I noticed that there is a legend that "Four Is Death". According to TV Tropes, "In Chinese Language, Japanese Language, and Korean Language, the words for "Four" and "Death", despite being written differently, are pronounced similarly (somewhat like "sì" in Mandarin, "shi" in Japanese, "sa" in Korean, and "sei" in Cantonese). As a cultural trope, Asian works of media tend to treat the number the same way Western writers treat the number 13 (except 13 isn't half a letter away from "death"). As a similar point of reference, point building floors and apartments are (mis)numbered accordingly to avoid the number, and some Japanese people prefer to say "yon" (another word for four) instead of "shi"."
I also noticed that in
Tales of Monkey Island, four seems to be the very embodiment of death in Chapter 4, even though it may be a coincidence. As a result, I've added
Tales to the
Four Is Death trope, and "Four Is Death" to the
Tales of Monkey Island trope. Here's the info that I wrote in the Spoiler box shown here:
•Four Is Death: This may be a coincidence or unintentional, but Chapter 4 seems to be the very embodiment of death itself, especially when its eerie-sounding title, "The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood", foreshadows its premonition that Guybrush will die, with a bit of Fridge Brilliance. And it's a little eerie when the scene on Flotsam is night-themed, indicating that night is very deathly. And out of the five charges that Guybrush faces and manages to clear, only four are civil ones that carry the death penalty, as indicated in the court briefs.
◦Also in Chapter 4, death happens not just to Guybrush, but to four of the characters that he has met on or near Flotsam Island. In Chapter 1, he is first met by Davey Nipperkin before encountering the Pyrite Parrot of Petaluma and the Marquis De Singe, and at the end of the chapter, the fourth character he encounters in person (though unidentified until Chapter 2) is Morgan LeFlay, who is also the first supporting character to die in Chapter 4. He would either witness or hear of three more deaths (Nipperkin, the Pyrite Parrot, De Singe) before he himself would be slain at the end of said chapter. Oh, and the four wind idols that he has rearranged in Chapter 1 are very helpful once again in destroying De Singe in the Wind Control Device, powering up La Esponja Grande and curing the Pox of LeChuck in Chapter 4, while they also indicate that something bad (and fatal) may happen.
◦What sets up the death-themed Chapter 4 is this: out of the five characters in the body count in this chapter, only four of them are human (Morgan, Nipperkin, De Singe, Guybrush); and out of the same five characters, we only get to see four of them get killed on-screen (only Nipperkin's death is off-screen). And to add to the finishing touches, Guybrush himself is the fourth and last human character to die on-screen at the end of this chapter! So this trope itself wasn't kidding: Four IS death all around in Chapter 4!
A bit eerie, isn't it? I wondered if the folks at Telltale have borrowed some "four is death" idea from Eastern culture while working on ToMI, especially Chapter 4.
