Trivia / Monkey Island

• Acclaimed Flop: The first two games sold OK, but far from competitor Sierra, but became among the most acclaimed point-and-click games of all time. Inverted with Escape, which sold well but was met with mixed reviews.
• Acting for Two:
  • Dominic Armato, Guybrush's voice actor, also does the Duck in Escape and the Pyrite Parrot of Petaluma in Tales.
  • Alongside Elaine, Boyd voices the American-accented Son Pirate at the very end of Curse.
  • Adam Harrington, The Other Darrin for LeChuck in the PC download version of Chapter 1 of Tales, also does the voice for "Moose" Muszalski in Chapter 3.
  • The Voodoo Lady's voice actress, Leilani Jones-Wilmore, also does the voice for Carla the Swordmaster in the Special Edition of Secret. When Alison Ewing took up the role in Tales, she also does the voice for Bosun Kathryn Krebbs.
  • Besides Stan, his voice actor Pat Pinney does the voices of Elaine Marley's grillcook and the moose in the Special Edition of Revenge.
  • Neil Ross, Wally's voice actor, does the voices of Rum Rogers, Jr. and Filbert the Gardener in the Special Edition of Revenge, and Hugo the Perfume-Spritzer and Pirate #4 in Escape.
  • Besides Murray, his voice actor does Skully and the Father Pirate in Curse; Mister Santiago in Escape; one of the Pirate Leaders, the Narrator, and the Citizen of Mêlée in the Special Edition of Secret; and Fred (the Man of Low Moral Fiber), Bruno, Larry, the Narrator (again) and the Voodoo Priest in the Special Edition of Revenge.
  • Besides Herman, his voice actor Wally Wingert does the voices of two other pirates in Escape; Biff the Ghost and one Insult Swordfight opponent in the Special Edition of Secret; the Potman and Greg in the Special Edition of Revenge; and Franklin (the Man of Low Moral Fiber) in both latter games.
  • In the Special Edition, we hear Largo LaGrande berate Mad Marty after the Bucket of Mud incident, where both characters are voiced by James Arnold Taylor. Besides these two, Taylor has also provided voices for the Spitmaster and the Fisherman.
  • Jared Emerson-Johnson, De Singe's voice actor, has also provided the voice of one of McGillicutty's crew members of the Spoon Isle Trio.
  • We hear De Cava speak with Bugeye in Chapter 3, and both characters are voiced by Chaikin, who also provides the voices for Joaquin D'Oro (Chapter 4), Murkel Trenchfoot, McGillicutty and two of his crew members of the Spoon Isle Trio.
  • Besides Winslow, his voice actor Roger Jackson provides the voices of Hemlock McGee, one unnamed bartender of Club 41, and Galeb in Tales; the troll, one of the Pirate Leaders, Fred (the Man of Low Moral Fiber) and his rat, Jojo Sr., Spiffy the Dog, the Piranha Poodles and Meathook's parrot in the Special Edition of Secret; and Bart, Governor Phatt, the rat (again) and Toothrot's parrot in the Special Edition of Revenge.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Dominic Armato is actually a good singer. He had to purposefully sing badly in Curse.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Stan in Escape from Monkey Island, and yet again in Tales.
  • Carla and Lemonhead in the Special Edition of Secret (S. Scott Bullock, who had voiced the latter in Curse, now voices Red Skull in the aforementioned Special Edition).
  • The Voodoo Lady in Tales.
  • Elaine is an odd example of this trope coming full circle and actually reversing itself. Also, she is the series's most obvious example of this trope because not only does she change actresses, but she (inexplicably) changes accents as well.
    • In Curse..., she is voiced by Alexandra Boyd and has a British accent.
    • In Escape..., she is voiced by Charity James and has an American accent.
    • In Tales..., she is once again voiced by Boyd and once again has a British accent. Also, Boyd plays Elaine in the Special Edition remakes of Secret and Revenge, which among other improvements add voice acting to the previously silent originals. Boyd would also come back for Return.
• Permanent Placeholder:
  • Guybrush Threepwood's first name is an example of this. "Guybrush" comes in part from Deluxe Paint, the tool used by the artists to create the character sprite. Since the character had no name at this point, the file was simply called 'Guy'. When the file was saved, Steve Purcell, the artist responsible for the sprite, added 'brush' to the filename, indicating that it was the Deluxe Paint "brush file" for the "Guy" sprite. The file name was then "guybrush.bbm", so the developers eventually just started referring to this unnamed 'Guy' as "Guybrush".
  • According to Tim Schafer, most of the dialogue in Secret of Monkey Island was thought by him and the other writer to be placeholder, and that the bigwigs were going to hire some "real" dialogue writers to do the actual stuff, but the humorous placeholder dialogue was so funny that they decided to leave it in. This actually had quite an impact on the gameplay itself and led to the "rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle" bit.
• Promoted Fanboy: Dominic Armato was a huge fan of the first two games, and would tell his friends that his dream project would be voicing Guybrush in a third game, which at the time seemed unlikely to be made. When he was called in to audition for a part, he didn't know what he was going in for at first, and when he discovered what role and game it was, he says he nearly fainted. His sheer enthusiasm and love for the series won over the creators and got him the part. His wonderful performance as Guybrush in the third game and subsequent installments (and the remakes of the first two) is one of the only things the Broken Base seems capable of agreeing upon.
• Sequel Gap: Six years between 2 and 3, three years between 3 and 4, a whopping nine between 4 and Tales, and a very lengthy thirteen years between Tales and Return. The only games that didn't suffer any significant gap were the first two, released only a year apart. With Return confirmed to follow up from LeChuck's Revenge, it makes a gap of thirty-one years.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Actress and nerd Lisa Foiles once pitched a Monkey Island movie to Warner Bros.; unfortunately, they dismissed her out of hand.
  • Turns out an animated film called The Curse of Monkey Island was planned, with Steven Spielberg as producer and a script written by Ted Elliott. However, several ideas from it would later be used in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, also written by Elliott. It should be noted that the first Monkey Island game was loosely based on both the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and the novel On Stranger Tides. Nowadays Monkey Island and Pirates of the Caribbean have referenced each other so much that it goes into Mind Screw territory.