ACME and V.I.L.E.

The ACME Detective Agency (ACME Crimenet) and V.I.L.E. are two fictional organizations central to the premise of the "Carmen Sandiego" series. Within the series, ACME is a vaguely defined worldwide organization that devotes most or all of its resources to thwarting V.I.L.E., a criminal organization of comparable size. Carmen Sandiego is the leader of V.I.L.E. and the archvillain of the franchise.

Overview

In most "Carmen Sandiego" media it is explained that Carmen was once a brilliant ACME agent who decided that being on the other side of the law would be more challenging. Therefore, she left ACME and turned to a life of crime to give herself greater intellectual challenges. To achieve her goals, she founded V.I.L.E., which is generally portrayed as a vast organization that seems to consist mainly of incompetent henchpeople.

Both organizations are variously portrayed possessing technology that makes them capable of teleportation, spaceflight, time travel and such. Therefore, the series often verges on spy-fi, especially in the games "Carmen Sandiego Word Detective" and "Carmen Sandiego Math Detective". However, the existence of ACME and V.I.L.E. seems to be common knowledge among the general public as news reports seen in the series are often written in a way which implies the reader is familiar with them.

ACME and especially V.I.L.E. seem to employ a large number of eccentric people whose names are puns ("Polly Tix", "Lou Pole", etc.) on their primary personality traits.

ACME Crimenet

The ACME Detective Agency or ACME Crimenet (changed to ACME Timenet in "Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?") is the organization that the user or protagonists always work for.

The exact nature of the organization is never explained, but it appears to be concerned mainly with tracking down and capturing international criminals. Principally, ACME trains and employs agents who act as detectives, spies and double agents against V.I.L.E.

Name

The name "ACME" is presumably an homage to the Acme Corporation of "Looney Tunes" fame. In earlier games, the name was often spelled with only the "A" capitalized ("Acme"), but it is now typically spelled in all caps ("ACME"). Note that ACME, unlike V.I.L.E., is not an acronym and therefore it should not be spelled with dots after each letter (i.e. "ACME" not "A.C.M.E.").

Early depictions

ACME as it currently exists in the series did not appear in the original "World" game from 1985, which instead had the user working for Interpol. However, the opening scene showed a stereotypical detective office with the words "ACME Detective Agency" written in the window. It was in the following game, 1986's "Where in the U.S.A. is Carmen Sandiego?", that first made references to the user working for the "Acme Agency".

Nature of the organization

Carmen is the founder of V.I.L.E. and she worked for ACME prior to that, which would indicate that ACME well predates V.I.L.E. although most of the time the former seems to primarily exist to thwart the latter. Note that the ACME logo seen on this page has "dedicated to the pursuit of Carmen Sandiego" written around it. However, ACME is occasionally shown to battle criminals unaffiliated with Carmen in the "Earth" animated series. In "Treasures of Knowledge", Jules Argent makes reference to some past cases that she and Carmen worked on together.

Although the structure of ACME Headquarters varies, it is always located in San Francisco, often being depicted as well within view of San Franciscan landmarks such as the Transamerica Pyramid and the Golden Gate Bridge. Additionally, ACME usually has numerous field offices around the globe. An ACME training academy of some kind is often stated or alluded to exist, presumably located at its San Francisco headquarters.

The Chief

The leader of ACME is called "The Chief", though the nature of the character varies considerably in different media. The character is never given a name beyond that title. In the original first few computer games "the Chief" was a mysterious male figure hidden in the shadows who had very little personality or role. No Chief character appears in "Carmen Sandiego's ThinkQuick Challenge", "Carmen Sandiego Word Detective" and "Carmen Sandiego Math Detective". The most notable "Chiefs" were the live-action Chief played by Lynne Thigpen and the Chief of "Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?" voiced by Rodger Bumpass.

The Chief featured in "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego: Treasures of Knowledge" and "" was voiced in both games by Marcie Henderson. Perhaps as a tribute, this Chief looks somewhat similar to Lynne Thigpen, although her voice and personality are unmistakably different. In fact, she has little personality beyond getting angry whenever Carmen breaks into ACME communication lines.

V.I.L.E.

The Villains' International League of Evil ("V.I.L.E.") is Carmen Sandiego's criminal organization whose agents either assist her in committing outrageous thefts or else commit thefts on her behalf. The organization is always referred to by its acronym, which is pronounced phonetically and is therefore often a source of puns. It is usually stated only in the game manual what the initials in "V.I.L.E." stand for, though their meaning has been consistently maintained since the first game in 1985.

Nature of the organization

Given that V.I.L.E. essentially exists to allow Carmen the opportunity to flaunt her abilities, one must wonder where she found such a huge supply of sycophantic accomplices. The game manuals for the third versions of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" and "Where in the U.S.A. is Carmen Sandiego?" specify that Carmen has a "soft spot" for people less capable than herself and that she therefore likes to surround herself with incompetent fools, presumably to reinforce her own sense of mental superiority. This would explain why most members of V.I.L.E. seem to be buffoonish men and women with one-dimensional personalities and materialistic motivations.

Apparently a very diverse organization, V.I.L.E. has been variously portrayed employing robots (RoboCrook of the "World" game show, the KnowBots of "Carmen Sandiego's ThinkQuick Challenge", the unnamed robots of ""), extraterrestrials ("Where in Space is Carmen Sandiego?", Kneemoi of the "World" game show,"Carmen Sandiego's ThinkQuick Challenge") and, in the person of Patty Larceny from the "World" game show, preteen schoolgirls. Carmine, Carmen's semi-anthropomorphic pet cat of "Carmen Sandiego: Junior Detective Edition" and the third versions of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" and "Where in the U.S.A. is Carmen Sandiego?", is commonly listed as a member of V.I.L.E.

In many of the computer games and in the "World" game show, Carmen's underlings are portrayed as colorful, eccentric characters in their own right who commit similarly outrageous thefts under the V.I.L.E. banner for their own personal reasons, which Carmen appears to allow. The most common motives among these characters seem to be personal profit, fame or that they simply desire the loot for themselves, often for a humorously petty reason. In the "Time" game show, however, Carmen is clearly shown sending her crooks into the past, deciding herself what they will steal. Her crooks in "Time" appear to enjoy creating chaos simply for the sake of it and seem to require no motivation beyond having the opportunity to do something evil.

In most media, Carmen seems to be the undisputed leader of V.I.L.E. and the driving force behind all its schemes to the extent that it appears to be presumed that her capture will cause the organization to cease to exist. In the "Earth" series, however, there is a degree of rivalry among some of the more prominent members of V.I.L.E. and there have been a couple instances where a V.I.L.E. operative tried or temporarily succeeded in usurping Carmen's position.

Logo or lack thereof

Unlike ACME, V.I.L.E. is not given a logo in any of the computer games. The closest the games have come to portraying a V.I.L.E. logo is in "Word Detective" and "Math Detective" where "V.I.L.E." is consistently written in italics with the "E" written as three lines on top of each other. V.I.L.E. does not seem to have a permanent headquarters either, although "Word Detective" and "Math Detective" show it to have various "hideouts" in exotic locations around the world. "Where in the U.S.A. is Carmen Sandiego?" and "Carmen Sandiego Math Detective" both portrayed a headquarters for V.I.L.E., but each was lost to ACME by the end of the respective program.