Pegnose Pete

From Monkey Island wiki

"No one messes with Pegnose the pirate and lives to tell the tale."

Pegnose Pete is a secondary villain and major character in Escape from Monkey Island. A career criminal at the time the game is set, Pegnose is wanted in connection with approximately three hundred Lucre Island thefts, along with several disappearances and murders, and has never been caught. His home is a tiny shack in the heart of the Mysts o' Tyme Marshe and stores all his ill gotten gains and loot within his Booty Showcase. Until Guybrush Threepwood arrives on Lucre Island, Pegnose was the only person capable of navigating around the Marshe. His one weakness was a crippling fear of ducks, rumoured to be due to a duck nibbling off his nose. When Guybrush asks Pegnose whether a duck really did nibble off his nose, Pegnose refuses to answer.

Escape from Monkey Island

Pegnose Pete, restrained, as he is about to be found guilty by Inspector Canard

Always on the prowl for another opportunity to expand his wealth and prospects, Pegnose allows himself to become a party to an insidious conspiracy headed by Ozzie Mandrill and LeChuck. Ozzie Mandrill hires Pegnose to rob the Second Bank of Lucre wearing a Guybrush Threepwood mask while the real Guybrush is checking through the heirlooms for the deed for governor's mansion of Mêlée Island, thus framing Guybrush. Pegnose steals the Marley Heirlooms, which he hides in his Booty Showcase and waited on Ozzie's orders for further instruction, all the while losing his patience for his employer's refusal to pay him at the current point in time.

Unfortunately for Pegnose, Guybrush is able to track him through the Mysts o' Tyme Marshe and overhear Ozzie and Pegnose plotting to use the contents of the herilooms to determine where the pieces of the Ultimate Insult, a voodoo talisman capable of utterly mocking a person's soul into oblivion, are located; Pegnose himself couldn't care less about Ozzie and LeChuck's ambitions and simply seeks the massive amount of filthy lucre Ozzie promised him upon hiring the insidious criminal. Guybrush furthers disrupts their plans by finding the hidden heirlooms, locating evidence placing Pegnose at the crime scene, and with the help of a nearby duck, delivering Pegnose into Inspector Canard's custody.

Soon after his capture however, Pegnose is able to escape and joins Ozzie and LeChuck on Mêlée Island, where he captures Elaine Marley on LeChuck's orders in order to locate the final piece needed to activate the dormant voodoo energies within the Ultimate Insult. The villains eventually learn that the final piece for the weapon is in fact the gubernatorial seal of Mêlée Island, which they are able to obtain from Elaine shortly after her capture. Once Ozzie assembles the Ultimate Insult, however, he feels he no longer needs Pegnose, and tests its power on him after he threaten Ozzie into finally paying him. The power of the Ultimate Insult leaves him a shivering, whimpering wretch, and he runs off into the night after being told to "take a long walk off a short pier," never to be seen again.

Name Game

Guybrush tracks Pegnose Pete down by finding the name he uses with Deadeye Dave (possibly his real name, though this is unconfirmed) and address in the peculiar Rolodex at the Palace of Prostheses. Pete's name varies with each play-through of the game—a rare instance that changes the solution of the puzzle every time the game is played. Examples of his pseudonym include "Jorge H. Christoff", "Ulysses F. Toughguy", or "Sam N. Max".

Memorable Dialogue

When robbing the Lucre Island bank, Pegnose exclaims, "Everybody be cool. This is a robbery!" This is a direct reference to the film Pulp Fiction, in which Tim Roth's character, "Pumpkin," speaks the same line when robbing a diner.

Appears in

• Escape from Monkey Island

Voiced by

• Tom Kane

Trivia

• Pegnose suffers from a specialized case of ornithophobia—specifically, ducks. Even simply saying "Quack" in his presence is enough to scare him. Freddie recounts how he was once attacked by Pegnose, but the villain fled when Freddie raised his WD-32 walking stick, which has an ornamental duck's head on the handle.
• Pegnose Pete has a distinctive odour, resembling a concoction of flowers, wood shavings, fish and swamp water.