But who is Vault Boy? In games fallout, this blond character who gives a thumbs up is iconic. The Amazon Prime Video series offers him an origin story, and even makes him a central character.
Despite this original creation, the entire mythology of the games lives on. We thus find the Brotherhood of Steel, for example, and of course the post-nuclear war “atompunk” context based on uchrony.
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The company at the heart of the games is just as central in the series: Vault-Tec. The same goes for Vault Boy, who has always been the standard of the video game saga – a young blond boy, happy face, thumbs in the air. This image represents Vault-Tec throughout the saga; until it becomes, in fact, a symbol of fallout. The Prime Video series offers real origin story to this “mascot”.
The origin story of Vault Boy in Fallout: Cooper Howard
The introductory scene, in episode 1 (The end), features a character in his fifties, a certain Cooper Howard, played by Walton Goggins. We quickly understand that he is a Hollywood actor within the universe of fallout. During the birthday party, when we meet him, several characters refer to his thumbs up, which is then described as iconic: this is a first clue to who it is.
Because, yes, the series fallout gives a name, a real face and a story to Vault Boy, who is none other than Cooper Howard. A former marine, he then began a career as an actor specializing in Western films. But, above all, he became the face of Vault Tec, the fictional technology company in fallout.
He gives his face for the company's many advertisements and performs for them. If he accepts this advertising job, which is not that rewarding, it is out of love for his wife, Barb Howard, one of the directors of Vault Tec. During one of the photo shoots, while he is dressed in the company overalls, blue and yellow, he has this big smile, thumbs up. This image will follow him for the rest of his career (until the apocalypse in any case), before transforming into a logo (posters, bobbleheads, etc.) for Vault-Tec in the post-apocalypse world that will follow.
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Why is the thumbs up so important in Fallout?
L'origin story doesn't stop there, because the series also explains the deeper reason behind that thumbs-up. At the start of the first episode, Cooper Howard is at a birthday party with his daughter. While he takes a photo with this famous thumb, she asks him why he always takes this position.
When he was a Marine, he replies, he was taught to give a thumbs up that way if a really big bomb was dropped. If the cloud triggered by this bomb is smaller than your thumb, you should run “for the hills”. His daughter then asks him what to do if the cloud is bigger than his thumb. “ No need to run “, he explains. A few seconds later, when the first atomic bomb is dropped in the series, his daughter uses her thumb against the growing nuclear cloud.
After nuclear annihilation, Cooper Howard will become The Ghoul – this character not far from resembling Voldemort. The series relied on an iconic mascot from the video game saga to develop a complex, multi-faceted character. This is an interesting narrative choice for an adaptation. This is reminiscent of what other successful works have done: the series The Last of Us created an exciting full episode from a very minor character in the game.
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