Griswold Goodsoup

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Griswold Goodsoup is a fictional character in the LucasArts adventure game The Curse of Monkey Island. He appears as a minor character on Blood Island and he is the last known member of the apparently once great Goodsoup Family. He is voiced by Kay E. Kuter, who also voiced the Dockmaster Velasco in LucasArts' Grim Fandango.

Griswold Goodsoup is a fairly elderly pirate who dresses in a large hat with a white feather; he has rather protruding lips and clothes of a bar man; he wears a sword and his eyes are not too good in terms of sight; he confuses himself both with a painting and a mirror.

[edit] History

Griswold's Aunt Minnie Goodsoup was a young debutante on the Island, but both his age and the age of his aunt remain unknown in the series. What is known is that Griswold was around when LeChuck engaged his aunt and they were set to be married; however on the night before the wedding LeChuck prised the diamond from the ring and sold it to smugglers on Skull Island. Minnie died a week later.

According to Griswold and his family's ancestral book, the Goodsoup Family used to own a chain of popular restaurants serving soup across the Caribbean. Blood Island, the Island in which Griswold is met by the game's protagonist pirate Guybrush Threepwood, was once held the finest "Goodsoup Plantation Resort and Casino". The business was so successful they apparently drove the famous Van Salad family out of the Caribbean.

The Goodsoup Empire collapsed and left the Goodsoup Hotel on Blood Island as their last known resort, until it too decayed when Griswold's greatest attraction failed. According to Griswold, he used to get guests out on the veranda to watch the volcanic eruption; its molten lava heating the barbeque of the hotel. It is later revealed that a tribe of cannibals attempted to appease the tastes of "Sherman the Volcano God". When they realised that it was lactose intolerant the eruptions stopped and so the hotel fell into ruin, leaving Griswold alone in the hotel to rot and get drunk. The island was deserted except for Griswold, the Cannibals, Mort the gravedigger and the tarot reader Madame Xima, when Guybrush Threepwood and his crew shipwreck on the island.

[edit] Game appearance

As Guybrush Threepwood encounters Griswold, he has a terrible hang-over which must be cured in order for him attend to his bartending duties. Griswold owns the Goodsoup Family Crypt where various relatives are buried, including his dead aunt. As the last of the Goodsoups, he commands the crypt, and as Threepwood seeks access to the wedding ring of Minnie, he claims to be a Goodsoup too having already been buried in the public crypt. As he is successfully convinced, Griswold to this day still believes Guybrush is his relative; yet Guybrush has never returned to Blood Island since the third game.

As Threepwood makes the volcano errupt again, the business is back on for Griswold and he is positive all the rooms will be filled again; though how he will inform potential guests is unknown. Yet again, this is never explored as the Monkey Island series has not revisited Blood Island since The Curse of Monkey Island.