Pork Pie Hat Kid

"You're the bait, Gyro Zeppeli!"

- Pork Pie Hat Kid to Gyro Zeppeli

Pork Pie Hat Kid (ポーク・パイ・ハット小僧) is a minor antagonist featured in Steel Ball Run.

Pork Pie Hat Kid is one of Funny Valentine's henchmen and attacks Johnny Joestar and Gyro Zeppeli in the desert to take their Saint Corpse Parts. He is a Stand User, wielding the double hooked Wired.

Appearance
Pork Pie Hat Kid appears like a skinny and short young boy, hiding his bald head with bamboo sticks. Unlike most characters, he is unattractive, having a large and angular jawline and baring his teeth constantly. In contrast to the usual character design, Pork Pie Hat Kid possesses large black irises.

Pork Pie Hat Kid wears a sleeveless suit, open and laced at the back and decorated with studs arranged vertically on both sides of the chest and both legs, as well as short feathers on the shoulder and finally a tutu-like short dress. He also wears large bracelets adorned with leaves on both wrists.

Because of his Stand Wired, Pork Pie Hat Kid's tongue has two hook shaped cavities and the bottom of his mouth two wheels around of which the cables of Wired can roll.

Personality
Pork Pie Hat Kid appears to be a goofy and deranged individual. He seems to have little conception of normalcy and shows several disturbing habits. For instance, he has a tendency to eat and drink anything that comes into his view such as the ink of a pen (finding it delicious) or a whole coffee pot, and even wonders if he could eat his broken teeth. He is also shown hitting a bag with a rock to search it instead of opening it. Like any of Valentine's subordinates, he has little problem with using violence and killing his targets.

Due to the presence of his Stand Wired being located within his mouth, his speech is slurred slightly, leading to him mispronouncing things such as Johnny's name, furthering his odd and degraded seeming personality.

His motivation of searching for the Corpse Parts is to get a promotion and be acknowledged as being "invincible and smart", hinting that he is aware that people look down on him and is uncomfortable with it.

Despite his quirks, Pork Pie Hat Kid is still shown to be a capable tactician in a Stand fight. Aware of his primary objective of securing the Corpse Parts, he takes the time to analyze the situation and is shown to devise several plans to counter the enemy actions, at one point using Gyro as a bait after having predicted that Johnny would come to save his companion or release Slow Dancer near Johnny to weaponize the horse' instinctual will to go to its rider and then detect the hidden Johnny.

Abilities
Pork Pie Hat Kid possesses a Stand ability named Wired, which takes the form of two fishing hooks attached to a winch system located inside the back of his mouth. Using a body of water, a filled up pan in the case of his fight with Johnny and Gyro, he can send these hooks through the water and out through "bait" (such as insects or animal parts like feathers) to snag his targets. The wires on his winch that connect to the hooks are shown to be incredibly resilient, appearing to resemble industrial steel cables in strength, and are stated to be able to lift around the weight of a adult horse when used together.

History
Nothing specific is known about the past of Pork Pie Hat Kid. It can be assumed that he was working for Valentine's government previously though, before the events of Steel Ball Run, since he mentions his main motivation for hunting down the protagonists is to raise his position further within said government.

Steel Ball Run
After Fritz von Stroheim's failed assassination attempt, Pork Pie Hat Kid uses Wired to kidnap Gyro along with stealing the duo's luggage and horses, looking for something. Johnny begins to understand that the enemy wasn't trying to kill them to get ahead in the race, but instead was looking for something they have: a mummified hand that entered Johnny's body during their battle against the Boom Boom Family. Even Von Stroheim and Oyecomova were hunting for it.

Johnny realizes the enemy can attack from the distance, by transforming objects like feathers and bugs into bait that produces wired hooks with enough strength to lift a horse. Unfortunately, Johnny falls prey to the enemy but just as he is about to give up the corpse, a strange creature emerges from the hand, awakening Johnny's ability to fire his own nails thus attacking Pork Pie Hat Kid.

Thanks to Gyro, Johnny finds out the enemy's position and manages to seemingly defeat him. Gyro was however turned into bait, and Pork Pie Hat Kid forces Johnny to give him the corpse, threatening to kill his friend. With the hand obtained, Pork Pie Hat Kid attempts to run away, but to his disadvantage, Gyro had managed to apply the Spin to the corpse's nails, marking Pork Pie Hat Kid's defeat.

Pork Pie Hat Kid is later discovered by some of Valentine's other aides, which soon reported back that he would not recover from his injuries. It is not clarified what "unable to recover" was referring to when Valentine's aides confirmed Pork Pie Hat Kid's status; whether it meant that he would soon die of his injuries, or that he was just left unable to effectively fight anymore is unclear, therefore he has just been considered retired.