Right. Because it is totally logical for a tribe to change their entire culture (including the way they act in private) based on pre-war culture that they have no way of seeing or interacting with because someone told them to do it to attract customers. This definitely wasn't "Hey you know what would be cool? Lets have mafia dudes in New Vegas!" and than working backwards to justify that. How did that even work? Did he just give them a bunch of Godfather holotapes and say "This is your life now"? If we're comparing them directly Fallout 4's explanation makes far more sense.
That's the way I always saw it. He offered them his stockpile of resources, he casino as a base so they could stop their wanderings, his limited military backing giving them an edge over the other tribes and the promise of much more wealth and power. In exchange they'd work for him and change to suit his tastes like any employee should. The Omertas you see today are all about strength and increasing their power so I could see such a deal being tempting to them. I'd like to believe House had enough first hand experience dealing with pre war Vegas types to show his new tribes what he wanted from them and was able to fill in the blanks with holotapes in the same Kings discovered Elvis. The suits were salvaged from the hotels. For his part House wanted to recreate the Vegas he knew and wanted his underlings to have a culture that wasn't alien and easier to manipulate. You make a good point about the in private part. I'd say the facade bled into their real lives over time due to strict enforcement from House as well as having a natural appeal to the Omertas and the change was gradual over the decades. My problem is that time from the forming of the three families to the present was a few decades and not a century.
I agree with you about the working backwards part though. Vegas to Casinos to the Mob.
For the Triggermen in 4 the origin story comes from a bit of dialogue of a ghoul triggerman talking to a human member about the vault they are guarding. All he says is that back in the day there was union construction rackets implying he was alive back in the day and in the mob. That's it, everything I said before is speculation based on this. We don't get any story about the mobsters that survived the war, we don't get a don figure who was possibly one of the ghouls, we don't get any real hierarchy of the faction. All the bosses of the faction are humans speaking like old timely gangsters and wearing these clothes for no given reason and there are hundreds of them in unrelated gangs.
That's my problem with Triggermen is they have nothing other then a unique aesthetic. They failed to do anything to make me believe they have a reason why they exist in this world. Its so weird to me how badly they dropped the ball. You have a cool gangster faction that has some ties to Goodneighbor but your primary interaction with them is not in Goodneighbor. You meet them in the course of saving the old timey detective that has beef with them. This detective also has beef with a ghoulified Whitey Bulger. The ghoulified Whitey Bulger is completely unrelated to the pre war like gangster faction.
Why wasn't Edward Winter the brains behind a singular Triggerman organization run out of Goodneighbor and you deal with them as a part of Nick Valentine's story? That way you get an explanation why they exist the way they do and some sort of stakes in the events of the game.
I'll take the Omertas and their backwards reasoning to explain something they thought would fit the setting and aesthetics of their world with the gaps being filled in with reasonable speculation from other given examples in the world to the almost absolute nothing Fallout 4 gives the Triggermen.
I don't mean to say I hate Fallout 4 or even the Triggermen. I like the idea a lot but the execution is so bare.
