The gang of Where in America's Past (1991)

Where in America’s Past Is Carmen Sandiego? (1991) keeps its crooks on cards. Each suspect gets an illustrated card with a name, an OCCUPATION line and a paragraph of DESCRIPTION, and the manual files them under Dossiers as “the sixteen V.I.L.E. henchmen that you’ll be tracking.” The box counts more strictly (“Fifteen clever new cohorts to track down”) because the sixteenth card belongs to Carmen herself. The write-ups are credited to Rick Goldsmith (“V.I.L.E. Descriptions”).

The fifteen

• Casey Rah Sirah: part-time disk jockey, “full-time motormouth” and Carmen’s press agent. Blue-eyed, from Mountainhome, Pennsylvania; keeps an armadillo named Tex.
• Claire Voyant: former tabloid psychic whose last correct prediction, in 1958, was that the new Pope would be Catholic. Red hair, emerald eyes, an opossum called Dishrag.
• Della Kitessen: grey-haired owner of Della’s Calf-A in Grubville, Missouri, a diner that now serves mainly as the gang’s Midwestern headquarters. Has 86 food-poisoning cases pending.
• Homer DeBrave: retired slow-pitch softball player, black hair, grey eyes. His card is a “Casey at the Bat” parody in which he swings for a lock and hits the fire alarm.
• Laverne Onions: Della’s blonde short-order cook, whose reputation keeps customers (and witnesses) away. Tries to copy Ansel Adams photographs.
• Leif Malone: blond, blue-eyed bouncer at the Calf-A with a rooftop aviary, a pair of bald eagles included.
• Lucinda Boltz: grey-haired ace mechanic who joined after $89.95 of work on Carmen’s 1939 Packard convertible. Owns Andrew Wyeth paintings.
• Marty Graw: green-eyed counselor at Camp Idono Ware Weeyar, wanted in three states for passing off crocodile pups as rare African guard dogs.
• “Moms” DeWerd: carrot-topped retired chorus-liner and former queenpin of the Sweden-based DeWerd “disorganized crime family.” Babe Ruth’s photo hangs in her rec room.
• Phil R. Yup: red-haired, tone-deaf one-man band from Walla Walla, Washington, whose racket drives witnesses off. Wrestles a crocodile named Noodles.
• Rhoda Lottamiles: blonde, green-eyed bike messenger from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who once left a job’s loot scattered along Interstate 35.
• Shlomo Replay: black-haired KBTZ-TV cameraman from Kentucky and honorary V.I.L.E. historian, once knocked silly by a young Cassius Clay.
• Skip Tumelu: ten-year department-store mannequin turned lookout, straw-haired and emerald-eyed, from Wahoo, Nebraska.
• Stanley Cupp: ex-player for Minnesota’s St. Cloud Saint Bernards, now the gang’s receptionist. Grey hair and eyes; breeds racing armadillos.
• Tippi Canoe: raven-haired, grey-eyed con artist and real estate agent who got a Rotterdam investor to put money down on the Brooklyn Bridge. Owns a coyote named Babe.

Reading the cards

The gags carry the evidence. A contemporary review of the MS-DOS release says ACME’s electronic mail supplies details “such as hair and eye color and favorite animal, artist, and athlete,” and the cards tuck exactly those into the jokes. The animals repeat: armadillos on four cards (Casey, Della, Lucinda, Stanley), opossums and crocodiles on two each, bald eagles on three. Muhammad Ali turns up in three files and Billie Jean King in two, so one clue rarely isolates anyone; build the warrant from several. For the naming habit, see the pun names of V.I.L.E.

The sixteenth card

Carmen’s card lists her as a “multiple agent and V.I.L.E. mastermind,” once a travel agent for Club Ned and a talent agent for the Flying Banana Brothers. Raven-haired and brown-eyed, she sends heist plans by semaphore and satellite uplink from a mountain retreat in Montana and sled-races a coyote team led by Snookers. The box back plays the ladder as a telegram: “Tenderfoot Chris” collars Lucinda Boltz over the Liberty Bell (Philadelphia, 1752), loses Marty Graw in 1927 for want of a warrant, and finally nabs Carmen trying to swipe the Pecos River.