Davy Jones

Lore & Background

Davy Jones, a mortal Scottish pirate and a great sailor, fell in love with the sea goddess, Calypso. She entrusted him with ferrying the souls of those who died at sea to the next world and gave him the Flying Dutchman. She swore that after ten years, she would meet him and they would spend one day together before he returned to his duties. When Jones returned to shore after ten years, Calypso failed to appear.

Believing Calypso had betrayed him, a heartbroken and enraged Davy Jones turned the Pirate Brethren against her. They assembled in the First Brethren Court and Jones successfully taught them how to imprison her into her human form. Despite betraying her, Jones still loved Calypso, and in despair and guilt he carved out his own heart and placed it in the 'Dead Man's Chest.' The chest was sealed and placed within a larger wooden chest, along with Jones' numerous love letters to Calypso and all other items having to do with her, except his matching musical locket.

The chest was then buried on Isla Cruces. Jones kept the chest's key with him at all times. With Calypso gone, Jones abandoned his duties and returned to the Seven Seas. As a result, Jones gradually became monstrous, his physical appearance merging with various aquatic fauna.

Jones recruits dying sailors by promising them a reprieve from death in exchange for 100 years of service aboard the Dutchman. During this time, he comes to command the Kraken, a feared mythological sea monster.

Reader's Guide

The physique of Davy Jones and the other crew of the Flying Dutchman was designed to be a mixture of various aquatic flora and fauna features. In the third film, Tia Dalma reveals it is the fate of the captain and crew of the Dutchman should they fail or abandon their duties on board. Jones has prehensile octopus-like appendages resembling a beard, a prominent sac on his head, and a siphon in place of his nose. He has a crustacean-style claw for his left arm, a long tentacle in place of the index finger on his right hand, and the right leg of a crab resembling a pegleg.

Jones' skin color was partly inspired by a coffee-stained styrofoam cup scanned into ILM's computers. Jones speaks with a distinguishable, thick Scottish accent. Originally, director Gore Verbinski wanted Jones to be Dutch, but Nighy responded, 'I don't do Dutch. So I decided on Scottish.'

Nighy later revealed that the Scottish sitcom Still Game influenced his choice of accent. The computer-generated imagery and motion capture technology used to complete Davy Jones earned VFX company Industrial Light & Magic the 2006 Academy Award for Visual Effects and was considered revolutionary. Despite the mixed reception of Dead Man's Chest and At World's End, Nighy's performance as Davy Jones was praised, and the character was named as one of Entertainment Weekly's '10 Favorite CG Characters' in 2007.

Did You Know?

• Bill Nighy's performance as Davy Jones was recorded using motion capture during filming on set, with Nighy wearing markers in a grey suit and on his face, rather than in a studio during post-production.
• Several reviewers mistakenly identified Nighy as wearing prosthetic makeup or a latex mask due to the computer-generated character's photorealism.
• When the Disney theme park ride was revamped in 2006, the character of Davy Jones as portrayed by Bill Nighy was added to it.