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Peppy Hare(JP) is one of the main characters in the Star Fox series. He's an admirable old character who is the only member of the current generation's Star Fox team who was also a member of the previous one, which consisted of James McCloud (Fox McCloud's father) and Pigma Dengar, who became a traitor and joined Wolf O' Donnell's evil gang.
Currently it can be concluded that Peppy is the most experienced and knowledgeable of the entire group, often giving all three of his teammates tips. He and his now deceased wife Vivian gave birth to a female bunny named Lucy Hare.
Personality and Traits[]
In all games including the spin-off media, Peppy often displays a fatherly persona towards the younger teammates, especially Fox himself, possibly since he doesn't have a son of his own and being significantly older than the rest of the teammates are. This is due to having been lifelong friends with James McCloud and watching from a young pup to an experienced pilot, and Peppy becomes his father figure and mentor after James lost his life. In a sharp contrast to his former teammate who is the selfish and greedy Pigma Dengar, who turned his friends in for a profit and hated by everyone, including the Star Wolf team, Peppy remains good-hearted and Loyal and his teammates have grown to love and respect him for his wisdom and experience. Additionally, his daughter Lucy Hare reveals that Peppy views Krystal as a "second daughter" to him. Such combination of attributes makes him the team's father in the Star Fox team.
While Peppy declines the position of Star Fox's leader despite being the most experienced in that field and passing the title to Fox, he still gives commanding advice which the others respond due to his seniority. In his old age, Peppy seems to have a slight nagging side to him and disapproves tomfoolery, as shown when Slippy gets himself into trouble or he breaks formation, or when Falco exceeds his speed. After retiring from active duty in Adventures, Peppy maintained his wise, senior persona, but also due to his age, he becomes more absent-minded and falling asleep in the main menu until the player wakes him up with the selection.
Starting with Assault, Peppy took a more secondary command position to go with his advisory role after Krystal took his place as the fourth pilot and directing orders to the active team. Within some points in the game, Peppy shows himself to be just as reckless, if not more than Falco is, usually putting himself in life threatening situations, as shown when he flies in his Arwing to save General Pepper while hurting himself, after Fox was forced to shoot down the general, and another time when he flies the Great Fox into a powerful shield blocking the entrance to the Aparoid Homeworld, sacrificing himself and almost getting himself killed.
In the Starlink: Battle for Atlas crossover, it has been shown that Peppy prefers to stay focused on the main task ahead of them and brush aside sub-missions, which is shown when the team enters the Atlas Star System to hunt down Wolf and see the Equinox's pilots in need of help to fight off the members of the Forgotten Legion. Fox wishes to assist them, but Peppy declines to do this and only wants to take down Wolf, but Fox, Falco, and Slippy don't listen and fly off to help the pilots anyway. Peppy ends up wishing he retired on Corneria, and follows them reluctantly.
Appearance[]
Although Peppy's last name would suggest that he is a hare, he is actually a rabbit. He has long ears, large incisors, and a country accent that seems to mellow out in each game as he gets older. In all games, he wears a long trench coat with a long collar, with a flight suit similar to Fox McCloud, Falco Lombardi and Slippy Toad's, except that it is red in color. Not counting his ears, he's of average height, being about as tall as Fox, and of stocky build, much like Slippy. In later games, he grows a white mustache and wears glasses. Peppy's original character artwork had brown fur in the original "Star Fox" as well as the Nintendo Power comics, but not in the actual video game, where he appears grey, while in Star Fox 2, his fur is brown like in the artwork. From "Star Fox 64" to "Star Fox 64 3D", Peppy's fur changes color: in both "Star Fox 64" and its remake, the fur on the sides of his head is in a different shade of brown and his muzzle becomes grey, while in "Star Fox Adventures" and "Star Fox Assault", he's grey-furred and his muzzle becomes dark yellow, and in "Star Fox Command", his fur is completely grey. His brown fur returns as of "Zero", likely as a reference to his original, realistic character artwork, and his ears are slightly shorter. This design is updated in "Starlink: Battle for Atlas", where he has visible whiskers like real-life rabbits, and his mouth has visible teeth outside of his buck teeth.
History[]
Pre-Star Fox Years[]
Originally, Peppy had served within the Cornerian Army alongside James McCloud under orders from General Pepper, before they pull out to become one of the founding members of a freelance organization of mercenaries for hire, with the only intent of serving justice and freedom with the aid of their wingmate, Pigma Dengar. Outside his line of duty, Peppy had a daughter named Lucy through his late wife Vivian. Five years since the disgraced chief scientist Dr. Andross was exiled, Peppy, James, and Pigma were summoned by Pepper to make an investigation of strange activities from the planet Venom on the opposite end of the Lylat System. Once they arrived, James and Peppy learned too late that Andross's forces were waiting for them and the team was ambushed. It was at this moment that Pigma Dengar betrayed the team by taking them to Andross to have them imprisoned. James was supposedly killed, but Peppy learned the tricks about the Androssian ways and narrowly escaped captivity and returned home safely to inform James' son Fox about his father's final fate. Peppy becomes a second father to Fox and they would reform a new Star Fox team.
Star Fox[]
Peppy's debut in the Star Fox series was marked in "Star Fox". His famous advisory role began here as well, as he gave advice on how to perform certain maneuvers. In contrast to later games, he has no established connection to Fox's father or given any seniority traits which were introduced later.
Star Fox 64[]
After a few years since the loss of James, Peppy co-founded the new Star Fox team consisting of the more honest and loyal members; himself, Fox, Slippy, and Falco. Despite Peppy being the most experienced and was once a member of the original team, he turned the leadership role down in favor of Fox and they worked to finish what he and James started, settling for the role of advisor for his young teammates. Peppy will consistently give advice to Fox, point out a boss's weakness to turn the tide, and will call out the younger teammates if they get too reckless in battle.
Occasionally the team would run into the rival mercenary group known as Star Wolf, led by Wolf O'Donnell and it consisting of Leon Powalski, Andrew Oikonny, and a former member of the original Star Fox team, Pigma Dengar. Peppy is the consistent target of his former colleague, who remorselessly attacks him and condescendingly refers him as "old pal". During the Venom II Route, Star Fox runs into Star Wolf again and Peppy is able to get back at Pigma for betraying him and James. Fox would then tell everyone to stay on the surface while he fights Andross. A horrified Peppy tries to object, but Fox goes in anyway. Later, after Fox was triumphantly able to escape the exploding base alongside James, who disappears upon exiting, Peppy was proud of him and relieved that he was okay. Once he sees Fox looking around space for something, he asks what was wrong, but Fox assures him that everything's fine and the team returns home and received their pay from General Pepper.
Star Fox Adventures[]
Four years pass since the events of Farewell, Beloved Falco, Peppy has retired as a pilot due to his age and became an adviser and navigator within the deteriorating Great Fox, alongside ROB (and at this time, Slippy). He will spend time studying Saurian Maps and the planet's history plays a minor, but important role. After Fox is able to save Sauria from total destruction, Peppy will by happy to receive the monetary reward since the Great Fox really needed the repairs and remembers that he received a message from a young lady named Krystal in time for her arrival on the bridge to thank Fox personally and later joins the team. Peppy is the only member to not poke any fun at Fox for having a crush on her.
Star Fox Assault[]
With Krystal having officially joined the Star Fox team, Peppy fully retires from active flight duty, but he chooses to stay with the team and acts as the team's strategist as well as the Great Fox's pilot. With Pepper's orders to stop a rebellion perpetuated by Andrew Oikonny, he and the rest of the crew flew into the space just above Fortuna to fight Oikonny's forces. He launches the team's Arwings and upon catching up to Oikonny on the planet's surface, Peppy warns they can't tell what a cornered beast might do next. Once it was destroyed by an Aparoid. Peppy recognized the monster right away and once it was destroyed, he tells Fox to retrieve its Core Memory.
After Beltino Toad and General Pepper recount the history of the Aparoids, they find themselves responding to a distress signal coming from an outpost on the planet Katina. Fox went on foot for a while and Peppy sends him a Landmaster tank to give him an edge in battle. After many Aparoids are destroyed, Aparoid Hatchers began to appear and Peppy warns Fox that those hatchers will spawn more Aparoids. After all the hatchers are destroyed, a gigantic Aparoid appeared, which Fox promptly destroyed. Fox attempts to retrieve the Core Memory, only for the distress signal to turn off and Pigma Dengar appearing to snag it. Peppy calls the team back and pursued Pigma to the Sargasso Space Hideout.
Peppy curses Pigma for going to such a place and commands the team to take control of the hideout, and once the hideout was revealed to be under the ownership of the Star Wolf Team, which Peppy tells Fox that he needs to fight them and a comment from Star Wolf's newcomer Panther Caroso reveals that Pigma went to Fichina.
Peppy tells the team that even though Fichina would normally be blanketed in a perpetual blizzard, a climate control center made habitability possible. He informs them that because Pigma had shut down the center, the blizzard had restarted, reducing visibility. He sends Fox on the surface in a Landmaster and tells him to destroy the generators of the device's defense shield. After Falco rescued Fox from being ambushed by the haywire sentry robots and wing riding for some time, Peppy sends Fox the Arwing. Peppy told the team that the Aparoids had corrupted the device and Fox would need to blast it to prevent an explosion. Falco was surprised that the Apariods were actually capable of controlling machines, which Peppy replies that those with weak wills easily succumb to corruption, which reminds Fox of his father.
The team follows Pigma to the Asteroid Belt where it was discovered that Pigma had been building a base, which Peppy wasn't surprised since Pigma would never pass up a trick. Even while he was shocked that Pigma had been badly infected by the Aparoids and fused into a giant Aparoid weapon, Peppy tells Fox to evade the devastating laser that Aparoid Pigma used and the monstrous machine was soon destroyed, allowing Fox to take back the stolen Core Memory and send it to the general, who then tells them to head to the Aparoid Homeworld. However, Krystal received a telepathic message from Sauria, commenting that she is hearing cries of agony. Peppy monitored the fight in the skies with Slippy and Falco while Krystal and Fox fought on the ground.
Once the team hears that Corneria had suffered an invasion and the army having been decimated while they were away, Peppy forces the team to go there immediately. He tells Fox to destroy a series of radar jammers so the team will have an easier time targeting their enemies. Peppy then sends the Arwing to Fox after the jammers were taken out, but as Fox arrived, the Aparoids quickly destroyed the Arwing and surrounded him, only to be saved by Wolf and his team. Eventually, Peppy saw the general's flagship on the horizon, and discovered that Pepper was infected by the Aparoids. Peppy believes that Fox could end this battle by destroying only the machine parts without hurting Pepper too much, and by the time the ship fell, Peppy flew in an Arwing and uses it to catch the ship before it hit the ground, which had him greatly injured from the impact, unsure if he would have survived but either way, his duty is done.
With Pepper incapacitated, Beltino would take his place for the remainder of the war and Peppy led the invasion to the Aparoid Homeworld. Before they left, the Beltino Orbital Gate they were using to warp there was attacked by Aparoids, but with the help from the Star Wolf team, they were quickly expelled allowing them to enter the gate and arrived on the Aparoid Homeworld and Peppy led the Corneria forces to the homeworld.
Peppy sent Fox and Krystal on a ground mission in a floating city above the entrance to the lair of the Aparoid Queen. Peppy tells Fox that the Cornerian Army was losing the fight at a fast pace and lost twenty percent of the fleet after Fox destroyed the first Aparoid Hatcher. Once all of the hatchers are destroyed, the team are about to enter, only to be denied entry when a new shield formed over the entrance.
Peppy appeared in the skies above the city, with the Great Fox being almost covered entirely by Aparoids, and despite ROB telling him that the ship would not take anymore damage, Peppy replied that it didn't matter at this point and destroyed the entire city with the lasers and told the team that he will crash the ship into the shields, despite the distressed pleas of the team not to do so. Peppy flies the mothership into the shield and the team flew through the broken shield before it regenerated and the Great Fox ends up destroyed. Peppy's voice was used as one of the voice imitations used by the Aparoid Queen to torment the team, which almost worked until Wolf's advice rings in, allowing them to resist it.
With the death of the Aparoid Queen, the Aparoid Homeworld was destroyed, and just as the team was about to mourn their losses despite the victory, Slippy saw that Peppy and ROB survived due to them using the bridge of the Great Fox as an escape pod to narrowly cheat death, and he promised that he is finally going to retire and Fox thanks everyone for their support.
Star Fox Command[]
During the Anglar Blitz, General Pepper had fallen ill and was confined to his sickbed, so at his request it was his old friend Peppy who he elected to replace him as the commander-in-chief of the Cornerian Army. General Peppy also entrusted his daughter Lucy Hare, who was teaching astrophysics at Fichina, to remain on Corneria and protect their homeworld in his place while Peppy flew to join up with his old Star Fox team. Instead of a flagship akin to the one piloted by General Pepper, Peppy piloted his own Arwing on the battlefield, which resembled the Aparoid Invasion model. Following the defeat of the Anglar armies and their Emperor, the successful Cornerians threw a celebration which Peppy and Lucy attended but slipped away from to fondly remember their lost wife and mother, Vivian.
Whenever Peppy is a selectable pilot for gameplay, he will fly an Arwing identical to the ones used in the Aparoid Invasion era, while the background music plays a rendition of the "Hit the Planet" cutscene in Assault.
Star Fox Zero[]
Peppy returns in "Star Fox Zero", still giving advice and gameplay hints like before. Peppy appears in the opening cinema where James apparently sacrificed himself in order to let Peppy make an escape, evident when Peppy's critically damaged Arwing escapes laser from from several Harlock-class Frigates. Unlike in Star Fox 64, Yaru de Pon doesn't appear in Training Mode, and Peppy takes his place, explaining Fox the controls of the game. He is the focal point of the mission on Titania where his Arwing has crashed into a sandpit and become a captive of the Scrapworm, identical to when Slippy was a captive of Goras in Star Fox 64. He is also the playable character in the Salvadora secret level where it's revealed that he managed to recover on his own and single-handedly takes on the heavily armed battleship. Performing the Barrel Roll will cause him to shout "Barrel Roll" every time. In the trailer, Peppy is seen driving a Landmaster, where the cockpit has a photograph of himself and his army comrades and friends, James and Pepper, but the photograph appears to be torn off in the right corner which is likely where Pigma would have been had it not been for his treason.
Barrel Roll[]
Peppy Hare is the originator of the insanely popular quote "Do a barrel roll (Z or R twice)". The quote was first said in Star Fox 64, where he advised Fox that to easily dodge enemy fire, you must "Do a barrel roll!". It can almost be considered a minor meme, rivaling that of popular quotes from major movies such as 300. Nintendo referenced it in Star Fox Zero where the player can access gain access to a secret level where they can play as Peppy and each time they do a barrel roll, Peppy will utter his famous quote.
Super Smash Bros[]
In the GameCube title Super Smash Bros. Melee, Peppy made a minor cameo appearance on the Corneria stage, where he would occasionally come near the stage in his Arwing and shoot either you or your opponents. In Adventure Mode, you'd hear him talk, explaining that he's come to save Fox McCloud in battle. There is also an easter egg conversation that can be triggered on Corneria with Fox or Falco taunting with him joining in. This remains in the later iterations of the series with the Corneria stage.
He was also one of the 293 (296 in Japan) trophies in the game, along with his fellow team members. Peppy also appeared in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, taking a role as a trophy and a cameo on the Lylat Cruise stage, during an Easter Egg conversation.
He returns to make an appearance in the Orbital Gate Assault stage in another Easter Egg conversation, though this one requires the players to hold R before a match on the stage instead of taunting.
Trivia[]
- Considering the many similarities between Star Fox and Star Wars, Peppy's personality is like Obi-Wan's, just like how Fox McCloud's is like Luke Skywalker's and Falco Lombardi's is like Han Solo's. Like Obi-Wan, Peppy is wise, caring and fatherly and survived an incident which Fox's father apparently did not survive, similar to Obi-Wan surviving the Jedi order's fall. His quote, "I've got a bad feeling about this, Fox", is a Star Wars reference as well.
- Peppy makes an appearance in Steel Diver: Sub Wars as one of the possible crewmates.
[]
| Characters in Star Fox | |
|---|---|
| Star Fox | Fox McCloud • Falco Lombardi • Slippy Toad • Peppy Hare • Krystal • Fay • Miyu • ROB 64 |
| Star Wolf | Wolf O'Donnell • Leon Powalski • Pigma Dengar • Andrew Oikonny • Panther Caroso • Algy |
| Other | Andross • General Pepper • Bill • Katt • James McCloud • Tricky • General Scales • Beltino Toad • Aparoid Queen • Dash Bowman • Amanda Toad • Lucy Hare • Anglar Emperor • Grippy Toad |