WMG / Clue

It was Dr. Black/Mr. Boddy, in the Stairwell, with the Untied Shoelace.

That's how the body was mangled enough that they couldn't tell if he was shot, strangled, stabbed, etc. and why there were no bloodstains leading from the room to the stairwell. Col. Mustard Is Gonna Walk, so there.

Dr. Black faked his death, moved to the states, changed his name, and had to pull a similar stunt all over again.

The names of the suspects were all code, for a Mystery Dinner Party, and it's merely coincidence and personality that Mr. Boddy's group happened to match the circle of associates he escaped from in Britain. Whether a Mr. Cadavre shows up shortly afterward in British-occupied India and starts making acquaintances, or Dr. Black's corpse is in an American grave marked "Timothy Boddy, 1878-1929" is up to the gardeners to decide.

THE BUTLER DID IT!!!!

Oh, come on. You all saw it coming!

• The butler rarely ever actually did it, even in the oldest mystery novels. This a cliche to even think it was cliche.
  • To be fair Dine and Carr both felt a need to explicitly forbid servants from being the culprit, so it's easy to see why people would think it use to be a common occurrence
• This cliche is the reason why the name of the butler in the Clue VCR game is Diddit.
• Actually Mrs. White is the housekeeper in most continuities.

Everything is taking place in an Umineko: When They Cry-type "Groundhog Day" Loop.

The Boddy estate is the center of a game, and all of the characters are witches/sorcerers. The rules are as follows:

1. In each loop, Mr. Boddy will vanish under strange circumstances.
2. Events will happen that result in the Boddy estate becoming a Closed Circle.
3. The player who can find a mundane explanation for the death wins the round.
4. Suggestions are Blue Truths and showing a card is using the Red Truth. (e.g. Professor Plum killed Mr. Boddy with the Revolver in the Lounge. Mr. Boddy was not killed in the Lounge.)
5. Mr. Boddy's power is that he can vanish without a trace. The player who realizes this becomes the new Mr. Boddy.

• Opening the envelope in the stairwell is a Gold Truth, no?

Everybody was in on it.

Mr. Boddy was a Jerkass who had it coming. Mrs. White was sick of having to wait on the ungrateful bastard night and day. Miss Scarlet had seduced him and wanted to get her hands on his fortune. His cousin, Ms. Peacock, was his only living relative and therefore stood to inherit. Col. Mustard served with Mr. Boddy in the military, and wanted revenge from an incident where Boddy's recklessness caused the death of innocent civilians. Professor Plum wanted to get his hands on a Tome of Eldritch Lore that Mr. Boddy kept in his library. Funny thing, nobody else knew about the others' schemes, which is why they all try to pin the murder on each other.

• What about Mr. Green?
  • Mr. Green was at home, sleeping with his wife.
    • Or with Mr. Boddy's mom.
  • Or, to go with some versions of the game/books, he was Boddy's personal priest to whom he had made a confession, and something he confessed to was so heinous it convinced Green he needed to die. Alternately he was a mafioso or other crime boss to whom Boddy owed money.

It was Uncle Pennybags!

Yes, it was him. He knew no one would suspect that he ran Mr. Boddy over with the little car token, he killed the poor bastard, emptied the guy's pockets, and escaped to his own board game to become a millionaire.

• He lost Mr. Boddy's boddyguard by ducking through Guess Who? on his way from the Waddington-Hasbro crossing to get to Marven Gardens at Milton Bradley. The bowler hat and white facial hair threw off the fact that Mr. Monopoly was bald.

In the movie, there is a small hidden compartment under the staircase.

...in which Mr. "Boddy" left a manila envelope of surprisingly accurate evidence of who his killer was and how he expected to be killed.

In the third ending of the movie, although Mr. Green was indeed a plant...

...He was not faking his homosexuality. He used this as an opportunity to keep up his cover by pretending to pretend to be gay. (Doesn't the non-sequitur line "now I'm going home to sleep with my wife" smack of Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?)

• It certainly smacks of him blatantly saying "I'm heterosexual, no, really!"... but given the circumstances, Mr. Green might have had any number of reasons to say that that doesn't imply he is gay. After all, he has just spent hours pretending to be a fussy, clumsy gay - it might, for example, be his way of having a bit of fun in telling the others that practically nothing they've learned of him during the night is true, including the thing he was blackmailed for.
  • For that matter, remember early on in the film when they're first revealing that everyone has been blackmailed. Despite Green's willingness to confess to being gay, and his insistence that he doesn't feel any shame over it, he is nonetheless one of the people who insisted before hand that he was innocent of what he's being blackmailed for.
  • This would even work with the change in his demeanor at the end: while he was really gay, it was the fussy, effeminate stereotype of gayness that was being faked, and in actuality, he was Straight Gay or even Manly Gay (to go with the need to keep his orientation hidden in those times). And if he was being blackmailed for something else and was innocent of that, he could still really be gay but have his claim of innocence be true.
• It also might explain why Wadsworth is so surprised at Green's casual reveal of what he's being blackmailed for: he's not surprised about the homosexuality, he's surprised Green claims to work for the State Department rather than the FBI.
  • Makes no sense. In the third ending, Wadsworth is shown to be the villain. If he knew that Green was really FBI... why would he invite a cop into his crime den? Why would he be surprised at the J. Edgar Hoover call? He should have known from the start that Green was trouble for his plans. Also, why wouldn't Wadsworth correct him if he knew he was lying? The whole point of the exposure scene was to let out the facts. No one else in the scene was allowed to lie. There is no point to Green lying about where he works anyway.
• Alternately, he might have been separated from her to keep up appearances, so he might be celebrating his ability to come back to her.
• Alternately, Mr. Green's wife is a trans woman, and they were together before she transitioned.
• It makes sense if he's not the real Mr. Green. Perhaps the real Mr. Green, who is really gay and really works for the State Department, went to the FBI when he started being blackmailed, and they found an agent who could pass as him at the dinner party.

Mrs. Peacock is either a Drag Queen or a transgender woman.

• Mr. Green was right about him/her.
  • Looks like I was beat to the punch. There was a reason Mr. Green recognized him/her and how he/she had been been familiar with men's restrooms. Miss Scarlett asks him/her about whether he/she (going to just say Peacock now) thought that 'men could use a bit of practice'. She may have recognized how Peacock more herself like some of her girl's clients or the occasional male worker. There is also how she mentioned Yvette finding secrets for her and listing Senator Peacock. No one saw Peacock's invitation so it may well have been that it was derisively using Mrs. to hint about what would be exposed if Peacock didn't arrive or it may have not given a gender.
    • Huh? It's well stated that Senator Peacock is her husband. At the end of 2nd ending she shouts "I'm a Senator's wife!" You're saying that a sitting Senator poses as his own wife? Wonder how that's supposed to work at dinner parties... And if Peacock's big secret is that he's a crossdresser / transgender, .... why would he show up in that secret?

Col. Mustard got his nickname from his excessive use of mustard gas

• Mustard gas was not used in WWII.

Mr. Boddy wanted to be killed

The entire evening is a Batman Gambit, trying to goad one person into killing him. He avoids the legal complication/stigma of suicide and sends someone he doesn't like to jail. He plants an envelope of evidence just to make sure.

All the suspects have amnesia

Mr Boddy drugged them, which is why you can implicate yourself.

Mr. Boddy and the suspects are all Multiple Personalties or hallucinations of the same person.

This patient is undergoing psychoanalysis to confront these different aspects of his/ her own psyche by determining which one of them is hurting him, how they are doing it, and when they started doing it.

Miss Scarlett is The Vamp and represents the patient's misgivings about sex.

Col. Mustard is a staunch, intimidating military figure who represents the patient's many run-ins with authority.

Mrs. White is a fastidious maid representing the patient's compulsive need to clean and organize.

Mr. Green is a Corrupt Corporate Executive or Sinister Minister who is both wealthier and more respected than the others and never mises an opportunity to remind them. He represents how society stigmatizes the mentally ill.

Mrs. Peacock is an Evil Matriarch, representing the patient's Freudian Excuse.

Prof. Plum is either a Sadist Teacher representing the patient's bad school life, his resentment toward therapists in general, or simply a transference avatar for the doctor treating him now.

Mr. Boddy is the patient's self-image, a scared and reclusive victim who feels the universe is out to get him.

• ...And of course:

Wadsworth is the patient's envisioning of his therapist, attempting to navigate amongst this sea of caustic personalities and bring them all to a satisfactory conclusion.

• So in the "everybody did it" ending where Green shoots Wadsworth represents...?
  • Maybe it represents the higher-ups firing the therapist?

In the third ending of the film, Mr. Green is indeed faking being gay, but he's not a plant. He's the real blackmailer.

"The Chief" is there to dispose of everybody else.

All three endings happen.

And I don't mean they're all plausible, I mean the three endings all occur. Professor Plum killed Mr. Boddy, Mrs. Peacock killed the cook, Colonel Mustard killed the motorist, Miss Scarlet killed Yvette and the cop, and Wadsworth kills the singing telegram girl. This is because when they realize they've all been blackmailed, they all decide to get rid of the problems with their finances (their blackmailers). Mr. Boddy wasn't the only person blackmailing people, the victims of the murders are responsible for blackmailing their killers. None of them knew any of the others were running around the mansion killing people, which is why there is always surprise when a new victim is discovered. Also, if all three endings happen, where do three guns come from? Simple - two people brought guns with them and one person had the one provided by Mr. Boddy. Thus, the 1+2+2+1/1+2+1+1 confusion.

• I'm not following you. What you've just described is not all three endings happening, it's just the third ending except that Scarlet kills Yvette, instead of White killing Yvette.

Mr. Boddy was the killer

It's the only way it can make any sense.

• This is why we don't play Clue, Sherlock. It's not possible for the victim to have done it.
  • I do not know if that was based on a scene from the show, but it doesn't seem entirely likely to be there. Mostly because they play Cluedo and generally have Dr. Black. Of course, some media references Mr. Boddy as being Dr. Black's nephew from America, so it would give him quite a good motive. Might even give all the guests a motive to kill him in turn, for having ruined their lives by having people wrongly suspect them of being murderers.

The Singing Telegram girl did it all!

When we first meet Prof. Plum, Wadsworth reveals that Plum used to be a psychiatrist who specialized in treating "paranoid and homicidal lunatics suffering from delusions of grandeur." After the singing telegram girl's body is found, Plum reveals that she used to be his patient. Is it any coincidence that a known homicidal lunatic just happened to show up at a house where multiple murders were committed that night? Col. Mustard was actually correct when he suggested that there might be someone else in the house. The telegram girl had been hiding out, and snuck through the house, making use of the secret passages, turning the power off when necessary, to kill the various victims. She then snuck out of the house in the dark, turned around, rang the doorbell, planning to show up at the end so that she could masquerade as a totally innocent bystander. Wadsworth, recognizing her as Plum's former patient from the photographs from earlier, realized what she had done, and realized that she would get away with it, and so shot her as punishment.

• The problem with that theory is that if the Singing Telegram Girl was the real murderer, then why would Wadsworth (or Miss Scarlet, or Mrs. Peacock in the other two endings) not reveal that she had murdered all the other victims?

The first ending is the real one.

Bear with me on this: Of the six victims, Boddy, the cook, the motorist, the cop, the singing telegram girl, and Yvette, three of them, the motorist, the cop, and the telegram girl, could have been killed by anyone. Only two people, however, had the opportunity to kill the cook: Yvette and Mrs. Peacock, as they were the only two who were alone at all during the interval in which the cook was killed. You will note that in both of the two scenarios in which Yvette did not kill the cook, it was Mrs. Peacock. However, whoever killed the cook had to have known about the secret passage from the kitchen to the study, in order to get back from the kitchen to the study without being seen, as explained by Wadsworth. Yvette could easily have known about the passages, just as Wadsworth did; if nothing else, remember that she was already at the house when Wadsworth arrived, suggesting that she would have had plenty of time to search the place and find the secret passages beforehand. So really, only Yvette could have killed the cook, and therefore only Yvette could have snuck back into the study through the secret passage to kill Boddy with the candlestick. As for who killed Yvette herself, it was clear that she was meeting someone she trusted, according to some pre-arranged plan. That means that it had to be her employer, Miss Scarlet. What must have happened is that when Wadsworth contacted Yvette to get her to work as the maid at the party, she must have then informed Scarlet. Between that and the letter, Scarlet must have figured out what was going on and decided to use the opportunity to get rid of Boddy and his informers, while taking over Boddy's role as blackmailer.

• The problem with this is Yvette's last words. If she was meeting Miss Scarlet as arranged, why exclaim "It's you!"? Unless she was a double agent for one of the other guests...
• Or as noted on another page, the exclamation meant that she realized Miss Scarlet was the actual murderer (of the Motorist, at this point). Colonel Mustard was one of her (and thus Miss Scarlet's) clients, so he may well have told Yvette of what the Motorist had on him and if he did so, she may have assumed that Colonel Mustard had killed the Motorist, not Miss Scarlet (who may have learned of the Motorist from Yvette).
• Another possible point in favor of this: the first ending is the one with the most flashbacks showing how the murders were committed—in fact it's the only one to show them for the Cook, Mr. Boddy, and the Singing Telegram Girl; the second shows none, and the third only shows the Motorist, Yvette, and the Cop, and the last two also appeared in the first ending. It additionally included explanations for things not touched on in the other endings like why no one heard the Cook scream (because of Mrs. Peacock and the poisoned brandy).

The Cop was a paranoid schizophrenic

He may not have been a cop at all. Considering that he seems to be ranting about being in danger over the phone while the power is cut.

• At least in the United States, telephone equipment receives power from the phone line directly, rather than relying on the electric utility. Phone companies provision generators to keep this (low-voltage DC) supply available even when utility power goes offline, precisely so that telephones keep working during a power outage. That's why the only phones you see with power cords are wireless, or equipped with a built-in answering machine, or otherwise outside the rather strict regulations on how much power an instrument may draw from the phone line, and for what purpose.
• Landline phones don't get power from the same power lines as the house. Telephone lines are separate lines and they provide enough power (a few volts) for a phone to work. This is still true today, presuming you have a non-cordless phone and an honest-to-bob landline, which hardly anyone does anymore. TLDR cutting the house power wouldn't affect the phone. And besides, the cop *does* notice when the hook is depressed by the person with the lead pipe, cutting the call. This is Aluminum Christmas Trees.

The House is Purgatory.

Mr. Boddy is the devil and the Jehovah's Witness/FBI chief is an incarnation of God ("The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!"/"You ain't just whistlin' dixie"). Each of the houseguests is reliving the guilt for their crimes, and go to hell or heaven depending upon whether they are murdered or confess to the murder. Each time they are caught without freely confessing, however, the whole scenario begins again ad infinitum. Possibly Wadsworth may even be a representative of Death himself. Mr. Green is in fact an Angel sent as Heaven's emissary to watch over the whole affair - hence his constant claim that he didn't do it, his servile personality and his seemingly fluid sexuality.

• That...is friggin awesome! You... are brilliant. The movie just became like 5 times cooler than it already was. I think I like this WMG the best - it actually kinda works.
  • I thank you. They said my Comp. Lit. degree was useless! But I proved them!
    • You certainly did.

Yvette expected to meet the Singing Telegram Girl before she was murdered

Think about it. STG was the only character Yvette wasn't shown being introduced to since she entered roughly about the same time Yvette died . They are both in the business of using their bodies to blackmail or obtain information from powerful men. It's not too far out of the realm of possibility that they were working together perhaps to murder Mr. Boddy.

Mr. Green has a twin brother, who was actually the one being blackmailed for being a homosexual

The real Mr. Green could have gone to him for help, getting the FBI involved and the sting set up. The Mr. Green we see in the movie might have been so twitchy because he's undercover.

• Alternately, the real Mr. Green doesn't even look like the FBI agent from the movie. The FBI got wind that a man from the State Department was being blackmailed, and discovered upon questioning him that the blackmailer didn't know what their victim actually looked like: the blackmailer's evidence in Green's case was illicit love letters, not photos. When the real Green received the invitation to Hill House, they infiltrated an agent of the right age and general physical type into the gathering in the true extortion victim's place.

In the film, there was something hidden behind the curtain in the ballroom⋯

A TREE! The main Film page suggests this is communism simply a red herring caused by a tree branch but none is visible outside to be within striking range – it is still blowing and no tree is tapping the window or poking the hole it has created. Additionally – there is no sign of broken glass on the floor of the ballroom (none seen, none heard underfoot) meaning the glass was broken from the inside outward. So if it was broken by a branch, it would have to be between the curtain and the window.

• It was already broken. None of them know the house and nobody had previously been in the ballroom.

In the film's third ending Mr. Boddy was blackmailing J. Edgar Hoover

Mostly a headcanon, but I find the idea of Boddy trying to blackmail the wrong damn person, and getting the FBI sicced on him as a result, quite amusing.

• Hoover was accused throughout his life of being homosexual. Maybe when Green claimed to be such, he was talking about the actual person he was representing.
  • That also explains why Wadworth is confused, especially in the third ending where he's really Mr. Boddy.

Mr. Green is bisexual

He's both being blackmailed for (past, or else they have an open marriage) homosexual activities and Happily Married.

The movie takes place on Halloween

The whole thing is an elaborate murder mystery party...only Wadsworth forgot to tell everyone they were supposed to be acting.

The secret paths are at different levels

The NE-SW path is below the ground floor, whereas the SE-NW path is above the ground floor. (or vice versa)

• Another theory is that both paths are below ground. One path is underneath the other.

The third ending cannot be the "true" ending.

It is IMPOSSIBLE for Mrs. White to have killed Yvette the way Wadsworth claimed it happened.

According to Wadsworth, White snuck downstairs from the second floor, turned off the power to the house, grabbed the rope, then waited in the billiard room to kill Yvette.

However, when the power goes out, we see White upstairs screaming her head off in a child's room. We continue to hear her in the very next shot, which shows Yvette making her way downstairs from the attic. When we next see Yvette, she slips into the billiard room where her killer is waiting. How could White possibly go downstairs to shut off the power, go back upstairs to scream, go back downstairs to the billiard room before Yvette, kill Yvette, then go back upstairs one last time to the same spot in the child's room WITH NOT ONE OTHER PERSON SEEING HER?!

To make a long story short, (Too late!) White physically couldn't have done it.

(...I may have had to study this film in middle school, and while I will forever adore it, this REALLY stood out to me when having to guess who actually could have done it. There are multiple other issues with the "true" ending, but this to me was the most egregious.)

In the Film, Boddy and Wadsworth were actually in cahoots, and Wadsworth was trying to wrap up all the spies and informants and take over the entire thing himself.

So, here's the way I see it happening: Wadsworth and Boddy are actually buddies, not employer/butler. Together they'd amassed a network of informants and were blackmailing people.

The "gather blackmailed persons together for a dinner party and present them with their blackmailer" is a bit of theater they've performed several times with other people they've been blackmailing. This is because there are statutes of limitations for the actual criminal acts they are blackmailing people for (with the exception of murder, which has no So L) and if they didn't get their victims on the hook again some of them may have decided to just take the scandal instead of continually shelling out for the blackmail.

This explains two major plot holes I've long held for the movie - first, why Boddy would just "play along" with Wadsworth's game if he was really the "widower butler slave to Wadsworth" (after the suicide of his wife). Second, Wadsworth's otherwise sudden and sharp call of the police being on the way just before the first attempt on Boddy's life in the study by Professor Plum using the revolver.

((the bit with Boddy running and Wadsworth chasing is a preplanned bit of staging that they still play out just in case someone from the party follows behind))

((also, it's very strange that both Wadsworth and Yvette are absent when the party runs into the kitchen looking for the cook, only to have Plum and Peacock both disappear and Wadsworth alone reappear a few moments later... Peacock and Plum reappear a few moments later but Yvette never shows up in the kitchen))

The way the night usually goes is that the gun has special loads that fire a nonlethal. Wadsworth and Boddy both have blood packs ready to go to play "dead" if they feel the impact of the shot.

But as Wadsworth was planning on wrapping up their network he loaded the gun with real bullets. When Boddy felt the real shot slap past his ear, he realized what his partner was planning and played dead until an opportunity presented to remove himself. Which failed because Plum thinking he was taking out the blackmailer killed Boddy.

Wadsworth then kept up the pressure and pretense, and having made sure to bring in the informants who would be recognized by the victims as the way "Boddy" had found out about them, and got all but Green to commit a murder that would guarantee to never let his victims escape.