Characters / A Fistful of Dollars

Joe

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Silvanito

Portrayed by: Jose Calvo

Voiced by: Luigi Pavese (Italian), Jack Curtis (English)

• Cool Old Guy: Guns down the last of the Rojos with a rifle.
• Defiant Captive: Keeps his mouth shut while under torture from the Rojos. The undertaker cheerfully points out that he's a stubborn old man who'll die before he talks.
• Expy: Of Gonji, the old man who reluctantly gives Sanjuro room and board.
• Older Sidekick: Accompanies Joe on some of his missions, despite thinking the young man's plan to be crazy.
• Rage Breaking Point: He normally voices mere annoyance with certain parts of Joe's gambit at worst, but he protests vehemently when he learns what Joe plans to do with the bodies of the Mexican soldiers they brought to the cemetery. He takes the sanctity of the dead so seriously, he raises his voice for the first time in the film when Joe explains how he'll be using those two bodies.
  Silvanito: I'm alive, and I want to remain with the living, understand? And when I'm dead, I want to remain with the dead, and I would be unhappy if somebody living forces me to remain with the living! I hope that's clear! And also, I don't like the idea that you placed those bodies there—the man we buried in that grave is the only one who ever died of pneumonia in this cursed town!
• Straight Man: He considers himself to be more sensible than Joe.

Ramon Rojo

Portrayed by: Gian Maria Volontè (as John Wells)

Voiced by: Nando Gazzolo (Italian), Bernie Grant (English)

He is a member of the Rojo gang - a group of illegal rum-runners controlling a small town called San Miguel - being the middle-eldest. He and his brothers are at war with the Baxter family.

• Adaptational Nice Guy: Just barely, but in the novelization, it is he who offers to let Joe leave with his life if he would just tell him where Marisol is.
• Alliterative Name: Ramon Rojo.
• Arch-Enemy: He took Marisol away from her desperate husband, and he later becomes this to Joe for beating him and threatening Silvanito.
• Ax-Crazy: He's an enthusiast for violence and destruction.
• Bandito: A classic example, but very smart.
• Big Bad: The main antagonist.
• Blood Knight: Definitely.
• Cigar-Fuse Lighting: He uses a cigar to light the fuse on the dynamite that blows up the wall around the Baxter house.
• Cold Sniper: Shown to be able to shoot a mounted soldier more than halfway across the river.
• Composite Character: Of Unosuke and Tokuemon. Like the former, he is a marksman who serves as the muscle for his gang. Like the latter, he holds a desperate man's wife captive.
• Conspicuous Gloves: He wears a single fingerless glove on his gun hand.
• Disproportionate Retribution: He makes Marisol his whore just because he thinks her husband owes him on account of a past gambling incident.
• Dragon-in-Chief: He serves as this to his elder brother Miguel. Miguel is the Don of the family, but Ramon is a much more dangerous fighter, and is the true power of the family.
• The Dreaded: Like his counterpart.
• Even Evil Has Standards: When Esteban shoots Consuela Baxter, he stops grinning and looks more than a little shocked.
• Evil Genius: He's the only one of the villains who has a clue about Joe, and seems to be the Rojos' planner as well.
• Faux Affably Evil: Acts friendly, but is rotten to the core.
• For the Evulz: This is the only reason in him. He is just an inhuman bastard who enjoys killing and robbing.
• Freudian Trio: Of the Rojos, he's the Ego: violent and crazy, but cunning and calculating.
• Gatling Good: His first scene involves mowing down a company of Mexican soldiers.
• The Heavy: He's the real force of the Rojos.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: He somehow manages to always shoot his targets right through the heart with his rifle.
• Instant Death Bullet: Averted; he's alive for a little longer after Joe shoots him.
• Jerkass: That's putting it mildly.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: He sets up two mass murders within several days rather than try more subtle methods or be content to accept an enemy's surrender.
• Pet the Dog: He allows Marisol to temporarily reunite with her son during the prisoner exchange, but he draws the line at her husband being present and has Rubio deal with him—and he would have, too, if Silvanito had not pointed a rifle at him, which allowed Joe to successfully defuse the situation before the exchange can go to hell.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Even as the other combatants have their doubts about the two men in the cemetery, Ramon refuses to take the chance that Joe could be right after all and simply unloads one bullet each into the corpses, just to be certain that they were dead, and then taunts the Baxters about it.
• Sadist: Just look at the Slasher Smile he puts on while mowing down Mexican soldiers.
• Yandere: Holds Marisol captive out of lust for her.

Chico

Portrayed by: Mario Brega (as Richard Stuyvesant)

Voiced by: Renato Turi (Italian), Jack Curtis (English)

• The Brute: The Rojo gang's muscle.
• Expy: Of Kannuki, the Giant Mook. Kannuki makes it to the finale, Chico doesn't.
• Fat Bastard: Overweight and cruel. His first scene is him shooting at a child's feet to scare him off.
• Giant Mook: He's the first of the Rojo thugs we see, and also one of the most prominent to the point of being billed in the opening credits. He's got a great girth, and he generally isn't very friendly even towards his fellow thugs, except for Vincente, who complains about having to watch Joe until he's ready to open his mouth about Marisol, ultimately getting barreled to death along with him.
• Ironic Nickname: Chico is the Spanish equivalent of calling someone "Tiny", and this heavyweight is anything but.
• Squashed Flat: When Chico and Vincente show up to continue beating up Joe, Joe rolls an enormous barrel on top of them, and then incinerates their corpses by lighting the spilled liquor on fire to terrorize the still-living Rojos looking for him.

Marisol

Portrayed by: Marianne Koch

Voiced by: Rita Savagnone (Italian), Joyce Gordon (English)

• Damsel in Distress: Has to be rescued by Joe and re-united with her husband Julio and son Jesus.
• Expy of Nui.
• Rape as Backstory: Ramon forcibly keeps Marisol to himself away from her husband Julio, using an incident involving a game of Poker as his justification for it.

Don Benito/Don Miguel

Portrayed by: Antonio Prieto

Voiced by: Mario Pisu (Italian), George Gonneau (English)

• Adaptational Jerkass: The novelization portrays him as more thuggish and actively participating in Joe's torture in the storeroom.
• Boom, Headshot!: How he dies.
  Miguel crashed to the ground with a bullet in his head and other men joined him as the stranger kept up the incessant fire.
• The Don: The head of the Rojo family.
• Do Wrong, Right: At the end of the torture scene, he instructs Chico to wait until Joe wakes up to continue torturing him; there's no use getting information from an unconscious man.
• Dub Name Change: Don Benito in Italian, but referred to as Don Miguel in the US.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The most well-disposed towards Joe even after he betrays them (offering his life for Marisol's location), he laughs as the Baxter home is destroyed and the Baxters are slaughtered but looks horrified when Esteban guns down Consuela.
• Evil Laugh: As he watches his brothers and Mooks wipe out the Baxters.
• Expy: Of Ushitora.
• Freudian Trio: Of the Rojo brothers, he's the Superego, the most cautious and reasonable.
• Not So Above It All: Despite being the most reasonable of the Rojo brothers, he's shown indulging in evil/insane laughter along with the other Rojo brothers and their men during the slaughter of the Baxters (though he doesn't kill any of the Baxters himself).

Esteban

Portrayed by: Sieghardt Rupp

Voiced by: Bruno Persa (Italian), Bernie Grant (English)

• Ax-Crazy: Just as much as Ramon, perhaps even more so, since Ramon declined to kill a grieving Consuela Baxter, despite her venomous tirade at the Rojos. Esteban quickly loses any patience and guns the poor woman down right next to her husband and son, a deed that even Ramon seems to disapprove of.
• Did Not Think This Through: Being impulsive, thuggish, and not too bright, he is prone to this, and his brothers sometimes point the fact out to him. Most notably, when he suggests simply shooting Joe in the back rather than paying him, it has to be explained to him that trying to shoot such a capable gunslinger in the back is an extremely risky proposition, with absolutely no margin for error. The words prove prophetic: Esteban is the last Rojo brother alive, and tries to kill Joe by shooting him from hiding, only to miss his shot and then get his head blown off by Silvanito.
• Dragon Their Feet: Lasts a few more seconds than Ramon and tries to shoot Joe from a balcony.
• Freudian Trio: Of the Rojo brothers, he's the Id, as the most impulsive of all three brothers.
• Giggling Villain: Spends the scene when Joe is beaten up by the Mooks lying down in the corner, laughing his head off.
• The Hyena: Especially during Joe and Silvanito's torture, where he even sounds like a literal hyena while cackling.
• Pragmatic Villainy: In the novelization, when he captures Antonio, he tells his brother that killing Antonio would not be the best idea because he'd be more useful as a hostage. Doubles as a Smart Ball, since he's not normally the brother you'd expect to think of that.
• Sadist: He enjoys himself much more than is healthy during the massacres that the Rojo brothers arrange and while Joe is being tortured.

Rubio

Portrayed by: Benito Stefanelli (as Benny Reeves)

Voiced by: Sergio Graziani (Italian), Ray Owens (English)

• Et Tu, Brute?: The novelization confirms he's so active in Joe's torture because he felt betrayed by him, more than the other Rojos, and thus has taken the betrayal much more personally than the others.
• Mook Lieutenant: Ramon's armor-bearer and caddy of sorts, who holds his gun until he's ready to use it.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: In his sole line, he quietly threatens to murder an entire family before Silvanito intervenes and Joe defuses the situation by calmly telling the mother to go to Ramon and the father to take his kid home before things really get ugly.

John Baxter

Portrayed by: Wolfgang Lukschy

Voiced by: Giorgio Capecchi (Italian), Bernie Grant (English)

• Adaptational Villainy: In the film, the only real indication that he's a villain is in his being one of two rival crime lords running San Miguel's black market; otherwise, you'd think him a Villainy-Free Villain. In the novelization, however, after the massacre at the Rio Bravo, the crimes the Baxters committed under his watch are elaborated upon further.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When he's outgunned by the Rojos, he offers to skip town. They just shoot him dead.
• Authority in Name Only: He's the Sheriff, at least according to himself and his badge, but he's on equal footing with Don Miguel.
• Dirty Cop: Ostensibly the Sheriff, but he's the leader of a gang of arms smugglers.
• Evil Counterpart: He's an American that ended up in San Miguel, just like Joe, but he uses the town as the center of his criminal enterprise.
• A Father to His Men: When he and Joe first meet, he threatens to have Joe hanged for killing four of his mooks.
• Henpecked Husband: His wife appears to be the brains of their operation.

Piripero

Portrayed by: Josef Egger (as Joe Edger)

Voiced by: Lauro Gazzolo (Italian), Robert Dryden (English)

The undertaker of San Miguel, and the only other man in town besides Silvanito who makes his living honestly.

• Evil Laugh: After telling Joe what the dynamite he'd procured for him is for in his coming final confrontation with the Rojos.
• Heroic BSoD: Briefly undergoes one after the last of San Miguel's bosses carks it, before measuring the corpses for their coffins as Joe rides out of town.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: After the Rojos torture Silvanito in the cantina, Piripero, the unfailingly happy old undertaker who falls into despair only when he runs out of customers, looks genuinely horrified at the lengths to which the Rojos will go to recapture Joe. His Tranquil Fury as he says "Curse them...!" only seals the deal.
• Undertaker: He builds coffins for the bodies left by the Rojos and the Baxters.