Inspiration for Thimbleweed Park

I wanted to ask the developers if something other than Twin Peaks and X-Files served as inspiration for TWP. Did you consider your personal experiences, acquaintances and so on? Did you base some aspect of the characters on real people you know? Or was it purely your imagination after setting the mood of the game? Sorry for my poor english.

1 Like

You know this is just a theory. But at his Post Mortem about Maniac Mansion, Ron Gilbert said that the character of Razor was based on Gary Winnick´s then girlfriend. Whose name was Ray. And was a redhead…you might assume that both are based on the same person, but given their vastly differing chracteristics, this might be stretch.

Then again, I also read somewhere (might have been the imdb trivia section) that this girlfriend was in fact then unknown singer Tori Amos. Which…I don´t wanna claim that this was unlikely but it sounds a bit wild considering I´ve never heard that anywhere else.

1 Like

Simulacron-3 by any chance?

Oh wow. I´ve actually seen the german TV adaptation of that! It´s kind of a classic. And the words german, TV and classic rarly ever go together when it´s not about “Das Boot”.

Some players have linked Thimbleweed Park to the movie The Thirteenth Floor. I have not watched the movie (and the reviews are not very good).

(coincidentally, the Edmund hotel has 13 floors)

This reminds me of the german film “23” covering the life of a german hacker. He sees the 23 as a “magical number”. The director of the movie said in a documentary that while making the film, he saw the 23 everywhere around.

So if you want to make a correlation to something, you will see and find it everywhere - I’m sure, if you look for more movies or real events, that you will find more things with the number 13 that could be the pattern/prototype for the 13th floor in TWP.

Yes, that’s a common type of bias. If you want to see it, even unconsciously, your brain will try to find more correlations.

The 13th floor thing is very common because of the old believe that the 13 was a cursed number many real life buildings actually skip the 13 in the numbering of the floors (that´s in western countries in china they fear and avoid the number 4).

Funnily enough the kickstarter pitch that mentioned Franklin said he was “stuck on the 13th floor” of the hotel.

That´s also the reason “backwards masked” messages are gibberish until somebody tells you what they´re supposed to say (“here´s to my sweet satan” in Stairway To Heaven)

Could Funhouse actually be that movie, that Gary said inspired that line about kids going into a house, getting killed one by one and just never thinking of leaving?

1 Like

I enjoyed The Tunnel Under The World.