| Roscoe Bosco |
Mentioned in Hit the Road, and first seen in Culture Shock, Roscoe Bosco is the severely paranoid and conspiratorial thinking owner of Bosco's Inconvenience store.
Character Detail[]
Bosco's business style appears to be based around overcharging for any item so he can afford his elaborate high-tech, homemade security systems, as well as selling his personal brand of "BoscoTech equipment", which are generally rudimentary at best, but cost extraordinary amounts of money (like a hundred million dollars for a "Truth Serum" - which turns out to be a bottle of Vodka). Throughout Season One, his paranoia causes him to dress up as different people (such as an English man, a French man, a Russian man, and even his own mother). These disguises usually involve nothing more than Bosco wearing a hat or make-up. He still wears his ordinary clothes, and even his name tag saying his name.
Bosco's disguise rack. The fifth one was never used.
At some point between Seasons One and Two, Bosco uses the money he made selling his BoscoTech items to Sam & Max to equip his store with even better security measures and various detection apparatus. He also covers the windows in aluminum foil, dims the lighting to a red glow and stops selling things. This is mostly because of his newfound fear of being abducted by T.H.E.M., which turns out to be justified as they do abduct him sometime between Moai Better Blues and the end of Night of the Raving Dead. He is found relatively easily, but it takes Sam & Max Chariots of the Dogs and a significant part of What's new, Beelzebub? to completely save him.
Bosco has a peculiar relationship with his mother, Ms. Bosco. In Chariots of the Dogs, Bosco inadvertently travels back through time and causes a mess in her store. While Sam & Max manage to repair most of the changes to history this causes (including Bosco being a cow), this nonetheless makes her seek revenge and enlist Flint Paper to try to track him down, unaware that he is actually her own future son. The truth about all of this only comes out after she dies in What's new, Beelzebub?. At the time she also mentions how she sent Bosco an alarm clock every Christmas, which he always took to be a bomb and promptly disposed of.
One of the first test-tube babies, Bosco was "born" in a machine, rather than his mother's womb. It is implied that his father is John F. Kennedy, which may explain his paranoia and obsession with conspiracy theory.
In the time before Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse, Bosco has traveled with Bluster Blaster to Las Vegas along with the rest of his unspent money that Sam and Max had given him in Season 1. He left town without saying goodbye and shut down the Inconvenience Store, and is completely absent for the season aside from mentions. In the fourth episode of the season, Bluster Blaster can be found at the harbor and reveals that Bosco stayed behind in Vegas to resolve his gambling debts... as a male stripper. Bluster Blaster was carrying a letter from Bosco for his mother, which turned out to be a request for 20,000 dollars (He also claimed he "met a girl" which may or may not be a cover-up). Bluster Blaster then says that he doesn't want to deal with a person like Bosco ever again.
Personality[]
Bosco is shown as being smart and incredibly paranoid. He's a relatively two-dimensional character, who embodies multiple harmful stereotypes about black and mentally ill people.
Like his mother, he's capable of making incredibly advanced technologies, but usually saves those for himself, opting to give others - such as Sam & Max - useless junk he claims are actually various technologically advanced items, like saying a tissue with his snot on it is a "bioweapon", and claiming a gun that shoots onions is a "tear gas launcher". Despite what appears to be shady, duplicitous behavior, he does not seem to be a particularly greedy person, and mentions the fact that he only sets his prices so ridiculously high because Sam & Max are always able to meet them.
During Chariots of the Dogs, the Moai heads upset him by rightfully pointing out he is a stereotype, which he seems to feel bad about.
Voiced By[]
Joey Camen (Season One and Two)
Ogie Banks (Sam and Max: Save The World Remastered and Sam and Max: Beyond Time and Space Remastered)
Trivia[]
- Whenever Sam randomly asks Bosco what he has in his store, he simply says "Nope.", But he'll eventually say yes to the question. In the sixth episode (where he's disguised as his mother) he actually has some stuff that could've been used for Sam and Max's previous adventures. Max loudly berates himself for not asking for said items before.
- His biggest fear is being watched, which is both the cause and result of his paranoia. In "Beyond the Alley of the Dolls", it is revealed that Bosco stayed in Vegas during the events of The Devil's Playhouse to earn money as a male stripper.
- It is implied that Bosco has a gambling problem - in "The Penal Zone", Ms. Bosco mentions that he still had 15 Billion Dollars leftover from selling Sam and Max his inventions (He calls them idiots for giving him all that money). And yet in "Beyond the Alley of the Dolls", Bluster Blaster reveals that he ran into debt... meaning he SOMEHOW gambled away the BILLIONS of dollars he swindled from Sam and Max.
- In the Remastered game, Bosco is voiced by Ogie Banks, possibly due to controversy over his previous voice actor being white impersonating a stereotypical black man, as well as the original voice actor having been revealed to have done blackface not too long before the remasters started development. Some of Bosco's lines were also changed due to the original quotes deemed offensive.
- Due to some dialogue changes, Sam and Max still refer to him as "Sissypants" in episode 3, this was probably to make the duo make fun of his disguise.
- In the original dialogue (disguised as his mother), when Sam asks him to rub his unicorn, he'll say "I'm not that kind of woman!" In the Remastered game, he will gasp while the subtitles read "Well!"
Names in other languages[]
| Language | Name | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Polish | Bosko | Same last name. Also means "Divinely" or "Heavenly"; His shop is called "Bosko u Bosko", which means "Divinely at Bosko's" |