| “ | Oh, but Mr. Calavera, I'm going to need most of these to get myself out of this world. You see, I've been a VERY bad boy! | „ |
| ~ Hector LeMans |
Hector LeMans
is the main antagonist of the video game grim fandango
Biography
Little is known about Hector while he was alive, or exactly how he met his death, though he was presumably guilty of especially heinous crimes. He found himself in the Eighth Underworld, known as the Land of the Dead, where deceased souls usually undertake a four-year journey to the Ninth Underworld in order to achieve eternal rest. Those who had led worthwhile lives were eligible for packages that would make their journey easier, with the most worthy being granted tickets aboard the Number 9, a train that took souls to the Ninth Underworld in just four minutes. Those who had led more selfish lives were forced to make the journey on foot with no assistance, and those who were actively guilty of crimes were barred from access to the Ninth Underworld until they had somehow worked off their debt.
Realizing that he had no realistic prospect of ever being allowed into the Ninth Underworld, Hector took to a life of crime in the Land of the Dead. Initially his crimes were small in scope, but at some point he concocted a plan to hoard a huge amount of Number 9 tickets and buy his way into the Ninth Underworld that way. He installed two henchmen, Don Copal and Domino Hurley into the Department of the Dead, which was responsible for handing out travel packages, and had them steal Number 9 tickets from good souls, who were then downgraded to inferior packages from which they could be abducted and forced into work at a mining complex on the edge of the world. Hector would then supposedly sell these tickets to other souls who were unable to access the Ninth Underworld; however, what he actually sold them were forgeries that would cause them to instead be sent into a fiery abyss.
Hector's plan hit a major snag when Copal threatened to fire Manny Calavera, a DoD agent who had been working at the office since before Hector's takeover. While Copal presumably did this so as to allow another of Hector's underlings into the office, Calavera responded by stealing one of Hurley's clients, a charity volunteer named Mercedes Colomar. When Manny couldn't find her Number 9 ticket (his computer having been rigged to not offer any decent packages to anyone), she decided to make the journey on foot. Hector was furious, realizing that she could potentially expose his plan; consequently, he executed Copal by shooting him with a dart filled with Sproutella, a chemical which caused plants to grow in and consume the physical form of a dead soul, presumably consigning that soul to oblivion. He then sent Hurley to retrieve Colomar, and also Calavera upon discovering that he had escaped and also set off after her.
Despite Calavera and an underground resistance movement actively working against LeMans, his plan appeared to proceed unhindered, with not even Hurley's eventual demise two years later slowing things down. The year after that however, the disguised Calavera arrived at Hector's office, and impressed him by persuading two potential customers to buy Hector's tickets. Hector offered a job to Calavera, who then unmasked himself and demanded at gunpoint that Hector return the tickets. Hector escaped however, and while Calavera was able to briefly retrieve the tickets, Hector sent his agent Olivia Ofrenda (a friend of Calavera's, who was unaware that she was working for him) to bring Calavera to his greenhouse, which was surrounded by a meadow made up of all the enemies that Hector had sprouted over the years.
Hector shot Calavera with a dart of slow-acting Sproutella in order to give him an excruciating (second) death, but Calavera was able to neutralize the plant with some liquid nitrogen, while Ofrenda was dealt with in a self-sacrifice by Calavera's resistance ally, Salvadore Limones. Calavera then shot a dart of full-strength Sproutella into the water feed lines going into Hector's greenhouse, creating a huge cloud of Sproutella which reacted with Hector's body and created an enormous mass of flowers which filled the entire greenhouse, putting an end to Hector once and for all.
Notes
- Despite being the main villain and mentioned prominently throughout the storyline, Hector only interacts the player character, Manny Calavera fairly briefly in the game's latter stages, and prior to that is only seen in two short cutscenes.
- Whether or not Hector's plan to buy his way into the Ninth Underworld with his huge collection of tickets would actually have worked is never made clear. Since it's implied that even Hector's victims who had their tickets stolen from them would have been consigned to the same fiery abyss as those with fake Number 9 tickets had Calavera not retrieved them in time, however, it seems safe to assume that his plan would not have worked.
- Along with the game's other antagonists, Hector qualifies for the unusual distinction of being a "deceased villain" even before his final death at the end of the storyline, due to the game's setting being one where everyone is dead.