Historically, Shipwreck was by far the
horniest member of the elite
G.I. Joe fighting force. He was known to flirt with
Lady Jaye,
Scarlett,
Cover Girl, and myriad other women ranging from
civilians met on
missions to
Cobra experimental
fish-girl hybrids. Though he is usually shown to be
rebuffed in his
lustful aspirations towards his female team members, he clearly occasionally hits the
home run with other women. Shipwreck is, as well, easily the most disheveled fighter on the force, with unkempt
shaggy hair unfit for a
Navy man, a
beard any
pirate would be proud to wear, and his unbuttoned shirt revealing a brawny wall of
chest hair. Following on the pirate theme, he is one of the handful of Joes with an animal companion. Not a dog like
Mutt (that's the character, not his dog; the dog is
Junkyard); nor a
wolf like
Snake Eyes or a
hawk like
Spirit. No, Shipwreck has a
parrot. Named
Polly. And not particularly a fierce fighting parrot, more like an occasional humorous quipping parrot. On the other hand, Shipwreck was without doubt the team member most likely to get into a
bar fight. And win it by beating up the entire bar. He was, naetheless, always a sort of second-tier team member, almost always in the secondary
storyline and often as not trotted out for
humor at the expense of his somewhat inflated
ego.
If you vaguely remember Shipwreck from the 80's
Saturday morning cartoon version of the show, then you probably have no idea that he was
Latino, his real name in-Universe (according to the 'secret file' on the back of his
action figure packaging) being
Hector Xavier Delgado, from
Chula Vista,
California. The 'secret file' doesn't indicate which
street gang he was affiliated with as a kid; perhaps none, since he ran away to join the Navy at sixteen, apparently in a day and age when one could still get away with misrepresenting one's
identity while signing up for the
armed forces. The reason that his
Hispanicity never even occurred to you was that his voice acting is done with an eye towards making the character sound a bit like
Jack Nicholson, the idea being that nothing portrays 'an intense guy who just might be a bit crazy' like that particular voice profile. Just ask
Christian Slater. In the
Fenslerfilm parody of Shipwreck's
PSA (the original has the sailor man
counseling kids
not to steal bikes),
Shipwreck confronts the kid and strongly implies that he is his father, musing that "it's like looking in a mirror" and asking "does your mother still hang out at dockside bars?"