Peter Butler

"You weren't supposed to know..."

- Peter, upon discovering Stefan investigating the safe.

Peter Butler is one of the many possible villains of the 2018 Netflix interactive movie Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. The father of film protagonist Stefan Butler, Peter acts as a neutral figure through most of the story, doing his best to keep his son from losing stability in the face of mounting stress; though emotionally disconnected from Stefan and unable to relate to his son's interests, he genuinely seems to want the best for him. However, in some paths, Peter is actually revealed as a villain, part of a conspiracy intent on controlling Stefan's life from behind the scenes.

He was played by Craig Parkinson.

Prior To The Film
Little information is known concerning Peter Butler's past, and given that travel between parallel universes is a reality within the setting, much of what is known about quickly becomes subject to change over as Stefan begins unwittingly hopping across multiple timelines. However, in most possible narratives, perhaps fifteen years prior to the events of Bandersnatch, Peter was happily married and raising a child in a relatively normal manner.

Unfortunately, a disagreement emerged between him and his wife over how they were raising their five-year-old son, Stefan: when he was a baby, Stefan's mother had knitted him a toy rabbit as a gift, and he'd very quickly grown attached to it, refusing to go anywhere without his new security blanket; though keeping such a toy well into childhood was regarded as perfectly normal by his mother, Peter believed that Stefan should give it up sooner rather than later, claiming it was inappropriate for a boy to be "playing with dolls." For good measure, his father-in-law reportedly also despised the doll, often ranting at Peter about the evils of "permissive parenting" and clearly wearing on the younger man's nerves.

One day, just before Stefan and his mother were due to pay a visit to the family grandparents, Peter decided he could do without another lecture from the in-laws, and set out to confiscate the toy rabbit without his son's knowledge. In some timelines, he left the rabbit in a code-locked safe in his office, assuming that nobody would ever find it there or guess the code. However, without his favorite toy, Stefan refused to leave the house at all; having already missed their 8:30 train in all the confusion, Stefan's mother was forced to take the 8:40 alone, leaving her husband and son behind.

Later, the two learned that the train had derailed en route, resulting in a massive death toll that included Stefan's mother. Both Peter and Stefan were grief-stricken by this course of events, but neither of them were able to reconnect and bond over it: Stefan secretly resented his father for inadvertently triggering the death of his mother, and Peter gradually lost his ability to relate to his son's interests.

Over time, both became emotionally distanced from one another, even prone to keeping secrets: Stefan found a copy of Jerome F. Davies' classic choose-your-own-adventure novel among his mother's belongings, and soon became completely obsessed with both the narrative and the focus on free will - which he felt he lacked - and refused to share any of his feelings on the subject with his father; similarly, Peter got into the habit of spending a great deal of time in his office, always locking the door behind him when he left (which eventually becomes tied with overtly villainous behavior in certain plotlines later in the game).

By the events of the film, Peter and the now nineteen-year-old Stefan are still living in the same house, perfectly courteous with one another but clearly emotionally strained. For good measure, they are unable to exchange much more than a few sentences with one another before lapsing into awkward silence. Peter will occasionally try to reconnect with his son, while Stefan remains too distracted by his own obsessions to follow up on it. Because of this and many other emotional problems, Peter has been keeping Stefan in contact with a therapist - one Dr R Haynes at Saint Juniper's hospital.

Events Of The Game
The game begins with Stefan setting out to create a game adaptation of Bandersnatch in collaboration with gaming company Tuckersoft. Though Peter is quite proud of his son for taking this step, he seems a little bit concerned that Stefan has set out to create the game at home, unsupervised.