Headscratchers / Super Paper Mario

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Peach's marriage

• So... Is Peach still married to Bowser? I don't recall them getting a divorce or annulment from the end of the game.
  • I doubt that the wedding would be considered legitimate, even by Mario-verse standards. Both the bride and groom were kidnapped, physical force was administered to get both parties to agree to the vows, and I sincerely doubt that Count Bleck is a minister.
  • But the wedding was legitimate enough to bring about the apocalypse. Doesn't that count for anything?
  • Only on Tv Tropes do you find this kind of sentence, ladies and gentlemen.
  • The prophecy called for the two of them to say vows, but that doesn't mean that the vows were legitimate.
  • At the very least, Peach obviously isn't willing to consider the wedding as being valid. I could see her just ignoring the fact that there ever was a wedding once she and the others return home, since it's not as if anyone else in the Mushroom Kingdom is going to find out. Sure, Bowser and the Koopa Troop might try using it as a claim to put him on the throne or something, but he's been trying to take over since the before the first Paper Mario game, so it's not as if anyone would take his claim of marriage seriously or that having it annulled would put a stop to his constant schemes and plans.
  • Not to mention Odyssey.
  • Also, if the pure hearts function by pure, true love then the opposite should be true for the chaos heart. The wedding and vows from Bowser and Peach were fake and chaotic, but that's excatly the reason why the chaos heart reacted and started the apocalypse.

Mario and Luigi in the Underwhere

• After replaying the game again, something struck me upon arriving in the Underwhere. It's obvious that this and the Overthere are the heaven and hell of the Mario-verse. So it makes sense that the Peach is found in the Overthere and that Bowser needs his own damn room that has to be locked in the Underwhere. But why are Mario and Luigi - who have done numerous heroic deeds - sent to the Underwhere?
  • There are a couple explanations:
    • One is that Peach and Bowser are actually the outliers in this situation — it's stated that everyone whose game ends starts out in the Underwhere, like Mario and Luigi did. Then they need to be judged by Queen Jaydes, who decides whether they're worthy of ascending to the Overthere or remaining down below. (Or worse, in Bowser's likely case.)
    • And the other is that neither Mario, Luigi, Peach, nor Bowser ever actually died. Jaydes tells them that they were somehow sent to the aftergame while they were still alive, which is why she allows them to leave and go back to Flipside. Dimentio made it seem as though he'd killed them because he needed to get them to someone who could fix the stoned Pure Heart but had to do it in a way that wouldn't arouse Count Bleck's suspicions. That's why each of the four heroes ends up exactly where their abilities were necessary to proceed.

Space

• Okay, so hurtling through space via cannon, then spending time walking on the moon is no problem, but if you're going to bob gently though space, you need a fishbowl at minimum. ...Huh?
  • Negative Continuity.
  • Batman Can Breathe in Space when he damn well needs to.
  • Maybe there's air on the moon. I know OUR moon doesn't have any real atmosphere but that doesn't mean this moon can't have enough air to support a portly plumber for an hour.
  • It might be that the Crystal Stars allowed Mario to breathe in space...
  • Personally, I always thought that Mario-verse physics worked sort of like gravity does in the Looney Tunes world (where it doesn't take effect until someone notices it). Remember, in the opening to Chapter 4, Mario/Peach/Bowser don't react at all until Tippi points out that they're in space, at which point they go "!" and start flailing their arms around. It's very possible that Mario/Peach/Bowser/Luigi don't actually need to breathe, but think they do, and will panic if they realize they aren't. Remember, none of them have any trouble breathing underwater in this game, either, and if the Galaxy games are anything to go by, space wouldn't give them difficulties either. I always figured that the fishbowl resolved their problem largely because they were convinced it would, and since they didn't have any real problem in the first place, it worked just fine.
  • Just a minor note, but in the Galaxy games, Mario/Luigi has a magical star child hiding beneath his hat who gives him the power to perform a spinning maneuver and fly through space like a comet. I always assumed Luma just granted him the power to breath outside the atmospheres of the various planets he visited.
  • For that matter, don't forget that the various levels in SPM and the moon in TTYD all take place in different dimensions. The laws of physics could differ wildly between them.
  • If you use Goombella to tattle the very first room in the X-Naut Fortress (the Escalator room) she lampshades it.
    Goombella: Who knew there'd be such a weird building on the moon... It's kind of crazy, actually. I mean, it's got a big glass dome to keep all of the air from leaking out......What's that? Yeah, now that you mention it, I guess we were OK out there with no air to breathe......... Yeah I'd rather not think about that too much, I guess. Yeah, let's change the subject.
  • I could've sworn I once read something that pinned Mario's ability to breath on the Moon as being due to the Crystal Stars. I can't find it anywhere now, but it would make sense - they were said to contain "the power of the stars" or something like that.

Count Bleck and the betrayal

• One thing that has always confused me is how Count Bleck didn't see Dimentio's betrayal coming. It's stated that The Dark Prognosticus can see the end of wars that were fought over it... So we can either assume he was stark, raving mad or just didn't care. But his surprise at the end of the game seems to refute this.
  • The book did foreshadow Dimentio's betrayal at the end of the game...Just not every part of it. It's Count Bleck who first exposits the book's statement that Luigi is the ideal host for the destruction of the Chaos Heart, and it's Luigi who first fuses with it to form the final boss. Dimentio basically was pulling strings to make a prophecy happen that he wasn't initially a part of.
  • To put it in simple terms, the book records things that are fated to happen, but it doesn’t mean everything that happens is going to be recorded in the book. Like Tippi says at the end, all living things determine their own destinies, so there are going to be outcomes that prophecy can’t account for. If Luigi had been more cold-hearted, for example, he could’ve chosen to become the new host without Dimentio getting involved.

The ending

• At the end of the game, Bleck and Tippi exchange their wedding vows in order to power the Pure Hearts enough to counter the Chaos Heart. According to Bleck, all that was necessary for this to happen was mutual love between two people. So does this mean none of the 4 heroes form a pair which mutually loves each other, obvious brotherly love between the Mario Bros. aside? If so, is there really no romance between Mario and Peach (and for those fans, Peach and Bowser)?
  • Bleck also said that whoever professed the necessary feelings of love would "disappear". You didn't just need to confess your love to someone, you needed it to be someone you loved so much, you're willing to give up your existence in order to do so — and there are several parts of the game that demonstrate why that's not what Mario, Luigi, Peach, or Bowser are like. It's also implied that the love needed to be reciprocated, or else Bleck wouldn't have had to force Tippi to also sacrifice herself when he could've accomplished it on his own.

Nastasia and the betrayal

• At the end of the game, the Hand Wave for how Mimi and O'Chunks knew where to find Count Bleck is that Nastasia told them beforehand that she expected they'd end up there... so wait. This would mean that Nastasia knew (at least enough to accurately predict) that Dimentio was going to betray them and bring about the end of all worlds himself. ...So why didn't she DO anything about this herself? Her ONLY known power is the ability to hypnotize people into following her orders absolutely, and even if for some reason she couldn't do this, she could surely tell someone what was about to happen. The bigger problem here, however, is how she knew this to begin with. As far as I can tell, this is never answered or explained.
  • Dimentio did blab his whole plan to Mario. Nastasia could have overheard it, but that begs the question of why she didn't tell it to Bleck. The best answer is she believed that not even the heroes in cahoots with Dimentio could stop Bleck and so gave it no thought. Bleck WAS invincible during the fight until the Pure Hearts intervened so maybe she just thought to herself "Let them try, they will fail since Bleck is invincible." Not a great explanation but still.
  • O'Chunks says something like "She knew you'd come here, or rather she FELT you'd come here." I always assumed we were meant to take it the same as things like Tippi knowing that Mario was at the top of the tower after returning from the Underwhere, or when Mario felt that his friends were ok after falling in the halls of Castle Bleck - unexplained hunches/feelings that turn out to be true. True, the other examples are a little easier to justify, but I figured it was meant to fall within the same line of thought.
  • Considering that Nastasia seems to have been the only resident of Castle Bleck who was both intelligent and relatively sane, I think that it's reasonable to assume that she would be the first of the minions to suspect Dimentio's true motives. Because Bleck was not in the best mental state at this time, she may have deliberately avoided being the one to warn him directly for fear of invoking a Cassandra Truth plot with her crush.
  • The most obvious answer is that she found out about Dimentio’s betrayal while the heroes were fighting Count Bleck, which was after the count had told her to leave him face them alone. After the count has been defeated and she pops back in, she makes as though she’s trying to tell him something, but he’s so busy explaining himself that she can’t get a word in.

Transformed Pure Heart

• Luvbi got turned into a Pure Heart and was then put into the Heart Pillar to allow access to Castle Bleck, right? If so, then what explains her presence in the Overthere after defeating Super Dimentio?
  • The Power of Love? After all, she is the ambiguously angel-like daughter of the rulers of pseudo-Heaven and Underworld, both of whom no doubt would do anything in their power to bring her back if they could, and at heart is an incredibly magical MacGuffin. Something in there must have contributed to it.
  • If you talk to her afterwards, she says something about not remembering how she was brought back.
  • If there were a real, in-game reason why she was able to be brought back, I don't think her sacrifice would've seemed like such a big deal had her parents known such a loophole existed. I think it was just that no one could've foreseen such a sacrificial act of love as begin nessecary to stop the Chaos Heart - they all believed the heroes would be able to defeat Count Bleck and stop the Void with time to spare. Thus, Blumiere and Timpani's exchanging of vows and the subsequent burst of power they gave to the Pure Hearts was the one event that no one saw coming, yet it may have been what actually brought Luvbi back.

Captain Gills

• You can take Captain Gills and set him free in the canal underneath Flipside and whenever you return to that area, he gets bigger and there are bones in the canal. What's the deal?
  • A possible rival for his (unseen) love's affections?
  • Fish need to eat, too, you know.

Cragnon's kingdom

• At the end of the game, we see the land of the Cragnons get reconstructed, despite it never getting explicitly destroyed in the first place. Meanwhile, Sammer's Kingdom, which was definitely destroyed, is never shown being recreated. Did the two worlds get their roles switched at some point in development?
  • The Land of the Cragnons is shown getting explicitly destroyed during the fight with Super Dimentio, alongside Flopside and Lineland. As for Sammer's Kingdom not being recreated onscreen, neither were Flopside and Lineland. They weren't required to show every world coming back, especially since you can go back and check them yourself once the game is over.

Purity Heart and Squirps

• How come the power of the Purity Heart reforming all worlds was able bring Luvbi back into existence, yet can't do anything for Squirps? Like sending him back to when his mother was alive, or bringing her back to life in the present time, or reforming some of his kingdom, or...something? He's all alone in outer space... If you ask me, that's almost as bad as what Luvbi went through.
  • Luvbi was only able to be brought back because she's a Pure Heart. There's nothing in the game to indicate that the Pure Hearts can be used for time travel or bringing back people who have been dead for centuries.
    • King Croacus was killed in battle during Chapter 5, and he came back at the end of the game. He may not have been “dead for centuries”, but I don’t see how that would make a difference.
  • What about Blumiere and Timpani? Count Bleck himself said that using their vows to destroy the Chaos Heart would cause them to disappear, yet after the end credits, they both appear to be fine. The Purity Heart even managed to restore Tippi to her normal form.
  • Yes, disappear is the key word here. That doesn't mean necessarily mean that they died. It probably means that they got transported to another world. In fact, Count Bleck's minions believe that he's still alive and well along with Timpani.
  • It also seems as though intent matters on some level regarding what the Purity Heart does for people. Jaydes and Grambi didn't want to give Luvbi up, so they ultimately got her back in the end. Same with Tippi and Blumiere; they wanted to find a place where they could be happy together, so the Purity Heart gave them one. While Squirps is obviously sad about his situation and misses his mother a great deal, it's also hinted that he chose to take up his mission or at least was on board with it. During the postgame, he talks about how sad he was when he got sealed away but that he still hopes to rebuild his kingdom in order to make his mother proud — this, the Purity Heart allowed for that by letting him stay where he was, when he was, as he was.

Weapons and Bowser's Castle

• Why don't the Mario Bros. bring any weapons with them when they go to Bowser's Castle in order to confront him and rescue Peach? Disregarding the fact that (for once) she's not really there, neither of them seem to have their own hammers when you play as them later, and when you first encounter Bowser in battle during Chapter 3, you can't jump on him since he has spikes and using Pixls is the only way to damage him. What exactly was their plan, to just go inside and ask him nicely to return the princess?
  • You might as well ask why Mario downgraded to the basic Hammer and Boots before setting out on what promised to be an adventure in TTYD. ...Actually, why did he do that?
    • Bag of Spilling in full effect.
  • Maybe Mario did stick on his Spike Shield badge from one of the previous games before going to Bowser's Castle, but it got knocked off when Count Bleck attacked him. Or maybe his badges from the previous games just don't work outside his dimension, so once he's taken to Flipside, Spike Shield instantly became worthless and ineffective.

Attacking Bowser

• Why do the Koopas and the like in the Bitlands continue to attack you when you have Bowser in your party? Given we're shown how loyal they are to their king, shouldn't they still be subservient to him?
  • Retroactive backtracking. You play the levels as they were, only this time there's no Bowser boss. Same thing happens in the Underwhere Road.
  • Well, that can't be the case, because if you play back through the chapters after clearing the game, Squirps is still mourning his mother in the Whoa Zone, Castle Bleck is completely intact, and both Luvbi and King Croacus have come back to life. Yet the Koopas in the Bitlands will still go as far as attacking Bowser directly. I'd say it's possible they were mind-controlled by Nastasia, but again, they still do it after the end of the game, where Nastasia pretty much becomes one of the good guys.
  • Concerning the above, the mind control doesn't even apply in this scenario, because these were the few minions that WEREN'T brainwashed and were loyal to Bowser even in Chapter 3 (after the brainwashing of most of their Koopa minion buddies already happened), so it makes the original question pertinent. Why did Bowser's minions, who weren't brainwashed by Bleck and Nastasia and were loyal to Bowser when he joined Mario's party, continue to attack Bowser, someone they WEREN'T brainwashed into considering the enemy, when he walks through the same area later on?
  • They did say they were going to throw a party while Bowser was off fighting. Maybe they're too hungover to recognize/care who they're fighting.

Blumiere's father and Timpani

• What did Blumiere's father do to Timpani, exactly? Everywhere I look simply suggests that he just cursed her to wander through dimensions until she grew exhausted and died...but I haven't really found anything in the game to back this up. Even if it were true, however, this also begs the question of why no one ever helped her before she appeared in Flipside and was taken in by Merlon?
  • I haven't played the game in awhile, but that's exactly what happened to Timpani according to http://www.mariowiki.com/Tippi. As for why no one helped her, unfortunately, it's Truth in Television; people have a tendency to ignore those who are in danger.
  • Maybe...but that seems odd, though, seeing as we hear her telling Blumiere, in flashback, that "anyone with a heart would not ignore an injured soul", and she later argues against Count Bleck's plan by insisting that all beings in the world have a heart...It seems quite odd that she would say that after wandering the worlds to the point of death yet finding no one who stopped her and helped her...
  • Maybe she was reminded of the time Merlon helped her and that's what she meant by "anyone with a heart". Or maybe it was a translation error, I don't know.
  • We know that Merlon and his clan far exceed the events of Paper Mario, so it's possible he knew Timpani from a different land in is youth.
  • It's also possible that Timpani was cursed to wander the third dimension in particular. Think about it. When Red was trapped in 3D, he says that he was hollering and screaming for help for days before you rescue him, and no one even noticed. Perhaps Timpani tried to seek help from the residents of the worlds that she wandered, but no one could see or hear her. Meanwhile, Merlon, a powerful descendant of the Ancients who likely can see past dimensions, was able to find and rescue her while she was on the brink of death.
    • That would explain why she was so exhausted! Apart from being attacked by monsters and wandering around without a chance to stop and rest, she also would've had to deal with her Flip meter constantly running down and refilling, taking off a little bit of her health each time, with nothing she could do to stop it.
    • In fact, if we take this theory a little further, it starts to make all sorts of sense with regard to the rest of the game. There was never an official statement that Tippi had ever been forced to wander through dimensions, so what if we cut that part out? Hypothetically speaking, let's say Blumiere's father simply banished her into 3D and left her there. Tippi ran to the only person she could think of for help - Blumiere - but, as mentioned, he couldn't even see or hear her and thus had no idea she was there. As a result, Tippi could do nothing but stand and watch as he opened the Dark Prognosticus and wiped out his people (explaining how she could remember it later), and it was the force of this act that erased her memory, nearly killed her, and sent her to Flipside where Merlon rescued her.

Cragnons and Floro Sapiens

• In Chapter 5, the Cragnons are harming Floro Sapiens by throwing garbage into the river and polluting their water supply, thus driving King Croacus, a normally caring ruler who seeks to add beauty to the world, into insanity. The Floro Sapiens' solution to this...is not to simply tell the Cragnons about how what they're doing is harming them, but rather try kidnapping them and forcing them to work in the mines, therefore driving up tensions between the two groups even more. How is this supposed to be a logical solution to their problems?
  • Maybe the Floro Sapians thought that the Cragnons wouldn't listen if they just told them what happened to King Croacus, so they thought force would be the better option. And people tend to not think rationally when they're worrying over someone, especially if they're either suffering from a mental illness or dying.
  • Yes, but...even stranger is that King Croacus seems to be the one ordering for the kidnappings, and throughout the chapter, none of the Floro Sapiens ever hint at the pollution being the root of their problem or that they feel that they're nabbing Cragnons for a good cause.
  • King Croacus was driven insane by the polluted water, so it's not surprising that he was the one to order the kidnappings. Maybe the chapter's ending was a Green Aesop someone tacked on at the last minute during development when they realized they had flower people as the bad guys.

The Tribe of Darkness

• So the end of Super Paper Mario comes, all worlds are restored to life, and the Void disappears for good...All is well, it seems. But what ultimately becomes of Blumiere's father and his other tribesmen? We're never explicitly shown what Blumiere did to them when he stole the Dark Prognosticus, but one can only assume that the dimension was most likely destroyed. Given this was before the Chaos Heart was formed and thus, was not caused by it, would its destruction by the Purity Heart have been able to bring the world back?
  • I assume the world and its people were restored, just like the Sammer Kingdom. It seemed like all of the destruction that Count Bleck caused during his role in the Dark Prognosticus, Chaos Heart or not, was undone when the Chaos Heart was destroyed, and I assume that includes his original world. Blumiere's father probably had to find someone else to carry on the family legacy though since I doubt Blumiere had any intention to go back after what they did to Timpani.
  • Honestly it's probably Fridge Horror I always assumed they were just straight up murdered and they're dead for good.

Pure Heart Protection

• Why did Grambi decide to protect his Pure Heart, by turning it into a living thing? Did the Ancients not tell him that it would have to be taken and used by the heroes someday? Squirpina, the Cragnons, and even King Sammer knew about that, so why did Grambi decide to award sentience to the Pure Heart when he knew it would cause Luvbi a lot of emotional torment when she had to be changed back?
  • It was a good tactic to hide the Pure Heart... he just (intentionally or unintentionally) didn't consider the ethics of it.
  • We don’t really know what Grambi and Jaydes were like 1,500 years ago. It’s possible they weren’t as morally upright back then, and them growing to care for Luvbi is what changed them.

Blumiere's Noodle Incident

• In Tippi's first flashback, it's revealed that she met Blumiere when she found him lying at the base of a cliff, badly injured, and nursed him back to health. But the game never explains what he was doing there...Did he jump off the cliff himself, or was he pushed by someone? If it's the former, why, and if the latter, by who?

Going home

• How do the Heroes of Light get back to the Mushroom Kingdom after the game is over? Their only means of dimensional travel either take them to the game’s eight chapters or back to Flipside.
  • By the end of the game, the heroes are able to get in contact with a lot of people who probably know a lot about interdimensional travel. Count Bleck's team have been crisscrossing between dimensions all throughout the game trying to stop Mario and co., so they'll probably know enough to get the heroes back to the Mushroom Kingdom now that they've joined the good guys.

Dimentio's whereabouts after the game is finished

• Why isn't Dimentio in the Underwhere when you visit it post-game? I thought dead people go to the Underwhere.
  • You saw those 'Shayde' things, right? That's what happens to characters who are judged to belong in the Underwhere. Presumably, Dimentio was judged right quick that he should stay in the Underwhere, and immediately turned into a Shayde. He was probably then cast somewhere deep within the Underwhere, so you wouldn't even meet his Shayde.
  • Alternate explanation: Count Bleck mentioned the destruction of the Chaos Heart meant the cessation of existence of the Pure Hearts and those linked to them (not just death, full-blown cessation of existence). Is it so implausible that the same thing happened to those linked to the Chaos Heart?
  • From a gameplay standpoint, you don't see any plot-relevant characters appear in the Underwhere; there'd be no reason for them to make an exception for Dimentio. In terms of the story, even if he wasn't erased from existence and managed to escape having a horrible punishment bestowed on him for his actions, the Underwhere is undoubtedly much larger than the comparatively small parts of it you get to explore in-game.
  • It's a common belief in various cultures that souls take some time to cross over into the afterlife. If the above interpretations aren't correct, it's possible sufficient time hasn't passed for Dimentio to manifest in the Underwhere.
  • There's also a chance Dimentio might've been flung to another dimension similar to what was implied to happen with Bleck and Tippi where Bleck's minion mention they felt their presence in another world, thanks to his connections to the Chaos Heart. However since there's implication that was the source of his power and it's now gone, there's a good chance he's trap wherever he is and powerless to do anything.

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