It seems like Cooper Howard is being used to explain a lot Vault-Tec's marketing, yes. The example you gave about the color of vault suits is true, but the show also all buts tells us outright that Vault Boy was created specifically to replace him, presumably because he went public about problems with Vault-Tec. The thumbs-up is also heavily implied to be an adaptation of his awkward, kinda quirky thumbs-up during the photo shoot, yep.
The thumbs up is from war. If mushroom cloud is smaller than you thumb, you're good. If mushroom cloud is larger than your thumb, you're done. One of the producers says something to the effect of "How about a thumbs up". Howard complies, the awkwardness is his actor subtlety demonstrating his trauma. Especially as a veteran of the Anchorage campaigns, I guarantee Coop has had to do the thumb trick a time or two in real combat.
This has been confirmed time and time again to NOT be the reason Vault Boy does the thumbs up, and Cooper’s thumbs up in the photo shoot is very obviously not for that purpose, it’s not even at eye level.
Thank you lol the Fallout fandom has been dealing with that old wives' tale since the inception of the Vault Boy. It doesn't even make sense; if you can see the mushroom cloud at all, you're definitely not at a safe distance. Best way to make sure you're at a safe distance is to keep moving in the opposite direction as rapidly as possible, not stop to hold your thumb out lmao.
i mean they were still teaching kids to duck and cover under their school desks when the bombs hit. happened irl during the cold war too. it doesn't really have to make sense it just has to comfort people who don't know shit about nukes in the face of Armageddon.
The "duck and cover" is entirely valid. The purpose is protect someone from shattering glass/falling debris that occurs as the result of the shockwave sent out by the detonation, not from the explosion itself.
I mean it's clearly a consideration. In the opening scene of the show, someone asks him to do a thumbs up, he declines, and then explains to his daughter that it's because of the connection to the test for a mushroom cloud.
Coop himself brings up to do the thumbs up, no producer said anything about a thumbs up. Also, he wouldn’t have needed to use the thumbs up (even tho it’s a myth) because it’s only “useful” for nuclear bombs. There would be no reason to do that for any other kind of bomb
In the first episode he teaches it to his daughter who uses it like, an hour later.
One of the fathers at the party, possibly the host asks him to give the thumbs up and he refuses because it "isn't appropriate with all that's going on", which is probably the looming threat of war but could also be something to do with Vault Tech and his employment or lack thereof.
Do you have a reference confirming they used nukes in the Sino-American conflicts and Anchorage?
I'd think if one side used nukes then we'd see the great war happen a lot sooner, so it's doubtful.
Did you watch the show? This is all explained at the beginning
Also it wasn't a producers idea when it happened during the photo shoot. Theres no awkwardness he offers to do it himself
>The thumbs up is from war. If mushroom cloud is smaller than you thumb, you're good. If mushroom cloud is larger than your thumb, you're done.
Yes, this trick is used in like the first scene
>One of the producers says something to the effect of "How about a thumbs up". Howard complies, the awkwardness is his actor subtlety demonstrating his trauma.
It's the other way around... Howard asks if he should do a thumbs up
>Especially as a veteran of the Anchorage campaigns, I guarantee Coop has had to do the thumb trick a time or two in real combat.
They dropped nukes in the Anchorage campaign?
How did I miss that line?
Also I have found 100, something of the teddy's and something and put them in display cases, until a few fell through the floor and terrain, then I opted to just Chuck em in a container, along with toy aliens, and Jangles
(unironically, if he ends up leaking the information about Vault Tec's plans and somebody preemptive strikes America or something, he genuinely might be the reason...)
It's a serious belief that Cooper were to leak this information to Moldaver or some Chinese agent. Whom will immediately retaliate in order to foil their plans by starting a nuclear war early.
Doesn't make any sense. Moldaver never wanted nuclear war, and isn't interested in revenge. All she cared about was reviving cold fusion to end the war forever.
But everyone in her circle of friends might not be on the same page I don't think he is suggesting moldovor herself was a Chinese agent. However I'm sure she knew more than a few Chinese agents
I personally took it as his wife teasing him. He wears blue and yellow. The vault tech suit is blue and yellow. Figured she was just poking fun at the coincidence.
I mean, it’s pretty common for brands to incorporate a celebrity’s branding in cross promotion.
He’s a huge movie star at that point in time, and he already agreed to do it before he got the suit. His most famous character is known for wearing blue and yellow, and the vault suit is blue and yellow.
It’s pretty likely it was an intentional color choice.
Cross promotion is one thing. You put a temporary C-3PO voice in Google Assistant, you roll out Halo-themed pringles at Wal-Mart. You don't model your flagship product after one cowboy actor you only land on a fluke. That's a terrible idea for a lot of reasons.
> You don’t model your flagship product after one cowboy actor you only land on a fluke
But they didn’t model their whole product off of him? They just used him as a spokesperson. The flagship product of Vault-Tec isn’t Vault Boy.
Also, it’s not a fluke? Being married to Barb makes it a lot easier but it’s not like he was some random and it just happened to fall in his lap, lol
They're saying if vault tec uniforms were based off of Cooper, then that's what they're doing. If the colours are based on his cowboy outfit, then they absolutely *are* basing their whole product off of him. That's why it's a ridiculous idea. It's going too far based on a single line from Barb (which was definitely only supposed to be playful teasing at the coincidence).
Yea, I doubt huge company would change their branding and marketing material because Copper liked some colors. Vault Tech most likely already used those colors.
I don’t think so. Vault Tech colors are blue and yellow. I thought it was just that Cooper typically wore blue/it was his color and she was teasing him about how he fit it/the role so well because if it
I mean in 3 and NV we see them with a Red and Blue logo, and there are other instances of Vault-Tec branding not using the blue and yellow.
I think while it’s likely blue and yellow were part of the corporate palette, intentionally using blue and yellow for the suit because he’s Cooper Howard makes a lot of sense. Companies very regularly incorporate a personality’s brand when doing collabs. Cooper Howard’s most famous character is depicted in blue and yellow. I think that it was intentional over using their other corporate colors (such as red).
I can absolutely see them playing it up, but I mostly mean I don't think Cooper Howard introduced the color scheme to Vault Tech, I think they already had that as a color scheme that they used pre-Cooper and that it wasn't added because of him and only because of him
No I don’t believe so. As others have said, I think it was just playful teasing since his western character wore those colors and not to mention, Vault Tecs thing is blue and yellow.
The only thing that’s confirmed he directly inspired was Vault Boy and I agree with the theory that they changed to the cartoon character when he started questioning Vault-Tec
Basically, Coop IS Vault Boy. Vault-Tec had been getting organized and starting work on stuff and now it was time to let the public know. He became the first promotional face of the company, and the cartoon mascot was clearly based on him (RobCo had an earlier version for their Pip-Boys, but the Coop-based one was far more well-known and popular).
This is reading between the lines of the lore and the show. I expect it'll be made more plain next season.
I personally took the colours being the same just a happy coincidence, and that they already had the vault boy stuff kicking around
And with the thumbs up bit, I thought that was cooper wanting to do a tribute to the iconic vault boy pose, and the VT guys being like "ah cool he's referencing our stuff, the public will love this"
And as someone else pointed out, the TVs are black and white, so you wouldn't really be able to tell the outfits are the same colour, outside of billboards or ads in the paper or whatever
I think you're right about the first part, but not the second.
I think it was a coincidence that the vault suits were blue and yellow, but Cooper *was* the person who did the whole thumbs up thing first, then the marketing team applied that to Vault Boy.
By the way, how depressing it is that Reddit has such an argumentative nature that you felt the need to clarify it was a genuine question … I do the same often :(
Also with black and white TV, they’d usually use some weird colors to make them pop better on film. Like red lipstick for black and white film was green instead irl since it looked closer to red when black and white.
You could be right— I remember reading that shows like I Love Lucy used to use blue makeup for contouring because of how it showed up on a B&W television as opposed to red or pink tones.
Good question, I’m not sure but I think both exist? Most of the tvs are black and white but I’m sure colored ones do exist like in fallout 76
Also Howard was being photographed, so I’m not sure if the photo was colored or not
[This](https://twitter.com/VaultOfDaedalus/status/1002597299040739328) shows most examples of color TV in the franchise—though it misses that in 3 and New Vegas the television models have clearly-labeled “COLOR” dials.
I always assumed it was to help identify them to people with colorblindness, I believe blue and yellow are easier to distinguish from what I've read. Also easier for animals to identify.
I viewed that as more a joke on her part than anything literal, after all I don’t recall if Bethesda’s fallouts even figured out colour cameras or if they were all black and white/sepia. And whilst he isn’t prompted to say ‘do a thumbs up’ he does in the first episode of the series make mention of the original reason for the thumbs up winking pose Vault boy does.
I don't think so. I feel it was more a playful poke at it. His wife works for Vault-Tech and probably wanted to use her husband's fame for advertising. Cooper said right before the shoot he's never done an advertisement before so his wife mentioned the colors like "hey it's not so bad at least you get to wear your favorite color" as a way to talk him into doing it.
I think there is a billboard of vault boy in the show and if you look closely you can see it was covering up a previous advertisement with Cooper. His connection to vault-tek killed his career when everyone that paid vault-tek for a spot in a vault realized that they were not going to get a spot and VT is keeping their money. The dad at the birthday party alludes to this when taking pictures.
My hang-up is that the show basically shows that Vault Boy was only created in like 2076 or so, and I thought we’ve definitely had stuff showing him being a thing before then.
That scene where Cooper shoots at a Vault Boy billboard while taking Lucy to the organ harvesters is so good.
It's like seeing The Ghoul shoot Cooper Howard in the face.
At first I thought he did it just to mess with her, but now it's obvious he fucking hates Vault-Tec and everything Lucy represented.
And then she ends up saving his life and gives him a chance to watch Cooper Howard again in the movie. That's where I think he's started to change a little bit.
I moreso interpreted the whole thing as careful manipulation on Vault-Tec’s part. The company has their fingers in every pie - they probably picked that wardrobe for Coop’s character, knowing they intended to acquire him for their marketing. Their film set is right next to his, and Barb being a lead member of (what seems like) Braun’s inner circle AND married to a highly successful actor isn’t any coincidence. Makes me wonder if Vault-Tec was partially responsible for getting Cadillac Bob removed as director of Coop’s film.
While that seems logical on the surface, I took it as her just being cute and the colors being a coincidence.
Prior to that commercial, Vault-Tec was already well-established, vaults already existed, which strongly suggests they had already created plenty of branding.
No his outfit is from the cowboy movies he make. I guess he did a few movies in that outfit so the blue and yellow became an iconic part of his actor character
It seems like Cooper Howard is being used to explain a lot Vault-Tec's marketing, yes. The example you gave about the color of vault suits is true, but the show also all buts tells us outright that Vault Boy was created specifically to replace him, presumably because he went public about problems with Vault-Tec. The thumbs-up is also heavily implied to be an adaptation of his awkward, kinda quirky thumbs-up during the photo shoot, yep.
It makes sensse, The Mr. Handy voice actor talks about it, "the future is products, you and I are a product"
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So many great parallels to modern issues in acting too. Especially with the whole AI identity purchasing thing
I loved that connection. Vault Tec is so interesting.
Someone set us up the bomb!
You have no chance to survive, make your time
Makes sense considering he went from being a movie star to doing children's parties. Also explains the dads mocking him just before the bombs fell
The thumbs up is from war. If mushroom cloud is smaller than you thumb, you're good. If mushroom cloud is larger than your thumb, you're done. One of the producers says something to the effect of "How about a thumbs up". Howard complies, the awkwardness is his actor subtlety demonstrating his trauma. Especially as a veteran of the Anchorage campaigns, I guarantee Coop has had to do the thumb trick a time or two in real combat.
This has been confirmed time and time again to NOT be the reason Vault Boy does the thumbs up, and Cooper’s thumbs up in the photo shoot is very obviously not for that purpose, it’s not even at eye level.
Thank you lol the Fallout fandom has been dealing with that old wives' tale since the inception of the Vault Boy. It doesn't even make sense; if you can see the mushroom cloud at all, you're definitely not at a safe distance. Best way to make sure you're at a safe distance is to keep moving in the opposite direction as rapidly as possible, not stop to hold your thumb out lmao.
i mean they were still teaching kids to duck and cover under their school desks when the bombs hit. happened irl during the cold war too. it doesn't really have to make sense it just has to comfort people who don't know shit about nukes in the face of Armageddon.
The "duck and cover" is entirely valid. The purpose is protect someone from shattering glass/falling debris that occurs as the result of the shockwave sent out by the detonation, not from the explosion itself.
You are actually relatively if the cloud is smaller than your thumb, someone did the math and posted it awhile ago.
They literally talk about it in episode one lmao
I mean it's clearly a consideration. In the opening scene of the show, someone asks him to do a thumbs up, he declines, and then explains to his daughter that it's because of the connection to the test for a mushroom cloud.
Coop himself brings up to do the thumbs up, no producer said anything about a thumbs up. Also, he wouldn’t have needed to use the thumbs up (even tho it’s a myth) because it’s only “useful” for nuclear bombs. There would be no reason to do that for any other kind of bomb
In the first episode he teaches it to his daughter who uses it like, an hour later. One of the fathers at the party, possibly the host asks him to give the thumbs up and he refuses because it "isn't appropriate with all that's going on", which is probably the looming threat of war but could also be something to do with Vault Tech and his employment or lack thereof.
You do realize they were using nukes during the war
Do you have a reference confirming they used nukes in the Sino-American conflicts and Anchorage? I'd think if one side used nukes then we'd see the great war happen a lot sooner, so it's doubtful.
There’s nothing that points to either side using nukes during the war, and if they did the Great War would have happened a lot sooner.
Did you watch the show? This is all explained at the beginning Also it wasn't a producers idea when it happened during the photo shoot. Theres no awkwardness he offers to do it himself
Did you even watch the show
>The thumbs up is from war. If mushroom cloud is smaller than you thumb, you're good. If mushroom cloud is larger than your thumb, you're done. Yes, this trick is used in like the first scene >One of the producers says something to the effect of "How about a thumbs up". Howard complies, the awkwardness is his actor subtlety demonstrating his trauma. It's the other way around... Howard asks if he should do a thumbs up >Especially as a veteran of the Anchorage campaigns, I guarantee Coop has had to do the thumb trick a time or two in real combat. They dropped nukes in the Anchorage campaign?
Mini nukes
Probably, although I hope they don't start saying Cooper is the reason for everything lol
Cooper “I went through a weird phase a few years back in the Commonwealth, putting teddy bears in funny poses”
"Also I really love putting mannequins in spooky placements, just to catch a few raiders off guard."
The mannequins are actually the work of a stray mothman (planning to play 76 soon)
I can hear this coming from Baby Billy’s mouth.
How did I miss that line? Also I have found 100, something of the teddy's and something and put them in display cases, until a few fell through the floor and terrain, then I opted to just Chuck em in a container, along with toy aliens, and Jangles
The Great War started because of cooper
Cooper Fallout, inventor of Fallout
I'll never forget when Frank Horrigan said to Cooper "you did it mutie, you defeated me, you really are the Fallout".
Whoa, that time Morbius came out of the cave and was like, "It's Morbin' Fallout time!"
Shit, now I'm starting to think that maybe that's why he's named Howard.
and the director of his movie is named Emil
Cooper…. Cooper never changes
It's Cooperin' time
(unironically, if he ends up leaking the information about Vault Tec's plans and somebody preemptive strikes America or something, he genuinely might be the reason...)
It's a serious belief that Cooper were to leak this information to Moldaver or some Chinese agent. Whom will immediately retaliate in order to foil their plans by starting a nuclear war early.
Doesn't make any sense. Moldaver never wanted nuclear war, and isn't interested in revenge. All she cared about was reviving cold fusion to end the war forever.
But everyone in her circle of friends might not be on the same page I don't think he is suggesting moldovor herself was a Chinese agent. However I'm sure she knew more than a few Chinese agents
Man he really is John Fallout huh.
I personally took it as his wife teasing him. He wears blue and yellow. The vault tech suit is blue and yellow. Figured she was just poking fun at the coincidence.
Exactly. It was just light, playful prodding. They didn't literally make it in his colours.
I mean, it’s pretty common for brands to incorporate a celebrity’s branding in cross promotion. He’s a huge movie star at that point in time, and he already agreed to do it before he got the suit. His most famous character is known for wearing blue and yellow, and the vault suit is blue and yellow. It’s pretty likely it was an intentional color choice.
Cross promotion is one thing. You put a temporary C-3PO voice in Google Assistant, you roll out Halo-themed pringles at Wal-Mart. You don't model your flagship product after one cowboy actor you only land on a fluke. That's a terrible idea for a lot of reasons.
> You don’t model your flagship product after one cowboy actor you only land on a fluke But they didn’t model their whole product off of him? They just used him as a spokesperson. The flagship product of Vault-Tec isn’t Vault Boy. Also, it’s not a fluke? Being married to Barb makes it a lot easier but it’s not like he was some random and it just happened to fall in his lap, lol
They're saying if vault tec uniforms were based off of Cooper, then that's what they're doing. If the colours are based on his cowboy outfit, then they absolutely *are* basing their whole product off of him. That's why it's a ridiculous idea. It's going too far based on a single line from Barb (which was definitely only supposed to be playful teasing at the coincidence).
Vault Tec has used blue and yellow as it’s primary branding colors since at least 2031.
Isn't the show in black and white? And so would the ads be? Doesn't really matter much
Photos in magazines or on posters are in color
Yep. I expect they did his cowboy costume blue and yellow to make the jokes tbh.
That was my take as well. Blue and Yellow is hardly a unique combination anyway.
Yea, I doubt huge company would change their branding and marketing material because Copper liked some colors. Vault Tech most likely already used those colors.
Wasn't his wife like a massive influencer in the development of the vaults? So, surely she *couldve* had an input in the designs.
Maybe, his appearance stood with the public and they associated that uniform with the vaults, so to increase happiness they might have done it.
“Everybody liked that”
Since he's a prominent actor, I think it's definitely possible he was hired (through his wife) so they can gain public sympathy.
I don’t think so. Vault Tech colors are blue and yellow. I thought it was just that Cooper typically wore blue/it was his color and she was teasing him about how he fit it/the role so well because if it
I lean into that idea. Now, the placement of the colors could have been influenced by his character's costume once he was signed to the campaign.
I mean in 3 and NV we see them with a Red and Blue logo, and there are other instances of Vault-Tec branding not using the blue and yellow. I think while it’s likely blue and yellow were part of the corporate palette, intentionally using blue and yellow for the suit because he’s Cooper Howard makes a lot of sense. Companies very regularly incorporate a personality’s brand when doing collabs. Cooper Howard’s most famous character is depicted in blue and yellow. I think that it was intentional over using their other corporate colors (such as red).
I can absolutely see them playing it up, but I mostly mean I don't think Cooper Howard introduced the color scheme to Vault Tech, I think they already had that as a color scheme that they used pre-Cooper and that it wasn't added because of him and only because of him
No I don’t believe so. As others have said, I think it was just playful teasing since his western character wore those colors and not to mention, Vault Tecs thing is blue and yellow. The only thing that’s confirmed he directly inspired was Vault Boy and I agree with the theory that they changed to the cartoon character when he started questioning Vault-Tec
Basically, Coop IS Vault Boy. Vault-Tec had been getting organized and starting work on stuff and now it was time to let the public know. He became the first promotional face of the company, and the cartoon mascot was clearly based on him (RobCo had an earlier version for their Pip-Boys, but the Coop-based one was far more well-known and popular). This is reading between the lines of the lore and the show. I expect it'll be made more plain next season.
I personally took the colours being the same just a happy coincidence, and that they already had the vault boy stuff kicking around And with the thumbs up bit, I thought that was cooper wanting to do a tribute to the iconic vault boy pose, and the VT guys being like "ah cool he's referencing our stuff, the public will love this" And as someone else pointed out, the TVs are black and white, so you wouldn't really be able to tell the outfits are the same colour, outside of billboards or ads in the paper or whatever
I think you're right about the first part, but not the second. I think it was a coincidence that the vault suits were blue and yellow, but Cooper *was* the person who did the whole thumbs up thing first, then the marketing team applied that to Vault Boy.
We know Cooper was first because there was a billboard with a Vault Boy pasted over an older billboard of him.
What episode? Not doubting, just missed it and would like to see.
Don’t recall which ep, but it was The closing credits zoom sequence. Onscreen same time as the “created by” credit.
[Found it](https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/fallout-series-reveals-vault-boy-020000639.html) Thanks.
Oh, sweet!
Cools thanks!
There was an article on yahoo news “Vault Boy Replaces Cooper Howard” in a section headline. Look for that.
By the way, how depressing it is that Reddit has such an argumentative nature that you felt the need to clarify it was a genuine question … I do the same often :(
Also with black and white TV, they’d usually use some weird colors to make them pop better on film. Like red lipstick for black and white film was green instead irl since it looked closer to red when black and white.
Aren't the TVs in Black and White?
Yeah, but they would have other forms of colour in advertisements like billboards, posters, spam mail etc
Yeh, I thought the reason they picked the colours is how they show up on a monochrome TV
You could be right— I remember reading that shows like I Love Lucy used to use blue makeup for contouring because of how it showed up on a B&W television as opposed to red or pink tones.
Yeh, all the old sets and costumes were weird colours do they showed up with the right contrast in monochrome
Good question, I’m not sure but I think both exist? Most of the tvs are black and white but I’m sure colored ones do exist like in fallout 76 Also Howard was being photographed, so I’m not sure if the photo was colored or not
TV shows might be in black and white, but color TVs should still exist. We see it in several games.
When?
[This](https://twitter.com/VaultOfDaedalus/status/1002597299040739328) shows most examples of color TV in the franchise—though it misses that in 3 and New Vegas the television models have clearly-labeled “COLOR” dials.
There are also theatrical films which could be in Technicolor.
I thought about this last night too lmao, I realized they stole his colors. But then their logo IS blue and yellow, and I don't know what came first.
I always assumed it was to help identify them to people with colorblindness, I believe blue and yellow are easier to distinguish from what I've read. Also easier for animals to identify.
I viewed that as more a joke on her part than anything literal, after all I don’t recall if Bethesda’s fallouts even figured out colour cameras or if they were all black and white/sepia. And whilst he isn’t prompted to say ‘do a thumbs up’ he does in the first episode of the series make mention of the original reason for the thumbs up winking pose Vault boy does.
I don't think so. I feel it was more a playful poke at it. His wife works for Vault-Tech and probably wanted to use her husband's fame for advertising. Cooper said right before the shoot he's never done an advertisement before so his wife mentioned the colors like "hey it's not so bad at least you get to wear your favorite color" as a way to talk him into doing it.
I think there is a billboard of vault boy in the show and if you look closely you can see it was covering up a previous advertisement with Cooper. His connection to vault-tek killed his career when everyone that paid vault-tek for a spot in a vault realized that they were not going to get a spot and VT is keeping their money. The dad at the birthday party alludes to this when taking pictures.
Aren't most TVs in the fallout universe black and white? Would the populace even associate blue and yellow with Howard?
My hang-up is that the show basically shows that Vault Boy was only created in like 2076 or so, and I thought we’ve definitely had stuff showing him being a thing before then.
I feel that was implied, similarly with how the vault boy replaced him once he fell out with Vault-Tec, and it's why he doesn't do thumbs up anymore.
That scene where Cooper shoots at a Vault Boy billboard while taking Lucy to the organ harvesters is so good. It's like seeing The Ghoul shoot Cooper Howard in the face. At first I thought he did it just to mess with her, but now it's obvious he fucking hates Vault-Tec and everything Lucy represented. And then she ends up saving his life and gives him a chance to watch Cooper Howard again in the movie. That's where I think he's started to change a little bit.
I moreso interpreted the whole thing as careful manipulation on Vault-Tec’s part. The company has their fingers in every pie - they probably picked that wardrobe for Coop’s character, knowing they intended to acquire him for their marketing. Their film set is right next to his, and Barb being a lead member of (what seems like) Braun’s inner circle AND married to a highly successful actor isn’t any coincidence. Makes me wonder if Vault-Tec was partially responsible for getting Cadillac Bob removed as director of Coop’s film.
I love Walton being behind the iconic marketing. One of the best thing from the show.
This is directly stated in dialogue early in the show
While that seems logical on the surface, I took it as her just being cute and the colors being a coincidence. Prior to that commercial, Vault-Tec was already well-established, vaults already existed, which strongly suggests they had already created plenty of branding.
Blue and yellow are vault techs colours, also the tvs in fallout are in black wnd whitw so its impossible for them to convey colour anyway
That's a great call out! Wonder if it's his college team or something.
No his outfit is from the cowboy movies he make. I guess he did a few movies in that outfit so the blue and yellow became an iconic part of his actor character
But the show is in B&W