The Hicox surname links two British men separated by decades. Tim Roth backed the family connection, although his explanation did not pinpoint the number of generations exactly.
Oswaldo Mobray is a false identity
In The Hateful Eight, Tim Roth’s character is introduced as Oswaldo Mobray, the supposed hangman of Red Rock. The later reveal identifies him as English Pete Hicox, a member of the gang that aims to free Daisy Domergue. The surname becomes tied to the discovery of a lie, when his professional identity no longer offers the security it seemed to promise.
The analysis of Oswaldo Mobray and Pete Hicox must preserve that double introduction. The character uses manners and rhetoric about justice to appear to be a legitimate authority. His initial conversation about public punishment takes on another meaning once we know it is part of the deception. Verbal elegance does not guarantee the moral standing it seems to represent.
Archie Hicox, played by Michael Fassbender in Inglourious Basterds, is a British officer with experience as a film critic. His involvement in the operation against Nazi leaders uses that cultural background within a military mission. He shares a surname and British origins with Pete, but those visual and nominal similarities would not be enough on their own to establish kinship.
What Tim Roth confirmed
In a promotional interview for The Hateful Eight with CinemaBlend, Tim Roth confirmed that his character was an ancestor of Fassbender’s. When trying to specify the degree, he wavered between different numbers of generations. His testimony supports the general family relationship, but it is wise not to turn one of those hesitant formulations into an exact family tree.
The information comes from outside the scenes. Neither film shows the characters speaking about that relationship, and their time periods rule out a direct meeting. The connection expands the world built around them without becoming a fact the other characters need to know in order to act.
For that reason, the strongest formulation is that Pete is an ancestor of Archie according to Roth’s explanation. Saying who their children were, where they lived or how the surname was passed on would require other evidence. The testimony allows us to recognise a family line; it does not give us all the people who make it up.
Two ways of using British identity
The comparison between The Hateful Eight and Inglourious Basterds is fruitful even without completing the genealogy. Pete performs a false social role in order to infiltrate a closed space. Archie must adopt a German identity to operate in enemy territory. Both depend on their behaviour being accepted by those who observe them.
In the tavern in Inglourious Basterds, cultural details become a matter of life and death. The identity of Archie Hicox is not sustained by a uniform alone: he needs gestures, accent and answers compatible with the role he is playing. His film culture helps him enter the mission, but it does not make him immune to a behavioural mistake.
Pete, by contrast, uses politeness and a supposed profession to make his presence in the haberdashery acceptable. The viewer can compare both performances as forms of social camouflage. That narrative similarity does not prove a psychological inheritance between relatives; it describes Tarantino’s recurring interest in people who survive by convincingly playing a part.
Moral choices separate the two men. A family link does not force them to share aims or make Archie responsible for Pete’s conduct. The kinship creates a continuity of names, while the stories show different fates and alliances. That distance prevents us from reducing them to variations of the same character.
Within Tarantino’s two universes, the Hicoxes form a connection supported by an identifiable testimony. Its scope should be kept proportionate: ancestor and descendant, with no known intermediate generations. Comparing their scenes offers far more than inventing the missing links in a family the films never develop.
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