Ah, Pirates of the Caribbean—the swashbuckling blockbuster series that gave us Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow, an unreasonable amount of eyeliner, and a deeply philosophical understanding of why the rum is always gone.
And then there’s Monkey Island—the gloriously chaotic point-and-click adventure where you swordfight with insults, solve puzzles using rubber chickens, and occasionally get slapped by ghosts.
Two very different franchises, right?
But here’s what most people don’t realise: they were both inspired by the same Disneyland ride.
Yes. That boat ride with singing animatronic pirates drunkenly chanting “Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirate’s Life for Me” somehow gave birth to both a billion-dollar movie franchise and a cult-classic video game series full of undead pirates and coconut-powered logic.
So… How?!
Monkey Island’s creator, Ron Gilbert, openly cited the original Pirates of the Caribbean ride as one of his key inspirations. It had it all: ghost ships, cursed treasure, skeletons sipping booze, and that quirky mix of comedy and danger that would later define the game’s tone.
Years later, Disney greenlit a movie based on that same ride. Enter Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, where ghost pirates, voodoo mystics, undead monkeys, and rum-fueled absurdity reign supreme.
At this point, the only thing separating Jack Sparrow and Guybrush Threepwood is a rubber chicken and some pixel art.
Pirate Multiverse Confirmed?
We might just be living in the Pirate Multiverse. One where a single Disney ride created two wildly different but strangely related realities:
- One is a blockbuster film saga that ran so long they started throwing mermaids and tridents into the mix.
- The other is a pixel-perfect parody of everything piratey, where half your enemies are ghosts and the other half are confused shopkeepers.
Honestly, we wouldn’t be surprised if Jack Sparrow and Guybrush Threepwood are just different timeline variants of the same chaotic pirate soul.
Final Thought
Next time you hop on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, take a moment. Somewhere in those singing skeletons and barrels of questionable grog lies the origin of two of the most beloved pirate sagas of all time.
All from one ride. One boat. One very catchy theme song.
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