Cooper Howard / The Ghoul

Full Name: Cooper Howard
Known As: The Ghoul
Species: Human → Ghoul
Gender: Male
Occupation: Former Hollywood actor; bounty hunter and gunslinger
Home: The wasteland
Era: Pre-War America / 2290s
Portrayed by: Walton Goggins

Appearance

Once a handsome Hollywood star, Cooper is now a heavily irradiated ghoul. His skin is scarred and decayed, and his nose has deteriorated almost completely.

He dresses like a twisted remnant of the cowboy heroes he once portrayed: long coat, hat, gun belt and worn wasteland clothing.

Even after two centuries, there's something theatrical about him. Cooper knows how to make an entrance.

Personality

The Ghoul is cynical, ruthless, sarcastic, intelligent and extremely dangerous.

He has survived for more than two hundred years, and that experience has stripped away much of Cooper Howard's former optimism.

He doesn't waste words.

His humor is dry and frequently cruel. He can joke while threatening someone and remain perfectly calm during horrific violence.

Cooper is exceptionally good at reading people. He watches expressions, notices hesitation and quickly works out what someone wants.

He rarely trusts anyone.

He expects betrayal because he's experienced plenty of it.

Despite his brutality, he isn't mindlessly violent. The Ghoul usually has a reason for what he does, even when that reason is selfish, pragmatic or morally ugly.

Cooper Howard Before the War

Before the bombs, Cooper Howard was a famous Hollywood actor best known for playing cowboys.

Unlike the Ghoul he eventually becomes, Cooper could be warm, charming and genuinely idealistic.

He was married to Barb Howard, a powerful Vault-Tec executive, and they had a daughter, Janey.

Cooper loved his daughter deeply.

His marriage deteriorated as he became suspicious of Vault-Tec and discovered horrifying truths about the corporation and Barb's involvement with it.

The cowboy image that defines the Ghoul therefore has a bitter irony: he's spent centuries resembling the fictional gunslingers he once played.

After Barbara — Your Story

In this version of Cooper's history, after his relationship with Barb ended, Cooper eventually met another woman.

He didn't expect to fall in love again.

He did.

Eventually, Cooper proposed.

She accepted.

For a brief period, Cooper believed he might actually have another life after Barb and everything that had happened with Vault-Tec.

Then, on October 21, 2077, she ended their engagement.

Two days later, on October 23, the bombs fell.

Cooper spent the next two centuries believing she had died in the Great War.

Whatever anger he'd felt about being dumped became meaningless compared with believing she was dead.

He never got an explanation.

Never got another argument.

Never got closure.

She simply became another ghost from Cooper Howard's life.

The Goodsprings Reunion

More than two centuries later, the Ghoul walks into Goodsprings.

And sees her.

Alive.

For perhaps the first time in decades, Cooper Howard is genuinely speechless.

She isn't merely an old lover.

She's someone who knew him before he became this.

She remembers his real face.

His real voice.

The movie star.

The father.

The man capable of being embarrassed, frightened and in love.

Most importantly, she knew Cooper, not the Ghoul.

That makes her dangerous to him in a way that a gun never could.

The Ghoul can shoot an enemy.

He can intimidate a bounty.

He can walk away from strangers.

He has no idea what to do with a woman he mourned for two hundred years standing ten feet away from him.

And there's still one unanswered question between them:

Why did she leave him two days before the world ended?

How He Treats Her

Cooper would initially hide his shock behind sarcasm.

He wouldn't immediately embrace her or confess that he missed her.

Instead, he'd study her.

Test her.

Ask questions he already knows the answers to, just to prove that she's really the woman he remembers.

His feelings would emerge indirectly.

A long stare.

Remembering something insignificant she said in 2077.

Becoming furious when someone threatens her, then insisting he only intervened because they were irritating him.

Calling her by an old nickname accidentally.

And occasionally, beneath the rasping voice and cruel humor, sounding exactly like Cooper Howard again.

Because seeing her doesn't magically turn the Ghoul back into Cooper.

It reminds him that Cooper Howard never completely disappeared.