Can black pepper go bad?

We’re camping this weekend in the RV. I’m frying some potatoes and onions in butter. The first batch just smelled awful and tasted bad so I tossed it.
However I attributed it to the fact that I’d cut the potatoes up on Friday (today is Sunday.) I’d tossed them in a zip lock bag with some olive oil. On Friday I only used half of what I cut up, and the other half has been sitting in the bag. They were a bit brown so as I started cooking, and smelling, them I figured it was the storage the messed them up so I tossed them and started over.
This new batch was fine….until I put pepper on them and now they smell off too.
I’m guessing the pepper is about a year old. It’s been stored in a glass pepper shaker in a cabinet in the RV.
So is pepper bad? Or am I just hung over maybe?!