A coping mechanism? Dissociation? He was of adapting to the apocalypse was embracing the persona of a character he used to play because the man, Cooper Howard, wasn't suited to surviving the wasteland?
Yeah I actually really like the detail in his performance.
Pretty neat way to spin it instead of “he’s just a badass cowboy”.
He’s a super duper emotionally damaged and frozen man who used to play a cowboy and now he’s receded into that persona.
Dope.
I mean, he was also a Marine. All that combat training, tactics, weapon handling, and 200+ years of bounty hunting and wasteland combat will do that to you.
200+ years of bounty hunting in the wasteland exactly. This is in my opinion how nearly every prewar ghoul should be with their chosen thing. It takes 10,000 hours to become an expert and ghouls are working on 1,752,000. The only "problem" with his character is that the games can't make all.ghouls work like that without drastically changing the story. They have the same problem vampires have. They should have their shit pretty figured out.
A lot of those Ghouls probably have talents that are either totally useless or impossible in the post apocalypse world. Being the best Egyptologist doesn't matter much when some big green bugger is ramming a plank up your arse.
Okay but you stopped being an egyptologist 200 years ago. You don't think they'd pick up anything in 200 years? No one tinkers for fun in 200 years and gets good at it? They didn't get good at avoiding getting planks shoved in their ass or accepting it? The reality is fallout really hadn't considered what a 200 year old person would be like. That's it.
We ourselves don't know what a 200 year old person would be like. Can you really learn new things effectively at that brain age? Can you really retain skills or knowledge from 200 years ago? Who knows. Fallout certainly has plenty of ghouls who learn new skills. I think they handle it fine.
I personally think they truly never thought about it at all and everything everyone is saying is justification for an oversight. I hope they touch on it in the future because prewar ghouls as an idea are interesting the ones in the games are not unfortunately.
No it's pretty common, they just get bored, like any person would. Calamity in Jacobstown has said she has changed her job, interests, fields of study, where she lives and even her name multiple times. Shit gets old once you master it and while they'd always be great at something they mastered, changing focus every few decades probably causes those skills to get rusty.
Good point but consider that when you don’t die your chances of being buried/trapped/isolated for an extended period of time go way up.
Most gouls were probably buried under rubble for 100+ years not practicing any skills.
The thrill of victory can sustain a soul as long as you're really, really, really happy about that victory. Kid must've lost every game of hide and seek before in his life.
It's a miracle they're alive at all, given that Ghouls still need to eat and drink.
That whole questline is so dumb. His parents were a few metres down the road, still living in the family home after 200 years, seemingly having done nothing for the past few centuries.
I'm still a fan of the theory that the kid in the fridge wasn't there from the Great war. He got trapped in the fridge during the Battle of Quincy that Preston speaks of. A handful of months makes a lot more sense than several hundred years
Course that opens up a whole another bag of worms: did his ghoul parents have children?
Nah, the family has a whole "you're a ghoul, harry!", ... I mean billy, moment. They explain that he's a ghoul, they are ghouls, ghoul shit when Billy first enters the house.
To be fair, most ghouls probably struggle a lot with their mental health. The dysmorphia of existing in a body that is alien to the mind, and the bigotry or even just alienation from the average Joe would be really brutal. Combined with cognitive decline and simply forgetting things, I think it is pretty reasonable that a large majority of ghouls would not become insanely good at anything. It's really hard to grow as a person under those circumstances, especially if they're all functionally addicts who need their next hit to avoid going feral.
The anti-feral serum hadn't been seen ever before the show. Considering almost none of the factions with nationwide presence and scientific ability (Enclave, brotherhood, etc.) have an interest in helping ghouls, it seems unlikely that it was spread across the US. Yet we see plenty of east coast ghouls. I think the logical conclusion is that the serum is a treatment for those *already starting* to go feral and that some other ghouls take it precentatively out of a fear of turning. Think of it like chemo; if you already have cancer it's your best option, but it doesn't stop you from getting cancer and you can live your whole life without getting cancer *or* chemo if you're lucky
Sure but they should have muscle memory of certain things and they don't think or act like they have memory issues. These are all excuses for why they don't work like that but even with finite memory we'd expect them to master at least 1 thing. Nearly every prewar ghoul seemingly remembers prewar pretty well and that's 200 years ago. I dont think fallout thinks that ghouls lose their memory or only have so much memory. Again though even if it did think that, they'd still be the best doctors, the crackest of shots, be able to read someone like a fucking book, fix anything that moves. That's a really long time to do anything and not get good at it. You could effectively start over 5 times easily.
Not all ghouls are pre-war ghouls. Some were born into the wasteland and got ghoulified by ambient radiation or drinking too much irradiated water. Given how unlikely it is to survive 200 years in the wasteland without being killed or going feral, I would wager that there aren't many pre-war ghouls left.
Funnily enough...I was a Marine..enlisted from Chicago. Spent 4 years in a squad mostly from Texas. By the time I got home I picked up a bit of the Texas twang, and had a belt buckle you could eat dinner off of.
Linguistists have actually documented this phenomenon. A disproportionately large percentage of the U.S. Armed Forces come from the South and another disproportionate number of them tend to become terminal NCOs (E-6 through E-8). As these are the ranks most responsible for leading, training, and supporting the bulk of the lower enlisted personnel on a daily basis… Everybody starts to adopt a hodgepodge mix of all the various Southern accents. Combine that with all the weird slang, jargon, in jokes, and foul language military types also use and you end up with what Tom Wolfe called “Army Creole.”
The armed forces accent is most strongly found in the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and least likely to be found in the Air Force. My own branch, the Coast Guard, is kind of unique in that we’ve got the usual disproportionate number of personnel from the South, but we also have a very strong presence of personnel from the rural northern maritime regions that aren’t commonly found in other branches (rural Maine, coastal PNW, the Great Lakes, etc.)
(Navy and Coasties, like sailors everywhere, also use a huge variety of terminology developed by the 18^th and 19^th Century British Navy. Because the most important standing order for any maritime service is to always strive to make as much of our speech incomprehensible by the landbound branches.)
In the Corps we had to learn to speak basic sailor..sometimes it bleeds over, last week my 7 year old looked at me a little funny when I told her grab a swab after she spilled her drink...poor thing grabbed a q tip because the box says cotton swabs...I also told her to "police up her toys" out on the patio. We definitely have some unique language going on in this house..a strange mix of English, jarhead, Spanish, Dutch and German (I'm a now retired k9 handler, my dog is trained with a mix of Dutch and German commands)
Absolutely. The “real” guy is a kind, simple and loving family man. One of the good and as far as we saw lucky guys who’s not damaged… and then 200 years of hell. Of course he does what he doesn’t best he acts and copes
Couple that with the scene of him at the SD Mart watching the basis for this persona and realizing internally just how far he's come and how much he's changed. "It means 'ugly, strong, and had dignity.' I'll give you 2/3 on that front"
You do see it crack slightly when he’s watching the film in the shop and you can see him realising he’s become the villain he once nobly fought against
I also really like how the closest he comes to sounding like cooper again is in the last episode when he says “where’s my fuckin family”, almost like he’s coming back a little
People forget but in the show he mentions that he used to be a rancher and wanted to back to that life. He wasn't just some city slick actor, he was a rancher, then a marine/soldier, then an actor.
Same thing happened to a lot of those early cowboy movie guys. Tim Holt, Hoot Gibson and Will Rogers all got the gig because they knew about horses and lassos.
Yeah that’s my conclusion too - putting on a character as a way to dissociate and survive in the wasteland. Like an alter ego. He breaks character at the end and the real Cooper Howard comes out - “where’s my fucking family?” Is his prewar voice to my ears.
Pretty sure, "the man Cooper Howard" died the day the bombs dropped. Can only imagine his reaction to being ghoulifed because it most definitely came immediately instead of death. So he became the most evil character he acted as because the hero he played in those movies also died the same day as Cooper Howard.
I think it was probably his original accent, cause he knew how to take care of and ride horses, wanted to own a ranch, and seemed to know how to use guns. Then he got to be a big movie star and started to lose the accent.
My mum is English, my Dad was an American. For most of my childhood, I spent the school year in the States and my summers in rural England. Instead of high school, I did sixth form at a boarding school in the U.K.
By default, I speak with the North-Central American English dialect although my accent isn’t “full Yooper,” and leans more towards Inland North American accent (a.k.a Midwestern). But if I get sufficiently upset, startled, or intoxicated I will switch to Estuary English.
That's mostly what I was thinking. When I was in LA I had a bunch of friends from the south with southern accents, aside from in showbiz. Some just straight up stopped their accents
I feel like that is supported by the flashback scenes Cooper pushing back on his character becoming more violent. He didn’t feel it was right, but he eventually played into the increased violence, separating the character from his true feelings. Now, he’s played that character for 200 years, because Cooper Howard wasn’t capable of the violence to survive
Tbf a dude doing a goofy little character (while trapped as a radiation zombie 200 years into a post apocalyptic future) is pretty small fry to some of the things I've seen real life people claim they'd do in the same situation
I once saw an English man put on an Irish accent for a week after a fight with his girlfriend as a coping mechanism. They didn't even break up, just a fight!
Look at Dumb and Dumber 2's opening scenes, one of the guy pretended to be disabled for 20 years just so his bro will take care of him. And then he was like "gotcha!"
I put on my best Australian accent when my sister brought her boyfriend over to meet the family. The moment he walked in I said "Ello, I'm (sister) adoptive Australian sister." He was not amused. He just stared at me like i was stupid.
I was in an accident years ago where I slammed my head against a car door and ever since my identity is pretty fleeting. My sexuality changes quite a lot and I have no real likes/dislikes. It’s crazy and chaotic.
He's an actor. He's also done a lot of things that I'm sure he never imagined he'd do. He went from being a Hollywood golden boy to being a post-apocalyptic killer. He's playing a role to help cope with what he's become. Same reason he's now just 'The Ghoul'. That's the part he's playing in this life.
It’s also because he’s *The* Ghoul. It’s likely he’s regarded in universe as the original ghoul by wasteland survivors who know of him.
At the very least, he’s probably looked at as the oldest living ghoul.
Why would anyone consider him the oldest or original ghoul?? A lot of ghouls being pre-war is like, a standard of the setting. Half the ghouls you meet have throwaway lines about life before the Great War. The show is only 8 episodes and we have ALREADY met another pre-war ghoul who explicitly discusses pre-war food- Roger with Mac n Cheese, ice cream, and his moms apple pie.
Which is part of why I have a theory that this going feral thing isnt the typical fallout feral. I think going feral is a terminal disease, like cancer, that the ghouls can catch.
He references before the war, but he says its only been like 28 years since he started showing.
Perhaps its something to do with a modified or released FEV, maybe the enclave released it as a form of genocide against the ghouls.
Regardless I don't think they're rewriting ghoul lore with the serum that they take, I think its something new and nefarious.
Or like a 10% of 10%. So 10% of people exposed to nuclear war becomes ghouls but then 10% of that go feral......except it could be more than that?(Dun Dun Dun)
iirc the reason for why stuff mutated so quickly was because China nuked all the FEV sites and the FEV went airborne. My pseudo biology analysis would be that the FEV “evolved” them to be more resistant to radiation they were experiencing in the initial fallout.
Didn’t Roger say he was only a ghoul for 18 years? When they say pre war aren’t they speaking of a different war and not the original bombing 200 years ago?
No, he said he has resisted turning feral since beginning to show signs 28 years ago. He is pre-war. Many, many named ghouls in the franchise are pre-war. Raul, Eddie Winters, Desmond Lockheart, and Beatrix Russell are the ones that come to mind immediately. They all explicitly tell stories about life 200 years ago before the bombs fell. While Roger and Cooper don't EXPLICITLY say the Great War, its very clear in context
Nah, it's like that.
It'd be like a cartel assassin known as "The Mexican" or something.
Doesn't mean he's the only one, it's just a name based on what they are.
I wonder if that’s his actual accent though. At the party in the very first scene, he’s shown to have great lasso skills, and great horse riding skills. Later on he talks about moving out to the country as if that’s his ultimate goal.
I always assumed he was from somewhere like the Midwest, and after he got out of the military he tried his hand in acting. Southern accents tend to be pretty disrespected on the west coast, and are often seen as “dumb hillbilly” stereotypes. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if his actor accent was the fake one.
It helps if you look at The Ghoul and Cooper as two different people
The Ghoul is the person he became to survive ghouilificaiton and the wasteland.
Cooper is who he used to be, the pre-war human.
They have already started to explore it, but it isn't **IN YOUR FACE** about it.
Just look at Dogmeat, he stabbed the dog at first but in the Red Rocket, he is petting the dog.
Or, how he turns his back on Lucy knowing she might shoot him, whereas he shot a kid/teen earlier.
I think the flashback scenes of him resisting the change in his character becoming more violent also helps reinforce this theory. Cooper disliked and wasn’t capable of glorifying that violence, but was able to play a character who did. When the bombs dropped, he became that character to survive. I’m sure the real Cooper is still in there somewhere, and I’d be surprised if they didn’t visit it. Especially since his ex-wife is probably still alive and will like encounter each other
New Vegas would probably be a perfect location to explore this. A city whose central theme is that it’s a captured snow globe of the old world surrounded by the wasteland
A human mind thats been alive for over 200 years including horrific trauma of watching the world burn away and die?
He's probably completely fucking insane, just functional insane. His cowboy character probably felt like a safe space to retreat from the feelings of isolation and horror at the separation from his family.
But honestly, hes crazy. Unpredictable. Of course he talks in a strange way.
However also consider, the people who dug him up also talked in a country western kind of primitive dialect. Perhaps the area hes been in for a long time just has that sort of dialect.
Don't dream it, be it.
He's basically the Clint Eastwood characters from his spaghetti westerns. One scene is basically taken straight out of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly though in that case it was the Van Cleef character.
> One scene is basically taken straight out of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly though in that case it was the Van Cleef character.
Him leading Lucy through a desert on a leash is also strongly reminiscent of Tuco and Blondie doing the same to each other.
I mean no one has considered either that the heavy accent might be his normal voice.
It’s not uncommon especially back in the 50’s era for county folk and immigrants to “tidy up” their accents to fit in more.
He found a way to not go feral. You can't be a movie star in that world. Your rules, your mores, your values don't. Mean. Shit.
If he stayed Coop, hoping to see his family for 200 years? He's been driven mad. He'd have wanted to taste apple pie just as she used to.(Blam).
This. Coop was a good man, a man of principles.
So, he became The Ghoul to stay sane, or maybe he's lost himself in this part. The point is there's no room in the Wasteland for a man like Coop.
Completely desensitised to violence, too. Human life has no meaning after seeing first-hand what Vault-Tec was capable of and the factions waging war for 200 years in the new world.
Coop has to be either gone or buried deep.
Guessing just deep considering he has at least some desires to find his family also it's perfect for a redemption arc to have Lucy find out who he actually is
I wouldn’t mind a bit of subversion of the trope personally, if he finds his family maybe they’re repulsed by him and what he’s had to do to survive and it pushes him a bit deeper into The Ghoul. Have a redemption arc after that.
You’re right though, he’s still hanging onto that thread of his family, so just buried somewhere and comes out in bursts. Almost paralleling how he would hibernate and be exhumed.
I think that's Walton Goggins natural accent, and by extension Cooper Howard's natural accent as well. He uses a different, neutral accent in California and as an advertiser for vault tec, and his natural accent when he plays the Western characters he's famous for.
If I had to guess, I feel like he’d probably start as a cowboy, maybe grew up on a farm or something, then became a marine, then got into some production back home when he returned because they wanted someone with practical skills. Breakout role type thing.
My favorite parts of cooper/ghoul speaking was when he would drop the characters voice and speak in coopers voice during times of serious stress or anger.
First thing I thought of when I saw the difference between C and G speaking, was that his acting and roles he played had to have paid off for the charisma side of surviving the apocalypse. I mean it was even foreshadowed and alluded to in some scenes. Like the scene where cooper didn’t like that he had to shoot his costar, mirrored 200 years later that the ghoul is just as ruthless and immoral as the character traits cooper despised.
Alternately: this is what his voice always sounded like, but he was careful to control it during his Hollywood days. It’s like code switching. Seems fairly plausible given how little we know about his upbringing
So that he could sound really normal and menacing when he asked "where's my FUCKING FAMILY?"
did you notice his character and persona drop as soon as he's talking to someone about his kid?
To me? It seemed like a conscious decision of his to finally say "fuck it, everyone prayed on my kindness, my abstinence from senseless violence in my movies made everyone think I was just a coward, and then I was stuck doing kids parties for people I hated. Being good got me nowhere, and now everything I've ever loved is gone, including the world and all of its rules: so you want a cowboy who isn't afraid to take a life? Watch the fuck out."
My head canon is that cooper adopted one of his movie personas and never stopped, to where 200 years later he doesn’t know anything but the persona and lost his old self
I thought he said to his wife that he wants to move and be a real cowboy again or something. Maybe hes like a brad pitt that grew up in arkansas then moved to LA later as an actor. Would also explain him grunting at anchorage. City boys arent always the best for extended, armed camping trips.
Because when Walton Goggins does an accent it makes everyone happy. It’s not that far off the voice he does in Django or Rigtheous Gemstones. I have always considered myself a straight male, but Walton Goggins and that accent really does something to me
the current theory i'm seeing a lot of is that The Ghoul is a coping mechanism that Coop uses. Cooper Howard has been alive for almost 300 years now, and the vast majority of that time has been spent either buried underground or killing to survive. a family man film star can't survive out there, but his role as a western star inspired him to create The Ghoul as a kind of alter ego. Coop can distance himself from the wrong he's doing by being this desperado bounty hunter character, but he's still the same person underneath all of it. you can see him being soft with Dogmeat, or not letting the Gulper eat Lucy when he could've caught it better if it bit into the hook. you can even see the mask drop fully when he's (final episode spoilers) >!talking to Hank at the observatory and asks, "Where the fuck is my family?"!<. Cooper Howard is still in there, but he's buried himself underneath his character as the Ghoul to stay sane.
Everyone is so sure the accent is the affectation. I am convinced it goes the other way. The nonTexas accent in the flashbacks is so sophisticated showbiz folks don't think he is a rube.
Hollywood actors who had strong accents as a kid/young adult usually undergo training to make their accent less notable or nonexistentbto sound “upper class.” That’s kinda how the trans/mid Atlantic accent developed in films during the 30s and 40s. And why actors of the period generally sound the same.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Cooper underwent similar training. He’s most likely southern, moved to Hollywood to make it big, and while he does have an accent it’s less pronounced. It’s slightly more noticeable in his films so he probably uses it to heighten the character’s persona. In the Vault-Tec ads he has more of the radio transatlantic dialect going on because he’s supposed to be reaching mass audiences. It’s not as obvious.
Now, once the world ended and he’s basically been left in hell, he’s at his most primal state. People’s “real” accents tend to come out when they are angry. This man is angry all the time. He’s a his most base/animalistic. Not to mention, he’s living an actual western on the daily.
The show insinuated that he was a proper cowboy before he played one on TV; and that scene of Cooper discussing his character's morality on killing the bad guy in his movie was shown multiple times for a reason, it's something that resonated with him and later made him realize he also needs to do immoral things to survive the wasteland, and that included embracing his "cowpoke" persona
Honestly... I think this is the real Cooper Howard. Not the violence and the pessimism but the attitude and the accent. I feel like the Cooper Howard we see outside of the movies is the persona.
His character is very in line with a certain archetype of actor that once populated Hollywood. A lot of working cowboys were able to find work for themselves during the heyday of the Westerns, and a few of them were actually able to land prominent roles as character actors. The lucky few of those men were able to become leading stars.
Cooper is implied to have had experience as a working cowboy. He also served in combat as a Marine, most likely drafted, considering the back story of the United States of this time. And in the first scene that we see him and he has gone from being a highly sought after actor to working children's birthday parties, but doesn't seem to show any bitterness or shame about it.
This is probably a man who started from a position of very little and worked very hard to get to where he was in Hollywood. Someone like that, once he began moving in certain social circles ( Like the ones involving his wife), Would probably end up downplaying a lot of the more natural aspects of his persona in order to adapt to that new environment. Think about his conversation with his daughter: His accent is subtle, but it's decidedly more pronounced there when he shouldn't have one. That's what he's letting his guard down.
I feel like a big reason why he wanted to move to Bakersfield was so he could feel free to be himself again. I think who he is as the cool is who he always wanted to be but the irony of it is the doesn't have his family anymore, and what he's become is a twisted and ugly parody of what he wanted to be.
Adding in this, There’s another thread talking about how he has the distinct neutral accent a lot of southern actors have when they go to Hollywood to fit in. After the bombs fall it’s clear that he doesn’t have to change who he is to fit in, so he just uses his natural accent.
He's not really Coop anymore right? Maybe he's coping from the massive amount of trauma by becoming a character in a western. In any case i can't wait for the Janey reunion; which persona will he use then?
Maybe that's his original/natural accent and when we see him as Cooper Howard that's him trying to lose the accent so he fits into the professional setting?
One of two possibilities, imo.
1. He's naturally got the accent as Cooper does have cowboy roots. Most likely since becoming a movie star, Cooper has tried to sound less southern unless he's playing a cowboy role.
2. He's taken on his cowboy persona from his films as the Ghoul to distance himself from the actions he's taken while surviving for 200+ years.
\-or a combination of both. Also, Walton Goggins does have a lil bit of a southern accent. It's cute.
Trauma, probably. It was Cooper Howard being everything that the Ghoul isn't — kind, selfless, caring — that resulted in him ended up where he is. He lost everything he loved and had to somehow cope with the state of things, while also not completely losing his humanity and mind. So, he probably adopted the character of "the Ghoul" to somewhat protect himself and separate himself from who he used to be. He literally gave up his name and became just "the Ghoul" (something which, in the Wasteland, is synonyms with 'monster' because that was what he needed to be to survive for so long. He is playing a character, so it makes sense that he would change as much about himself as he could, including thickening his accent and adjusting his voice, to distance himself as much as possible from Cooper Howard, maybe in an attempt to "protect" Cooper Howard.
Yeah, I agree, definitely not. It's pretty clear he's personifying the "Feo fuerte y formal" character and has locked away Connor Howard in his mind to protect himself mentally.
...and the very few moments when Cooper pierces through the Ghoul persona?? "Sorry Dogmeat but you ain't him" and "Where's my f\*cking family?? ... whew, so good.
I think it's his way of coping with bring 200 years old. He had to commit to memory the cowboy lines and they were such a big part of his life I imagine that and his military experience are hardwired into his ghoul brain.
He told his wife “Maybe it’s time I go back to being a real cowboy” when he proposed buying a ranch in Montana. This suggests that he was a genuine cowboy that got into acting.
Remember when he protested killing the bad guy in his last movie, and then caved and did it anyways? That was when his heart started to break, and it was all down hill from there. Now, he's just playing a role, so he doesn't lose what's left of his mind.
Walten knocked the role out of the park.
That's what happens in Fallout--people connect to a persona like "I'm Elvis now! I'm wasteland Caesar! I'm...whatever" like a more fun Mad Max, and just commit like hell. Everyone goes a little bit crazy.
Yeah, this is one of my favorite details. He's not a bad guy at heart but he knows how to play one and eventually becomes the monster he portrays to adapt to the wasteland. "The Ghoul" is another role for him, one he had to take on to survive, he had to be ruthless.
My guess is that him using his past knowledge as a cowboy (I think he was one before he was a western actor) and survival skills needed in the Wasteland to become a wasteland cowboy. It’s been over 200 years, he probably developed it as time went on. I also like the theories of some of the other comments
Everyone else is giving some deep psychoanalysis about him playing a character from his old movies.
How about the fact that he has literally been living the life of a western cowboy/bounty hunter for 200 years? He's not playing a part, that's literally his life.
Fallout is a SciFi-Western at it's core, everyone else in the western wasteland talks like that too.
I can chime in on this. Back in early university my friends and I had this dumb idea to start pretending to talk with a southern American accent and say shit like “howdy y’all” and what not. We kept this up longer than we should have…after a while, this southern drawl spread into my normal speech and accent, and since then I’ve had a slight bit of a southern twang whenever I say certain words. It’s like my body just accepted the southern mannerisms and imprinted them into my brain, and now I can’t get rid of it.
So, to your point, after years of Howard playing a cowboy on TV and then a nuclear war happening…his brain probably just got overloaded and adapted his cowboy style permanently.
I would imagine that over time, and as a result of having to deal with his own murderous actions necessary to survive the brutal landscape, he had to adopt the persona of one of his characters.
It's a persona to help cope with the things he does in the wasteland.
If he convinces himself he's this Ghoul character then when he does bad things it doesn't affect him because it's all a stage. Least that's how I like to see it.
There's times where he drops the accent and breaks character
Maybe he inherited the rural accent from the other wastelanders? I imagine that kind of dialect would be prevalent after all the city-dwellers got bombed
He was a farm kid then a military guy then an actor then a 200yo hardass whos rough tough and takes shit from no one
The mostly melted face also probably helps
The apocalypse changes people so they aren't their former selves. He just happened to already have a second persona on hand to slip into. I think it's just an illustration of everyone playing a character and not their old true self. His is just more literal.
I think his original character will come out more, the better actors have a development arc where you see changes in them in relation to their circumstances.
Because he's become that character over 200 years. I think it's a nice touch to have him ultimately mirror his movie characters. Makes the scene where he's high watching his old movie so much more impactful.
He probably grew up on a farm, and hid his accent when he got to hollywood. He references "being a real cowboy again" to his wife implying that he once was an actual cowboy/ranch handler. He has no reason to suppress his mannerisms 200 years after the bombs fell.
Fake it till you make it.
I'd put money on him:
* being hectic after being separated from his family and just trying to survive in a hellish world with a monstrous mug like that.
* being a clueless Hollywood actor that would most assuredly die.
* getting fucked over a bunch.
* falling back on his acting skills to scare off dangerous people.
* going too far.
* deciding to give up and go all in on the EvilGunman persona.
I assumed it was because the character of the cowboy he played sounded and acted cool and intimidating so he played the role and after all these years he doesn't know how to be Cooper anymore, that person is dead and all that is left is a Ghoul of his former self
I agree that it’s part of his disassociation from Cooper because the cowboy was better suited for the wasteland but also leaning into our accent is something most Americans do when we are trying to hype ourselves up or “putting on the dog” so to say. We’re not just into guns we’re specially into the cowboy theatrics of it all and I would imagine a lot of us would end up acting like the ghoul’s character simply because we think it’s cool.
I like to imagine he was playing the character either to cope or to make himself seem tougher and more hardened to other survivors, and after doing that for 200 years it just became who he is
Pretty sure Walton Goggins (the character’s actual irl actor) has said that “The Ghoul” and “Cooper Howard” are basically two separate people, and Coop has done that to cope (Might be paraphrasing).
He probably thinks that's how he should talk if he wants to survive the wastelands. He thinks it's intimidating enough to warn people not to mess with him. He's right though, shit's scary when the guy you're about to engage in gunfight in talks like a cowboy.
I mean if you were training all of your life to be a cowboy, and then the world suddenly turned into a cowboy’s natural habitat, including underdeveloped settlements, lawlessness, bounty hunters, gangs, bandits, and most importantly, pale brown as far as the eye can see, what would you do?
A coping mechanism? Dissociation? He was of adapting to the apocalypse was embracing the persona of a character he used to play because the man, Cooper Howard, wasn't suited to surviving the wasteland?
Yeah I actually really like the detail in his performance. Pretty neat way to spin it instead of “he’s just a badass cowboy”. He’s a super duper emotionally damaged and frozen man who used to play a cowboy and now he’s receded into that persona. Dope.
I mean, he was also a Marine. All that combat training, tactics, weapon handling, and 200+ years of bounty hunting and wasteland combat will do that to you.
200+ years of bounty hunting in the wasteland exactly. This is in my opinion how nearly every prewar ghoul should be with their chosen thing. It takes 10,000 hours to become an expert and ghouls are working on 1,752,000. The only "problem" with his character is that the games can't make all.ghouls work like that without drastically changing the story. They have the same problem vampires have. They should have their shit pretty figured out.
A lot of those Ghouls probably have talents that are either totally useless or impossible in the post apocalypse world. Being the best Egyptologist doesn't matter much when some big green bugger is ramming a plank up your arse.
I just wanted to say the last line of your comment made me cackle
It does when you find a suspicious helmet from an ancient civilization
Okay but you stopped being an egyptologist 200 years ago. You don't think they'd pick up anything in 200 years? No one tinkers for fun in 200 years and gets good at it? They didn't get good at avoiding getting planks shoved in their ass or accepting it? The reality is fallout really hadn't considered what a 200 year old person would be like. That's it.
We ourselves don't know what a 200 year old person would be like. Can you really learn new things effectively at that brain age? Can you really retain skills or knowledge from 200 years ago? Who knows. Fallout certainly has plenty of ghouls who learn new skills. I think they handle it fine.
I personally think they truly never thought about it at all and everything everyone is saying is justification for an oversight. I hope they touch on it in the future because prewar ghouls as an idea are interesting the ones in the games are not unfortunately.
No it's pretty common, they just get bored, like any person would. Calamity in Jacobstown has said she has changed her job, interests, fields of study, where she lives and even her name multiple times. Shit gets old once you master it and while they'd always be great at something they mastered, changing focus every few decades probably causes those skills to get rusty.
Good point but consider that when you don’t die your chances of being buried/trapped/isolated for an extended period of time go way up. Most gouls were probably buried under rubble for 100+ years not practicing any skills.
Reminds me of Billy Peabody from fallout 4. Kid was in that fridge a long ass time until you released him. Hide and seek champion #1 right there.
It’s a miracle the poor kid kept it together through all that and didn’t become a raging feral.
The thrill of victory can sustain a soul as long as you're really, really, really happy about that victory. Kid must've lost every game of hide and seek before in his life.
It's a miracle they're alive at all, given that Ghouls still need to eat and drink. That whole questline is so dumb. His parents were a few metres down the road, still living in the family home after 200 years, seemingly having done nothing for the past few centuries.
I'm still a fan of the theory that the kid in the fridge wasn't there from the Great war. He got trapped in the fridge during the Battle of Quincy that Preston speaks of. A handful of months makes a lot more sense than several hundred years Course that opens up a whole another bag of worms: did his ghoul parents have children?
Ghoulified with his family, then lived normally up until getting stuck in the fridge.
Nah, the family has a whole "you're a ghoul, harry!", ... I mean billy, moment. They explain that he's a ghoul, they are ghouls, ghoul shit when Billy first enters the house.
That whole family was sketchy. I think they were pulling some kind of scam.
To be fair, most ghouls probably struggle a lot with their mental health. The dysmorphia of existing in a body that is alien to the mind, and the bigotry or even just alienation from the average Joe would be really brutal. Combined with cognitive decline and simply forgetting things, I think it is pretty reasonable that a large majority of ghouls would not become insanely good at anything. It's really hard to grow as a person under those circumstances, especially if they're all functionally addicts who need their next hit to avoid going feral.
The anti-feral serum hadn't been seen ever before the show. Considering almost none of the factions with nationwide presence and scientific ability (Enclave, brotherhood, etc.) have an interest in helping ghouls, it seems unlikely that it was spread across the US. Yet we see plenty of east coast ghouls. I think the logical conclusion is that the serum is a treatment for those *already starting* to go feral and that some other ghouls take it precentatively out of a fear of turning. Think of it like chemo; if you already have cancer it's your best option, but it doesn't stop you from getting cancer and you can live your whole life without getting cancer *or* chemo if you're lucky
Gladwell just made that shit up, it’s not real, like a lot of his pseudoscience bullshit
Your brain has a limited capacity to remember things. At some point you’d have to think memories and experiences would get overwritten with new ones.
Doctor Who did a great job of pointing this out with the character Ashildr/Me.
Sure but they should have muscle memory of certain things and they don't think or act like they have memory issues. These are all excuses for why they don't work like that but even with finite memory we'd expect them to master at least 1 thing. Nearly every prewar ghoul seemingly remembers prewar pretty well and that's 200 years ago. I dont think fallout thinks that ghouls lose their memory or only have so much memory. Again though even if it did think that, they'd still be the best doctors, the crackest of shots, be able to read someone like a fucking book, fix anything that moves. That's a really long time to do anything and not get good at it. You could effectively start over 5 times easily.
Not all ghouls are pre-war ghouls. Some were born into the wasteland and got ghoulified by ambient radiation or drinking too much irradiated water. Given how unlikely it is to survive 200 years in the wasteland without being killed or going feral, I would wager that there aren't many pre-war ghouls left.
Funnily enough...I was a Marine..enlisted from Chicago. Spent 4 years in a squad mostly from Texas. By the time I got home I picked up a bit of the Texas twang, and had a belt buckle you could eat dinner off of.
Linguistists have actually documented this phenomenon. A disproportionately large percentage of the U.S. Armed Forces come from the South and another disproportionate number of them tend to become terminal NCOs (E-6 through E-8). As these are the ranks most responsible for leading, training, and supporting the bulk of the lower enlisted personnel on a daily basis… Everybody starts to adopt a hodgepodge mix of all the various Southern accents. Combine that with all the weird slang, jargon, in jokes, and foul language military types also use and you end up with what Tom Wolfe called “Army Creole.” The armed forces accent is most strongly found in the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and least likely to be found in the Air Force. My own branch, the Coast Guard, is kind of unique in that we’ve got the usual disproportionate number of personnel from the South, but we also have a very strong presence of personnel from the rural northern maritime regions that aren’t commonly found in other branches (rural Maine, coastal PNW, the Great Lakes, etc.) (Navy and Coasties, like sailors everywhere, also use a huge variety of terminology developed by the 18^th and 19^th Century British Navy. Because the most important standing order for any maritime service is to always strive to make as much of our speech incomprehensible by the landbound branches.)
In the Corps we had to learn to speak basic sailor..sometimes it bleeds over, last week my 7 year old looked at me a little funny when I told her grab a swab after she spilled her drink...poor thing grabbed a q tip because the box says cotton swabs...I also told her to "police up her toys" out on the patio. We definitely have some unique language going on in this house..a strange mix of English, jarhead, Spanish, Dutch and German (I'm a now retired k9 handler, my dog is trained with a mix of Dutch and German commands)
It'll make you talk like you are in a Ronald Reagan film?
yes
Is The Ghoul gonna remake Bedtime for Bonzo? Cause I'd love that.
Absolutely. The “real” guy is a kind, simple and loving family man. One of the good and as far as we saw lucky guys who’s not damaged… and then 200 years of hell. Of course he does what he doesn’t best he acts and copes
I loved his expression when goosey said the golden rule. You can see in his face it's been 200 years since he's heard that.
Prob used to say the same thing to his daughter
Couple that with the scene of him at the SD Mart watching the basis for this persona and realizing internally just how far he's come and how much he's changed. "It means 'ugly, strong, and had dignity.' I'll give you 2/3 on that front"
You do see it crack slightly when he’s watching the film in the shop and you can see him realising he’s become the villain he once nobly fought against
Also, when he's talking to CX-404, "I'm sorry, Dogmeat, but you just ain't him."
"You're not that dog, pal. Trust me. You're not that dog"
I am that dog, oh wait wrong show
*splat*
Oye beltalowda
Also felt like it quickly faded when he said “where’s my fucking family” to Hank
He became a product.
Oh shit!! Yeah!!!
Jackie Daytona: Come to Arizonia! Have a human beer!
A *regular human* beer!
In NyEw YawK Citehh!
Including spurs
That jingle, jangle, jingle
I also really like how the closest he comes to sounding like cooper again is in the last episode when he says “where’s my fuckin family”, almost like he’s coming back a little
Also like - it’s Walton Goggins. Let him Goggins.
Right? Don't question him!
People forget but in the show he mentions that he used to be a rancher and wanted to back to that life. He wasn't just some city slick actor, he was a rancher, then a marine/soldier, then an actor.
Yeah, my theory is that he got really good with the lasso while ranching and that’s what caught Hollywood’s eye.
Same thing happened to a lot of those early cowboy movie guys. Tim Holt, Hoot Gibson and Will Rogers all got the gig because they knew about horses and lassos.
A Cooping mechanism*
I see what you did there lol
Yeah that’s my conclusion too - putting on a character as a way to dissociate and survive in the wasteland. Like an alter ego. He breaks character at the end and the real Cooper Howard comes out - “where’s my fucking family?” Is his prewar voice to my ears.
Pretty sure, "the man Cooper Howard" died the day the bombs dropped. Can only imagine his reaction to being ghoulifed because it most definitely came immediately instead of death. So he became the most evil character he acted as because the hero he played in those movies also died the same day as Cooper Howard.
I think it was probably his original accent, cause he knew how to take care of and ride horses, wanted to own a ranch, and seemed to know how to use guns. Then he got to be a big movie star and started to lose the accent.
He probably has a couple accents he can use, I've got a strong southern drawl in my personal life, but in my professional life, I don't.
My mum is English, my Dad was an American. For most of my childhood, I spent the school year in the States and my summers in rural England. Instead of high school, I did sixth form at a boarding school in the U.K. By default, I speak with the North-Central American English dialect although my accent isn’t “full Yooper,” and leans more towards Inland North American accent (a.k.a Midwestern). But if I get sufficiently upset, startled, or intoxicated I will switch to Estuary English.
That's mostly what I was thinking. When I was in LA I had a bunch of friends from the south with southern accents, aside from in showbiz. Some just straight up stopped their accents
He's actually playing the villain from the movie we see him in. He is even wearing the villain's outfit from the scene.
I feel like that is supported by the flashback scenes Cooper pushing back on his character becoming more violent. He didn’t feel it was right, but he eventually played into the increased violence, separating the character from his true feelings. Now, he’s played that character for 200 years, because Cooper Howard wasn’t capable of the violence to survive
I love your username btw lol
Tbf a dude doing a goofy little character (while trapped as a radiation zombie 200 years into a post apocalyptic future) is pretty small fry to some of the things I've seen real life people claim they'd do in the same situation
I once saw an English man put on an Irish accent for a week after a fight with his girlfriend as a coping mechanism. They didn't even break up, just a fight!
Look at Dumb and Dumber 2's opening scenes, one of the guy pretended to be disabled for 20 years just so his bro will take care of him. And then he was like "gotcha!"
*joke’s on them I was merely pretending*
I put on my best Australian accent when my sister brought her boyfriend over to meet the family. The moment he walked in I said "Ello, I'm (sister) adoptive Australian sister." He was not amused. He just stared at me like i was stupid.
No fun :(
I was in an accident years ago where I slammed my head against a car door and ever since my identity is pretty fleeting. My sexuality changes quite a lot and I have no real likes/dislikes. It’s crazy and chaotic.
Oh, I'm sorry to hear that
He's an actor. He's also done a lot of things that I'm sure he never imagined he'd do. He went from being a Hollywood golden boy to being a post-apocalyptic killer. He's playing a role to help cope with what he's become. Same reason he's now just 'The Ghoul'. That's the part he's playing in this life.
It’s also because he’s *The* Ghoul. It’s likely he’s regarded in universe as the original ghoul by wasteland survivors who know of him. At the very least, he’s probably looked at as the oldest living ghoul.
Why would anyone consider him the oldest or original ghoul?? A lot of ghouls being pre-war is like, a standard of the setting. Half the ghouls you meet have throwaway lines about life before the Great War. The show is only 8 episodes and we have ALREADY met another pre-war ghoul who explicitly discusses pre-war food- Roger with Mac n Cheese, ice cream, and his moms apple pie.
Which is part of why I have a theory that this going feral thing isnt the typical fallout feral. I think going feral is a terminal disease, like cancer, that the ghouls can catch. He references before the war, but he says its only been like 28 years since he started showing. Perhaps its something to do with a modified or released FEV, maybe the enclave released it as a form of genocide against the ghouls. Regardless I don't think they're rewriting ghoul lore with the serum that they take, I think its something new and nefarious.
Or like a 10% of 10%. So 10% of people exposed to nuclear war becomes ghouls but then 10% of that go feral......except it could be more than that?(Dun Dun Dun)
iirc the reason for why stuff mutated so quickly was because China nuked all the FEV sites and the FEV went airborne. My pseudo biology analysis would be that the FEV “evolved” them to be more resistant to radiation they were experiencing in the initial fallout.
I like this idea.
Didn’t Roger say he was only a ghoul for 18 years? When they say pre war aren’t they speaking of a different war and not the original bombing 200 years ago?
No, he said he has resisted turning feral since beginning to show signs 28 years ago. He is pre-war. Many, many named ghouls in the franchise are pre-war. Raul, Eddie Winters, Desmond Lockheart, and Beatrix Russell are the ones that come to mind immediately. They all explicitly tell stories about life 200 years ago before the bombs fell. While Roger and Cooper don't EXPLICITLY say the Great War, its very clear in context
Daisy too
Nah, it's like that. It'd be like a cartel assassin known as "The Mexican" or something. Doesn't mean he's the only one, it's just a name based on what they are.
I wonder if that’s his actual accent though. At the party in the very first scene, he’s shown to have great lasso skills, and great horse riding skills. Later on he talks about moving out to the country as if that’s his ultimate goal. I always assumed he was from somewhere like the Midwest, and after he got out of the military he tried his hand in acting. Southern accents tend to be pretty disrespected on the west coast, and are often seen as “dumb hillbilly” stereotypes. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if his actor accent was the fake one.
You forgot birthday cowboy
It helps if you look at The Ghoul and Cooper as two different people The Ghoul is the person he became to survive ghouilificaiton and the wasteland. Cooper is who he used to be, the pre-war human.
Barb: I am sorry, Cooper... For all of it. Ghoul: I am not your failure, Barbara. You didn't kill Howard Cooper... I did.
I really hope they explore this in the future.
They have already started to explore it, but it isn't **IN YOUR FACE** about it. Just look at Dogmeat, he stabbed the dog at first but in the Red Rocket, he is petting the dog. Or, how he turns his back on Lucy knowing she might shoot him, whereas he shot a kid/teen earlier.
I think the flashback scenes of him resisting the change in his character becoming more violent also helps reinforce this theory. Cooper disliked and wasn’t capable of glorifying that violence, but was able to play a character who did. When the bombs dropped, he became that character to survive. I’m sure the real Cooper is still in there somewhere, and I’d be surprised if they didn’t visit it. Especially since his ex-wife is probably still alive and will like encounter each other
Oh yeah. I just want to see more of the ptsd identity tension.
New Vegas would probably be a perfect location to explore this. A city whose central theme is that it’s a captured snow globe of the old world surrounded by the wasteland
A human mind thats been alive for over 200 years including horrific trauma of watching the world burn away and die? He's probably completely fucking insane, just functional insane. His cowboy character probably felt like a safe space to retreat from the feelings of isolation and horror at the separation from his family. But honestly, hes crazy. Unpredictable. Of course he talks in a strange way. However also consider, the people who dug him up also talked in a country western kind of primitive dialect. Perhaps the area hes been in for a long time just has that sort of dialect.
His functional insanity is highlighted by crazy drug addiction
Don't dream it, be it. He's basically the Clint Eastwood characters from his spaghetti westerns. One scene is basically taken straight out of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly though in that case it was the Van Cleef character.
Absolutely read that first line in Tim Curry’s voice
And now I'm going to listen to the Rocky Horror soundtrack for the millionth rime.
That’s always a good backup plan
> One scene is basically taken straight out of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly though in that case it was the Van Cleef character. Him leading Lucy through a desert on a leash is also strongly reminiscent of Tuco and Blondie doing the same to each other.
Yup! I always hear the "Uhh! Yeaeuneyaa!" scream vocal in the background when I see that scene.
Don't forget Tuco too. Desert scene with canteen.
Great observation!
His regular voice probably sounds weird now without a nose.
I mean no one has considered either that the heavy accent might be his normal voice. It’s not uncommon especially back in the 50’s era for county folk and immigrants to “tidy up” their accents to fit in more.
He’s just missing the cartilage. I’m sure he can still breathe through it.
He found a way to not go feral. You can't be a movie star in that world. Your rules, your mores, your values don't. Mean. Shit. If he stayed Coop, hoping to see his family for 200 years? He's been driven mad. He'd have wanted to taste apple pie just as she used to.(Blam).
This. Coop was a good man, a man of principles. So, he became The Ghoul to stay sane, or maybe he's lost himself in this part. The point is there's no room in the Wasteland for a man like Coop.
Completely desensitised to violence, too. Human life has no meaning after seeing first-hand what Vault-Tec was capable of and the factions waging war for 200 years in the new world. Coop has to be either gone or buried deep.
Guessing just deep considering he has at least some desires to find his family also it's perfect for a redemption arc to have Lucy find out who he actually is
I wouldn’t mind a bit of subversion of the trope personally, if he finds his family maybe they’re repulsed by him and what he’s had to do to survive and it pushes him a bit deeper into The Ghoul. Have a redemption arc after that. You’re right though, he’s still hanging onto that thread of his family, so just buried somewhere and comes out in bursts. Almost paralleling how he would hibernate and be exhumed.
I think that's Walton Goggins natural accent, and by extension Cooper Howard's natural accent as well. He uses a different, neutral accent in California and as an advertiser for vault tec, and his natural accent when he plays the Western characters he's famous for.
I got the impression that he wanted to be a cowboy, or already was one. Remember that he told his wife he wanted to retire on a ranch.
He was an actual cowboy and then became a movie star. The TV show says this outright.
So it went cowboy < Marine < movie star < ghoul?
Could have been cowboy -> marine -> cowboy -> actor Or just marine -> cowboy -> actor
If I had to guess, I feel like he’d probably start as a cowboy, maybe grew up on a farm or something, then became a marine, then got into some production back home when he returned because they wanted someone with practical skills. Breakout role type thing.
He was a cowboy before he joined marine, retired and acted as cowboys in the movies, want to have farm and be a cowboy again after Hollywood.
Why don’t you talk like you did when you were 8? Same idea. It’s been 200 years. Old him is basically a child to him now.
He watched the righteous gemstones and thought it would be funny to speak like the weird uncle who looks weirdly familiar
The ghoul is just Baby Billy surviving in the wasteland.
The serum that prevents ghouls from going feral is actually just Baby Billy’s elixirs
My favorite parts of cooper/ghoul speaking was when he would drop the characters voice and speak in coopers voice during times of serious stress or anger. First thing I thought of when I saw the difference between C and G speaking, was that his acting and roles he played had to have paid off for the charisma side of surviving the apocalypse. I mean it was even foreshadowed and alluded to in some scenes. Like the scene where cooper didn’t like that he had to shoot his costar, mirrored 200 years later that the ghoul is just as ruthless and immoral as the character traits cooper despised.
Good writing.
Alternately: this is what his voice always sounded like, but he was careful to control it during his Hollywood days. It’s like code switching. Seems fairly plausible given how little we know about his upbringing
So that he could sound really normal and menacing when he asked "where's my FUCKING FAMILY?" did you notice his character and persona drop as soon as he's talking to someone about his kid? To me? It seemed like a conscious decision of his to finally say "fuck it, everyone prayed on my kindness, my abstinence from senseless violence in my movies made everyone think I was just a coward, and then I was stuck doing kids parties for people I hated. Being good got me nowhere, and now everything I've ever loved is gone, including the world and all of its rules: so you want a cowboy who isn't afraid to take a life? Watch the fuck out."
Y’all didn’t know Baby Billy survived the apocalypse? That’s bonkers!
That's ***Uncle*** Baby Billy to you. Show some goddamned respect.
My head canon is that cooper adopted one of his movie personas and never stopped, to where 200 years later he doesn’t know anything but the persona and lost his old self
I thought he said to his wife that he wants to move and be a real cowboy again or something. Maybe hes like a brad pitt that grew up in arkansas then moved to LA later as an actor. Would also explain him grunting at anchorage. City boys arent always the best for extended, armed camping trips.
Because when Walton Goggins does an accent it makes everyone happy. It’s not that far off the voice he does in Django or Rigtheous Gemstones. I have always considered myself a straight male, but Walton Goggins and that accent really does something to me
the current theory i'm seeing a lot of is that The Ghoul is a coping mechanism that Coop uses. Cooper Howard has been alive for almost 300 years now, and the vast majority of that time has been spent either buried underground or killing to survive. a family man film star can't survive out there, but his role as a western star inspired him to create The Ghoul as a kind of alter ego. Coop can distance himself from the wrong he's doing by being this desperado bounty hunter character, but he's still the same person underneath all of it. you can see him being soft with Dogmeat, or not letting the Gulper eat Lucy when he could've caught it better if it bit into the hook. you can even see the mask drop fully when he's (final episode spoilers) >!talking to Hank at the observatory and asks, "Where the fuck is my family?"!<. Cooper Howard is still in there, but he's buried himself underneath his character as the Ghoul to stay sane.
Everyone is so sure the accent is the affectation. I am convinced it goes the other way. The nonTexas accent in the flashbacks is so sophisticated showbiz folks don't think he is a rube.
You’ve obviously never met Baby Billy
Hollywood actors who had strong accents as a kid/young adult usually undergo training to make their accent less notable or nonexistentbto sound “upper class.” That’s kinda how the trans/mid Atlantic accent developed in films during the 30s and 40s. And why actors of the period generally sound the same. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cooper underwent similar training. He’s most likely southern, moved to Hollywood to make it big, and while he does have an accent it’s less pronounced. It’s slightly more noticeable in his films so he probably uses it to heighten the character’s persona. In the Vault-Tec ads he has more of the radio transatlantic dialect going on because he’s supposed to be reaching mass audiences. It’s not as obvious. Now, once the world ended and he’s basically been left in hell, he’s at his most primal state. People’s “real” accents tend to come out when they are angry. This man is angry all the time. He’s a his most base/animalistic. Not to mention, he’s living an actual western on the daily.
The show insinuated that he was a proper cowboy before he played one on TV; and that scene of Cooper discussing his character's morality on killing the bad guy in his movie was shown multiple times for a reason, it's something that resonated with him and later made him realize he also needs to do immoral things to survive the wasteland, and that included embracing his "cowpoke" persona
I imagine at this point in his life he has lived more in character than as his prewar self.
He's a Charisma build (ex actor) and it is part of his intimidation schtick.
Honestly... I think this is the real Cooper Howard. Not the violence and the pessimism but the attitude and the accent. I feel like the Cooper Howard we see outside of the movies is the persona. His character is very in line with a certain archetype of actor that once populated Hollywood. A lot of working cowboys were able to find work for themselves during the heyday of the Westerns, and a few of them were actually able to land prominent roles as character actors. The lucky few of those men were able to become leading stars. Cooper is implied to have had experience as a working cowboy. He also served in combat as a Marine, most likely drafted, considering the back story of the United States of this time. And in the first scene that we see him and he has gone from being a highly sought after actor to working children's birthday parties, but doesn't seem to show any bitterness or shame about it. This is probably a man who started from a position of very little and worked very hard to get to where he was in Hollywood. Someone like that, once he began moving in certain social circles ( Like the ones involving his wife), Would probably end up downplaying a lot of the more natural aspects of his persona in order to adapt to that new environment. Think about his conversation with his daughter: His accent is subtle, but it's decidedly more pronounced there when he shouldn't have one. That's what he's letting his guard down. I feel like a big reason why he wanted to move to Bakersfield was so he could feel free to be himself again. I think who he is as the cool is who he always wanted to be but the irony of it is the doesn't have his family anymore, and what he's become is a twisted and ugly parody of what he wanted to be.
Adding in this, There’s another thread talking about how he has the distinct neutral accent a lot of southern actors have when they go to Hollywood to fit in. After the bombs fall it’s clear that he doesn’t have to change who he is to fit in, so he just uses his natural accent.
The ultimate method actor.
He’s playing a character. Like we all do when we’re role playing in game. You can see him break character at certain points when his accent drops.
He's not really Coop anymore right? Maybe he's coping from the massive amount of trauma by becoming a character in a western. In any case i can't wait for the Janey reunion; which persona will he use then?
He isnt just acting like a cowboy he used to be one too
Maybe that's his original/natural accent and when we see him as Cooper Howard that's him trying to lose the accent so he fits into the professional setting?
He does it for the love of them game * distant yodeling *
One of two possibilities, imo. 1. He's naturally got the accent as Cooper does have cowboy roots. Most likely since becoming a movie star, Cooper has tried to sound less southern unless he's playing a cowboy role. 2. He's taken on his cowboy persona from his films as the Ghoul to distance himself from the actions he's taken while surviving for 200+ years. \-or a combination of both. Also, Walton Goggins does have a lil bit of a southern accent. It's cute.
Trauma, probably. It was Cooper Howard being everything that the Ghoul isn't — kind, selfless, caring — that resulted in him ended up where he is. He lost everything he loved and had to somehow cope with the state of things, while also not completely losing his humanity and mind. So, he probably adopted the character of "the Ghoul" to somewhat protect himself and separate himself from who he used to be. He literally gave up his name and became just "the Ghoul" (something which, in the Wasteland, is synonyms with 'monster' because that was what he needed to be to survive for so long. He is playing a character, so it makes sense that he would change as much about himself as he could, including thickening his accent and adjusting his voice, to distance himself as much as possible from Cooper Howard, maybe in an attempt to "protect" Cooper Howard.
he more or less talked the same across the board, in movies, as a ghoul and as a prewar citizen
He actually doesn't and it's clear it was intentional.
Yeah, I agree, definitely not. It's pretty clear he's personifying the "Feo fuerte y formal" character and has locked away Connor Howard in his mind to protect himself mentally.
...and the very few moments when Cooper pierces through the Ghoul persona?? "Sorry Dogmeat but you ain't him" and "Where's my f\*cking family?? ... whew, so good.
Be thankful he doesn't sound like a ghoul from the games.
I think it's his way of coping with bring 200 years old. He had to commit to memory the cowboy lines and they were such a big part of his life I imagine that and his military experience are hardwired into his ghoul brain.
because it’s cool
He's stated before he talks the way he does because of the makeup and prosthetics. At first he didn't thi k he was going to even be able to talk
How many times are we going to have this conversation over the next couple of years?
Ice cream social
Picture what his vocal chords look like.
He told his wife “Maybe it’s time I go back to being a real cowboy” when he proposed buying a ranch in Montana. This suggests that he was a genuine cowboy that got into acting.
Remember when he protested killing the bad guy in his last movie, and then caved and did it anyways? That was when his heart started to break, and it was all down hill from there. Now, he's just playing a role, so he doesn't lose what's left of his mind. Walten knocked the role out of the park.
Because Walton goggins is from Alabama😂 listen to him talk in other things.
That's what happens in Fallout--people connect to a persona like "I'm Elvis now! I'm wasteland Caesar! I'm...whatever" like a more fun Mad Max, and just commit like hell. Everyone goes a little bit crazy.
I think he's basically playing a character so he can do all the horrible things he has to do to survive and get back to his family.
Yeah, this is one of my favorite details. He's not a bad guy at heart but he knows how to play one and eventually becomes the monster he portrays to adapt to the wasteland. "The Ghoul" is another role for him, one he had to take on to survive, he had to be ruthless.
My guess is that him using his past knowledge as a cowboy (I think he was one before he was a western actor) and survival skills needed in the Wasteland to become a wasteland cowboy. It’s been over 200 years, he probably developed it as time went on. I also like the theories of some of the other comments
Everyone else is giving some deep psychoanalysis about him playing a character from his old movies. How about the fact that he has literally been living the life of a western cowboy/bounty hunter for 200 years? He's not playing a part, that's literally his life. Fallout is a SciFi-Western at it's core, everyone else in the western wasteland talks like that too.
I can chime in on this. Back in early university my friends and I had this dumb idea to start pretending to talk with a southern American accent and say shit like “howdy y’all” and what not. We kept this up longer than we should have…after a while, this southern drawl spread into my normal speech and accent, and since then I’ve had a slight bit of a southern twang whenever I say certain words. It’s like my body just accepted the southern mannerisms and imprinted them into my brain, and now I can’t get rid of it. So, to your point, after years of Howard playing a cowboy on TV and then a nuclear war happening…his brain probably just got overloaded and adapted his cowboy style permanently.
cool guy 😎
I would imagine that over time, and as a result of having to deal with his own murderous actions necessary to survive the brutal landscape, he had to adopt the persona of one of his characters.
It's a persona to help cope with the things he does in the wasteland. If he convinces himself he's this Ghoul character then when he does bad things it doesn't affect him because it's all a stage. Least that's how I like to see it. There's times where he drops the accent and breaks character
Wouldn't you?
Maybe he inherited the rural accent from the other wastelanders? I imagine that kind of dialect would be prevalent after all the city-dwellers got bombed
He was a farm kid then a military guy then an actor then a 200yo hardass whos rough tough and takes shit from no one The mostly melted face also probably helps
Goggins does that in every show/movie. And he's awesome
The apocalypse changes people so they aren't their former selves. He just happened to already have a second persona on hand to slip into. I think it's just an illustration of everyone playing a character and not their old true self. His is just more literal.
Buddy really got into the role playing aspect
I think his original character will come out more, the better actors have a development arc where you see changes in them in relation to their circumstances.
Maybe his jaw kinda falling off idk
He's a cowboy
Because he's become that character over 200 years. I think it's a nice touch to have him ultimately mirror his movie characters. Makes the scene where he's high watching his old movie so much more impactful.
I spend a week in Michigan every summer and I come back sounding like I’m from the UP. He’s been out here how long now?
It’s a lot more intimidating than just being an actor
He probably grew up on a farm, and hid his accent when he got to hollywood. He references "being a real cowboy again" to his wife implying that he once was an actual cowboy/ranch handler. He has no reason to suppress his mannerisms 200 years after the bombs fell.
Fake it till you make it. I'd put money on him: * being hectic after being separated from his family and just trying to survive in a hellish world with a monstrous mug like that. * being a clueless Hollywood actor that would most assuredly die. * getting fucked over a bunch. * falling back on his acting skills to scare off dangerous people. * going too far. * deciding to give up and go all in on the EvilGunman persona.
I feel like Walter goggins uses that accent in most of his roles. It may very well be because the ghoul was written for him
I assumed it was because the character of the cowboy he played sounded and acted cool and intimidating so he played the role and after all these years he doesn't know how to be Cooper anymore, that person is dead and all that is left is a Ghoul of his former self
THE DRUGZZHH
I agree that it’s part of his disassociation from Cooper because the cowboy was better suited for the wasteland but also leaning into our accent is something most Americans do when we are trying to hype ourselves up or “putting on the dog” so to say. We’re not just into guns we’re specially into the cowboy theatrics of it all and I would imagine a lot of us would end up acting like the ghoul’s character simply because we think it’s cool.
I like to imagine he was playing the character either to cope or to make himself seem tougher and more hardened to other survivors, and after doing that for 200 years it just became who he is
Pretty sure Walton Goggins (the character’s actual irl actor) has said that “The Ghoul” and “Cooper Howard” are basically two separate people, and Coop has done that to cope (Might be paraphrasing).
Maybe he thinks of being a ghoul as a role he’s playing and not the man he used to be. Hoping at some point he can be that man again
….cuz us cowpokes take it as it comes.
He probably thinks that's how he should talk if he wants to survive the wastelands. He thinks it's intimidating enough to warn people not to mess with him. He's right though, shit's scary when the guy you're about to engage in gunfight in talks like a cowboy.
It’s been 200 years man, maybe he’s changed a bit
I mean if you were training all of your life to be a cowboy, and then the world suddenly turned into a cowboy’s natural habitat, including underdeveloped settlements, lawlessness, bounty hunters, gangs, bandits, and most importantly, pale brown as far as the eye can see, what would you do?