Windows

Grim Fandango

Trivia

In the German gaming magazine PC Player (issue 01/2000) Grim Fandango was named as "Best Adventure in 1999".

The game contains a reference to Frank Herbert's sci-fi cult novel Dune. At the end of the 4th year, when Salvador bites down on a fake tooth, releasing a cloud of poison that kills both him and his victim, he alludes to an almost identical event in Dune.

The game was originally going to be named Deeds of the Dead but the management at LucasArts didn't want a reference to death in the title.

You soon end up working for an underground organisation called the L.S.A., or the Lost Souls Alliance. As stated in the manual Grim Fandango is steeped in references to Aztec and Mayan culture and art (as well as Mexican folklore and film noir of the 1930's, 40's and 50's). LSA (for short) is the psychoactive ingredient of 'Ololiuqui' - the Aztec name for the seeds of certain plants that have been used and held sacred by the Aztecs for many years. This may or may not be intentional but trivia nonetheless!

Grim Fandango established several precedents.

• It was the first 3d adventure game from LucasArts
• It was one of the first and only games to include pieces of music from live musicians.
• Latin actors were hired to perform the voice parts.
• It was one of the first games that didn't have a visible interface. All actions were performed by manipulating Manny.

Contributed by Santa (847) on Sep 06, 2005.

Most players don't know that there is actually a "Look" key in the game, 5 on the numpad. Pressing it can provide useful information about objects, or just a witty comment from Manny that you might not otherwise hear by using the context-sensitive "Enter" key.

Originally, Manny could find out the entire conspiracy in a conversation with Domino in Year Three. The audio files shipped with the game, but the dialogue tree was cut.

As of 2004, Grim Fandango is the only game that didn't make LucasArts a profit.

Like other LucasArt Games, Grim Fandango was developed with the LUA scripting language. LUA, like Forth, has the unique quality of merging scripted code in to the interpreter/compiler as language extensions.

Contributed by Santa (847) on Aug 01, 2004.

Including the references mentioned below, the game's characters have many similarities to actual Day of the Dead objects. There is, for example, Don Copal - Copal is a festive resin from tropical trees often burned in special bowls on graves during the Day of the Dead in Mexico.

In year 2, there is a part of the game where you see a Blimp/Zeppelin hovering in the air above the Cat Tracks... As you cross the bridge under it, a short melody plays which is part of the opening theme to Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe... and older World War 2 flightsim from Lucasarts (or Lucasfilm Games as it was known back then)

In the hallway of the DOD there is a picture of a boat. If you look at in Manny says "Not that I have a choice, but I wonder if I would be happier working on a ship. Then again I'm so competitive I wouldn't be able to rest until I was Captain." At the end of year two on the ship he is just the cleaner, and then a year later he is the captain.

As you progress through the game, more of the design over the save screen will show.

As in many others LucasArts games, you can find Max, from "Sam & Max". Go to the tattoo parlor (in Rubacava, you must walk all the way to the right). Take a look to the poster and you will find him in the tattoo designs.

The game's hero is Manny Calavera. Calaveras are actually those skeleton-dolls, which the majority of the characters in this game are.

One of the characters is called Olivia Ofrenda. "Ofrenda" is a Mexican celebration of the dead.

Contributed by Unicorn B. Lynx (63927) on Oct 01, 2001.

The main character in this game is a skeleton, take a look at the side of the box and you'll see a different LucasArts logo. The usual golden figure who raises his arms (towards the sun?) is replaced by a skeleton.

In the 200th anniversary issue of Computer Gaming World, the staff named it the seventh best game of all time.

Grim Fandango was voted #41 overall in PCGamer Magazine's Readers All-Time Top 50 Games Poll (April 2000 issue).

Contributed by PCGamer77 (3025) on Jan 22, 2001.

Get the patch if you've got a high-end machine. It will save you a lot of trouble in the second half of the game.

This game is a member of Computer Gaming World's Hall of Fame.

Hal Barwood, the game designer behind titles such as Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, had an idea of a Star Wars adventure game that "was going to involve a lot of very expensive pre-rendered 3D sets", but since Grim Fandango (also utilizing a lot of pre-rendered sets) was already in development at LucasArts, the president of the company felt uneasy about doing two games that way and the idea was buried.