I was just looking browsing som site on mojo, and found this one THIS HERE! (http://www.worldofmi.com/features/funny/mi3in/grimfandango1-1.jpg)...

Was Manny a pirate? Maybe it is the reason why he worked at the DoD?

quite frankly i'd say "no he wasn't"

a humerous cross gendre lucasarts games jape and a shamless commercial plug for the game GF. sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and a Calavera is just a skeleton.

That is funny. But that raises an interesting question. Why was Manny at the DoD? What did he do? They never really answer that question. Are there any clues in the game? He doesn't seem like a criminal type.....wellllll.......

If you've been playing the damn Lucasarts adventure games as long as I have, you'll remember in "Monkey Island 1", there was the Evil Guy's henchman from "Loom" in the Scumm Bar, wearing a pin saying "Ask me about Loom". Their shameless plugs go back a long way.

*warning geekism about to commence
in 5,4,3,2...*
'everything I learnt about life
I learnt through watching Star Trek.'
but I think that Grim Fandango
is a wonderful metaphor for life
(and considering they are dead)
that's saying a lot.

Manny Calavera
is basically a good soul.
he works at a dead end job,
which he no longer believes in,
and he is desperate to get away.
he has a boss who tries to make
his life (or rather death)
a living (dying) hell.
and an obnoxious co-worker
to contend with.
to top it all off
his attempts at fraternizing
with the office's receptionist
meet with little or no success.
and the woman of his dreams
returns his affections with
bottles of champaigne
(in his numbskull)
and a bed of roses
(hmmm for some reason I thought
they would be petunia's...oh well)
and his best friend in the underworld
is a large orange demon.
(port? sherry? or the S.S. Lola)
*I told you that was a bad name
to call a ship.*
anyhow despite all this;
demon spiders,
insane scrimshaw artists,
lupe coat check girls,
giant unclean kitty litter,
corrupt government officials,
snooty french waiters,
mean little men with bad tempers,
crafty colourful mimes,
a supply closet for an office,
and a fear of pidgeons;
Manuel tries to do the right thing.

and since we all play Grim Fandago
as Manny; I think you know
where I am going with this analogy.

No matter how commercial this little ploy was, it worked. My wife did ask about GF and the rest is history. Can't say the shameless plugs my LucasArts are all that bad anymore.

How about you? How did you find out about Grim Fandango (Sounds like a poll in there or something... hmm... NEXT UP!)

JB

Yep it's Manuel Calavera alright. He's been dug up and placed at the cafe with a button by LucasArts so CMI players buy the game and cut holes in their wallets.

Good for them!

It's a sort of an easter egg. Would I think. I've found it in www.eeggs.com) (http://www.eeggs.com) .:rolleyes:
Oh, by the way, I'm :newbie: here

Manny a pirate? (snort) Not to make you feel stupid, but that cat's altruism and "yo-ho-ho and a bottle o' jack" just don't go together. You've watched "Treasure Planet" one too many times.

-Hector

Manny said he didn't know why he was at the DoD. I thought he was a plant by the powers that be to end the corruption in the DoD.
Just an idea.
~~Sal

Hey I got a "404 Not Found" from the link. Somebody please satisfy my curiosity by telling me what there was on the site.

I got the same thing, actually. :(
~~Sal

Mojo be down (http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=101459)
(and with it, everything else. ever.)

It's an easter egg in "Curse of Monkey Island", a game that you should check out (It's much better than EMI, honest).

You mean the one where he was in the cafe, with a knife in his back? "Ask me about Grim Fandango" or something like that? Well maybe...

I don't think so...and if the link(broken?) is what i think it is...the cameo in Monkey Island 3 then that's just a silly subject...:D

Manny will never Know what he done wrong...neither we will...

Who knows maybe it was a plan of the supreme being so as to save the land of the dead...:)

The real question is, was Manny a radio DJ?

One of the radio announcers on Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City (Fernando Martinez)sounds a lot like Manny. I thought it was the same voice actor for a while.

Sadly its not. But it was fun driving around Liberty City thinking that I was listening to Manny on the radio.

I haven't played Vice City yet, but I'll try :)

NOTE: The actor who played the voice of Manny is an old noir-actor named Tony Plana. I've only seen him in one movie. But it was funny :)

i heard bout grim through the grapvine, and all the gaming mags over here gave it superb reviews. and the whole name recognition thing, it had the big TS on the cover.

Yeah...... Cleary to me,the skeleton plugging Grim Fandango™ in CMI was a generic skeleton. A life of piracy doesn't really work for manny, i'm with "Hector_Lemans" on that subject. But when Manny was talking to meche in his office, he asked her if she had ever stolen anything or killed anybody and thats why his computer wouldn't give her a #9 package. SO i at least assume that Manny did something that bad and thats why hes stuck in a dead end job at the DOD. In closing, he was PROBABLY a criminal.

:mm1 :manny:

Originally posted by Glottiscane
In closing, he was PROBABLY a criminal.

:mm1 :manny:

NAAAAAAAA.... don't think so...
he knew if he made those things he asked metche ...
but he didn't knew why he was in there ;), so he hadn't made any of them.... :D

Originally posted by Glottiscane
In closing, he was PROBABLY a criminal.


Dude, he doesn't know what he was, or what he did wrong. At least that's what he says in the game. Are you calling Manuel a liar?

I din't mean to say anything about manny, forgive me for hurting the feelings of a fictional character. but i don remember he doesn't know what he was, or what he did wrong. At least that's what he says in the game somehow i don understand that he was brainwashed at death, but i do remember meche remembered that she never killed anyone, or stole anything, and that a puppy followed her out of the pet store. So y would meche remember her life, but not manny? I got no idea. Nothing like brain washing was ever mentioned in the game.

Yes. That indicates that he doesn't think he actually did anything wrong.

It's film noir. We're not supposed to know what he did. :¬: It's the same thing as we don't get to know why Rick was thrown out of the USA in Casablanca.

Hmmm, I would agree with that, but its still fun to speculate. We also know that Sal used to have the same job as Manny, but he seems to be a very good person so what could he have done in his life to have him put in a DOD job? Well, at the end of the game you see that Sal had a #9 ticket, so he must have been cheated out of it by the corrupting force he sets out to undermine. Couldn't the same have happened to Manny, afterall he gets on the #9 at the end of the game and says he has his own ticket as a "retirement present". Was he cheated out of his ticket just like Sal?

hahahaha criminal said?? His error was having lunch at MI3! ;D ;)

I don't know exactly...but manny never sais that he had a ticket all along. It's just that after his great "job" at the DOD he earned a ticket for the number 9....

As for the "I am you. Or rather, I was you, years ago."
that doesn't mean that manny had a ticket that was stolen...
does that mean that he was part of DOD? or that as i remember i understood...that sal wanted to get out of the land of the dead...

"He is manny", as both wants to get out...but "he WAS like manny"(after all) as now he has a duty and liberate the land of the dead ;)

Originally posted by pleto4_ryan
I don't know exactly...but manny never sais that he had a ticket all along. It's just that after his great "job" at the DOD he earned a ticket for the number 9....

As for the "I am you. Or rather, I was you, years ago."
that doesn't mean that manny had a ticket that was stolen...
does that mean that he was part of DOD? or that as i remember i understood...that sal wanted to get out of the land of the dead...

"He is manny", as both wants to get out...but "he WAS like manny"(after all) as now he has a duty and liberate the land of the dead ;) It's never explicitely mentionned in the game that Manny had a ticket all along, but there are so many hints in the game pointing to that theory that we can simply assume it. After all, why WOULDN'T Hector steal Manny's ticket? Manny hasn't done anything bad back in the land of the living that he can remember... He isn't a shady character like Nick Virago, Maximino, Hector, or Domino.

One thing that stuck out in my mind throughout the whole game, is whenever Manny looks at the Bone Wagon, he says, "You know, if I had a car like this when I was alive, things would have been different."

Different how?

The Bone Wagon is a big fancy souped-up car. Who drives souped-up fancy cars? People who are either good mechanics and can make it themselves or are wealthy enough to afford something fancy. Perhaps Manny had it tough when he was alive and had to make ends meet any way that was necessary. Perhaps he had done something that was bad enough to get him into the DOD, but didn't seem like it at the time, which could provide a theory as to why he didn't really know why he was working there. If things had been different when he was alive, perhaps his life would have been better and he wouldn't be working at the DOD.

And also recall the character development that took place. In the beginning, Meche is the good client that he needs to get him out of there. So he starts out after her for his personal gain. But once he gets to Rubacava, he can't just sit around waiting for her, he has to do something - move on with his life/death, so to speak. (That cutscene at the end of Year 1 had a powerful effect on me.)

As time goes on, he makes some friends, and meets up with some interesting people. After he meets up with Meche and especially during Year 4, it's less about him getting to the Ninth Underworld by himself and more about his helping others get there as well by finding the missing Number Nine tickets and righting the wrong that is the crime and corruption in the Land of the Dead.
;)

The beauty about all this is that we'll never ever know why he was there in the first place or what his past was like. And that makes for some interesting discussions!

BTW, I just finished the game for the first time ever a couple days ago.

:manny: :newbie: :meche:

Manny didn't know why he was at the DoD. Is was important ,because he forgot about past ,so he had new target in live (death , doesn't matter ;) ). Maybe he was serial killer or something.

I'm torn really.

On one hand, Manny could have been conned out of his ticket like everybody else (including Salvador) and forced into the dead-end job at the DoD. This would explain why he has no idea what he did wrong in life - because it was stolen from him.

However, if this was true then there would have been a ticket for Manny in the suitcase at the end of the game. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that either Hector or Manny say that the case contains all of the stolen tickets from the good souls.

Even Salvador's ticket was in there, and he was forced into the DoD through having his ticket stolen way before Manny (we know this because Salvador must have worked at the DoD before Manny's time since Manny doesn't recognise him, but we know Manny has been there a long while due to the fact that he used to be "at the top").

So yeah, it could be either. He might be an innocent soul, or he could have done something not so bad in life which resulting him not getting a ticket and he doesn't know quite what that is.

Hnmmm ,but you forgot about one thing. In suitcase ,which contains stolen tickets there wasn't one for Manny. So his ticket wasn't stolen. At the end of game , he got one ticket as reward for his sacrifice , I think. But I don't know English very good , so I can mistake in that.

How did I forget that? I just made a point of it in my above post.

This would explain why he has no idea what he did wrong in life - because it was stolen from him. However, if this was true then there would have been a ticket for Manny in the suitcase at the end of the game.

Ups ,sorry. :). But we have right - Manny ticket wasn't stolen. He worked in DOD , because he was a bad men in life ,so job as travel agent was his punishment.

Greetings :)

Yes, the complication is that Manny says he does not know why he ended up in the DoD. That implies that he doesn't know what he did in life that was bad, but surely he would remember if he did something particularly bad.

It can't really be explained since there are two conflicting sides to the story. Meh.

I read in polish magazines about Grim Fandango story. They have written that only a very bad people ,who have "hard" sins ended up as worker of DOD. So I think that Manny was serial killer or terrorist. :) But that doesn't matter in Grim Fandango. That game shows Manny as a good dead ,who tries repair life evil.

heres something for ur braincell to think about...

Manny said that if he had that car his life would have been different. Lets assume he could not have afford it.

Manny did not get a ticket. Lets assume this should have happened.

Manny could have been a thief, to get money. He might of thought this was not a bad thing, BUT bad enough to get rid of his ticket.

Originally posted by theburglar
Manny could have been a thief, to get money. He might of thought this was not a bad thing, BUT bad enough to get rid of his ticket.
:nod: That's kind of what I had in mind in my post earlier.

This would explain why he has no idea what he did wrong in life - because it was stolen from him.

However, if this was true then there would have been a ticket for Manny in the suitcase at the end of the game.
:nod: again.

Also, at one point when he's talking to Meche about the tickets, he says something like, "There'll be no ticket for me." This implies that he knows that things were bad enough during his life to take away his ticket and if he's unable to work off his debt, he's not going anywhere. But then when he looks in the suitcase (during which time Salvador's ticket jumps out), he sighs and says, "just as I thought - no ticket for me." Or something to that effect. An ounce of hope that maybe there had been an error somewhere and he really did have a ticket all along. But alas, no.

do you think we are being too serious?I mean, llucas arts may have put him at the DOD to make a story

What I want to know is if all the #9 tickets were in the suitcase, and Manny didn't seem to have one there, then how the hell did he get one at the end?

He said that the department fixed him up with one. However, although we know that Manny has been a good soul throughout the game - how did they know that?

So that leads me to believe that they knew Manny was supposed to have one but it was someone stolen/sold before he got it. Either that or they can magically create tickets which work for whoever they wish (although I thought that they only were attracted to their owners).

Confuzzling.

He took it from the suit case. Plain and simple.

False tickets (ie: ones that don't belong to you) result in you not being allowed into the next underworld, the train would turned into a fiery demon and took them to hell - or something would have happened.

Plus Manny says that the deparment gave him one - why would he lie about that? We know him, he's generally not a liar in the game.

Originally posted by theburglar
do you think we are being too serious?
Probably! :p I've had debates and discussion on quality non-LucasArts games as well. Makes the game into more than it is. You can't just stop after the ending sequence plays!

Although the Department itself seemed less like a department and more like a casino at the end, I think Manny's ticket was the result of his helping Meche. She was that premium client that he needed to get out of there. So that's where his ticket from the department came from.

Good point! The whole reason he went after her was to get his ticket out of there, and he achieved that goal - and met his love.

Interesting, I never really thought about that. And yes, we are taking it too seriously. But hell, if we're still discussing and enjoying the game 5 years from release it must be getting obessive, right? :p

Who says all the tickets ever were in the suitcase anyway? I doubt a pair of reapers could handle all the deaths in the world. And yes, I'm being annoying.

Also, if you're sent to the fiery pits of hell for boarding with a purchased ticket, and most of the tickets were in fact stolen, then isn't there a good chance that some evil no-gooder boarded the train with Manuel and Mercedes? And what about the potentially honorable people that boarded with their own ticket alongside Nick, or perhaps those who had to purchase a ticket because they were cheated out of their own?

And as far as I can see it, Manny clearly got his ticket from the big giant talking statue head outside the train station.

I think those is are interesting ideas, but when we see Nick on the #9 train, it is year three, and by then I would think that Hector LeMans must have pretty much total control over the DoD (which he probably had for a while) and I doubt that anyone is given there ticket anymore, with the money Hector stands to make selling them and the amount he could amass by doing so. And yes I agree, the suitcase couldn't have held all the genuine tickets could it? I mean, Sal had noticed corruption in the DoD years before Manny even was around, so there must have been many more than just one suitcase's worth.

Well I just looked at the script and the exact quote is "The company gave me one on the other end; sort of a retirement present."

So I'd assume that he worked off his debt to society through the game and/or finding Meche, earning his ticket - whatever happened to his original ticket I doubt we'll ever know.

Obsessive? I just purchased the game a few weeks ago and finished it 5 days ago, so I'm new blood with new ideas here. I can't speak for the rest of you. ;)