Three Old Men

The three register as a set of weathered old men most often found hunched over a card game together. The original series gives them little in the way of individual physical detail, and their shared name is a nod to the Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Gambling is their common pastime, and it brings out plenty of squabbling, with Antonio in particular quick to grumble that his companions are fleecing him. They boast of having once dug an Astral Gate together, and a running quirk defines them: no matter how often they and the Bebop crew turn up in the same place, neither party ever recognizes the other.

Their travels string together a series of brushes with the crew. A card session at the El Ray bar on Tijuana sent them diving for cover when gunmen came hunting Asimov Solensan, and they relocated only to land in another shootout. They played blackjack at Spiders From Mars, where a passing Spike wished them luck and pocketed a few of their chips, and puzzled fruitlessly over Victoria Terpsichore's name at Mac's Diner without checking that their guess even fit. They kept company with Chessmaster Hex at the Bohemian Junkheap, offered a gloomy Shaft mushrooms as a cure on Io, and scattered when Jobim spotted the Teddy Bomber by a fountain just as Spike and Andy arrived. A card game at the Cafe Ifrane in Alba City broke up the instant they clocked Spike as a bounty hunter. Their biggest turn came during the Halloween crisis, when they piloted vintage planes to help Jet Black spread the vaccine that neutralized the loose nanobots.