Carmen Sandiego (character) - Overview

Overview

In most Carmen Sandiego media, it is stated or implied that the title thief steals only for the challenge of it, although some of her V.I.L.E. minions seem to be more traditionally motivated. She often describes her schemes and the user/protagonists attempts to stop them as being a game, which they ironically are, regularly gloating that she is impossible to capture or that her plans are infallible and acting as though any efforts made against her are extremely trivial. Sometimes, she asserts that it is impossible for anyone to understand her or her motives and seems to revel at how difficult she can make it for anyone trying to figure her out.

In the original Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? game from 1985, it is stated that Carmen is a former spy for the Intelligence Service of Monaco and that she is "an agent, double agent, triple agent, and quadruple agent for so many countries that even she has forgotten which one she is working for," but this background seems to have since been abandoned. Carmen now has a different origin story which has been consistently maintained for over a decade. Typically, it is explained that she was an ace detective for the ACME Detective Agency who found catching criminals too easy and decided that outsmarting ACME itself would make for greater challenges.

In both the animated TV series Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? and in the computer game Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Treasures of Knowledge, it is heavily hinted that, despite her thieving ways, she may still have some goodness left in her. The character has, however, never been depicted turning back to the "good" side outright, although she has often been encouraged to do so. Nevertheless, Carmen tries to maintain a reputation as a "thief with a conscience" in the Earth series and ACME agents who used to work closely with her are often shown to have mixed feelings about imprisoning her.

In other media, however, the character seems more than willing to bring chaos and destruction upon the world. For example, many of the thefts committed in the Time game show, such as stealing the history of medicine for example, would quite clearly cause millions to die, although this is never specifically stated. In Word Detective and Math Detective, she appears to be particularly fiendish, plotting to steal the concept of natural language in the former and to make herself invincible in the latter. This inconsistency in her portrayal is never explained, but it seems reasonable to assume that not all Carmen media is set in the same universe.