Buckaroo Banzai Character Profiles (DVD Special Edition Files)

Some of the content below, like the Buckaroo Banzai information, is split into a Buckaroo Banzai Personal Profiles section of the special features. Some of the content below was edited or changed from what appeared on the DVD.

BUCKAROO BANZAI (Primary) - First and foremost an extraordinary neurosurgeon, Dr. Banzai became dissatisfied with a life devoted exclusively to medicine and perfected a wide range of skills. It was quite by chance that he became involved in scientific investigation, first studying the psychology of crime. Although he was born in London while his parents were visiting England, he spent his early days on the vast ranges of Colorado and Arizona and was taught how to ride and shoot by the redskinned Sioux warriors, who strangely seemed to enjoy showing an Amerasian boy their tricks. Until he was fourteen he went to school in Denver and later continued his education in Massachusetts, Texas and England, taking his medical degree from Harvard. In this way a love of travel and the craving for excitement and danger were stimulated in him from childhood.

He later studied bujitsu and particle physics. His skill with a sixgun was reputed to eclipse that of Wyatt Earp. He spoke a dozen languages and wrote songs in all of them. His band, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, was one of the most popular, hard rocking bar bands in east Texas, though its members were not professional musicians at all but rather cartographers and botanists, linguists and propellant engineers, an entomologist and an epidemiologist. All of these experts in the oddest fields of endeavor were drawn to Buckaroo, and all of them came and went like the wind on the prairie (Rawhide, Reno, the Swede, Perfect Tommy, Big Norse, Red River Daddy, the Seminole Kid and Pecos to name but a few).

BUCKAROO BANZAI (Background) - Despite a Japanese surname and upbringing, his true heritage can be traced to Mongolia (home to the aggressive Asiatics who terrorized Europe from the 4th to 17th centuries). This Mongolian lineage is also shared by Hanoi Xan, whose savage forebears became locked in a generations-long blood feud with those of B. Banzai (a conflict which continues to this day).

BUCKAROO BANZAI (Eastern) - The principles by which B. Banzai lives are known as the Five Stresses, the Four Beauties and the Three Loves. Those things to be stressed are decorum, courtesy, public health, discipline and morals. The Four Beauties are the beauties of mind, language, behavior and environment. The Three Loves are love of others, love of justice and love of freedom.

BUCKAROO BANZAI (Musician) - Buckaroo's skilled musicianship began at an early age while visiting the house of a taikomochi, an expert player of drum, engaged by Buckaroo's father to teach him in the ways of that instrument. (The young musical prodigy had already mastered the koto [harp], samisen [banjo], gekkin [guitar] and nigenkin [a two stringed musical instrument]).

RENO NEVADA - An acclaimed author whose body of work approaches nearly one hundred volumes, Reno acts as official chronicler of the adventures of Buckaroo Banzai and the Hong Kong Cavaliers. Novels such as "Bastardy Proved A Spur" and "Across the Eigth Dimension" (recently re-released by Pocket Books) have charmed and teased the world with a glimpse into the lives of this mysterious and enigmatic group. Originally from Jacksonville, Florida, he became dissatisfied with his high-powered position at an influential think-tank in Washington, DC. It was during a lunch hour that Buckaroo Banzai showed up unannounced at his office and offered him a fellowship at the Banzai Institute. Without hesitation, Reno packed his bags, grabbed his saxophone and has never returned. Finally recovered from a long-term illness, he plans to return to writing and has revealed that several new Buckaroo Banzai adventures are indeed on the slate.

NEW JERSEY (AKA Sidney Zwibel) - First met Bucakroo at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons, sharing classes in histology and enzymology. Much of New Jersey's wardrobe is drawn from his Grandfather's silent-movie era costumes, a proud homage to his forebear's heyday as the star of black and white cowboy serials such as "The Lone Horseman" and "The Canyon of Missing Men."

DR. EMILIO LIZARDO - A much lauded physics professor at Princeton in the 30's, Lizardo broke ground with his pioneering work in magnetic particle acceleration. Aided by his colleague, Professor Tochi Hikita, they created a crude Oscillation Overthruster and conducted an intra-dimensional experiment that produced mixed results - while Lizardo did partially enter (and thus prove the existence of) the Eigth Dimension, the experience left him mad. His violent lunacy eventually led to his confinement in a home for the criminally insane. It was later discovered that his mind had been violated by the consciousness of Lord John Whorfin, the violent leader of alien dissidents from Planet 10. In the scientific community, Dr. Lizardo's descent into madness has been called "an incalculable loss."

LORD JOHN WHORFIN - A bloodthirsty warlord who was overthrown by the freedom-loving Adders on Planet 10 and exiled with his followers to eternal imprisonment in the 8th Dimension. They were freed in 1938 when Dr. Emilio Lizardo prematurely attempted to pass through solid matter and opened a temporary gateway through which they could enter our world at Grover's Mills, New Jersey. Whorfin himself took over the body of Dr. Lizardo, who fled the site of the experiment and went on a feverish crime spree. Whorfin's followers assumed human identities and founded Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems, a defense plant which served as a front for their efforts to construct a ship to return them to their home planet. In the years since his defeat at the hands of Buckaroo Banzai, Whorfin has reportedly been sighted, but no credible witnessess have stepped forward and these stories (most likely hoaxes) have yet to be confirmed.

RAWHIDE - Originally from the western United States, this man of truly simple tastes owns no more than he can carry. In addition to being a top flight scientist, self-taught pianist and biochemist by training, he is rumored to have once been a minor league baseball player and is still fond of the sport. As an amateur folklorist and naturalist, he spent considerable time in La Plata and indeed traveled the world before meeting Buckaroo (he often recalls time spent riding horseback through Arabic deserts with 'Touaregs' (desert riders)). One ex-wife is known of, while the existence of dependents has yet to be substantiated. His most talked-about belief: "The study of crime is the study of mankind in it's truest form."

PENNY PRIDDY - At a very early age, Penny's parents and identical twin sister were killed in the fire that claimed their home. Taken in by distant relatives from Wyoming, Penny soon became a restless, troubled youth who felt an incredible sense of unbalance in her life. She fled from home during her early teens and entered into a brief career as a religieuse at a convent on the eastern seaboard. Leading a nomadic existence from town to town and job to job, her life took a turn for the unexpected upon meeting Buckaroo Banzai and learning of her sister's true fate (as the wife of B. Banzai - a marriage cut short by her murder at the hand of Hanoi Xan). Tragically, history repeated itself in the most dire fashion, for soon after Penny and Buckaroo were wed in 1986, Xan also saw fit to take her life. Many now speculate that Xan is more interested in denying B. Banzai any heirs than in killing the man himself - surely a fate worse than death.

PERFECT TOMMY - An enigma. Little is known of his background although, despite his considerable contributions to the fields of chemistry and astronomy, it is believed that he received no more than a grade school education in the south. He changes his mind as often as his hair color, and, upon his induction into the Hong Kong Cavaliers (at a surprisingly young age), was nicknamed by Buckaroo "Knight of the Lesser Boulevards." He has been in trouble with the law on several continents and once fled prosecution in Cairo by posing as a Belgian and joining the Foreign Legion. It was his design for the Jet Car's suspension that convinced Buckaroo that the promise of the Oscillation Overthruster might at last be realized.

PINKY CARRUTHERS - Auxiliary guitarist for the Hong Kong Cavaliers, he also serves as Banzai Institute chief of security. Famous for his wide variety of pink attire, Pinky is also known as the Keeper of the 47,000 Unknown Facts.

JOHN PARKER, the Adder emmissary to Earth, is a noble creature to whom the world owes a great deal. A skilled musician and fluent in Spanish (certain powerful Mexican radio stations are occasionally received on Planet 10), Parker assumed the guise of a dreadlocked Rastafarian for his mission to Earth (when the Planet 10 Fathership arrived at this planet, they scanned the island of Jamaica, leaving the Adders with the false impression that all Earthlings look like Rastafarians). His role in helping B. Banzai defeat Lord John Worfin aided his career move from diplomat to a much- respected politician on Planet 10.

LO PEP - Operating primarily out of New York and Hong Kong, Lo Pep is Hanoi Xan's representative for worldwide business affairs and chief financial officer of World Capital Lending. Before anything goes to Xan, it goes through Lo Pep. Before brokering a deal with the Pivot of Mystery himself, Pep is likely the first person you'll see. Once Xan has gotten what he wants out of the arrangement, Pep is also the last person you'll see - ever.

HANOI XAN (AKA The Scourge of Burma, The Spawn of Hell, The Face That is No Face) - Perhaps the most evil man - nay, force - the world has ever known, Xan is the Supreme Commander of the Legion of Death and the boss of The World Crime League. Operating out of his stronghold in Sabah (a relic city of caves hacked out of mountainous jungle), he surrounds himself with brignads and assassins from every corner of the world. Murder is considered a discipline, and Xan teaches those around him to 'walk in the hidden ways.' Although it cannot be proven, it is known by Interpol that he was responsible for the death of B. Banzai's parents and has sworn to murder Banzai himself and end the centuries-old blood feud that began with their Mongolian ancestors long ago.

LECTROIDS

Lectroids desire only one thing for both body and spirit - power. Whether it be electrical charges through their spine or the sweet taste of a dry cell battery, they crave current. Socially speaking, the Lectroid does not thirst for knowledge or beauty, has no record of intellectual attainment, has never produced a single, notable figure in any area of endeavor, save one: the field of battle. Their attitude towards such things as history and culture, even their own (which they do not bother chronicling), is one of the utmost indifference. All that matters in their scheme is the lust for power and a single- minded will to possess a thing by destroying it.

Insofar as their personal habits, the Lectroid is filthy by preference, it being common for them to bathe but twice in a lifetime (at birth and after their wedding night). It is evidently a belief of theirs that washing shortens one's life and is 'unmanly.'

By and large carnivorous, they are wont to supplement their intake of smoked meats with large doses of electrical current, although the years on our planet had seen them grow increasingly on what is called 'junk food,' many of them foregoing their traditional diet entirely in favor of sweet cakes and candy bars in bright cellophane.

TOICHI HIKITA - The world's preeminent authority on electromagnetic particle acceleration, he was both student and collage to the esteemed Professor Emilio Lizardo at Princeton University during the 30's. After a terrible extra-dimensional accident claimed the sanity of Lizardo, Hikita continued his mentor's research and developed the first working model of the Oscillation Overthruster in 1955. Tragedy struck again when another test accident destroyed his equipment and claimed the life of his partner, Masado Banzai and his wife, Sandra Willoughby. They left behind a five-year old son, Buckaroo, whom Hikita raised as his own. An investigation into the accident revealed evidence of sabotage, in the form of an explosive device tied to the ignition system of the original Jet Car. Although it has yet to be proven, all evidence points to the handiwork of Hanoi Xan.