JadeiteART

My mind just won’t stop and wait for the canon information so thought I’d share what I’ve gathered! °₊·ˈ∗♡( ˃̶᷇ ‧̫ ˂̶᷆ )♡∗ˈ‧₊°

I’m really curious as to what Cooper Howard’s age was when the bombs dropped. I’ve seen break downs of the potential age for Lucy but haven’t stumbled across an analysis for Cooper 🤔 (mainly due to there being more dates to help conclude Lucy’s age range- which by using information stated in interviews and from the show should put her right at 25-26 years old)

(It also seems like Maximus’s age could be between 25-30 years old!)

Majority of what I’ve seen has been assumptions that Cooper’s age correlates with Walton Goggins’ age- which is 52. Personally speaking I instinctively feel like that is a tad older than the character could be, but this is just my interpretation going off little.

So here are my mental notes:

Janey seems to be within the 6-8 year range which reinforces to me that he could ideally be in his late 30’s-mid or late 40’s when the bombs dropped. While it’s completely plausible she was born when Barb and Cooper were already in their 40’s (with the assumption they are close in age), I still would like to think that’s later than normal in their universe. I’m specifically highlighting a range in the 40’s first because it would only make sense for Cooper Howard to be in his 50’s when the bombs dropped, with let’s say an 8 year old daughter, if she was born when he was in his early 40’s.

It seems more likely they had Janey during the 30’s year range, resulting in Cooper Howard potentially being in his 40’s when the bomb actually dropped.

Now, in Ep. 6 “The Trap” we see a scene where Barbra refers to her time at home while Cooper was off fighting in the American-Sino war (specifically in 2067 near the start of that war, 10 years before The Great War happens)

The dates obviously show that Cooper went to war before Janey was involved in their lives but also to add- I strongly believe Barb would have additionally pointed out in that scene how she took care of herself while pregnant or took care of Janey while he was away. Given that she didn’t, further evidence they conceived her after he returned from war (which would also go with baby boomer type logic).

This puts Janey’s birth year from 2069-2071, depending on her age, between the 6-8 year range. I’m betting she is 7 years old at the start of the Great War, and was born in 2070. (I went in a deep dive a couple of weeks ago and somehow found information that stated Teagan Meredith, Janey’s actress, was 7 years old at time of filming. However, I can’t find it again? Her actress is now 9 years old)

Now- if you check out the Fallout Wiki on Cooper Howard, you’ll see this: “In an interview with Collider, Goggins described the Ghoul in terms of "the person that he is 250 years later," giving a rough timeframe and bare minimum of his age range.[12]” This could have been a general ballpark from Collider, so it’s not quite proof of anything but I’m still going to use that information and try to determine around it!!

The fallout show takes place in 2297, 219 years after 2077, when the bombs dropped. If you subtract 250 years from 2297, that leaves Cooper with an absolute minimum age of 32!

Now if he was 32, that’d mean he fought in the war in this early 20’s and had Janey by 24 years old. That idea could be realistic for some people, but to me personally, that just seems off and too young. Cooper and Barb appear physically middle-aged, and it notes that in the Wiki, which one is typically not considered “middle-aged” until their 40’s.

Also to note- looking at the posters made for Cooper Howard’s movies he seems to look between the ages of 30-40! Also many men typically start showing signs of gray hair in their mid 30’s, which goes along nicely to me that Cooper Howard has just a little gray coming in on his side burns!

Putting my estimate that he was around 38-43 years old when the bombs dropped!!!

Anyway, I have some more minuscule details but my brain is starting to hurt, forget, and this is getting quite disorganized and long….

Comment a specific age if you have one or more details to share 🤩

All excellent points. I personally thought Coop was supposed to be in his mid to late forties, I'd say 45-47? And Barb was supposed to be slightly younger, 40 maybe? If that were true sthey would have had haney at 38-40 and 32 respectively which, imho, is more than realistic, especially if you consider Barb is a working girl who might have put off having kids (or maybe she never planned to have any, it was just an accident).

On another note, where'd you get Max being 25-30 from? Cause as far as I can tell, his character is about 20-ish.

Baby Max and Baby Lucy both appear to be 5-6 in the flashbacks (thus some hc they might have met and been friends as kids) except... these flashbacks are 4-5 years apart. Lucy's are from 2277 at most since that was the year she last saw her mom before Hank took her back to the vault and faked the whole famine or something to cover shit up. Max's are from 2281-82 when Shady Sands was actually bombed. So if Lucy is 25-26, Max is 20-21, which imho makes more sense for his character than if he were 30 or so like the actor.

starting to see the poetry in moldaver keeping rose all this time in her feral state and the possibility of cooper and lucy forming some type of bond where lucy would theoretically do the same [though i don't particularly think cooper would end game exactly this way at least not in the show] but then i started wondering... just how long was rose ghoulified? i am curious if they'd show moldaver and/or rose flashbacks because a timeline or even just scenes would be interesting to the story. like if rose's ghoulification was fast, i wonder if moldaver was incredibly sentimental and grief stricken and this situation just happened? or was it slow. like most ferality is. and moldaver and rose got to talking. what if rose asked moldaver to keep rose around even... after... as... evidence? i mean lucy got to see all what hank did this way. with verified proof. it's obvious there was sentiment there too with moldaver but... the twist, the exposure of that what hank did was the sharpest revelation, i think. at least the most prominent in those moments... i think moldaver [implied at least to me] loving rose and then keeping her as a feral ghoul is with detailed purpose. i definitely think there's going to be more things similar to this in the show. whether it has anything to do with cooper and/or lucy, i guess the writers will show us in time but i can see parallels being drawn, maybe not as tragic or even as stark. but i do think there will be more than what we saw with roger and rose.

I'd say the post-atomic society's view and treatment of ghouls who really are just people with an extreme condition is one of the major socio-political themes of the show.

There are several different scenes sprinkled throughout the show that offer us small pieces of information on this topic:

- When Honcho and friends dig Cooper up we learn that people consider ghouls as subhuman and are generally wary of them

-In Filly, Ma June says Cooper's kind ain't welcome, which again seems to imply ghouls are seen as a subspecies

- Roger saying that smoothies can be so unkind further illustrates how ghouls, even the nice and non-violent ones like himself, are generally mistreated based on their condition alone

- At the same time, Roger's observation that Coop had gotten himself a smoothie of his own, seems to imply that ghoul-human relationships of one kind or another are a thing that exists

-Lucy's interactions with Cooper throughout the first 4 episodes in which she holds him to the same standards as anyone else, shows us she's devoid of that anti-ghoul bias. While she has eyes and therefore can tell he's... well, different, she still sees him as nothing more and nothing less than a man and expects him to act as such

- This last point is reinforced in the scene at the SDM where 1. she refers to Cooper as a "man" not a "ghoul" and 2. advocates for the ghouls locked in the fridges because in her mind they aren't creatures, they are people

- Moldaver's attachment to Rose that transcended her ghoulification might have been meant to further prove that ghouls are still people and that the change to their condition doesn't magically erase one's feelings for them. At the same time it might try to show us that Lucy's approach to ghouls, while it might come from a place of naivety, isn't fundamentally wrong as it seems to align with Moldaver's who is anything but naive.

There is a second part to this about how I think Rose turned feral so quickly but I will finish and post it tomorrow.

oh absolutely, it's definitely a huge underpinning to the games and represents various allegories for real life marginalizations, i'd say too--- i like your analysis of moldaver keeping or having rose around still even after ghoulification. moldaver and lucy probably had the same view about ghouls to be honest. and i like that you included literally every instance of ghoul scenes or ghoul and people interactions. i look forward to your second part, i love your assessments

So here comes part two

How quickly did Rose turn feral? Very quickly, I'd say, and here's why.

I heard/read a theory that the reason behind ghouls turning feral is, get this, plain old infection. While it might sound like something one would pull out of their ass, it could explain why some turn feral quickly while others hold on for centuries.

So, we know ghoulification occurs in the result of exposure to radiation. This, however, can happen in a variety of different ways, affecting both the speed and outcome of the ghoulification process.

Rose was certainly caught in the blast that destroyed Shady Sands (which happened in 2281 or 2282 so 14-15 years before the events of the show). This means that other than being hit by gamma radiation she would've also suffered severe thermal burns. In real life, the radiation would prevent her burns from healing. Here, the opposite would happen. Once her ghoul gene was activated, the radiation would actually help her heal. She wouldn't regrow her burnt off skin or anything like it (thus her sorry state when we first meet her in her ghoul form), but her tissues would heal and scarify faster and she wouldn't die from organ failure.

The important question to ask here is: how long does it take for that special gene to activate and the ghoulification process to begin?

If it takes some time - which I think it does - then infection could have found a way inside Rose's body before she turned and her burns healed and scarified. Once the infection reached her brain, she would've gone feral in no time.

Let's look at Roger for comparison. He wasn't caught in any nuclear blasts but was instead gradually exposed to the residue radiation in the environment. He says it had been 28 years since he started showing, implying that his ghoulification was a process that happened over time. So, if he wasn't burnt in a blast, how come he's turning feral? Notice the gash on his forehead. That must have been a nasty wound. If he got it before he turned (and was therefore able to heal quickly), it might have served as a doorway for infection to enter his body. So how come he hadn't turned ages ago?

Well, here comes the mystery yellow serum. I suspect it's not a special drug for ghouls but something else, some kind of drug or medicine that just so happens to prevent ghouls from going feral, maybe because it contains antibiotics?

Since we're already on this topic, let's take a moment to talk about Coop cause he's a whole separate case.

We know he had been there when the bombs fell in 2077. We see him get hit by the shockwave from a nearby blast but he doesn't get immediately pulverized. There's a video on YT where they tried to calculate whether Coop had any chance of outrunning those bombs and apparently, he did (because these bombs were actually very small for some reason). That said, let's assume that his melted-looking but curiously integral skin is the result of exposure to gamma which burned him but at the same time triggered his ghoul gene and therefore immediately healed him. So, unless he got shot or stabbed or suffered any other major wound that could've gotten infected before he turned, he shouldn't go feral. In fact, I don't think he does.

It has been pointed out by someone before that when Coop runs out of the mystery yellow serum, he doesn't present the same symptoms as other ghouls. Roger and Martha, when they start to go, twitch and growl and repeat their name. Meanwhile Cooper coughs and then just... drops. The mystery yellow serum certainly helps him but maybe it actually helps him with something else?

It occurred to me that during the stand-out in Filly, Coop gets shot in the back. Repeatedly. It's probably not the first time either. Later, he also tells the lead farmer that he probably still has some of his lead in him. So maybe it's all the bullets lodged in his lungs and possibly other places that cause him to cough up his soul unless he takes the mystery yellow serum which, again, I suspect is some kind of medicine?

i knew you'd come with a banger because i've never come across in my digging people speculate about infection causing ferality in ghoulification. this is a great explanation and i'd love to see more opinions on this too and if you have links to this, i'd love to see. because i've been wondering on the drug cooper and the ghouls in the tv show keep taking versus how ghoulification happens and and how ferality manifests in the games. i'm really of the opinion it's not what ghouls are being sold it is and it's either placebo effecting or like you said, helping in another way. it being antibiotics or something of that sort solves to me a lot, especially why cooper isn't typically displaying feral symptoms without it and why he coughs more without it. for me, i have pondered if he's showing signs of withdrawals with his coughs and passes out? it also occurred to me he might have an as yet undisclosed respiratory illness to begin with [they showed him smoking various tobacco products in the pre war so perhaps that's a layer on top of this too?] it never occurred to me that roger's head wound was before he went went totally ghoul. it's so easy to assume it's part of the decomposing appearance via ghoulification but what if, you know? also i've been thinking about that lead comment from the lead farmer since i wrote my episode review and was initially confused by it. because if adam and cooper know each other, it's curious if they've had shootouts. cooper saying "your lead" leads me to believe he meant adam himself. i couldn't understand if this was a general "you" or what. i guess cooper very well could be talking about the ncr as a whole here? surely adam has had to fight and use firearms before and against cooper. i'm quite curious about cooper's connections to the ncr, if any. i also wrote weeks ago speculating [jokingly, really] that all that lead inside him might be what's causing him to cough so much and not the ghoulification. realizing that lead really is used in bullets and that it's a rare condition but lead poisoning can happen this way may not make this idea farfetched at all if he's been a war veteran and bounty hunter for over two hundred years. i wonder if anything about this will come up in the next seasons tbh rose going feral fast is heartbreaking. i mean, fast or slow, it's terrible. because you know the last time rose ever consciously saw lucy was probably when she was being taken or something. and she probably was repeating her own name, maybe even lucy's until she wasn't herself anymore. the more i think about it, the harder it is grapple with. i wonder if they'll show that? and in detail? i wonder if lucy's memories will resurface as the seasons go on and show just how brutal hank is? the games kind of make it vaguer tbh how and why people suddenly go feral. many characters never show signs or take anything. a lot of them just wait and see. feels kinda random idk. though i am not sure it's an inevitability, i almost think the show might paint it that way, not sure yet. but i'd like to see something clearer about the process and if there's rhyme and reason. i really appreciate you make us all think including me, i love finding out new stuff or thinking about things in a different way and especially for the show, thanks for the addition seriously

Part 4: The Mystery of the Yellow Serum

People have pointed out how the serum potentially breaks lore because until now, no one has heard about it but in the show it looks as if the ghouls have been taking it for the past 200+ years to avoid going feral. Or have they?

As I already said before, if you don't get an infection, you shouldn't go feral, serum or no serum. So that explains how we can have all those centuries-old ghouls who seem to be doing surprisingly fine, despite having never taken anything.

If you think about it, the only ghouls that we see take that serum are Cooper and Roger, who just so happens to be Cooper's old friend. None of the ghouls that Lucy lets out of the fridges at the SDM stop to take some vials to go. Moldaver never got any for Rose (although maybe Rose was already too far gone for that). So it would appear that serum's anti-feral properties aren't common knowledge after all.

You know what I think? I think it all tracks back to Cooper and how he became a ghoul. We don't know the exact details of it yet but I can't shake the thought that he might have been involved in some sort of experiment, as a test subject that is.

When the bombs fell, his priority would've probably been to take Janey somewhere safe. The only relatively safe place would've been a vault. Cooper couldn't know the location of all the vaults, certainly not the management vaults, but he did know the location of one specific vault because he's already been there to shoot a commercial: Vault 4. Maybe he went there and was actually let in. Maybe Barb, who might have had contact with 4 as a Vault-Tec Exec overseeing their experiments, ordered that they be let inside. Maybe they were given Rad-Away - it would explain why Coop is so smooth compared to other ghouls. Maybe then Janey was taken to Barb while Coop was left behind in 4 and was included in their experiments.

Roger implied Coop had been taking the mystery serum ever since he started wastelanding. This means that it's either something that existed pre-war or... it's something that was created right after the war. Maybe it's some common medicine - an antibiotic or a strong painkiller - or some new experimental drug they developed in Vault 4?

I suspect that whatever it is exactly, the yellow serum must have a wider range of applications. It could have strong curative properties (it looks suspiciously similar and is inhaled just like the serum the Snake Oil Salesman gave to Thaddeus) and maybe could also be employed as a recreational drug. If it wasn't something that could be sold to regular people as well as an occasional ghoul, I don't think it would still be produced and the guys at the SDM wouldn't have such a large stash of it. Also, before going to SDM, Cooper is looking for it in a clinic. Why would it be in a clinic if it was made specifically for ghouls.

So if it's not an anti-feral ghoul drug, how come some ghouls, like Roger, came to think of it as such? Well, maybe they learned about it from Cooper? Maybe they saw him take it and search for it like his life depended on it and put two and two together? Think of it, it's not even some ghouls, like Roger. As far as we know, it's only Roger.

There is a detail here I don't think anyone has mentioned before. When Honcho and his goons dig Cooper up they indirectly say he's been Dom Pedro's captive for 30 years. Roger says it's been 28 years since he began tuning into a ghoul. It could be just a mistake, but if it isn't, it would imply that Cooper met Roger when he was still just a regular human.

So imagine Roger noticed Cooper taking the serum and just asked him why he did it? And Cooper told him that it was to prevent him from turning feral. So when Roger turned into a ghoul, he too began taking the drug so he wouldn't turn feral either.

The real question is: why does Cooper think the serum prevents him from going feral? 'Cause honestly, I don't think it does. I think he never went feral for the same reason the ghoul kid in the fridge never went feral. No infection = no going feral. Still, the serum has some kind of effect on him.

The etiquettes on the vials have a skull and a bomb. What if the serum contains concentrated radiation? It would explain why it would trigger Thaddeus' ghoul gene (that's assuming that the serum the Snake Oil Salesman gave him was indeed the same thing or a variant of it and that he is in fact turning into a ghoul and not a super mutant or something).

As for Cooper, maybe his actual problem is that he isn't radioactive enough? I mean, he still has his ears and his lips and his eyes look normal and he doesn't trigger Lucy's geiger counter. Maybe, if he was indeed taken into Vault 4 and given some Rad-Away, it messed up his ghoulification? Maybe at first the Rad-Away helped him, preventing his burns from getting worse (explaining his relatively smooth appearance), but before it could flush all the radiation away, his ghoul gene activated and the situation reversed. The scientists there didn't know what was going on with him but they figured that if removing radiation made him worse, perhaps they should put some back in and see what happens. So they concocted and gave him this drug containing a concentrated dose of radiation. It worked, he got better, but then they had to keep giving him more of it, otherwise, he would start getting worse again because there'd be no radiation there for him to absorb and heal himself further.

Now, imagine at some point Coop managed to escape Vault 4, taking a stash of those vials with him. Maybe, not yet being such a supreme badass, he had some of them stolen. Maybe word spread that there was this new chem that could heal your wounds and shit. Maybe entities that produce chems in-universe got their hands on a sample and began to produce more of it and sell it to people because capitalism, I guess. It would explain how come one could find these vials in clinics or buy them from dealers two centuries later. Maybe they also modified it to make it highly addictive so that once someone got into it, they'd constantly need to buy more.

So does the serum actually prevent ghouls from going feral? Well... if it's radiation-based - which I think is the most likely - it could boost ghouls' healing abilities, preventing the infection from reaching their brain. It would explain why they would turn feral relatively quickly but not necessarily immediately after running out of it.

Now, Cooper doesn't know any of this. All he knows is that ghouls can go feral. Many of them do after a relatively short period of time meanwhile he's been around for ages and is still doing fine. What is the difference between him and those other ghouls? He's been constantly taking that serum. So of course he's think that if he stopped taking it, he might go feral too. Not to mention, whenever he does that he feels like shit and that could either be because:

What about the lead?

They way I understood it, when Cooper says he might still have some of (the farmer's) lead in him, he means that some of the bullets he was shot across the recent years might have been made with the lead the farmer is farming. I don't think it was necessarily meant to imply anything about the NCR.

Lead poisoning is something I have considered since he obviously has some lead bullets lodged in his back from the shoot-out in Filly and probably some more from earlier but:

So while I think he'd be better off if he had those bullets surgically removed and took an antibiotic for good measure, lead poisoning probably isn't the reason for the coughing and other symptoms he presents when he doesn't take his serum.

All the coughing and drooling and apparent difficulty breathing when he goes for too long without the serum makes me think that whatever he has is related to his respiratory system. Perhaps you are right and his lungs are fucked up from smoking cigs for a century or two. Or maybe he has asthma? Or maybe he coughs because having no nostrils he's unintentionally inhaling sand particles?

At this point, I really don't know anything anymore but I hope that all of this is tackled at some point because it looks intentional. They could've made him growl and twitch lightly just like Roger and Martha. Or they could have Roger and Martha cough and drool. If they made them do different things, there must have been a reason behind it. Considering the level of attention to detail put in this show, it can't be a mistake or a coincidence. This was a choice and it was done on purpose. I think they wanted us to notice this and try to figure out what it means.

ooo a part three and four! yeah, the joke is kinda that they "yassified" ghouls for the show but then again this could be said for the games, bethesda changed them up and took them in a different direction and even between fallout: new vegas and fallout 4. a theory for the show unifying the lore is great, i have been wondering if lore from the show would effect and/or involve the games more...

oh this is interesting, i think i'm inclined to agree with it too. it would explain so much because as it stands, it's a little vague otherwise why ghoulification results in going feral. i'm not sure i've seen other explanations [besides just the radiation itself] and this one is very good.

yeah, ghoulification is weird because this theory calls into question some other stuff because there's definitely lore on drugs causing ghoulification [no radiation as understood whatsoever and people becoming ghouls well before the bombs dropped] and born ghouls [people being birthed as ghouls and/or experimented on to be born as ghouls]. but i still like the theory because it's such a reasonable explanation and it's not outside the realm of the lore for it to happen, you know

yes ok that ghoul child in the fridge presents a host of lore issues on its own! not sure why he was included or made in the way he was but it turns the idea that ghouls need food, water, and air on its head, it implies multiple things like that the fridge didn't shield him, he survived without food, water, and air and that ghoulification? was what kept him from passing all this time. this also goes for another character that was buried [much like cooper] from an earlier game.

there's a few theories that kinda i guess make it make sense--- much like how how cooper was buried, there's some idea about a type of hibernation. but that still begs the question of how so without the serum. or other human and being alive things one needs for this to make sense. not sure why they decided on this. but then again, there's non feral glowing ghouls, ghouls who turn into trees, and ghouls who may never go feral, perhaps bethesda just likes being a little vague here dkgkdk

yes, when i first saw the show, i furrowed my brow over the serum because it didn't really make sense to me and with the games at first--- i had never heard or seen it and saw people say it muddles the the lore up too. i didn't even realize this! that the ghouls in the super duper mart didn't take any vials and/or didn't need any. nice catch, that's so interesting they didn't. and stuff like this is why i call into question if the serum is forreal or just a scam, because it's got to be on purpose showing mostly only cooper and roger taking the serum and/or the idea that it's not widely known for its healing and/or antiferal properties.

i have seen speculation maybe cooper was involved with some ghoul experiment vault as a theory [would make sense to me atp!]. omg no ok but him having ended up in vault 4 to be experimented on, wow. i hadn't quite thought of this [mostly because the doctors knew him and the vault experiments at least in the beginning seemed to be centered on a very specific type of creature they were making but]. this checks out so much, friend. they would "help" people there before i'm sure and then experiment on them oof

ooo the serum being pre war would be so interesting. there's also a lore discrepancy with various chems like this, some characters claim to have created them at certain points in the timeline that don't always make sense in other games, very interesting to think about with this to me. ok but i do wonder if the snake oil salesman knows what the serum is. and that's why maximus tells thaddeus he thinks he's a ghoul because the serum has some type of healing properties? i don't exactly think it's the same one but who knows, right? that instant healing makes it seem like it is so i get why one would think so. ah, the clinic having it would definitely make it seem like it's pre war, wow yeah. totally right

omg i didn't think of this either [not good at math dglld] so i didn't realize cooper may have met roger as a human. this means the next time he seems roger, his friend is already feral ☹️. see yes ok, i don't think it prevents him from going feral, i think it just staves off symptoms of something else he has going on idk? omg wouldn't that be interesting, radaway [and/or rad x] being the opposite type of solution and then there's this radiation packed serum.

i firmly think thaddeus might be turning into a super mutant but i guess just as well the show could be introducing us to drug induced ghoulification too. i noticed the vials had like, skulls and stuff on them but i couldn't guess what it could mean. i guess it's like almost saying it's poison. whoaaa--- cooper maybe not being radioactive enough? your mind. wait omg, i don't think i realized he didn't trigger the geiger. because... didn't it go off with monty? this would be crazy?? it not going off with cooper? oh it makes me want to rewatch for a third time because whattt

modifying the serum to make it more addictive would explain how i feel about it for cooper's experience with it to me and also unify the possibility it really was doing what he thought it was supposed to do, wow, your mind again! maybe the serum i guess it's a catch 22. taking it prevents ferality in ghoulification but if you stop, perhaps the withdrawals make ghoulification worse or make ferality faster idk... lmao not colander lungs 😭 i was thinking he coughs because radiation [and smoking pre war] done turned them into swiss cheese but. it is almost certain that all them bullets has effected his breathing too omg you're so onto something

ooo i just know bullet wounds [and them healing over, making his body react], ghoulification, taking that serum [then having withdrawals? from it], all that sand, having no nose, smoking pre war, and possibly having asthma or some other respiratory problem is compounding into what we see with him and his breathing and coughing. i think it was with purpose not showing him starting to go feral because ferality is the end stop for all ghouls. they at least want to stave off any true implication of that. i also think they wanted us to notice and figure out what it means, too. because there's so much vagueness and discrepancies, it's making our heads spin ldgldl

Part 5: On Ghoul Decomposition, Yassification and Drug Lords

The yellow serum origins

I think you're right, the serum is probably a pre-war drug and I think I might have an idea about the circumstances in which it came to be.

In your reblog you mentioned Rad-Away. Now, how would you go about creating something like that? I suppose you'd have to do some trials, including eventual human trials but here's a problem: where to find enough irradiated people to test on in a pre-atomic world?

I think this serum might have been originally created to purposefully give people radiation poisoning in a way that would be both discreet and controlled. It could be a strong medicine of some kind (maybe containing antibiotics and painkillers) purposefully imbued with a calculated dose of radiation. When a patient of the right sort - someone like a homeless person or a junkie - would present themselves at a hospital participating in the Rad-Away research, the doctors would give them the serum under the guise of trying to help them. When it would eventually cause them radiation poisoning, they would suggest that they try this new anti-radiation therapy they have been researching. You get the idea.

If this is how it went, it would explain why some of those vials could still be found in old abandoned clinics centuries later.

Now Vault 4 would certainly have a stash of that thing since the whole idea behind it was radiation-related research which began before the bombs dropped. The world wasn't full of radiation-ridden people that could accidentally fall into the vault while looking for medical supplies. If they wanted to test on humans, they'd have to irradiate them first and what safer way to do it than through a radiation-laced serum. As for Cooper, it would make sense for the scientists there to give it to him after they realized that removing radiation from his body was doing him more harm than good, not necessarily to help him but to see what what would happen.

Speaking of Vault 4, I recommend you check out Oxhorn's YT video about it - that is if you haven't already - as he brings up some excellent points.

An indirect cure for ferality with highly addictive properties

See, so far, we've been operating on the premise that the yellow serum is at least thought to be an anti-feral chem in-universe. If you think about it, however, the show never really states as much.

Roger, who is about to turn feral, asks for the serum which seems to imply he thinks it could help stop the process. As I said before, he might know about the serum from Coop, who might have told him that was why he was taking it but he might have also told him nothing. Unless it's an oversight in writing, Roger would have turned into a ghoul when Coop wasn't around. He might have started taking the serum because he thought it would prevent him from turning feral because a ghoul he knew who had been taking it never did. When they meet again, it's already late. When Roger asks for the serum, Cooper doesn't explain him that it wouldn't really help him anymore, because what would've been the point?

There is also the possibility that Roger asks for the serum simply because he's addicted to it and besides going feral, is also suffering withdrawal symptoms.

When Lucy steps victorious from the SDM, hands full of the serum, she asks Coop:

and we all assume she means the feral ghouls but the feral ghouls that were at the SDM are all laying dead inside and the ghouls she's pointing to are the non-feral ones that ran off after she had them released from the fridges. it could be an mistake but what it isn't? What if it's actually a clue?

Lucy doesn't see a difference between the various feral and non feral ghouls imprisoned at the SDM. At least not yet. That's why she asks that all of them be released. She does however see a difference between them and Cooper. She can tell that, while he's definitely not a regular human man, he's not quite the same as the ghouls from the SDM. He's not as... decayed. So when she says the above line, she's really asking him: "if you don't get your serum, you will start to decay until you become like them?".

At this point, Cooper doesn't know yet that there were any feral ghouls at the SDM. So when he nods he probably means: "yes, I will start to decay and then, eventually, will probably turn feral".

Now that would tie perfectly with what I said previously about body decomposition being a sign of infection which is the reason why some ghouls turn feral.

If the yellow serum was made from a pre-war drug that was some kind of medicine (maybe containing antibiotics and other stuff), it would help a ghoul fight the infection, preventing him from decaying and ultimately going feral. The fact that it's irradiated not only wouldn't harm them but would further help them.

As for the serum's addictive properties - which I think are hardly up to debate - they could either be the result of the original serum being cut with something else to turn it into a recreational drug or could be related to one of its original components, some opiates maybe?

I mean, in real life, certain types of medicine, like some strong painkillers or psychotropes, can be seriously addictive.

Cooper taking that serum from the beginning would not only explain why he didn't turn feral yet or why he didn't die from all the bullet wounds and other injuries he might have sustained, but also why he's so much more in the flesh compared to other ghouls - not just ghouls from the games but also all the other ghouls we come across in the show.

I can't help but notice that if they wanted to change the way the ghouls look in general, they could've done it to all the ghouls but no. They only really made Coop a pretty ghoul.

Yes, I know they did his makeup like that so his performance could still shine through but the way in which they constantly point out how they purposefully tried to make him somewat attractive, ad in sexually attractive makes me think there might be more to it.

Maybe they made him like that because they intended for his character arc to include romance - be it a story with Lucy or a reconciliation with Barb - and wanted to make sure that the viewers, especially those new to the IP, could roll with it.

The Mysterious IV Bag

I've seen a theory saying it could be Rad-Away meant to incapacitate him by flushing radiation out of his system but Rad-Away IV bags have the name written on them. Also, Cooper must be taking this thing willingly. He's trapped in the coffin but there's enough space in it for him to tear the needle out of his arm if the substance in the IV was something harmful. So the only other logical explanation is that the IV contains his beloved serum.

On a side note, he doesn't have any needles in his arms or anything so maybe he's just sucking at it like from a straw?

The question is: why would Dom Pedro give him that serum and where would he get so much of it?

Well, maybe Dom Pedro is like a post-atomic Pablo Escobar? Maybe he has labs down in Mexico where they produce that serum and then distribute it through places like the SDM?

Maybe Coop went down to Mexico to get himself some of that serum directly from the source except things didn't go as planned and he ended up trapped in that cemetery?

Maybe Dom Pedro feeds him the serum to make sure than when he digs him up to torture him, he won't find himself dealing with a feral?

One thing to notice here is that Honcho and his men still consider Coop might be feral. That means that they don't know anything about the yellow serum being an anti-feral solution. Noticing the IV bags, however, they do conclude that Coop must be a "mutant" so I guess the serum could either be known to cause ghoulification or it could just be very popular among ghouls.

Part 6: Miscellaneous Thoughts and Ideas

Thaddeus and the Magic Potion

When I first watched the show I was under the impression that the Snake Oil Salesman was a bit of an alchemist who was creating some original concoctions from available chems. I think that the serum he gave thaddeus might have been a mixture of the yellow vials with something else like maybe FEV?

While you're right that the show might have wanted to introduce us to drug-induced ghoulification, it might be more interesting if Thad was actually turning into a Super Mutant.

Hibernation Theory

I really like this one. It would make sense to me if ghouls, with all their regenerative capabilities, when deprived of food and drink would just go into standby mode. I mean, if they don't die from old age, why should they die of hunger? Maybe they need food and water to stay active and if they don't eat and drink they just fall into a sort of coma?

Children Hiding in Fridges

You asked how come Billy was ghoulified if he was locked up in a fridge. Well... unless that was a very tight lead-lined fridge, radiation could've crept in and slowly turned him into a ghoul. As such he wouldn't age and could survive without nutrition by going into hibernation.

Since we're talking about children hiding in fridges, I gotta bring up Max. Someone pointed out how his fridge has an opening in the back! So he should've gotten irradiated and maybe he did. Maybe the fridge only protected him from thermal burns but he still got hit with gamma. Except maybe his mom fed him Rad-X with his cornflakes because you know, they're living in a radioactive wasteland so prevention is key, and then maybe the BoS also gave him some Rad-Away after rescuing him?

Cooper as a Victim of a Vault Experiment

I'm glad you liked my Vault 4 theory. There is, however, another possibility as well.

Bakersfield. Cooper mentions wanting to buy a ranch there. What if, after the divorce, he did just that? Maybe Barb kept the LA House and he moved to Bakersfield? Maybe, after the bombs fell, he tried to get with Janey into the Vault located there, the one that didn't close properly. Except Janey was taken away by Barb or someone from Vault Tec at some point while he was left there and was exposed to radiation and ended up ghoulified?

Someone pointed out how the mention of Bakersfield was just an Easter Egg but I wouldn't exclude the possibility of it being foreshadowing.

starting to see the poetry in moldaver keeping rose all this time in her feral state and the possibility of cooper and lucy forming some type of bond where lucy would theoretically do the same [though i don't particularly think cooper would end game exactly this way at least not in the show] but then i started wondering... just how long was rose ghoulified? i am curious if they'd show moldaver and/or rose flashbacks because a timeline or even just scenes would be interesting to the story. like if rose's ghoulification was fast, i wonder if moldaver was incredibly sentimental and grief stricken and this situation just happened? or was it slow. like most ferality is. and moldaver and rose got to talking. what if rose asked moldaver to keep rose around even... after... as... evidence? i mean lucy got to see all what hank did this way. with verified proof. it's obvious there was sentiment there too with moldaver but... the twist, the exposure of that what hank did was the sharpest revelation, i think. at least the most prominent in those moments... i think moldaver [implied at least to me] loving rose and then keeping her as a feral ghoul is with detailed purpose. i definitely think there's going to be more things similar to this in the show. whether it has anything to do with cooper and/or lucy, i guess the writers will show us in time but i can see parallels being drawn, maybe not as tragic or even as stark. but i do think there will be more than what we saw with roger and rose.

I'd say the post-atomic society's view and treatment of ghouls who really are just people with an extreme condition is one of the major socio-political themes of the show.

There are several different scenes sprinkled throughout the show that offer us small pieces of information on this topic:

- When Honcho and friends dig Cooper up we learn that people consider ghouls as subhuman and are generally wary of them

-In Filly, Ma June says Cooper's kind ain't welcome, which again seems to imply ghouls are seen as a subspecies

- Roger saying that smoothies can be so unkind further illustrates how ghouls, even the nice and non-violent ones like himself, are generally mistreated based on their condition alone

- At the same time, Roger's observation that Coop had gotten himself a smoothie of his own, seems to imply that ghoul-human relationships of one kind or another are a thing that exists

-Lucy's interactions with Cooper throughout the first 4 episodes in which she holds him to the same standards as anyone else, shows us she's devoid of that anti-ghoul bias. While she has eyes and therefore can tell he's... well, different, she still sees him as nothing more and nothing less than a man and expects him to act as such

- This last point is reinforced in the scene at the SDM where 1. she refers to Cooper as a "man" not a "ghoul" and 2. advocates for the ghouls locked in the fridges because in her mind they aren't creatures, they are people

- Moldaver's attachment to Rose that transcended her ghoulification might have been meant to further prove that ghouls are still people and that the change to their condition doesn't magically erase one's feelings for them. At the same time it might try to show us that Lucy's approach to ghouls, while it might come from a place of naivety, isn't fundamentally wrong as it seems to align with Moldaver's who is anything but naive.

There is a second part to this about how I think Rose turned feral so quickly but I will finish and post it tomorrow.

oh absolutely, it's definitely a huge underpinning to the games and represents various allegories for real life marginalizations, i'd say too--- i like your analysis of moldaver keeping or having rose around still even after ghoulification. moldaver and lucy probably had the same view about ghouls to be honest. and i like that you included literally every instance of ghoul scenes or ghoul and people interactions. i look forward to your second part, i love your assessments

So here comes part two

How quickly did Rose turn feral? Very quickly, I'd say, and here's why.

I heard/read a theory that the reason behind ghouls turning feral is, get this, plain old infection. While it might sound like something one would pull out of their ass, it could explain why some turn feral quickly while others hold on for centuries.

So, we know ghoulification occurs in the result of exposure to radiation. This, however, can happen in a variety of different ways, affecting both the speed and outcome of the ghoulification process.

Rose was certainly caught in the blast that destroyed Shady Sands (which happened in 2281 or 2282 so 14-15 years before the events of the show). This means that other than being hit by gamma radiation she would've also suffered severe thermal burns. In real life, the radiation would prevent her burns from healing. Here, the opposite would happen. Once her ghoul gene was activated, the radiation would actually help her heal. She wouldn't regrow her burnt off skin or anything like it (thus her sorry state when we first meet her in her ghoul form), but her tissues would heal and scarify faster and she wouldn't die from organ failure.

The important question to ask here is: how long does it take for that special gene to activate and the ghoulification process to begin?

If it takes some time - which I think it does - then infection could have found a way inside Rose's body before she turned and her burns healed and scarified. Once the infection reached her brain, she would've gone feral in no time.

Let's look at Roger for comparison. He wasn't caught in any nuclear blasts but was instead gradually exposed to the residue radiation in the environment. He says it had been 28 years since he started showing, implying that his ghoulification was a process that happened over time. So, if he wasn't burnt in a blast, how come he's turning feral? Notice the gash on his forehead. That must have been a nasty wound. If he got it before he turned (and was therefore able to heal quickly), it might have served as a doorway for infection to enter his body. So how come he hadn't turned ages ago?

Well, here comes the mystery yellow serum. I suspect it's not a special drug for ghouls but something else, some kind of drug or medicine that just so happens to prevent ghouls from going feral, maybe because it contains antibiotics?

Since we're already on this topic, let's take a moment to talk about Coop cause he's a whole separate case.

We know he had been there when the bombs fell in 2077. We see him get hit by the shockwave from a nearby blast but he doesn't get immediately pulverized. There's a video on YT where they tried to calculate whether Coop had any chance of outrunning those bombs and apparently, he did (because these bombs were actually very small for some reason). That said, let's assume that his melted-looking but curiously integral skin is the result of exposure to gamma which burned him but at the same time triggered his ghoul gene and therefore immediately healed him. So, unless he got shot or stabbed or suffered any other major wound that could've gotten infected before he turned, he shouldn't go feral. In fact, I don't think he does.

It has been pointed out by someone before that when Coop runs out of the mystery yellow serum, he doesn't present the same symptoms as other ghouls. Roger and Martha, when they start to go, twitch and growl and repeat their name. Meanwhile Cooper coughs and then just... drops. The mystery yellow serum certainly helps him but maybe it actually helps him with something else?

It occurred to me that during the stand-out in Filly, Coop gets shot in the back. Repeatedly. It's probably not the first time either. Later, he also tells the lead farmer that he probably still has some of his lead in him. So maybe it's all the bullets lodged in his lungs and possibly other places that cause him to cough up his soul unless he takes the mystery yellow serum which, again, I suspect is some kind of medicine?

i knew you'd come with a banger because i've never come across in my digging people speculate about infection causing ferality in ghoulification. this is a great explanation and i'd love to see more opinions on this too and if you have links to this, i'd love to see. because i've been wondering on the drug cooper and the ghouls in the tv show keep taking versus how ghoulification happens and and how ferality manifests in the games. i'm really of the opinion it's not what ghouls are being sold it is and it's either placebo effecting or like you said, helping in another way. it being antibiotics or something of that sort solves to me a lot, especially why cooper isn't typically displaying feral symptoms without it and why he coughs more without it. for me, i have pondered if he's showing signs of withdrawals with his coughs and passes out? it also occurred to me he might have an as yet undisclosed respiratory illness to begin with [they showed him smoking various tobacco products in the pre war so perhaps that's a layer on top of this too?] it never occurred to me that roger's head wound was before he went went totally ghoul. it's so easy to assume it's part of the decomposing appearance via ghoulification but what if, you know? also i've been thinking about that lead comment from the lead farmer since i wrote my episode review and was initially confused by it. because if adam and cooper know each other, it's curious if they've had shootouts. cooper saying "your lead" leads me to believe he meant adam himself. i couldn't understand if this was a general "you" or what. i guess cooper very well could be talking about the ncr as a whole here? surely adam has had to fight and use firearms before and against cooper. i'm quite curious about cooper's connections to the ncr, if any. i also wrote weeks ago speculating [jokingly, really] that all that lead inside him might be what's causing him to cough so much and not the ghoulification. realizing that lead really is used in bullets and that it's a rare condition but lead poisoning can happen this way may not make this idea farfetched at all if he's been a war veteran and bounty hunter for over two hundred years. i wonder if anything about this will come up in the next seasons tbh rose going feral fast is heartbreaking. i mean, fast or slow, it's terrible. because you know the last time rose ever consciously saw lucy was probably when she was being taken or something. and she probably was repeating her own name, maybe even lucy's until she wasn't herself anymore. the more i think about it, the harder it is grapple with. i wonder if they'll show that? and in detail? i wonder if lucy's memories will resurface as the seasons go on and show just how brutal hank is? the games kind of make it vaguer tbh how and why people suddenly go feral. many characters never show signs or take anything. a lot of them just wait and see. feels kinda random idk. though i am not sure it's an inevitability, i almost think the show might paint it that way, not sure yet. but i'd like to see something clearer about the process and if there's rhyme and reason. i really appreciate you make us all think including me, i love finding out new stuff or thinking about things in a different way and especially for the show, thanks for the addition seriously

Part 4: The Mystery of the Yellow Serum

People have pointed out how the serum potentially breaks lore because until now, no one has heard about it but in the show it looks as if the ghouls have been taking it for the past 200+ years to avoid going feral. Or have they?

As I already said before, if you don't get an infection, you shouldn't go feral, serum or no serum. So that explains how we can have all those centuries-old ghouls who seem to be doing surprisingly fine, despite having never taken anything.

If you think about it, the only ghouls that we see take that serum are Cooper and Roger, who just so happens to be Cooper's old friend. None of the ghouls that Lucy lets out of the fridges at the SDM stop to take some vials to go. Moldaver never got any for Rose (although maybe Rose was already too far gone for that). So it would appear that serum's anti-feral properties aren't common knowledge after all.

You know what I think? I think it all tracks back to Cooper and how he became a ghoul. We don't know the exact details of it yet but I can't shake the thought that he might have been involved in some sort of experiment, as a test subject that is.

When the bombs fell, his priority would've probably been to take Janey somewhere safe. The only relatively safe place would've been a vault. Cooper couldn't know the location of all the vaults, certainly not the management vaults, but he did know the location of one specific vault because he's already been there to shoot a commercial: Vault 4. Maybe he went there and was actually let in. Maybe Barb, who might have had contact with 4 as a Vault-Tec Exec overseeing their experiments, ordered that they be let inside. Maybe they were given Rad-Away - it would explain why Coop is so smooth compared to other ghouls. Maybe then Janey was taken to Barb while Coop was left behind in 4 and was included in their experiments.

Roger implied Coop had been taking the mystery serum ever since he started wastelanding. This means that it's either something that existed pre-war or... it's something that was created right after the war. Maybe it's some common medicine - an antibiotic or a strong painkiller - or some new experimental drug they developed in Vault 4?

I suspect that whatever it is exactly, the yellow serum must have a wider range of applications. It could have strong curative properties (it looks suspiciously similar and is inhaled just like the serum the Snake Oil Salesman gave to Thaddeus) and maybe could also be employed as a recreational drug. If it wasn't something that could be sold to regular people as well as an occasional ghoul, I don't think it would still be produced and the guys at the SDM wouldn't have such a large stash of it. Also, before going to SDM, Cooper is looking for it in a clinic. Why would it be in a clinic if it was made specifically for ghouls.

So if it's not an anti-feral ghoul drug, how come some ghouls, like Roger, came to think of it as such? Well, maybe they learned about it from Cooper? Maybe they saw him take it and search for it like his life depended on it and put two and two together? Think of it, it's not even some ghouls, like Roger. As far as we know, it's only Roger.

There is a detail here I don't think anyone has mentioned before. When Honcho and his goons dig Cooper up they indirectly say he's been Dom Pedro's captive for 30 years. Roger says it's been 28 years since he began tuning into a ghoul. It could be just a mistake, but if it isn't, it would imply that Cooper met Roger when he was still just a regular human.

So imagine Roger noticed Cooper taking the serum and just asked him why he did it? And Cooper told him that it was to prevent him from turning feral. So when Roger turned into a ghoul, he too began taking the drug so he wouldn't turn feral either.

The real question is: why does Cooper think the serum prevents him from going feral? 'Cause honestly, I don't think it does. I think he never went feral for the same reason the ghoul kid in the fridge never went feral. No infection = no going feral. Still, the serum has some kind of effect on him.

The etiquettes on the vials have a skull and a bomb. What if the serum contains concentrated radiation? It would explain why it would trigger Thaddeus' ghoul gene (that's assuming that the serum the Snake Oil Salesman gave him was indeed the same thing or a variant of it and that he is in fact turning into a ghoul and not a super mutant or something).

As for Cooper, maybe his actual problem is that he isn't radioactive enough? I mean, he still has his ears and his lips and his eyes look normal and he doesn't trigger Lucy's geiger counter. Maybe, if he was indeed taken into Vault 4 and given some Rad-Away, it messed up his ghoulification? Maybe at first the Rad-Away helped him, preventing his burns from getting worse (explaining his relatively smooth appearance), but before it could flush all the radiation away, his ghoul gene activated and the situation reversed. The scientists there didn't know what was going on with him but they figured that if removing radiation made him worse, perhaps they should put some back in and see what happens. So they concocted and gave him this drug containing a concentrated dose of radiation. It worked, he got better, but then they had to keep giving him more of it, otherwise, he would start getting worse again because there'd be no radiation there for him to absorb and heal himself further.

Now, imagine at some point Coop managed to escape Vault 4, taking a stash of those vials with him. Maybe, not yet being such a supreme badass, he had some of them stolen. Maybe word spread that there was this new chem that could heal your wounds and shit. Maybe entities that produce chems in-universe got their hands on a sample and began to produce more of it and sell it to people because capitalism, I guess. It would explain how come one could find these vials in clinics or buy them from dealers two centuries later. Maybe they also modified it to make it highly addictive so that once someone got into it, they'd constantly need to buy more.

So does the serum actually prevent ghouls from going feral? Well... if it's radiation-based - which I think is the most likely - it could boost ghouls' healing abilities, preventing the infection from reaching their brain. It would explain why they would turn feral relatively quickly but not necessarily immediately after running out of it.

Now, Cooper doesn't know any of this. All he knows is that ghouls can go feral. Many of them do after a relatively short period of time meanwhile he's been around for ages and is still doing fine. What is the difference between him and those other ghouls? He's been constantly taking that serum. So of course he's think that if he stopped taking it, he might go feral too. Not to mention, whenever he does that he feels like shit and that could either be because:

What about the lead?

They way I understood it, when Cooper says he might still have some of (the farmer's) lead in him, he means that some of the bullets he was shot across the recent years might have been made with the lead the farmer is farming. I don't think it was necessarily meant to imply anything about the NCR.

Lead poisoning is something I have considered since he obviously has some lead bullets lodged in his back from the shoot-out in Filly and probably some more from earlier but:

So while I think he'd be better off if he had those bullets surgically removed and took an antibiotic for good measure, lead poisoning probably isn't the reason for the coughing and other symptoms he presents when he doesn't take his serum.

All the coughing and drooling and apparent difficulty breathing when he goes for too long without the serum makes me think that whatever he has is related to his respiratory system. Perhaps you are right and his lungs are fucked up from smoking cigs for a century or two. Or maybe he has asthma? Or maybe he coughs because having no nostrils he's unintentionally inhaling sand particles?

At this point, I really don't know anything anymore but I hope that all of this is tackled at some point because it looks intentional. They could've made him growl and twitch lightly just like Roger and Martha. Or they could have Roger and Martha cough and drool. If they made them do different things, there must have been a reason behind it. Considering the level of attention to detail put in this show, it can't be a mistake or a coincidence. This was a choice and it was done on purpose. I think they wanted us to notice this and try to figure out what it means.

starting to see the poetry in moldaver keeping rose all this time in her feral state and the possibility of cooper and lucy forming some type of bond where lucy would theoretically do the same [though i don't particularly think cooper would end game exactly this way at least not in the show] but then i started wondering... just how long was rose ghoulified? i am curious if they'd show moldaver and/or rose flashbacks because a timeline or even just scenes would be interesting to the story. like if rose's ghoulification was fast, i wonder if moldaver was incredibly sentimental and grief stricken and this situation just happened? or was it slow. like most ferality is. and moldaver and rose got to talking. what if rose asked moldaver to keep rose around even... after... as... evidence? i mean lucy got to see all what hank did this way. with verified proof. it's obvious there was sentiment there too with moldaver but... the twist, the exposure of that what hank did was the sharpest revelation, i think. at least the most prominent in those moments... i think moldaver [implied at least to me] loving rose and then keeping her as a feral ghoul is with detailed purpose. i definitely think there's going to be more things similar to this in the show. whether it has anything to do with cooper and/or lucy, i guess the writers will show us in time but i can see parallels being drawn, maybe not as tragic or even as stark. but i do think there will be more than what we saw with roger and rose.

I'd say the post-atomic society's view and treatment of ghouls who really are just people with an extreme condition is one of the major socio-political themes of the show.

There are several different scenes sprinkled throughout the show that offer us small pieces of information on this topic:

- When Honcho and friends dig Cooper up we learn that people consider ghouls as subhuman and are generally wary of them

-In Filly, Ma June says Cooper's kind ain't welcome, which again seems to imply ghouls are seen as a subspecies

- Roger saying that smoothies can be so unkind further illustrates how ghouls, even the nice and non-violent ones like himself, are generally mistreated based on their condition alone

- At the same time, Roger's observation that Coop had gotten himself a smoothie of his own, seems to imply that ghoul-human relationships of one kind or another are a thing that exists

-Lucy's interactions with Cooper throughout the first 4 episodes in which she holds him to the same standards as anyone else, shows us she's devoid of that anti-ghoul bias. While she has eyes and therefore can tell he's... well, different, she still sees him as nothing more and nothing less than a man and expects him to act as such

- This last point is reinforced in the scene at the SDM where 1. she refers to Cooper as a "man" not a "ghoul" and 2. advocates for the ghouls locked in the fridges because in her mind they aren't creatures, they are people

- Moldaver's attachment to Rose that transcended her ghoulification might have been meant to further prove that ghouls are still people and that the change to their condition doesn't magically erase one's feelings for them. At the same time it might try to show us that Lucy's approach to ghouls, while it might come from a place of naivety, isn't fundamentally wrong as it seems to align with Moldaver's who is anything but naive.

There is a second part to this about how I think Rose turned feral so quickly but I will finish and post it tomorrow.

oh absolutely, it's definitely a huge underpinning to the games and represents various allegories for real life marginalizations, i'd say too--- i like your analysis of moldaver keeping or having rose around still even after ghoulification. moldaver and lucy probably had the same view about ghouls to be honest. and i like that you included literally every instance of ghoul scenes or ghoul and people interactions. i look forward to your second part, i love your assessments

So here comes part two

How quickly did Rose turn feral? Very quickly, I'd say, and here's why.

I heard/read a theory that the reason behind ghouls turning feral is, get this, plain old infection. While it might sound like something one would pull out of their ass, it could explain why some turn feral quickly while others hold on for centuries.

So, we know ghoulification occurs in the result of exposure to radiation. This, however, can happen in a variety of different ways, affecting both the speed and outcome of the ghoulification process.

Rose was certainly caught in the blast that destroyed Shady Sands (which happened in 2281 or 2282 so 14-15 years before the events of the show). This means that other than being hit by gamma radiation she would've also suffered severe thermal burns. In real life, the radiation would prevent her burns from healing. Here, the opposite would happen. Once her ghoul gene was activated, the radiation would actually help her heal. She wouldn't regrow her burnt off skin or anything like it (thus her sorry state when we first meet her in her ghoul form), but her tissues would heal and scarify faster and she wouldn't die from organ failure.

The important question to ask here is: how long does it take for that special gene to activate and the ghoulification process to begin?

If it takes some time - which I think it does - then infection could have found a way inside Rose's body before she turned and her burns healed and scarified. Once the infection reached her brain, she would've gone feral in no time.

Let's look at Roger for comparison. He wasn't caught in any nuclear blasts but was instead gradually exposed to the residue radiation in the environment. He says it had been 28 years since he started showing, implying that his ghoulification was a process that happened over time. So, if he wasn't burnt in a blast, how come he's turning feral? Notice the gash on his forehead. That must have been a nasty wound. If he got it before he turned (and was therefore able to heal quickly), it might have served as a doorway for infection to enter his body. So how come he hadn't turned ages ago?

Well, here comes the mystery yellow serum. I suspect it's not a special drug for ghouls but something else, some kind of drug or medicine that just so happens to prevent ghouls from going feral, maybe because it contains antibiotics?

Since we're already on this topic, let's take a moment to talk about Coop cause he's a whole separate case.

We know he had been there when the bombs fell in 2077. We see him get hit by the shockwave from a nearby blast but he doesn't get immediately pulverized. There's a video on YT where they tried to calculate whether Coop had any chance of outrunning those bombs and apparently, he did (because these bombs were actually very small for some reason). That said, let's assume that his melted-looking but curiously integral skin is the result of exposure to gamma which burned him but at the same time triggered his ghoul gene and therefore immediately healed him. So, unless he got shot or stabbed or suffered any other major wound that could've gotten infected before he turned, he shouldn't go feral. In fact, I don't think he does.

It has been pointed out by someone before that when Coop runs out of the mystery yellow serum, he doesn't present the same symptoms as other ghouls. Roger and Martha, when they start to go, twitch and growl and repeat their name. Meanwhile Cooper coughs and then just... drops. The mystery yellow serum certainly helps him but maybe it actually helps him with something else?

It occurred to me that during the stand-out in Filly, Coop gets shot in the back. Repeatedly. It's probably not the first time either. Later, he also tells the lead farmer that he probably still has some of his lead in him. So maybe it's all the bullets lodged in his lungs and possibly other places that cause him to cough up his soul unless he takes the mystery yellow serum which, again, I suspect is some kind of medicine?

i knew you'd come with a banger because i've never come across in my digging people speculate about infection causing ferality in ghoulification. this is a great explanation and i'd love to see more opinions on this too and if you have links to this, i'd love to see. because i've been wondering on the drug cooper and the ghouls in the tv show keep taking versus how ghoulification happens and and how ferality manifests in the games. i'm really of the opinion it's not what ghouls are being sold it is and it's either placebo effecting or like you said, helping in another way. it being antibiotics or something of that sort solves to me a lot, especially why cooper isn't typically displaying feral symptoms without it and why he coughs more without it. for me, i have pondered if he's showing signs of withdrawals with his coughs and passes out? it also occurred to me he might have an as yet undisclosed respiratory illness to begin with [they showed him smoking various tobacco products in the pre war so perhaps that's a layer on top of this too?] it never occurred to me that roger's head wound was before he went went totally ghoul. it's so easy to assume it's part of the decomposing appearance via ghoulification but what if, you know? also i've been thinking about that lead comment from the lead farmer since i wrote my episode review and was initially confused by it. because if adam and cooper know each other, it's curious if they've had shootouts. cooper saying "your lead" leads me to believe he meant adam himself. i couldn't understand if this was a general "you" or what. i guess cooper very well could be talking about the ncr as a whole here? surely adam has had to fight and use firearms before and against cooper. i'm quite curious about cooper's connections to the ncr, if any. i also wrote weeks ago speculating [jokingly, really] that all that lead inside him might be what's causing him to cough so much and not the ghoulification. realizing that lead really is used in bullets and that it's a rare condition but lead poisoning can happen this way may not make this idea farfetched at all if he's been a war veteran and bounty hunter for over two hundred years. i wonder if anything about this will come up in the next seasons tbh rose going feral fast is heartbreaking. i mean, fast or slow, it's terrible. because you know the last time rose ever consciously saw lucy was probably when she was being taken or something. and she probably was repeating her own name, maybe even lucy's until she wasn't herself anymore. the more i think about it, the harder it is grapple with. i wonder if they'll show that? and in detail? i wonder if lucy's memories will resurface as the seasons go on and show just how brutal hank is? the games kind of make it vaguer tbh how and why people suddenly go feral. many characters never show signs or take anything. a lot of them just wait and see. feels kinda random idk. though i am not sure it's an inevitability, i almost think the show might paint it that way, not sure yet. but i'd like to see something clearer about the process and if there's rhyme and reason. i really appreciate you make us all think including me, i love finding out new stuff or thinking about things in a different way and especially for the show, thanks for the addition seriously

As much as I'd love to direct you to the source of that idea I just don't remember where I saw it! I think it was mentioned in a post about something else and I just thought it made sense.

I never played the games (I'm not much of a gamer) but I know that ghouls are portrayed a bit differently across the games and now also the show. I think the meta-reason for it is that they saw how players responded to the ghouls (the non-feral ones) and decided to take them in a slightly different direction than what might have been originally intended. If they wanted to somehow unify the lore by having an in-universe reason for why their ghouls can vary so much, going from a literal rotting corpse to a guy with a sunburn, and why and how some of them turn feral, infection could be the perfect solution.

My medical knowledge is limited to the use of Ibuprofen but please HEAR ME OUT!

Part 3 - The Infection Theory

So, the way I understand it, if you have that special gene and exposure to radiation (either one-time exposure to a large amount, like from a bomb going off, or prolonged exposure to smaller amounts, like from living in an irradiated wasteland) activates it, then that same radiation which by that point has already caused some damage to your body - and under normal circumstances would keep on doing that until you died - starts to heal it.

In summary, it goes like this:

you get hit with gamma → you start to get radiation burns → your ghoul gene activates → radiation stops to harm you and starts to heal you → your burns scarify → further exposure to radiation in the environment constantly heals your body, counteracting regular aging processes and allowing you to live on for centuries

Is that right, or am I missing something here? 'Cause if it is right, then why would some ghouls keep on decomposing? If the radiation constantly heals them, they shouldn't keep on decomposing! Unless...

Unless some of them keep on decomposing not because of radiation but because of infection. That's what happens in real life when people sustain injuries. Then can have their skin burnt off and all but only when their wounds get infected they actually start to rot.

In a ghoul's case, it's a constant battle. Infection eats at them, radiation heals them, infection eats at them some more, radiation heals them again, and this keeps on going until the infection reaches their brain. At that point they go feral. They keep on living because the radiation keeps healing whatever damage infection does to their bodies but it cannot make them regrow their brain, so once the infection gets there they lose their cognitive abilities.

So feral ghouls are just ghouls who got an infection that eventually caused them irreparable brain damage. This would explain why all ferals look and smell terrible as opposed to non-ferals where there appears to be some variety.

"Progressing" is the keyword here. Scarified radiation burns don't count. I'm talking open wounds that don't heal, skin and muscle that keeps falling off the bones, things like that.

Case study: the child ghoul in the fridge

I've seen people mention this minor character from one of the games when discussing how the introduction of the yellow serum in the show doesn't fit with the pre-existing ghoul lore. They pointed out how this kid, who was ghoulified around 2077 when the first bombs fell, never took any of that yellow serum, having been locked in a fridge until someone let him out and yet, he's not feral. Why is he not feral? It's been two centuries! Shouldn't he have gone feral if he didn't take that serum? Well... no, because having been locked in that fridge he only suffered radiation burns from gamma that somehow got inside that fridge, burns which then promptly healed. At this point it didn't matter if he took the serum or not because no infection = no going feral.

---

This is already long so I decided to cut it here but there is a part 4 and maybe even a part 5 (depends how lengthy my ramblings get) about the serum and the lead. So stay tuned.

---

On another note, this:

"i really appreciate you make us all think including me, i love finding out new stuff or thinking about things in a different way and especially for the show, thanks for the addition seriously"

just melted my heart ^_^

starting to see the poetry in moldaver keeping rose all this time in her feral state and the possibility of cooper and lucy forming some type of bond where lucy would theoretically do the same [though i don't particularly think cooper would end game exactly this way at least not in the show] but then i started wondering... just how long was rose ghoulified? i am curious if they'd show moldaver and/or rose flashbacks because a timeline or even just scenes would be interesting to the story. like if rose's ghoulification was fast, i wonder if moldaver was incredibly sentimental and grief stricken and this situation just happened? or was it slow. like most ferality is. and moldaver and rose got to talking. what if rose asked moldaver to keep rose around even... after... as... evidence? i mean lucy got to see all what hank did this way. with verified proof. it's obvious there was sentiment there too with moldaver but... the twist, the exposure of that what hank did was the sharpest revelation, i think. at least the most prominent in those moments... i think moldaver [implied at least to me] loving rose and then keeping her as a feral ghoul is with detailed purpose. i definitely think there's going to be more things similar to this in the show. whether it has anything to do with cooper and/or lucy, i guess the writers will show us in time but i can see parallels being drawn, maybe not as tragic or even as stark. but i do think there will be more than what we saw with roger and rose.

I'd say the post-atomic society's view and treatment of ghouls who really are just people with an extreme condition is one of the major socio-political themes of the show.

There are several different scenes sprinkled throughout the show that offer us small pieces of information on this topic:

- When Honcho and friends dig Cooper up we learn that people consider ghouls as subhuman and are generally wary of them

-In Filly, Ma June says Cooper's kind ain't welcome, which again seems to imply ghouls are seen as a subspecies

- Roger saying that smoothies can be so unkind further illustrates how ghouls, even the nice and non-violent ones like himself, are generally mistreated based on their condition alone

- At the same time, Roger's observation that Coop had gotten himself a smoothie of his own, seems to imply that ghoul-human relationships of one kind or another are a thing that exists

-Lucy's interactions with Cooper throughout the first 4 episodes in which she holds him to the same standards as anyone else, shows us she's devoid of that anti-ghoul bias. While she has eyes and therefore can tell he's... well, different, she still sees him as nothing more and nothing less than a man and expects him to act as such

- This last point is reinforced in the scene at the SDM where 1. she refers to Cooper as a "man" not a "ghoul" and 2. advocates for the ghouls locked in the fridges because in her mind they aren't creatures, they are people

- Moldaver's attachment to Rose that transcended her ghoulification might have been meant to further prove that ghouls are still people and that the change to their condition doesn't magically erase one's feelings for them. At the same time it might try to show us that Lucy's approach to ghouls, while it might come from a place of naivety, isn't fundamentally wrong as it seems to align with Moldaver's who is anything but naive.

There is a second part to this about how I think Rose turned feral so quickly but I will finish and post it tomorrow.

oh absolutely, it's definitely a huge underpinning to the games and represents various allegories for real life marginalizations, i'd say too--- i like your analysis of moldaver keeping or having rose around still even after ghoulification. moldaver and lucy probably had the same view about ghouls to be honest. and i like that you included literally every instance of ghoul scenes or ghoul and people interactions. i look forward to your second part, i love your assessments

So here comes part two

How quickly did Rose turn feral? Very quickly, I'd say, and here's why.

I heard/read a theory that the reason behind ghouls turning feral is, get this, plain old infection. While it might sound like something one would pull out of their ass, it could explain why some turn feral quickly while others hold on for centuries.

So, we know ghoulification occurs in the result of exposure to radiation. This, however, can happen in a variety of different ways, affecting both the speed and outcome of the ghoulification process.

Rose was certainly caught in the blast that destroyed Shady Sands (which happened in 2281 or 2282 so 14-15 years before the events of the show). This means that other than being hit by gamma radiation she would've also suffered severe thermal burns. In real life, the radiation would prevent her burns from healing. Here, the opposite would happen. Once her ghoul gene was activated, the radiation would actually help her heal. She wouldn't regrow her burnt off skin or anything like it (thus her sorry state when we first meet her in her ghoul form), but her tissues would heal and scarify faster and she wouldn't die from organ failure.

The important question to ask here is: how long does it take for that special gene to activate and the ghoulification process to begin?

If it takes some time - which I think it does - then infection could have found a way inside Rose's body before she turned and her burns healed and scarified. Once the infection reached her brain, she would've gone feral in no time.

Let's look at Roger for comparison. He wasn't caught in any nuclear blasts but was instead gradually exposed to the residue radiation in the environment. He says it had been 28 years since he started showing, implying that his ghoulification was a process that happened over time. So, if he wasn't burnt in a blast, how come he's turning feral? Notice the gash on his forehead. That must have been a nasty wound. If he got it before he turned (and was therefore able to heal quickly), it might have served as a doorway for infection to enter his body. So how come he hadn't turned ages ago?

Well, here comes the mystery yellow serum. I suspect it's not a special drug for ghouls but something else, some kind of drug or medicine that just so happens to prevent ghouls from going feral, maybe because it contains antibiotics?

Since we're already on this topic, let's take a moment to talk about Coop cause he's a whole separate case.

We know he had been there when the bombs fell in 2077. We see him get hit by the shockwave from a nearby blast but he doesn't get immediately pulverized. There's a video on YT where they tried to calculate whether Coop had any chance of outrunning those bombs and apparently, he did (because these bombs were actually very small for some reason). That said, let's assume that his melted-looking but curiously integral skin is the result of exposure to gamma which burned him but at the same time triggered his ghoul gene and therefore immediately healed him. So, unless he got shot or stabbed or suffered any other major wound that could've gotten infected before he turned, he shouldn't go feral. In fact, I don't think he does.

It has been pointed out by someone before that when Coop runs out of the mystery yellow serum, he doesn't present the same symptoms as other ghouls. Roger and Martha, when they start to go, twitch and growl and repeat their name. Meanwhile Cooper coughs and then just... drops. The mystery yellow serum certainly helps him but maybe it actually helps him with something else?

It occurred to me that during the stand-out in Filly, Coop gets shot in the back. Repeatedly. It's probably not the first time either. Later, he also tells the lead farmer that he probably still has some of his lead in him. So maybe it's all the bullets lodged in his lungs and possibly other places that cause him to cough up his soul unless he takes the mystery yellow serum which, again, I suspect is some kind of medicine?

starting to see the poetry in moldaver keeping rose all this time in her feral state and the possibility of cooper and lucy forming some type of bond where lucy would theoretically do the same [though i don't particularly think cooper would end game exactly this way at least not in the show] but then i started wondering... just how long was rose ghoulified? i am curious if they'd show moldaver and/or rose flashbacks because a timeline or even just scenes would be interesting to the story. like if rose's ghoulification was fast, i wonder if moldaver was incredibly sentimental and grief stricken and this situation just happened? or was it slow. like most ferality is. and moldaver and rose got to talking. what if rose asked moldaver to keep rose around even... after... as... evidence? i mean lucy got to see all what hank did this way. with verified proof. it's obvious there was sentiment there too with moldaver but... the twist, the exposure of that what hank did was the sharpest revelation, i think. at least the most prominent in those moments... i think moldaver [implied at least to me] loving rose and then keeping her as a feral ghoul is with detailed purpose. i definitely think there's going to be more things similar to this in the show. whether it has anything to do with cooper and/or lucy, i guess the writers will show us in time but i can see parallels being drawn, maybe not as tragic or even as stark. but i do think there will be more than what we saw with roger and rose.

I'd say the post-atomic society's view and treatment of ghouls who really are just people with an extreme condition is one of the major socio-political themes of the show.

There are several different scenes sprinkled throughout the show that offer us small pieces of information on this topic:

- When Honcho and friends dig Cooper up we learn that people consider ghouls as subhuman and are generally wary of them

-In Filly, Ma June says Cooper's kind ain't welcome, which again seems to imply ghouls are seen as a subspecies

- Roger saying that smoothies can be so unkind further illustrates how ghouls, even the nice and non-violent ones like himself, are generally mistreated based on their condition alone

- At the same time, Roger's observation that Coop had gotten himself a smoothie of his own, seems to imply that ghoul-human relationships of one kind or another are a thing that exists

-Lucy's interactions with Cooper throughout the first 4 episodes in which she holds him to the same standards as anyone else, shows us she's devoid of that anti-ghoul bias. While she has eyes and therefore can tell he's... well, different, she still sees him as nothing more and nothing less than a man and expects him to act as such

- This last point is reinforced in the scene at the SDM where 1. she refers to Cooper as a "man" not a "ghoul" and 2. advocates for the ghouls locked in the fridges because in her mind they aren't creatures, they are people

- Moldaver's attachment to Rose that transcended her ghoulification might have been meant to further prove that ghouls are still people and that the change to their condition doesn't magically erase one's feelings for them. At the same time it might try to show us that Lucy's approach to ghouls, while it might come from a place of naivety, isn't fundamentally wrong as it seems to align with Moldaver's who is anything but naive.

There is a second part to this about how I think Rose turned feral so quickly but I will finish and post it tomorrow.

I am so looking forward to cooper Howard character development in s2 but I can’t lie. I’m gonna miss the accent when he eventually has to drop it.

Unless...

Someone had pointed out before how, similarly to The Ghoul, The Hollywood Actor Cooper Howard is also a persona.

Post-war Coop is making an effort to appear a certain way which includes him adopting this exaggerated accent. Pre-war Coop is also making an effort to appear a certain way which includes him loosing his original accent.

If the goal of his character is to find that healthy balance between who he was (a pristine movie star) and who he's become (a ruthless wastelander) - none of which is his true self - a nice way to show that would be to have him tone down the heavy accent but not lose it completely. Cause the real Coop, the Coop before the bombs, before acting, before all of it - the Coop who was just a cowboy somewhere - must have had an accent, just a less cartoonish one.

wait... wait this is genius omg.

I also so badly want to see or for him to talk about what it was like before he was a big movie star. But not only about being a more rural countryman, but how he got in to acting. Was he in a school play? Did he do local theater? Big time acting is not something you stumble in to.

Ok I just read the wikipedia page for John Wayne and he started working as a prop boy and had roles with just a few lines for awhile before getting any starring roles. And even after that he still had to take on a lot of small roles.

I would LOVE to hear how Cooper worked his way up and why he liked acting, because he did seem to like it to an extent and had a lot of integrity in terms of protecting story and characters (shown by his protest to shooting instead of arresting his co star). Of course we all want to see Lucy realize the he is THE cooper howard. I want to hear how he went from an actor to a sort of mascot for vault-tec. How it feels to him looking back at how things began before his wife.

I think when you hear hollywood cooper speak you do hear a little southern twang, but that could also be from Walton who is from Alabama. But I totally believe that the character would hide his accent in order to be more respected as an actor in hollywood.

Just UGGGHHH he fascinates me with how he takes on the task of adapting and how he has/had these morals but he has moments where he compromises them and moments where he does what he thinks is right and the toll that both and having AND abandoning these morals has taken on him.

He would rather shoot a room of people than talk about his past with somebody, BUT I WANT TO SEE ITTTTT

I think Walton said in some interview that Coop started out as a stuntman. Which would make sense with him being an actual cowboy before he moved to LA. The question is, why and when did he move to LA? I have a theory that it was for Barb. Now, hear me out!

So in 2077 Coop is about 50 and Barb is maybe about 40. Their daughter could be 8 or so. That said, let's assume they'd been married for about 10 years. So now imagine a 30-ish Barb who somehow ends up in Alabama (or wherever the hell Coop is originally from) - idk, maybe she's there for a distant cousin's wedding or something like that - and meets this handsome local 40-ish cowboy, Cooper. She eventually goes back to the city where she belongs but he's so smitten with her, he decides to follow. Except what could a cowboy whose competencies at that time mostly include riding horses and doing lasso tricks do in LA? Well, how about stunt work in western movies?

I recall Walton saying Coop was asked to read some lines at some point, people liked it and from there he gradually moved on to acting. I think he might have been pushed to tone down his accent - something Walton himself can certainly relate to - in order to keep his career moving forward. As for how he became the "Vault Boy", well, we kinda got the answer to that in S1 already.

Still, I'd love to see more of Coop's backstory. I may have my headcanons and all but I actually want to see it.

You are a GENIUS!! In my heart I will always head cannon that he did participate in the school play. But you are so right. I can TOTALLY see some executive picking up on a little southern drawl and seeing his tricks and saying “what’s that guys name? Tell him to come to my office” But I really do think he liked parts of it. I think he really is a performer. We see a lot of showmanship in the way the Ghoul kills people. And I mean DAMN what a yapper he can be sometimes. I think he enjoys performing and after 200 years things can get boring. I can see why you would want to mess with your audience AKA the people you’re holding at gunpoint. And yeah it’s an intimidation tactic but he’s having fun. Case in point when he acts as though he ate the lead farmers daughter. “Oh… you thought” LIVES IN MY HEAD RENT FREE

Omg that scene! Yep! Honestly tho, any scene Coop/Walton is in is pure gold. The man just stole the show!

Anyway, yep, you're right, he DOES enjoy acting. Add that to the list of things Walt and Coop have in common. He did have a point when he said "I am Cooper Howard, he is me" or something along these lines.

Yk what I think? I think Coop might have been performing before coming to Hollywood. I can't quite see him doing Shakespeare in a school play BUT what about RODEO? I mean, he does LASSO TRICKS. If that doesn't scream rodeo, idk what does. Now what if that's how Barb first met him? Maybe she went to visit that cousin for her wedding but first there had to be a BACHELORETTE and because it's the countryside they went to see the rodeo. There Barb saw Coop doing THAT ONE MOVE ON THE HORSE...

... and got all hot and bothered, cause honestly who wouldn't! Half of us did just looking at a blurry gif, imagine that irl! So maybe later they met at the afterparty or something and that's how their story began?

I'm making this up as I go but dang, tell me if it doesn't make sense???

OMGGGGGGGGG!! RODEO FOR SUREEE!!

I just know she took one look and said “that one please. I will take that man right there thank you” AND WHO CAN BLAME HER?

I’m sure whatever the writers come up with will be golden but you are hitting some POINTS!! Goshhhh I just want to know absolutely everything about all of these characters. It’s so funny and heartbreaking and just Ahhhhhhh!

walton really was the man for the job. Shout out to the casting directors

You are quite the inspiration cause I just had another brilliant thought!

What if his iconic blue and gold cowboy costume wasn't just a movie prop? What if that was his outfit from his rodeo days?

Think of it!

He's wearing that outfit in the opening scene, AFTER he was kicked out of Hollywood. Why would they let him keep the ENTIRE OUTFIT, especially in that economy? And why would HE want to keep it (and then actually wear it for two centuries) when he didn't even like "The Man from Deadhorse"? Why not keep the one from "A Man and his Dog"? Why would Barb refer to it to point out Vault-Tec had made their suits in HIS COLORS? Unless that outfit was actually HIS.

Now, you might wanna ask: but why would he wear his own clothes to play a character?

Honestly, idk. Maybe they had a wardrobe malfunction? Maybe the outfit they had for him was too large or too small or some other thing and they had no budget to get him something else? Or maybe he was the one who came forward with the idea like "you know what, I just happen to have a nice sheriff outfit from back when I did rodeo shows, maybe I could wear that?". I wouldn't put it past him since he seemed to have had a good relationship with the previous director and was involved in the development of his characters.

Idk, it just makes sense to me if that outfit was actually his "real cowboy" outfit. It would explain why he'd want to stick to it all this time (other reasons aside, like him hoping it could help Janey recognize him) and would play into the whole meta of his outfit representing his true self. Cause his true self ain't the sheriff from "The Man from Deadhorse". His true self ain't even the big time movie star. His true self is the simple cowboy from somewhere down South who did lasso tricks on a horse in a pretty blue and gold shirt. That EXACT blue and gold shirt.

@perfectfangirl tagging you cause we did have that convo about his clothes recently and I thought you might be interested in this follow up 😉

I am so looking forward to cooper Howard character development in s2 but I can’t lie. I’m gonna miss the accent when he eventually has to drop it.

Unless...

Someone had pointed out before how, similarly to The Ghoul, The Hollywood Actor Cooper Howard is also a persona.

Post-war Coop is making an effort to appear a certain way which includes him adopting this exaggerated accent. Pre-war Coop is also making an effort to appear a certain way which includes him loosing his original accent.

If the goal of his character is to find that healthy balance between who he was (a pristine movie star) and who he's become (a ruthless wastelander) - none of which is his true self - a nice way to show that would be to have him tone down the heavy accent but not lose it completely. Cause the real Coop, the Coop before the bombs, before acting, before all of it - the Coop who was just a cowboy somewhere - must have had an accent, just a less cartoonish one.

wait... wait this is genius omg.

I also so badly want to see or for him to talk about what it was like before he was a big movie star. But not only about being a more rural countryman, but how he got in to acting. Was he in a school play? Did he do local theater? Big time acting is not something you stumble in to.

Ok I just read the wikipedia page for John Wayne and he started working as a prop boy and had roles with just a few lines for awhile before getting any starring roles. And even after that he still had to take on a lot of small roles.

I would LOVE to hear how Cooper worked his way up and why he liked acting, because he did seem to like it to an extent and had a lot of integrity in terms of protecting story and characters (shown by his protest to shooting instead of arresting his co star). Of course we all want to see Lucy realize the he is THE cooper howard. I want to hear how he went from an actor to a sort of mascot for vault-tec. How it feels to him looking back at how things began before his wife.

I think when you hear hollywood cooper speak you do hear a little southern twang, but that could also be from Walton who is from Alabama. But I totally believe that the character would hide his accent in order to be more respected as an actor in hollywood.

Just UGGGHHH he fascinates me with how he takes on the task of adapting and how he has/had these morals but he has moments where he compromises them and moments where he does what he thinks is right and the toll that both and having AND abandoning these morals has taken on him.

He would rather shoot a room of people than talk about his past with somebody, BUT I WANT TO SEE ITTTTT

I think Walton said in some interview that Coop started out as a stuntman. Which would make sense with him being an actual cowboy before he moved to LA. The question is, why and when did he move to LA? I have a theory that it was for Barb. Now, hear me out!

So in 2077 Coop is about 50 and Barb is maybe about 40. Their daughter could be 8 or so. That said, let's assume they'd been married for about 10 years. So now imagine a 30-ish Barb who somehow ends up in Alabama (or wherever the hell Coop is originally from) - idk, maybe she's there for a distant cousin's wedding or something like that - and meets this handsome local 40-ish cowboy, Cooper. She eventually goes back to the city where she belongs but he's so smitten with her, he decides to follow. Except what could a cowboy whose competencies at that time mostly include riding horses and doing lasso tricks do in LA? Well, how about stunt work in western movies?

I recall Walton saying Coop was asked to read some lines at some point, people liked it and from there he gradually moved on to acting. I think he might have been pushed to tone down his accent - something Walton himself can certainly relate to - in order to keep his career moving forward. As for how he became the "Vault Boy", well, we kinda got the answer to that in S1 already.

Still, I'd love to see more of Coop's backstory. I may have my headcanons and all but I actually want to see it.

You are a GENIUS!! In my heart I will always head cannon that he did participate in the school play. But you are so right. I can TOTALLY see some executive picking up on a little southern drawl and seeing his tricks and saying “what’s that guys name? Tell him to come to my office” But I really do think he liked parts of it. I think he really is a performer. We see a lot of showmanship in the way the Ghoul kills people. And I mean DAMN what a yapper he can be sometimes. I think he enjoys performing and after 200 years things can get boring. I can see why you would want to mess with your audience AKA the people you’re holding at gunpoint. And yeah it’s an intimidation tactic but he’s having fun. Case in point when he acts as though he ate the lead farmers daughter. “Oh… you thought” LIVES IN MY HEAD RENT FREE

Omg that scene! Yep! Honestly tho, any scene Coop/Walton is in is pure gold. The man just stole the show!

Anyway, yep, you're right, he DOES enjoy acting. Add that to the list of things Walt and Coop have in common. He did have a point when he said "I am Cooper Howard, he is me" or something along these lines.

Yk what I think? I think Coop might have been performing before coming to Hollywood. I can't quite see him doing Shakespeare in a school play BUT what about RODEO? I mean, he does LASSO TRICKS. If that doesn't scream rodeo, idk what does. Now what if that's how Barb first met him? Maybe she went to visit that cousin for her wedding but first there had to be a BACHELORETTE and because it's the countryside they went to see the rodeo. There Barb saw Coop doing THAT ONE MOVE ON THE HORSE...

... and got all hot and bothered, cause honestly who wouldn't! Half of us did just looking at a blurry gif, imagine that irl! So maybe later they met at the afterparty or something and that's how their story began?

I'm making this up as I go but dang, tell me if it doesn't make sense???

I am so looking forward to cooper Howard character development in s2 but I can’t lie. I’m gonna miss the accent when he eventually has to drop it.

Unless...

Someone had pointed out before how, similarly to The Ghoul, The Hollywood Actor Cooper Howard is also a persona.

Post-war Coop is making an effort to appear a certain way which includes him adopting this exaggerated accent. Pre-war Coop is also making an effort to appear a certain way which includes him loosing his original accent.

If the goal of his character is to find that healthy balance between who he was (a pristine movie star) and who he's become (a ruthless wastelander) - none of which is his true self - a nice way to show that would be to have him tone down the heavy accent but not lose it completely. Cause the real Coop, the Coop before the bombs, before acting, before all of it - the Coop who was just a cowboy somewhere - must have had an accent, just a less cartoonish one.

wait... wait this is genius omg.

I also so badly want to see or for him to talk about what it was like before he was a big movie star. But not only about being a more rural countryman, but how he got in to acting. Was he in a school play? Did he do local theater? Big time acting is not something you stumble in to.

Ok I just read the wikipedia page for John Wayne and he started working as a prop boy and had roles with just a few lines for awhile before getting any starring roles. And even after that he still had to take on a lot of small roles.

I would LOVE to hear how Cooper worked his way up and why he liked acting, because he did seem to like it to an extent and had a lot of integrity in terms of protecting story and characters (shown by his protest to shooting instead of arresting his co star). Of course we all want to see Lucy realize the he is THE cooper howard. I want to hear how he went from an actor to a sort of mascot for vault-tec. How it feels to him looking back at how things began before his wife.

I think when you hear hollywood cooper speak you do hear a little southern twang, but that could also be from Walton who is from Alabama. But I totally believe that the character would hide his accent in order to be more respected as an actor in hollywood.

Just UGGGHHH he fascinates me with how he takes on the task of adapting and how he has/had these morals but he has moments where he compromises them and moments where he does what he thinks is right and the toll that both and having AND abandoning these morals has taken on him.

He would rather shoot a room of people than talk about his past with somebody, BUT I WANT TO SEE ITTTTT

I think Walton said in some interview that Coop started out as a stuntman. Which would make sense with him being an actual cowboy before he moved to LA. The question is, why and when did he move to LA? I have a theory that it was for Barb. Now, hear me out!

So in 2077 Coop is about 50 and Barb is maybe about 40. Their daughter could be 8 or so. That said, let's assume they'd been married for about 10 years. So now imagine a 30-ish Barb who somehow ends up in Alabama (or wherever the hell Coop is originally from) - idk, maybe she's there for a distant cousin's wedding or something like that - and meets this handsome local 40-ish cowboy, Cooper. She eventually goes back to the city where she belongs but he's so smitten with her, he decides to follow. Except what could a cowboy whose competencies at that time mostly include riding horses and doing lasso tricks do in LA? Well, how about stunt work in western movies?

I recall Walton saying Coop was asked to read some lines at some point, people liked it and from there he gradually moved on to acting. I think he might have been pushed to tone down his accent - something Walton himself can certainly relate to - in order to keep his career moving forward. As for how he became the "Vault Boy", well, we kinda got the answer to that in S1 already.

Still, I'd love to see more of Coop's backstory. I may have my headcanons and all but I actually want to see it.

I am so looking forward to cooper Howard character development in s2 but I can’t lie. I’m gonna miss the accent when he eventually has to drop it.

Unless...

Someone had pointed out before how, similarly to The Ghoul, The Hollywood Actor Cooper Howard is also a persona.

Post-war Coop is making an effort to appear a certain way which includes him adopting this exaggerated accent. Pre-war Coop is also making an effort to appear a certain way which includes him loosing his original accent.

If the goal of his character is to find that healthy balance between who he was (a pristine movie star) and who he's become (a ruthless wastelander) - none of which is his true self - a nice way to show that would be to have him tone down the heavy accent but not lose it completely. Cause the real Coop, the Coop before the bombs, before acting, before all of it - the Coop who was just a cowboy somewhere - must have had an accent, just a less cartoonish one.

has cooper been playing the ghoul persona so long, he ties his humanity/who he is to the duster [as well as the hat and shirt]? or is the hat and shirt what he's really clinging onto and the duster is a cover, a mask [the persona]? truly i think all these clothing items are metaphors and beyond what they represent in the game for ghouls, somewhere between reminding himself of humanity as he endures ghoulification, janey being able to recognize him, and playing a character in the wasteland to cope, there's a reason[s] in there and it probably hurts to think about idk

I think the shirt and the remaining pieces that were part of his og look (so the pants, belt and hat, maybe even the shoes), but especially the shirt, represent his humanity, or if you will, his heart. They constitute his most inner layer of clothing and tie narratively with who he was before. These pieces are stained and the pants are even a bit shredded at the edges, representing the irrevocable changes to Coop's character after so much time in the wasteland, but they are still fairly integral. This means to act as a cue to both the other characters (Janey, Barb, Lucy, maybe others) and the viewer that while he may be battered, he's still the same Coop at heart.

The duster is definitely representative of his ghoulishness. It's made of this uniquely textured material (to this day I can't tell if it's leather or fabric but I'm leaning towards fabric), uneven in color and shredded, resembling a ghoul's scarred skin. It's the piece of clothing that's most on top, the one that you notice first, the same way you first notice the fact Coop is a ghoul before you notice anything else about him.

Now the leather vest is interesting because it's the piece that directly covers the shirt, protecting it from staining more than it has to, and serving as an middle layer between the shirt (Cooper) and the duster (the Ghoul). It's made of what looks like leather: sturdy and wear resistant. Not sure how to put it, but I think the duster represent the fact he views the Ghoul as just a persona and separates his actions from his own. It's like a mental shield that protects him from just giving into this life blindly and mindlessly.

...

On another note, remember how it was said/implied Lucy will help Cooper regain some of that lost humanity? Poor choice of wording, imho, as he didn't loose it, he covered it up. I'd say her presence and influence will rather make it resurface.

Anyway, I think a great visual way to convey that would be to have him drop the duster.

I had this idea (I should write it down next to the apple pie one cause it could make a decent fanfic) where Lucy gets taken by some human traffickers. Remember how at the SDM she thought they were gonna make her a sex slave? Imagine, that happened to her for real!

So, after the observatory showdown, Lucy would have been traveling with Coop for some time, and while he'd treat her relatively well (like, he'd offer her some radroach and water, not to mention some fuckin answers) she'd still hate him for everything he did to her earlier, and rightfully so. She'd dismiss any and all acts of kindness on his part and keep seeing him as this supreme asshole she's only traveling with out of convenience. Then she'd get kidnapped by people who'd treat her so poorly to make her reconsider Cooper's previous treatment of her. She'd get bound and beaten and drugged so she'd quit trying to fight back (cause Lucy would try to fight back) and on top of that stripped to her underwear so that she could later be properly presented to a client. And that's how Cooper would find her after tracking her down and massacring the place (cause I'm sure at that point he would track her down and shoot every one of those assholes' balls off) and so he'd take off the duster and wrap her up in it, before carrying her barely conscious ass out of there bridal style like some fuckin' action hero.

I could imagine Lucy's thinking Coop wouldn't come for her cause why should he? He was a pragmatic man and she wasn't instrumental to him in any way. More than that, she was probably slowing him down. Max would have come for her. He liked her but even if he didn't, he would've come for her because that would have been the heroic thing to do. Cooper certainly didn't like her and he didn't care to be a hero. He wouldn't come for her. Except he does - he comes to save her despite it going against his interests - and her whole idea of him just shatters in the same fashion his idea of her had shattered at the SDM. From that moment on, things between them begin to take a different and somewhat unexpected turn.

yes, the his shirt, pants, belt, hat--- all integral to cooper's character and/or closely linked to it. and yes, it means the same cooper at heart, no matter how stained, old, tattered they are 🥲 yeah, i'd have to see it in person to guess what the duster is? for what it is, maybe some leather or canvas [since these tend to last a little longer but idk]. we don't talk enough about the vest! i want a good look at it. maybe he'll take that duster off and we can see the vest.

i agree with your interpretation of the clothing layers represents almost like parts of his personality--- duster being outermost persona layer. the vest is the middle, the real protective layer around his personality. and his personality, which is who is and is meant to represent, that blue shirt which is now stained and tattered but still a blue shirt, that's cooper. wow this is... just 🤌

you know what, the wording is important here, you're right. he still has humanity. it just needs to be cleaned, washed, laundered out of him tbh 😭 lucy does make his humanity, who cooper really is, resurface. and i predict that's a pretty permanent change for him. on the topic of wardrobe changes, i do wonder if they'll both drop the garb they started with. i wonder if lucy will don something like a duster and cooper will shed his and go for some other type of jacket or coat [weird how there's not much else to the vault suits lol because here i would say something about a vault jacket or whatever but they don't particularly have those like that and he hates what that all represents]. maybe not a switching of roles here physically with the clothes but definitely perhaps a morality switch where he gets softer [back to himself] and lucy gets harder [unfortunately and unknowingly raised by a vault tec psycho]

you have an interesting scenario there and for fanfiction. [which i actually think i read something like this in one] i would say at this rate with lucy saving cooper's life by giving him the vials considering his treatment of her, i do believe he's very much want to save her and atp because they both have answers they need to solve and it's better together and she can help him too since hank has betrayed them both, i view lucy as a asset to cooper. i think he would not be able to get what he wants now without lucy's help by the finale. maybe in the premiere, yes, i'd agree he has no reason to know her or save her but by the finale, i believe he does.

sure cooper is a legendary and feared bounty hunter who can hold his own but you catch more flies with honey than vinegar and lucy reminded him of that. having hank's daughter and that type of questioning attitude and vault knowledge will prove useful for what they both want to know. them coming from both of those worlds is what's needed to take vault tec down, i firmly believe. if he was vulnerable enough to let his naked back be open to her loaded gun in the observatory, i truly think he'd go anywhere, anytime, to rescue her. nobody who doesn't not care for someone would do that, you know? i believe saving lucy would be in his interests. sure i suppose in general he has no reason to. but neither did lucy. they're cool now, they have the same goals, i think they'll begin to care for each other. he doesn't want to see harm come to her like that now--- he saw what hank did and presumably overheard hank and lucy's exchange. he knows she also wants to get to the bottom of this. i think cooper probably thinks he owes lucy. so he'd bound to protect her now 😩

@perfectfangirl

has cooper been playing the ghoul persona so long, he ties his humanity/who he is to the duster [as well as the hat and shirt]? or is the hat and shirt what he's really clinging onto and the duster is a cover, a mask [the persona]? truly i think all these clothing items are metaphors and beyond what they represent in the game for ghouls, somewhere between reminding himself of humanity as he endures ghoulification, janey being able to recognize him, and playing a character in the wasteland to cope, there's a reason[s] in there and it probably hurts to think about idk

I think the shirt and the remaining pieces that were part of his og look (so the pants, belt and hat, maybe even the shoes), but especially the shirt, represent his humanity, or if you will, his heart. They constitute his most inner layer of clothing and tie narratively with who he was before. These pieces are stained and the pants are even a bit shredded at the edges, representing the irrevocable changes to Coop's character after so much time in the wasteland, but they are still fairly integral. This means to act as a cue to both the other characters (Janey, Barb, Lucy, maybe others) and the viewer that while he may be battered, he's still the same Coop at heart.

The duster is definitely representative of his ghoulishness. It's made of this uniquely textured material (to this day I can't tell if it's leather or fabric but I'm leaning towards fabric), uneven in color and shredded, resembling a ghoul's scarred skin. It's the piece of clothing that's most on top, the one that you notice first, the same way you first notice the fact Coop is a ghoul before you notice anything else about him.

Now the leather vest is interesting because it's the piece that directly covers the shirt, protecting it from staining more than it has to, and serving as an middle layer between the shirt (Cooper) and the duster (the Ghoul). It's made of what looks like leather: sturdy and wear resistant. Not sure how to put it, but I think the duster represent the fact he views the Ghoul as just a persona and separates his actions from his own. It's like a mental shield that protects him from just giving into this life blindly and mindlessly.

...

On another note, remember how it was said/implied Lucy will help Cooper regain some of that lost humanity? Poor choice of wording, imho, as he didn't loose it, he covered it up. I'd say her presence and influence will rather make it resurface.

Anyway, I think a great visual way to convey that would be to have him drop the duster.

I had this idea (I should write it down next to the apple pie one cause it could make a decent fanfic) where Lucy gets taken by some human traffickers. Remember how at the SDM she thought they were gonna make her a sex slave? Imagine, that happened to her for real!

So, after the observatory showdown, Lucy would have been traveling with Coop for some time, and while he'd treat her relatively well (like, he'd offer her some radroach and water, not to mention some fuckin answers) she'd still hate him for everything he did to her earlier, and rightfully so. She'd dismiss any and all acts of kindness on his part and keep seeing him as this supreme asshole she's only traveling with out of convenience. Then she'd get kidnapped by people who'd treat her so poorly to make her reconsider Cooper's previous treatment of her. She'd get bound and beaten and drugged so she'd quit trying to fight back (cause Lucy would try to fight back) and on top of that stripped to her underwear so that she could later be properly presented to a client. And that's how Cooper would find her after tracking her down and massacring the place (cause I'm sure at that point he would track her down and shoot every one of those assholes' balls off) and so he'd take off the duster and wrap her up in it, before carrying her barely conscious ass out of there bridal style like some fuckin' action hero.

I could imagine Lucy's thinking Coop wouldn't come for her cause why should he? He was a pragmatic man and she wasn't instrumental to him in any way. More than that, she was probably slowing him down. Max would have come for her. He liked her but even if he didn't, he would've come for her because that would have been the heroic thing to do. Cooper certainly didn't like her and he didn't care to be a hero. He wouldn't come for her. Except he does - he comes to save her despite it going against his interests - and her whole idea of him just shatters in the same fashion his idea of her had shattered at the SDM. From that moment on, things between them begin to take a different and somewhat unexpected turn.

From my observations.

I want the snake oil salesman to come back. The tweet below had their energy

Oooh Chicken Fucker will be back. I got no doubts. He'll be to the Fallout show what Scrat was to Ice Age. More or less. You know, that kind of unnamed but oddly memorable character that just happens to be there when shit happens

i had put off reading this interview fully but i found a nugget in here i'm not sure i've seen yet--- i didn't realize walton said he felt like the same person playing both pre war and post war cooper. i think that's significant

some people want to separate them and make them kinda two different people, two different characters and sometimes for fanfiction [and that's fine!] but i am glad he said this so i can understand how he himself views it and his approach to the role as i have viewed cooper much the same way this entire time. i just didn't know walton clarified what i was [correctly] thinking. love that

I think Cooper is like his shirt. It used to be this bright blue and gold pristine shirt that anyone could see and recognize him by. Post war that shirt is faded and stained and covered by some more layers but it's still there. It's still the same fuckin shirt and you can tell. In the same way, Cooper is changed by the wasteland and hiding under the ghoul persona but at the end of the day it's still the same man.

this is a fantastic analogy and thank you for making it 🤌

That shirt (which is so pretty and makes Coop look like that cowboy Ken doll I never had) has a DOUBLE function actually:

🧑‍🌾 In universe, it's Coop's trademark outfit. It's likely intended to serve as the element allowing other characters to recognize him. This could be Janey or even Barb, but it could also be Lucy who might eventually notice the shirt and reconnect it to "The Man from Deadhorse" and realize the Ghoul is in fact the actor Cooper Howard.

🧑‍🌾 On a meta level, the shirt serves as the aforementioned metaphor for Cooper's post-atomic transformation and Cooper himself.