FALLOUT, Prime Video’s latest show based on the post-apocalyptic video game series of the same name just came out, and one character, The Ghoul, is having viewers puzzled.
Here’s everything you need to know about The Ghoul, aka Cooper Howard, in the Fallout TV series.
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Note that the rest of the article contains spoilers for Fallout Season 1 .
Who is The Ghoul in the Fallout TV show?
The Ghoul in the Fallout show on Prime Video is Cooper Howard, and the show begins by revealing his backstory before the nuclear war.
Howard was a once-famous Hollywood actor who starred in Westerns, but later had to work as an animator at kids’ birthday parties.
After the nuclear bombs fell, he was transformed into a ghoul and has since become a bounty hunter.
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Who is The Ghoul played by in the TV show?
The Ghoul in the Fallout show on Prime Video is played by American actor Walton Goggins.
Goggins is best known for starring in various TV shows, including crime drama series The Shield and Justified, HBO’s Vice Principlas, and the animated show Invincible.
This is not his first role based on a video game; he played Mathias Vogel, the rival of Lara Croft’s father, in 2018’s Tomb Raider film.
How were Ghouls created in Fallout?
In the Fallout games, Ghouls are post-human creatures who survived the Great War, a nuclear holocaust that destroyed life on the surface of the planet as we know it.
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They have mutated significantly due to exposure to residual radiation giving them unnaturally long life but also deforming them into zombie-like creatures.
Some Ghouls are similar to normal humans in behaviour and cognitive ability, but they are discriminated against by other humans due to their appearance.
Ghouls can go feral which means they lose the ability to reason and become aggressive and act more like zombies.
Most humans become feral right after turning into ghouls, while others remain non-feral for decades and even centuries.
Do Fallout Ghouls age and are they rotting?
Ghouls stop ageing at the normal pace humans experience, which significantly prolongs their lifespans. This makes them effectively immortal unless they are killed.
Ghouls don’t rot, but they have suffered the effects of prolonged exposure to radiation, which has damaged their skin.
In short, they do look like zombies, but their flesh is not rotting, and their tolerance to low-level radiation likely makes their bodies even more resistant to rotting than regular humans.
How are the Ghouls in the Fallout TV show different to the Ghouls in the game?
The video games have been vague about how exactly ghouls become feral, but the show expands on the lore by giving one possible explanation.
In the show, The Ghoul is seen using RadAway, a drug that also appears in the games and is used to remove radioactive particles from the body and mitigate the effects of exposure.
Later in the series, we learn that not taking RadAway frequently enough would cause The Ghoul to go feral.
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The games never explain why and how ghouls become feral, but Fallout 3 hints at social isolation playing a role in the process, or at least making ghouls more likely to go feral.
If you’re looking for more on the Prime Video series, check out how the Fallout show answers another unresolved mystery from the video games.
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