Video Game / Thimbleweed Park

"In a town like Thimbleweed Park, a dead body is the least of your problems."

Thimbleweed Park is a Point And Click Adventure Game from 2017 developed by Terrible Toybox, headed by Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick. The game is explicitly built to the retro standards of the LucasArts adventure games of the 90s.

Agents Ray and Reyes have been called to investigate a corpse lying face down and beginning to pixelate by Trestle Trail, right off the highway near the tiny town of Thimbleweed Park. Delores Edmund wants to be a game developer, but if she becomes one, she'll go against her entire family's wishes. After an untimely death, a phantom needs to put his last affairs in order so that he might move on to the afterlife. Ransome the *bleep* Insult Clown, greatest artist of a generation, has pissed off the wrong person, and now needs to recover the mere tatters of his former success.

This is not what this game is about.

In 2020, Ron Gilbert released a free short game called Delores A Thimbleweed Park Mini Adventure that was made using assets from the main game.

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This game has examples of tropes such as:

• Aborted Arc:
  • The game basically becomes a giant abandoned arc once the reality of the universe is revealed, and all the plot points are brought to abrupt endings through magical items.
  • Once Delores gets the balloon animal, she can immediately head to the river and quickly bring the game to a close unilaterally, preventing the other characters (and indeed, herself) from even getting superficial closure to their storylines.
  • You can go inside some of the unused buildings in the end-of-game wireframe mode, suggesting that they were once going to be used. However, several of the ones that you can go into in the final game aren't accessible in this version. Also, the Mansion is nearly identical to the one in the original Maniac Mansion, including an appearance from Nurse Edna in the kitchen, who doesn't appear in the final game. In the final Thimbleweed Park, it is a different mansion called Mansion Mansion and the family is called the Edmunds rather than the Edisons.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Beneath Thimbleweed Park, including closed off gates, and an emergency number to call for people to be taken away from it.
• Acme Products: The hotel manager tries to call ACME Maintenance for assistance – but they're busy.
• Advanced Tech 2000: The machines all over Thimbleweed County are named [Whatever]Tron 3000™.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The AI that Chuck made in his factory gained power and set the building on fire (killing Reyes's father in the process), forced Chuck to secretly rebuild it, and then demanded him to join them in the PillowTron 3000.
• Anachronism Stew:
  • Chuck has a cat-o-nine tails made out of Cat5 cables in his home office during Delores's introductory flashback. Cat5 cables weren't invented until 2001.
  • In the endgame, Chuck namedrops Kickstarter, which obviously did not exist back in 1987. It doubles as Breaking the Fourth Wall.
  • People mention "cosplay", a word that didn't enter the English language until 1993.
  • Willie asking for kombucha might be one as it was not popular or well known in America until long after 1987.
  • Agent Ray and Lenore use the term Murder Simulators to refer to video games when talking to Delores. The moral panic about video games being tied to real-life violence wouldn't kick off until the late 1990s.
  • The biggest one that was pointed out to Ron Gilbert that made him kick himself was the presence of "Sexy" Riker in Thimblecon. While Star Trek had been back, by the time the game takes place, Riker hadn't grown a beard in TNG yet. This solicited a "DAMNIT" from Gilbert.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Franklin (as a ghost) plays very differently from the other characters, as his verb menu commands are almost completely different.
• Artistic License – Law: Ray and Reyes mention and are told a few times that they need a warrant to obtain a few items. However...
  • When Willie has a wallet covered in blood he refuses to give the agents. That would certainly fall under probable cause (and, given how small it is, they could argue Willie might destroy or dispose of it if they waited for a warrant).
  • Ransome states that the agents need a warrant in order to enter the circus. However, not only is the place public property (Delores and Ransome mention using it as a dump), but Ransome admits to squatting since he was evicted from his previous home. Since Ransome doesn't own the trailer or the land, he has no right to stop a search.
  • The arrest warrant the agents need is dispensed by a computer, rather than granted by a judge.
• Be as Unhelpful as Possible: The sheriff-a-reno. He'll stop the feds from exploring town if they have no map (which he stole from the convenience store).
• Beneath the Mask: The eye drops allow the player to glimpse beneath the surface of the minds of both Ray (who wishes she could be more likable) and Ransome (whose father was cruel to him). Reyes and Delores can also use them, but they don't say anything the player doesn't already know.
• Better than a Bare Bulb: Lots of characters will discuss adventure game tropes and how it relates to the events going on in the game, even those who shouldn't have ties to adventure games. They'll even talk about the body "pixelating" instead of decomposing.
• Bilingual Bonus: Spanish speakers will be able to understand the phone message from Reyes' mother.
• Bland-Name Product:
  • "The non-copyright infringing can of Poopsi," which is a reference to the actual can of Pepsi in Maniac Mansion.
  • MMucasFlem Games, and the various games they produce, are a reference to Lucasfilm Games (later LucasArts) and their games. In particular, two tools used for creating games with the SCUMM engine are called MMUCUS and FLEM.
• Book Ends:
  • The first puzzle of the game leads to Boris's death, and the last puzzle involves doing something with his corpse.
  • Ransome is introduced when Sandy discusses his fall from grace with the agents. Ransome's final puzzle involves giving the apology card to Sandy to travel back in time and redo his final show.
• Brain Uploading: Chuck uploaded himself into the PillowTron 3000 circuits.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Though sometimes it seems like there is No Fourth Wall, this is intentional. What's not immediately obvious is that the lack of a fourth wall is a plot point, not just used for meta-humor.
  • At one point the characters get a Betamax copy of Blazing Saddles. A character who looks at it comments that they like it, but are unsure about what they think of the ending. Blazing Saddles and Thimbleweed Park both end pretty much the same way, by not only breaking the fourth wall but blasting through it with full force, winking at the viewer the whole time; it can also be seen as a Take That! for those who didn't care for the game's ending.
• Broken Bridge:
  • The agents aren't allowed out of the main village without a map.
  • A Street is blocked off due to a broken vacuum tube on the hydrant. Access down the street is blocked until it is repaired.
  • Every time a flashback is started, it must be completed before returning to the primary game. Also, after entering the hotel room Franklin was last seen in, Ghost Franklin must complete his scaring quota. The hotel's front door is blocked off, and the only playable characters are Franklin and whichever agent entered his room.
  • The penthouse is inaccessible because Clara screws with the elevator's buttons. Ghost Franklin can bypass it by giving her some cake. Other characters may access it by distracting Clara with the TV.
• The Bus Came Back: The agents are literally put on two different buses once the murder is solved. They come back not too long after.
• The Cameo: The diner is run by Sandy and Dave. Dr. Fred, Edna and Green Tentacle can be spotted in the crowd watching Ransome's show, as are Guybrush Threepwood, Zak, Annie, a Caponian and David Fox. Edna can also be found in the wireframe kitchen version of the Mansion mansion. Neil Cicierega is among the game's backers whose number can be called in the phone book.
  • Speaking of the phone book, be sure to use it to get the number of Alex Valerdo "Danda" to call him to get rewarded with a speech only cameo from Tex Murphy which is actually voiced by his creator and actor Chris Jones.
• Camera Spoofing: A still photograph is used to fool room surveillance at the hotel.
• Character Name Alias: There are at least two points in the game where you need to give a pseudonym, and every option is a celebrity from the 1980s or a LucasArts adventure game character, which is simply accepted.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: First the gas is used to fuel the chainsaw and later it comes in handy again when making ink.
• Chekhov's Gag: There are 3,000 phone numbers, but only 80 people live in the county. The rest are the backers of the Kickstarter project to fund the game. In the endgame, the characters realize that they're in a videogame, subject to the choices and wishes of those in the "upper world", and a mission to disconnect themselves from us begins.
• Clear Their Name: Reyes is actually in Thimbleweed Park to prove his late father's innocence. He was framed for the arson of the pillow factory where he died by Chuck Edmund, his employer, because the arsonists were Chuck's dear robots and he didn't want the police to investigate.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Quite literally, everyone in the game. Special mention goes to the Pigeon Brothers (who dress like actual pigeons), and the guy in the tinfoil-covered pizza costume.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Ransome unleashes one when he discovers he can't remove his makeup after the show. It gets an extension when the cascade of misfortune soon follows.
• Concealing Canvas:
  • Ransome's wall safe in his trailer is hidden behind a clown poster.
  • Likewise, Chuck's safe in his room is hidden behind a painting.
• Creator Career Self-Deprecation: Delores mentions her dialogues are better written than what we see in this game upon which Natalie replies "I hope so."
• Cruelty Is the Only Option: You have to have Ray, Reyes, Ransome, and Delores eat obviously disgusting hot dogs to progress.
• Deadly Rotary Fan: There is a huge spinning fan◊ in Chuck's factory which you have to find a way to stop in order to pass through it and find the secret lab.
• Deadpan Snarker: Most of the female characters, like Agent Ray and Sandy, are. Some of the men are, as well.
• Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit: Chuck's AI set the factory on fire, and Chuck decided to frame the victim of the arson (Reyes's father) for it so the police wouldn't investigate the AI.
• Decoy Protagonist: While all five playable characters are given focus, Ray and Reyes are the first to be introduced and appear to be the ones leading the investigation. After Willie is arrested, Delores quickly takes center stage.
• Developing Doomed Characters: The plot twist near the end means that none of the plotlines introduced earlier will get any resolution.
• Deus ex Machina: In order to end the game, Chuck gives the four main characters highly convenient items that will bring their various storylines to a quick close.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Willie went out with Chuck's girlfriend once. So Chuck had Willie's business burned to the ground and his bank account deleted, reducing poor Willie to a life of sleeping rough and begging passerbys for change. To make it worse, Chuck apparently went through girlfriends at a pretty steady pace, so it's unlikely he ever cared much about the woman - it was just the principle of the thing!
  • Madame Morena curses Ransome the Insult Clown for... insulting her while she was viewing his act, which was entirely about insulting everybody in the room. Her curse results in Ransome losing his marriage, his house, his lawyer, and a potentially multi-million dollar plush toy business, forces him to have his clown makeup stuck on his face for the rest of his life, and ultimately leaves him a destitute man squatting in the remains of the run down old circus he used to perform in. Ransome is a dick on and off the stage no doubt about it, but Morena really had no cause to be offended and her punishment was way overblown.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Thimbleweed Park used to be happenin' center of the tri-county area until it lost popularity and became the slowly dying town that it is when the game begins. Sounds a lot like the past 20 years of point-and-click Adventure Games, doesn't it?
  • Thimbleweed seems almost eerily similar to Possum Springs... which itself was designed off of these towns.
• Donut Mess with a Cop: There are pieces of doughnuts left at the police station.
• Door to Before: The factory has a locked door that can only be opened from the inside, once you've made your way through the bowels of the factory.
• Dying Town: The fate of Thimbleweed Park after the PillowTron factory went out of business.
• The End... Or Is It?: Delores unplugs the system, either giving the town a peaceful life or ending their loops... only for The Stinger to suggest it's all going to repeat again.
• Energy Weapon: AI Chuck protects the PillowTron with a hallway protected by an array of constantly firing laser beams. They appear to emit loud pew-pew sounds but Chuck admits that they're actually completely silent and that he's piping in the sound effects for ambiance.
• Expy:
  • Reyes and Ray bear a striking physical resemblance to two other famous FBI agents, and their initial characterisation (he's wide-eyed and friendly and seems to be a Conspiracy Theorist; she's grouchy and realistic and acts like she's Surrounded by Idiots) also resembles a slightly mean-spirited parody of the same. We eventually learn that they are quite different characters beneath the surface, though.
  • Quite a few characters bear more than a passing resemblance to a few characters from The Simpsons, including a grouchy, not-quite-child-friendly clown, a deranged Scottish groundskeeper, a fat comic book nerd who over-articulates, and a mustachioed friendlyman with a weird vocal tic-a-reno.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The entire game (except Boris's murder, which happens on the day before, and the various flashbacks) takes place in a single night.
• Flashback Effects: The transitions in and out of flashback episodes happen via those wavy lines and a harp sound.
• Fluorescent Footprints: One puzzle requires you to create those.
• Follow in My Footsteps: Chuck wants his niece to be his successor in his PillowTron business. This causes friction as Dolores would rather become a software developer.
• Foreshadowing: One of the coroner's machines can tell you about the Three Laws of Robotics: a robot won't harm a human or let it come to harm, a robot will serve humans, and a robot will protect its own existence. You then find out that Chuck's AI rebelled against him, burning the factory and killing Reyes's father in the process.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Ray and Ransome are Choleric, Reyes is Phlegmatic, Delores is Sanguine and Franklin is Melancholic.
• The Friends Who Never Hang: Reyes and Ray interact repeatedly, and so do Delores and Franklin. Aside from a few cutscene comments near the end, there is no real interaction between any other pair of playable characters. Indeed, they never really formally introduce themselves to each other. Averted, however, with the June 2017 patch, which adds interaction between all playable characters (apart from Franklin) with additional dialogue explaining why they are all working together.
• Future Loser: Implied with Leonard. He refers to his cousin Bernard as a "dweeb" for getting into Harvard while he's working as a convenience store clerk in a dead-end town.
• Gentle Touch vs. Firm Hand: Can be seen in the approaches between Reyes (Gentle Touch) and Ray (Firm Hand). Most notably in talking with Ricki or Delores, who respond very differently to each agent.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: Ray and Reyes use the routine on the murderer, Willie. Lampshaded, as the culprit starts babbling confession nonsense the second the feds say "good cop bad cop."
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Ray smokes whereas the other characters don't, and she's definitely more amoral than the rest (besides Ransome).
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Considering that Ransome swears so much he bleeps, it's a little weird that Reyes refuses to swear at all, saying "Bullpuckey" if he catches someone lying to him.
• Green Around the Gills: Trying a hotdog will turn every character's face green of sickness.
• Gypsy Curse: Ransome gets struck with one for mocking Madame Morena.
• Hair-Trigger Explosive: Ransome uses a brick of C-4 explosive and detonates it from the sparks from his defective prototype candy dispenser. In reality, C-4 is an incredibly stable product and requires a specific shock wave in addition to heat to make it explode. On the other hand, the door flops down anticlimactically, so clearly realism was not the intention.
• Hyperaffixation: The sheriff, coroner and hotel manager all have this: A-reno, a-who and a-boo respectively. This Verbal Tic is what keeps people from suspecting they're the same person, and each of them insists that you'll never catch them using the other's tic. However, each has at least one situation, when surprised, in which they use the wrong tic, suggesting they really are one and the same.
• It's All My Fault: After being wrongfully put behind bars for the murder of Boris, Willy sarcastically confesses to have abducted the Lindbergh baby, to being Jack the Ripper and the Zodiac Killer as well to have left the toilet seat up.
• Jacob Marley Apparel: All the ghosts still wear their (period piece) dresses they died in.
• Japan Takes Over the World: Hinted at, with Agent Ray working for a company that wants to get into PillowTronics.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After treating everyone like shit and throwing constant insults to everyone, Ransome loses his wife, his mistress, his cash, and he's stuck in his clown makeup forever.
• The Last Dance: When Ransome learns that they are about to shut down PillowTron 3000 and end their lives as video game characters, his last request is to do one last show, "one last chance to be in the limelight".
• Lethal Chef: The S&D Diner reportedly had a number of botulism cases a while back. No one gets that, but eating the food makes the eater throw up.
• The Lost Woods: Ricky Lee mentions that people got lost for days in the Thimbleweed forest.
• MacGuffin: The strange device Ray gets. She remarks when she looks at it that it will probably be useful near the end of the game. It opens up the AI storage unit.
• Medium Awareness: AI Chuck tells Dolores and the team they are just characters in a video game.
• Missing Mom: There are no hints as to the identity of Delores and Lenore's mother (and presumably Franklin's wife). This gets Lampshaded by AI Chuck, who presents the absence of any mother in Delores' life as evidence that they're living in a simulated reality that doesn't exist beyond the plot of the game. Delores is forced to agree when she realises that not only does she not know who or where her mother is, she doesn't even remember having a mother at all, or ever being curious about why not.
• Mockstery Tale: The murders of Boris^spoiler The sheriff-robot did it and Franklin^spoiler Chuck did it remain unsolved, and the whole detective plot becomes unimportant when the protagonists realize they are characters in a video game.
• Moon Logic Puzzle: Most of the game's puzzles avert this. However, there are a few exceptions.
  • There is a puzzle to find out a path people take to get through a forest. To solve it, you need to dump glowing toxic waste into a puddle the people walk through. This can be really difficult to figure out, as the only thing that can tell you Delores's pewter trophy can hold the waste is that it's a Shout-Out to an earlier game.
  • Late in the game, Delores is given a balloon animal, with no idea on what to do with it. At least AI Chuck gives her the hint to look at the Kickstarter video, which involves using the balloon animal on Boris's corpse in the first 30 seconds.
• My Little Panzer: Ransome's prototype candy dispenser. Instead of sweet treats, it emits sparks. Which can be useful for igniting explosives.
• Name-Tron: There is a lot of automation machines across Thimbleweed that serve different purposes, and all of them end in "Tron": BloodTron, FingerTron, FaceTron, PrintTron... To top it off, they have the 3000 suffix after "Tron". Gadgeteer Genius Chuck made all of them.
• Nice Guy: Dave. He's pleasant to everyone, even Ransome. He's the one who coaxes Sandy to send Ransome back into his flashback.
• No Fourth Wall: The characters routinely talk about game tropes, such as saying "Should I save my game?" or "This cut-scene is already getting long."
• No-Sell: Wrapping the pirate hat in aluminum foil makes the Player Character invulnerable to laser rays. Chuck, as the AI who set up the lasers, calls this character a cheater.
• Nostalgia Level: The last scenes of Dolores inside the "wireframe" world look like concept art for the game. Or 80s adventure games.
• Ocular Gushers: Using the eyedrops from the Occult shop makes this happen. It's needed for an achievement.
• Omniglot: Drinking the tea in the Occult Shop will allow the character who drank it to speak a random line in a different language.
• One-Time Dungeon: The Absurdly Spacious Sewer where one of the agents gets taken to.
• Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?: When talking to Willy in the street either of the FBI agents will ask him what that thing is in his pocket (wallet) upon which Willy replies that he may just be happy to see them.
• Orphan's Plot Trinket: Antonio Reyes has an old, broken pocket watch that belonged to his father, head of security at the pillow factory who then died when its AI burned the place down. He has to repair it, and it serves a plot purpose to open the Pillow Factory's door by tricking the security system.
• Overly Long Gag:
  • One of the coroner's machines can calculate the last digit of pi... a number with infinite digits. It takes about ten seconds worth of "calculating" dialogue, and the machine even admits it gets the answer wrong the first time around. Also serves as Foreshadowing since one possible clue that our own reality is a simulation would be finding an end to pi or other numbers that theoretically shouldn't end.
    FingerTron: Five. No, wait... Seven.
  • While examining the empty soda bottle that you can hand over at Quickie Pal for money, the character will name every single state, including the District of Columbia.
    Player Character: Five-cent deposit in Massachusetts, Hawaii, California, Arkansas, Idaho, Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia, Virginia, Connecticut, Vermont, Maryland, Kansas, North Carolina, Texas, Montana, Tennessee, South Dakota, District of Columbia
  • Ransome takes half a minute to climb up the ladder in the radio tower, and you have to watch all of it. He complains and swears about it from time to time until he's up.
    Ransome: Oh, let's get the *beep* clown to climb the ladder.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Franklin uses a party mask with glasses and a nose to fool the hotel manager into believing he is somebody else.
• Paradiegetic Gameplay: To solve the last puzzle with the balloon animal, the player is required to go online and watch the Kickstarter video for the game.
• Permanently Missable Content: The game was structured specifically to avoid becoming unwinnable. However, after Willie is arrested, Agents Ray and Reyes disappear for a short while. Any useless items in their inventory will disappear when they return. This might lock a player out of an achievement, if, say, the eyedrops were discarded.
• Pixel Hunt:
  • Parodied with the 75 tiny specks of dust scattered throughout the game which the characters can hunt for and collect.
  • Played straight with the books in the Mansion mansion library. Every pixel is a different book, so it can be very difficult to find yours ^note  For the kickstarter backersamong the hundreds and hundreds of them.
• Power Glows: The Book of the Dead glows.
• Precision F-Strike: Ransome made his career out of being a master with these.
• Properly Paranoid: There's a group of conspiracy nuts in Thimbleweed Park, but there is something going on in Thimbleweed Park.
• Reused Character Design: The Sheriff, the Coroner and the Hotel Manager may be this. Then again, maybe not. As with so many other tropes in the game, this is lampshaded.
• Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue...: When you come across a bulletin board outside the Nickel News building, you notice some advertisements that only Agents Ray and Reyes can read. One of them is a fading advertisement that says:
  Roses are red,
  Pillows are white,
  Get our special bundle
  And stay up all night!
  $50 Valentine's special at Fancy Nancy Flowers sponsored by Pillowtronics!
• Scare Chord: Can be heard when a pair of red eyes appear in the sewer opening early on.
• Scooby-Dooby Doors: Dolores' maze of doors at the Edmund mansion.
• Shared Universe: With Maniac Mansion, given that many of its characters cameo (with some guest starring) roles.
• Shout-Out: Ransome mentions he wouldn't microwave a hamster.
• Sickly Green Glow: The toxic waste found at the factory glows sickly green.
• Signs of Disrepair: The neon sign on top of Edmund Hotel has broken letters, so all we see is E-MU-D Hotel.
• Sinister Surveillance: Everyone in town is being watched.
• Spinning Paper: When Reyes gives Natalie Chuck's confession to clear his father's name, she will quickly write up a story, followed by a cut scene of a paper spinning into view with the headline "Factory Guard Cleared in Fire".
• The Stinger: There is a scene after the closing credits in which which the simulation "Thimbleweed Park" gets restarted.
• Stuff Blowing Up: The only way to get a Game Over in this game is to push the Big Red Button on the device in Uncle Chuck's lab. It will blow up the mansion.
• Supreme Chef: Ricki used to be the town's best baker. She'll make you the pie you need if you give her some berries.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: Revisits to the coroner's autopsy room can give you shots of him creeping up on the player character, or a scene where one of them is lying on a slab.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: The hotel manager ensures his customers that there is nothing to be worried about during their stay, especially not food poisoning.
• The Swear Jar: The Stupendous Brothers Circus has a "Ransome the Clown" swear jar. According to his contract, Ransome himself is the only one who's exempt from contributing to it.
• Take That!: At one point, Delores can mention that she would be dead if she were in a Sierra On-Line adventure game for handling broken glass.
  • Self-Deprecation: Because some people thought this was annoying, a patch gave players the option to turn off the "Annoying in-jokes".
• Tap on the Head: That's how Boris goes out in the prologue and also Agent Ray/Reyes later behind the diner.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork:
  • Ray despises working with Reyes on the case but complies as she thinks it's the quickest way out of the town.
  • Ransome is not amused to be working together with the other characters but he does it anyway for the potential reward.
• This Is Reality: During their dealings with Madame Morena, one character mentions that spells only work in games.
• Teamwork Puzzle Game: There are puzzles towards the end that require different characters to work together.
• Tinfoil Hat: The conspiracy nuts wear them to "protect against the mind control rays." You can make one yourself with some tinfoil and a pirate hat. You actually use it to get past some lasers.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: There's one in the Occult store.
• Totally Radical: Played with. The annoying kid actually talks like this, but it fits the time period. When Franklin is trying to "get on his level" he has several (wrong) Dialogue Tree options where he speaks with slang terminology from the '70s or earlier. This, of course, fools no one.
• Trade Snark: Used quite frequently, especially with the various -Tron devices. Some characters even say it out loud.
• The Unsolved Mystery: Who or what killed Boris and kidnapped agent Ray/Reyes?
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: There were a few rare bugs the developers fixed.
  • The dime could spawn in a place where it could not be reached, and the agent could've had no way to rescue a trapped partner.
  • The game would remove the pirate hat from the inventory if a failed trade was made to get the hint book.
• Unwinnable by Design: Constantly lampshaded throughout the game. The game itself is scripted to never be unwinnable. However, it is possible to lose control of Agent Ray or Reyes. They can be either attacked by a shadowy figure in the alley behind the diner in Chapter 2, taking a nap on the coroner's table, or at the beginning of Chapter 4 when they are on the bus. They'll become active later, so the player might have to wait for a bit if they were carrying a necessary item, but the game is never unwinnable.
• Useless Item:
  • The specks of dust and the Occult Store's eyedrops are only useful to get an achievement.
  • You need the severed head from the occult store for an achievement and to gain the arcade tokens, but you can complete the game without doing either of those things.
  • The tea in the Occult Store gives a fun Easter Egg, but is not needed to complete the game.
  • The Quickie Pal has a bottle of bear repellent. While you can hear a bear in the woods when trying to get the thimbleberries and/or find the secret hideout, it never shows up and the repellent is useless.
  • The items on the roadside leading from the river to the town are completely useless and their only function is to be thrown in the garbage: An Atari cartridge, a circus poster, a six-pack cartilage, and an empty can of tuna. There is also an empty bottle, which is useful.
  • The bottle of whiskey and the Betamax tape were originally intended to be part of a quest involving the convenience store security camera, but the quest was cut for time, and the items were never removed.
  • There's a paperweight on the bank manager's desk you can steal. It's useless to the game.
  • The items in Delores's fridge serve only as a Call-Back to the Maniac Mansion fridge. The can of Poopsi serves as an Easter Egg, the rest of the items are useless except for the hot sauce, which, coincidentally, is the only item not from the Call-Back. The items in Delores's bedroom: Her math trophy, red gel decorder, and stuffed chinchilla can be picked up in her flashback, but are useless. The decoder and trophy are not useless, however, in the present.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: The game's not very graphic. But you can steal a cherished knick-knack from the bank manager for no reason than that you want to.
• The Voiceless: Lenore's husband (Peter) and son (Chuckie) don't say a word. If Dolores tries to speak to either, Lenore will loudly assert that if her sister has anything to say, she could say it to her.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: None of the characters want to enter Sexy Riker's room while being noisily sick.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: After eating a hot dog, each character goes into the alley behind the diner and throws up. You see the vomit coming out of each character's mouth.
• Wall of Text: There are over 1,000 books in the mansion library, each of which contains a couple paragraphs of text. Assuming each is about 200 words long, that's over 200,000 words in all - about the length of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
• We Can Rule Together: On the monitor screens inside his factory Chuck urges Dolores to follow him and merge minds with the PillowTron 3000.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Who did kill Franklin and Boris? Where did Franklin's body go? Franklin's casualness with his killer before he's offed suggests it couldn't be Chuck or the Sheriff (as he was afraid of them), but he clearly knew who the person was.
• Where It All Began: The last level lets Dolores visit the corpse by the bridge where the game began.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The location of Thimbleweed Park is kept intentionally vague outside of being in the US. When filling out the online job application, the four options have nearly identical descriptions except that each one lists a different state short-form starting with a W^note Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming (and some capitalization).
• Yank the Dog's Chain: The Ransome lookalike contest offers a licensing agreement and free plastic surgery for the winners. Ransome could really use both of those prizes, because he needs money and can't remove his cursed clown makeup. You'd think nobody could possibly win against Ransome, right? Well...
• You ALL Look Familiar: The sheriff, coroner and hotel desk clerk all look identical, except for their uniform. The player characters suspect they are all the same person, especially as only one can ever be found at a time. They insist they're totally different.
• Your Costume Needs Work: At Thimbleweed Con '87, nobody believes that Ransome is the actual Ransome the *BEEP*ing insult Clown. Ransome comes in third place (out of 3), no matter what you try.

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