How Walton Goggins Brought His Beloved Fallout Character To The Video Games [Exclusive]

Life seems to be pretty good if you happen to be named Walton Goggins. The acclaimed character actor not only has recent hit shows like "The Righteous Gemstones," "The White Lotus," and the upcoming second season of "Fallout" under his belt, but he's also unquestionably one of the main highlights in each of those. He'll next reprise his role as the fan-favorite The Ghoul (aka Cooper Howard) in one of the best video game adaptations around, though that's not his only radioactive appearance worth keeping an eye out for these days.

In a fun twist, Goggins recorded lines and lent his likeness to The Ghoul for the latest update on the 2018 "Fallout 76" game, with the new "Burning Springs" expansion released earlier this month. For someone who was wholly invented from scratch for the Prime Video series, it's kind of a big deal that the character's popularity made it a no-brainer to bring him back over to the original medium. For the star of the show, however, it wasn't the easiest transition. In a recent interview with /Film's BJ Colangelo, Goggins explained how the differences in physical vs. voice acting required some adjustment:

"Voicing anything for me was a learning curve. It was a steep learning curve [...] but what I realized is that I don't modulate my voice or change the way that I play pretend, just because I'm not on screen. I don't really know how to do that. I had to kind of learn how to do that, and I'm still not that good at it. I have a way of working whenever there is no camera on me, like in a sound booth, that also requires just moving as if the situation's really happening and doing all of those things."

Still, there's a reason why Walton Goggins remains one of our best and most in-demand actors around. Despite the difficulties of translating his live-action performance for a video game, the "Fallout" star soon fell into the rhythm involved in bringing The Ghoul to life. While speaking to /Film, he said, "The very first hour in the booth, or first five or 10 minutes, I just had to find it. It's like, 'Well, who is The Ghoul in this world? Oh, it's no different. Oh, it's this.' It's just a process of exploration like everything else."

But as challenging as it is to film an expensive series adaptation of one of the biggest video games around, that pales in comparison to what Goggins went through in a completely separate incident. A horseback riding accident left him with a serious injury (which he expanded on in a recent appearance on "The Tonight Show") that could've impeded his ability to speak his lines for "Fallout 76." As he told /Film:

"I was compromised, to be quite honest with you [...] I was on this vacation, it's a long story, but I had broken my rib. When we started that day, I just didn't know how it was going to hold up. It was so painful to breathe, let alone do the rest of it. I just had to be careful of that. We did it, and I'm so proud of it, and the game, this next iteration of it, is so good."

Fortunately for us all, gamers and TV obsessives alike, The Ghoul is a pretty tough nut to crack. "Fallout" season 2 premieres on December 17, 2025, and drops new episodes on Wednesdays.