While not exactly characters in the movie, the piglets contain a representative power that culminates when The Sampler hurls several of them into a stream in the final, wordless act. According to PETA, "tens of thousands" of piglets are subjected to laboratory experiments each year. The Sampler uses them as vessels for his nefarious agenda, but as the plights of Kris and Jeff illustrate, the piglets endure as much turmoil as the people to whom they're connected, a point that serves the movie's weighty cycle-of-life conceits.