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Seeing as we’re really getting into the weeds here, the colour of his jacket is another continuity error. 😀

Big spoiler:

As someone who spent the better part of the last decade doing exactly that I'm pretty sure you are right. I'm glad I got out of it but hey... I got to run an electronics store and sell games too so it made it worth it I guess lol. One of my former employees has one of my copies of curse lol, knowing anything about Monkey Island always got extra points with me 😀

He seemed like a smooth talker in Curse to me as well. I love the sound of his voice but it never sounded like Stan to me. That low-toned drawn out “Weehhllcome to muuutual of Stahhhnn” just never seemed right. Again an excellent voice and great performance, but not Stan as I heard him. Stan always seemed like he should be Kurt Russell from “Used Cars” (or as I recently learned, the person that archetype is based on: Cal Worthington), a more nasal, sweaty fast talking guy who never lets you get a word in.

Wow, sorry to add noise (feel free to delete the post after you read it) but as a regular Mojo reader and forum user I just felt a bit uncomfortable, it really does look like mentioning some things will only trigger a lot of aggressive and hostile behavior. I think you can trust me as I never, ever had any kind of argument with anyone here and I'm quite the peaceful dude. It just comes up as an attitude that leads users to think "wait, am I allowed to post this here without stepping on someone's toes?", like we're all walking on thin ice. You have every right to just reply "OK get the hell away if you don't like it", but I don't think it's wise or appropriate to just kick out those who politely make a point.

So, about that Loom rumour, eh?

This could also be his sales persona bluffing his way through. If Guybrush would’ve said any other name he’d react the same because he wants that sale! (Even though he’s not selling anything yet at that point, but than again, it’s his whole personality.)

MI2 - Guybrush locks Stan in the coffin. ReMI - Stan shows up in hell just as Ron Gilbert planned. Turns out he died while trapped in the coffin. Guybrush has to send Stan back to life somehow. CMI - Stan breaks free from the coffin. In his opening speech to Guybrush, he says "I'm one of the lucky ones. I've been dead!" It all fits! 😎 (Also Guybrush technically never tells Stan his name in MI1/2, making his "Of course! Guybrush Threepwood!" line a continuity error. Maybe ReMI could fix that by introducing them to each other properly!)

There’s no reason Guybrush can’t talk to Stan in his coffin and decide to leave him there. There’s no reason Stan can’t be let out of his coffin only to be trapped again at the end of the game. When we thought the game might be set in Hell (per the I final MI3 plan) it also would have made sense that Stan was down there, after dying in his coffin. But was rejected by Hell for being too annoying (I like this idea). There’s so many ways a character and start in a location and end in the same location.

Here's my theory: the story starts at the amusement park, with the goal of getting Guybrush to run away from Chuckie again. In this phase we control both Guybrush as a child and Elaine wich still is in the "world of Monkey Island". At that moment someone (Largo ?) Sees Elaine and discovers the true power of Big Whoop. This prologue ends with the beginning of Curse, with Guybrush in the autoscript car lost in the ocean. There is a time jump of many years, and now we are in the real world. Guybrush, now 50 years old (here is that insistence of the biographical element to which Dave always mentions ...) is recalled by Murray to "return to Monkey Island": in fact, during his absence a form of cruel dictatorship has been established that uses the powerful black magic of the seals (Goetia) and that has imprisoned Lechuk, taking over his crew of ghosts. This interpretation is deducible from the strange seals that appear in several images (the ghost that loads the ship, the courthouse, the streets of Melee) attributable to this species of new culture or power that has settled in the Caribbean and that gives great importance to the keys, as seen in the blacksmith screen and the painting in the courtroom. Maybe they are the keys to accessing the true power of Big Whoop, which has to do with time? Anyway this 50-year-old Guybrush returns to Melee, having forgotten most of his past as a pirate, and must therefore first try to remember who he was and then try to end the power of this new dictatorship, with the help of Elaine and Lechuck himself. I imagine there may be numerous "time travel" or paradoxes, similar to that old design document posted by Ron in 2020, "Time Fly".

It most definitely is!

This and exactly this! Couldn’t have put it better myself. Just focus on writing a good story. I don’t know if anyone’s interested in the works of Carl Barks and Don Rosa, but if you read the Carl Barks stories, he has such a wonderful free style of writing, which has story above all. If Donald Duck needs a second story to his house for a comic, he just has one. No need to explain it. It’s fun to read the Don Rosa comics too, because they came after the Barks comics and try to make an interwoven story of it (especially the Scrooge stories). They’re great comics in their own right, but he sometimes writes himself into corners, because he tries to make “canon” out of it. Back on topic: Gee, isn’t Monkey Island swell?

Others have made it up decades ago and you're left with the impossible task to make your perfectly round story fit that square socket. All the time knowing that you could write a much better story if you just ignored some of the previously established material. That seems to be Dave and Ron's path though, and I'm thankful for it. 🙏 In most popular narrative media, having established canon that plays out in the series' future is a ball and chain. I'm off that sauce. The prequels, the interquels, spinoffs, crossovers. They tend to ruin my stories. Heck, an entire Star Wars prequel trilogy was boring as funk because you knew all the time what was going to happen, and what they made up to keep the canon in check was on the "wipe those droids' memory" level throughout. Now that's a script that Dr. Fisher couldn't fix. Sure, Star Wars writers and good ol' Georgie did write their way around everything eventually. But even if they more or less succeeded, that didn't create any magical "aha" moments. The reason for those jumps through hoops wasn't to write the best story they could, it was only ever to shove that round plug into that stupid square hole. A process that, of course, tends to open up new holes in our game as well: Why doesn't Stan comment on why he's being locked into a coffin in CMI? Damn. Uhm, maybe Guybrush wears a disguise. Or we're playing another character at the time. Or maybe Stan gets knocked on the head and has amnesia ... I don't know. It's all a bit too much "there I fixed it" for my taste, not trying to step on anybody's toes. They can have Stan walking around in total freedom all of the time, without explaining a single thing, for all I care. It's just this laborious jumping-through-somebody-else's-hoops that I don't like to see. "How do we write the best story" should be the question, not "How do we make ReMI fit what comes after?".

I don't consider Stan an outdated stereotype at all. If anything, I'd argue that he's more current than he's ever been. The world has been completely engulfed by marketing, self-promotion, ever-changing "personal brands" and serial entrepreneurialism. I've actually lost track of how many real-life Stans I've run into in recent times.

I think today’s kids would just assume he’s based on phone shop salesmen. 😀

Yeah when Ron posted the "Guybrush is in hell chashing demon LeChuck and Stan's there too" thing that really read like he's supposed to die in the coffin but I dunno, that may be too dark even for MI2 Guybrush. Him getting let out of the coffin only to be trapped again at the end on the other hand feels really forced. The way I see it Stan is kind of an old, outdated archetype, the character that's the most likely to get cut from a modern game that's supposed to be full of new characters. Or it's the monkey.

I really like Weird Al's version of Stan.

Yep, that's exactly it. And this clip from Used Cars, too. He's even got the same checked jacket:

It's a little complicated. The grey monkey in MI1 was never actually named in-game. The brown monkey playing the piano on Scabb Island was called Jojo. The grey monkey in EMI on Monkey Island was called Jojo Jr. , but he's actually the son of the grey monkey from MI1, who was retroactively named Jojo Sr. Bottom line. All monkeys in the Caribbean (aside from Timmy) are named Jojo!

I am basing this on memory from a long time ago but I think the Jojo in EMI clarifies that his father was the one left on the totem and ended up dying there. I don’t think he was even named in SMI was he? So it’s just more daft EMI retconning.

Given that Ron's entire plan for MI3 is Guybrush goes to hell and Stan is there, I think it's likely that Stan is a favourite of Ron's, so I'd be somewhat surprised if he doesn't make it in just because of CMI, but it's not impossible. Out of the ones in the list my money's on 1) Voodoo Lady (maybe they just decided that the other games have taken this character as far as it goes, or they didn't want to touch the revelations from Tales, so found it easier just to sidestep the character 2) Stan (Has only been a fairly minor character in the games so far, after all) 3) Jojo the Monkey (would be the easiest one to get rid of without anyone caring. Jeez, EMI introduced a whole new character called Timmy the Monkey like we were supposed to know who that was, when Jojo was RIGHT THERE) The only reason that I don't think it's Jojo is that I don't think Ron would have been as likely to bother with this tease if that's all it was.

I prefer it that the inhabitants of hell find Stan too unbearable (presumably he tries to sell everyone something) and so instead send him back to earth... trapped in his coffin and unable to die again

Yes, not to mention the possibility of some sort of time jump. But I think the situation of Stan being inside a coffin since MI2 and somehow getting transported to Blood Island and somehow not dying in the intervening time is already ridiculous enough that you could handwave ANY explanation for it. It would be a kind of fun joke payoff if we found out in ReMI that the coffin in CMI is actually a completely different coffin that he's ended up in for another, unrelated reason.

Re: TimeFly I'd really enjoy it if this is the sort of weirdness Return ends up dealing in.

I still don’t see it (wonky browser settings?), but thanks anyway. I finally found it on Google! My best guess is Jojo the Monkey. Since he died before EMI and they’re trying to adhere to canon. (But all other characters are way more interesting to speculate upon.) I’d doubt that. He’s the recurring villain! Plus, it would mean they can’t use him in any game anymore, because Boen is not likely to come out of retirement. That, and considering the ending of Monkey Island 2, it’s hard to start off on that note without LeChuck (or Chuckie) in it. Plus, we hear LeChuck’s theme in the teaser trailer ánd it’s his ship sitting in port. It’s much more likely to be Stan or the Voodoo Lady. Stan is in the coffin, so that would be logical, but he could be in it if we get a time shift. The Voodoo lady makes even more sense since it’s already established in CMI that she hasn’t seen Guybrush since MI2, and that she has an agenda at the end of TMI that they might not want to delve into with this game.

I basically agree we shouldn't dwell on this, but just quickly - I haven't, and didn't say Ron is misremembering - I in fact said he could well be right. I'm just saying that I think I wouldn't trust myself to remember what I made 30 (or 20, or even 10) years ago in any great detail, so while I'm happy to take the words we have as they are, I'm not quite ready to tie a bow on it and say 'okay, that's the final word on it, then', because creating stuff is usually a messy process in which details get lost in the shuffle. (I think this really is semantics) That video is interesting though and I don't think I've seen it before. It definitely suggests that that specific ending came very late, but I think it's compatible with my just general... hunch that they were circling around the themes that produced that ending for quite a while before that.

If that was some inside joke I didn't get, sorry for posting the image. Nah, actually not sorry, it's so cool!

I know you say you don’t feel the same way anymore, but I actually agree with you here. I’d forgotten that feeling, but I think there IS something slightly less satisfying about playing through an extended flashback. (Although I’m not sure I even fully understand why.) Re: The MI2’s ending. Here’s my personal wish for how it could have been interpreted: Firstly, I have to say that I wish the voodoo power of Big Whoop had been a bigger part of the explanation. I love Curse, but making Big Whoop a literal theme park never felt right to me. My own personal pet explanation was that Guybrush accidentally unleashed the awesome voodoo power of Big Whoop when the chest broke: But it took a few minutes to fully permeate and twist reality. So the longer you’re playing the last section of MI2, the more Big Whoop is taking control. Accidentally unleashing Big Whoop near LeChuck had an unintended consequence: He was also pulled into this new disturbing voodoo reality. (This explains why LeChuck’s attempt to transport Guybrush into a dimension of pain doesn’t work — they’re both already in another dimension.) Big Whoop is, as the voodoo lady said, an incredible power. And it can be used to bend reality. But while everyone else treated that power with total respect. Possibly only carefully taking a fraction of it with each use. Guybrush accidentally unleashed the whole damn thing at once by clumsily smashing its container. All Guybrush wanted was to escape LeChuck. And maybe that subconsciously manifested in a desire to become a kid again: bring his parents back to life and feel safe. Except Guybrush being Guybrush, he fumbles the whole thing and takes LeChuck with him into this new twisted dimension and casts him as his brother. So my Monkey 3a would have involved both LeChuck and Guybrush trying to escape from (and undo) Big Whoop. LeChuck hating Guybrush even more for having forced him to endure this Big Whoop created reality. And Big Whoop’s reality would have kept getting weirder and nightmarish. (Think David Lynch.) It wouldn’t have just stayed in a theme park. It would have glitched and twisted. Maybe Guybrush’s parents would have become evil, trying to stop Guybrush and LeChuck escaping. And previously visited locations would appear randomly. And maybe Big Whoop world have kept slowly growing, sucking in everyone on Dinky, so that Elaine and then Herman would appear in that new world, too. Anyway, that’s my own personal interpretation/wish list: As soon as that chest broke, reality became perverted.

I think Elaine’s “spell” remark could just as easily be a kid still playing the game when everyone else went home. I don’t think it’s that, but I’m not a fan of requests to cut off a line of interpretation because you don’t like it.

They're all perfect, be quiet now.