Grim Fandango

Grim Fandango unfolds across four acts, each set on the Day of the Dead in four consecutive years. Manuel "Manny" Calavera works as a travel agent at the Department of Death in the city of El Marrow, grinding away to pay off a debt "to the powers that be." Frustrated at being handed clients doomed to the grueling four-year journey to the afterlife — and threatened with the sack by his boss, Don Copal — Manny swipes a promising client, Mercedes "Meche" Colomar, from his rival Domino Hurley. Despite Meche's pure heart, the Department's computers deny her a coveted ticket on the luxurious Number Nine express train, and Manny soon discovers that Domino and Don have been rigging the system, hoarding those tickets for the crime lord Hector LeMans, who resells them at obscene prices. Unable to take Hector on directly, Manny — with his hot-rodding demon driver Glottis — sets off after Meche through the Petrified Forest, falling in along the way with Salvador Limones and his underground Lost Souls Alliance, who know of Hector's schemes. Arriving first at the port city of Rubacava, Manny waits a year, building his own nightclub, before learning Meche has slipped away with Domino. Tracking them to a coral mine on the Edge of the World, he frees Meche and the enslaved souls whose tickets were stolen, sending Domino to his death in a rock crusher. A year's travel later, the group reaches the gateway to the Ninth Underworld, but the Gatekeeper turns them away for lacking their tickets, and Glottis falls gravely ill. After reviving Glottis with a makeshift rocket-cart, Manny returns to El Marrow — now renamed Nuevo Marrow under Hector's full control — and reunites with the LSA. He discovers Hector has not only hoarded the real Number Nine tickets but printed counterfeits, and after being betrayed and nearly "sprouted," Manny finally defeats Hector when Sal sacrifices himself. Recovering the genuine tickets — including the one Meche should have had all along — Manny returns them to their rightful owners and is granted his own for his good deeds, boarding the Number Nine alongside Meche at last.