The International House of Mojo

Hidden within concept art and source codes, you can find proof of a Monkey Island 2 that was quite different from the final product. Here are a handful of more notable examples.

An Island By Another Name

As shown in concept art, Booty Island was at some point called “Crooked Island” and was supposed to be set at night. One nighttime scene—Stan’s Used Coffins—even made its way into the rolling demo.

Crooked Island was also supposed to connect to another small island: “The Mysterious Island of Cleptomaniac Parrots.” If I were a betting man, I would presume the seagull and the giant tree took its place in the final game.

Meanwhile, over at Phatt Island, there was a weird tunnel system that, by all accounts, connected the main island to Rum Roger’s cabin. A quick Photoshop job gives you an idea of what could have been.

It was, of course, replaced with a tunnel system reminiscent of that under Dinky Island, though interestingly, it looks like a bridge connected the two locations at some point. Possibly, the tunnel went through the island’s hillside, cheating saving the world from the monkey wrench puzzle.

And speaking of Rum Rogers, a small animation can be found in the game’s assets. As part of our absolutely hilarious “deleted” scene shenanigans, we had also put together a video of what it would more or less have looked like.

···

Those LeChuck and Largo Cutscenes

Four in-game cutscenes featuring LeChuck and Largo were originally supposed to be shown as close-ups but were cut because of space limitations.

Notably, one additional cutscene simply didn't appear in the game. In it, LeChuck tells Largo why he does not want Guybrush to find Big Whoop or, more accurately, find what’s underneath it:

In other words, the treasure of Big Whoop lives up to its name—it, itself, is not important. As Ron Gilbert mentioned in our 1999 IRC chat: “Like I said before, I didn't really have any plans for Big Whoop. I didn't think people would latch onto it, so it was never a part of my story.”

Here are the five cutscenes reconstructed by Mojo’s chief German correspondent, Marius Winter, from assets found in the game’s source code.

Interestingly, dialogue for the deleted scene was recorded for the Special Edition, even though it did not appear in the final game. Here’s an attempt to reconstruct the scene with said audio.

At least one more location was cut from “LeChuck’s Fortress”—a voodoo room which, if we were to speculate, might have belonged to LeChuck’s voodoo priest. A finished-looking piece of concept art exists, and an earlier pencil drawing was found in the source by Marius, who, alongside Mojo alumnus Jake Rodkin and our server admin Zaarin, built the scene from what they had.

Further Reading: “The Secrets of Monkey Island’s Source Code” from Video Game History Foundation.