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Salty dogs of the highway.

Scott Pilgrim: Are you a pirate?
Matthew Patel: Pirates are in this year!

Swashbuckling, rum-swilling, Dressed to Plunder pirates in modern times. This trope covers works the presence of pirates clearly based on The Golden Age of Piracy, whether the real deal or the Hollywood versions, in works clearly set in the modern era or, at least, any point after the heyday of Caribbean piracy ended.

Exactly why these characters are dressed and acting like they are varies from case to case. Some will be consciously trying to reenact "classical" piracy for one reason or another, and deliberately take up the dress, gimmicks, and mannerisms of pop culture piracy. Other cases will simply have peg-legged, eyepatch-wearing, doubloon-seeking Blackbeard stand-ins roam the seas of the 20th century without comment or explanation.

Compare and contrast Sky Pirates. Space Pirates is when they are a few more centuries late; many cases of this trope are just as inexplicably tied to the visual icons of Caribbean pirates as these ones are. For modern, Real Life pirates of the type who are very good at shivering people's timbers (with an AK-47, not a cutlass), see Ruthless Modern Pirates. If the pirates are more concerned with looking the part than acting it, they're probably The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, or maybe a Friendly Pirate.

Compare to Born in the Wrong Century for when they feel like they belong in The Golden Age of Piracy.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Animation 
  • One of the villains of Noonbory and the Super 7 is a frog pirate named Wangury who is assisted by henchmen named Mungury and Taegury. The show's setting, Toobalooba, is clearly past its piracy days.
  • Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Joys of Seasons: Episode 42 has Weslie, Paddi, and Sparky meet a trio of pirates and join them on their ship. The show is supposed to take place in the year 3513, so it's more like 2,000 years too late.

    Anime & Manga 
  • Black Lagoon: In Shaitan Baidi, one of the people the Lagoon is transporting is a woman who is, or believes herself to be, a direct descendant of the infamous Captain Morgan...and dresses the part.

    Comic Books 
  • The DCU:
    • Batman:
      • The villains Captain Stingaree and Cap'n Fear. Somewhat subverted in the case of Cap'n Fear and his crew, as Detective Harvey Bullock doesn't find them funny or charming at all ("I hate them swishbucklers.") and one of Fear's own men mutters about how he's getting "sick of this Popeye rap" (though he promptly changes his mind once he's threatened with a slit throat).
      • In one Golden Age story, Batman fights a one-shot villain called Blackbeard, who styles himself after the historical Blackbeard.
    • Seven Soldiers of Victory (2005): The Subway Pirates fought by the Manhattan Guardian. In the subways of Manhattan, homeless citizens have banded together creating "pirate gangs", most notably the rival factions belonging to No-Beard and All-Beard. They adopt the trappings of classic pirates and ride pirate trains through the subway system: sometimes attacking subway stations to capture slaves.
    • The Trial of Superman has a character named Freelance, a bounty hunter who travels space in an 18th century-style pirate ship, complete with holographic figurehead changeable to whatever female he happens to be attracted to. He enjoys letting enemies onto his ship simply to throw them off, fighting with a sword, and sports an eyepatch.
    • Wonder Woman (1942): Wonder Woman once faces a husband-and-wife team who lead a group of (mostly women) air pirates who operate out of a small fleet of aircraft. While most of the group is well adapted to "modern" (1940s) times, the husband styles himself after an old-timey pirate and goes by Captain Redbeard. Amusingly their fight attracts the attention of a Clock Roach that then puts the pirates, Diana, Steve, Etta, and the Holliday Girls back in the more appropriate time period for a swashbuckling confrontation on the high seas.
  • Femforce foe Singapore Sal mixes this trope with Ruthless Modern Pirates in a deadly combination. She dresses and talks like a refugee from the Golden Age of Piracy, but has no qualms about using modern ships and weaponry to conduct her piracy.
  • The Losers: Captain Storm in the original World War II version becomes one of these after losing his memory (and an eye) to an explosion. He already had a wooden leg, it was a reasonable assumption.
  • Sub-Mariner: Commander Kraken, a foe of Namor's. His arsenal includes an electrified Hook Hand, a rocket-powered Sea Dog Peg Leg, and an electrified cutlass. His vehicle of choice was a Brigantine called "The Albatross". This old-style pirate ship could transform into a sleek golden high-powered submarine.
  • The Ultraverse: The Strangers has Scar and his crew. After gaining superpowers, they moved to the Caribbean and become pirates, basing their costumed identities on classic pirates.

    Comic Strips 

    Fan Works 
  • In A New World on her Shoulders, there's White Fang member Captain Tick, whose personality and appearance is that of the swashbuckling scurvy dogs of the past, complete with a fake hook hand. This is much to the annoyance of his crew, who better fit as Ruthless Modern Pirates in appearance and armaments.

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Blackbeard's Ghost is about a modern-day man having to deal with the eponymous ghost as he unwittingly read an incantation to see him.
  • DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story: Steve the Pirate, as played by Alan Tudyk. It's never explained why he dresses and acts like a pirate, but the Average Joe's crew doesn't mind him. Late in the movie, after taking too much from people making fun of him, he disappears...and reappears after the climactic dodgeball game, now clean-shaven and wearing modern clothing. But when he sees the giant chest of riches Peter won betting on the Average Joe's to win, he reverts to his pirate voice.
  • The Island centers on a long-isolated band of Caribbean pirates who prey on 20th Century boaters.
  • Monty Python's The Meaning of Life: The Crimson Permanent Assurance. The elderly British employees of the Permanent Assurance Company, a staid London firm which has recently been taken over by the Very Big Corporation of America, rebel against their much younger corporate masters when one of them is sacked. Having locked the surviving supervisors in the safe, and forced their boss to walk a makeshift plank out a window, they commandeer their Edwardian office building, which suddenly weighs anchor, uses its scaffolding and tarpaulins as sails, and is turned into a pirate ship. The stone office building starts to move as if it were a ship. Sailing through the City of London, they then proceed to attack The Very Big Corporation of America's (VBCA) skyscraper, using, among other things, wooden filing cabinets which have been transformed into cannonades and swords fashioned from the blades of a ceiling fan. On ropes, they swing into the board room and engage the executives of VBCA in hand-to-hand combat, vanquishing them.
  • Pirates Of The Plain: Pirate Jezebel Jack and his mutinous crew end up in modern-day Nebraska via a time vortex.
  • In Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Matthew Patell (the first evil ex) dresses like a pirate and gets mocked by the crowd for it. "Pirates are in this season!"

    Literature 
  • The Flight Engineer: Invoked by some (not all) space pirates. Putting on the affectations of movie pirates makes them feel like holo heroes instead of the thieves and murderers they actually are.
  • The Island centers on a long-isolated band of Caribbean pirates who prey on 20th Century boaters.
  • Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle 's deceased husband was a pirate when he was alive, and the story takes place in The '50s.
  • Star Wars Legends: This is the hat of the Tof race, who embrace the wooden-ships-and-iron-men aesthetic despite living in a Space Opera universe.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.: Despite being set around the turn of the 20th century, Blackbeard LeCutte and his crew are classic 17th-century pirates who were driven off the high seas and took to roaming the Nevada plains in an armored carriage flying the Jolly Roger and plundering loot from any wagon unlucky enough to cross their path.
  • The Armstrong and Miller Show parodied this in a sketch that involves random people getting press-ganged by the Royal Navy into joining the "South Harbour Club Patrol" after buying t-shirts reading exactly that. And if that concept isn't 18th century enough, then Somali pirates attack South Harbour... by firing audible cannon broadsides.
  • Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger is the 35th season of Super Sentai and focuses on pirates from other planets who formed a team and came to present day Japan to look for the greatest treasure in the universe.
  • Odd Squad: Pirates are a common oddity in the world of the show, and most are amiable when it comes to interacting with agents.
    • In "The Curious Case of Pirate-itis", Olive contracts the titular disease when she helps a pirate cross a busy street and begins to slowly turn into a Pirate Girl. By the climax of the episode, she's nearly full pirate, with the manner of speaking, the outfit, and the behavior to match.
    • In "Ocean and the Fly", while looking for a cure to turn Oona back into a human from her fly form, Ocean and Oona visit a pirate in a cave, who has a treasure chest full of gold and pearls, and also wants to start a butter company. He asks Ocean and Oona to help him pick a label for his new butter, and once they pick one, he allows them to take a pearl from his treasure chest. Later on in the episode, he is shown at the grocery store attempting to sell his new butter to customers but failing, and once he sets his eyes on Ocean and Oona, he becomes enraged and takes off after them.
  • Sorry, I've Got No Head: "The Bluebeards" sketches are about a modern-day pirate family whose son Jim Bluebeard struggles with his life at a Privateer school.
  • The Wrong Door had the "The Train Pirates", disenfranchised modern people who swapped their suits and briefcases for 17th-century dress and cutlasses but took to the rails rather than the seas and rode aboard "The Whore of Clapham" led by Captain Goitier played by BRIAN BLESSED.
  • You're Skitting Me: In one of the "Tatiana the Sailor" sketches, Tats's friend Em was supposed to be disguised as a Somali pirate. However, having no idea what a Somali pirate actually was, she instead appears as one of these.

    Music 
  • Jimmy Buffett: The trope name is paraphrased from "A Pirate Looks at 40"; though the line in the song is "two hundred years too late". The song contains the bittersweet confession of a modern-day, washed-up drug smuggler as he looks back on the first forty years of his life, expresses lament that his preferred vocation of piracy on the high seas was long gone by the time he was born, and wonders what he should do with himself now.
  • The Last Saskatchewan Pirate by The Arrogant Worms tells the story of a farmer who, having lost his land as a result of the general decline of the economy, decides to become a pirate of the Saskatchewan River, targeting other farmers for their equipment and produce. He sinks barges of his victims and jumps farmers on bridges, and evades local law enforcement by virtue of the fact that the mounties don't have boats.
    "A swingin' sword, a skull and bones and pleasant company
    I never pay my income tax and screw the GST (Screw it!)
    Sailin' down to Saskatoon, the terror of the seas
    If you wanna reach the co-op, boy, you gotta get by me"
    • The music video of the cover by Captain Tractor defies the lyrics of this song, in that he isn't actually sailing on the Saskatchewan. Rather, he drives his pick-up truck on top of the river while it's frozen over, and raids the trucks of other farmers as though they were Spanish treasure ships.
  • Jesse Rice is a relatively unknown country singer, whose most major album is called "The Pirate Sessions." This trope comes into play the strongest on the song, "300 Years Ago," a ballad in which the artist compares the life he lives with that of pirates three hundred years ago.

    Professional Wrestling 
  • Absolute Intense Wrestling's second championship tag team, Morty Rackem and Ruthless Rufio Rapier: The Cut Throat Crew. They were sometimes accompanied by Syd Smythe as well and Morty also serves in Pirate Justice, primarily for Prime Wrestling, and sometimes the two groups got together.
  • The Pro Wrestling Syndicate has The Drunken Swashbuckler and Salty The Deckhand.
  • In WWE Paul Burchill briefly became a "wrestling pirate" after discovering that he was a descendant of Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard.

    Puppet Shows 
  • The Muppet Show:
    • One "Pigs in Space" sketch has John Cleese attacking the Swinetrek as a pirate of the swashbuckler variety. Link Hogthrob informs him that he's a few centuries out of place, which leads to an argument between John and his parrot.
    • The episode guest starring Glenda Jackson has her revealing herself to be one of these, much to Kermit's confusion. She and her motley crew then take over the show, convert the theater into a ship, and set sail to the Spanish Main on a quest for buried treasure.

    Tabletop Games 
  • The Back East: The North sourcebook for Deadlands has the Vikings of Duluth; a group of Scandanavian descendants who adopt Viking trappings to fight the British Navy on the Great Lakes. There are also pirates (drawn in full seventeenth-century garb) in the Great Maze in what used to be California.
  • Captain Kraken of Mutants & Masterminds Freedom City setting is a form of this. Essentially, he's an alien Space Pirate who started watching broadcasts of Earth pirate movies and decided that it would be fun to dress himself and his crew in the same style. How serious he is about following the tropes depends on the GM.
  • Pirates Constructible Strategy Game; the eighth set introduced the Viking Faction, a group of Scandinavian pirates and Viking fanboys who sail around in modernized longships. The set explicitly takes place after the American Civil War, so these Vikings are 700 or so years late.

    Theatre 

    Video Games 
  • Around the World in 80 Days: Downplayed as approximately 150-200 years too late, but the captain in USA believes he's a pirate which is why he's against letting Aouda on his ship, which causes him to be labeled as an eccentric and Fogg to see it as ridiculous. The last leg of the journey involves getting pirate items to satisfy his beliefs.
  • Hidden Expedition 5: The Uncharted Islands features a mostly-Affably Evil group of pirates led by a man nicknamed Undertow. Justified because the islands in question are under a force field which grants its denizens rather long lives, at the price of never being able to leave.
  • In Lester the Unlikely, the pirate ship, and the pirates, that sink the cargo ship Lester is on are straight out of the Age of Sail. Lester has to battle them as the last level in the game.
  • Garou: Mark of the Wolves: Bonne Jenet and her crew are somewhere between this and Ruthless Modern Pirates. The crew dresses like stereotypical pirates, but their ship is a nuclear sub.
  • Monkey Island occasionally crosses into this due to the Purely Aesthetic Era.
  • Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves features a trip to Blood Bath Bay, a series of small islands inhabited by "throwbacks" who still live by old-fashioned pirate culture.
  • Soul Series: The resident pirate Cervantes de Leon is an inversion, as the games are set during the late 16th and early 17th centuries, but his design cues harken to The Golden Age of Piracy, which only begins in the mid-1600s, thus his pirate style is about a century early.

    Web Animation 
  • Happy Tree Friends: Russell, whose catchphrase is "Yar".
  • Helluva Boss: Blitzo has had a fascination/obsession with pirates since his childhood. It's safe to assume that it's why his weapon of choice is a flintlock pistol.
    Young Fizzarolli: You keep talking about pirates, I will punch you.
  • Lego Pirate Misadventures: The main cast, made more prevalent in #3, when they attend an office party in a cube farm and go into a crappy dive bar.
  • The Weebl toon Somalia portrays Somalian pirates like this.

    Webcomics 
  • Irregular Webcomic!: The pirates, who for the most part are the classic Hollywood swashbuckler sort, become this when they are arbitrarily transported to 1940.
  • Li'l Gotham: Captain Greenbeard (a sea-going counterpart of the Joker) and his crew.
  • The Non-Adventures of Wonderella: The Chesapeake Bay Pirates, who faithfully embrace every pirate trope in the book despite the increasing difficulty of maintaining the traditional lifestyle in the modern day — it's hard to be a successful marine robber when the Coast Guard has machine guns and lasers and you're still sailing a wooden sailing ship.
  • Q Force: Captain Rigur DeMortis. His status as The Undead partially justifies it as he's been around for 400 years, though in the words of his "loyal" undead crew, he hasn't aged well:
    Crewman #1: Ye couldn't best Cap'n Crunch!
    Crewman #2: Software Pirates be scarier than ye!
  • In Sluggy Freelance, Kiki, Bun-Bun, and a little girl play at being pirates in a small boat. Unfortunately Bun-Bun, being Bun-Bun, tries actually thieving and murdering.

    Web Videos 
  • SuperMarioLogan: In "Chef Pee Pee's Father", Chef Pee Pee's father is a present-day pirate.

    Western Animation 
  • Almost Naked Animals: The lobster pirates who attempt to take over the cabana in "Narwhal's Birthday".
  • In Batman: The Animated Series, the one-shot villain Sewer King is a complete kook even by Batman villain standards, and he proves it by wearing an old-fashioned pirate outfit for no explained reason (except instead of an eyepatch, he wears a pair of sunglasses with a missing lens.) Since he kidnaps and enslaves wayward children and keeps ravenous crocodiles as pets, the pirate getup serves to make him look like a warped parody of Captain Hook.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door features the candy-swiping Captain Stickybeard and crew. Fortunately for them he also hates vegetables.
  • Danny Phantom: Youngblood and his pirate crew hits the mark of the traditional, swashbuckling pirates we know and love, though this may be a justified case as Youngblood constantly dresses up in costumes for his own childish amusement.
  • Dennis the Menace (UK): One episode of the cartoon has a group of actors turn out to be real pirates.
  • Dexter's Laboratory has an episode where Captain Ahab and his crew of merry swashbucklers, all dressed like classical pirates, kidnap Dee Dee. They serve mostly to contrast Dexter's robots and missiles with old-fashioned guns and plunder.
  • Family Guy: Played for Laughs in "Long John Peter", when Peter goes from stealing a parrot as a pet from a veterinarian's office to dressing as a stereotypical pirate and hiring a pirate crew to finally going on the road and engaging a motorist in an epic swashbuckling fight, in the course of which Peter's car acquires a mast and sails.
  • Filmation's Ghostbusters had to deal with the likes of Long-John Scarechrome, a cross between this and a Space Pirate. Any ghostly pirates seen in the show.
  • A Garfield and Friends episode featured a TV repairman who decided to follow the footsteps of his pirate ancestor and become a full pirate (In fact, the episode describes the TV repairman job as a way for pirate descendants to keep close to their roots). This modern-day pirate's criminal career was helped by the fact the authorities refused to believe whenever his victims reported him. Fortunately Garfield saved the day.
  • I Got a Rocket has Captain O'Cheese (referred to as "Pirate" in the credits) drives a pirate ship on the streets.
  • Inspector Gadget: On episode has Gadget on a Caribbean cruise ship that is attacked by stereotypical, pegleg-having eyepatch-wearing pirates who sail a galleon. Though, as Penny discovers, the pirates do have some modern equipment, like a Video Phone.
  • Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures: The first episode has pirates dressed like what you would expect from the typical traditional pirate from a few centuries ago. Justified because they're posing as ghosts to keep people away from a shipwreck while they carry off the loot.
  • Mike, Lu & Og has a trio of pirates who are the shipwrecked descendants of the pirates who shipwrecked the island's other inhabitants.
  • PAW Patrol's Season Four finale introduces a pirate villain named Sid Swashbuckle, who displays multiple stereotypes associated with pirates.
  • Rocko's Modern Life, "Sailing the Seven Zzzs": After accidentally digging up a childhood trauma involving a play about pirates, Mr. Bighead starts to sleepwalk and acts out dreams of being a pirate, trying to reclaim his "treasure map" from Rocko.
  • Scooby-Doo:
    • Mystery Inc confronts these, posing as ghosts no less, in Scooby Doo! Pirates Ahoy!
    • Mystery Inc does the same thing in various episodes of the original series... and those pirates are also posing as ghosts.
  • SheZow: The Pushy Pirate Posse.
  • South Park: In "Fatbeard", after hearing about the recent increase in piracy in Somalia and thinking this to mean that the age of Caribbean-style pirates is coming back, Cartman decides to go and live there (along with Butters, Clyde, Kyle's little brother Ike, and one of the ginger kids, that latter of whom Cartman quickly kicks out for being ginger, since Cartman believes they have no souls). Kyle and Stan realize what an incredibly stupid idea this is, but instead play up his fantasy, encouraging him to go, hoping that he will be killed along the way. Cartman is disgusted to learn that modern Somali pirates are "a disgrace to Blackbeard", and tries to get them to act more traditional. He actually makes some progress for a little bit...until the United States military gets involved due to thinking the Somalis kidnapped the kids and subsequently wipes them all out with modern weaponry.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: The series often throws in pirates for no reason other than to go with its nautical theme. Most notable are the Flying Dutchman (who is a ghost) and Patchy (more of a cosplayer than anything else). (Fish) pirates sell Squidward the pie bomb in "Dying for Pie", and Mr. Krabs plays pirate in "Arrgh!". A later episode reveals that his grandfather was a pirate... and still is.
  • The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries: "You're Thor?" has Vikings a thousand years too late.
  • Team Hot Wheels: The Road Pirates in Team Hot Wheels: Build the Epic Race combine this trope with Greaser Delinquents. Special mention should go towards their boss Captain Grease Beard, who outright drives a pirate ship-themed car, complete with cannons on its engine!
  • Teamo Supremo: One episode has the kids' teacher tell them that there are no such things as pirates in the modern day. The identity of the Villain of the Week proves her wrong.
  • ThunderCats (1985) has a robot version as a very minor recurring villain, complete with robo-parrot and speech pattern.
  • Van Beuren Studios: Even though most of the Cubby Bear cartoons are clearly set in the 1930s, there are old-fashioned swashbuckling pirates in "Bubbles and Troubles".
  • The Venture Bros.: The pirates in "Ghosts of the Sargasso". Much like the Jonny Quest example above, they try to use trickery to pose as ghosts in order to scare merchant vessels away from their ship. Unfortunately, this plan immediately goes to pot when Brock kills one of them. The pirates also learned the hard way that nobody sails galleons full of gold doubloons across the sea anymore, and the only booty they've been able to steal so far has been a shipment for Toys R' Us, medical supplies from a Red Cross boat, and a cargo can full of L'eggs Eggs.
  • Woody Woodpecker: The 1970 cartoon "All Hams on Deck" has Woody Woodpecker being kidnapped by Captain Blah, a pirate operating in the current year complete with a pirate ship and parrot.

    Real Life 
  • Invoked every year on Talk Like a Pirate Day.
  • "Great Lakes Pirate" Dan Seavey (1864-1945) is called this in all of his biographies.
  • Tampa, Florida has a festival called Gasparilla celebrating Jose Gaspar, and the people of Tampa tend to follow this trope around that time.

 
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A stereotypical pirate fight... using cars in modern day.

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