The Curse of Monkey Island/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Big Lipped Alligator Moment: "A Pirate I was Meant to Be" appears out of nowhere and is forgotten in the next scene.
  • Contested Sequel: A variation, since nearly everyone agrees it's a good game; the question is more how good. Some consider it the pinnacle of the series for its gorgeous visuals, strong dialogue and voice acting, and well-balanced difficulty curve (even in the Mega-Monkey mode). However, others consider it a minor step-back from LeChuck's Revenge, for abandoning that game's more open-ended format in favor of a return to the first game's "two island" structure, as well as the much Lighter and Softer overall tone.
  • Disappointing Last Level: Arguably the last two chapters, which have very little to do with the rest of the game's plot, forsaking the epic quest to cure Elaine and the intriguing history of Blood Island to give us an uninteresting LeChuck showdown. You end up walking through a half-arsed parody of Disneyland, bringing a distinct shift from the piratey atmosphere from before, and the adventure and mystery of Plunder and Blood. What's more, they're notably rushed, with a significant amount of time taken up by a long and pointless exposition scene dedicated to tying up the plots of the previous games rather than that of Curse itself.
    • The LeChuck Exposition Break is notorious. Notably, it's much more sensible than the explanations/retcons given in Escape from Monkey Island.
      • It's not out of character though. He does the same in Monkey Island 2, if not at the same length.
    • More importantly, the puzzles of these two final sections were just rehashes of ones you did earlier in the game (hangover recipe and the exploding rum cask, respectively).
  • Ear Worm: The main theme is an in-universe example: if you ask Edward Van Helgen for a pirate story, he'll tell you about a pirate crew who went insane because they couldn't get the song out of their heads.
    • "A pirate I was meant to be..."
    • Let's see you fall off the cliff six times and not get that jingle stuck in your head...
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Murray is one of the most triumphant examples of this trope. Most of the time, he has in the game doesn't serve an purpose, and the player doesn't even need to talk to him, but fans found his Small Name, Big Ego so utterly hilarious that returned in the next two games.
    • In fact, he started as an Ascended Extra; the developers included him in the demo just to provide some humor while the players tried to solve a couple of the puzzles. He was so well-received they decided to include him in the rest of the game.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: Mary Kay Bergman playing a ghost. She committed suicide just two years later.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: When the game was released, fans of the first two games absolutely hated Guybrush's new lanky and tall appearance, as his original sprite art made him look short and stocky. It wasn't considered as good as the other two games, but since attained a classic status unlike the next sequel.
  • The Woobie: Wally is the personification of this trope. The developers actually took out a scene from the ending of the second game where he is stranded on a raft, his monocle falls in the water, and he then falls in trying to retrieve it because they felt bad for him.
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