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Peter Evans is the protagonist villain of the 2005 off-Broadway play Bug and its 2006 film adaptation. He is a mentally ill drifter who is obsessed with the paranoid delusion that the government has poisoned him with flesh-eating insects, and who persuades a lonely woman whom he meets at a motel to share in his psychosis.

In both the film and play, he was portrayed by Michael Shannon, who also portrayed Colonel Richard Strickland in The Shape of Water, Richard Kuklinski in The Iceman, Bobby Monday in Premium Rush, Frankie Lombardo in Kangaroo Jack, Captain Beatty in the 2018 remake of Fahrenheit 451, Rick Carver in 99 Homes, White Death in Bullet Train, and General Zod in the DC Extended Universe.

In Bug[]

Peter is introduced to Agnes White, a waitress at a gay bar in rural Oklahoma, by her friend R.C., who also works at the bar, at the isolated motel where Agnes lives. Peter, who is polite but socially awkward, makes a feeble attempt at seduction that Agnes laughs off. Eventually, however, they bond over their mutual loneliness, and Agnes allows him to stay the night, albeit without having sex with him. A malfunctioning smoke alarm wakes them up, which so agitates Peter that he destroys it with a Magic 8-Ball.

The next morning, Agnes' abusive ex-husband Jerry Goss, who she filed a restraining order against, turns up at the motel and starts harassing her until he finally hits her in the face. Peter, who had been out getting food, comes back just as Goss is leaving, and comforts Agnes, and they become lovers.

That night, Peter claims to see a nest of aphids in the bed and becomes paranoid and frightened. He tells Agnes that he is being followed but refuses to say by whom, and abruptly runs out of the motel room. He later returns, feeling guilty for abandoning her, and claims that he is a Gulf War veteran and that the government experimented on him against his will during his service. He then says that the mysterious hang-up calls Agnes has been getting, which she thought were from Goss, are in fact from government agents, and that the motel room is infested with invisible insects planted by the government as part of the experiments that they are still performing on him.

At first, Agnes thinks that Peter is either lying or crazy, but over time she begins to share his delusion because he soothes her loneliness. R.C. is alarmed by Peter's behavior and takes Agnes to a dermatologist and has the room inspected to prove to her that there are no insects in it, but Agnes refuses to believe it and tells her to leave. Peter then has what appears to be a seizure, which Agnes believes is a symptom of his "infestation".

Peter and Agnes lock themselves in the room, which they cover with aluminum and flypaper, believing that doing so will keep out the insects and block communications they believe to be from the government. Peter also becomes convinced that the government implanted a listening device in his tooth, so he tears it out with a pair of pliers. He and Agnes look at the tooth through a child's microscope, convinced that they see the listening device in the remains of the tooth.

The next day, Jerry arrives with a man calling himself Dr. Sweet, and tries to get Agnes away from Peter. Sweet tells Agnes that Peter escaped from a mental institution, and that delusions about insects infecting his body are part of his psychosis. He also says that the bugs are real, and that he can help them escape and find her son Lloyd, who disappeared years earlier. As he talks with her, however, he prepares to inject Peter with a sedative; Peter overpowers him, however, and stabs him to death with a knife. He tells Agnes that Sweet was a robot sent by the government, and that he had been trying to trick by saying could find Lloyd.

Now both completely unhinged, Peter and Agnes convince themselves that Lloyd was kidnapped by the government in order to set in motion a chain of events that would lead to them meeting. They both declare that they have both been infected with insects in order to get them to "mate" and create a new breed of human/insects that will take over the world. Convinced they must die to prevent this from happening, they douse themselves with gasoline and set themselves on fire, declaring their love for each other as they die.

Trivia[]

• Michael Shannon also portrayed Evans in the play the film is based on.
• Both the play and film leave it ambiguous whether Peter's story about having been experimented upon is true or if he is simply insane.