Big Whoop

From MIwiki

This article deals with the treasure of Big Whoop, for the amusement park see The Carnival of the Damned

Big Whoop is the name for a number of items and locations in the Monkey Island series. It's exact meaning depends on the context used.

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge

In the second game Big Whoop is described to be a fabulous pirate treasure, located on the relatively unknown island of Dinky Island. Guybrush is on the search for it and after Largo LaGrande resurrects LeChuck he is encouraged by the Voodoo Lady to find Big Whoop before LeChuck finds him. To do this he has to collect the four map-pieces left back by Captain Marley and his crew.

Through a number of events the player gets to Dinky Island and discovers a chest by digging at the great X of Dinky Island. Hitting concrete Guybrush blows a hole with dynamite and finds a treasure chest which he believes is the treasure. However, falling down the chest breaks and merely reveals the mysterious E-ticket.

Due to the ambiguous nature of the ending it is never actually learned what Big Whoop is. However, original creator Ron Gilbert said that Big Whoop was actually unimportant in his idea for Monkey Island 3^[1]. However, he was involved only in the first two Monkey Island games and had no involvement in future games.

The Curse of Monkey Island

In the third game we learn that Big Whoop is the name of amusement park (The Carnival of the Damned). In Part 5 of the game LeChuck also goes into a lengthy explanation of the fact that the treasure of Big Whoop was actually a Gate to Hell which is what turned him into a ghost (in the first game LeChuck was said to have died in a shipwreck, but the story elaborates on him surviving).

Conflicting information

Big Whoop is a puzzling item within the Monkey Island series. It is quite possible that the Carnival was intended to signify Big Whoop as the ending of Monkey Island 2 seemed to indicate that the first two games were merely the imaginings of a small child (Guybrush). However, as this plot-revelation is retconned in later games it adds a more problematic aspect to the definition of what Big Whoop actually is.

The Voodoo Lady herself appears to scold Guybrush (very mildly) in the third game for going out to look for Big Whoop while in the second game she is the one who told Guybrush to seek it out. Additionally she says that Big Whoop is the source of much of LeChuck's power which doesn't explain wether she means in the sense that LeChuck actually draws power from the Big Whoop portal or whether she refers to the fact that the Big Whoop amusement park is a recruitment plan for the killing and resurrection of pirates as undead skeletons. It is never explained why she thought Guybrush's quest to survive LeChuck would be helped by a portal to Hell.

Also the geography of Dinky vs. Monkey Island becomes problematic when the explanation of the history between Captain Marley and LeChuck given in the third game which also shows a map where Dinky is shown to be located South-East from Monkey, but Monkey is shown to be South-East from the rest of the Tri-Island area.

The name

Big Whoop is a sarcastic term used to express dissappointment. In the third game Guybrush descibes Big Whoop saying: "That [he] was expecting so much more and felt so left down."