How to Make The Ghoul Costume from Fallout
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| # | Item | Description | Shop |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brown Wool Cowboy Hat | Soft, weathered felt with a pinched crown and a brim that dips at the front. Crush it a little — his has been through two centuries of wasteland. | 🛒 Check on Amazon |
| 2 | Dark Brown Duster Coat | Long, lapelled and buttoned, falling to mid-calf. Plain — no shoulder cape. | 🛒 Check on Amazon |
| 3 | Black Work Shirt | A plain dark button-up worn under the duster, collar open. | 🛒 Check on Amazon |
| 4 | Dark Brown Work Pants | Dark, plain work trousers. Nothing about the Ghoul is flashy below the belt except the brass. | 🛒 Check on Amazon |
| 5 | Brown Leather Shotgun Shell Bandolier | Worn across the chest from one shoulder. Load it with red shells — it is the most recognizable thing he wears after the hat. | 🛒 Check on Amazon |
| 6 | Antique Brass Oval Belt Buckle | The big oval buckle on his trouser belt, the last trace of the Hollywood cowboy he used to be. | 🛒 Check on Amazon |
| 7 | Dark Brown Holster Belt | A second belt, slung lower, carrying the revolver at the hip. | 🛒 Check on Amazon |
| 8 | Silver Foam Revolver | A long-barreled silver single-action revolver. Foam passes most event prop rules. | 🛒 Check on Amazon |
| 9 | Brown Leather Gloves | Worn, dark brown work gloves. He rarely takes them off. | 🛒 Check on Amazon |
| 10 | Brown Cowboy Boots | Plain brown western boots, scuffed. | 🛒 Check on Amazon |
| 11 | Ghoul SFX Makeup Kit | Liquid latex and scar wax for the ruined skin, plus the color wheel for the missing nose. See the makeup notes below. | 🛒 Check on Amazon |
| 12 | The Ghoul Full Costume Set | A Ghoul-specific set — duster, bandolier, belts and holster in one box. Add the hat and the makeup. | 🛒 Check on Amazon |
The Ghoul is a cowboy costume with two things that make it his: the bandolier of red shotgun shells across the chest, and a face with no nose. Get the hat, the duster and the bandolier right and the silhouette reads instantly; the makeup is what turns "a cowboy" into Cooper Howard.
Start with the hat, because it is the part people recognize from across a room. His is not a crisp rodeo hat. It is soft felt, weathered to a dusty olive-brown, with a pinched crown and a braided cord band, and the brim sags unevenly at the front. Steam or crush a new hat to break the shape, then rub a little brown and grey pastel dust into the crown. If you want the real thing rather than a costume piece, a Stetson crushable outdoor hat is close to the shape on screen.
Everything below the hat is layered dark on dark: a black shirt, dark brown trousers, a long dark brown duster left open. Two belts break it up. The trouser belt carries a big oval brass buckle — thread it onto a plain snap-on leather strap — and the holster belt sits lower on the hips with the revolver on the right. The bandolier goes over the left shoulder and across the chest. Most bandoliers ship empty, and red dummy shells are what make it read as his.
The makeup
The Ghoul's face is the hard part, and it's worth doing properly. The look is burned, tight, cracked skin over a bald head, with the nose replaced by a dark triangular hole.
- Stipple liquid latex over the face, scalp and neck in thin layers, stretching the skin slightly as each layer dries so it wrinkles when released.
- Build ridges and raised scars with scar wax along the cheekbones, brow and jawline.
- Paint the whole area a sallow, reddish-tan, then work darker brown and red into the creases.
- For the nose, flatten it visually rather than trying to hide it: paint the nose itself in skin tone to match the cheeks, then paint a dark brown-black inverted triangle over the nostrils and bridge. From a few feet away it reads as missing.
- Yellow the teeth with a tooth-color pencil if you have one.
If makeup isn't an option, a latex ghoul mask with the hat on top gets the idea across, though it loses the expressiveness that makes the character.
For the details that fans will spot: he carries an inhaler, the medication that keeps ghouls from going feral, and he is rarely without a bottle or a cigarette. Pair him with a Vault Dweller for a Lucy-and-the-Ghoul duo, or go as pre-war Cooper Howard instead — a clean cowboy in a white hat, with no makeup at all.
About The Ghoul from Fallout
The Ghoul is the name the wasteland knows Cooper Howard by. Before the bombs fell, Howard was a Hollywood actor who starred in westerns and became a spokesman for Vault-Tec, the company behind the vaults. More than two hundred years later he is a ghoul — kept alive, and slowly ruined, by radiation — working as a bounty hunter while searching for the family he lost when the world ended.
He is played by Walton Goggins in Amazon Prime Video's Fallout, which premiered in April 2024 and follows him alongside Lucy MacLean, a sheltered vault dweller, and Maximus of the Brotherhood of Steel. The series cuts between the Ghoul in the wasteland and Cooper Howard before the war, which is what makes the character: the same cowboy, first as a movie star and then as the real thing.
Ghouls in Fallout need regular doses of medication to keep from going feral, which is why the Ghoul is so often seen reaching for his inhaler. The character's look has since carried over into the games, with the Ghoul's outfit and duster added to Fallout 76.
