Characters / Mario The Music Box Investigators

(Mario) The Music Box Main Character Index
Investigators | Residents

The playable characters of the series, each one being playable at different times. They each have a different reason for exploring the mansion.

Beware of unmarked spoilers!

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Playable Cast

General

• And I Must Scream: All 3 of the investigators find themselves trapped in the mansion and are looking for a way to escape.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The three of them are capable of dying in a plethora of horrible ways at the hands of the spirits, with some deaths including getting eaten alive, torn apart, drowning, viciously hung by the neck, and many more.
• The Determinator: A shared trait that all of them have is that they will stop at absolutely nothing to escape the mansion, regardless of how many spirits try to convince them that it's futile (Mario and Luigi) or how long it takes (Riba).
• Eaten Alive: A potential death that all 3 of them can actually experience in the original game (although Mario can also die this way in the Arc expansion)

Mario

^{Click here to see "Malice" (SPOILERS!)}

I will still fight. I have a will to live.

An inhabitant of the Mushroom Kingdom who came to investigate the weathered mansion, as well as Luigi's older twin brother (who envies him sometimes), Mario is the most popular figure in the Mushroom Kingdom. Concerned for Princess Peach's safety, he decides to venture out to the abandoned mansion alone; he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer though, forgetting to bring tools with him. He may appear fearless a lot of the time, but hiding underneath that exterior is someone who houses many different fears.

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• Adaptational Sexuality: In the canon Mario titles, Mario only had eyes for Princess Peach. Here, while he still has feelings for Peach, the "Continuance 3" ending in the Insane Route for ARC also has him pair up with Riba, with Word of Gay all but confirming that he is bisexual.
• Adaptational Wimp: Not that he's helpless, but Mario is noticeably weaker than his canon counterpart.
• All for Nothing: The 3rd Continuance ending of Arc basically makes the Insane Route this for Mario, as it's revealed that Alice passes the same illness she had onto Mario after leaving his body which means that Mario is just simply always destined to die.
• All-Loving Hero: Despite everything that goes on for him, Mario usually tries his absolute best to help others if he can. From Riba's manipulation of him, to the spirits' repeated attempts to kill him, to Alice constantly trying to steal his body, he reaffirms his status as this in "Better Off Lost". He sets Alice's soul free without a second thought when he sees how remorseful she truly is, deciding that keeping her in it would only cause her and the family more pain, smashing the music box so they can all finally pass on.
• Badass in Distress: Has his body taken from him by Alice in "Sealed", "Puppet", and "Better Off Lost", prompting Luigi to save him.
• Beat the Curse Out of Him: The first time this happens is when Alice first takes over his body and Riba attempts to choke her out of him. The second time, Mario gets completely taken over by Alice, and he becomes the Final Boss.
• Berserk Button: Downplayed and for laughs. As far as he cares, artificial plants can go fuck themselves to the point he openly considers breaking something at one point (Luigi doesn't share this berserk button and lampshades this).
  • On a more serious note, pretending to be Luigi, after Mario has seen and believed him to be dead, is a bad idea, as one poor shadow figure learned the hard way in the Insane Route. Unfortunately, when the real Luigi shows up in the Insane Route, Mario ends up killing him due to believing he's a fake.
• Break the Badass: Mario goes through a lot of pain, fear, and distress in this game.
• Broken Tears: He genuinely does cry from having witnessed a flashback of Anna killing Serina in cold blood, and in death scenes that involve him accidentally killing Luigi, Mario cries in despair and commits suicide right afterwards.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: In "Omitted Memory", after having Alice exorcised out of him via Luigi's holy water, he goes on to battle her. He succeeds in defeating her, but it's not without consequences; she was the host for her own curse, and with her defeat, the curse began to spread. Mario is consumed by it and opts to keep it within him for as long as he can until it takes him with it back to the mansion.
• Cain and Abel: In some Game Over scenarios, Mario and Luigi will end up as this with each other. Mario takes the role of Abel in most of those cases. One case has him either try to call out to Luigi not to get choked to death (to no success) or fatally stab him in self-defense. The other case has a possessed Luigi beat him to death with a stone.
• Call-Back: He can read someone's entry about how their wife wanted to bury their child in the front of the mansion, calling it crazy. He lampshades the absurdity of it too if he actually inspected said tombstone prior to entering the mansion.
• Chainsaw Good: The original demo of the -ARC- expansion gave Mario the option of choosing between a chainsaw and the cleaver, though in the full game, he can't take the cleaver in the Sane Route or the chainsaw in the Insane Route. Originally, there was a Cleaver-Sane Route that was cancelled, where Mario embraces Luigi when they reunite, but he doesn't realize that he still has the cleaver in his hand and inadvertently kills him, slipping into despair and questioning if this is real or not. Picking the chainsaw after giving in to Alice's madness will result in Mario viciously murdering Luigi having completely descended into insanity, Doing so after resisting Alice's temptation to kill Peach will result in a chase scene against Riba to escape the mansion with Luigi, though Mario is stabbed at the end. The revamped -ARC- Expansion's demo actually gives Mario the chance to use it proper to tear down boxes in his way and to temporarily stun Riba if he hits him, although it will slow him down if he has it equipped.
• The Chosen One: Alice theorizes that this is the reason Anna spared Mario's life when he entered the mansion, believing that he could set her and the other spirits free.
• Creepy Crossdresser: He wears Alice's dress…when she's possessing him.
• Curiosity Is a Crapshoot: Mario's curiosity can result in his death many times due to there being so many things in the house that want to kill him.
• Deadpan Snarker: He gets a few moments to himself, mostly whenever artificial plants are concerned.
  (Sees a sign reading "You will die soon.")
  Mario: What a nice thing to read.
• Deader than Dead: At one point in the Arc expansion, Marchionne can forcefully remove Mario and Alice's souls from his body, forcing Mario to find a way to fix this. If Mario takes too long to find something, or gets his health depleted by an attacking doll or the shadow hands, his soul will get completely destroyed.
• Demonic Possession: Momentarily falls victim to it early in the story and Alice threatens to do this to him when they first meet in a vision. She makes good on the threat, as him touching the music box ended up freeing her and giving her a body to inhabit; as a consequence, this happens many times in the game as she plans to leave the mansion to complete her ritual, and several Game Overs feature Alice successfully taking control of his body. She's forced out of Mario with holy water in "Omitted Memory" and "Sealed", but not without her curse taking hold of him afterward when he purifies her with it; in "Better Off Lost", however, she's forced out of him with no repercussions.
• Despair Event Horizon: He crosses this anytime Luigi dies. In a few instances, he end up committing suicide in response (like if he kills Luigi in self-defense after the latter lost his mind and attacked him in the Sane Route of Arc).
• Destroy the Evidence: As part of a promise he made to the pacified Alice's spirit, he destroys his journal to allow the secrets of the haunted mansion to remain a secret.
• Driven to Suicide: Whenever he sees Luigi die or accidentally kills him, Mario gets overcome by despair, and losing his brother tends to lead him to take his own life.
  • If Riba tells him about Luigi, Mario goes looking for him, but because of the traumas with the fake Marios, Luigi goes completely insane and tries to strangle him to death, not recognizing him as the real Mario, leaving the player with the choices of searching for a weapon or calling out to him. If Mario chooses to find a weapon, he picks up the knife he dropped and stabs Luigi in the chest to defend himself, resulting in Luigi letting go of him and dying shortly after. Mario then kills himself out of grief in the same way.
  • If the Bros. keep taking wrong turns in the aptly named "Forest of Suicide" (now named the "Forest of Despair"), then Luigi will end up doing this after getting lost from Mario. Mario follows suit not too long afterward, after seeing Luigi(s) in trees everywhere he looked after getting lost himself.
  • In Marchionne's house in the Sane Route, Luigi goes crazy and tries to kill Mario, with Marchionne holding him back to give him time to escape. When he reaches the door, Mario can choose to stay and fight, hitting Luigi on the head with a coat rack in an attempt to knock him unconscious, but he accidentally kills him because he hit too hard. As he realizes it, he then bursts into tears and commits suicide by stabbing himself through the chest with his knife, refusing to leave without him and wondering if they will get reincarnated.
  • The Drowned Ending in the Insane Route of ARC has Mario attempt to drown himself, having nothing to live for at that point after losing the ones he loves.
• Fan Disservice: Whenever Alice gains enough control of Mario to where Riba dresses her in a nice white dress, it just makes Mario himself look positively freaky—sure, it may be something Alice would wear and would look good in, but it does not look good on a possessed Mario. Later, in the remastered "Puppet" ending, the viewer is treated to two shots when Mario takes a shower once he and Luigi escape the Aduraice Estate: the first one is from the side, showing Mario's naked chest, including a nipple, while the second is from behind him, with a bit of a glimpse of his buttocks, and for the viewers of the mind that Mario's a handsome man—maybe even a sexy man, then it would have been a treat to see. However, the mood is once again spoiled with the knowledge that he is in the process of falling under Alice's complete control and is not himself because he lost half of his soul, resulting in him being almost reduced to an empty shell because he's unable to feel anything.
• Fighting from the Inside: He does everything he can to stop Alice from the inside, but it's very unsuccessful throughout. Thus, the task of freeing him falls onto Luigi.
• Final Boss: If it's an ending where he gets possessed; Luigi attempts to snap him out of it. His level of success depends on the ending route.
• Foreshadowing: After he takes the music box and just before he leaves the hallway, a single text appears saying:
  It's going to be mine. It's mine!
• Glamour Failure: Whenever Mario is possessed by Alice. It ranges from mild cases (such as physically having his eyes change to green) to more serious cases (such as displaying virus victim symptoms).
• Good Is Not Nice: Mario is still a nice guy through and through, but expect him to get snarky or even snappy at times.
• Good Is Not Soft: In this game, he's become a little more prone to outright fleeing from the spirits instead and is not as durable as he usually is (a natural consequence of being in a horror genre game), but don't think that he'll never attempt to kick someone's ass or kill them if worse comes to worst.
• Good Parents: In the remastered game's "Omitted Memory" route, Mario takes it upon himself to raise a de-aged Alice from her infancy, and he proves to be the single best influence Alice ever had with a loving parent like Mario and without a horrible other around like Evie.
• The Hero: As in his home series, Mario is the one leading the charge to fight the spirits and save his loved ones.
• Heroic BSoD: Can suffer one if he answers the phone "Princess Peach" is calling from. Alice capitalizes on this and takes over his body, resulting in a game over.
• I Hate Past Me: In ARC, he feels some sympathy for his past self, Marchionne; however, he also despises him for his role in the witch hunts as an executioner which got the past life of Luigi/Luciano executed as a witch, caused Aurora to kill herself out of grief, and stole the home of a child Alice. This is more pronounced on the Insane Route where Marchionne is directly antagonizing Mario.
• I'm Crying, but I Don't Know Why: After partially reading through an unfinished page (about Serina's death), Mario sheds tears. Riba tries to reassure him, but Mario denies he was doing it in the first place. It was likely Alice, who was inside of him, crying through him.
• Made of Iron: Even though he's not as strong as his canon counterpart, he still shows this, especially in some death scenes where it takes a while for him to die after fatal wounds. In the Sane Route of ARC in particular, Riba stabs through him from the back to his chest, but Mario manages to survive and treat his wounds with medicines after entering a house in Evangeline.
• Manly Facial Hair: He sports an iconic bushy mustache and is quite a fighter in his own game series, despite his many deaths here.
• Men Don't Cry: Mario cries after reading one of the journal entries, but then denies that he did it; however, it was likely Alice crying through him, which is why he doesn't realize he's doing it. However, he does shed some genuine tears throughout the game.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Gets himself, Luigi, and Riba into a lot of unnecessary trouble because of his own curiosity. In the remastered version of the original game, after the mine collapses, the exit is blocked and they barely manage to escape before getting crushed to death, he gets chastised by Luigi about the fact that he decided to investigate the mansion and keeps putting himself in unnecessary mortal danger.
• Reincarnation Romance: The ARC Expansion reveals that Mario and Princess Peach are reincarnations of the witch executioner Marchionne and his maid Aurora. They were in love in their past lives and continue to be in the present day.
• Ret-Gone: This is what happens in the Omitted Memory ending. After succumbing to Alice's curse, Mario has apparently wiped all memory of him from everybody who knows him, and erased any form of physical proof as well.
• Sanity Slippage: Happens to him a lot over the course of the original game, often punctuated with him screaming things like "Stop it", "I can't take it anymore" or "I want to go home" many times. He notes that it might be the case after the "Endless Hallway" experience. If he and Luigi take too many wrong turns in the Forest of Suicide and after Luigi commits suicide himself, Mario loses it, seeing Luigi in every tree. It's not long until he follows in his brother's footsteps. It can become way worse during the ARC Expansion where he does his absolute best to not succumb to Alice's madness, and the one thing that will make Mario positively break is when Alice kills "Peach" with his body.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Delivers this to Mercy who tried to kill him as a fake Princess Peach and was waxing on him his imminent fate, reminding her and the player that he'll never rest until he's made it out safe and sound. Also during the Insane Route of the Arc expansion, he will eventually give this to Marchionne, eventually being fed up with him.
• Tongue Trauma: One of the brutal deaths Mario suffers at the hands of Envy consists of his tongue getting cut off with scissors.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • It's probably not the wisest idea to visit a mansion, that's known for being a place where people mysteriously disappear, alone and with no tools.
  • Some of the death scenes has Mario play out this trope by having him do obviously awful ideas. For example, attempting to jump across the gap in the Garden, only to fall in, walking through water even though a sign says not to, sticking his body into a man-eating tree and straight up walking into lasers in a death scene in Arc just to name a few. However a really notable example is in the Insane Route in Arc, Mario will have the option to talk to Riba in his home (if he's still alive) and tell him that he knows who he is and what he did, prompting Riba to just kill him. Riba will even lampshade how dumb this was.
• Uncertain Doom: Mario's fate after the Monochrome fight is left very ambiguous.
• Virus-Victim Symptoms: Of the Glamour Failure variety. Later in the game, he and Luigi can inspect a mirror; while Luigi sees everything normal, Mario sees an evil reflection of himself complete with green eyes, black eyes of crazy, and a slasher smile. This shows how far Alice's control has spread to him compared to if he looked at the same mirror much earlier in the game (in which he saw himself perfectly fine). In the remastered version, the flipside occurs where it is Luigi who notices the change while Mario does not, and boy what a change it is compared to normal—his eyes are all screwed up and bloodshot, his face is melting, and his mouth looks like it was ripped all the way open.
• Vocal Dissonance: On the receiving end whenever Alice assumes ownership of his body.

Luigi

I'll do anything it takes to save my brother. Even… if it costs my own life.

The younger twin brother of Mario who always seems to be scared of everything. Hidden beneath that crippling fear, however, is courage that drives him to jump over even the most difficult of obstacles whenever Mario's life is on the line. Even if Mario constantly steals the limelight from him, his strong brotherly love for him unquestionably pushes that aside in the end.

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• Ax-Crazy: Luigi has a brief moment of this in the original game where he loses his mind from seeing too many false illusions of Mario dying and becomes very unstable, even attacking and/or killing the real Mario if he attempts to confront him while Laughing Mad. Thankfully, he eventually calms down and comes to his senses.
  • It also happens to him in the Sane Route of ARC. After abandoning Mario out of desperation, he later returns and beheads Marchionne, who sacrifices himself so that Mario can escape, and at this point, Luigi has become violent and unstable, trying to kill his brother too. While the original version didn't show how this happened, it's implied that it was Luciano's influence as a vengeful spirit to make him snap, as he wanted to get revenge on Marchionne for betraying him and sentencing to death, but because Mario looks so much like him, he tries to kill the latter. The Revamped shows more of Luciano's involvement, as he appears in front of Luigi and tells him what Marchionne did to him, and while Luigi tries to fight off his influence despite the shock, it already started to plant the seeds of doubt when he finds Mario in Evangeline: when they get separated in a house because the door shut and trapped Mario inside a room, Luigi thinks that he's making excuses, though he was telling the truth this time, and after they go back outside, he is pushed to the breaking point and abandons him, though he later feels guilty for judging him so harshly and goes back to look for him.
• Anger Born of Worry: In the remastered version of the original game, there's a time limit to escape the collapsing mine, and after Mario manages to escape, Luigi gets angry and scolds his brother about what they're going through, all because he wanted to investigate the mansion and doesn't stop putting himself in mortal danger. Justified because because Luigi had come in search of him and previously suffered too much trauma from the illusions of dead/fake Marios, and he does feel guilty about it when Mario gets apparently offended and runs off.
• Cain and Abel: In some Game Over scenarios, Mario and Luigi will end up as this with each other. While it varies, Luigi usually takes the role of Cain in those cases. One case has him either choking a pleading Mario to death after not recognizing him as the real one or getting fatally stabbed by him in self-defense, and another such case has him possessed and beating Mario to death with a stone.
• Demonic Possession: Falls victim to this upon trying to take sealing charm piece from the mutilated corpse of Leo, only for a brief moment. It happens to Luigi again when Mario similarly tries to take a key from the fireplace as Leo's mother Mercy grabbed him. He snaps out of it, though. Giving Rosa only Alfred's apology letter or his name will lead to this as well, culminating in Luigi murdering a helpless Mario.
• Despair Event Horizon: He crosses this anytime Mario dies. Only in one instance does he end up committing suicide (which is if he kills the real Mario believing him to be a fake earlier).
• The Determinator: Nothing will convince Luigi that Mario is too far gone from saving. Whether Mario's under demonic possession, corrupted, sealed inside an Artifact Of Doom, when Luigi's lost his own mind, or even if he's got to sacrifice his own life to ensure that, anything that tries to stop him be damned. Only a sufficient amount of convincing evidence that Mario's dead will ever dissuade him, and even in some cases he's certain that he's not.
• Driven to Suicide: Two instances; the first is if he kills Mario after mistakenly believing him to be a fake, and the other is if the brothers keep taking wrong turns in the aptly named Forest of Suicide, in which he'll be the first to go after getting lost and losing his mind to the darkness of the forest.
• Glamour Failure: When a spirit has taken control of him and is speaking through him, he has orange eyes. The orange eyes come back when Mario is getting dragged into a fireplace by another spirit. Those eyes have the same coloration as Mercy's, the same spirit who attempt to attack you as a Princess Peach impostor.
• Heroic BSoD: After a lot of traumas with the fake Marios, he's left a depressed man believing his brother died after rounds of fakes and illusions getting to him. Sometimes the Sanity Slippage will lead to him actually trying to commit suicide.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: When Mario is taken over by Alice, Luigi calls out to him while fending off her attack.
• Laughing Mad: During a Game Over sequence, he does this when he's trying to strangle what he believes to be a fake Mario.
• Made of Iron: Several times when something fatal takes Luigi's life, he takes quite a while until he actually dies, sometimes even managing to hold a conversation of decent length. In the ARC expansion, he also survives the likely-intended-to-be-fatal stab attack from Alice!Mario that would have done him in during the "Missing" Ending, takes a no holds barred beatdown from Mario in the insane route in his weakened state, and he still has enough in him to track Mario down just in time for one of the two bad endings that finally takes him out.
• More Expendable Than You: He believes this sentiment strongly in regard to his relationship with Mario.
• Sanity Slippage: The numerous fake Marios apparently began to take a toll on the poor man's sanity. This leads to him actually trying to kill what he thinks is another one and is instead the real Mario.
• Say My Name: A few times when he thinks Mario's dead for real, and if he kills him himself thinking him to be a fake.
• Shout-Out: Luigi's none too pleased to be looking for Mario in a haunted mansion a second time.^note This game was made before Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon and Luigi's Mansion 3 were made and/or released.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Always deflects the "you're doomed" types of words he gets from the spirits. He gives Alice one right before he takes her on in "Sealed", "Puppet", and "Better Off Lost".

Riba

^{Click here to see Demon!Riba (SPOILERS!)}[[quoteright:269:

Miss me?

A lone man who comes to the mansion to investigate it himself. He looks like the average investigation, but he's more than capable of holding his own in this cursed place. He aids Mario as the two attempt to find an escape route, but unknown to the plumber, there's much more to the mystery man than meets the eye.

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• Achilles' Heel: He has two major weaknesses:
  • Holy water is extremely painful for him, and should Mario offer some to him, it burns him on the inside and causes so much pain that he decides to stab himself repeatedly until he dies.
  • Emotions in general are a big one for him. Whenever he's his usual evil and twisted self he's shown to be an almost unstoppable threat, yet in Arc when he's at most compassionate in the Continuance 4 ending, he's too vulnerable to stop Marchionne. Likewise anytime he treats Mario as a companion, he's weak enough for spirits to easily dispose of.
• A Day in the Limelight: In the Insane Route of the ARC Expansion.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: Seems to have developed this from his time trapped in the mansion. He's at his nicest when he doesn't understand what is going on, and becomes more Ax-Crazy and violent as he remembers his past. However this is retconned in the 2021 remake.
• And This Is for...: In the ARC Expansion, he beats the hell out of Alice with a crowbar, as he loudly proclaims that he's doing it as payback for Elizabeth and Anna's deaths.
• The Atoner: In the "Continueance 3" and "Continueance 4" endings of the ARC Expansion, after learning to care for Mario, he finally swears off his old hedonistic ways to live a better life with his newfound companion.
• Ax-Crazy: What he really is, but he puts up a very good Mask of Sanity. Thanks to losing parts of his memories each time he dies, he starts to forget he is actually a malicious demon, but regaining them brings this trope back into effect. This can be dulled or outright dispelled if his affection is high with Mario in the ARC Expansion.
• Becoming the Mask: The ARC expansion reveals that Riba only married Alice in order to make a ritual that would make her into an entity and pass her down his immortality (as payback for Elizabeth's death). Even though he was only using her and never truly loved her, he genuinely loved their daughter, Serina.
• Berserk Button: Anything related to fish can get him quite angry. His name means "fish" in Slovenian, so mentioning a fish or something like that can cause him to take it in the wrong way.
• Best Served Cold: After Alice killed his wife, Riba spent years trying to woo her and later marries her so he could influence her more. When she gets a terminal illness, Riba convinces to kill her family and servants in a ritual to acquire immortality. After the deed is done, Riba tells the ritual was a lie and he made her kill her loved ones as payback for Alice killing his wife years ago. He then murders her.
• Big Bad: He is the main antagonist and Final Boss of the Sane route of ARC, in which he chases after Mario and Luigi to kill them.
• Big Bad Ensemble:
  • In the original game, after he recovers his memories, he becomes a threat to the brothers along with Alice. However, he is mainly a secondary threat who rarely appears.
  • In ARC, with Alice and Marchionne, though mainly in the Sane Route, in which he pursues Mario and Luigi to kill them.
• Blind Without 'Em: A Game Over sequence reveals that he can't see without his glasses. Concept art of him in his demon form reveals that he still has poor eyesight even in that form.
• Characterization Marches On: In the original game he was friendly and affable to Mario due to the curse erasing his memories of his past deeds, only returning to being a condescending jerk once he regains said memories. The ARC Expansion and the 2021 remake he does not bother with the facade (as he isn't amnesiac in this version) and makes clear he only tolerates Mario because it's his only chance to escape the house.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Riba only saved Mario so often in the story just because he needed him to find a way to break the curse so he could finally leave the mansion and not out of any sense of altruism. Also, in the "Continueance" endings of the ARC Expansion, once he's freed from the mansion he won't hesitate to kill Mario if his affection score is low.
• Cartwright Curse: His first wife Elizabeth was killed by a jealous Alice and he later married her. He ended up murdering her after finding out Alice killed Anna. All of his love interests are doomed to die (even though he never loved Alice and was actually using her). Also, in the "Continueance 3" ending, he loses Mario.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: As revealed in the ARC expansion, Riba constantly switches sides to whichever one will benefit him most. He's joined with the Evangelisti family, then with Alice, then Marchionne, then Alice again, then by himself, then Mario, then by himself again. Helena mocks Riba for this when Riba calls Mario out on selling him out to her for her.
• Deal with the Devil: Made two such deals, being the "devil" in the equation: with Alice and her father. With her father, the entire deal is sketchy at best and Riba talked about wanting his soul (and possibly the deed). With Alice herself, it was eternal life and love at her side if she committed mass murder for a ritual (even though it was a lie).
• Declaration of Protection: He makes it towards Mario in the "Continueance 3" ending of the ARC Expansion, after they destroy the curse and proceed to live a new life with Mario at his side.
• Demon of Human Origin: Tells a young Alice that he was once a human before becoming a demon, telling her that it wasn't fun being a human. In the revamped demo of the -ARC- Expansion, he himself no longer seems to remember, casting more ambiguity on who or what he was before becoming a demon.
• Depraved Bisexual: He has taken advantage of both Alice and Mario throughout the course of the game, and while he is good at hiding his insanity, it comes out at his absolute worst moments.
• Didn't Think This Through: Riba has a bad habit of not thinking some of his actions out down the line, effectively making him nothing but enemies in the long run, and only those ignorant (Anna, Elizabeth) or possibly trusting of him despite his past actions should they know of what he did (Mario) are on his side. His toying with Alice's heart causes her to murder his wife, and later deceiving her into killing the rest of her family out of revenge before killing her makes her his sworn enemy who curses him to be trapped in the mansion once she rises as a vengeful spirit. His manipulations of Marchionne, which led to the deaths of the Evangelistis and likely many others in Evangeline, caused them to rise as vengeful spirits as well who are more than happy to rip into him when Layla lures him back to Evangeline in the "Better Off Lost" ending. Also, even if Layla didn't plan to lure him back to Evangeline, how on Earth does expect to kill someone like her.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Out of everyone he has interacted with, he truly cared for his first wife Elizabeth and his two daughters Anna and Serina. It is unclear of how much of morality pets or morality chains they were for him after the death of Marchionne, but it was very clear that Riba spiraled even further into depravity after their demises.
• Eviler than Thou: Considers himself this to Alice. It wavers back and forth between the two of them depending on the different routes and endings.
• Evil Laugh: He lets out a low chuckle after he shreds the note Mario was reading about Anna, Alice, and himself. He lets out another, more outright evil one when threatening to kill Luigi.
• Foreshadowing: As Mario's trudging through the red-tinted forest area with voices whispering all in his head, visible blink-and-you'll-miss-it messages say something very damning about Riba. While it could have been more tricks at the hands of other spirits, in light of the conversation he (and Mario) can have with apparitions of Alice beforehand, it turns out that it isn't:
  Don't you get it? He was never your friend. You have to kill him to survive. He killed us. He will kill you.
• Final Boss: Of the Sane route in ARC. Depending on whether or not you have the dispel charm, he can have a possessed Luigi aiding him.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: In one instance after Mario is freed from possession, he bleeds from the mouth and hyperventilates—Riba promptly and literally slaps some sense into him.
• Guest-Star Party Member: He's not playable for long, unlike Mario and Luigi. Part of that may be due to some parts of the mansion not being completed when the game was released.
• Happily Married: The ARC Expansion reveals he was once married to a woman named Elizabeth and they had a daughter together, Anna. Unfortunately for him and Elizabeth, Alice, who was still obsessively infatuated with Riba (not realizing that Riba only saw her as a pawn) did not take it well and murdered Elizabeth. He then married Alice, but it was part of a revenge plan in order to get her to kill her own family.
• The Hedonist: He does whatever he wants just because.
• He Knows Too Much: He attempts to kill Luigi after saying this word for word, after he (possibly) killed Mario and Alice with him.
• Heel–Face Turn: In the ARC expansion, if his affection points are high, then it gets Double Subverted as he ends up regretting his actions in the past and is genuinely kind to Mario.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Not once, but three times:
  • Once an egoist demon who ruined people's lives just for his personal gain, he's settled down and seemingly reformed into a good person after marrying Elizabeth, but then Alice (who was infatuated with him) kills her in a fit of jealousy.
  • He marries Alice as part of his revenge plan, but comes to care for their daughter Serina and Anna (his daughter with Elizabeth). And then Anna murders Serina in a misguided attempt to make Alice pay attention to her, causing Alice to kill Anna in retaliation and causing Riba to kill Alice after everything is said and done.
  • In the "Continueance 3" ending, Mario and Riba run off to start over a new life after breaking the curse. They live peacefully in a farm for a few years until Mario falls ill with the same that plagued Alice in the past and dies (it's implied she passed Mario her illness out of spite). Riba mourns him and accepts that he loved Mario as much as he loved Elizabeth, Anna and Serina.
  • In the "Continueance 4" ending, Riba tries to convince Mario to start over a new life with him, but he's knocked out by Len. Len kills Mario before resetting the timeline and Marchionne in Mario's body murders Riba. It's implied Riba could have easily defended himself, but chose not to, because of his newfound fondness for Mario.
• Humanoid Abomination: His true form, as seen in the "Absent" ending of the ARC Expansion.
• I Lied: To Alice. He promises him immortality in exchange for the lives of her family and servants, but merely wants her to suffer by killing her loved ones just like she killed Elizabeth and Anna in the past.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: When Mario is taken over by Alice, Riba calls out to him while fleeing from him. He gets physical after ambushing Mario from the closet.
• Irony: The guy who manipulates others for his own benefit, only to then dispose of them once they're no longer useful can actually find himself on the receiving end of this in the Insane Route of Arc. Players eager to skip through the bosses can use him to instantly kill Aurora and then later hand him off to Helena to skip through her boss fight.
• Hidden Depths: He has been a sadistic demon in the past who ruined others' lives for his own gain, but he is also a lonely man who can't get over his first love's death and deeply resents his immortality.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In the secret scene of the "Better Off Lost" ending, Riba is finally free from the Aduraice residence and can do as he pleases once more, but he is met by Layla almost immediately afterward. He decides to celebrate his newfound freedom by going back to his wicked old habits by threatening to kill Layla for being a nuisance to him, chasing her into the abandoned town of Evangeline. Layla spells out to him in no uncertain terms that he is most definitely not going to be enjoying his newfound freedom anytime soon—he is quickly surrounded by many of the angry spirits who were killed because of his actions in Evangeline, not the least of which includes Marchionne (executed by him), Luciano (burned by Marchionne because he and Alice exposed the two as twins), and Aurora (committed suicide out of grief after Marchionne's execution). Likely for the rest of his immortal life, Riba will be continuously hounded by these vengeful spirits everywhere he goes.
• Louis Cypher: Although it's not immediately clear, Alice offhandedly states that he is the devil, telling Luigi how she made a deal with him to gain eternal life and love with him. She tells Riba himself to go back to Hell after disposing of him for getting in her way and being of no further use to her. This explains how he's still young-looking despite it having been decades since he was seen like that in a photo. The ARC expansion makes this even more likely, as though it is very clear that he is some sort of demon, exactly where on the demonic spectrum he is remains unclear. There's even a cult that worships him, though Helena states that Riba is simply a lowly demon who she intended to kill to gain a high status in her cult (whether she is aware of his resurrective immortality or not is up in the air), and he is said to be hampered by his poor eyesight even in demon form coupled with being very hard to control himself while in it.
• Only Sane Man: He's notably the only one of the three playable characters who doesn't lose his composure, generally knows what he's doing, and usually thinks out how to handle the situation first instead of winging it like the brothers. This trait is lost later in the story where he turns out to be the opposite.
• Parental Neglect: Downplayed. It's hinted in ARC and the remake that he was so focused on his revenge on Alice that he barely paid attention to Anna and Serina. However, he still loved them and was absolutely devastated when they died.
• Pet the Dog: Despite absolutely hating Alice and planning on getting his revenge against her, it's implied that Riba did genuinely love their daughter, Serina.
• Pyromaniac: Riba apparently has the ability to summon flames, which he demonstrates in his boss fight by setting the church on fire.
• Really 700 Years Old: He's an immortal demon who has been alive for at least two centuries and has his resurrective immortality.
• Reincarnation Romance: Or rather, Reincarnation Friendship, as Mario is the reincarnation of Marchionne, Riba's liege and ally several years ago. Subverted, as Riba ordered Marchionne's execution once he had outlived his usefulness and Riba only plans to use Mario in order to complete Alice's ritual. Then Double Subverted in the "Continueance 3" and "Continueance 4" endings of the ARC Expansion, where he becomes a true friend to Mario.
• Sadist: His sadism is on full display when the Mario Bros. encounter him in the ARC Expansion's Sane Route, relishing in the fear he strikes into the bros. and desiring nothing short of inflicting agonizing deaths on them while also recounting the misery he had inflicted on Marchionne in the latter's life. He also slips into this once again in the secret scene of "Better Off Lost" when he chases after Layla and goes in depth about what he'll do to her when he catches her, leading to his eventual downfall.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Is represented with the sin of Greed. Outside of his genuine relationship with Elizabeth, Anna and Serina, Riba used everyone around him to land himself into a nice little spot as the head cleric in the town of Evangeline in the past and to free himself of Alice's curse in the mansion in the present day. From the Evangelistis' position in the town (most prominently Marchionne), from Alice's affections for him, and Mario's trusting nature towards him in the present, Riba took all he could and only really gave each one betrayal in return. Such is highlighted in the Trials of Sins.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: He's sporting a nice brown suit and glasses. While this sets him apart from fellow playable Mario Bros., this makes him fit more with the other Original Generation cast.
• Skyward Scream: Has a heartbreaking one in the "Continueance 3" ending after Mario dies. What's depressing is that in this ending, Riba had left his old ways and became a kinder person thanks to Mario.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: He does this while hiding his eyes once he's gotten a helpless Mario in his grasp.
• Story-Breaker Power: Assuming Marchionne's words are to be believed and that Riba ever caring about anyone makes him weaker, Riba when he goes full on Ax-Crazy qualifies as he has more power than Marchionne. It certainly helps that Riba is one of the only bosses that Mario can't take down by simply fighting him, that in the Sane Route of Arc where he's the Big Bad and is craziest, Helena doesn't go after him unlike in the Insane Route, and that Alice for all her gloating never directly faces him whenever he's completely lost it^note During the entirety of the Sane Route, Alice never comes out, even when Riba is goading her to in a death scene and when he mocks for being a failure. The only time Alice does face him is when she suddenly betrays him and kills him when his back is turned.. In fact, in general, whenever Riba gets hurt or killed by the other spirits it's always when he has Mario as a companion.
• Suddenly Voiced: In ARC, he has a few voice clips, and in the "Continueance 3 and 4" endings, he is heard speaking when saying to Mario that he taught him to feel compassion.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • For a man as smart as he is, Riba has the dumbest way to get a Game Over by far: hiding with just a lampshade on his head in plain sight while Alice!Mario is pursuing him in the nursery. This gets him killed, of course, but the dialogue is what sells it. You can just imagine him slapping himself in exasperation over his own lack of foresight.
  Alice!Mario: You can't hide from — (Sees Riba)
  (Long, awkward silence.)
  Alice!Mario: Oh where, oh where could he be? I can't see him anywhere~.
  (Walks up to Riba holding the light switch.)
  Alice!Mario: Hmmm... Let me turn on the light to see better.
  Riba: Uhh...
  (More awkward silence.)
  Riba: ...Click.
  Alice!Mario: Nice try, Riba.
  • For a more serious example, his very nasty tendency to just use people and screw them over just because has come back to bite him on more than one occasion, the most frequent people doing the biting being Alice and Marchionne in many endings. In the secret ending of "Better Off Lost", this reaches his logical conclusion as his dumbass dickery is what ultimately lands him in scalding, hostile spirit-infested water when he returns to Evangeline.
  • His bright idea to kill Layla, assuming he's aware of what she is and that she's as powerful as Len easily makes him this trope.
  • Riba's decision to drink a mysterious glass of water in the Church without question was certainly not the smartest move, considering he's a demon vulnerable to a certain type of water associated with holiness and it was in a damn Church.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: In the ARC Expansion. He wasn't nice in the original game, but he's much crankier, especially towards Mario. This is especially prevalent in the Remastered game where he's much more dismissive of Mario, and in all of the death scenes where he can accidentally kill Mario, he either doesn't care or finds it amusing.
• Took a Level in Kindness: In the Insane Route of the ARC Expansion, he becomes more friendly to Mario if he gives him the apple, which he loves. This act of kindness from Mario will lead him to become a better person.
• Trademark Favourite Food: He loves apples, and after Mario gave him the green headband, a memento of Elizabeth, he can also give him one, resulting in Riba becoming a true friend to Mario, not killing him at the end like he does in Continueance 1 & 2".
• Walking Spoiler: He turns out to be a demon and one of the main antagonists, rather than the nice investigator he seemed to be.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In the original version of the game, it was unknown what happened to him in the "Better Off Lost" ending of The Music Box once Mario managed to break the curse of the Aduraice Mansion.
  • The Dog Bites Back: With the 2021 remake's secret bonus scene (earned by collecting all Journal entries) and the ARC Expansion's revelation in that he has resurrective immortality, Riba was shown finally being freed of the mansion…but he is quickly lured into Evangeline by Layla and runs into all of the vengeful ghosts who died there which includes Marchionne, Luciano, Misery, and many others who suffered because of his actions.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: His true motivation, as revealed in the ARC expansion.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: His favorite method of dealing with people he doesn't have any use for. This is how he almost kills Mario and Luigi in The Music Box and how he disposed of Alice and Marchionne in the ARC Expansion's flashbacks. In a few endings Alice herself offs him once she no longer needs him, and in "Better Off Lost" this is his fate once Mario and Luigi are both out of the mansion with Alice no longer troubling them—Layla lures him back to Evangeline where he is confronted by the hostile spirits of all those who suffered because of him.

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