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This page refers to the Duke Nukem 3D enemy. For other uses, see here.

The Pig Cop is an enemy in Duke Nukem 3D. It is first encountered on Hollywood Holocaust, the first level of the game.

Duke Nukem 3D was the first game to introduce the Pig Cop, which has since become a staple enemy in the Duke Nukem franchise.


Mutated from police officers in the L.A.P.D., the Pig Cops are muscular, humanoid boars that were created by the aliens to do their bidding. The Pig Cop has a mohawk running down its back, an underbite to accommodate its long tusks, and red eyes that glow in the dark. It wears a tattered blue police uniform and black boots. It bears the letters "L.A.R.D." on the front and back of its uniform and carries a small yellow badge near its left shoulder. It wields a Shotgun.

Notably, the Pig Cop only appears on Earth-based levels; it is the only recurring enemy from L.A. Meltdown that does not appear at all in Lunar Apocalypse (except as two corpses found on Dark Side).

Cultural significance

In American culture, "pig" is a common slur against police officers, and American visual media often depicts scenes of police officers engorging themselves with donuts, a stereotype that is considered offensive to police officers. The Pig Cop's appearance is a reference to these cultural themes and a disparagement of police officers.

In the wake of the George Floyd protests, Randy Pitchford, a developer who worked on Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition, tweeted, "I was tormented at starting in this industry in [the] wake of the Rodney King riots - you could feel it in our art (pigcops). Injustice persists, frustration grows. ... [W]e've been dealing with this for a long time. How do we create a world where no cops are Pigcops?"

Combat analysis

Weapon effectivenesses
Mighty Foot
10 kicks
17 shots
2 shots
Chaingun Cannon
12 shots
1 rocket
Pipe Bomb
1 bomb
1 blast
7 shots
3 rockets
Laser Tripbomb
1 mine
4-5 shots
1 shot
  • The values given for the Shotgun and the explosive weapons are minimum values only.

The Pig Cop moves very slowly, making it an easy target, but it has relatively high health, matching that of the Enforcer.

The Pig Cop always fires its shotgun in volleys of two evenly timed blasts, making its shots easy to predict. It is capable of shooting from either a standing or lying position.

Unlike the Enforcer or Battlelord Sentry, the Pig Cop can deal massive hitscan damage instantaneously. If the player has less than 50 health, then there is a nonzero probability that the player may be unavoidably killed by the next Pig Cop encounter. This is a danger posed by no other enemy in the game. Given that other enemies such as the Octabrain, Assault Commander, and Protector Drone are so easily dodged that they are unlikely to deal any damage to a skilled player, it is arguably more appropriate to use the RPG, Shrinker, Expander, Devastator, Freezethrower, and Incinerator on the Pig Cop than on any of these other enemies.

Upon dying, the Pig Cop may drop either a Shotgun or Used Armor. Unlike other Shotguns in the game, those dropped by Pig Cops only contain one to four bullets, and unlike other Armor in the game, Used Armor provides only 50 or 75 armor.

Damage and accuracy

The Pig Cop is capable of dealing up to 49 damage per shotgun blast.

According to the GAME.CON file that the game uses to determine enemy behavior, the Pig Cop fires five pellets from a standing position and four pellets from a diving position.

Each pellet fired by the Pig Cop uses the same variable as the player's Shotgun to determine its damage, which is set to 10 damage per pellet. (It is not obvious why the first pellet to hit the player always deals 9 damage instead of 10.) The precise amount of damage dealt depends on how many pellets hit the player, which is determined according to a random hitscan function.

The Pig Cop does not have perfect accuracy. Although the Pig Cop may sometimes hit the player from incredible distances on levels like Golden Carnage, hitscan projectiles follow a trajectory at an angle within a random interval determined by the ANGRANGE and ZRANGE variables. Therefore, the Pig Cop should be less accurate at greater distances.

Figure: Distribution of damage dealt by the Pig Cop at a close-range distance across 100 in-game trials. See here for methods and interpretation.


Hit points 100
Speed 72
108 (Running)
Pain chance 12.5% (32/256)
Clipdist 80
Scale 40 x 40
Sprites & sounds
Actor tile number 2000/PIGCOP
Alert sound pigrg.voc
Action sound pigrm.voc
Pain sound pigpn.voc
Death sound pigdy.voc
Shotgun Bullet Attack
Type Hitscan
Damage 10 per pellet*

(*Exception: 9 for first pellet)
Standing: 5 pellets per shot
Diving: 4 pellets per shot

Rate 0.7 shots/second
Actor tile number 2613/SHOTGUN
2595/SHOTSPARK1 (animation)
2329/SMALLSMOKE (Impact)
Sound shotgun7.voc
shotgnck.voc (recharge)
ricochet.voc (Impact)

In ports and expansions

See also: Pig Cop in other games


  • The game's instruction manual states that the Pig Cops were created by the aliens "to suppress residual human opposition" and to enforce "the new alien power on Earth." They are said to have "an extremely high intolerance" for humans, and they "are filled with rage when they detect human scent."
  • The Pig Cop's shotgun has a different appearance than the Shotgun obtained by the player, even if that Shotgun was dropped by a Pig Cop.
  • Each time a Pig Cop is frozen using the Freezethrower, there is a chance it may drop a Shotgun or Used Armor, even though it has not died.
  • Some Pig Cops are unable to leave their sector of the map. If frozen using the Freezethrower, these Pig Cops will be able to roam freely once they thaw.
  • An unused tile (2061) shows a map mode view (top view) of the Pig Cop. This is likely a remnant from an abandoned plan to make the enemies appear in the map mode view.
  • On Sega Saturn version of Duke Nukem 3D Pig Cops may drop a regular armor instead of used armor because such an item doesn't exist in that port.
  • The Pig Cop was originally intended to melee the player with its shotgun, but this idea was scrapped during development. There were even sprites developed for the accompanying animation.
  • Importing any of the maps from Duke Nukem 3D into Duke: Nuclear Winter will reveal that Santa Claws has replaced all instances of the Pig Cop. This is because the Pig Cop sprites in Duke: Nuclear Winter are actually drawn from a different location than in Duke Nukem 3D, while the Santa Claws sprites have overwritten the original Pig Cop sprites.


See also

Duke Nukem 3D
Episodes L.A. MeltdownLunar ApocalypseShrapnel CityThe BirthAlien World Order
Weapons Mighty FootPistolShotgunChaingun CannonRPGPipe BombShrinkerExpanderDevastatorLaser TripbombFreezethrowerIncinerator
Items Access CardsHealth ItemsHolodukeJetpackNight Vision GogglesPortable MedkitProtective BootsScuba GearSteroids
Enemies Assault CaptainAssault CommanderAssault TrooperBattlelord SentryCycloid SentryEnforcerFirefly TrooperOctabrainOverlord SentryPig CopPig Cop TankProtector DroneProtozoid SlimerRecon Patrol VehicleSentry DroneSharkTurret
Bosses BattlelordOverlordCycloid EmperorAlien QueenCycloid Incinerator
Editions ClassicAtomic Edition (Plutonium PAK)20th Anniversary World Tour
Expansions Duke AssaultDuke Caribbean: Life's A BeachDuke It Out In D.C.Duke Nukem 3D Level Design HandbookDuke Nukem's Penthouse ParadiseDuke XtremeDuke: Nuclear WinterDuke!ZONEDuke!ZONE 150Duke!ZONE IIUnofficial Expansions
Community High Resolution PackMods & Total ConversionsSource PortsSpeedrunningUser Maps
Other Build EngineCheat CodesDifficultyDuke Nukem (character)MultiplayerMusicPortsPrototypesQuotesScrapped Content