Monkey Island (series)/WMG

Big Whoop is the cause of every retcon and plot hole in the series

In Monkey Island 2 the Voodoo Lady explicitly states that Big Whoop is a gateway to another world. That is exactly what it is, but the world it connects to is merely a more ideal version of the world the user is from. The Gainax nature of MKI2's ending was reality being warped by the power of Big Whoop. After Guybrush breaks open the seemingly empty chest buried beneath Dinky Island, he's carried over into an alternate reality where LeChuck is far less of a threat, Elaine still loves him, Herman Toothrot is Grampa Marley, and the alternate Big Whoop is a device for turning pirates into skeletons. That explains both the drastic shift in tone, and why the Voodoo Lady in Curse calls Big Whoop "Pure Evil" when it was she herself who told Guybrush to seek it out in the previous game.

DeSinge did not kill Morgan.

He claims he didn't, and while I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him, it doesn't seem likely that a wussy science man like him would be able to overpower and stab a Mighty Pirate Hunter like Morgan.

• Especially when we know that LeChuck was already evil and unaccounted-for while Morgan was being killed (since we don't know what he did before entering the courtroom).
• Confirmed!
  • although her REAL killer might not be who she claimed it was, because...

...Morgan Leflay was Dead All Along

Morgan died a long time ago; possibly before Guybrush and LeChuck were even born. The Voodoo Lady went into the spirit world and offered Morgan a deal. If Morgan helped the Voodoo Lady stop Elaine's plan to finally kill LeChuck, she would be free to roam the world of the living as a ghost. To facilitate this, The Voodoo Lady gave Morgan a temporary physical body so that she could interact with Guybrush without arousing his suspicions. Also, the Voodoo Lady was the one who made the flyer that DeSinge found on Flotsam Island.

When Morgan broke into the Marquis's home, she stabbed herself and waited for Guybrush to find her. Acting on The Voodoo Lady's orders, She lied when she told him that LeChuck was the one who killed her. Once Guybrush left the lab, the fake body dissolved and Morgan was sent back to the afterlife to await further orders.

• Problem with that theory. If Morgan was against the ghost pirate's defeat, then why did she willingly perform one-half of the final coup de grace against him?
  • Agreed, but she arguably didn't kill him, The bit after the end credits made it look like she captured him and brought him to the Voodoo Lady. If that is, in fact, what happened, then she wasn't helping Elaine kill LeChuck, but rather helping the Voodoo Lady. Elaine thought she was killing him once and for all, but was really playing the part of a Unwitting Pawn.

Charles L. Charles is the same person as Pushing Daisies' Charles Charles.

So that's where he got to!

• But that just raises even more problems, considering that Charles L. Charles was LeChuck in disguise.

Guybrush will make another Cursed Cutlass of Kaflu

According to the tradition of using Chekhovs Boomerangs in Monkey Island, whenever Guybrush is taught to do something he will use it twice. Also, let's see the ingredients for the cutlass to see if he can get replacements to make another one:

• Steal 37 oz. of blood stained silver: Morgan was paid with lots of Silver coins, and the floor in Desinge's lab was covered in blood when she was stabbed.
• Ultimate Insult: There should still be one in Melee Island.
• Midas Diamond: The Goodsoup ring.
• Voodoo doll: Voodoo Lady.
• Enchanted root beer bottle: Not impossible to find.

Also that means that Guybrush could use the Feast for the Senses recipe again for another thing.

• Jossed, at least for now. But with a next season confirmed, who knows what's next?
  • Not sure about this one. The Dev. Team commented that the prologue of Tales is actually the ending to an unseen adventure of Guybrush's, and features him improvising the recipe, as is typical at the end of an adventure. So it's more likely that the gag is that he made one for whatever reason at the beginning of the non-existent Monkey Island 5, and the one we saw was the second one he made.

== Despite the events of Rise of the Pirate God, LeChuck isn't Deader Than Dead ==. The guy's a poster child for Joker Immunity, right up there with trope naming Joker and the Daleks. The Stinger at the end of Rise of the Pirate God seems to suggest that LeFlay picked up a Soul Jar containing him and brought it to the Voodoo Lady.

• Almost certainly. The guy's come back five times already, what's once more?
• It looked to me more like Guybrush's voodoo hand, in the preserving jar that the Marquis de Singe was using to regenerate himself, actually... Given that we have no clue to the exact timing, my guess is... Well, next WMG!
  • Guybrush's voodoo hand is lying on the table amongst the other knick-knacks. The thing in the jar is almost certainly LeChuck's skull - the guy has a really tiny head between the gigantic hat, lips and beard.
    • Also, when the focus is on the jar, you can hear what sounds like Earl Boen's muffled voice.

A significant length of time had to pass between the pre-credits ending and The Stinger.

If my look at the artifact handed over during said Stinger is accurate, that artifact is Guybrush's Voodoo'd Hand in the Soul Jar that Marquis De Singe had cooked up - the one that made him impossible to injure. The Voodoo Lady would, naturally, have to have known about it - but implications that the two had met and discussed before makes this possible even without accounting for her being the Wizard Who Did It around the Tri-Island Area...

Now, notice that Guybrush's hand is back on him in the main ending. The most logical place for the voodoo'd hand and artifact to be, therefore, after it was abandoned at Ep4's ending... Is the afterlife. Right where only ghosts - like LeFlay - can touch it... At least, normally.

The holes to be filled, are how the Voodoo Lady reached LeFlay (presumably taking some time, but not being outside the realm of possibility - after all, no one bested her as the swordmaster, so she was still at the Crossroads), and LeFlay finding the thing - that second one takes a lot longer. The length of time involved is more than just the length of the credits... Enough for significant establishing to be set up.

Perhaps we'll be playing, not Monkey Island 7 (remember, ToMI is 6, not 5!), but rather 8, with The Stinger in fact representing a key piece of 7's ending? In this case, this nonexistent 7 could also have the hallmark of being the first Monkey Island where you don't play as Guybrush - and with semi-rival-franchise Ace Attorney switching it's POV to Edgeworth for it's next round, well, who at Telltale who knows about that series wouldn't want to make a gag about that?

The woman that Guybrush married is not actually Elaine

Having had enough of Guybrush, Elaine uses the finale of Curse to "disappear" so that she will NEVER have to deal with the vile LeChuck or the idiotic Guybrush ever again. Shortly after the Big Whoop Coaster incident, Guybrush is approached by a red-headed female pirate. This woman, seeing an opportunity to hook up with the most famous pirate in the Carribean, passes herself off as Elaine and marries Guybrush. Guybrush, being Guybrush, mistook her for the real deal, not even questioning her sudden lack of a British accent. To keep Guybrush from ever figuring out the truth, the fake Elaine eventually manages to speak with a convincing British accent.

• If this turns out to be true, my guess is that the real Elaine ended up marrying Wally (who ALSO took the finale of Curse as an opportunity to "disappear") and the two lived happily (or at least pirate-free) ever after.
• We're using body-double WMG to try to justify Elaine's change in voice actor? Well then why don't we theorize that LeChuck killed Guybrush between the second and third games, and someone else with blond hair decided to steal his reputation and pass himself off as Guybrush? That would certainly explain his hairstyle change, and maybe his Compressed Vice fear of porcelain.
  • That's the fun of WMG, friend. The possibilities are literally ENDLESS!
    • Jossed by Dominic Armato's appearance in the Special Editions, though.

There is more than one Voodoo Lady.

Simply put, there are a number of Voodoo Ladies out there, all body doubles of one another and each hanging out on a different island. The evidence:

• She has never told Guybrush her name, regardless of his insistence in asking. Perhaps all the Voodoo Ladies have different names, and if more than one of them revealed their name to the same person the jig would be up.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: When Guybrush asks in Curse, she mentions that she is "known by many names on many different islands". Wow.
• In chapter 5 of Tales, Guybrush has the option of asking Galeb if he knows "the" Voodoo Lady. He replies, "Which one?" Everyone else in the series seems sure that there is only one Voodoo Lady. This can't just be chalked up to Galeb's personality; he may know something we don't.
• She has been seen on Melee Islandâ„¢, Scabb Island, Plunder Island, and Flotsam Island. The last of the four is especially significant because it's infamous for its inability to leave, but even forgiving that she's not exactly the most mobile person in the Caribbean (see chapter 3 of Tales).
• Considering her vague confirmation as The Chessmaster of the series in Tales, I wouldn't put this sort of gambit past her.

Murray is Guybrush's father

At the end of LeChuck's Revenge, Guybrush pulls the skull off of his father's skeleton.

• But then why or how would he join LeChuck's undead army in Curse? So he could see his son again?
  • My money is on this: Murray's head was reattached to his body between Revenge and Curse (and was subsequently knocked off again when Guybrush saved Elaine during the seige of Plunder), but the trauma of having it removed in the first place gave him amnesia. One day, he might remember his past and his son. Until then, he'll be the TERROR OF THE SEAS!

The ending of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge was The Plan by a Loom Spellweaver disguised as a Voodoo Priest, to save the Monkey Island universe from being completely destroyed.

• All LucasArts universes are somehow connected.
• At the end of Loom, the Loom universe was split in half when the Great Loom was Unmade. Both halves of the universe deteriorated and gradually broke down into nothingness. Before this happened, some denizens fled through tears in the Pattern and escaped to other universes (e.g. Cob and Gull).
• In the first two Monkey Island games, the Monkey Island universe is a figment of Guybrush's imagination, as he is only a child running around in a theme park. It is a highly unstable reality.
• The Voodoo Priest of Revenge was one of the surviving spellweavers during the Undead invasion of Loom Island. His walking stick is a weaving distaff; his cloak and skullmask keep his face covered. His world and the Monkey Island world were connected through tears in the fabric of reality, in both worlds. Also, LeChuck's Fortress is quite possibly the remains of The Forge. The "Voodoo Priest" is able to understand that this universe is based on the unstable childhood imagination of a young boy named Guybrush, a fact also known by the Voodoo Lady (who in Secret of Monkey Island warns Guybrush to be careful what he learns about his world).
• The special voodoo doll made for LeChuck was something that only a Weaver could have crafted. The Voodoo Priest promised that it would send Guybrush to "a dimension of infinite pain". Sewn into the doll and the magical needle were powerful Rending drafts.
• Because the Monkey Island universe was a figment of Guybrush's imagination, everything in that universe was linked to Guybrush himself. So when LeChuck first stabbed the voodoo doll beneath Monkey Island, it tore Guybrush into two pieces, and thus Rended the Monkey Island universe as well. It was similar to what happened to the Great Loom in the Loom universe.
• One half of the universe remained as Guybrush the child’s imagination. Eventually, when his day at the park ended, real-world Guybrush stopped daydreaming. Everything in this half of the universe disappeared as young Guybrush returned to reality. It is possible that characters such as the Men of Low Moral Fiber, Largo LaGrande, and the Voodoo Priest were on this side of the rift.
• The other half of the universe was split off as a living imprint of Guybrush's daydream. Since this half was cut off from real-world Guybrush's imagination, it is no longer affected by his every thoughts. It becomes a stable reality in is own right.
• In the game itself: from the point LeChuck first stabs Guybrush's voodoo doll, the universe has been split, and the two new universes are trying to reconcile themselves from the chaos. The gameplay we see comes from both universes simultaneously.
• From the point in which we see LeChuck's glowing eyes, everything we see in the Monkey Island games comes from the newly-created, stabilized universe. This is the only Monkey Island universe that still exists.

Nor Treblig, Keeper of the Crossroads, is really Ron Gilbert

Think about it. Not only is the anagram obvious, but this explains the Voodoo Lady's motivations completely. The Voodoo Lady is clearly capable of Breaking the Fourth Wall and knows that in another world, all their adventures are told in a series of games. But, in order for that series to continue, the Voodoo Lady has to manipulate things from behind the scenes. She's mostly doing Nor Treblig's will in all cases. She engineered the series of events that would lead to LeChuck becoming Guybrush's arch-nemesis in the first place to ensure that there'd be a good enough story for the first few games. And she has most likely had a hand in all of Lechuck's comebacks (including, possibly, his next one if that scene with Morgan at the end of Tales Chapter 5 is what some believe it to be), so that Lechuck is there to be the Ganondorf to Guybrush's Link, the Bowser to Guybrush's Mario, and so on. So in closing, the Voodoo Lady's purpose is to make sure the adventures continue and some other world keeps making games about them.

If Telltale does a follow-up to Tales..., Morgan and Bugeye will become a couple.

He was clearly interested in her in Lair of the Leviathan, now that they're both dead, she just might give him another chance.. As LeChuck said, the dating pool be smaller for the undead.

• • Do you mean Morgan and Noogie? I don't remember Bugeye dying. (Though Morgan and Bugeye would make an awesome Crack Pairing.)
    • Yeah, I meant Noogie.

Yet another explaination for MI2's Gainax Ending: All of it was real: the two worlds were connected and behaved rather like worlds of/around Narnia do.

Guybrush and Chuckie/LeChuck go to the carnival with their parents, stumble through a portal. They get seperated who-knows-how and proceed to grow up: Chuckie/LeChuck perhaps gets captured by pirates and becomes one of them, rising to take command...then getting killed so he becomes a ghost. Guybrush, being younger, has an easier time forgetting/repressing his past memories: he must land on his feet somehow though, in order for him to seek his fortune as a pirate which is where we meet him in the first game.

For further analogies refer to The Magician's Nephew: remember that Polly and Diggory have the magic rings that transport them to an in-between world that connects England, Charn, Narnia and others. The basement-sort of area that makes up the last part of the game is the in-between world, and the ticket is an item that allows travel out of it. It does seem you can reach the between-world just by going underground far enough from the Carrebean pirate-world - Hollow World or The World Below maybe? But once they leave they revert back to being children (Year Inside, Hour Outside + whatever effect let it happen to the Pevenses) and they still rememeber everything. The magic/curse that affected LeChuck remained with him however. Possible explanation for the retcon in subsequent games: they find their way back. Perhaps they *want* to find their way bacK: LeChuck for the power, Guybrush for the adventure.

Guybrush's Dream in the second game...

From the page for that game:

Non Sequitur Scene: The dream sequence. Okay, it is referenced later on as the solution to a puzzle but three games and 19 years later, we still have no idea why it happened or what the fuck it was supposed to mean.

My little pet theory on this has always been that the dream was a hallucination induced by Lechuck, who appears to Guybrush in the dream so that he can collect from him the things he needs to make the voodoo doll of him. The "dream Lechuck" that appears is really an astral projection of Lechuck.

All of these came from the torment of insane Guybrush in his crazy, twisted imagination ...

The popular theory about original plot of MI1 & MI2 that has been discussed above: All of the adventure was just the product of Guybrush boy's over-active imagination while wandering in a theme park. OK, now this troper would like to suggest one step further, into an even deeper layer (just like Silent Hill, maybe?):

• Our Guybrush, maybe still kiddie or adult, is actually an admitted patient in a psycho asylum. Since that day he as a kid went to that "Big Whoop Amusement Park" and wandered a bit too far, until he got into the staff area (where he may got in contact with a female park staff who tried to "help" him back to his parents, but he managed to slip further) and into underground tunnels.
• His big brother Chucky found him and tackled him first, and there has been some struggle. Their parents followed closely, but then am accident happened - something involving helium tanks or some stock explosive (the likes of which we saw in LeChuck's fortress before Guybrush blew it up.) - that killed his brother Chucky and his parents.
• Guybrush himself survived, but with guilt-induced trauma such great that he became insane and escaped into his delusional fantasy world, based on pirate-themed adventure in the amusement park that day, ever since.
• How many days, months or years have passed we may never know, but poor Guybrush is still living in all "piratey adventure" in his mind where his bigger, bully-type brother become created anew into the form of a ghost/undead/demon enemy which slayed his(their) parents - instead of the reality where Guybrush himself caused all their deaths.
• Then throw in some Voodoo, to make all of the situations that eventually lead to their fates more "magical" and out of Guybrush's control, with desire of a lost child seeking comfort and guidance from a mentor-parents substitute creating the Voodoo Lady.
• And thus followed his obsession to talk and interact with skeletons of his parents (or corpse-digging other people's parents for that matter).
• Then add in a romantic interest who is elder, more powerful women - just like the female staff he encountered on that day.
• And the ultimate ending of that adventure would most likely be: Guybrush reconciled with his brother Chucky after an epic fight where he wins, and they both return as kids just like in that big day's reality, then go home safely with their parents. The ending which, alas, will never become true. Never. Only fulfilling the "oracle" of Voodoo Lady to at last seek and bravely confront Big Whoop - the truth associated with his greatest guilt - could he redeem himself and his sanity, escape this world of delusion, and earn the true "happy ending" of the games.
  • This theory also explains Guybrush's childlike personality - he's still stuck in the period of his life where he was a little boy playing pirates.

Guybrush Threepwood is the player character in Sid Meier's Pirates!

Just look at the guy. All versions: white male, short light hair, clean-shaven, white shirt. And the story: A young man, fresh arrived in the New World, becomes captain of a ship and proceeds to bend the Carribbean Sea to his will. He captures enemy vessels (building a veritable fleet), sacks towns (installing random governors at a whim), seizes the Treasure Fleet and Silver Train multiple times, finds buried pirate treasure and Incan gold, becomes a Duke for every nation that matters, rescues his family, and marries a beautiful governor's daughter. Is it hard to believe that this could all be in a little boy's imagination? Also, in reimaginings, we see that he insults during his swordfights, carries around items of importance, calls on the aid of Native peoples who revere shrunken heads, and beats up rival pirates such as Blackbeard and Jean Lafitte.

Morgan's body was taken away by the Voodoo Lady

Yeah, LeChuck killed her but he has no reason to get rid of her body. But the Voodoo Lady may have a reason. Remember Guybrush not being able to touch anything in life while in Ghost form? Maybe the body is the key that would allow the Voodoo Lady to give Morgan the ability to make physical contact with things (and targets) even in Ghost form.

The Secret of Monkey Island is...

There is no secret. Think about it. Everyone thinks there's a secret, and there isn't one, so the fact that there is no secret is a secret itself.

• GLaDOS: Don'tthinkaboutit Don'tthinkaboutit Don'tthinkaboutit...
• Wheatley: Hmmm, I'm going to say true.

Stan's suit is a part of his skin.

He acted as if he was in pain when moths attacked his suit!

When LeChuck said the voodoo doll will send Guybrush to another dimension...

It did.He warped in the next room which actually already warped him in alternate dimension

Guybrush has amnesia at the beginning of the first game

He only remembers his name and his objective. As time goes by, Guybrush begins to recall more and more things and the process of recovery is helped by the adventures he gets in and the constant head injuries he suffers. This can explain why his fear of porcelaine doesn't appear until much later. And it allows LeChuck to mess with his head by claiming to be his brother - Guybrush can't remember if this is true or not.

Also, Guybrush may have some other memory related problems. He has a hard time remembering the Voodoo Lady between games, for example. His fondness for telling long, very detailed stories of his adventures is not just his ego - it's the need to make sure he remembers exactly what happened.

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