Chariots of the Dogs

"Chariots of the Dogs" is the fourth episode of Sam & Max Season Two created by Telltale Games and published by GameTap. It was released on March 14, 2008.

Short plot synopsis
Bosco's vanished from the face of the Earth—literally! When Sam & Max manage to track him down, what they find is so mind boggling, you'll have to see it to believe it. Can the Freelance Police set things right, or will life as they know it fall victim to the capricious whims of T-H-E-M?

Plot
Bosco has vanished and Flint Paper, who has been tracking him for 40 years, needs Sam & Max to help him find him. They enter his shop to find it deserted and then the bathroom, where they find baking soda and vinegar, as well as several model volcanoes. Combining baking soda and vinegar, they produce an explosion which prompts a space ship to come over and beam them on board. There they find Bosco, as Boscow, a half man half cow. He explains that he entered an elevator which turns out to be a time machine and then found himself this way.

Sam & Max enter the elevator and find themselves in 1963's version of Bosco's shop, run by his mother. She, an avid feminist, explains that she will make her baby herself using saliva from herself and a random man from the White House with her baby-maker. The baby-maker has milk dripping in the male-sample unit, which explains why Bosco is a cow. When Sam & Max want to leave, she is turned on by Max's attitude (hating girls) which adds the problem that Bosco will never be born. In the White House they encounter a younger Agent Superball, looking no different from his future self. Thinking him the father, they use his sample but it does not work as expected.

They use a sample from President Kennedy and are able to recreate Bosco, who still is a paradox, not having been born. They go to Stinky's Diner in the 80s to manipulate their past selves' view about girls which makes Max a womanizer. Ms. Bosco does not love him anymore once he shows her his new attitude which allows Bosco to be born as intended. Back on the ship they go to look for T-H-E-M, who turn out to be a trio of birthday Mariachi singers who travel through space and time singing for birthdays and, as a part-time job, collecting and crushing souls. The surprise is too much for Bosco and he dies of a heart attack, his soul being slowly crushed into smithereens.

Sam & Max manage to lure all three Mariachi singers away from the ship and thus can save Bosco, but Max accidentally steps on the "suck"-button and Bosco's soul is sucked up into the Bermuda Triangle. After extending the bridge to the soul-crusher area, Bosco's body is placed there by accident, which prompts the ship to start a self destruct sequence. This forces Sam & Max to flee through the Bermuda Triangle, taking Bosco's body with them. The space ship comes to the beginning of time and crashes into the gravitational singularity, causing the Big Bang and creating the universe.

Cultural references

 * The title is a reference to Chariots of the Gods?. The title card also has the same text style as the book's cover. The concept was earlier spoofed in the Sam & Max comic "Fair Wind to Java".
 * The way Agent Superball uses his sunglasses to wipe the memory of Sam & Max whenever they mention "time travel" is a reference to the "Neuralizers" used in Men in Black.
 * The chair future Sam is sitting in looks like the chair of Doctor Who villain Davros and at one point in a dialogue refers at a time-traveling phone booth (which also may be a reference to Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure).
 * Future Max wears a visor like Geordi La Forge's from Star Trek: The Next Generation and there's also a stardate based calendar in the future office.
 * In the opening scene Flint Paper asks Max if he is a "bad enough president to rescue the dude" when questioned about Bosco. This is a reference to the arcade game Bad Dudes.
 * The "strange numbers" referred to on the time cards Sam picks up are actually dates, starting with year, then month, then day. Example: the Embarrassing Idol time card had "2006.1221" imprinted on it. This means that the date is December 21, 2006, exactly the same day in which Sam & Max: Situation Comedy first premiered on GameTap.
 * In the future office, if you click on the coat rack, Sam says "Where we're going, we don't need... coats.", parodying the 1985 movie Back to the Future where Doc Brown says "Roads? Where we're going we don't need... roads.".
 * In Stinky's diner, Sam is creating Bluster Blaster, a parody of Star Wars when Anakin creates C-3PO. Another reference occurs when Sam says "I was going to Penn Station to pick up some power converters" a parody of a A New Hope.