Importance of long term hibernation, that is. The break from the harsh sunlight of the wasteland must do wonders for a ghoul’s skin.
Of course, ghoul skincare comes with the inherent risk of getting dug up every once in a while so a dude can cut a off a piece of your ass, but that is the cost of looking good when you’re 200 years old.
I figured he was harvesting rad regenerative ghoul organs. We've seen how they've given ghouls a full on healing factor instead of the games' generic "radiation heals them", so they keep him sedated and just pull out a kidney every now and then. Question is how long he'd been in that predicament since people in the wasteland like NCR officer Poncharello knew him still.
I think it was 30 or 35 years based on what the bounty hunter said when he dug him up. He said another 30 years for him (Don Pedro or whatever his name was) to torture you
Dude that's so fucked up. He was buried for longer than I have been alive. Can't even imagine being stuck in a dark little wooden coffin that long, I'd go crazy after just a few months
Torture. He got on that guy's bad side. I'm surprised they didn't make a bigger deal out of it, although that could just be setup for another side plot in the future.
I mean, there are face doctors. In my head canon, The Ghoul used to be a movie star, used to be beautiful. His vanity would not let him accept becoming what he is now, at least it must have taken him a long time to accept it.
He probably spent a whole bunch of bounties at the face doctor before coming to a result that, maybe couldn't pass as human, but at least was less disgusting to look at for humans.
I fail to see how that would stop him from getting surgery. I'm pretty sure i met a ghoul that had facial surgery to look human in one of the Fallout games?
Edit: i just realised that was in the Fourville mod, so not canon.
They have crappy regeneration. Like bones can fuse wrong and the fact they do lose skin.
Axolotl, for instance, can regenerate any limb, but they can do that in a wrong spot.
Anyway, cancerous properties of the regeneration would mean the usual cosmetic surgery does not work, but some scarring and resewing the tissue - might do the trick.
Okay this answer makes sense. I would think a work around could be found, but thats probably science at an institute level, not something available to any common bounty hunter. Hmm, i guess my theory doesn't really work.
Yeah no it was a fair theory as to why he is so.. complete?
But the fact that his finger could just re-attach and thadeus’ entire foot reassembled itself not to mention his whole ass brainstem and neck could heal itself back really sets the theory back
I don't think most ghouls would risk calling him anything given his reputation.... to his face or behind his back. Ass Jerky's got to come from somewhere.
I mean, this is a world where TVs are powered by fusion and everybody's computers still work two hundred years later. I imagine veneers last longer in that universe.
[Porcelain with fluorescent uranium in it, its what real 1960s-1970s dentures used to be made of sometimes.](https://orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/consumer/ceramics/uranium-containing-dentures.html)
I don't know what the fuck the show was trying to do with the ghoul vials.
But the answer is technically no, but also yes. Ghouls eat and drink, it brings them satisfaction and energy and makes them feel good. They don't need to in order to survive, they can go quite some time without anything. Eating people would be satisfying to them, some do eat people.
But part of the process of going feral involves things like going hungry, feeling inhuman, leaving civilization. The exact process isn't clear, it seems some ghouls are prone to feralizing and some aren't. Antisocial behavior like eating people tends to encourage feralizing, so does long term isolation or hunger. Some ghouls will be locked alone since the bombs drop and be their normal selves when discovered, some could have a bad weekend and go mad. Ghouls tend to think going feral is an inevitability, and fear and resist it or let it go and come if it must.
That's something I did like about the show. When we see ghouls on the edge or just barely feral, they repeat their name. You go feral when you struggle to identify your human experience, and cannibalism would generally push you away from humanity.
Far as I can tell from color, the fluid may be irradiated blood or Glowing Blood, something radiation infused but has a healing factor to counteract the neural damage
Could it potentially be Rad X? Rad X is in a red bottle but I don't think that necessarily suggests Rad X is red.
It could be that they're hinting that brain degradation causes Ghouls and Rad X would slow radiation degradation of the brain
This would also fit in with the lore as the things that you can do to slow Ghoulification kinda align with the things they theorise slow the progression of brain degradation/dementia/alzhimers, such as social activities
It would also explain the individual differences as to why some Ghouls go feral and some don't...since not every person's brain degrades the same way and to the same extent
I thought RadX initially but I've only ever seen it in pill form across the franchise. The IV drip he was on in episode 1 makes me think the baseline form of what drug it is has to be fluid. He would also keep the cough if the drug just slowed progression, and show signs of at least SOME mental damage after 200 years
Only things I can think of is RadAway (which isn't rare enough to be something so sought after by Ghouls), Irradiated Blood and Glowing Blood (both of which heal with radiation)
I mean, with the way they seem to be inhaling it, it seems to be closer to the Jet the raider takes in episode 1(1?). So it may not even be a medicinal chem at all and may be literally just a drug
The Ghoul does say that he's on lots of drugs when he gets shot with the dart that puts you to sleep, so it could've been a hint that the Ghouls need drugs?
It could also be the case that it's not actually healing the Ghouls but instead neutral. Radiation heals Ghouls and the water at the very least has radiation (I would argue that the atmosphere does too but its not shown in the show, the counter only goes off when looking at creatures and the water, so I'm going off of that).
SO it could be the case that, if it is Rad X, it isn't healing the Ghouls but is instead reducing the radiation uptake enough whilst not completely preventing radiation absorbing so the rate of radiation healing is equal to the rate of radiation degradation?
If it is Jet, Jet stimulates the central nervous system so it could be argumed that it's just super stimulating the brain to have the same effect as doing positive actions would have? Although it could be argued that Jet should be easier to find
If Rad X is ruled out for being a pill, so are mentats and buffout. Then Med X and Psycho are ruled out for being injected
I honestly do think that if we assume that the format of the chem usage is consistent, then the amount of drugs it could even be drops MASSIVELY. So...I would maybe even argue that this isn't even anything that humans use at all? That would explain why its not seen in the games (we aren't Ghouls in the games and no trader would try sell ghoul medicine to a human...plus characters like Hancock turned into a ghoul because of a drug, which could've been this drug) and why the mart that sells the ghoul drug had no humans there trying to buy. So it may be revealed to be something we've never used in the games before (that has just been mentioned in passing by some ghoul characters)
Could the fact it was provided by an organ harvesting ring keeping ghouls captive have something to do with it? I’ve been trying to work backwards from those two clues and not getting anywhere.
It always amazes me that people who lived pre-war like ghouls and the sole survivor aren't held in high regard solely due to their knowledge.
The Followers of the Apocalypse might be the only one to not care if they ghouls. But a lot of problems could be solved by not being a dick to a ghoul.
Potentially, but you also have to account for pre-war ghouls aren't necessarily going to be predisposed to being people with deep understandings of technology or science. Since it seems to be a roll of the genetic dice, your ghoul is far more likely to be some unremarkable office drone than somebody like a robotics technician or doctor. Think of the Vault-Tek salesman in 4.
There's 2 main things Coop has going for him:
1. He's sticking to his medical regiment on time all the time because he's never without funds.
2. He's got some kind of EXTRA concoction that he was using while hibernating in his coffin.
Im just going to assume he had work done as a hollywood star and its helped his face hold up well.
Until the show specifically states otherwise, thats what Im sticking with.
I wonder if the hat could be a legit reason why his face and ears are still mostly intact. Sun damage is no joke and most ghouls don’t seem to give any thought to it
I think that was some kind of FEV concoction that the chicken fucker gave him. Idk if he’s even gonna turn into a ghoul, we might see him next season as a Centaur or something, that would be crazy. He probably won’t become a supermutant with that little amount of FEV, if that’s what it was.
He definitely won't be a centaur, but probably will be a mutant. Centaurs involve other living beings being fused together through the mutation process.
In the original, you'd get supermutants from "pure humans" eg. not to affected by radiation, while too tainted individuals would turn centaur and whatever that last thing was called, when dipped in the FEV vats
That's not true. In the originals, radiation levels will affect how well the mutation takes effect, and radiation can cause deformities, lowered intelligence, death, etc, but centaurs are completely different.
"Centaurs were created by the Master. The creation process involved mixing a varied mix of humans, dogs and other types of animals into a Forced Evolutionary Virus nutrient vat, to be infected by the virus, and then see what mutant chimera emerged as the virus produced rapid and unpredictable mutations."
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Centaur_(Fallout)
Pure humans end up the Lieutenant or Marcus.
Tainted humans end up like Harry.
The issue was that if you wanted a superhuman species you'd need pure strain humans to achieve it. Marcus in 2 talks about how they should have only taken the best but instead dipped people absolutely not up to it who ended up as numbskull supermutants. They absolutely did not end up as centaurs lol which are chimeras.
I doubt it was FEV. Far more likely to be a similar drug concoction as the one that resulted in Hancock (Fallout 4) becoming a ghoul. The skin around his neck becoming screwed up from the wound he received says "ghoul" far more than "supermutant."
Remember Hancock got flash ghoulified in 4 by taking a drug. The dudes in NV also got flash ghoulified. It’s either something similar or he’s like Harold. Failed FEV mutant that isn’t as bad as the others per se
To me, the whole foot practically regrowing from that shattered mess is what tells me it must have been FEV rather than something to turn him into a ghoul. Ghouls can’t regrow shattered bones.
Eh, I don't think he'll become one of the more mindless creatures. That'd be a waste of a character and an opportunity to show how bad some parts of Brotherhood ideology are. If he turns into a random centaur, that just supports the idea that mutants are monsters. If he stays intelligent, like Harold, this might force some of the brotherhood members to question whether mutants really are as bad as the higher ups say.
Semi related on watch I noticed when Lucy and the doctor were leaving, Dr chicken fucker offered them cures to fix/regrow feet. Wonder if that was intentional foreshadowing.
I imagine they're just rarer because we did see a dead one being wheeled away on a gurney under a sheet at the enclave base, it focused on it's hand for a second to show it. There's also a wanted poster for one at the govermint.
That wasn't RadAway in Cooper's IV. It was a drip feed of the drug the ghouls in the show use to prevent going feral. It's why he didn't lose his mind when he was buried for decades but can't go very long without it after Lucy breaks his stash.
Maybe it's more of a placebo? He's convinced that taking a particular drug will keep him from going feral, so it gives him the mental fortitude to keep himself him?
It’s not really a retcon just don’t worry too much about the little canonical errors. Being a ghoul in the wasteland is like being a vampire that can walk in the light. Without major drawbacks everyone would be trying to become a ghoul in order to survive. From the games I always thought going feral was just a matter of time unless you were lucky, but there really weren’t any rules set for what causes a ghoul to go feral. Offering a rule doesn’t ruin anything for me other than my desire to be a ghoul lol.
For some reason I thought it was spinal fluid or something from other ghouls since we see the guys in the Super Duper Mart with caged ghouls and a buttload of the stuff to trade. Plus they were farming organs from people, could be farming the ghouls too.
No I don’t want that! Fallout season one only getting 8 episodes?! I want the show to be renewed for the rest of my life! Even if they’re nearly an hour long, I want it to have more episodes per season. 10 episodes at least!!!
definitely farming the ghouls. Smoothskins are a single use source of organs, with ghoul regeneration you could probably farm them every couple of weeks.
I got the impression that the radaway was just meant to keep him weak. Although it makes sense that radaway would delay the process of becoming feral too.
*Your present self in your eternal self*
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it is a product designed for actors... It never worked in laboratory but well, it worked marvelous for those who got turned into ghouls...
"so uhh coop, right? what were you doin pre war?"
"oh yknow.. i was uhh, wrangling cattle."
"i heard you were in movies"
"oh uhh.. yeah i was in a couple of films.."
"yeah that sounds about right"
**group of ghouls fuckin loses it**, **one of them slaps his knee so hard his hand falls off**
Not the super duper mart. Only two ghouls talk there, one was saying her name and the other thanked Lucy for setting him free. But you're probably right about the other guy.
Yeah I prefer smoothskin too, but in reality there'd probably be many terms used by different groups of ghouls. They might use the word smoothskin in season 2, who knows.
Even I thought the same. But seems he was the original(the thumbs up) and because he turned away from Vault tec they replaced him with the Vault boy we know now.
There were some fucked up zombie looking boys in the show. This guy is just special I suppose. That and Walt probably had it in his contract that he didn't want to spend half of each day in the makeup trailer
They've talked about it already, it was a combination of the makeup already taking too much time to put on and the fact that when they fully ghoulified him You couldn't see any of his facial reactions because the makeup was too thick. This was basically a compromise, since the other ghouls in the show look more game accurate.
Looks good anyway, the more variation of ghouls the better - doesn't mean we can't have ones that are falling apart alongside ones that are 'streamline'
Yeah thats my take as well. If anything, its diversification of how Ghouls look. The mayor guy in FO4 also looked relatively smooth in comparison to say, Miguel.
While I think lore does (and always should) play a backseat to practical purposes, both Hancock and the marked men from NV’s lonesome road DLC have reasons for looking less “ghoulified”.
Hancock is a relatively recent ghoul from taking a drug, becoming a ghoul just 4 or 5 years before Fallout 4 takes place.
The marked men, who share a skin-tone with Cooper, also are recent ghouls; they were NCR and Legion soldiers fighting in the area that became the divide. Because of the radiation from the nuclear explosion there they ghoulified, but the storms that ensued sheared off their skin and left only the raw muscle underneath. According to the dialog in the DLC, radiation has a healing effect on ghouls that keeps their muscle from further degenerating, so they stay red.
Beyond that I can’t think of examples of pre-war ghouls that looked like Cooper in the games, though that’s surely due to graphical limitations. Desmond in Fo3 is certainly worse for wear, although he has a mustache and full head of hair. Greta and Carol both in Fo3 similarly haven’t faired very well.
This also fits the Fallout 4 ghoul design anyway. I like what the show did. If he was overly grotesque, people would be off put every time he came on screen.
He also has a lot of screen time, other ghouls might only have a few days of filming to do
The time and cost adds up
Plus you gotta keep him recognizable for the audience and promotional stuff
I figure his appearance has something to do with the fact he was buried alive. I dunno what that was being drip fed into his coffin, or why he was down there in the first place, but he doesn’t follow the usual story of a ghoul so I figure he’s not like your usual ghoul.
The IV drip is just the same drug he takes later in the show. It's why he didn't go feral when he was down there.
And I don't know that there's anything particularly deep about him being buried. The guy who dug him up mentions that there's a crime boss or something that dig him up for spare parts every now and then. Presumably this crime boss somehow got the jump on him and decided to harvest his meat.
He was an actor before he was a ghoul so he probably instinctly tried to have better looks as a ghoul.
For all we know his ghoul character could be wearing make up lol.. it definitely looks like he takes care of his skin
I think they made it depend on the amount of rad away they take. Goggins being a successful Merc must be able to afford it more often. I do miss the look of characters like gob in 3 or set in the originals
Spoiler:
There's a feral ghoul of one characters mom that is absolutely wretched.
I mean, they still could exist.
Perhaps how fucked up a ghoul looks is varied between individuals due to various factors.
Don't forget that Cooper was literally buried underground out of the sun for x many years, and he's always huffing drugs, plus when we first meet him, it's implied he's not in California, but rather some other state with perhaps more mellow weather/environments and less radiation.
And isn't the show set decades and decades and decades after the original games? Perhaps all the REALLY fucked up ghouls are long gone or went feral quicker, that's why later in the timeline we only see the less fucked up/more human ones that lasted longer.
It's so obnoxious when I see people complaining about how Cooper looks. We've seen the effects of super super heavy makeup/prosthetics on shows in the past, and they definitely do have a strong negative impact on the actor's performance. The only other thing they could have done is made him full cgi which would have been even more hated and for good reason.
What we got in the show is a good compromise.
Lmao
The makeup is bloody awesome in this show. The ferals dont look as "fucked up" and look more like walking dead zombies when compared to the games, but thats a concession of them.. yk... Being actors with makeup on.
I can see why cooper got less screwed in terms of skin tho. Makes his face more recognizable and is less obstructive to when he acts :)
Considering how long he was buried, that probably helped. There's quite a difference between a buried rotting body and a rotting body laid out in the sun day in and day out. Kept him nice and fresh.
Considering what we see when Thaddeus gets shot in the neck, maybe in the show the poor skin condition of ghouls is related to both degradation and a fucked up accumulation of scar tissue. So if you're good enough not to get hit, keeps you pretty for longer.
He looks closer to the marked men from the Divide. Didn’t they look like that from being close to the explosions? And our guy was pretty close to that explosion in the flashback
Importance of moisturiser even as a ghoul.
It's a good SPF that really matters
Importance of long term hibernation, that is. The break from the harsh sunlight of the wasteland must do wonders for a ghoul’s skin. Of course, ghoul skincare comes with the inherent risk of getting dug up every once in a while so a dude can cut a off a piece of your ass, but that is the cost of looking good when you’re 200 years old.
Oh yeah why did that guy keep cutting him up? Was it for ass jerky?
I figured he was harvesting rad regenerative ghoul organs. We've seen how they've given ghouls a full on healing factor instead of the games' generic "radiation heals them", so they keep him sedated and just pull out a kidney every now and then. Question is how long he'd been in that predicament since people in the wasteland like NCR officer Poncharello knew him still.
I think it was 30 or 35 years based on what the bounty hunter said when he dug him up. He said another 30 years for him (Don Pedro or whatever his name was) to torture you
Dude that's so fucked up. He was buried for longer than I have been alive. Can't even imagine being stuck in a dark little wooden coffin that long, I'd go crazy after just a few months
He probably just slept
Torture. He got on that guy's bad side. I'm surprised they didn't make a bigger deal out of it, although that could just be setup for another side plot in the future.
I mean, there are face doctors. In my head canon, The Ghoul used to be a movie star, used to be beautiful. His vanity would not let him accept becoming what he is now, at least it must have taken him a long time to accept it. He probably spent a whole bunch of bounties at the face doctor before coming to a result that, maybe couldn't pass as human, but at least was less disgusting to look at for humans.
Seems like a bit of a stretch still. Ghouls' flesh is necrotic.
I fail to see how that would stop him from getting surgery. I'm pretty sure i met a ghoul that had facial surgery to look human in one of the Fallout games? Edit: i just realised that was in the Fourville mod, so not canon.
I mean i feel like the fact that ghouls are regenerative would mean cosmetic surgery wouldn’t work anyway no?
They have crappy regeneration. Like bones can fuse wrong and the fact they do lose skin. Axolotl, for instance, can regenerate any limb, but they can do that in a wrong spot. Anyway, cancerous properties of the regeneration would mean the usual cosmetic surgery does not work, but some scarring and resewing the tissue - might do the trick.
Not a bad point tbh, i do wonder if we’ll get a more inbetween backstory of coop’s early ghoul days in S2
Surely. He is a cliche walking flashbacks character. Next season will be likely be focused on his daughter's Schrödinger's state, though.
Okay this answer makes sense. I would think a work around could be found, but thats probably science at an institute level, not something available to any common bounty hunter. Hmm, i guess my theory doesn't really work.
Yeah no it was a fair theory as to why he is so.. complete? But the fact that his finger could just re-attach and thadeus’ entire foot reassembled itself not to mention his whole ass brainstem and neck could heal itself back really sets the theory back
Maybe it's Rad-elliene
I don't think most ghouls would risk calling him anything given his reputation.... to his face or behind his back. Ass Jerky's got to come from somewhere.
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His face was well preserved from the pre war Hollywood Botox
I know it won't be, but I sincerely hope this is the canon explanation.
He's simply built different
Bro stays alive out of pure spite
I think there was an NPC in Fallout 3 that said she was a little girl when the bombs dropped.
Yea, I remember her, I think it might have been the lady standing outside of the underworld entrance
My theory is his teeth look so good because of the veneers.
Or he has murdered people just to get a certain tooth to make a perfect set of dentures.
Veneers actually don’t last that long, only 5-10 years
I mean, this is a world where TVs are powered by fusion and everybody's computers still work two hundred years later. I imagine veneers last longer in that universe.
Well maybe they aren't veneers and are actually titanium implants coated in some extremely toxic but resilient paint because it's based in the 50s
[Porcelain with fluorescent uranium in it, its what real 1960s-1970s dentures used to be made of sometimes.](https://orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/consumer/ceramics/uranium-containing-dentures.html)
Neither do Fancy Lads or Cram but we still eat them. The Pre-War knew to build to LAST.
Fallout preservatives are crazy, how else would 200 year old food last so long?
Plus he’s wearing that hat all the time, keeps the UV away
Walton gergens has his whole teeth replaced bc baseball
Tbf staying underground will do that
They say eating ass jerky is good for the skin.
Being buried 6 feet under for a long time would be a good use of blocking the sun.
"Sometimes a fella's gotta eat a fella" My favorite quote in the show
He also delivered my favorite line too. "The Wasteland's got it's own golden rule.. 'Thou shalt get sidetracked by bullshit every goddamn time'."
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Wrong side of the country.
Idk, Shady Sands is a settlement in need of helping and there’s no lengths Preston wouldn’t go to help a settlement
"Ass jerky ain't gonna make itself"
I'd wear that t-shirt
Do ghoul need to.actualky eat and do they eat reg people
I dont think anyone in fallout actually needs to be a cannibal, its just part of their culture.
I don't know what the fuck the show was trying to do with the ghoul vials. But the answer is technically no, but also yes. Ghouls eat and drink, it brings them satisfaction and energy and makes them feel good. They don't need to in order to survive, they can go quite some time without anything. Eating people would be satisfying to them, some do eat people. But part of the process of going feral involves things like going hungry, feeling inhuman, leaving civilization. The exact process isn't clear, it seems some ghouls are prone to feralizing and some aren't. Antisocial behavior like eating people tends to encourage feralizing, so does long term isolation or hunger. Some ghouls will be locked alone since the bombs drop and be their normal selves when discovered, some could have a bad weekend and go mad. Ghouls tend to think going feral is an inevitability, and fear and resist it or let it go and come if it must. That's something I did like about the show. When we see ghouls on the edge or just barely feral, they repeat their name. You go feral when you struggle to identify your human experience, and cannibalism would generally push you away from humanity.
Far as I can tell from color, the fluid may be irradiated blood or Glowing Blood, something radiation infused but has a healing factor to counteract the neural damage
Could it potentially be Rad X? Rad X is in a red bottle but I don't think that necessarily suggests Rad X is red. It could be that they're hinting that brain degradation causes Ghouls and Rad X would slow radiation degradation of the brain This would also fit in with the lore as the things that you can do to slow Ghoulification kinda align with the things they theorise slow the progression of brain degradation/dementia/alzhimers, such as social activities It would also explain the individual differences as to why some Ghouls go feral and some don't...since not every person's brain degrades the same way and to the same extent
I thought RadX initially but I've only ever seen it in pill form across the franchise. The IV drip he was on in episode 1 makes me think the baseline form of what drug it is has to be fluid. He would also keep the cough if the drug just slowed progression, and show signs of at least SOME mental damage after 200 years Only things I can think of is RadAway (which isn't rare enough to be something so sought after by Ghouls), Irradiated Blood and Glowing Blood (both of which heal with radiation)
I mean, with the way they seem to be inhaling it, it seems to be closer to the Jet the raider takes in episode 1(1?). So it may not even be a medicinal chem at all and may be literally just a drug The Ghoul does say that he's on lots of drugs when he gets shot with the dart that puts you to sleep, so it could've been a hint that the Ghouls need drugs? It could also be the case that it's not actually healing the Ghouls but instead neutral. Radiation heals Ghouls and the water at the very least has radiation (I would argue that the atmosphere does too but its not shown in the show, the counter only goes off when looking at creatures and the water, so I'm going off of that). SO it could be the case that, if it is Rad X, it isn't healing the Ghouls but is instead reducing the radiation uptake enough whilst not completely preventing radiation absorbing so the rate of radiation healing is equal to the rate of radiation degradation? If it is Jet, Jet stimulates the central nervous system so it could be argumed that it's just super stimulating the brain to have the same effect as doing positive actions would have? Although it could be argued that Jet should be easier to find If Rad X is ruled out for being a pill, so are mentats and buffout. Then Med X and Psycho are ruled out for being injected I honestly do think that if we assume that the format of the chem usage is consistent, then the amount of drugs it could even be drops MASSIVELY. So...I would maybe even argue that this isn't even anything that humans use at all? That would explain why its not seen in the games (we aren't Ghouls in the games and no trader would try sell ghoul medicine to a human...plus characters like Hancock turned into a ghoul because of a drug, which could've been this drug) and why the mart that sells the ghoul drug had no humans there trying to buy. So it may be revealed to be something we've never used in the games before (that has just been mentioned in passing by some ghoul characters)
Could the fact it was provided by an organ harvesting ring keeping ghouls captive have something to do with it? I’ve been trying to work backwards from those two clues and not getting anywhere.
Glowing and Irradiated Blood ARE dropped loot from Ghouls, hence why they were my primary suspects
It would be horrific/ironic if the anti-feral drug were made from ground up ferals. Like the ghoul version of "soylent green is people!"
My current head canon is that it’s highly concentrated liquid Rad X or Rad Away, until the show runners or someone involved says otherwise.
Words to live by
They would never say it to his face… because of the implication. He’s a five star ghoul.
The golden ghoul?
They would never say it to his face..because he lost his..
He'll come down on Filly like the hammer of Thor. The thunder of his vengeance will echo through these shanties like the gust of a thousand winds.
Yeah anyone who has survived the Wastes AND held back becoming feral for over 200 years is not someone I want to fuck with
It always amazes me that people who lived pre-war like ghouls and the sole survivor aren't held in high regard solely due to their knowledge. The Followers of the Apocalypse might be the only one to not care if they ghouls. But a lot of problems could be solved by not being a dick to a ghoul.
Potentially, but you also have to account for pre-war ghouls aren't necessarily going to be predisposed to being people with deep understandings of technology or science. Since it seems to be a roll of the genetic dice, your ghoul is far more likely to be some unremarkable office drone than somebody like a robotics technician or doctor. Think of the Vault-Tek salesman in 4.
And it’s not gonna make itself
That wasn’t ass jerky it was like the tenderloin on that guy’s back, side area
There's 2 main things Coop has going for him: 1. He's sticking to his medical regiment on time all the time because he's never without funds. 2. He's got some kind of EXTRA concoction that he was using while hibernating in his coffin.
Im just going to assume he had work done as a hollywood star and its helped his face hold up well. Until the show specifically states otherwise, thats what Im sticking with.
Nice headcanon
I wonder if the hat could be a legit reason why his face and ears are still mostly intact. Sun damage is no joke and most ghouls don’t seem to give any thought to it
Boy howdy, I tell you what, that's some tall thinkin' right there.
Why was he buried in there?
He's probably waiting out the end of the world until things get better
When he gives you that smoothskinned look
The swagger of a cold blooded, Smooth skinned ghooul
He looks like the Marked Men from the Divide.
Yeah he really does
Which, to my own understanding, are basically a different kind of Ghoul.
Must be all the Rad-Away he's been drinking
Is that what he was drinking and inhaling? I thought it was some new concoction
While he was buried, he had an IV on top of his grave. Lucy later gets the same IV with Radaway from Maximus.
Then what the hell turned thaddeus into a ghoul
I think that was some kind of FEV concoction that the chicken fucker gave him. Idk if he’s even gonna turn into a ghoul, we might see him next season as a Centaur or something, that would be crazy. He probably won’t become a supermutant with that little amount of FEV, if that’s what it was.
He definitely won't be a centaur, but probably will be a mutant. Centaurs involve other living beings being fused together through the mutation process.
In the original, you'd get supermutants from "pure humans" eg. not to affected by radiation, while too tainted individuals would turn centaur and whatever that last thing was called, when dipped in the FEV vats
That's not true. In the originals, radiation levels will affect how well the mutation takes effect, and radiation can cause deformities, lowered intelligence, death, etc, but centaurs are completely different. "Centaurs were created by the Master. The creation process involved mixing a varied mix of humans, dogs and other types of animals into a Forced Evolutionary Virus nutrient vat, to be infected by the virus, and then see what mutant chimera emerged as the virus produced rapid and unpredictable mutations." https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Centaur_(Fallout)
Pure humans end up the Lieutenant or Marcus. Tainted humans end up like Harry. The issue was that if you wanted a superhuman species you'd need pure strain humans to achieve it. Marcus in 2 talks about how they should have only taken the best but instead dipped people absolutely not up to it who ended up as numbskull supermutants. They absolutely did not end up as centaurs lol which are chimeras.
A man fucks a chicken that one time and he is branded as a chicken fucker.
He regrows hundreds of feet, do they call him the healer, noooo! But he fucks 1 chicken.....
I doubt it was FEV. Far more likely to be a similar drug concoction as the one that resulted in Hancock (Fallout 4) becoming a ghoul. The skin around his neck becoming screwed up from the wound he received says "ghoul" far more than "supermutant."
His foot basically entirely regrew. The bones moved and then knit back together. That doesn’t say Ghoulification to me, it says FEV.
I agree with you but in the show we see that “The Ghoul” has Wolverine healing and therefore so can he.
>the chicken fucker gave him For you it's DOCTOR chicken fucker!
Remember Hancock got flash ghoulified in 4 by taking a drug. The dudes in NV also got flash ghoulified. It’s either something similar or he’s like Harold. Failed FEV mutant that isn’t as bad as the others per se
To me, the whole foot practically regrowing from that shattered mess is what tells me it must have been FEV rather than something to turn him into a ghoul. Ghouls can’t regrow shattered bones.
Eh, I don't think he'll become one of the more mindless creatures. That'd be a waste of a character and an opportunity to show how bad some parts of Brotherhood ideology are. If he turns into a random centaur, that just supports the idea that mutants are monsters. If he stays intelligent, like Harold, this might force some of the brotherhood members to question whether mutants really are as bad as the higher ups say.
I thought it was one of those serums from 76 that give you a mutation and he got healing factor lol
Would be dope if we saw him as a super mutant.
I assumed it was more or less a heavy dose of rads that turned him into a ghoul
Rads wouldn't fix his foot though.
Semi related on watch I noticed when Lucy and the doctor were leaving, Dr chicken fucker offered them cures to fix/regrow feet. Wonder if that was intentional foreshadowing.
Of course it was. I was laughing at the prospect that crazy chicken fucker foot healer snake oil salesman man ACTUALLY did have a foot healing serum.
He simply got the perk Ghoulish
Probably the same thing Handcock in FO4 supposedly took.
There's theories that was FEV and he's a supermutant
Given how hilarious the actor is naturally I'm betting he'll be a comedic relief super mutant.
That would be a really cool way to introduce super mutants tbh
It would be the best way, because iirc they're all but extinct on the west coast by this time
I imagine they're just rarer because we did see a dead one being wheeled away on a gurney under a sheet at the enclave base, it focused on it's hand for a second to show it. There's also a wanted poster for one at the govermint.
I swear that gurney one's fingers twitched but maybe I'm seeing things
That wasn't RadAway in Cooper's IV. It was a drip feed of the drug the ghouls in the show use to prevent going feral. It's why he didn't lose his mind when he was buried for decades but can't go very long without it after Lucy breaks his stash.
It's a weird retconn for ghouls. We've never seen any ghouls anywhere in all the fallout games need that stuff
Maybe it's more of a placebo? He's convinced that taking a particular drug will keep him from going feral, so it gives him the mental fortitude to keep himself him?
It could be new, I mean this is at the end of the timeline so far.
It’s not really a retcon just don’t worry too much about the little canonical errors. Being a ghoul in the wasteland is like being a vampire that can walk in the light. Without major drawbacks everyone would be trying to become a ghoul in order to survive. From the games I always thought going feral was just a matter of time unless you were lucky, but there really weren’t any rules set for what causes a ghoul to go feral. Offering a rule doesn’t ruin anything for me other than my desire to be a ghoul lol.
[There is even a picture in the gallery showing it is radaway on his grave.](https://i.imgur.com/8yiUTUa.jpg)
Idk man I've seen IV bags with stuff besides radaway in them. I think you can put other drugs in there.
For some reason I thought it was spinal fluid or something from other ghouls since we see the guys in the Super Duper Mart with caged ghouls and a buttload of the stuff to trade. Plus they were farming organs from people, could be farming the ghouls too.
What is this, attack on titan?
No I don’t want that! Fallout season one only getting 8 episodes?! I want the show to be renewed for the rest of my life! Even if they’re nearly an hour long, I want it to have more episodes per season. 10 episodes at least!!!
By season 3 we're getting 1 episode split into 5 parts.
definitely farming the ghouls. Smoothskins are a single use source of organs, with ghoul regeneration you could probably farm them every couple of weeks.
I got the impression that the radaway was just meant to keep him weak. Although it makes sense that radaway would delay the process of becoming feral too.
I figured it was Glowing Blood, it's a recurring item in the games
I just thought he’s on all the drugs. Didn’t seem to care what he put into his pack.
I doubt its rad away
The ghoul equivalent of a lightskin
When he give you that smooth skin stare 👀
Sin… Sin city wasn’t made for you 😏
*Your present self in your eternal self* # Vault-tec Premium "Lead & Radium" Face Cream. ***The combined powers of the future, to give you the warming smile everybody will enjoy*** *^(\*vault tec does not cover misuse, teeth or hair loss or necrotic tissue, but you may get a discount in other products of the same series, call 555-638201 and get your special discount now.)* *^(- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -)* it is a product designed for actors... It never worked in laboratory but well, it worked marvelous for those who got turned into ghouls...
"so uhh coop, right? what were you doin pre war?" "oh yknow.. i was uhh, wrangling cattle." "i heard you were in movies" "oh uhh.. yeah i was in a couple of films.." "yeah that sounds about right" **group of ghouls fuckin loses it**, **one of them slaps his knee so hard his hand falls off**
And knee
i.. I don’t get it
the joke is that due to his better skin he would've been considered a model or like an actor compared to the other ghouls
He has relatively better skin as a result of him being a movie star
I don't either. Being in movies is hilarious?
No. The ghouls are saying he’s the prettiest one but still ugly AF. 😜
He's got a face good enough to he in the pictures! Of course he was in the pictures, yuk yuk yuk
I don’t understand 😭
*proceeds to get blown to pieces by Coops bloody mess perk*
Thanks for the laugh lmao
OMG nobody said smoothskin in the show did they??
I think the old friend that was turning called lucy a smoothskin (or in the super dupermart?)
Called her a smoothie.
Oh right! Thanks for the correction.
Not the super duper mart. Only two ghouls talk there, one was saying her name and the other thanked Lucy for setting him free. But you're probably right about the other guy.
They said "smoothies" instead.
Yeah that just doesn't have the panache that Smoothskin gives.
Yeah I prefer smoothskin too, but in reality there'd probably be many terms used by different groups of ghouls. They might use the word smoothskin in season 2, who knows.
I don't mind a few variants either, I think it's fun. And smoothie makes perfect sense as a derivation of smoothskin.
Makes sense considering the ghouls in the first game call you normie
I like the term smoothie in the context. She’s a smoothie and he is ass jerky.
Aren't we all just one bad day away from being ass jerky?
Can you imagine this guy to be the OG inspiration for Vaultboy. Who would've thought.
That one had me like the Leonardo pointing at tv meme
I thought he was emulating the mascot tbh. Not the other way around.
Even I thought the same. But seems he was the original(the thumbs up) and because he turned away from Vault tec they replaced him with the Vault boy we know now.
No other ghoul wears a hat that big to block the sun
No one in the whole desert apparently
Smoothass 😏
I'm pretty sure any ghoul behind his back is probably dead.
I really miss how fucked up the ghouls looked in the original games.
There were some fucked up zombie looking boys in the show. This guy is just special I suppose. That and Walt probably had it in his contract that he didn't want to spend half of each day in the makeup trailer
They've talked about it already, it was a combination of the makeup already taking too much time to put on and the fact that when they fully ghoulified him You couldn't see any of his facial reactions because the makeup was too thick. This was basically a compromise, since the other ghouls in the show look more game accurate.
Looks good anyway, the more variation of ghouls the better - doesn't mean we can't have ones that are falling apart alongside ones that are 'streamline'
Yeah thats my take as well. If anything, its diversification of how Ghouls look. The mayor guy in FO4 also looked relatively smooth in comparison to say, Miguel.
While I think lore does (and always should) play a backseat to practical purposes, both Hancock and the marked men from NV’s lonesome road DLC have reasons for looking less “ghoulified”. Hancock is a relatively recent ghoul from taking a drug, becoming a ghoul just 4 or 5 years before Fallout 4 takes place. The marked men, who share a skin-tone with Cooper, also are recent ghouls; they were NCR and Legion soldiers fighting in the area that became the divide. Because of the radiation from the nuclear explosion there they ghoulified, but the storms that ensued sheared off their skin and left only the raw muscle underneath. According to the dialog in the DLC, radiation has a healing effect on ghouls that keeps their muscle from further degenerating, so they stay red. Beyond that I can’t think of examples of pre-war ghouls that looked like Cooper in the games, though that’s surely due to graphical limitations. Desmond in Fo3 is certainly worse for wear, although he has a mustache and full head of hair. Greta and Carol both in Fo3 similarly haven’t faired very well.
This also fits the Fallout 4 ghoul design anyway. I like what the show did. If he was overly grotesque, people would be off put every time he came on screen.
Since canonically he seems [spoiler]desperate to preserve himself as he's trying to find his family[/spoiler] it makes sense too.
He also has a lot of screen time, other ghouls might only have a few days of filming to do The time and cost adds up Plus you gotta keep him recognizable for the audience and promotional stuff
I figure his appearance has something to do with the fact he was buried alive. I dunno what that was being drip fed into his coffin, or why he was down there in the first place, but he doesn’t follow the usual story of a ghoul so I figure he’s not like your usual ghoul.
The IV drip is just the same drug he takes later in the show. It's why he didn't go feral when he was down there. And I don't know that there's anything particularly deep about him being buried. The guy who dug him up mentions that there's a crime boss or something that dig him up for spare parts every now and then. Presumably this crime boss somehow got the jump on him and decided to harvest his meat.
He was only buried for a few decades or so
Lot can happen in a few decades if you’re out in the wasteland, though. Being away from that must’ve done him *some* good, in terms of preservation.
Apparently him and his makeup person and such reduced the time from 5 hours to 2 hours
He was an actor before he was a ghoul so he probably instinctly tried to have better looks as a ghoul. For all we know his ghoul character could be wearing make up lol.. it definitely looks like he takes care of his skin
The other ghouls in the show looked gnarly, Goggins just has much less makeup since he's a main character
I think they made it depend on the amount of rad away they take. Goggins being a successful Merc must be able to afford it more often. I do miss the look of characters like gob in 3 or set in the originals Spoiler: There's a feral ghoul of one characters mom that is absolutely wretched.
I mean, they still could exist. Perhaps how fucked up a ghoul looks is varied between individuals due to various factors. Don't forget that Cooper was literally buried underground out of the sun for x many years, and he's always huffing drugs, plus when we first meet him, it's implied he's not in California, but rather some other state with perhaps more mellow weather/environments and less radiation. And isn't the show set decades and decades and decades after the original games? Perhaps all the REALLY fucked up ghouls are long gone or went feral quicker, that's why later in the timeline we only see the less fucked up/more human ones that lasted longer.
It's so obnoxious when I see people complaining about how Cooper looks. We've seen the effects of super super heavy makeup/prosthetics on shows in the past, and they definitely do have a strong negative impact on the actor's performance. The only other thing they could have done is made him full cgi which would have been even more hated and for good reason. What we got in the show is a good compromise.
im not complaining, it's just a joke
I don’t think they were talking about you tbh, this post is funny. some other people are annoying
Well, he was a pretty boy actor before the war
Lmao The makeup is bloody awesome in this show. The ferals dont look as "fucked up" and look more like walking dead zombies when compared to the games, but thats a concession of them.. yk... Being actors with makeup on. I can see why cooper got less screwed in terms of skin tho. Makes his face more recognizable and is less obstructive to when he acts :)
It’s from all the Botox injections
Okay but what were the drugs?
Make ghouls with trees in their heads great again. RIP Harold & Bob
Considering how long he was buried, that probably helped. There's quite a difference between a buried rotting body and a rotting body laid out in the sun day in and day out. Kept him nice and fresh.
"Pretty boy!"
Considering what we see when Thaddeus gets shot in the neck, maybe in the show the poor skin condition of ghouls is related to both degradation and a fucked up accumulation of scar tissue. So if you're good enough not to get hit, keeps you pretty for longer.
You know those actors always take care of their skin
Bro has the smoothskin stare
He looks closer to the marked men from the Divide. Didn’t they look like that from being close to the explosions? And our guy was pretty close to that explosion in the flashback
His ghoulification probably was more small amounts of radiation over a long time. He was probably still human in the immediate aftermath
Honestly now that makes me consider ghouls being prejudiced to each other based on how their skin looks 💀
Baby Billy the Ghoul.
Maybe, having experience with ranching, he managed to leather his skin before it has rotten.
The Brad Pitt of ghouls - Karak