The Hicox surname connects two British men separated by decades. Tim Roth confirmed the family relationship, though his explanation did not pin down the exact number of generations.
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 plans to free Daisy Domergue. The surname becomes tied to the discovery of a lie, when his professional identity stops offering the security it seemed to promise.
The analysis of Oswaldo Mobray and Pete Hicox has to preserve that double introduction. The character uses manners and talk about justice to seem like a legitimate authority. His opening conversation about public punishment takes on a different meaning once we know it is part of the deception. Verbal polish does not guarantee the moral position it appears to represent.
Archie Hicox, played by Michael Fassbender in Inglourious Basterds, is a British officer with experience as a film critic. His role 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 a family relationship.
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 character. When trying to specify the degree, he wavered between different numbers of generations. His statement supports the general family link, but it also suggests not turning one of those uncertain formulations into an exact family tree.
That information comes from outside the scenes. Neither film shows the characters talking about that relationship, and their time periods prevent a direct encounter. The connection expands the world built around them without becoming something 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 down would require other evidence. The statement lets us recognize a family line; it does not give us every person in it.
Two ways of using British identity
The comparison between The Hateful Eight and Inglourious Basterds is fruitful even without completing the genealogy. Pete adopts a false social role to infiltrate a closed space. Archie has to present a German identity in order to operate on enemy territory. Both depend on their behavior being accepted by those who watch them.
In the tavern in Inglourious Basterds, cultural details become a matter of life and death. Archie Hicox cannot rely on a uniform alone: he needs gestures, an accent, and answers that fit the role he is playing. His film knowledge helps him enter the mission, but it does not make him immune to a behavioral 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 reflects Tarantino’s recurring interest in people who survive by convincingly playing a role.
Moral choices separate the two men. A family relationship does not require shared goals or make Archie responsible for Pete’s conduct. Kinship creates continuity of names, while the stories show different destinies and alliances. That distance keeps them from being reduced to variations of the same character.
Within Tarantino’s two universes, the Hicoxes form a connection supported by a verifiable statement. Its scope should remain proportional: ancestor and descendant, with no known intermediate generations. Comparing their scenes tells us far more than inventing the missing links in a family the films never develop.
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