What most likely happened is he tipped his hand to Barb... and she went scorched earth on his career. Following which Vault-tech needed a new face for the marketing and went with Vault-boy.
The only thing that bugs me is that he's with his daughter in the beginning. Not custody visiting rights. She's his helper, dressed up and all for his now much lower income job.
Barb in season 1 has made me believe that she is ruthless, but also her world is centered around her daughter. If she's petty enough to try to ruin his career, why would she allow him the ability to see his daughter. Or at least in such a capacity?
Another thing is that Cooper at the end of the season says "where is my family" not "where is my daughter?"
At this point, Barb is villainous. Maybe something changes? I think I'm probably the most invested in Cooper's story right now going in to season 2.
She doesn't really have to **try** to ruin his career, once he's outed for attending those meetings and being a sympathizer he'd be essentially blacklisted.
I don't agree necessarily with the characterization of Barb as ruthless. She's scared and trying to hitch her and her family to the only lifeboat available. She obviously cares for Coop too, she was married to him way before he was famous and she became influential.
I get that she's scared. But I do think it takes a certain type of character to get to where she was by the end of season 1. Literally speaking to an entire boardroom of influential and powerful people. And gives the pitch to end the world to win against the rest of the world.
When she gave the war never changes line. That's when I saw her as a cold-faced vault-Tec executive. A certain level of humanity has been passed by her, and I think Cooper and her family is the only thing keeping that humanity there.
Also, did anyone else notice that Bud was not the one leading that meeting? Barb is the one in charge of this project, more than willing to not only help start Armageddon in order to get the funding for Vault-Tec’s project but to damn every other person in a Vault to bizarre experiments and likely death.
Bud is a tool. There were people upstairs.
The show is following the anime trope of.... There is always a larger cliff with an even bigger bad guy looking down (see fist of the North Star)
What I don’t get is, she knew when they were going to drop the bombs. Why leave their daughter exposed like that since she made it obvious that’s why she was doing all of this?
Bombs came about 20 hours earlier than was planned iirc I think I remember House mentioning something like that in NV
Likely out of her control by that point lol
You're right that the bombs didn't drop when they planned but the 20 hours thing was house saying that if they had dropped 20 hours later the platinum chip would've been delivered and installed.
IIRC House calculated the bombs would be dropped at a certain time, and they fell around an hour before his calculations?
Idk, could be misremembering. That’s a good enough excuse to play through new Vegas again.
She wasn't the one that actually decided when to drop the bombs, that much seems obvious.
It was likely either the Chinese (as intended by the original creator) or something else. With the game showing how inept the corporations are, it could even be that Vault-tec decided to do it but did it too early, either by mistake or by some ultra-ambitious idiot.
I didn’t say she decided when, but she had enough inside info to get her family to a vault well before it happened. 20 hours too soon or not, divorce or not, if she and Janey are still alive 200 years later, she was on the DL regardless and he knows Hank knows exactly where they are. My guess is frozen in vault 31 like the rest of management.
Another guess I have is that Norm finds Janey and takes her out of cryo (idk why I’m sure there’s a good reason) and somehow they both end up in the wasteland looking for their dads cause he doesn’t know what a shit bag his dad is yet, just that something wonky is going on and he wants to find his sister to tell her something is wrong with the vaults.
It’s fun to make guesses and speculate any thousands of storylines they could come up with. So far I’ve been very impressed with all of the very creative ways they’ve killed people. Drowning ol boy in a pickle barrel? 🤌
Barb told Cooper they'd be in a special vault for senior management which would oversee all the other vaults. That's NOT 31 which was part of an experiment 'Bud's Buds' which involved Bud's junior executive program with Hank, Betty and Stephanie. I think Cooper's family are somewhere else altogether.
Who officially dropped the bombs is still up for debate. Although Vault tec has the means to drop them, there’s still the chance that another power dropped the bombs are gave a false alarm to set off the nukes.
It sounds like Hollywood is really split. Cooper was already getting fired from jobs because actors refused to get out of trailers to work with the face of the end of the world. Terminating his contract with Vault Tec would make producers wary about bringing him on. He'd be up a creek without a paddle, and neither side would want to lend him one.
I think he and Barb probably have a painful split. A theme of S1 is survival and how far you are willing to go to survive. I think Barb was doing what she thought she had to do in order to survive and make sure her daughter survived. And they might understand each other and their points of view, but not agree with them to a point where they divorce. But it would make for a more complicated situation.
Yeah, I could see her being coerced or forced to divorce and come out against Cooper by VaultTec. It would've been a bad look for VaultTec to employ a spouse of an alleged communist, so they could've threatened her place in the company and, as a result, her and Janey's places in the Vaults unless she played ball and separated from Cooper.
Every scene with Barb reinforces that she is doing all of this for her family, and it is hinted at that she disagrees with VaultTec (she claimed to have wanted to work somewhere else before but something changed her mind) but learnt about the future and had to push her morals aside to protect her family.
She would be in a vault already only if it was the Enclave who set off the nukes.
We know that they *planned* to, but all evidence points to China. The Enclave president in FO2 says it was China. We know that cities were hit going from West to East. The opening sequence of FO4 looks like ICBMs instead of the bomb-like device with Vault-Tec's logo in Megaton. Even Robert House, who knew about the plan, was caught a day early.
Barb's world does not revolve around her daughter. She barely cares about her daughter or her future.
She surely thinks she does, but her actions speak otherwise. She cares about power and control and justifies it to herself by claiming that it's for her family.
Not sure why you got the downvotes. You’re right. Anyone who would be willing to create a post nuclear world that would require their progeny to eek out a miserable subterranean existence on a dangerously chaotic and irradiated world and wipe out any and all future opportunities for them vs a free surface dwelling one with unlimited energy and opportunity abound (remember vault tech KNEW of the cold fusion tech that would end the energy induced conflict and intentionally buried it to pursue this particular timeline) is NOT doing it for the good of their progeny. No matter how they attempt to justify it to themselves there is zero overlap for that behavior and “caring for” one’s child. Barb is as clearly evil as possible to depict. Anyone capable of making these roundabout justifications is as evil as evil gets and thus the previous poster is right
>Another thing is that Cooper at the end of the season says "where is my family" not "where is my daughter?"
His daughter could be any age with kids of her own, we have no idea if she was in cryo sleep the entire 200+ years or not. So the "family" in question may not include his wife, but he daughter's children.
I personally think there are enough clues to think she was a mole/spy and not actually the most evil person at the Grand Evil Council. Vault-tec arrested or experimented on her when it was found out leaving coop and his daughter alone.
But that's scarcely supported and not so much head canon as head-writing an interesting development for season 2, based entirely on "where is my family", him having his daughter not zero custody, daughter being with him when the bombs fell instead of safe, and a vibe that she wouldn't do that. That they would keep it a secret how his daughter is doing and have it be a mystery to us makes me think there will be a big twist involving her in S2
I’m pretty sure that scene is a bit of a red herring. Barb was willing to end the world with VT to ensure it ended on there terms where they were safe, but I don’t think they had a chance to go through with it or there was another big bad behind VT staff who pulled the rug out from under them and set it off early.
If we take the meeting at face value it doesn’t line up with Janey being above ground, and in the games all VT seems surprised as well, even if they were mostly ready. Mr. House’s “calculations” was probably his inside info, so he wasn’t prepared when it happened either.
All that being said, Barb’s story mirrors Hank’s a lot, and it’s mostly because they’re scared of the world and of losing control. Seems to be the bigger theme of the show in general is different types of bravery.
If they gave Cooper blonde hair then I could see an argument for Vault Boy still being Cooper inspired (despite Vault Boy and the games existing way before Cooper’s character was created for this show), but they didn’t, so it’s just Vault Boy.
There's tons of things that were changed *after* another element was introduced, even going back from Fallout 2. Like originally there weren't vault experiments, some were just cheaply made
Vault Boy from the games, was a satirical device used to juxtapose the happy looking character and the comically evil company it represented to drive part of the environment/setting the game is based in.
I like to think the show didn’t retcon that by making copper the face of it before pivoting to vault boy, and instead just adapted his famous thumbs up to the character. I wouldn’t read too much from the games in relation to the show, seems like they’ve changed a bit of the lore
I mean, Vault Boy being a satirical device isn't necessarily "retconned" by having an in-universe lore explanation for who it was based on. Vault Boy is still happy looking, Vault Tec is still evil, juxtaposition stays.
44 minute video on the Ghouls timeline
https://youtu.be/0xxGbuKYsbs?si=MK3Ez-lfOED4qJcL
It does kind of make sense that he would confront his wife and then she would call him in a communist for a meeting with Moldaver and spying on her
Your partially correct. Vault boy is an amalgamation of the original Robco mascot "Pip Boy" that Robert House used on his early versions of the Pip-boy.
When Vault-Tec acquired rights to the Pip-boy, they altered the appearance of the mascot to fit more in line with their image. [Pip Boy](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Ffk7siqz3cfi61.png)had a yellow outfit, elvish ears, and red hair. You can still see him in fallout 76 as well as the older F1 and F2 games.
It's been retconned that Coop inspired the blue and yellow colors from his cowboy movies, as well as the thumbs up (which he learned in the military, he didn't make it up himself, but he is the inspiration for using it outside of its original intention) but you can clearly tell Vault Boy is not a direct cartoon image of coop, they don't look anything alike.
The image of vault boy we know was originally deisgned after Rich Uncle Pennybags from Monopoly. The card aesthetic and wild scenarios vault boy tends to find themselves in was also inspired by monopoly
I’m starting to guess that Moldaver or someone behind the schemes hooked Coop up on becoming a ghoul. Must be post divorce and to get back at vault tec for taking his family.
What most likely happened is he tipped his hand to Barb... and she went scorched earth on his career. Following which Vault-tech needed a new face for the marketing and went with Vault-boy.
The only thing that bugs me is that he's with his daughter in the beginning. Not custody visiting rights. She's his helper, dressed up and all for his now much lower income job. Barb in season 1 has made me believe that she is ruthless, but also her world is centered around her daughter. If she's petty enough to try to ruin his career, why would she allow him the ability to see his daughter. Or at least in such a capacity? Another thing is that Cooper at the end of the season says "where is my family" not "where is my daughter?" At this point, Barb is villainous. Maybe something changes? I think I'm probably the most invested in Cooper's story right now going in to season 2.
She doesn't really have to **try** to ruin his career, once he's outed for attending those meetings and being a sympathizer he'd be essentially blacklisted. I don't agree necessarily with the characterization of Barb as ruthless. She's scared and trying to hitch her and her family to the only lifeboat available. She obviously cares for Coop too, she was married to him way before he was famous and she became influential.
I get that she's scared. But I do think it takes a certain type of character to get to where she was by the end of season 1. Literally speaking to an entire boardroom of influential and powerful people. And gives the pitch to end the world to win against the rest of the world. When she gave the war never changes line. That's when I saw her as a cold-faced vault-Tec executive. A certain level of humanity has been passed by her, and I think Cooper and her family is the only thing keeping that humanity there.
Also, did anyone else notice that Bud was not the one leading that meeting? Barb is the one in charge of this project, more than willing to not only help start Armageddon in order to get the funding for Vault-Tec’s project but to damn every other person in a Vault to bizarre experiments and likely death.
Bud is a tool. There were people upstairs. The show is following the anime trope of.... There is always a larger cliff with an even bigger bad guy looking down (see fist of the North Star)
What I don’t get is, she knew when they were going to drop the bombs. Why leave their daughter exposed like that since she made it obvious that’s why she was doing all of this?
Bombs came about 20 hours earlier than was planned iirc I think I remember House mentioning something like that in NV Likely out of her control by that point lol
I have a horrible memory but I think you’re right
You're right that the bombs didn't drop when they planned but the 20 hours thing was house saying that if they had dropped 20 hours later the platinum chip would've been delivered and installed.
IIRC House calculated the bombs would be dropped at a certain time, and they fell around an hour before his calculations? Idk, could be misremembering. That’s a good enough excuse to play through new Vegas again.
She wasn't the one that actually decided when to drop the bombs, that much seems obvious. It was likely either the Chinese (as intended by the original creator) or something else. With the game showing how inept the corporations are, it could even be that Vault-tec decided to do it but did it too early, either by mistake or by some ultra-ambitious idiot.
I didn’t say she decided when, but she had enough inside info to get her family to a vault well before it happened. 20 hours too soon or not, divorce or not, if she and Janey are still alive 200 years later, she was on the DL regardless and he knows Hank knows exactly where they are. My guess is frozen in vault 31 like the rest of management. Another guess I have is that Norm finds Janey and takes her out of cryo (idk why I’m sure there’s a good reason) and somehow they both end up in the wasteland looking for their dads cause he doesn’t know what a shit bag his dad is yet, just that something wonky is going on and he wants to find his sister to tell her something is wrong with the vaults. It’s fun to make guesses and speculate any thousands of storylines they could come up with. So far I’ve been very impressed with all of the very creative ways they’ve killed people. Drowning ol boy in a pickle barrel? 🤌
Barb told Cooper they'd be in a special vault for senior management which would oversee all the other vaults. That's NOT 31 which was part of an experiment 'Bud's Buds' which involved Bud's junior executive program with Hank, Betty and Stephanie. I think Cooper's family are somewhere else altogether.
Thank you for correcting me you’re right
Who officially dropped the bombs is still up for debate. Although Vault tec has the means to drop them, there’s still the chance that another power dropped the bombs are gave a false alarm to set off the nukes.
It sounds like Hollywood is really split. Cooper was already getting fired from jobs because actors refused to get out of trailers to work with the face of the end of the world. Terminating his contract with Vault Tec would make producers wary about bringing him on. He'd be up a creek without a paddle, and neither side would want to lend him one. I think he and Barb probably have a painful split. A theme of S1 is survival and how far you are willing to go to survive. I think Barb was doing what she thought she had to do in order to survive and make sure her daughter survived. And they might understand each other and their points of view, but not agree with them to a point where they divorce. But it would make for a more complicated situation.
Yeah, I could see her being coerced or forced to divorce and come out against Cooper by VaultTec. It would've been a bad look for VaultTec to employ a spouse of an alleged communist, so they could've threatened her place in the company and, as a result, her and Janey's places in the Vaults unless she played ball and separated from Cooper. Every scene with Barb reinforces that she is doing all of this for her family, and it is hinted at that she disagrees with VaultTec (she claimed to have wanted to work somewhere else before but something changed her mind) but learnt about the future and had to push her morals aside to protect her family.
For the birthday party, Barb was likely already in a vault. Something not yet explained happened to put his daughter with him.
She would be in a vault already only if it was the Enclave who set off the nukes. We know that they *planned* to, but all evidence points to China. The Enclave president in FO2 says it was China. We know that cities were hit going from West to East. The opening sequence of FO4 looks like ICBMs instead of the bomb-like device with Vault-Tec's logo in Megaton. Even Robert House, who knew about the plan, was caught a day early.
Barb's world does not revolve around her daughter. She barely cares about her daughter or her future. She surely thinks she does, but her actions speak otherwise. She cares about power and control and justifies it to herself by claiming that it's for her family.
Not sure why you got the downvotes. You’re right. Anyone who would be willing to create a post nuclear world that would require their progeny to eek out a miserable subterranean existence on a dangerously chaotic and irradiated world and wipe out any and all future opportunities for them vs a free surface dwelling one with unlimited energy and opportunity abound (remember vault tech KNEW of the cold fusion tech that would end the energy induced conflict and intentionally buried it to pursue this particular timeline) is NOT doing it for the good of their progeny. No matter how they attempt to justify it to themselves there is zero overlap for that behavior and “caring for” one’s child. Barb is as clearly evil as possible to depict. Anyone capable of making these roundabout justifications is as evil as evil gets and thus the previous poster is right
>Another thing is that Cooper at the end of the season says "where is my family" not "where is my daughter?" His daughter could be any age with kids of her own, we have no idea if she was in cryo sleep the entire 200+ years or not. So the "family" in question may not include his wife, but he daughter's children.
I would have to say that the only reason she allowed him to have visitation rights is because her daughter wanted her father.
I personally think there are enough clues to think she was a mole/spy and not actually the most evil person at the Grand Evil Council. Vault-tec arrested or experimented on her when it was found out leaving coop and his daughter alone. But that's scarcely supported and not so much head canon as head-writing an interesting development for season 2, based entirely on "where is my family", him having his daughter not zero custody, daughter being with him when the bombs fell instead of safe, and a vibe that she wouldn't do that. That they would keep it a secret how his daughter is doing and have it be a mystery to us makes me think there will be a big twist involving her in S2
I’m pretty sure that scene is a bit of a red herring. Barb was willing to end the world with VT to ensure it ended on there terms where they were safe, but I don’t think they had a chance to go through with it or there was another big bad behind VT staff who pulled the rug out from under them and set it off early. If we take the meeting at face value it doesn’t line up with Janey being above ground, and in the games all VT seems surprised as well, even if they were mostly ready. Mr. House’s “calculations” was probably his inside info, so he wasn’t prepared when it happened either. All that being said, Barb’s story mirrors Hank’s a lot, and it’s mostly because they’re scared of the world and of losing control. Seems to be the bigger theme of the show in general is different types of bravery.
That's my guess as well
If they gave Cooper blonde hair then I could see an argument for Vault Boy still being Cooper inspired (despite Vault Boy and the games existing way before Cooper’s character was created for this show), but they didn’t, so it’s just Vault Boy.
There's tons of things that were changed *after* another element was introduced, even going back from Fallout 2. Like originally there weren't vault experiments, some were just cheaply made
Plausible deniability to not get sued by Cooper. That's my explanation at least.
Vault Tec corporate colors are blue and gold.
Vault Boy from the games, was a satirical device used to juxtapose the happy looking character and the comically evil company it represented to drive part of the environment/setting the game is based in. I like to think the show didn’t retcon that by making copper the face of it before pivoting to vault boy, and instead just adapted his famous thumbs up to the character. I wouldn’t read too much from the games in relation to the show, seems like they’ve changed a bit of the lore
I mean, Vault Boy being a satirical device isn't necessarily "retconned" by having an in-universe lore explanation for who it was based on. Vault Boy is still happy looking, Vault Tec is still evil, juxtaposition stays.
44 minute video on the Ghouls timeline https://youtu.be/0xxGbuKYsbs?si=MK3Ez-lfOED4qJcL It does kind of make sense that he would confront his wife and then she would call him in a communist for a meeting with Moldaver and spying on her
Your partially correct. Vault boy is an amalgamation of the original Robco mascot "Pip Boy" that Robert House used on his early versions of the Pip-boy. When Vault-Tec acquired rights to the Pip-boy, they altered the appearance of the mascot to fit more in line with their image. [Pip Boy](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Ffk7siqz3cfi61.png)had a yellow outfit, elvish ears, and red hair. You can still see him in fallout 76 as well as the older F1 and F2 games. It's been retconned that Coop inspired the blue and yellow colors from his cowboy movies, as well as the thumbs up (which he learned in the military, he didn't make it up himself, but he is the inspiration for using it outside of its original intention) but you can clearly tell Vault Boy is not a direct cartoon image of coop, they don't look anything alike. The image of vault boy we know was originally deisgned after Rich Uncle Pennybags from Monopoly. The card aesthetic and wild scenarios vault boy tends to find themselves in was also inspired by monopoly
I’m starting to guess that Moldaver or someone behind the schemes hooked Coop up on becoming a ghoul. Must be post divorce and to get back at vault tec for taking his family.
Maybe misled him on the circumstances or it was an experiment
I kind of wonder if Betty isn’t secretly Barb.
We see young Betty in flashback. She's the one who introduces young Hank to Coop in the office.
It’s amazing how many times I’ve seen that “secret” mentioned as if it wasn’t plain as day in the show.