Headscratchers / Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time

• ...Why doesn't anyone in the present remember the Shroob invasion?
  • Most likely Multiverse theory, kinda like Future Trunks in Dragon Ball.
• Why would Toadiko tell Mario to gather the Cobalt Star shards? She would have been with Peach and Toadbert when the Elder Princess Shroob was sealed inside, and she doesn't appear to have the stress-induced amnesia Toadbert had. Wouldn't she be far more interested in keeping the shards as far away from each other as possible?
• Why do the babies have the "'Stache" stat? They don't have mustaches.

• Why does nobody seem to remember the Shroobs in the second game? Yeah, there was a lot of screwing around with the time stream, but that didn't cause the invasion. The people who weren't babies should have been at least mentioned something about the near-destruction of the Kingdom 20-30 years ago.
  • How exactly is near-destruction of the kingdom anything new? They don't remember it because its in no way unusual. They're used to it by now.
  • If you speak to Madame Broque with Mario and Luigi, she sometimes mentions the Shroob invasion. Plus, Mario and Luigi tell Starlow about it after the three Shroobs are defeated in Bowser's Castle. A Continuity Nod is even made to the fact that it was Luigi, with his baby tears of Shroob smelting, who really destroyed the Shroobs in the end. Otherwise, there's no real reason for anyone to mention the Shroobs: everyone's got enough on their plate worrying about Fawful.
    • And before Fawful, they never mentioned it because they were more worried about Bowser, the Shadow Queen/X-Nauts, Smithy, Kamek, Bleck...
  • I think you're misinterpreting the question: In Partners in Time, the Shroobs invade the past Mushroom Kingdom. During that game, the present-day characters treat this as a new development. Why? It's like if someone from the present-day U.S. went back to the 60's and brought back the exciting new information we were involved in the Vietnam War. The Shroob invasion happened independently of the time travel (Peach only arrived after they had already invaded), so the other Timey-Wimey Ball explanations don't really seem to apply.
    • Mario, Luigi, and Peach were babies during the invasion so they were too young to remember. E. Gadd is old enough to remember but he was wrapped up in his own research and likely missed the whole thing. If you visit a room off to the right of the library late in the game a Toad mentions finding a book about the invasion written by Kylie Koopa. So SOME people do remember the invasion.
    • Does it really matter how young they are? They are clearly old enough to handle weapons, to talk, and perform other basics actions that babies in general aren't old enough to do. Is it really so much of a stretch to say that they should remember going on a huge adventure filled with peril, danger, and many near fatal incidents that finally ended with them saving the entire world from an insane alien species. Even if they can't remember it exactly, they should atleast have some memory of it.
    • Who survived to remember it? Toad Town was completely taken out, save two very old women—assuming Toads have a terribly long lifespan to begin with. The Yoshis are distant and carefree, and didn't see the bulk of the invasion. Everyone else... not as many creatures seem to be sentient as in Paper Mario. Toadsworth has no excuse, though.
    • Actually, in Bowser's Inside Story, after you take out the Shroobs and Starlow pokes fun of Luigi, Mario mentions that Luigi saved the day in the end, so maybe they do remember the invasion.
    • That's not the point - the point is why does nobody who was from that time period remember the invasion? It's not about them remembering traveling through time with their younger selves, it's about them not remembering anything about traveling through time and teaming up with their older selves.
    • I figured that the time machine actually screwed up the events of the Shroob Invasion. Think Back to the Future. Originally, the Shroobs attacked the kingdom and they probably succeeded in capturing Baby Peach... who with her tears of doom probably wasted the Shroob Princesses. And thus Baby Peach saved the day. However later on Peach time travels back to a point in time where she then alters history and we get the events seen in the game.
    • Though personally I think there was a better story that could have been told. When I saw the drawing's big reveal I didn't interpret the second Princess Shroob as being a sister... but being Baby Princess Shroob. Following that logic I came to the conclusion that Princess Shroob was from the present and went back in time to help her people conquer the Mushroom Kingdom. I think that kind of twist might have been cooler and it would have explained why no one remembered it because the invasion was actively happening in the past and the Shroobs weren't successful enough to have altered history yet. (Sort of like how Marty's photo didn't change right away, but was slowly changed as the changes approached the point of no return.)
    • I also think that Planet Shroob is decaying in the "present" and that the Shroobs simply travelled back in time themselves in order to attack the Mushroom Kingdom when it was weak (the monarch being a baby, with no parents or people to protect the land in sight). This would also explain why Elder Princess Shroob has the ability open Time Holes during the final battle. What if we take this even further: If Elder Shroob was the only Shroob displaying time travelling abilities, there would be no way for the younger Princess Shroob to return back to the present on her own. What would be the only way to do so? Using a Time Hole. And as the Shroobs experienced with Junior Shrooboid, it's not safe to simply do so. So she needed a disguise in order to have four unassuming brothers escort her safely. (I went quite a bit overboard, but I think you get the point.)
  • What I want to know is, what happened to the Beanbean Kingdom when this was happening? Apparently nothing too serious, if it turned out okay without needing to be saved...
    • It might also be worth mentioning that the Mushroom Kingdom constantly suffers from one problem or another. Back story for Super Mario Bros. says most of the population into blocks. Bowser has been and will be a constant problem on many levels for the kingdom, not counting at least two alien invasions other than the Shroobs. But for Me, It Was Tuesday may apply here. In addition, the people in the past might not have been able to understand why the Shroobs disappeared without a trace thanks to the Baby Tears. Add all this together and it might just be a particularly odd footnote in the history of a rather odd kingdom in constant war with other odd kingdoms.
  • Considering that the Mushroom Kingdom has been at the center of endless catastrophic events since then, one alien invasion from 20 years ago is just another in the history books to its denizens. Kylie Koopa explicitly has no recollection of it when you meet her again in Dream Team.
• In the middle of Partners in Time, after Mario and Luigi rescued Peach (actually Princess Shroob in disguise), they all rejoice and such and even say they can relax and everything is back to normal even though the past kingdom is still infested with Shroobs. That would make it even worse, as the past would make the present also ruled by Shroobs. Is Princess Peach that much more important than an entire kingdom? It's like it's a GOOD thing that Bowser kidnapped the fake princess.
  • Mario and Luigi don't seem like the type that would drop everything and walk away after rescuing their princess. They were probably just going to take a well-deserved break before continuing to save the kingdom. Bowser's intervention just cut the break short.
  • No, I think Mario and Luigi FORGOT about it. Because Toadworth says, "Just relax, everything turned out just fine", even though Shroobs were still in the Kingdom.
  • Even with the confusing time travel mechanics, it was still the past. They probably figured that since there aren't any Shroobs now, something had to take care of them in the past.
  • You are worrying about Mario & Luigi taking their time in a game where they have the ability to travel through time?
  • Yes, but... Baby Mario, Baby Luigi, Baby Peach, and Young Toadsworth are STILL in the present which is not ok, and would mess up a paradox.
    • As I said earlier, they were probably just taking a much-needed break.
    • Well, it still bugs me a little bit. I mean, why would they take a break? They're Mario and Luigi! They're kickass! But I guess they do. What really bugs me is why Mario goes the entire way just to rescue a princess in the other games. They don't even marry, Princess Peach only gives him a smooch on the CHEEK, and in earlier games she didn't even do that. And you can see how much hell hes been through to her. He died like millions of times to get to her.
    • Um, because they're friends? If you were perfectly able to rescue them, would you just look the other way if your friend was kidnapped because all they'd reward you with is a high-five?
    • Actually, present Toadsworth is the one who suggests to them to take a break when they ask the two to teach them their latest move, but Young Toadsworth DOES point out that the Shroobs are still running amok, and there's no time for breaks. So, Headscratcher solved.
  • This question reminds me of one of the least popular aspects of the NES game The Magic of Scheherazade. At one point, a character asks the player if he is afraid of monsters. If you answer "Yes", the game takes it to mean that you're giving up and you get a Game Over.
• How the heck was the future not affected when the past was invaded by Shroobs?!
  • Because presumably, Mario and Luigi had already gone back and fixed it. This isn't Chrono Trigger, okay?
  • My theory is going to burn some brains, so sit down and relax: Theoretically, a possible future with a link to the past (no reference intended) is not affected by the past until all links are severed like at the end of the game. Also, the future/present may or may not snap into the future/present whereas the Shroobs had won, that is; if the Marios and Luigis had relaxed until after the holes had closed, the future would have perhaps snapped into the Shroob-conquered future. Whether anyone had Time Traveller's Immunity is another question.
    • Yeah, I'd say that this game works in a single time stream and that when the game began, all of the actions done in the past had already happened. In other words, the Mario Bros. were pretty much destined to defeat the Shroobs, acting out stuff exactly the way people who lived back then had remembered it.
  • Or there could be something completely different going on. It really depends on your idea of how time propagates changes in the timeline. Anyone who played Achron knows what I'm talking about and for those who don't, it's like this: Changes in the past don't propagate to the present instantly, but they take some time. And the farther back the change is, the longer it takes for that change to propagate to the present. That is basically the gist of it. Seeing as we're talking about chronal entities (so, beings that are affected by changes in the timeline) and seeing as the time of the Shroob invasion is 20-30 years in the past, it would probably take at least a few years for the existence of Shroobs on the planet to propagate to the present. However, this would mean that Shroobs can act in the past, meaning that they also have time-traveling abilities. But there's nothing that contradicts that.
  • First, isn't there an event where the Bros. do something in the past that changes E. Gadd's memories, inspiring him to make that large-scale water pump? Second, the Shroobs invaded prior to any time travel takes place, so technically it just seems to be a historical event that everyone forgot about for some reason. (Maybe full-scale invasions of the Mushroom Kingdom happen so often that no one really keeps track of them?)
• In the second game, our heroes get eaten by Yoob, a Shroobish Yoshi monster. Now you see, baby tears are highly corrosive to the Shroobs and all of their biological creations. The very first thing Baby Mario and Baby Luigi do after landing in Yoob's small intestine is cry. Shouldn't that kinda dissolve Yoob's flesh?
  • Perhaps the dissolving only works from the outside in?
  • Not enough tears.
  • Maybe Yoob is immune to the tears. The ending didn't show what (if anything) happened to him—see the next JBM.
  • The idea that Shroobs can be killed by tears was pure Fan Wank and Epileptic Trees to begin with. They never show any Shroobs being destroyed by tears, Nobody explicitly says they were (If you're going to bring up Starlow's "ferocious crying" quote, that was far too vague to be taken as concrete evidence) , and I highly doubt the Mario Bros would ever try to commit genocide. What likely happened was that the loss of the Shroob Mushrooms left the Shroobs weak and powerless enough for Bowser (or whoever happened to in charge of the Koopa Troop at the time) to lauch a counterattack.
• At the end of the second game, what happened to Yoob? Did he disintegrate, turn into a normal (possibly still giant) Yoshi, or was he unaffected? The third game's Fawful Guys and Dark Fawful Guys add even more confusion to this: one of their attacks has them get eaten and spit out as eggs by some offscreen, Yoob-like creature (and this can happen even after Bowser inhales them!).
• What was E. Gadd planning to do with Junior Shrooboid at the end of the game?
• Yoob has a factory inside it. How did this exist and function before the Make My Monster Grow sequence?
  • The Shroobs built a small version of the factory, made it resistant to whatever bodily fluids Yoob has, fed it to Yoob, let Yoob terrorise some Yoshis for absolutely no reason, use magic shroob lasers to make him bigger, fed the RC Shroobers to Yoob, and then let them star the factory process. Simple!
• In the second game, you can fight as both the adult Bros and the baby Bros at once. Shouldn't it therefore be impossible to lose when the baby Bros are in a fight?
  • I'm not sure what you're asking. It's perfectly possible to lose if you're hit enough times.
    • I believe he was pointing out a time paradox. If the young Bros. were killed in battle, then the adult Bros. shouldn't have been able to team up with them. The best answers I can come up with are that either the game is very lax with its time paradoxes or it's a very good reason for a Game Over.
    • The Time Paradox CAUSES the game over.
• Why don't Mario and Luigi gain a level every time their baby selves do? For that matter, how can they be weaker at the beginning than their baby selves by the end? ( Yeah, Gameplay and Story Segregation, but still. )
  • Perhaps since their childhood was mostly uneventful, they forgot their abilities and went back to level 1 after the game was over?
    • Uneventful!?
    • Baby Mario and Luigi seem to be older in Partners in Time than they were in the Yoshi's Island games (They were being delivered by the stork in Yoshi's Island, and they didn't appear much older in Yoshi's Island DS, wheras they appear to be young toddlers in Partners in Time'), so the Yoshi's Island games probably take place before Partners in Time''.
    • When you first meet Kamek in the past he mentions how he failed to kidnap them previously during Yoshi's Island
    • Exactly. I mean, for a start, Yoshi's Island's babies had no clothes, just diapers. In Partners in Time, they did have clothes on. They're older, probably toddlers, but Baby Mario and Baby Luigi 1) sounds better, 2) that name was already established and 3) they still act like babies, besides the whole swinging hammers thing.
• In Partners in Time, how can the babies have stache points?
  • Maybe it measures their mustache potential?
• How did Bowser not recognize himself as a child or at least mistake his past self for Bowser Jr?
  • Bowser's not very bright.
  • He could probably recognize his own son by simply looking at him. As for the other option, see above.
  • Bowser didn't even realise that he's in the past, so logically he wouldn't automatically assume that Baby Bowser is his past self.
• That female Thwomp accuses the Mario Quartet of extinguishing the volcano because they're plumbers. What does being plumbers have to do with stopping an volcano's eruption?
  • It is because it would be hard not to notice a flood of water large enough to stop a volcano eruption, and she doesn't know about the time holes, so she probably figured that the water had to come from a huge pipe and therefore the four of them were a likely suspect because plumbers work with pipes quite a bit not only in real life, but in universe.
• This might be a dumb question, but in Partners in Time, how come Mario and his brothers and himself didn't even attempt to fight Yoob when they first met, instead cowering? I mean, sure, he's kinda weird-looking, and sure he ate some Yoshis, but he was only a little bigger than Swiggler and equal in size to Petey Piranha, so size at that point wasn't the problem.
  • I think they were simply trying to avoid it for as long as possible, whilst trying to continue their adventure. As you can see when playing the game, the four were pulled in by Yoob's tongue, so they didn't actively try to destroy it.
• In Partners in Time, how come during the fight against Sunnycide you need 5 yoshis to drop the Chomp Rock. The first yoshi you free roll it right to the very edge and yet it can't push it the last little bit to knock Sunnycide over?
  • The edge had a magical barrier that prevented specifically Chomp Rocks that weren't being pushed by five or more Yoshis! Duh.
• What happened to Toadiko at the end of Partners in Time? She was the only major character not shown in the end of the game where the toads are revived, and she did not return in the sequel. Was her Vim completely drained?
  • She did turn back to normal, she just didn't return to the present, at least not on-screen.
• This probably was answered or no one really cares, but why was it that Baby Luigi could sense there was something wrong with the Cobalt Star "spirit" in Star Hill, but NOT Baby Mario? Could Baby Luigi only notice because he was more cowardly or something?
  • To put a more positive spin on it—Luigi's always been the Blue (well, Green) Oni to Mario's Red. Mario is more headstrong, confident, and tends to rush into things rather than question motives, so presumably his baby self had the same qualities. Luigi is definitely more cowardly, but he's also more sensitive, empathic, and cautious, and his baby-form shows the same traits. Presumably it's that natural caution/sensitivity that allows him to detect that something's off about the Cobalt Star.