This Villainous Benchmark was Headlined on August 2025.
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“
I think of [death row] as a bucket of piss to drown rats in! That's all! Anybody doesn't like it can kiss my ass!
„
~ Percy Wetmore expressing his sordid nature.
“
I didn't know the sponge is supposed to be wet.
„
~ Percy claiming he "forgot" to wet the sponge as an attempt to get away with sabotaging Del's execution.
He is a sleazy, lazy, pompous, and extremely sadistic yet cowardly prison guard who enjoys toying with and tormenting death row inmates (particularly one named Eduard "Del" Delacroix), much to the chagrin of Paul Edgecombe and his colleagues.
He took great pleasure in abusing Del, including breaking his fingers and beating on him with his nightstick, attempting to kill his pet Mr. Jingles, and telling him that Mouseville is a hoax right before his execution.
He also was sadistically taunting a recently executed prisoner, implying that he is abusive to more prisoners.
He sabotaged Del's execution causing him to die a slow and painful death and attempted to get away with it with a blatant lie, claiming he forgot to wet the sponge.
Even though Percy was horrified at what he did, he is later seen reading a porn magazine without a care in the world so he actually didn't feel remorse.
He made a comment to the guards "Please don't put me in with Wild Bill," subtly suggesting Percy would do something like that if the roles were reversed.
He let Wharton almost strangle Dean to death, though this was more out of cowardice then actual malice.
While he maybe cools off by the end of the movie and stops being evil after being imprisoned at Briar Ridge, there's no evidence he actually redeemed himself.
While Wharton had a lot of comedic moments before his reveal, Percy is portrayed seriously with zero comedic moments.
Why He Doesn't Stand Out?[]
While abusing Del and sabotaging his execution to cause him to die a slow and painful death is bad enough to pass the baseline, he did not intend for Del to die that brutally despite sabotaging his execution, as he seemed to be shocked upon seeing his brutal death and in both the novel and film, it states that he did not expect for the execution to go that badly.
This means that he fails the heinous standard to Wild Bill who raped and murdered two young girls, killed three people (including a pregnant woman) in an armed robbery, nearly strangled Dean to death, sexually assaulted Percy while threatening to rape him and caused John's (a Pure Good) execution.
Resources did nothing to help since Percy is not just a prison warden, but he's also the nephew of a governor, while Wild Bill is just a prisoner with very limited resources and yet he managed to did worse than Percy.
In the novel, he fails the standard even further since even his own victim Del raped a little girl and started a fire that killed six people in the process. Not to mention other heinous villains like Patrick Hockstteter, Carrie White, Norman Daniels, and Annie Wilkes, as the works of Stephen King are connected together in a multiverse and that in this multiverse Wild Bill fails the standard himself (even failing it too much for NPE).
After John shows him what Wharton did to the Detterick girls, he goes up to Wharton's cell with a horrified look on his face and crying before he shoots him to death, suggesting he had some standards.
This is also another possible reason why Percy goes catatonic after killing Wharton (aside from the most common interpretation that John gave him cancer as punishment); Percy puts up the facade of a tough person, but when he firsthand sees genuinely bad people, he cannot handle it.
Trivia[]
He was as the second icon of the Mature template, replacing Donovan, and replaced by Cho Sang-Woo.
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