6 takeaways from the Fallout TV show trailer launch

4. Fallout will explore the Ghoul's backstory, pre-apocalypse

Actor Walton Goggins (Justified, The Shield) is known for playing somewhat chaotic characters, and he'll be bringing that energy to Fallout as the Ghoul, an irradiated bounty hunter who roams the Wasteland. Ghouls are a pretty important part of the Fallout mythos; in essence, they're people who have been exposed to so much radiation that their skin has mutated, some of their bones have sloughed away, and they no longer resemble the people they once were. At worst, they can become feral and go around mindlessly attacking people. But at best, ghouls are still just as sentient as humans and an integral part of Wasteland society.

Goggins' ghoul appears to be the latter sort, as evidenced by his quick wit throughout the trailer. Goggins appeared at the trailer launch in a pre-recorded video where he revealed more details about how the show would explore his character's backstory before the nuclear apocalypse.

"The Ghoul is, in some ways, the poet Virgil in Dante's Inferno. He's the guide, if you will, through this irradiated hellscape that we find ourselves in in this post-apocalyptic world," Goggins said. "He is a bounty hunter, an iconic bounty hunter. He is pragmatic, he is ruthless, he has his own set of moral codes, and he has a wicked sense of humor. Much like me. [laughs] No, he's a very, very, very complicated guy, and to understand him you have to understand the person that he was before the war. He had a name. His name was Cooper Howard, and he was a vastly different person than the ghoul that you've seen so far."

"Over the course of the show, through his experience back in the world before the nuclear fallout, you will understand how the world was. And he is the bridge between both these worlds."

We get to see quite a bit of the Ghoul as well as his former persona Cooper Howard in this trailer. At first, we see him talking up the virtues of the Vault-Tec vaults on television. Later on, we see the Ghoul watching an old episode of some TV show starring Cooper where he was dressed as a cowboy.

As of this writing, my best guess is that Cooper Howard was an actor. Perhaps he was known for being in westerns and was hired by Vault-Tec for an ad? Perhaps in exchange for a spot in the vault if the war started, which Vault-Tec then failed to deliver on? We also see him running with a young girl in his arms as the war kicks off. Given his ghoulish look later on, it seems safe to say he never made it into a vault. Cooper Howard was changed by the Wasteland, and we're going to see how.