Poker Night at the Inventory/WMG

Characters for Supposed Sequel
If a sequel is made, I predict Guybrush Threepwood, Phoney Bone, Francis, and possibly Tycho's pal Gabe, though that last one seems a bit iffy to this troper.
 * Always bet on Duke, baby!
 * I doubt a sequel will be made, but if so I belive that Sam, Phoney Bone, Bubs/Homestar/TheCheat, or Gabe will be in.
 * I think it would be DLC. Next up would be Sam, Homestar, Spy, and Gabe.
 * Uh, Homestar isn't very smart; I can't picture him playing Poker. Maybe Bubs?
 * Yeah, but that's what makes it fun. Strong Bad even mentions Poker Night at Homestar's, which means he's probably familiar with the game. Also, imagine a conversation between Homestar and the Spy. Pure hilarity.
 * Well, you've got a point. As for Gabe, I'm hoping Telltale would at least be prudent enough not to have him show everyone his balls, as Tycho says he does. Why would he not? Well, he could have such a reason as, "Not outside MY home!" or "Tycho isn't here." Of course, this troper doesn't know much about Penny Arcade...
 * Gabe really doesn't know how to play poker. There was a comic where Tycho pretty much sabotaged his learning the game ("I have the hole card. That means I win everything")
 * Max doesn't know how to play, either, but that doesn't stop him. 'Course, maybe Gabe doesn't enjoy banter as much as Max. Like I said, his being in the game's sequel seems iffy.
 * Nick would be a fairly obvious choice, him being a card player and all. I'd like it if Engineer could play too, seems like a fun guy to hang around with. Plus, Heavy mentions it was Engineer who showed him the Inventory.
 * Ellis would be fun to have in the game, too. As for the Engineer... Well, really, almost ALL of the Team Fortress 2 classes are elegible, the possible exceptions being Pyro (who can't speak) and maybe Scout (who isn't the most patient character out there).
 * In fact, I can picture one of the Sniper's quotes for raising. "You call that a bet? (tosses more chips into the pot) THIS is a bet!"
 * Murray with the skeleton body he briefly had in Chapter 3 of Tales. Just imagine how his bluffs would sound.
 * Also, if girl characters are eligible, I wouldn't mind seeing Laverne...of course this is largely dependent on the franchise being revived.
 * My theories:
 * Doctor Emmet Brown: The Characters need to be fun with converse with, and have the license relatively easy to obtain. Telltale has the BTTF license, so it wouldn't be too hard. Playstyle is a mix of Strong Bad's bluffing and Tycho's Cautiousness. Unlock would be a Brain-Wave Analyzer hat and BTTF blueprints [Building Reskins, like the teleporter has a speedometer and starts working at 88, etc.] for the Engineer.
 * Heavy mentions listening to Huey Lewis. Coincidence?
 * RED Spy: We need another TF2 character, as the reason many bought the game in the first place is because of the Heavy and the Unlocks. The original game contained two outrageously crazy guys [Strong Bad, Max] and two others, crazy but quiet [Heavy, Tycho]. Spy fills the quiet quota, others at the table could accuse him of sapping their cards, and he would tell stories about Scout's Mom. Unlock would be a handcarved Butterfly Knife.
 * RED Scout. He and the Heavy have even more in common. Nameless, the Sandvich. Plus, he has the most catchphrases ("BONK!") and is a braggart.
 * The Engineer would be another likely candidate. He seems like he would be a mix of Tycho's straight-man role with Max's easygoing "I'm here to have fun!" persona- basically, the casual guy who enjoys playing and is good at it, but takes a loss well and enjoys the conversation. Also, he could show off some awesome card tricks with the Gunslinger.
 * Homestar: Makes high bets based on random things. Gives out a Homestarmy Set for the Soldier when defeated [Orange Bowl and Wooden Spoon Melee].
 * How about Dr. Kleiner? The unlockable item could be Lamaar, in which all TF2 classes would get a headcrab hat.
 * 1 problem with the unlock lamaar got lunched into outer space in hl2:ep2
 * If Telltale wants to add another web series, Perhaps Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation as the stick figure we usually see in the series. Alternatively, they could also draw characters from other indie games like Captain Smiley.
 * DoctorBreen, anyone?
 * Unfortunately, his voice actor is deceased.
 * I would like John Freeman, or the Doomguy. Or Both.
 * The problem is John Freeman doesn't really have a voice actor. All of his voice acting is done by the guy doing the dramatic reading, and I doubt that people would want The Other Darrin.
 * How about Raz? He can provide some pretty good banter.
 * He's also ten years old. Fictional or not, No one under 18 is allowed in a speakeasy.
 * Tell that to Strong Bad ("Aren't you, like, ten?")
 * Heavy mentions that he was introduced to the Inventory by a certain Engineering Friend.
 * How about "Ladies' Night"? G La DOS, Marzipan, Elaine Marley, and Zoey
 * What about the Scout's mother?
 * Pyro?
 * Telltale said that celebrities were a possibility in a sequel. This Troper hopes that Gorillaz counts! Maybe, say... Jim Carrey? Robin Williams?
 * Lady Gaga. Can't read her Poker Face.
 * If another Team Fortress 2 character is in the sequel, they'll probably be from the BLU team (can't let the REDs have all the fun). Also, Telltale has the license to Jurassic Park and that's just begging for a dinosaur playing poker.
 * Except that the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park aren't smart enough to play Poker. Not even the Velociraptors. Besides, how would they hold the cards? No opposable thumbs! Maybe Dr. Alan Grant, instead (if he appears in the game)?
 * So? The original game makes use of Animated Actors and Rule of Funny. Just say that the dino's not a monster, he only plays one in the movies.
 * Although from Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm might work better.
 * Here's my argument for the raptors.
 * That is a fine argument, good sir.
 * I would like to have Scott Pilgrim, The Kid, Setzer, and The Joker.
 * This troper agrees with you on The Joker being in the game, and for added funny, throw in Deadpool!
 * The Kid would probably use high-risk tactics, bet his cape and pistol for unlockable scout items and comment of all the things that try to kill him on a daily basis.
 * The Kid from Bastion? I don't know? Wouldn't Rucks be better?
 * According to Bryan Lee O'Malley's Twitter, Telltale actually approached him about making a Scott Pilgrim game. He rejected, but the possibility's still there.
 * The Assault from Monday Night Combat.
 * Almost any of the classes from Monday Night Combat, really...the exceptions being the Assassin and possibly the Sniper (whose voice would get annoying after a while).
 * Fuck that, it'd just be funny as hell to weird out the other players with the mime Assassin.
 * Bosco, The Master Chief, Tedd Verres and Phoenix Wright.
 * I'd only take Master Chief if he's voiced by Microsoft Sam.
 * If Telltale has a crossover with Nippon Ichi, which I personally think is merely a matter of inevitability, Etna will DEFINITELY be in the sequel. She'll probably be bettin' big all the time to intimidate the competition, and will try to use her sex appeal to distract the mostly male opponents. The hilarity comes from the latter UTTERLY failing, due to them being either Cloud Cuckoo Landers, Ambiguously Gay, or outright disgusted to the point of the strategy working in the entirely different direction.
 * Commander Shepard, preferably Femshep. She's clearly rich enough to play, and reasonably funny to boot. Unlocks could be an N7 helmet and a Cain for The Soldier.
 * Legion. Unlock would be a Mass Effect style sniper rifle, or a scope designed around a Geth head.
 * Silent Protagonists from first person shooters as playable characters. We'll only see their hands (if they check or when they bet) just like how we only see their hands in their respective games. There's far too many to list here, but among them would be the Chief, Ramirez, or Jack.
 * What about Gordon?
 * Gendo Ikari.
 * "Hm." *steeples fingers.* "All in."
 * drunk!Misato for the girls.
 * Assuming we're staying with the same licenses, or only within licenses Telltale has at the moment (being realistic here), why not Sam, Homestar, Gabe, and The Medic? Was I the only one expecting them to all at least make a cameo in the first game?
 * Seconded. I think it's no coincidence that the first game's characters are all part of duos. Plus, the sequel's about a murder, and lord knows at least Medic, Gabe, and Sam would have a ball with that.
 * After Penny Arcade's recent landblasting of TF2 for the whole Free-To-Play thing, maybe Gabe won't be in it after all...the hidden chat did suggest Murder At The Inventory, right? So let's replace Gabe with Nelson Tethers. And hey, it'd be an excuse to somehow win his Nice Hat.
 * The characters are supposed to be interesting, right? As far as I've seen, Sam's about as interesting a character as a tree stump.
 * Bender and Dr. Doofenshmirtz. Though due to liscensing and content, it'd probably be impossible
 * Wallace and or Gromit. Wallace being able to talk helps, but Gromit makes a good Straight Man to anybody.
 * Considering the Colbert Bump he gave to the game, would it be that much of a stretch to have Totalbiscuit in there?
 * I'm guessing Commander William T. Riker, John Freeman, Shinji Ikari, Gabriel Angelos, and Abel.
 * I've got a better idea. All of the above.
 * A Pony, whether it be Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, or Ditzy/Derpy.
 * Wheatley as one of the first unlockable opponents, and the easiest to beat, offering Space Core as the Buy-In. And the last and hardest to beat, boasting the ultimate poker face and very little banter,
 * Astrid offering up Blade of Woe (cosmetic Spy dagger replacement) as her buy-in.
 * Steve? offering up Diamond boots (Gunboats replacer) as buy-in.

The Heavy's clash in opinion regarding his job
It seems the Heavy both regrets and loves his job. However, his sadistic personality is simply a coping mechanism, with his talk of nightmares and suffering being hints to the others to avoid the mercenary business. The reason he tells the story about the sparrow when asked about fun tales? Why he treats the act of shoving a wrench down a man's throat and tearing off his fingers as a joke? He's trying to gently steer the others away from the path he himself has gone down.

The Player is Gordon Freeman
Haven't seen much of him and it makes sense considering the Player's speechlessness. Could joke about Gordon's pokerface.
 * THIS IS NOW CANON IN MY MIND!
 * Alternatively only male players are Gordan Freeman. Female players are Chell.
 * During the scene where  Chell
 * The above is now canon in this troper's mind as well.
 * And mine. Hell, I was about to post this when somebody beat me to it.
 * Fanon has spoken! This is as official as it gets! Now go and write fanfics!
 * The Player has always been You in this troper's mind. Nobody special, just the actual person playing.
 * If that's the case, then a Freemans Mind video for this game would be appropriate, not to mention HILARIOUS! Or a Chell's Mind. Hell, any of the Mind series characters would be good in that game!

Symbolic poker player archetypes!
Your opponents would all love to win, but they approach the game with vastly different attitudes. Let's compare!

Max: The cheery/chatty guy who's there more to chat than play. Often the guy who'll get a conversation started. He's also the kind of guy who doesn't mind losing. Heck, he'll sometimes say "That was fun!" without sarcasm when he busts out.

Strong Bad: That guy who thinks he can totally win the game every time, easy. He also happens to lose every time, easy (or at least, that's the case for this troper). Not as great a player as he wants you to believe.

Heavy: The big guy who specializes in intimidation tactics. For one thing, he's already the Big Guy. For another thing, he loves to goad you into a challenge ("Time to show your honor. Can you beat me?").

Tycho: The expert. Seems know exactly what he's doing all the time and is brimming with non-stop confidence. Not exactly a stop having fun guy, but its clear he's got a lot of experience and he's way more serious about winning the game than the other characters.

The boy who killed the sparrow grows up to be The Spy.
He's trained as an assasin that uses a knife and flees after killing his victim. The story would also explain why the Heavy hates Spies so much despite not being one of the most Spy vulnerable classes.
 * But wait, why would the French Spy be in Russia? And actually, if a Spy can get behind a Heavy, there's only one way that's turning out.
 * it was an assassination camp, and the Spy has a very mixed accent, it's possible he was in russia at some point for training.
 * Or perhaps it was indeed spy, but not actually as a student, but on his first mission. He was out to demoralize the recruits and sabotage their training. Because he's a jerk like that.
 * Slightly irrelevant, but Heavies are ridiculously weak to Spies. Good Spies, anyway. Lots of back = lots of room for backstabbing. Probably the most susceptible next to Snipers and maybe Engineers.

The Player is Red.
This troper had a little bit of Fridge Brilliance lying in bed last night. Consider the following :
 * The Player isn't known to have any prior experience playing poker but is an instant expert. Red didn't have any prior training experience, but quickly became the best throughout the land (like no one ever was).
 * Heroic Mime. Need I say more?
 * There are a couple references to Pokemon. Strong Bad calls Max one, and suggests that it'd be funny if a spiky-haired kid tried to shove him in a baseball. Hmmm... perhaps he's trying to fool the Player into catching, and therefore taking out, the competition?
 * One of Tycho's win quotes is "I'm not playing Pokemon cards here!" An obvious insult.
 * Upon beating Tycho, he'll reference Gabe "showing his balls," commending you on your restraint, and then he goes back and asks if the Player is going to do that now. He's suddenly worried that he's given a rather nasty idea to an immature, impressionable eleven-year-old.
 * Or maybe he was talking about Red's Pokeballs.
 * Where does all that money come from? Pokemon battling.
 * Also, if the person playing the game is female, the character could easily be Leaf.
 * This may also explain why Red was on top of Mt. Silver in the Johto games- he lost big in a game and fled to the mountains to avoid having to pay out.

The "Murder at the Inventory" will be a Point-And-Click game.
Or at least be similar.
 * Provided the sequel IS "Murder at the Inventory".
 * Whatever the sequel is (and Telltale have stated that they DO want to continue the series), we won't be seeing it for awhile. With several different licensed game properties on Telltale's plate, they'll be busy until at least the end of 2011. *sigh*

Sequels won't be card games
Look at the table you're playing on. It has a backgammon set on it, as well as hexagonal tiles. Future titles will involve a whole new cast of characters chasing off the poker set to play an entirely different game.

The Sequels will...
Allow you to pick and choose not just which players you get to play with, but also what game as well.

There will be strip poker

 * But Max is already naked!

The player is the Pyro, only unmasked

 * He/She followed the heavy and Engineer to the Inventory, probably change out to more casual ware and joined the game on invite. Then, when Pyro got all the buy-ins, he/she went back to the barracks and asked the engineer to help modify some of the by-ins so that they can be used as weapons.
 * YES. Somebody write this fanfic.
 * Where?

The game is indeed canon in the Team Fortress 2 universe.

 * Tycho joked about mail-ordering in Heavy's sister. In Meet The Director, we find out he actually has several sisters. In one quote Tycho asks Heavy if Medic is his friend, and he says yes, and he doesn't take kindly to Spies impersonating him. In Meet The Medic, Medic addresses Heavy as "my friend". Their mutual love of birds might have been what drew Heavy and Medic to become bros in the first place. They also both tell morbid stories they laugh heartily at, and wield the only canonically-first weapons in the game.
 * Furthermore, in Meet the Director, we discover that apparently Heavy was sent to a gulag in Siberia with his family as a child, and it's implied (though he declines to comment) that he participated in a mass escape/arson in which guards were tortured to death. This makes things like the Engineer story and the comments about being sent to his death/work camps/etc. Harsher in Hindsight.
 * I kill many soldiers, and I am asked to join RED Team. That confirms it for me. Only we've run into a snag here. Heavy's father was a counter-revolutionary, meaning he fought against the Communists, right? So why does he have a hat and minigun with a hammer and sickle on it? Maybe they realized his power, and forced him to work for them, or he'd end up like his father. Brrr. Either that, or it's a "love the country, hate the government" kind of thing.

Tycho is actually the BLU Spy.

 * The BLU Engineer killed the entire RED team, and after Heavy killed him, BLU Spy took on Tycho's identity to avenge Engie and murder RED Heavy. Also, how else could he have an invisibility watch?
 * Nice thought, but it's not an invisibility watch: It's a Pacman one.
 * Technically, it is an invisibility watch- just not when Tycho or Gabe have it (as far as we know). In Team Fortress 2, it functions as a reskinned version of Spy's default watch.

In the sequel (Murder at the Inventory), the murder victim (or the killer!) will be one of the original characters' partners.

 * Think about it! Each character in Poker Night (besides the Player, of course) is one-half of a partnership (and at least half of them are one-half of a Fan Preferred Couple). That can't be a coincidence, can it? Thus, the sequel will be a murder mystery starring Gabe, Sam, Homestar (or the Cheat), and Medic, either being killed or straight-up murdering someone.
 * Alternatively, the murder victim will be someone completely different (perhaps the Player from the first game). The first four are ready to solve the mystery when suddenly-- the killer's trapped them in the Inventory! They manage to get a phone call out before the killer cuts the lines, probably to Sam. A few calls later and it's Sam, Gabe, Homestar (or Cheat), and Medic, plus a new Player, to the rescue! Or at least the attempted rescue!
 * If you look very closely during the game's opening cutscene, you can see that Sam is actually at The Inventory. It makes sense, seeing as how he doesn't let Max drive the Desoto.