Herman Toothrot

Herman Toothrot is a fictional character in the Monkey Island series of adventure games developed by LucasArts. Herman is based on the typical shipwrecked, big-bearded sailor who appears in many desert island adventures, other examples being Ben Gunn from the novel Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe, not to mention many a comic story which features similar marooned white men. He has appeared in some form in every game of the series, with an increasingly prominent role in the fourth game of the series, Escape from Monkey Island.
In Escape, Herman's backstory was entirely rewritten, causing severe continuity errors. He was revealed to have amnesia and in reality be Horatio Tuarqemada Marley, the governor of Melee Island, who had been assumed to be dead. This is inconsistent with his original backstory from the first Monkey Island game, and Escape does not explain the resulting plot holes.
Game appearances
Guybrush Threepwood meets Herman in the first game of the series, The Secret of Monkey Island. Herman is an old, ragged castaway who was shipwrecked on Monkey Island, where he has lived for over 20 years, losing a little bit of memory and sanity in the meantime. According to Herman, his ship sank long ago after finding the mysterious Monkey Island. Herman trained a group of monkeys to sail a ship, since he couldn't sail one all by himself and didn't want to spend weeks alone with a crew of monkeys; he sent this simian crew for help, but they never returned. He has since whiled away the years arguing with Monkey Island's resident tribe of cannibals, particularly over who borrowed what from whom, and surprisingly, build his own ship.
In the second game, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, Herman is now living on Dinky Island. After years of meditation, Herman has decided to share his views on philosophy. As Guybrush while on the island, you have the option to talk to him (however futile) and Herman asks Guybrush what the colour of a tree which falls down in a forest with no-one there to hear it, will be, where Guybrush can guess a huge variety of colours, none of which are ever the answer; after trying all the colors, however, Guybrush will guess "All colors", the correct answer; his response to Herman's next question, namely that he has learned from the experience that philosophy is a waste of his time, pleases Herman greatly, who claims that most students take years to learn what Guybrush has realized from a ten-minute guessing game. Unfortunately, the only student he can find is a parrot.
The enigmatic character had no "live" role in The Curse of Monkey Island, the third game. However, Herman was represented by "Dynamo-Monkilectric" figures in dioramas at LeChuck's infernal theme park, the Carnival of the Damned. The Carnival of the Damned parodied many aspects of the Disney parks, including "audio-animatronics", and the puppet of Herman Toothrot was a part of the exhibit alongside the puppet of Captain Marley.
Herman's biggest role in the series was in Escape from Monkey Island. Still suffering from severe amnesia, Herman gradually begins to remember his past (with help from Guybrush, heavy objects, and a good throwing arm); once he completely regains his memory, his story is quite different from that expected: he remembers that he is actually Horatio Torquemada Marley, the long-lost grandfather of Guybrush's wife Elaine Marley and he returns to Mêlée and reunites with his granddaughter.
===The "Who killed Captain Marley/Toothrot" problem===
Revealed by Herman Toothrot, after regaining his full memory during the events of Escape From Monkey Island, Ozzie Mandrill, a cheating scoundrel who features prominently in EMI, shoved him overboard and into a mysterious whirlpool that day. However, LeChuck had previously boasted in the Curse of Monkey Island to have sent Captain Marley into the whirlpool himself with no mention of Ozzie Mandrill's claimed intervention; this may be a continuity error, or LeChuck may be lying.
===The "Toothrot is Marley" problem===
*In The Secret of Monkey Island, Herman claimed that he had landed on Monkey Island shortly after discovering how to reach it with his ship, the Sea Monkey, which is later sold to Guybrush by Stan. Herman couldn't sail back alone after his crewmate's death, so he trained a bunch of monkeys to sail the ship back to get help. The attempt failed as the monkeys sold the ship after arriving to Melee Island. Several things, even around the island, seem to support this: Stan's story, the ship's log, a skeleton hanging by a jump rope (destined to be a swing) that Herman explains was the ship's captain, a rowboat, and several other items that seem to be parts of a ship that had once been there.
*In Escape from Monkey Island, however, Herman suddenly remembers that he washed up alone on Monkey Island after being shoved overboard during a race. Having thoroughly lost his memory, he invented the name Herman Toothrot after seeing the initial "H.T.". This fails to explain the ship's log that mentions the name Herman Toothrot, the hanged captain's skeleton or ship debris from the first game — unless this particular character has a split personality and is completely mad. It is worth noting however, that Herman never specifically states WHICH island shore he washed up on after losing his memory. It is entirely possible that he washed up upon the shores of Melee Island and took the name of Herman Toothrot. His frazzled appearance and long absence in Australia would describe why nobody on the island would recognize him. He then met his colleague, bought the Sea Monkey from Stan, and set out to find Monkey Island. This theory seems to support the stories of both SoMI and EfMI respectively.

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