Sam & Max: Freelance Police/WMG

Sam and Max

Max descends from

The rabbit in Monty Python's Holy Grail

Max is the only actual Ho Yay member of the Freelance Police.

Think about it. Even though the series is rife with innuendo, most of it comes from Max, similar to how most of the humor comes from Sam making a random but innocuous comment, and Max interprets it in that unique way of his. For instance, when Max claims that violence is how he shows affection, he goes on to say that he could "never stop loving Sam," even though Sam asks him to.

  • Plus, even though they both hate being separated, the most Sam will do is try to reunite by looking for Max. Max, on the other hand, is apparently willing to kill for Sam, making him something of a Yandere, as exhibited in "What's New, Beelzebub" when he ripped out the kidneys of the demon trying to take his place. (Although it's possible that this might just be his naturally violent tendencies.)
    • Not so sure about that; When Max's brain is stolen in season 3, Sam flies spectaculary of the handle, turning into something out of Sin City: He pulls Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique on everyone he meets, threatens friends with his revolver without provocation, and keeps spewing Noir lines at random.
  • This could explains the sometimes questionable nature of their relationship. It's never going to progress, it's never going to turn into anything more meaningful then a few iffy jokes, and the Ho Yay theories are never going to become canon, because it's unrequited.
    • Except whenever people in the games seriously mention the possibility, they become disgusted.
      • It's mostly Sam who seems to horrified, though, while when Max just shows mild surprise. For instance, in "Chariots of the Dogs," when Momma Bosco accuses Sam of wanting to keep Max for himself, Sam becomes offended and denies it, while Max turns to him idly and says that he "never knew he felt this way."
  • When disguises are necessary in the cartoons, Max almost invariably dresses as a girl. his costumes including a frilly pink swimsuit, a stewardess outfit, and a dress and heels to pose as Sam's girlfriend in "We Love Tonight."
    • Plus, Sam and Max become the surrogate parents of a baby crocodile in the episode "That Darn Gator," raising it like a child instead of a pet, with Max taking on the role of the mother.
      • Sam and Max are apparently married. You see this during the recap at the beginning of the first episode, with Sam as the bride and Max as the groom. This is never mentioned again, although you do see a wedding photo in the background of "The Final Episode." It might have just been a throwaway gag, but still. That's probably worth something.

Considering Sam is almost as crazy as his pal, with the difference being that he has some standards, apparently Sam just represses his part. Just go and (in the Penal Zone) use the ring with Max outside Momma Bosco's Lab.

The Geek couldn't decide what to do with her life, so she changed her name to Sybil.

This comes from the Telltale forums, but still.

The Commissioner is the Big Bad

So, he could be working as the Man Behind the Man in every, or almost every, case Sam and Max have worked for the past two years, trying to keep them busy so they can't interfere with some secret plan he has.

Also, he's working with the molemen. They were building something at the end of season two.

  • The molemen thing got Jossed. Apparently molemen guard ancient artifacts hidden under offices.

The Commissioner is Ness's Dad from EarthBound

Neither appear except as a telephone, and both know details about the main characters that they shouldn't. The Commissioner always knows where and when to call Sam and Max; he only got their answering machine once, and the message he left was that he'd be calling soon after they heard that message. Ness's dad somehow knows exactly how many enemies the kids have defeated and how long they've been adventuring. He can even call Ness when he doesn't have a phone on him.

If they're not the same person, they're at least both extradimensional omniscient phone entities.

  • But the Scout is also Ness' dad according to the Team Fortress 2 and EB WMG pages, which ties nicely into TF2 canon as well as EarthBound. It would explain Scout having the Lugermorph; Scout and Engineer had it first, and it was given to M Ax on his first mission. Then Max lost it in time and the Scout and Engineer got it.

They're both African-American-ish and both part of the Amazing Technicolor Population. Both are in games produced by Telltale, and both charge way too much for crappy wares they have a monopoly on. There are only two reasons Bubs hasn't made anyone pay a billion dollars for a used tissue:

  1. He hasn't figured out how.
  2. Sam and Max aren't his customers.
  • Then there's their poor attempts at disguising themselves.

Girl Stinky actually did murder Grandpa Stinky.

Although Grandpa Stinky denies it after coming Back from the Dead in Episode 205, he might have been lying to preserve his pride (after all, what Retired Badass would admit to losing a fight to his alleged granddaughter?). Also, if she didn't do it, her "suspicious" behavior in the first three episodes of Season Two has absolutely no basis, and even for this series that's significantly unusual.

  • Though you know, in the last episode, if you mention Sal, she starts acting a little...shifty....
    • Who is Sal?
      • The cook that Stinky shouts orders to.
    • This is taken a little farther in The Penal Zone. If asked, she'll denied Sal ever existed and insists that she's been working by herself. She also refuses to let Grandpa Stinky into the kitchen and starts getting apprehensive when he asks.
      • (Original poster) Well, God damn it. That destroys my theory altogether.
      • As it turns out, Sal does exist, is a 6-foot-tall cockroach and is now a security guard at the Museum of Mostly Natural History.

Mack Salmon will appear in the second episode of season 3

After all, it has his name in the title...

  • Jossed. But I can't link you the proof because is in, at the moment, private forum for pre-order people. But Jossed anyway.
    • Sammunmack is an Egyption Pharoah as it turns out, not a hideous fish-headed mobster.

By the end of Season 3, Sam and Max's office building will be back to normal

Know how at the end of Episode 301, Sam and Max end up turning their own office building into a secondary Penal Zone? I'm guessing that will be undone by the end of the season. Maybe the new Zone will be obliterated by another antimatter bomb or something and their old office will snap back into reality.

I'm not leaning on Status Quo Is God with this one; I have my reasons. Remember Episode 204 when they visited their far-future office? It didn't look anything like an alternate-dimension prison for criminals.

  • According to Word of God, Rule of Funny goes first than continuity between Seasons, when asked the same. But, in The Penal Zone there's a Vision of the Future of Sam and Max talking inside the building, in their Office.
    • But remember that in the "original" future, Sam and Max trap the general in the Penal Zone whilst on his ship, and their office was never destroyed. It was only after Skun'ka'pe used the future-vision toy to change the future that they had to come up with the new plan that involved destroying their office. So the vision of the future as seen in episode 204, as well as the ones earlier in episode 301, may no longer be true.
  • Technically, it's already back to normal thanks to Papierwaite, because he stole the power source of the new Penal Zone, ejecting Skun-ka'pe in the process!

Max doesn't wear clothes, because doing so makes him too Moe for words

Until now, his cuteness has been more informed than anything else. In the few instances where he actually wears some kind of clothing, though, just watch the fangirls squee. For example - meet Max as a down-on-his-luck newsboy. Need further examples? See Max in a raincoat ("A Glitch in Time"), Max in a swimsuit ("The Glazed McGuffin Affair"), and Max as a flight attendant ("The Final Episode"). Sure, most of the rare clothes-wearing occurrences happen in the cartoons, but how is that important in any way?

  • I don't know. When you see Maximus (Max's great-grandfather, who is essentially him wearing clothes) in The Tomb of Sammun-Mak, "cute" isn't exactly the first adjective that comes to mind.

The universe takes place in the same world as Team Fortress 2.

Sam's revolver and Max's pistol, and Max's head made an appearance in the game, although, TF2 takes place in the past, so it involves Time Travel in some way.

The Narrator is going to be Season 3's Big Bad.

Speaks for itself. After all, why would the introduce such a random and unnecessary character if he didn't turn out to be important at some point? He has absolutely no purpose. Except to narrate.

  • The narrator is probably Conroy Bumpuss (from Hit The Road). Both are apparently British. Their hair looks the same. Also, the Narrator's cape looks like something Elvis would have worn. Makes sense that Conroy would want something like that too.
  • Oddly enough, confirmed.
    • The Narrator being Conroy Bumpus is Jossed, the part about being the Big Bad is confirmed.

The Narrator is actually Season 3's Big Good.

Alternatively, The Narrator might actually turn out to be a powerful and benign entity who's been watching Sam and Max from the beginning. Unfortunately, since his role is simply to narrate events and not affect them directly, he can only give Sam and Max clues through narration that will help them defeat the Final Boss when the time is right.

  • Jossed, but he does do something heroic near the end.

Sam and Max are both straight. All the Ho Yay moments are actually enforced by Sam's jealously of Max

In the comics, Sam "reminds" Max that he does not like girls, even though the latter just asked for all the naked women his poor little eyes could stand. In a later story, Sam takes Max out of a mall before he can act out his desire to be taken home by some cute girls. In still another story, Sam reveals that he has vanity issues about his "Stephen King-shaped" body.

What does this all add up to? Well, Max, being smaller and (apparently) cuter, is more popular with the ladies and Sam knows this. Rather than allow Max to enjoy the attention, Sam derails these moments in any way he can. If Sam were either to get a girlfriend or become a ladies man himself, he'd probably let the little guy have his fun.

  • 2 things: 1- We have never seen what's happens when Max get his "girls" and, knowing him, who's knows what could happen and 2- Why can Sam not get a girlfriend? He looks somewhat handsome with glasses =P (and kilts). Of course, probably that's a mild case of Memetic Mutation
    • I'd always just figured that it was like Momma Bosco said, and he wanted to keep Max to himself. But that's because I'm a Yaoi Fangirl, and I just can't accept two guys being friends without SOME homoerotic subtext. Even though it does kind of make me feel squicky when I think about Sam and Max in that light.

Dr. Norrington from Episode 303 and the Narrator are one and the same

Their voices are quite similar, and they use a few of the same mannerisms (the "you are the only one" bit when the former first speaks comes to mind). This WMG could also tie in quite well with the other two Narrator-related WMGs above.

  • While I'm pretty sure Norrington is voiced by the same guy who voiced Human Le'Chuck.
  • Dammit, beat me to the punch.
  • Jossed. Dr. Norrington is Yogg-Sothoth, of all people.
    • Doesn't mean he isn't also the Narrator using a human disguise.
      • That's jossed, too.

Dr. Norrington is Momma Bosco

She found Paperwaite being eternally chewed on by Yog-Sothoth with her dimensional technology, rescued him and struck a deal: Paperwaite uses his necromantic powers to return her to life and she assists him on freeing Yog on 2015. Momma Bosco probably intends to betray Paperwaite before the summoning, though. Note how conspicuously absent she is from 303; Between her nature as a ghost and the fact than Sammun-Mak alternate reality aparently didn't recognize her existence, she was able to avoid the brain washing and manipulate Max into saving the day. Plus, why would Sam know her name if she didn't exist in some way in Sammun-Mak's future? And she has the technology to create the Sam clones that appear at the end.

  • Jossed. Except the cloning bit.

Sal and Girl Stinky are Star-Crossed Lovers, or at least that is what Girl Stinky thinks

Because their relation will be never approved by Grampa Stinky, but it's Girl Stinky who thinks that. Grampa Stinky looks like he has no idea about the existence of the guy and, like Sam said in Episode 303, Grampa Stinky never had problems with Cockroaches in the Kitchen.

Sam and Max's friendship/HoYay will kick off the endgame in Episode 305: The City That Dares Not Sleep.

The existence of Noir Sam shows that Sam goes absolutely awesomely nuts whenever Max is out of the picture; heck, Episode 205 shows that a world without Max is Sam's personal hell. Max will attempt to perform a quasi-Heroic Sacrifice in an attempt to defeat Yog-Sogoth, Papierwaite, Skun-ka'pe, Sammun-mak, etc., and save the universe. Sam will prevent him from doing so, setting up the final puzzles.

  • ...kinda? I mean, Max did wind up turning into an Eldritch Abomination at the end of 304. So maybe.
  • It probably won't work out the way originally imagined, but I can still see this happening. Since Max is a total monster now, Sam will probably have to enter an I Know You'reInThereSomewhere fight with him.
    • Just played through it and I'm still not sure whether this is confirmed or jossed.
      • To elaborate: Max turned into a monster and started rampaging through the city, but Sam was determined to save his friend no matter what it took - the rest of the episode stemmed from there. But in the end, Max chose to sacrifice himself to save the city, making everything Sam did meaningless.
      • Then Past Max popped out of nowhere with the time machine from season two, claming that the exact same thing happened to him and Past Sam, with Past Sam being the one to die in the end, prompting him to set out looking for a replacement. With nothing better to do, they team up, and Sam decides to look the other way and act like nothing happened.

Skun-ka'pe is unaware that what he is doing is wrong--he's just living out a somewhat childish personal fantasy of his imagined since childhood.

The video of the "Secret Origins of Skun-ka'pe" has been described as canonical. In it, Skun-ka'pe is born as a comparatively normal ape child with a love of toys and comic books and and a taste for daydream and fantasy. What turns him into an intergalactic criminal is an industrial accident that embeds a metal ring in his head--undoubtedly causing all manner of brain damage and a reversion to a child-like mindset.

The Sam clones are in fact Aliens who created the Toy Box and helped the Egyptians to build the pyramids.

Those "clones" are "slaves" and there's a big important guy who's their "master". This Master Ancestors created the Devil's Toybox (Which probably another name) for help out the Pharaoh at the time they arrived. When they decided to leave Egypt, they leave one/some of their people (I don't know if a "slave" or something similar, but probably is a slave) to protect and help the current pharaoh. He seemly forgot from where he come from and, after that current pharaoh and he died, their decendant somehow always fullfill the first order and always, somehow, make bond with a person with a brain with the gift. In other words, if you want to find someone with the gift in the earth, check out for the Giant Talking Barefoot Dog. And those aliens are back because they are chasing Skun-ka'pe. And probably they want to destroy the Devil's Toybox because has already fullfilled its purpose and it's just causing problems now.

  • Jossed.

The Samulacra/Dogglegangers/Sam Clones will be a part of a puzzle in The City That Dares Not Sleep.

There were a few clones left over...

  • Hard to believe it, but confirmed.

Harry Moleman will inadvertently become the Big Bad of Season Three or be somehow crucial to saving Max/saving the day in general.

The last characters to be lampshaded as being so generally useless and a pain in Sam and Max's collective side were the Soda Poppers...and we know what happened to them.

  • Jossed. But Sam does blurt out Harry's name as a throwaway gag.

The Lugermorph stays in the hands of mercenaries when not used by Max

When Sam said "So that's where you keep your gun!" during his brief bodyswap in Night of the Raving Dead, he meant it was in another universe, being kept warm by a bratty half-pint and a humble cyborg Texan builder.

If there's a fourth season, it will deal with The Multiverse.

Past Max's explanation of why he went looking for Sam opens up the possibility of alternate realities, and you'll finally get to make use of the dimensional destabilizer as more than a simple puzzle. Word of God also states that Max's delusions are caused by being part of a Hive Mind, and sharing memories and thoughts with a thousand other Max's in a thousand other worlds. (Although they might have been making it up to appease fans who thought 305's ending was a cop-out.)

Fate and the Omniverse DEMANDS a Sam and Max within a single universe.

Expanding on the above, either there was a universe having Sam and Max in the distant past who managed to single-handedly save all of reality which forced whatever Gods that ran reality to MAKE SURE that if there was a version of Sam and Max in a single universe that they HAVE to be paired up with each other, or the two share a bond so inseparable that the universe is forced to make damn SURE there exists a Sam and Max at the same time within a universe. The ending to the Season is the result of subtle mechanations of Fate to ensure equilibrium is restored to the fabric of reality since in the timeline "Past" Max originated from he was forced to blow up HIS Sam in a situation similar to Episode 305. In fact, if "Past" Max had not appeared, THIS Sam would've done the same thing, abandoning his home timeline and instead continue living in "Past" Max's timeline.

  • And by gods you mean the Telltale Games writers, right?
  • This troper is going to take it a step further: Sam and Max aren't so much individuals as they are the physical manifestations of chaos. They were not so much born as they came into being as there must will always be a Sam and Max in some shape or form. They're completely unaware of it, but they exist purely to prevent the end of the universe by any means possible -- including creating the universe in the first place. "Sam and Max" are not so much individuals as they are mythical figures in their world, remember: Almost every single doomsday prophecy on the planet involves them in some way, shape, or form. This doesn't even apply to just them, but their entirely "family tree", which of course doesn't exist at all. This also handily explains how they managed to exist in spite of both grandparents having been implied to be permanently single right up until they died.

During the time traveling adventures, Sam obtained the talismans that were apparently abandoned between Seasons 1 and 2. Hell, he might have stolen them during the season break. I suggest this because Max showed no ability to use the talismans, and Prismatology is clearly related to the manipulation of visible light. Other powers, such as the ones that led to the demise of Past Sam, involved the invisible parts of the spectrum.

It's all in Sam's head.

Sam and Max are actually two (human) roommates living in squalor together, set in a completely realistic universe. Sam eventually couldn't take the direction his life was headed anymore and went insane, imagining everything around him as a bizarre fantasy world where everything is, from his point of view, perfect. He sees himself and Max as a talking dog and rabbit (to symbolize how he thinks they're now free from human responsibility) and they go on wild adventures where they always come through in the end. The increasing strangeness of their adventures is a sign of Sam's steadily deteriorating mind. Most other characters are complete figments of Sam's imagination. The Commissioner is the biggest example of the latter, an imagined entity who never appears and exists solely to tell Sam of the cases that, in reality, Sam thought up. This is why Sam always answers the phone.

Meanwhile, Max is the actual straight man of the group. He goes along with Sam and acts crazy in Sam's presence because it makes Sam calmer. In real life, Max is clinically depressed and only barely able to keep away from the point of breaking himself. He's forced to work at his dead-end job even longer than before to support himself and Sam (Sam, wanting everything to be perfect for his little buddy, imagines Max's job to be President of the United States) and is so busy trying to keep Sam happy in his spare time that he's abandoned almost all his relationships with other people. (Because he has to spend so much time caring for Sam, Max can never have a girlfriend, a fact Sam's mind translates into "Max doesn't even like girls.") He's often attempted abandoning Sam entirely, but after witnessing Sam's reaction when Max isn't around, he's realized he has no choice but to stay.

Sam's former mind had a brief return to control during the events of "Chariots of the Dogs." In an attempt to make himself return to reality, Sam imagined himself and Max in the future: Sam a deranged man with the best years of his life behind him muttering nonsensical phrases to himself, and Max forced to sacrifice all his time trying to make him as comfortable as possible. It didn't work.

    • As an possible extension, Season 3 featured Sam escalating his "adventures" with Max to the point of some newsworthy, extremely dangerous accident (305), possibly involving a fire/gas explosion, in which Max sacrificed his own life to save Sam and other people caught in the debris/blast. Sam's mind turned this into saving the entire city from psychic phenomena, and turned the subsequent funeral into the failed cloning attempt from the game. He went into a BSOD-like slump and wandered the city as a dazed, depressed hobo. Eventually his mind broke completely and he hallucinated that Max had come back (in the time machine), using an implausible excuse to detach completely from reality and spend the rest of his life imagining adventures with his dead friend.

Sam Jr is Sal

Sam Jr hatched inside giant Max, and was therefore enlarged (he was just a baby but was already the same size as The Bug, an adult cockroach) if the Adventuring ending is canon, he travelled through time with Sam and Max, and they accidentally left him behind some time before 1901, after which he then grew up into an giant adult cockroach.

Both are anthropomorphic dogs with nice coats and a strong sense of justice... or at least good... Most likely they are cousins of some sort with a mutual "favorite uncle" that heavily influenced both of them... Only where Mc Gruff joined The Chicago PD as a Lawful Good, Sam Made a freelance police firm as a Chaotic Good.

    • Sam hates being called McGruff, almost as much a pink bellies.

The Original Max will return for season four.

At the end of 305, all of Max's psychic powers were shorted out by the electrical shock Sam gave him - except for astral projection, which allows the user to inhabit the bodies of different "versions" (clones, relatives, etc.) of themselves. After Max's death, he's replaced by Past Max through use of the time elevator. It's possible that his ghost could use the astral projection to possess the new Max. Two Maxes?!

The commissioner is the superego of the alternate version of Past Sam

Not mine. If you don't feel like following that link, here's the most crucial post

"In case anyone needs a recap at this point: There were three Sams. Our Sam, the Sam mentioned at the end of City that Dares not Sleep, and another Sam that was created during the second Sam's time travel adventures.

The second Sam is dead after transforming into a giant monster that the second Max blew up.

The third Sam, however, is Commissioner Sam. Commissioner Sam is, of course, the Commissioner that we know and love. But he isn't THE Commissioner. The Commissioner is Commissioner Sam's superego. Whenever The Commissioner witnesses a crime through Commissioner Sam's eyes, he takes control of Commissioner Sam. Unlike Max, Commissioner Sam has little willpower, and his superego can take over easily. The Commissioner then makes Commissioner Sam call up our Sam, who then takes out the bad guys. Commissioner Sam doesn't know that he even has this superego, however. He occasionally just wakes up next to a payphone with no idea of how he got there or why.

Our Sam knows all of this, and keeps it from Max to protect his fragile psyche. This is why Max can never answer the phone. When Max answered the phone in What's New, Beelzebub?, Commissioner Sam heard his voice and quickly grabbed the voice modulator, which he had gotten from Bosco, and used it to disguise his voice.

During Our Sam's bathroom break in The Tomb of Sammun-Mak, the Commissioner Sam was driving down Straight & Narrow when he got into a car accident, killing him. Our Sam witnessed this, and has since taken up the role of the Commissioner for himself. This is why the Commissioner never called Sam & Max after The Penal Zone.

Simple, right?"

Girl Stinky will return in season 4

After all, we still haven't learned everything about her.

The fourth season will focus on Superball's identity

If you pay attention, you might notice that Superball is one of the most mysterious characters in the series. While he states that he is the personal guard of the president (Max), he knows a hell a lot more than that, his pieces of dialog often contain references to this.

For example, when you try to read his mind, he says that his thoughts are classified. At one point he states that he has to notify his higher-ups, and when Max tells him that HE is his primary higher-up, he vaguely agrees. I don't think his higher ups are humans at all.

Max will no longer be President in Season 4.

Remember Superball's comment about "No currently acting President can enter the body of any former President"? And then there's all the blatent differences between real American politics and that of their universe. My guess is that the United States in this series has a bunch of wacky laws that serve no purpose other than joke fodder, one of which is that the "Max" who came from the alternate timeline where !Sam died, after the original Max got blown up in the main timeline, is thus not the President because he wasn't the original.

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