Grim Fandango

Grim Fandango

Complete Solution:
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Robert Readman AKA Killjoy Submited the following info
Email (Robert_Readman@Hotmail.com)
 
Grim Fandango is a huge game and one which deserves more 
than a cursory walkthrough. Below are the solutions to 
every puzzle in the game. Some (particularly in Year Two) 
may be worked on in various orders and many require a 
couple of puzzles to be completed before you progress. 
Think long, hard and laterally before using our solution 
and whatever you do, explore the conversations that are 
on offer. There are some magical moments in there which 
don’t directly affect the plot but flesh out the story. 
Game on.
 
YEAR ONE - EL MARROW
You need to get Glottis to be your driver, so you can get 
to the mass poisoning in the Land of the Living. He will 
agree if you convince him that he is not too big, but that 
cars are just too small. The poor sap. But Glottis can’t 
fit into the car, so get a work order by fooling Eva, 
Copal’s secretary. 
Climb up the rope to Copal’s office, and change the 
intercom message to 'Just sign it yourself'. When you 
take the order to Eva, she will sign it and you are on 
your way. Once you get to the restaurant in the Land of 
the Living, you’re a bit late and there’s only a twitching 
cocoon in the corner. All you have to do is use the scythe 
to open it and out will pop a certain Bruno Martinez.
Once Martinez is dispatched, you’ll need to pinch a 
premium work order. To get into the tube switcher room 
on the ground floor, you’ll need Brennis, the repair man, 
to open the door. To do this, you’ll need to block the 
machinery with two sabotage messages from your own office: 
get two worms (uninflated balloons) from the clown, and 
fill one with the light packing material and the other 
with the dark packing material from the ground floor 
hosepipes hanging down. Send them both down the tube in 
Manny’s office and they will burst and clog the tubes in 
the switcher room. 
Now Brennis, keen fellow that he is, will come to fix the 
switcher; but he won’t let you in while he’s working and he 
will lock the door when he leaves. To get around this (and 
if you’re stuck here, don’t be too surprised) you have to 
turn the latch while Brennis is working inside the tube 
delivery room. When he leaves, the door will stay open. 
Now you need to stop a work order flying through the tube. 
For this you will need a card from the pack in Manny’s 
office, but you will need to punch it with Eva’s holepunch 
on her desk so it will let air through the tube. Voilà! One 
choice work order, and it’s off in the motor with the ever-ready 
Glottis. 
Oops. You need to get out of Glottis’ shed, but apologising to 
the guard won’t help a bit. If you declare your intentions of 
destroying the company, however, the guard will set you free 
because he is secretly Salvador Limones, the leader of the LSA. 
Who would have thought it? To get away from the LSA, you need 
to give them your teeth... but a cast of them will do, so use 
Domino’s mouthpiece from above the punch glove in his room with 
a squirt of Fil-A-Dent and stick it in your mouth. 
You’ll also need to get on the roof above the ledge to get the 
pigeon eggs. Use the green coral from Domino’s office with the 
rope as a kind of grappling hook, throw it onto the ladder and 
up you go. To scare away the pecking pigeons, you’ll need a 
balloon (inflated, this time) from the clown and a loaf from 
the stall next door. Bury the balloon in the hopper under a 
pile of breadcrumbs, and when they pop the balloon the pigeons 
will fly away. Take the eggs to Salvador and Eva, and you will 
be shown out of town. 
Glottis soon has an accident and requires you to retrieve his 
heart back >from the spider-web. Take as many bones as you can 
from the pile (for later) and put just one on the web. Hook 
the scythe onto the bone and stretch the web back like a 
catapult... when it snaps back, it will propel Glottis’ heart 
over to where he is sleeping. Just stick it back into his chest, 
and he will revive. 
Leave via the car into the room with the signpost - it’s a 
tricky one as you have to find the secret exit but all the 
trails lead back to the clearing. Take the signpost which 
Glottis ran over and plant it anywhere in the Navigation Room 
(the room with the trails leading from it). You will notice 
that, wherever the signpost is planted, it will always point 
to a spot in the centre of the room. When you’ve worked it out, 
plant it there and a door will open up. 
To get the pumps from the trees in the Tree Pump Room, you need 
to synchronise the pumping on each side by moving the weights on 
and off the pneumatic tubes. If you do this right and turn on 
the harmonic balancer, the tree shakes down and the pumps can 
be used to make the big shock-absorbers needed for the Bone Wagon. 
Of course, you can have some fun with Glottis here. This one 
requires patience.
Now, a problem with Flaming Beavers. For this trick you’ll 
need some more bones from the pile by the web and a fire 
extinguisher. Stand under the rocky outcrop by the river of 
tar, and lure the beavers, one by one, off the outcrop by 
throwing a bone onto the river. When the beavers leap, give 
them a burst with the fire extinguisher. The little darlings 
will then sink, cold and hard, to the bottom of the river.
Once you’re in Rubacava, you’ll bump into Celso at the Rubamat. 
From here, you now need a job, and luckily Celso’s will do. 
If you show him the log-book from the dockmaster Velasco, he’ll 
leave to try and find his sweetheart, leaving you his mop so 
you can take over his job. And on that menial note, Year One ends. 
 
YEAR TWO - RUBACAVA
Once you go out of the café, a cut-scene starts which ends with you 
talking to Velasco again. Exhaust all the available conversation 
strings or you will miss out later in the game. 
You need to get on board the ship, and the best way to do this is to 
ensure the sailor Naranja doesn’t. You need to find a Mickey Finn with 
which to spike his drink, but talk to Chowchilla Charlie first and take 
his ticket machine, then talk to him about getting him a fake union card. 
He will ask you to get the suitcase from the High Roller club - you do 
this much later. Go there anyway, and pinch a turkey baster from the 
kitchen. Go to the Blue Casket and suck up some of the dirty hookah-pipe 
water from the sink. 
Naranja is at the scrimshaw parlour getting some tattoos done. To distract 
Todo and Naranja, jam the door of the refrigerator (in the next room) open 
by opening the lettuce crisper. This energy drain will slow down Todo’s 
drill, so you can nip in and spike Naranja’s bottle with the wacky water. 
To fake his death, simply take off his dog tags and stick them on a corpse 
in the morgue. When Membrillo, the coroner, finds them, he will pronounce 
Naranja dead.
Only he won’t, because the dull doctor can’t find the tags. He needs a 
metal detector; luckily Carla at the Land of the Living Security Gate has 
one. To persuade her to give it to you, drink the gold-flake liqueur from 
the bar, go through Carla’s security gate and, when it goes off, she will 
take you into the back room for a thorough going-over. Keep asking her 
about the metal detector, and eventually she will hurl it out of the window 
in frustration. There are some wonderful moments here if you keep talking 
to her. 
Go outside, and you will find it in the giant cat litter box. Wave your 
scythe over the box to locate the detector by its beeping, and then you 
can give it to Membrillo. Once he finds the tags, he will call the Police 
Chief, who in turn will call Velasco. Velasco will now offer you Naranja’s 
job - providing you can get some union credentials.
You need to start some insurrection among the SeaBees. Take the letters 
from the desk in the café office to the Blue Casket. Show them to the 
beatnik chin-strokers, and if you ask them about their book - 'Labor Revolt 
Made Easy' - they will give it to you. Give the book to Terry down by the 
docks. Unfortunately for him (and you), just as he’s about to down tools he 
gets dragged away to jail. 
It all gets complicated now. Go to the High Roller and speak to Nick Virago; 
he will refuse to help you get Terry out of jail, so you need something to 
blackmail him with. Remember that photo Lola took of him and Olivia? For the 
time being, just take the case which he leaves behind on the table - it has 
a key in, but you can’t get it out. Take it to Carla, tell her it’s a bomb 
and she will blow it up. Bingo: one key. 
The key opens the lighthouse door; you’ll find Lola at the top, but she’s 
nearly dead. She’ll leave you a tile with ‘22 Lengua’ inscribed on it. 
Take it to Lupe, and she’ll give you Lola’s coat (the tile was a coat-check 
receipt, you muppet), which, if you search, contains a slip of paper reading 
‘Rusty Anchor’. 
Take it to Todo the tattooist, who recognises it as the name of his most 
famous design. In his binder, there is a photo along with the ‘Rusty Anchor’ 
design. It’s not the one you’re after, though: that one is at the photo 
booth. To get that one, you need to print a false ticket using the machine 
from Charlie, with the details of the race in the photo you already have. 
Confused? You will be. 
The race number is in the photo itself: six. The airship in the picture, 
Manny remembers, crashed in the second week of the racing season and, 
since all the spectators are wearing kitty hats, it must be Tuesday. 
Print off a ticket with this information, and give it to the ‘good’ Doug 
at the photo booth, who will give you in return the photo of Nick and 
Olivia kissing. Give the other photo back to Doug. Show the photo to Nick, 
and he will spring Terry from the jailhouse. Terry will get the SeaBees to 
down tools, and then you can grab them. 
Now you need to get down the service elevator in the High Roller. You’ll 
need the drinking prowess of Glottis to empty a cask, which you can get 
inside, and get sent down the elevator by Aitor. To get Glottis there, 
you need the VIP pass from Charlie. Then, while he is drinking in the 
lounge, wait in the kitchen until Raoul comes in to get a new cask. Shut 
him in the pantry by closing the doors and jamming them with your scythe. 
Glottis will get impatient, come into the kitchen and see away an entire 
cask. Good man. 
To get into the cask, you need the big electric can opener >from the kitty 
stables. Once you’re inside, Glottis will open the pantry and free Raoul. 
Aitor will then send the cask, with you inside, down to the cellar. To get 
to the level in between the kitchen and the cellar, drive the forklift 
into the elevator and drive forward when you see the secret level. 
The forks will catch and the elevator will stop. Then raise the forks to 
widen the gap, slide through and find Charlie’s suitcase, which he asked 
you for earlier. If you look inside, you’ll find tickets for the No 9 
train, but when you leave the club, Charlie will collar you, take the 
suitcase and give you the fake union card. Mental. Roll on Year Three.
 
YEAR THREE - THE CORAL MINES
To get the ship out of port, once you are in the engine room, you need to 
perform a series of actions. There is an invisible button in the far left 
of the room which will pull up the anchor on the ocean side. The red button 
on the right side will pull up the dock side anchor. With me so far? 
There are levers in the middle of the room which, when you turn to the 
right, will prompt a shot of the ship moving away from the dock. Put down 
the levers, and press the red button again to drop the dock side anchor. 
Grab the levers again and turn to the left, then press the hidden button to 
drop the ocean side anchor. Grab the levers again, and you will see that the 
ship is away from the dock, with the anchors hooked together. 
Put down the levers and hit the dock-side anchor button to pull it up, then 
use the scythe on the anchors to put them onto the porthole. Hit the ocean 
side anchor button to drag both anchors along the ship, ripping a gash. Grab 
the levers once more to put the engines in reverse, ripping the ship in half. 
It’s dark beneath the waves, so you need Chepito’s lantern. Talk to him, grab 
his lantern, and proceed towards the glowing Pearl. To distract the octopus, 
walk around the crater to where Chepito will get stuck in the barnacles. The 
octopus will grab him and go into the yellow submarine; you will follow and 
be taken for a magical mystery tour to an octopus’ garden, beneath the waves. 
Sort of. Walk into the building, and use the elevator air lock. Walk out, 
take a right, past the vault door, into the ashtray room and then into 
Domino’s room. 
When you wake up in the foreman’s office, go and talk to Meche in the ashtray 
room. You need a gun, so do the obvious thing: move Meche’s ashtray slightly, 
and she will flick ash onto her tights. When she dumps her unwanted nylons in 
the bin, pinch them and take them to Chepito. He will trade them for a gun, 
which you can then give to the bare-legged Meche. 
To get Meche out of the awkward situation she got herself into, you need a 
power chisel, and again, Chepito is your man. If you talk to the angelitos 
about helping them, and say you don’t have the tools, they will give you a 
tiny hammer. Chepito will accept this for the chisel, which you can use on 
the door of the vault. However, this only exposes a set of tumblers. 
To open the door, spin the wheel clockwise to line up the top tumbler’s spot 
with the lock; anticlockwise for the second, and so on. Use the scythe to lock 
the tumblers in place, and pull the handle to find... no Meche. Hmm. If you 
close the door, you’ll see an electrical terminal on the back. Touch this 
with the scythe, and a secret door opens. Meche is in this secret vault. 
To get out again, touch the sprinkler with your trusty scythe. Turn the valve 
on, then off and you will see water drain away. Take the axe to the back vault 
and drop it on the dark square by the valve. This will smash the floor tile 
and reveal the pipe through which the water was escaping. It is also your 
escape route. 
You’ll need a ship to get off the island. Take the crane to the other side of 
the island, go down the conveyor, then past the lever and the anchor to find 
Glottis working on the Lamancha. You need to get the Lamancha up to the beach, 
so take the crane back to the beach and use the power chisel to detach the 
crane from the chain. Take the crane back to the other side of the beach and 
let the chain down - the conveyor will move the chain to the anchor. 
Go back and flip the lever to make the chain pull away from the anchor and 
start to pile up on the conveyor. Flip the lever once again, and the coiled 
chain should hook onto the anchor. Go back to the crane and pull up the chain, 
anchor, ship and all. To get through the coral reef, use the crane to drop the 
chain onto the crushers which Glottis spotted. Pull it back out, and the 
crushers will be ripped out of the machinery. The trusty Glottis will do the 
rest. 
When it comes to the duel with Domino on the sub, Dom will block all your 
attacks. By now, you should know you have to be lateral about this - use the 
scythe on the octopus’ eye to make it swim away madly. Dom will push you down 
and shout a lot. Meanwhile, the Lamancha comes along and the crushers deal 
with Domino... A gruesome end to Year Three. 
 
YEAR FOUR - NUEVO MARROW
Much fresh weirdness brings Manny to Glottis’ side at the 
foot of the temple stairs. You need some rocket fuel, so go 
right to the bottom of the stairs to find... our old friend 
Bruno Martinez. Take the packing material he throws at you, 
which can be used as fuel when mixed with the demons’ 
magnesium fire extinguishers. 
To prove the fuel works, put the mug in the rack in the 
demons’ kitchen. Take a rag from the drawer, soak it in oil 
from the barrel outside, then stick it in the toaster. When 
it catches fire, the demons will use their fire extinguishers, 
which squirt onto the mug. The mug whizzes around violently, 
and the demons will quickly realise the fuel’s viability. 
Back in Rubacava, you need to defuse the domino bomb which is 
linked to the Bone Wagon. To do this you will need the powers 
of Glottis’ remarkable digestive system, but first go to the 
Scrimshaw shop and get the liquid nitrogen. Then go to the 
docks and idly mention to Velasco that you found the Lamancha, 
whereupon he will dash off and you can pocket his ship-in-a-
bottle. Then go to the Blue Casket kitchen and fill up the 
bottle with the dodgy cocktail in the barrel. While you are 
here, chat to Olivia and arrange to take her back to El Marrow. 
Return to the lock-up and give the bottle to Glottis. He’ll 
drink the lot, then run off to the Blue Casket and, frighteningly, 
drink the whole barrel. When he returns, casually mention 
something unpleasant and he will promptly evacuate his stomach 
all over the floor of the garage. Use the liquid nitrogen on 
the pavement pizza and it will freeze, allowing you to safely 
drive off in the Wagon. 
Great to be back in El Marrow, right? Only now it’s Nuevo Marrow, 
and things have changed somewhat. You need to get Bowlsley the 
florist on your side, and the first step is to use the note from 
Hector to scare him. Give the note to the carrier pigeon, and 
show it the photo of the dead agent from the trash can. It will 
then fly off to the florist’s. 
In order to follow Bowlsley’s trail of sproutella, you’ll need 
a strong stomach: take the severed arm from the LSA HQ and go 
down into the sewers. You can’t follow the trail just yet, 
though: find the sewer entrance to the backstage area of the 
theatre, and take the grinder. Go to the start of the sproutella 
trail, and pick up the remote control for the Bone Wagon from 
Glottis on the way. Grind some of the arm in the grinder, and it 
will sprout into a trail of baby tears. Follow the trail, and 
Glottis will follow in the ‘wheels’. 
To get around the alligator demon, descend the ladder until you 
have its attention. Then, using the remote control, lower the 
Bone Wagon onto it, trapping it. Go into the florist’s, and, 
after you’ve freed the bell on the door, re-enter. The ring of 
the bell will jolt Bowlsley’s frazzled brain into thinking he’s 
a florist again, and he will happily furnish you with sproutella 
and a gun. 
To get a disguise for Hector’s casino, return to the theatre 
and chat with the Thunderboys. In order to join their ranks, 
take the coffee up the scaffolding and pour it onto them. When 
you next ask them, they will agree, since one of their number 
is unable to continue. They will give you a make-over, 
Thunderboy style, and you are ready to go to the casino. 
In the casino, talk to Meche, and get Charlie’s suit. To do 
this, throw the sheet over him and get the one-armed agent to 
enter the one-armed bandit, and release the coins. Charlie 
thinks he’s won, and agrees to go to the party with Meche. 
He’ll change into the sheet/toga in the bathroom, and then 
you can put on his clothes and head for the elevator with the 
lovely Meche. 
To get upstairs, the elevator demon wants to hear the last 
keno number that came up on the board in the casino. To impress 
Hector, you just need to convince Celso and his wife to buy 
Number Nine tickets from him. Then you will have his attention, 
and he will offer you a job... and before you know it, you’re 
trying to blow him away. To dislodge the neon woman’s grip on 
the gargoyle, use the grinder to grind some bone into the crack 
in the gargoyle, and then add some sproutella from the florist’s 
can. Slide down the leg, jump to the next building and pick up 
the suitcase full of tickets. 
Once you’ve been shot by Hector, use the liquid nitrogen (from 
Rubacava, remember?) on the wound. Then open the suitcase and 
follow the floating ticket - it indicates where Sal’s body is 
buried. Dig him up with your scythe and you’ll find the key to 
the trunk of the car where you will find the gun. To kill Hector, 
shoot the water in the tank: this will rain down on Hector and 
kill him. 
And that is the end. Sit back and enjoy the last cut-scene of 
the Eighth Underworld.