This is a list of fictional pirates, alphabetized by the character's last name or full nickname.
A
- Portgas D. Ace - the deceased former captain of the Spade Pirates and the former 2nd division commander of the Whitebeard Pirates in the manga One Piece by Eiichiro Oda
- Morgan Adams - captain of the Morning Star, played by Geena Davis in the film Cutthroat Island
- Air pirates (also called "sky pirates") - various groups, distinct from each other, use this label or belong in this category
- Johannes Alberic, captain of Perdita, a lightning catcher airship, member of the Fellowship of the Castle; from Neil Gaiman's 1999 novel Stardust
- Pirates of Algarth - major villains in The Clocks of Iraz, a novel by L. Sprague de Camp
- Angelica - Daughter of Black Beard in Pirates of the Caribbean love interest to Captain Jack Sparrow
- Captain Anton - leader of villainous space pirates in Asimov's novel Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids
- Atomsk - alien pirate king in the anime FLCL
- Jean-Benoit Aubéry - a sympathetic and romantic 17th-century pirate in Daphne du Maurier's 1941 historical novel Frenchman's Creek
- Captain Henry Avery - in the Doctor Who episode "The Curse of the Black Spot"; a naval officer in the 1690s who became a pirate; he left his wife and son, Toby, behind in England; his wife died in his absence
- Tom Ayrton - with his former crew of pirates and pirate captain Bob Harvey, sailed on their pirate brig the Speedy in The Mysterious Island, an 1874 novel by Jules Verne
B
- Seth Balmore - a sea pirate and immortal in the video game Lost Odyssey
- Balthier - a sky pirate in the video game Final Fantasy XII
- The Bango Pirates - used a sailing steamship to attack ships for the treasure in Sherlock Hound, Episode 1
- Hector Barbossa - character in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series; played by Geoffrey Rush; captain of the Black Pearl after mutiny against the ship's former captain, Jack Sparrow; dies but is resurrected
- Captain Barrett or "The Hook" - comic villain of the 1944 Bob Hope film The Princess and the Pirate, played by Victor McLaglen
- Bêlit - female pirate captain, one of the main protagonists along with her partner Conan of Cimmeria in the story "Queen of the Black Coast" by Robert E. Howard
- Ben Ali, the Barbary Dragon - an aggressive and highly predatory pirate leader who makes the mistake of stalking Doctor Dolittle; the pirate band was completely outwitted by the doctor's animal allies and were forced to reform and become bird-seed farmers, while the good doctor sailed off with their ship
- The Berserkers - Viking pirates in the ThunderCats TV show
- Bikke - an NPC pirate captain from the 1990 video game Final Fantasy
- Black Barney, a space pirate who later became Buck Rogers' friend and ally
- Black Bellamy - the Pirate Captain's cunning and black-hearted nemesis from The Pirates! series of comedic books (2004-2010); in the 2012 film The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, he was voiced by Jeremy Piven
- Captain Bizzarly - a pirate with aquaphobia who controlled all crime-related activities on the vast oceans of Water-O until the Waterians froze him and his crew many years ago; from TigerSharks, part of the Comic Strip show
- The Black Corsair - an Italian nobleman turned pirate to avenge the death of his brothers; one of Emilio Salgari's most legendary creations; portrayed in El Corsario Negro (1944) by actor Pedro Armendáriz; an Italian film was also made in 1937, directed by Amleto Palermi
- The Black Pirate - title character of the 1926 silent film The Black Pirate, played with acrobatic panache by Douglas Fairbanks
- The Black Pirate - DC Comics character; no connection to the 1926 Douglas Fairbanks film; a masked hero
- Black Vulmea - the nickname of Terrence Vulmea, a swashbuckling hero of the Spanish Main created by Robert E. Howard; his adventures are collected in Black Vulmea's Vengeance
- Art Blastside - a former gentlewoman named Artemesia Fitz-Willoghby Weatherhouse who lost her all memories of her life with her mother, Piratica, in a cannon accident that cost her mother her life; she regained her memory after six years of attending a finishing school and gathered her mother's former crew to set sail again; the Piratica series, by Tanith Lee
- Roger Blease - a young fictional lieutenant of the actual historical pirate Jack Ward whose English Free Rovers terrorized the Mediterranean in the early 17th century; the protagonist of Thomas Costain's highly successful 1942 novel For My Great Folly, which became a bestseller with over 132,000 copies sold, and of which the New York Times reviewer stated that "there will be no romantic-adventure lover left unsatisfied."
- Captain Blood - the alias of Peter Blood, an Irish doctor turned slave, then pirate; the title character of a series of novels by Rafael Sabatini; the novel was also adapted into a film starring Errol Flynn and directed by Casablanca director Michael Curtiz; Captain Blood also appears in Martin Mystery animated television series episode "Pirates of Doom" where he is depicted as a supernatural pirate
- Bloody Bess - a member of the Crimson Pirates
- Bloody Bill - a pirate with a dark past who unexpectedly befriends the boy protagonists in Robert Michael Ballantyne's The Coral Island
- Captain Bloth - captain of the fossil-like ship Maelstrom; the main villain of the animated TV series The Pirates of Dark Water
- Captain Blubber and Captain Blackeye - (fairly pathetic) pirates from the Banjo-Kazooie series; Blackeye's drunken comments and the furnishings of his room strongly suggest that he may have been a key aspect of the game's scrapped "Stop 'n Swop" feature
- Billy Bones - a pirate captain who kept the map of the island where Flint's treasure was hidden in Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Bras Priqué - the nickname of a notorious French pirate hovering off New Orleans in 1780, in Victor Herbert's 1910's operetta Naughty Marietta
- Tom Bristol - a sailor press-ganged into the British Royal Navy; in 1680, disastrous circumstances push him to become a daring Caribbean pirate, as narrated in the 1935 story "Under the Black Ensign" by L. Ron Hubbard
- Douglas "Dawg" Brown - the villainous pirate uncle of Morgan Adams and captain of the Reaper; appears in Cutthroat Island, portrayed by Frank Langella; like Morgan, he wants to recover the three portions of the treasure map before she does
C
- Cannonball - a Decepticon space pirate in Transformers
- Captain Gavin Capacitor - a software pirate from the computer-animated series ReBoot
- Captain Carlton - character in the book Pirateology: A Pirate Hunter's Companion
- Cap'n Crunch - not a pirate, but his commercial nemesis of bygone days, Jean LaFoote, was
- Captain Claw - an anthropomorphic cat pirate seeking the amulet of nine lives in the video game Claw
- Captain Clegg - the alias assumed by clergyman Doctor Syn when he turned to piracy in the novel Doctor Syn on the High Seas by Russell Thorndike; other notable pirates in the book include Captain Satan, a black pirate leader whom Syn kills and whose ship and crew he then takes over; Mr. Mipps, a former Royal Navy carpenter and Syn/Clegg's loyal lieutenant; and Yellow Pete, the ship's Chinese cook, who leads a mutiny and is killed by Syn
- Captain Firebrand, a.k.a. Theseus - see below
- Captain Skunkbeard - a ghost pirate from Scooby-Doo! Pirates Ahoy!, (2006 direct-to-video animated feature)
- Conan the Barbarian, Robert E. Howard's most well-known character, several times takes up the career of a pirate (sometimes among white fellow pirates, sometimes among black ones) before finally becoming a king (see also Bêlit); he takes up piracy one extra time after that, when being dethroned and exiled, though he soon returns from the sea and regains his throne
- John Connor - one-eyed Welsh pirate and smuggler from Cardiff, helmsman aboard Jean Lafitte's ship the Pride in the Italian comic book Zagor
- Captain Contagious - escaped from the snow and kidnapped a French lady doll away and sailed into the sea in Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure, directed by Richard Williams
- Captain Corroboc - a giant parrot and a fierce, cunning and notoriously cruel captain of a pirate crew composed of assorted anthropomorphic animals, in the fantasy world of the Spellsinger series of Alan Dean Foster; after Corroboc's death, his place is taken by his brother, Captain Kamaulk - who had originally been the accountant of the family ("Pirating is a business, make no mistake of that, and somebody needs to take care of the ledgers" - The Time of the Transference)
- The Corsairs of Umbar - have a strategic role on the enemy's side in the later part of the war in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings
- Cortez - an undead pirate from the 2004 video game Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
- The Crimson Pirate, a.k.a. Captain Vallo - played by Burt Lancaster; an acrobatic rogue who becomes a hero in the namesake 1952 movie; Lancaster's former circus partner Nick Cravat also appears as Vallo's mute sidekick, Ojo
- The Crimson Pirates - a group of inter-dimensional slavers
- Captain Crook - in advertisements, the pirate who sailed the sea to find the dish of the Filet-O-Fish in McDonaldland, at McDonald's fast food restaurants
- Conrad - the protagonist of The Corsair, a tale in verse by Lord Byron published in 1814, which was extremely popular and influential in its day, selling ten thousand copies on its first day of sale; Conrad was rejected by society in his youth and later becomes a corsair fighting against humanity (excepting women); in the opera Il corsaro by Giuseppe Verdi, loosely based on Byron's work, Conrad becomes the dashing and chivalrous Corrado; also based on The Corsair are the overture Le Corsaire by Hector Berlioz and the ballet Le Corsaire by Marius Petipa
- Cuthbert Conyers, nicknamed Old Cut-Throat - had a long and successful piratical career in the tropics and in 1732 settled with his loot for a "respectable" old age at an English country house, where two centuries later Lord Peter Wimsey discovered his hidden treasure; in Dorothy L. Sayers' short story "The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head"
- Henriette "One Eye" Cooper - a female raccoon pirate, ancestor of Sly Cooper from the Sly Cooper video game series
- Captain Henry Crow - the pirate captain from the newspaper comic strip Overboard
- Jack Crow - in John Steakley's novel Armor, a notorious celebrity and one-time pirate; a morally questionable character; a tough man who does not hesitate to kill; constantly at odds with his own morality
D
- Captain Jack Dancer - the skipper of the Red Wench and the hero of The Red Seas, an ongoing feature in the British comic book series 2000AD
- Arabella Drummond - character in the book Pirateology: A Pirate Hunter's Companion
- Ragnar Danneskjöld - a Norwegian 20th-century ideological pirate, completely dedicated to promoting the ideology of capitalism and unrestrained free market by force of arms on the high seas, in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged
- Captain Angstrom Darkwater - a deceased robotic space pirate, brought back to life in Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty in an attempt to revive Captain Slag, his treacherous former first mate
- Charlotte de Berry - female pirate captain who stars in Edward Lloyd's 1836 book, History of the Pirates
- The Marquis d'Escrainville, in the Angelique series by Sergeanne Golon - a late 17th Century French aristocrat turned Mediterranean pirate, mainly active in the Aegean. Keeps some mannerisms of the Versailles court which barely mask his ruthless greed. Captures the series's protagonist and sells her to slavery at Crete.
- DeFlorres - a pirate on The Fancy in the 17th century in the Doctor Who episode "The Curse of the Black Spot"; bitten by a leech, giving him a black spot; he is taken by the Siren to her ship, and later joins the rest of the crew when they take the ship for themselves
- Cervantes de Leon - the former captain of the Adrian; a Spanish ghost pirate who possesses Soul Edge in Namco's Soul series of fighting games; in later games, he loses Soul Edge and instead wields a longsword and pistol sword
E
- Edward Kenway - the main protagonist of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag; during the course of the game, he joins the assassins
- Elisabet Ramsey, a.k.a. "Lizzie the Pirate" - a buccaneer from the Caribbean colonies in Age of Empires III; voiced by Jennifer Hale
- Elizabeth Swann - a governor's daughter turned pirate in Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean movies. She is portrayed by Keira Knightley.
- Emperor Grog - first appeared in the Futurama episode "Godfellas" and attacked the Planet Express ship and its crew with his fellow space pirates; killed in the explosion of his own ship due to Bender crashing right through it; later appeared on a barrel of Space Grog in "Möbius Dick", where his name was finally learnt
F
- Mary "Jacky" Faber - the protagonist of the series by L.A. Meyer, Bloody Jack
- Fanny Campbell, protagonist of 19th century novel, Fanny Campbell, the Female Pirate Captain
- Captain Feathersword - a character in the stage and television shows of the popular children's troupe, The Wiggles; played by Paul Paddick; in the early years, he was played by Anthony Field
- The Fishhawk - threaten the coasts of 17th-century England; confronted by Solomon Kane in Robert E. Howard's story "Blades of the Brotherhood"
- Patty Fleur / Pati Furuuru - in the Tales of Vesperia, a 14-year-old pirate girl who travels around the world in search of romance and the legendary treasure of the notorious pirate Aifread; an expert marksman, skillful with both gun and knife, and despite her young appearance, has an elderly personality and manner of expression; she bears a resemblance to the pirate class of Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2
- Captain Flint - the captain who buried his hoard in Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 novel, Treasure Island
- The Flying Dutchman - a recurring character in the Nickelodeon animated television series SpongeBob SquarePants; a green pirate ghost who haunts Bikini Bottom
- Foxy the Pirate - an animatronic animal in the video game Five Nights at Freddy's
G
- José Gaspar (Gasparilla) - mythical pirate supposedly based in southwest Florida during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Though a popular figure in Florida folklore, there is no evidence of his existence. Celebrated every year in Tampa during the Gasparilla Pirate Festival.
- Gilbert - a pirate played by Marty Feldman in the movie Yellowbeard
- Gunpowder Gertie (Gertrude Stubbs) - a Canadian pirate created by storyteller Carolyn McTaggart
- Guinea Pirate / Michael Chertoff - the Secretary of Homeland Security under George Bush and the main antagonist of South Park's "Pandemic" story arc
- Captain Gutt - voiced by Peter Dinklage; the villainous pirate gigantopithecus captain and a self-styled master of the high seas in Ice Age: Continental Drift
- Gokaigers - the primary protagonists of the tokusatsu series Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger
- Gol D. Roger - the former Pirate King from the anime/manga One Piece
- Gorgon Isles pirates - in The Tritonian Ring, a 1951 novel by L. Sprague de Camp
- Guybrush Threepwood - of the Monkey Island game franchise
- Gangplank - a pirate champion from the video game League of Legends
H
- Captain Harlock - the titular space pirate of an anime series
- Bob Harvey - pirate captain of the Speedy in the 1874 novel The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
- Captain James Hook - haunted Kidd's Creek at Neverland in Peter Pan by James M. Barrie
- Captain Charles Hunter, in Michael Crichton's 2009 novel Pirate Latitudes; a heroic English pirate based in 17th-century Jamaica, whose burning aspiration to rob Spanish gold the book regards as completely justified
I
- Captain Ironhook - one of the leaders of the LEGO Pirates
- Captain Isabela - female pirate from Dragon Age role-playing video games
J
- B. Jenet - the female leader of the Lilian Knights (a band of modern pirates) in the King of Fighters game universe
- Jack Sparrow - the main protagonist of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. He is portrayed by Johnny Depp.
- Jason - and Roscoe - played respectively by Robert Urich and Michael D. Roberts, space pirates in the 1984 comedy/science-fiction film The Ice Pirates
- Jezebel Jack - played by Tim Curry in Pirates of the Plain; the main protagonist; ends up in Nebraska where he befriends a young boy, after his crew mutinies against him
- Killian "Hook" Jones - protagonist on the popular television series Once Upon a Time; former captain of the Jolly Roger; originally appears as an antagonist who wishes to avenge himself against Rumplestiltskin for having taken his hand and murdered his true love; later becomes a love interest for Emma Swan
- Jonathan "Johnny" Jones - from the 1996 video game Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
K
- Don Karnage - the flamboyant leader of a band of air pirates using airplanes in Disney's animated series TaleSpin
- Kongre - leader of a band of murderous pirates, roaming the South Atlantic in the pirate ship Maule, in Jules Verne's 1905 novel The Lighthouse at the End of the World
- Korsars (corsairs) - the scourge of the seas in the interior world of Pellucidar and major villains in Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1930 novel Tarzan at the Earth's Core
- King of the Atlantic - ship taken over by (unnamed) pirates in H.G. Wells's 1933 book The Shape of Things to Come
- Captain Arthur Kirkland - a former pirate and the national personification of England in the Japanese webseries, manga, and anime series Axis Powers Hetalia
- Drongo Kane - repeated adversary of A. Bertram Chandler's John Grimes; a clever and ruthless space adventurer whose acts constitute piracy by any common-sense standard, but who manages to stay within the law with the help of sharp lawyers
- Ker Karraje, a.k.a. Count d'Artigas - a sophisticated and ruthless pirate of Malay origin, using state-of-the-art technologies of the late 19th century, notably a submarine, in Jules Verne's 1896 novel Facing the Flag
- Maquesta Kar-Thon - the pirate captain of the Perechon who attempted to provide passage to the Heroes of the Lance in the Dragonlance novel Dragons of Winter Night by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (1985)
- Captain Kennit - a pirate from Robin Hobb's The Liveship Traders trilogy, who - while far from being a paragon of virtue - has many redeeming features
- Kernock in Eugène Sue's 1830 adventure novel "Kernock le pirate".
- Chung Khan, better known as "The Yellow Dragon" - a 19th-century Chinese pirate in the Italian comic book Zagor; a former nobleman and governor of a province in China
- Nancy Kington - with Minerva Sharpe, the protagonists of Pirates!, a 2003 novel by Celia Rees
L
- Denise Lafitte - the daughter of French pirate Jean Lafitte in the Italian comic book Zagor
- Johnny LaFitte - of Glenora, California; a 20th-century descendant of Jean Lafitte who in Edgar Rice Burroughs's story "Pirate Blood" gets to the distant Vulture's Island, where his pirate heredity asserts itself in a modern piratical career full of cold-blooded murders and rapes
- Locke Lamora - with Jean Tannen, the protagonists of Scott Lynch's Red Seas Under Red Skies; they are in essence land-bound thieves and swindlers "who don't know one end of a galley from another" but nevertheless get unwillingly sidetracked into joining and then leading a pirate crew
- Trafalgar Law - the captain and the doctor of the Heart Pirates in the anime/manga One Piece
- John Milton "Black Jack" Lee - the captain of the Ivory Web in The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest; he was once a Royal Navy officer, but was accused of treason and piracy; he and his frigate are sunk in 1796 by a Royal Navy ship commanded by commodore Horatio Nelson; two hundred years later, seamen fear him and his ship as ghosts
- LeChuck - the evil zombie ghost pirate antagonist of Guybrush Threepwood in Ron Gilbert's Monkey Island series of adventure games by LucasArts
- Missee Lee - a female Chinese pirate in Arthur Ransome's 1941 novel Missee Lee
- Captain LeFwee - an anthropomorphic scarlet macaw and one of the antagonists in the video game Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves; the captain of The Death Hen
- Lego Pirates - with all the typical pirate characteristics such as eye patches and wooden legs; launched by Lego in 1989 with considerable success
- Captain Levasseur - a dashing French buccaneer who briefly partners with Captain Blood, played by Basil Rathbone in the film of the same name; Levasseur and Blood fight a duel to the death over the fate of Arabella Bishop
- Captain Red Ned Lynch - and his crew of the Blarney Cock are pirates in the romantic adventure film Swashbuckler (1976)
- Monkey D. Luffy - captain of the Straw Hat Pirates and the protagonist in the world of One Piece, an anime and manga series. His crew includes:
- Roronoa Zoro, the swordsman
- Nami, the navigator
- Usopp, the marksman
- Sanji, the chef
- Tony Tony Chopper, the doctor
- Nico Robin, the archaeologist
- Franky, the shipwright
- Brook, the musician
M
- The Master of Ballantrae (James Durie) - in Robert Louis Stevenson's well-known novel of that name, becomes a ruthless and bloodthirsty pirate after being forced into exile following his involvement in the failed Jacobite Rising of 1745
- Mad Jack the Pirate - a pirate who goes treasure hunting with his first mate rat Snuk
- Malgo - in L. Sprague de Camp's novels The Unbeheaded King (1983) and The Honourable Barbarian (1989) is a former mercenary soldier and prison guard driven to the far islands of the East, where he gathers a pirate crew on board his notorious ship, The Maneater, commits many nefarious deeds, tangles with the adventurous ex-king Jorian and Jorian's young brother Kerin, and eventually comes to a deserved bad end along with his crew
- Jean Malot, better known as Captain Snake - a 16th-century French pirate in the Italian comic book Zagor; all his male descendants share his name and nickname
- Maxi - an Okinawan pirate from the Soul series of video games who wields nunchaku; unlike Cervantes de Leon from the same series, Maxi does not resemble stereotypical depictions of pirates. His ship is a playable stage in Soulcalibur IV
- Morgan "Moonscar" McWright - captain of the Maelstrom who led his crew onto an island in the Louisiana bayou and killed the inhabitants of a peaceful pagan village; he and his crew were subsequently slain by a pair of vicious were-cats, in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island
- McGrath - a 17th-century pirate on The Fancy in the Doctor Who episode "The Curse of the Black Spot". He was injured while fixing the rigging, giving him a black spot; he is taken by the Siren to her ship, and later joins the rest of the crew when they take the ship for themselves
- John Merrick - a former Royal Navy lieutenant turned pirate captain in the 1850s Pacific; the villain of O. V. Falck-Ytter's 1873 young adult action-adventure story "Haakon Haakonsen. En Norsk Robinson" ("Haakon Haakonsen. A Norwegian Robinson"), partly inspired by Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe; it was adapted to the 1990 film Shipwrecked, in which Merrick is played by Gabriel Byrne
- MooBeard - the Cow Pirate from the first episode of Random Cartoons
- Mulligan - a pirate on The Fancy in the 17th century in the Doctor Who episode "The Curse of the Black Spot"; started a mutiny with Boatswain against Captain Avery; he cut his hand, giving him a black spot; he is taken by the Siren to her ship, and later joins the rest of the crew when they take the ship for themselves
- Murdoch Juan - a bold space adventurer in Poul Anderson's story "The Pirate", part of the Psychotechnic League series; whether he is actually defined as a pirate, or rather a daring but legitimate entrepreneur, is a major issue on which the whole story turns
- Captain Mission - a pirate alleged by Daniel Defoe to have established a floating socialist pirate republic
- Manjanungo - a bloodthirsty space pirate in Race Across the Stars, part of the Spaceways series by John Cleve
- Elaine Marley - the governor of several pirate islands in the Monkey Island series of video games
- Captain Horatio McCallister, or the Sea Captain - from the animated TV series The Simpsons; admits in one episode that he is not actually a sea captain, but is still known for his frequent, pirate-like "Yarrr!"
- Bosun Moon - a petty officer on a pirate ship in the film Yellowbeard
- Captain Morgan - the pirate character for the rum of the same name
- Andrew Murray, a.k.a. "Captain Rip-Rap" - the idealistic Jacobite turned pirate, working in partnership with the decidedly not idealistic Captain Flint, who in A. D. Howden Smith's Porto Bello Gold (1924) captures from a Spanish galleon - and secretly buries - the same treasure which would a generation later be recovered with considerable trouble by the protagonists of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novel Treasure Island
- Captain Mutiny - one of the main villains on Power Rangers Lost Galaxy; in Japan, he was known as Captain Zahab (a play on Captain Ahab) and was the primary villain of Seijuu Sentai Gingaman, the series that became Lost Galaxy in America
- Harry Markel - a former captain turned into a pirate, who is captured and transferred to England, but escapes along with his right-hand man John Carpenter and the rest of his accomplices â" known collectively as the "Pirates of the Halifax" â" and seizes the Alert, a three-masted leaving, after having massacred the captain and crew; in the 1903 novel Traveling Scholarships by Jules Verne
- Captain Marika Kato - takes over her deceased father's position of the space pirate ship Bentenmaru in the anime Bodacious Space Pirates (2012)
N
- Nabel - a nasty cyborg space pirate on the 1996 film Space Truckers
- Carson Napier - Edgar Rice Burroughs's dashing space-traveler in the Venus series; discovered on Venus a tyrannical regime which needed opposing, and the best way to do that was to assume leadership of the Pirates of Venus
- Captain Nemo - Indian raja in Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea; driven by his hatred of the British Empire to become an underwater pirate, destroy ships with his submarine the Nautilus and help Greek insurgents in Crete
O
- Wolf O'Donnell - a one-eyed space pirate and bounty hunter in the Star Fox video game series
- One-Eared Pirate - a pirate in Robert Arthur's book The Three Investigators: The Mystery of the Talking Skull; legend says that he stole money and, before he was caught, he put all of the money into the geyser
- One-Eyed Willy - the pirate whose "rich stuff" the kids set out to find in The Goonies
- Orm the Red - a 10th-century Viking whose piratical exploits in Christian and Muslim Spain, England and southern Rus (present-day Ukraine) are narrated with considerable empathy and humor in The Long Ships, a novel by Frans G. Bengtsson
P
- Painty the Pirate and Patchy the Pirate are pirates that appear on the animated comedy SpongeBob SquarePants. Painty is a pirate captain in a painting that sings the theme song along with an unseen group of children, while Patchy is a live-action character who hosts many of the show's "special episodes".
- Harvey 'Blind' Pew - a pirate in the movie Yellowbeard
- Sneaky Pete - the nemesis of Zan the Man
- Pirate Jenny (German: "Seeräuber-Jenny") in the well-known song from The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill, with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht. The lowly maid Jenny imagines avenging herself for the contempt she endures from the townspeople. A pirate ship â" with eight sails and 50 cannons - would sail in and destroy the town, and the pirates would chain up the townspeople. Thereupon, Jenny would command the Pirates to slaughter everybody, after which Jenny would be crowned Pirate Queen and sail away with them. In this case, the pirates are imaginary also within framework of the play itself.
- Pirate Beard - a Raposa pirate from Drawn to Life, originally set on plundering the village with his crew, but is convinced to stay after being given a pirate ship by the Mayor; seems to be a spoof on the character Jack Sparrow from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean
- The Pirate Captain - the main character in The Pirates!; self-deluded and mostly incompetent as a pirate and as a sea captain, but he's ultimately kind-hearted and very much respected by his crew. He doesn't appear to possess any of the stereotypical pirate accoutrements, though he dresses in the traditional manner, and much is made of his luxuriant beard. In The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists he was voiced by Hugh Grant. His crew includes:
- Cutlass Liz, voiced in the film by Salma Hayek
- Peg-Leg Hastings, voiced in the film by Lenny Henry
- The Pirate with a Scarf, voiced in the film by Martin Freeman
- The Pirate with Gout, voiced in the film by Brendan Gleeson
- The Albino Pirate, voiced in the film by Anton Yelchin (US version) and Russell Tovey (UK version)
- The Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate, a female pirate in disguise, voiced in the film by Ashley Jensen
- The Pirate in Green
- The Pirate with a Hook Where his Hand Should Be
- The Pirate in Red
- The Pirate who Likes Kittens and Sunsets, voiced in the film by Al Roker
- The Burly Pirate
- The Pirate with an Accordion
- The Sassy Pirate
- Jennifer, a sensible Victorian lady who becomes an invaluable member of the crew
- Captain Walker D. Plank - a villain in the animated TV series James Bond Jr.; fits the traditional stereotype to the extent that even his parrot has an eyepatch and a wooden leg
- The Pepper Pirates - robbed the Smurfs in The Smurfs
- Captain Kelso Pepper in Colin Greenland's Take Back Plenty - terrorizing the spaceways in his green-colored, powerfully armed ship, "The Ugly Truth", which bears a figurehead of a bare-chested Nubian woman. His piratical crew consists of a Chinese man, a black robot and a superhumanly powerful female extraterrestrial. They all come to a suitably bad end at the hands of treacherous partner in crime.
- The Pie-Rats - a band of rodent thieves who specialise in stealing pastries and dress as pirates, from Pocket Dragon Adventures
- The Pirate King - with his crew of pirates, the title characters in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance
- Piet Piraat, a.k.a. "Pete the Pirate" - a good-natured adventurous pirate in a Flemish children's program
- The Pirates - a band of nameless and hapless pirates that appear as a running joke in almost all of the Asterix adventures
- The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything - three veggie pirates who tell a story of Jonah in Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie
- The Pirats - pirate rats in Reader Rabbit Math Adventures Ages 6â"9;"enemies" of Reader Rabbit and friends; they are Captain Ratbeard, Pearl, Vermina, Cheester and Riley
- Captain Pugwash - from a series of children's comic strips, books, and animated films created by John Ryan
Q
- Quartermaster - the pirate who served as the quartermaster aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge, under the command of Blackbeard in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
R
- Ragnar Danneskjöld - pirate in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged whose activities are motivated by radical pro-capitalist ideology
- Sir Raleigh - an anthropomorphic Welsh frog of aristocratic lineage who turns to piracy; a member of the villainous Fiendish Five who were responsible for the Death of Sly Cooper's family; the first villain in the 2002 video game Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus
- Red Rodney Radcliffe - captain of The Black Hand, and his daughter Ethel Radcliffe, in Harry Turtledove's Atlantis alternate history series
- Red Rackham - a pirate in The Adventures of Tintin comic The Secret of the Unicorn by Hergé; killed by Sir Francis Haddock after Rackham attempted to take over Haddock's ship, the Unicorn
- Captain Thomas Bartholomew Red - from the Roman Polanski film Pirates; played by Walter Matthau
- The Red Rover - the main antagonist of the various sailing characters in James Fenimore Cooper's 1827 novel of the same name
- Red Sonja - a female pirate in Marvel Comics
- Redbeard, a.k.a. Barbe Rouge - a comic book series since 1961, created by Jean-Michel Charlier and Victor Hubinon
- Redbeard - voiced by John Stephenson, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! season 1 episode, "Go Away Ghost Ship"; no connection to the comic book character
- Redbeard - a fearsome pirate leader whom The Phantom challenged, defeated and made into an ally; no connection to the previous two of this name
- Redbeard - a LEGO minifig sailing the Black Seas Barracuda and Renegade Runner; no connection to the previous three of this name
- The Rescator (Le Rescateur in French) - a mysterious pirate ranging the late 17th Century Mediterranean, his face always covered with a leather mask, and his true name and antecedents completely unknown. Unlike other pirates of his time, he strictly avoids the highly lucrative business of slaving. He appears in several volumes of the Angelique series by Sergeanne Golon. Only after his moving his operations to North America is the startling secret of the Rescator's life revealed.
- Rhine River Pirates - infest European rivers in the post-nuclear war world of Poul Anderson's story "Marius"
- Risky Boots - a pirate captain, and the main antagonist of the Shantae video game series
- Ridley - a member of the Space Pirates in the Metroid series of video games
- Roan Tom - in Poul Anderson's story "A Tragedy of Errors", a one-eyed space adventurer during the Long Night after the fall of the Terran Empire, roaming half-ruined planets and either trading or taking other people's property by force
- Robert the Terrible - the hideous veggie pirate character who sailed for revenge of his brother the king for the throne of his brother's kingdom in The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie
- The Dread Pirate Roberts - a fearsome pirate dressed all in black (including a black mask and headrag) who is reputed to leave no survivors, and captains Revenge in the novel The Princess Bride by William Goldman
- Jonathan Rockhal - a space pirate in the Italian comic book Nathan Never; before he turned to piracy, he was a general of the Federal Army of Earth
- Captain Roger, a.k.a. Redbeard - one of the leaders of the LEGO Pirates
- Kaptain K. Rool - the alter ego of King K. Rool in the video game Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest
- Russell - a friendly sea otter pirate, from Happy Tree Friends
- Rusty Pete - the robotic drunkard first mate of Captain Slag from the video games Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction and Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty
S
- Sailor John - the evil pirate in Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure
- Captain Stingaree - the first supervillain pirate in the Batman comic books
- Captain Samuel Salt - the pirate captain of a magic pirate ship and a crew of pirates who sail through sea and air to Nonestic Ocean in Pirates in Oz and Captain Salt in Oz in the Oz series created by L. Frank Baum and written by Ruth Plumly Thompson
- Captain Shakespeare - of the Caspartine, from the 2007 movie Stardust, a famous pirate with a reputation for being cruel, though in reality he is kind-hearted and rather effeminate; in the book he is named Johannes Alberic
- Captain John Sharkey - flew his green Jolly Roger flag in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1897 short stories and his 1925 novel The Dealings of Captain Sharkey
- Captain Sabertooth (Norwegian: Kaptein Sabeltann) - the main character in some Norwegian theatre plays created by Norwegian singer and actor Terje Formoe; the skipper of his band of pirates who sailed together in their ship the Black Lady in search of mystical treasures
- Sandokan, or "The Tiger of Malaya" - the scourge of the British in the South China Sea in a series of books by Italian author Emilio Salgari; portrayed onscreen in a 1976 Italian TV series by Indian actor Kabir Bedi
- Captain Scarblade - the vicious captain of the Revenge in the Neopets plot Curse of Maraqua; he and his crew of marauding pirates attempt to destroy the underwater city of Maraqua
- Faris Scherwiz - a cross-dressing female pirate captain in the video game Final Fantasy V
- Sea Hawk - a pirate and anti-hero from the TV series She-Ra: Princess of Power; originally a transporter for the Evil Horde, but later defects to The Great Rebellion when persuaded by Princess Adora/She-Ra
- Searats - anthropomorphic rats engaged in piracy, often appearing as villains in Brian Jacques' Redwall series of books; include the highly intelligent Cluny the Scourge, the insane Gabool the Wild and the opportunistic Ripfang
- Sed - son of Seth Balmore in the video game Lost Odyssey; owns the submarine Nautilus
- Minerva Sharpe - with Nancy Kington, the protagonists of Pirates!, a novel by Celia Rees
- Sir Arthur Richards of Kent, Diego Santana de la Vega - pirate captain; once a queen's spy in the Spanish Court; retired when chased back to England, where he and others began the crusade to promote the importance that reading plays in a child's development; recognized now as an active participant and sea dog, he is found at many western United States renaissance faires and pirate gatherings; his crew are the Pirates of Treasure Cove, and together they coined the often alluded-to truth "readers argh leaders"
- Sissy Le Poop, Smelly Pete and Shark Bait - characters from children's animated series Those Scurvy Rascals; they are underwear-obsessed pirates (plus Polly the Parrot) whom the show follows the adventures of; they all live on the ship The Soiled Pair
- Captain Skunkbeard - voiced by Ron Perlman in Scooby-Doo! Pirates Ahoy! (2006)
- Long John Silver - one of several pirates who appear in the Robert Louis Stevenson novel Treasure Island, which weaves together many pirate myths and motifs including maps of hidden treasure, villainy among pirates, marooning, parrots, missing limbs, and eye patches
- John Silver - a space pirate with mechanical leg in the Italian comic book Nathan Never; he is second in command to captain Jonathan Rockhal; before he turned to piracy, he was a general of the Federal Army of Earth
- Singh Brotherhood, arch-enemies of The Phantom; already had a long history as fearsome pirates before the first Phantom encountered them in 1536; they continue existing into the 20th century, though now as a crime syndicate rather than pirates
- Skull Pirates - from the Legend of Zelda video game series; a group of undead skeleton pirates, found most prominently in the Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons games
- Kaptain Skurvy - a secondary villain of the Donkey Kong Country cartoon series
- Captain Daniel Shaker, a smooth-talking, ruthless space pirate in Charles Sheffield's Godspeed, a loose Science Fiction adaptation of Stevenson's Treasure Island.
- Space pirates - various groups, distinct from each other, use this label or belong in this category
- Captain Romulus Slag - a robotic space pirate from the video games Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction and Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty
- Space Pirate Monkey From Pluto! - recurring character on Robot Chicken
- Steve the Pirate - a dodgeball player who believes himself to be a pirate, in the movie Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story; played by Alan Tudyk
- Stickybeard (voiced by Mark Hamill) - a candy-hunting pirate from Codename: Kids Next Door who sails the suburbs in his ship, The Sweet Revenge, with his crew of pirates, robbing kids of their candy
- Strombanni, Captain of The Red Hand - a Barachan pirate who contended with his hated rival, the Zingaran Buccaneer Black Zarono, for the famed treasure hidden a hundred years earlier by Bloody Tranicos in the land of the savage Picts. Falling out with each other while being besieged by the Picts, Strombanni and Zarono ended up being massacred along with their crews, and the treasure fell into the hands of their rival, Conan The Barbarian.
- Syndicate of Pirates - use flying machines (not yet invented at the time of writing) and secret rays to terrorise the adventurers of the Klondike Gold Rush in Alaska - in George Griffith's book The Great Pirate Syndicate (1899)
- Captain Syrup - a female pirate captain and the main antagonist of video games Wario Land and Wario Land 2
- Vikram Szpirglas - an airship pirate and antagonist in the novel Airborn
- Captain Spade - the henchman pirate captain of Ker Karraje in Jules Verne's 1896 novel Facing the Flag
- Starjammers - heroic space pirates in the Marvel Universe, who become pirates for eminently justified reasons
- Henry Steel - the legend of Henry Steel formed the backbone of CBS's cancelled reality TV show Pirate Master
- Captain Jack Sparrow - one of the main characters in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series; played by Johnny Depp; the son of Captain Teague and one of the nine Pirate Lords; captain of the Black Pearl
- Captain Ishmael Squint - voiced by Charles Napier in the Jumanji TV series; cruel pirate who sailed the Jumanji Sea
- Elizabeth Swann - a female pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean, played by Keira Knightley
T
- Taicoon Chang and Taicoon Wu - leaders of the Three Island Pirates who want to chop off heads in Arthur Ransome's 1941 novel Missee Lee
- Jean Tannen - with Locke Lamora, the protagonists of Scott Lynch's Red Seas Under Red Skies; they are in essence land-bound thieves and swindlers "who don't know one end of a galley from another" but nevertheless get unwillingly sidetracked into joining and then leading a pirate crew
- Helen Tavrel - female pirate in Robert E. Howard's 1928 story âThe Isle of Pirateâs Doomâ ([5], [6]
- Captain Teague - a Pirate Lord of Madagascar and keeper of the Pirata Codex, captain of the Misty Lady, in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series
- Captain Tempest - from two classic novels by Emilio Salgari: Il capitano Tempesta (1905) and Il leone di Damasco (The Lion of Damascus, 1910)
- Tetra - a female captain of a band of pirates in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass video games
- Theseus, a.k.a. Captain Firebrand - in Jack Williamson's 1940 Reign of Wizardry, a loose adaptation of Greek mythology, Theseus becomes the piratical Captain Firebrand since pirates greedy for loot are the only allies he can find in his struggle to destroy the evil magical rule of Minoan Crete; Theseus is a pirate leader also in Poul Anderson's The Dancer from Atlantis, but in that rendition the Cretans are the heroes and the greedy Theseus is a villain
- Thoas - in Poul Anderson's 1952 story "Son of the Sword"; a Cretan adventurer who visits Ancient Egypt in the turbulent times after Akhnaton's death; he makes off with an Egyptian princess whose life is in imminent danger; flees pursuit down the Nile and escapes by inventing the Ram, which would be a major part of naval warfare for many centuries to come
- Bloody Tranicos, in his time the greatest of the Barachan pirates, admiral of an entire pirate fleet which stormed the island castle of the exiled Stygian prince Tothmekri, killed the prince and his people and carried off an enormous treasure of gems. Fearing betrayal, Tranicos along with eleven of his trusted captains made a secret hideout in the land of the savage Picts - but they made the mistake of massacring a Pict village, and a surviving Shaman raised a demon to kill Tranicos and his captains, their bodies magically preserved around the table where they were sitting. A hundred years later, two rival pirates - Strombanni of The Red Hand and Black Zarono - sought Tranicos's treasure. Falling out with each other while being besieged by the Picts, they ended up being massacred along with their crews, and the treasure fell into the hands of their rival, Conan The Barbarian, who sold the gems to fiance the army which turned him from pirate into King of Aquilonia.
- Abraham Tuizentfloot - one of the main characters in the Belgian comic strip The Adventures of Nero; this insane little man talks, dresses, acts and claims to be a pirate, despite the fact that he is hardly seen at sea and can't even swim
- Gammis Turek - leader of a space pirate fleet in Vatta's War
- James Turner, nicknamed Captain Flint, in Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series
- William Turner - one of the protagonists of Pirates of the Caribbean; played by Orlando Bloom
- Guybrush Threepwood - the bumbling hero of Ron Gilbert's Monkey Island series of adventure games by LucasArts; his antagonist is the evil zombie ghost pirate LeChuck
U
V
- Pieter van Cleef, a wily 16th Century Dutch pirate in Cecelia Holland's The Sea Baggars. Captain of The Wayward Girl - based first at Nieuwpoort and later at Plymouth - van Cleef is quite old but still very fit and has an unmatched skill, both in seamanship and in the tricks of sea fighting. Playing the game of piracy for loot, pure and simple, van Cleef is reluctantly forced to join with the Watergeuzen seaborne rebels, whose claim to fight for Dutch freedom van Cleef dismisses as completely hypocritical. Conversely, Jan van Cleef - Pieter's nephew and second-in-command - is more of a Dutch patriot than pure pirate.
- Captain Vasquez - a pirate mentioned in the Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? episode "Hassle in the Castle"
- Terence Vulmea, a.k.a. Black Vulmea - born a 17th-century Irish peasant, he carried his vendetta with the English oppressors of his country to the waters of the Caribbean. He is one of Robert E. Howard's lesser known characters, more of his exploits added by David C. Smith
- Very Long - a giant pirate in the Puff the Magic Dragon cartoon film
- Vyse - main character of the video game Skies of Arcadia
W
- Jamie Waring - the swashbuckling hero of The Black Swan, 20th Century Fox's film adaptation of Rafael Sabatini's novel; played by Tyrone Power
- Duchy of Waldegren - haunt of notorious space pirates in A. Bertram Chandler's John Grimes series
- Captain Whisker - a robot look-alike of Doctor Eggman as seen in the video game Sonic Rush Adventure
- Whitebeard Pirates - in One Piece, led by Edward Newgate, a.k.a. Whitebeard
X
Y
- Yanez de Gomera - the Portuguese, more level-headed, philosophical elder sidekick of Sandokan; in the 12 novels of Emilio Salgari's Sandokan cycle, the last of which, posthumously published, is titled Yanez' Revenge (La rivincita di Yanez, 1913)
- Yellowbeard - the protagonist of the 1983 comedy film Yellowbeard; played by Monty Python alumnus Graham Chapman
Z
- Zack - the lead pirate in the 2007 video game Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
- Zanzibar - a Dreadnok pirate in the G.I. Joe toy line and comics; his real name, Morgan Teach, is a reference to Captain Morgan and Edward Teach
- Black Zarono - a Zingaran buccaneer who contended with his hated rival, the Barachan pirate Strombanni, for the famed treasure hidden a hundred years earlier by Bloody Tranicos in the land of the savage Picts. Falling out with each other while being besieged by the Picts, Zarono and Strombanni ended up being massacred along with their crews, and the treasure fell into the hands of their rival, Conan The Barbarian.
Miscellaneous
- several pirates in the book series Redwall by Brian Jacques
- the majority of the characters in the computer game Pirate101
- unnamed one-eyed pirate appearing on the cover of Pirate's Booty snack food packaging, with speech balloons voicing praise for the product accompanied by "Yo ho ho" and "Shiver me timbers" (expressions derived from Stevenson's Treasure Island, though the pirate depicted does not precisely correspond to any of its characters)
See also
- Pirates in popular culture
- List of space pirates
- List of pirate films