Pete White | |
---|---|
The Venture Bros. character | |
First appearance |
"The Terrible Secret of Turtle Bay" |
Last appearance |
"Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart" |
Voiced by |
Christopher McCulloch |
Information | |
Full name | Peter "Pete" White |
Aliases |
Casper The Pink Phantom The Pink Pilgrim The White One White Leader |
Occupation |
Computer technician Music producer (formerly) University radio DJ (formerly) Game show host (formerly) |
Notable Characteristics |
Albinism Computer skills Pink shirt |
Current Alliances |
Master Billy Quizboy Team Venture Venture Techno Industries |
Prior Alliances |
Quizboys Conjectural Technologies |
Enemies |
Augustus St. Cloud Henchman Zero (deceased) Mike Sorayama (deceased) |
Peter "Pete" White is a major reoccurring character on on The Venture Bros. He is a computer scientist and the co-founder of Conjectural Technologies, along with Billy Quizboy. He is voiced by Christopher McCulloch.
Appearance
Pete White is a tall, thin handsome albino, with pale, pink skin, white hair concealing half of his face, white eyebrows, and dark red eyes. He most often wears a pink shirt with a white jacket overtop it, and pink pants. He is often seen wearing sunglasses and using a parasol to protect himself from the sun while outside.
During his time in college, White suffered from bad facial acne, and wore his hair longer. During his time as a quiz show host, White hid his albinoism through makeup and a black wig, making him appear tanned but otherwise the same. When acting as his alter-ego "The Pink Pilgrim", White dresses in a pink 17th-century style English pilgrim outfit.
Personality
Pete is intelligent but lazy, unambitious, self-absorbed, but extremely loyal to his friends. Pete also has a tendency towards some mean spirited jokes as well as a passive aggressive nature. He is quite sarcastic and often snide, but this seems mostly due to his belief that he is a "freak", as he puts it, from being an albino. His lazy and sarcastic nature often leads to him being half-hearted in his work. This attitude sometimes puts him at odds with the more energetic Billy Quizboy. White is usually shown goofing off rather than doing actual work, such as playing video games or fooling around with scientific equipment.
On occasion, characters refer to him as "the gay albino", most likely because of demeanor and choice of clothing However, it is shown this annoys him, stating he is not gay, which is backed up by his recurring open interest in females. He has shown sexual interests in women such as Dr. Girlfriend, has fantasies about the mother from Growing Pains, and hooks up with the hired prostitutes during Hank and Dean's prom night. Additionally, White states his seemingly effeminate fashion is not by choice because his pink shirt is considered his "lucky shirt", and was red when he originally bought it.
Character History
His first known association with the Ventures came at State University which he attended with Dr. Venture, Baron Werner Ünderbheit and The Monarch, and where he hosted a New Wave radio show called "The White Room". Pete's actual field of study is never referenced, nor is it mentioned if he graduated, though it is mentioned he flunked Professor Impossible's class.
After college, White and Master Billy Quizboy met through unknown circumstances and worked together on a game show, called QuizBoys in which Pete hosted and Billy participated, with Pete using makeup and a black wig to hide his albinism. Pete would rig the game show in order to allow Billy to easily cheat to win. After they were caught and subsequently fired, White revealed to Billy that he is an albino and the two of them left to find new lives. They attempt to work for Rusty Venture, but he rejects them. White and Billy then go on the underground quiz circuit, but Pete would squander all of their earnings. One day, he enters Billy into another competition, not realizing it is a dog-fighting ring, and Billy loses an eye and a hand as a result. Billy upset with Pete over this, leaves him, and Pete would end up living in a trailer near the Venture Compound in a disheveled state. Pete would be reunited with Billy after Brock left him together with his memories of their earlier time together erased by the OSI. They would form an agreement to make sure Billy would never regain his memories of his time as a quizboy and OSI agent. Anytime Billy regains his memories, Pete would knock him unconscious and send him back to Brock and Dr. Venture for them to be erased again. They then form a company called Conjectural Technologies dedicated to science and inventions. Despite this, the two are rarely seen doing any actual work, but they do assist Rusty and his family many times, such as operating on Dean Venture's testicular torsion, or fixing and using Jonas Venture's Shrink ray, and using his music skills to be the DJ at Hank and Dean's prom.
Billy's skill as a surgeon attracted the attention of The Investors, who bought stock in Conjectural Technologies for $10,000,000. This money was payment for the future services of Billy as a surgeon, although Pete and Billy didn't know it at the time as Pete spent most of it on the Robobo robot. They stood the risk of losing this money to the Monarch but by Guild law the Monarch was forced to give it back after Dr. Venture rescued Hank before the Monarch could "return" him.
He and Billy have worked their ways deeply into Doc and Dean's psyches, taking on the roles of Thanatos and Eros (respectively) in Doc's subconscious and The White One and Giant Boy Detective in Dean's fantasy. They frequently argue over whom is the protagonist and who is the sidekick, resulting in them both being kidnapped in Any Which Way But Zeus.
By the fifth season, Pete becomes a super hero in his own right called The Pink Pilgrim, as his costume is a pink 17th-century style English pilgrim outfit. He and Billy form a superhero duo with the Robobo robot as their sidekick, and battles with Augustus St. Cloud, him and Billy's assigned nemesis. During one of their battles on Spanakos in the episode Spanakopita!, Pete is almost burned to death when he was captured by Augustus, but was freed by St. Cloud's henchman, Pei Wie, an act Pete attributes to the 'code of the albino', a bond even stronger than Pei Wie has for his master.
In Season 6, after an encounter with their archenemy Augustus St. Cloud ends up costing them their company, Pete and Billy are soon told by the latter that he has sold their company to VenTech Tower. As a result, the two move to New York to become Thaddeus Venture's personal staff and chief inventors. Upon relocating, Pete and Billy moved into the Brownstone rented out by the latter's mother and the former Team Venture members Colonel Gentleman, Kano and The Action Man. Billy and Pete come up with all kinds of inventions that turn out to be useless or dangerous such as the God Gas. However, they achieve a breakthrough in inventing something useful and successful with the Teleporters.
When strange things begin to happen at VenTech Tower during the The Venture Bros. & The Curse of the Haunted Problem in season 7, Rusty tasks Pete to investigate. Pete hacks into the building's database, triggering a major and negative reaction that scares him, Billy, and Rusty, and traps Pete in the lab, putting him in a deranged state. Pete manages to escape the lab, and with an axe, attacks the PROBLEM machine, causing Jonas Venture to react by trying to uproot the building and knocking Pete unconscious.
In the The Bellicose Proxy, he and Billy are arched by Augustus St. Cloud again and were dosed with laughing gas outside of the Ventech Tower.
In Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart, he and Billy assist Rusty with the launch of the Helper Pod. Pete also agrees with Billy that the pods are not ready for launch, but Rusty ignores their advice and sends him and Billy to work all night on fixing it's problem. They are not seen again for the rest of the film but due to the venture family moving back to their old spot in the Rocky Mountains, it's possible that Pete and Billy are either still or quit working for Rusty.
Relationships With Other Characters
Billy Quizboy
Pete is Billy's best friend, life partner, and are the co-founders, and sole employees, of Conjectural Technologies, which they run out of an old trailer which is also their home. They also are a superhero duo and go on adventures together. Despite their lifelong attachment to each other, their relationship can be seen as love/hate considering they have had major falling out and separations with each other throughout the series, only to find themselves back together. Nearly all of Billy's misfortunes in his life such as being banned from the quiz show circuit and losing his arm and eye are Pete's fault, but because of the OSI mind wipes, Billy will never remember as it would surely end their friendship if he did. Despite that, their combined high intelligence and super-science skills complement each other, but it appears as if White bosses Billy around, forcing Billy to do housework and company-related tasks while he plays video games (Billy retaliates by passive-aggressively leaving post-it notes reminding Pete of what he should do). The two are considered co-heads of their business, although people often incorrectly assume one works FOR the other, which often causes them to argue. In tune with the series tone of failure, the two tend to be bumbling, broke, inept, failures in a similar vein to Dr. Venture. Like Rusty, most of their ideas and inventions tend to breakdown and backfire.
Dr. Venture
Dr. Venture and Pete White first met in college in the early eighties. In The Silent Partners he even states that Rusty is his best friend, for mainly this reason. However, Dr. Venture doesn't seem to value their friendship as much, mostly using White and Billy for favors, and wouldn't even give them jobs in The Invisible Hand of Fate.
Though Rusty will not admit it, Pete is one of the real few friends that he actually has. The two are often showing enjoying each other's company, such as playing games, having discussions or playing pranks on others (frequently Billy).
In Maybe No Go, he and Billy move to New York after their company was taken over by Augustus St. Cloud for one penny which he in turn sold to Ven-Tech Industries for a considerable profit. Pete is now part of Dr. Venture's personal staff and works as one his chief inventors.
Episode Appearances
Season 1
- The Terrible Secret of Turtle Bay (pilot)
- Tag Sale - You're It!
- Ice Station - Impossible!
- Are You There God? It's Me, Dean
- Past Tense
- A Very Venture Christmas
Season 2
- Powerless in the Face of Death
- Escape to the House of Mummies Part II
- Showdown at Cremation Creek (Part II) (as The White Oracle)
Season 3
- The Doctor is Sin
- The Invisible Hand of Fate
- The Buddy System
- What Goes Down, Must Come Up
- Now Museum - Now You Don't!
- ORB
Season 4
- Handsome Ransom
- Pinstripes & Poltergeists
- The Diving Bell Vs. The Butter-Glider
- Any Which Way But Zeus
- Assisted Suicide (as Thanatos)
- The Silent Partners
- Operation: P.R.O.M.
- From the Ladle to the Grave: The Shallow Gravy Story
Season 5
Season 6
- All This and Gargantua-2 (epilogue only)
- Maybe No Go
- Faking Miracles
- Rapacity in Blue
- Tanks for Nuthin'
Season 7
- The Venture Bros. & The Curse of the Haunted Problem
- Arrears in Science
- The Bellicose Proxy
- The Unicorn in Captivity
Movie
Christmas Songs
Trivia
- White's susceptibility to sunlight as an albino is often inconsistent during his various appearances. By his own admission, he "can't go to the beach without exploding" and has at times been seen using a parasol to protect himself from the sun when out in public. In Spanakopita!, White was momentarily exposed to morning sunlight, which caused his hair to spontaneously combust until he moved back into the shade. Just as frequently however, White will often appear in full daylight with no protection whatsoever, with no apparant drawbacks.
- A photo of him seen in Spring Break 1994 (which is greatly at odds with his time at State University in the early 80s) shows him with somewhat-tanned skin, adding to the inconsistency.