Nightmare Fuel / Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time

The second, oft-overlooked installment of the Mario & Luigi series may retain the trademark wit and comedic antics fans have come to expect from Mario RPGs, but one thing the game is also well remembered for is for its surprisingly gloomy tone, in sharp contrast to what is expected from Nintendo's most iconic world, most often cited as the single darkest game starring the portly plumber to date second only to the third Paper Mario game. Those looking for a bright and sunny Mario game may wish to look elsewhere.

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• The Shroobs, period. Simply put, their presence and its impact on the story alone is the reason Partners in Time is so often regarded as one of the darkest games in the franchise. Most antagonists in the franchise are fairly comedic, with the likes of Fawful and Bowser himself, and even if they're not, their underlings will generally be silly, such as Grodus with the X-Nauts. The Shroobs, on the other hand, are simply introduced as a creepy race of extraterrestrials on a faraway planet who spend their time idly searching for a new planet, which they find in the form of the Mushroom Kingdom's planet. They waste no time in invading, and within what's most likely the span of a day in-game, they've managed to both wreck Peach's Castle and transform it into their own base using their armada of UFOs. On top of that, they speak entirely in a foreign language, meaning they lack any goofy dialogue to laugh at either, and whilst they're not completely foreign to being involved with little gags during certain scenes and in-battle, it does little to lighten the presence of their threat.
  • Amid their untranslatable, foreign dialogue spouted throughout the entire game, one recurring, two-character phrase written in Shroob language is dropped constantly by members of the species throughout the adventure. Before engaging Princess Shroob in combat, her text is translated, and she ends her monologue by saying the phrase once again, finally showing us what they've been repeating so often since the beginning of the game - "Destroy."
    • It gets even more unsettling when Elder Princess Shroob starts chanting it right before their battle starts.
  • One thing that stands out about the Shroobs is their willingness to disregard their own brethren in-battle. Beyond the final boss's destruction of her own soldiers' saucers, the Shroobsworth enemy encountered in their castle is set up as an obvious pastiche of the bros' fighting style, being an older Shroob carrying and protecting a younger Intern Shroob on its back in battle. Like with the bros, the elder needs to be defeated before the younger one can take damage, except when that happens... the Intern Shroob simply gets off and kicks the Shroobsworth's unconscious body off-screen to keep fighting by itself, only possibly dragging it back to revive it since the Shroobsworth protects it and has an array of powerful attacks. This, combined with the fact the Shroob saucers line themselves up to be shot down by their ruler in her battle, shows the Shroobs' disturbing lack of regard for life extends even to themselves.
  • And that’s just them as a race. Their leader Princess Shroob is quite possibly the most psychopathic character, after Dimentio and King Boo, in the whole Mario franchise. She has her armies raid and destroy innocent towns and villages, drain Toads out of their vim, which is their life force, to use for fuel for their ships, and feeds Princess Peach to Petey Piranha for no other reason except pure sadism. She is one horrific character in what should otherwise be a lighthearted game.
  • Thankfully, the only trace left of the Shroobs in the present of future games is the fact Bowser's got a lot of them on ice and the one that did survive both its species extinction and being frozen appears to have integrated peacefully with the koopa king's army, but if something were to ever let them out...
    • The Mario Bros. can unfreeze them, then beat them.
• The player's first real encounter with the Shroobs? We're treated to a Toad falling from the sky, mumbling something about a village, and proceeding to be abducted by one of their saucers as soon as the bros leave him, and soon afterwards, the village mentioned is found - Hollijolli Village, a Christmas-themed town that's been wrecked by the Shroobs, with destroyed houses, a complete lack of villagers outside of the mayor, who is abducted as soon as he comes out of hiding, no less, and with a depressing, lonely rendition of Jingle Bells for the background music to boot.
• The next area visited by the Shroobs, Toadwood Forest, manages to be even worse than Hollijolli Village. We learn that they abduct Toads and strap them to trees in order to suck their "Vim", which is seemingly their Life Energy, and send it to their factory to be converted to fuel for their saucers. Throughout the area, Toads can be found strapped to trees, often drained of color, as if they've become part of the trees themselves upon having their life force drained, and most of which can be spoken to, almost entirely weakly pleading for help or barely managing to describe how they feel.
  • In the factory itself, the vim sucked from the Toads has the appearance of green liquid with images of sad Toad spirits inside it. Although this is likely not the case, given the ending, the spirit images can definitely lead one to believe that they are the souls of the Toads, sucked out by the Shroobs.
  • The Vim could also be the Toads' blood, as it's implied it flows through the Toads' bodies, making it even worse. Heck, even that creepy goblet Princess Shroob holds could have Vim in it (and the drink a UFO brings for Elder Princess Shroob during her fight definitely does).
• The Yoob, who eats every Yoshi it encounters on sight (and later the Mario Bros and Baby Bowser), which inside its stomach are encased in eggs which would most likely turn them into more Yoobs to help conquer the Mushroom Kingdom, essentially making it a giant killing machine that takes the things it eats and erases their personalities to make them into more killing machines. Its design is certainly on the goofier side, but its spikier black scales, Shroob-like claws and glowing red Black Eyes of Crazy give it a surprisingly freaky and dangerous appearance for a Yoshi. By the time the bros arrive on Yoshi's Island, it's already consumed most of the race and those still surviving are hiding in terror. This is all before the Shroobs zap it to become the size of a mountain.
  • Inside Yoob, the alien dinosaur takes up the top screen's map, where it's framed in shadow in a way that makes it look a lot more imposing. While first exploring it, you can actually see it express its pain when the Babies use the hammer or the Baby Drill. The latter is especially wince-worthy if you consider that Yoob just had something drilling into its flesh and is moving underneath it. Though, thankfully, once he falls asleep, he no longer feels it... if wandering through an unconscious, possibly dead killing machine is more comforting to you.
• Peach and Kylie getting eaten by Petey Piranha. It's almost as frightening as Jabba's method of execution in Star Wars.
  • On that matter, Peach getting eaten becomes worse when you realize that it's pretty much a public execution, of which the Shroobs are taking full enjoyment in. Destroying the villages and sucking up the Toads vim, as horrible as they are, could be excused as military protocol for the Shroobs. But this shows that they’re not just simply hostile extraterrestrials looking to conquer. They are sadistic monsters looking to satisfy their appetite for suffering.
• Toad Town is possibly the perfect area to sum up the ambiance of the rest of the entire game. Every building stands derelict and abandoned, if not outright flattened, save for one shop. Every street is completely empty, save for the Shroob invaders, scouring for survivors. The different sections of town are locked off with bars and walls, the cracked Toad engravings and patterns a grim reminder of what has happened. However, despite all of that, the proper killer is the music. It's not happy and jolly like Yo'ster Isle, it's not heroic, it's not evil and daunting, it's... melancholic. In a Mario game. It slowly drags on, quietly pinging in the background, occasionally rising up into something more dramatic, before being pushed back into the hopeless pits of despair that the once cheerful Toad Town have become. The worst part? Throughout this entire sad trudge through the purple, corrupted streets of the old Capital of the Mushroom Kingdom, other than the two senile grandmas and the endless waves of invaders, there's not a single soul here. Then, suddenly, it hits you - Every single Toad that once lived in this city that wasn't killed has since been dragged off to the Vim Factory. Every single one is going to be farmed for their life force, if they haven't already been. Every last one.
• When Peach first goes on her trip, she is accompanied by two Toad attendants, Toadiko and Toadbert. By the time you encounter Toadiko, she is already near-lifeless, as she's already been captured and that most of her Vim has been sucked away. Then, she is found out and turned into a Shroob mushroom, presumably dying. (If she didn't, it's even worse.) Toadbert traumatically loses his memory for most of the game, and as soon as he recovers it, he is promptly turned into a Shroob mushroom as well. In both cases, this is softened by the fact that they, like all of the Shroobs' victims, recover (Toadbert even returns as comic relief in the third game), but still, this is some hardcore stuff, especially considering we don't even know how long they've been like this.
• The theme of Shroob Castle is a downright oppressive track with a dark and foreboding tone unlike many other final dungeons in the series, with a constant booming drum beat and unnatural pulsing sounds that perfectly embody the militaristic, malicious nature of the Shroobs.
  • Speaking of Shroob Castle, the time hole leading to it opens long before the area is explorable - There's something incredibly frightening about the ominous portal crackling with electricity on the top floor leading to the locked entrance of this obviously late-game dungeon, where nothing can be explored and yet the corruption of the Shroobs is at its most visible even on what little can be explored and all over the map screen. And there's no music in this exterior area, either.
• The Elder Princess Shroob. Contrasting to her sadistic younger sister's slender frame and reliance on technology, she is a giant mutant with a ferocious design and equally ferocious attacks, relentlessly attempting to ram into the bros and shooting down her own men. This is all before she goes One-Winged Angel, at which point she becomes too big to even fit on the bottom screen, gains numerous unsettlingly animated tentacles for legs and for arms, and a terrifying roar.
  • The atmosphere of her battle also deserves mention all on its own - as she appears, she sends the small platform her, the bros and the princesses stand on hurtling up who knows how high up into the dark, thundering skies beyond Shroob Castle's tower. Five tiny humans on a relatively small disk in the roaring sky, against one giant, building-sized monstrosity so horrifying it leaves Peach unconscious. And the game's final battle theme that kicks in as she enters her final form is likely the most desolate, despair-laden battle theme in the entire Mario franchise, lending the fight its dead serious tone as a battle that absolutely cannot be lost for the sake of likely all the life in the Mushroom Kingdom and likely all that lies beyond. It's downright mournful in a way that highlights how this battle is one that will extinguish an entire race's chances of survival... but as the rest of the game goes great lengths to show, the Shroobs' survival mean everything in their way being destroyed.
  • One chilling element, especially on replays, is all the times it's painfully clear Elder Princess Shroob was inside the Cobalt Star the whole time. From earlier moments like a single shard causing the Junior Shrooboid to suddenly roar from inside a test tube, to gags like the shards seeming to have a will of their own to send Baby Bowser flying off, Kylie Koopa's inexplicable reaction of terror from looking into them, and especially the encounter with the "spirit of the Cobalt Star" who speaks like a benevolent force and yet causes Baby Luigi to burst into tears. The thought that this monstrous tyrant is fully present, conscious and aware inside the Cobalt Star shards you're carrying the entire game, even down to being capable of attacking things when she chooses, is very much discomforting.
    • Moments like the conversation at the Star Shrine also go a long way prove how despite her beastly appearance and attacks, she's no Dumb Muscle - her act as the Cobalt Star's spirit was completely convincing, and she really did come off like any typical Guardian Entity character when she appeared before the bros in that form. The sheer contrast between that first impression of her with the roaring, shouting monster and her forceful attacks she uses against the bros only serves to make her even more frightening.