Notes on how to incorporate Grim Fandango into the Disney universe

Disney owns Lucasarts; a hurricane nearly drowned humble Kill Screen; a robot may be president in a week. These are times of frightening and great change, but, dear reader, as I just remembered, the greatest changes present the greatest opportunities.

I would never do something as crass as to suggest that Disney make a sequel or a prequel or a companion to Grim Fandango. I won’t do it, ok? That game is a perfect gem of art design and writing and puzzle design and world building and basically ever other thing at which a game can be good. I have the main character tattooed on my arm ferchrissakes.

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I do, however, think that Tim Schaefer and co. created a cast of such abiding charm and distinction that Disney needs to incorporate them into its universe of characters and places. Some suggetions for Walt’s army:

Manny Calavera in The Little Mermaid.

TLM abounds with riches and very nearly makes the Disney Mount Rushmore alongside Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King. Unfortunately, it gave the world Prince Eric, the bloodless and thoroughly uninteresting love interest, whose deep blandness has always made Ariel’s desire to live above the sea seem to me unjustified. Let’s introduce the princess to Manny’s self-deprecating charm, impeccable wardrobe, and endless supply of one-liners. Ironical, no, that a skeleton could liven up the redhead’s love life?

Glottis in The Lion King.

Timon and Pumba AND Glottis.

Hector LeMans in Pinocchi.

This is aesthetic more than anything, but can’t you just see the obese, fancily-mustachioed, three-piece suited villain cackling behind the scenes alongside Stromboli as our boy puppet dances his way to dollars? I can, but also, I have a fevered imagination and not enough to do.

Meche in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

Yes, it’s the first, it’s the classic from which all the others spring. It was also made in the teeth of the Depression, as writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett were defining a great American genre, the noir, without which Grim Fandago would not exist, and the cynical smarts of which Snow White bears not a trace. It’s a fable for children! you cry. Meche is the sexiest, smartest skeleton in the world, I reply, and would make a hell of a sidekick for our occasionally less-than-savvy heroine.

Anything else? I’m open to suggestions.