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On face value, I feel that Stan simply gave Guybrush the keys to lock up because he knows him, he was late for a meeting, and he really didn't care what happens after closing time.

 

My headcanon is that Elaine is or was an employee of Stan's, and can easily return the keys.

[Return to Monkey Island 🚨GAME-WIDE🚨 Spoiler Chat]

5 hours ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

Also, the big elephant is the room is: WHAT IS A FLOORING INSPECTOR? (Sorry, if this has been discussed earlier in the thread.) And (after you Google it) why is one locking up a theme park? 

 

Also, fun fact: Aside from the lookout saying it, Guybrush says he's a flooring inspector in Curse, too.

 

It is what it pretty much straightforward - a flooring inspector inspects the flooring to determine the cause of any carpet or flooring issues. 

 

This website explains what are flooring inspectors and what they do:

 

https://www.cfiu.org/

 

I imagine Guybrush not actually working at the park, but goes there from time to time - in one of the post-credits ending, we see a hand handing out two adult tickets (likely for Guybrush and Elaine) and one children ticket (for Boybrush.)

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1 hour ago, Xantospoc said:

Btw, I wish to say that I think  that at least up until recently, Guybrush and LeChuck being 'brothers' had to be a real thing.

Why?
Thimbleweed Park (which I am aware is meant to be a fictional world, but still) had this excerpt

 

To be fair, was it ever confirmed that the Monkey Island book in Thimbleweed Park was written by Ron Gilbert?  The reason is that the book titles and entries were submitted by Kickstaker backers.  I forgot to do this, so I never wrote a passage or a title of the book.

 

Anyway, that Monkey Island book in Thimbleweed Park might have been written by a Kickstarter backer. 

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1 hour ago, NightWalker said:

Yeah, I think that too, that the world of the game could be set in the modern day. Maybe even the clothes that Guybrush and Elaine are wearing in the park, while Guybrush tell his stories to his son, are costumes that the park sells you (or rent you). And maybe the treasure of Mire Island is some other amusement park attraction or another game prepared by Stan, who knows.

 

Anyway, one thing I found weird is that it seems to be lesser anachronisms in Return to Monkey Island than in the two first games... or maybe it was my impression. But in Monkey 1 and 2 we saw things very obvious such the grog machine, the water pump or even the signs with lightbulbs. In Return to Monkey Island... I don't remember many anachronisms... Maybe the staple remover and I can't think of much more apart from some dialogues which talk about modern things.

 

Ever since the ending to MI2, I always took it as modern times.  What I love about the games is that they aren't set in a floating timeline, but to the real world timeline, more or less.  What I mean is that each game - o1ther than the ending to MI2 - are sit in the same time period as each game's release.   Since Guybrush was a teenager in MI1, it makes sense that he is around 40 or 50 in RoMI - each game is about Guybrush's during a certain point in his life - a reflection of Dave Grossman's and Ron Gilbert's lives during their own experiences as 20 sonethings to 50 sonethings.  The letter found in the scrapbook pretty much confirms this.

 

I honestly feel that if Disney ever makes a Monkey Island movie, they should hand it over to Pixar and make it about a teen  (Guybrush) with an overactive imagination that goes through life my pretending to be a swashbuckling pirate hero.  For example, handing in his homework to his teacher, which in his head, is him is turning in his pirate diary to a historian. The theme could be that you are never old to fantasize and have fun.  I think Steve Carrell made a movie with similar themes a few years ago.

13 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

But those fake parents keep up the "leave us alone" demeanor both at the very beginning (with the modern amusement park) and later on at the lake (with the less modern appearances). That man had a collared shirt. Chucky wore a modern T-Shirt.

 

If the reality were pirate times (sleeping pirate on the balcony) and the fiction were modern times (stuffed giraffe on the balcony), then why would the fake parents wonder if the parrot were real or animatronic?

 

If Boybrush and Chucky lived in pirate times, and voodoo magic didn't exist, then how would they think to imagine things like amusement parks, grog machines, and other modern anachronisms in the MI stories?

IMO, I don't think the real universe in MI is a world of pirates.  I think it is similar to our world except pirate amusement parks are popular there.  Now that I think about it, Monkey Island and Big Whoop being two different amusement parks make sense - Stan probably owns  a couple of theme parks across the nation.

 

It makes sense as in the breakup between Guybrush and Elaine ended so badly after MI1, she probably asked Stan to transfer her over to another theme park as a means to get over Guybrush.

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22 hours ago, Sadbrush said:

 

Yeah, especially the fact that she's in costume and seems to stay in character as "governor" would be a way of explaining how they met in the park and why he started falling for her. I still think she might be a higher-up in the park, since she seems to get around the island area pretty frequently, but still takes her "job" very seriously.

I too think that she is a higher up, but that she gained the position later in the series like in Monkey Island 4 especially when she is no longer governor in that game.  I see the governor position as the Disney Princess position, but instead of the specific Disney Princesses being the more desirable cast member roles in real life, it is the title of being governor.  I feel that Stan wouldn't have given the keys to Guybrush to lock up unless Guybrush or Elaine was an employee at the park as well.  Since Guybrush is a floor inspector, it makes sense for Elaine being the employee.

 

I see how ppl interpreted Guybrush and Elaine as being real pirates because of the line Elaine said that she found a map right before the game ends.  I interpreted that as Elaine and Stan has made a new adventure for Guybrush to have fun playing with.  I didn't take them as being actual pirates since none of their adventures were actually fun if they were real within the universe.  To clarify, I don't think Guybrush thought that the adventure to lift the curse of his fiancee being turned to gold by an engagement ring he gave her was fun.  I also see how ppl taking the Elaine scene at the end of MI2 seriously.  Those sort of endings were popular during the 90s and early 2000s to make ppl question endings.

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29 minutes ago, Jake said:

Maybe from the front page of the subreddit one can get the impression that the ending is massively disliked, because “I didn’t like it” posts are choking out the rest of the discussion, but when there is an actual poll, even in that community, extremely positive to at least neutral-to-positive reactions win out. So, plenty of people enjoyed it even if they didn’t all think it was perfect. They just aren’t posting about it as much there. 
 

 

Anyway, good take and theory on the ending! I’ve always read Elaine as maybe a little older than the other characters, at least in the hypothetical “kid fantasy” reality, and what you said tracks as a fun possibility. 

I also believe that Elaine was a bit older than Guybrush by a few years.  I feel that this is due to various factors - the Elaine model in the original game looked older than the Guybrush model and how more mature the character came off when conpare to the more naive Guybrush.  It also doesn't help that the Elaine's voice actress sounds older than Guybrush's. 

 

I feel that Guybrush was probably a freshman in highschool whereas Elaine was in highschool when they first met in MI1  Because of their age differences and hence their difference in maturity levels, they probably broke up before the events in MI2.  In MI3, they probably reunited after not seeing each order in along time - Guybrush probably went to out of state to college. In the fourth game, Elaine quit the amusement park gig to attend college, hence why Elaine in MI4 sounds different - maybe she was replaced by another cast member (Morgan Leflay?) who pretended to be Elaine for Guybrush's story.  Tales of Monkey Island is probably when the two were insecure of their relationship with one another especially when the younger Morgan Leflay was giving Guybrush all her attention, making Elaine jealous.  Likewise, Guybrush was jealous of the cast member who played human LeChuck as he was being friendly with Elaine.  Knowing this, Elaine pretended to have been seduced by the pox and be on LeChuck's side to get back at him - to make Guybrush even more jealous.  Perhaps Elaine realized that Guybrush didn't have feelings for Morgan and that he still had feelings for her.  

 

As silly as my headcanon on Tales may have sound - I should replay Tales to see if my theory holds water as it has been ages since I last played it - each Monkey Island game may be a reflection of a specific stage in Guybrush's life.

 

Are you the same Jake that worked at Telltale games during their early days?  If so, I met you in person once when I went to Telltale's focus group on the Sam and Max episode, "Abe Lincoln Must Die!"

7 minutes ago, LowLevel said:

 

I have always considered the Voodoo Lady (who is sometimes called "the fortune teller", at least in the MI1 demo) to be a representation of an element common to Disneyland and amusement parks: fortune telling machines:

 

 

By the way, one of the fortune telling machines in Disney parks is the pirate Fortune Red.

null

I too thought the same thing, but someone said that the ticket holder was the Voodoo lady.  I got that post credit ending as well, but I thought it was someone else since all we see is a hand.

[Control scheme for Switch **chefs kiss**]

On 9/21/2022 at 6:17 AM, Kingharrison said:

When the game was first announced for Steam and… small gasp… Nintendo Switch I couldn’t figure out why. Mr. Gilbert had said the amount of orders for Thimbleweed Park in Switch was quite high so that is why they did these two systems first. 
 

I literally left for vacation the day RtMI came out so the Switch was my only option. After playing through the whole thing on hard on it I can say I absolutely love the control scheme. It was intuitive and easy to use to solve puzzles. 
 

Very much would try more point n click adventures on this little device again. 

I played it on my Steam Deck, so I had a very similar experience!

[Return to Monkey Island 🚨GAME-WIDE🚨 Spoiler Chat]

I might be one of the few who loved the ending of Return to Monkey Island, but I was elated that Ron Gilbert retconned  the notion that Guybrush fantasizing as a mighty pirate back into the game series; I enjoyed the meta ending in MI2 where Guybrush and Chuckie were paying pirates at an amusement park.

 

In my headcanon, Elaine was originally  a cast member a la "Disney princess" in the sense that she worked at the amusement park.  She probably gave Guybrush a chance when he asked her out due to his love of the park and playful personality