Video Game / Mother 3

Strange. Funny. Heartrending.

Mother 3 is the long-awaited sequel to EarthBound and the third (and final) entry in Shigesato Itoi's Mother franchise. Like prior games, the game contains weird and quirky writing and gameplay which features deft employment of Mood Whiplash in its artistic story, and centers on a young boy with psychic powers and his friends — but in this game, the time and setting are vastly different, and the threat to humanity is much more earthly than it was long ago.

The story follows Lucas, a young boy living in the rural Tazmily Village along the Nowhere Islands. His family- doting mother Hinawa, eager brother Claus, kind canine Boney and gruff but loving father Flint- separate for the weekend while Hinawa visits her father with the boys in tow. While they're out of town, a mysterious technologically advanced army of men in pig-like masks begins invading the islands and stirring up all sorts of trouble, in particular taking forest animals and twisting them into horrific chimeras of flesh and steel. When tragedy strikes, Lucas is forced to grow up fast to take on the pigmask army before it destroys the world he loves so dearly. While he receives aid from many allies (including party members Duster and Kumatora), it soon becomes clear that the scope of what's at stake is a lot larger than just the peace and quiet on the Nowhere Islands...

Unlike its two predecessors, Mother 3 shifts focus several times between the main protagonist, his family, and the people (and sometimes animals!) who will become his allies — and true to its slogan, its story is regarded as the darkest (and most emotional) of the three games while retaining all of the silly charm which endeared its fans to begin with.

Mother 3 is notable for its long development cycle (approximately the length of the already-long production of the previous title), having been planned almost immediately after Mother 2 was released. Details began to surface of Mother 3 as a Nintendo 64 title — as part of the now-failed Nintendo 64DD add-on — and was even given the tentative worldwide title EarthBound 64 before falling into vaporware territory (its earliest development predated Duke Nukem Forever's, which didn't surpass its time in Development Hell until 2007). It was officially cancelled in 2000, but eventually resurfaced in 2003 and was finally released for the Game Boy Advance in 2006 — apparently due to renewed interest while Mother 1+2 was being worked on. However, Nintendo has yet to release the game outside of Japan, despite vocal campaigns of support for an international release. Lucas eventually saw international recognition due to his inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Nintendo would end up not releasing the game outside of Japan, as not only did EarthBound horrifically undersell in North America, but the GBA was also all but dead in North America and Europe by the time Mother 3 released; by 2006, they had effectively stopped releasing first-party games for the system in Western markets in favor of focusing on the Nintendo DS. In response, a project to create an English-language Fan Translation began, which took two years to complete. Releasing in 2008, the fan translation would later receive an update in 2014 that fixed up minor typos, grammatical errors, and bugs; it can be found here, though you'll need an official copy of the game to play it. As it stands, the translation is currently the only way to ever play the game in a language that is not Japanese. For ease of reference, this unofficial translation is the primary source for tropes.

---

This game provides examples of:

A

• Abandoned Laboratory: The Chimera Laboratory. It only gets mildly creepy at first... then the Ultimate Chimera gets loose...)
• Absurdly Short Level: Chapter 6 consists solely of walking left for about a minute. That doesn't mean there aren't any plot developments, though.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The sewers under New Pork City, even if not as big a dungeon as in the previous game. At least this time the characters don't have to walk through sewage.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Old Man Wess constantly berates Duster, calls him "moron" more often than his real name, and it's strongly implied he's the reason Duster walks with a limp.
  • When the party is hallucinating on Tanetane Island, Lucas gets a vision of his father threatening to beat him. It's fairly unlikely that this has actually happened to him in real life, but it's apparently something he's deeply afraid of.
• Absurdly High Level Cap: You can reach level 99 if you want to, but to beat the game, you only need about over half that.
• Absurdly-Long Limousine: The game has a private limo that Porky uses to pick up Lucas and his gang to bring them to New Pork City. It's sized fairly appropriately on the outside, but on the inside...
• Accidental Kiss: Mentioned in relation to a pair of recurring NPCs; they're a young couple who panics that they accidentally kissed during a blackout.
• Action Commands: If you keep pressing A in time with the beat of the background music, you score extra hits. There's even a drum enemy which can change the beat to throw you off. And sometimes, you'll hear music that sounds familiar at first but actually has an extra beat or two thrown in or taken out, again to throw you off.
• Addressing the Player: Used in Chapter 1 (and 4) when asking for your name, and in the ending, when you the player wake up in the World of Mother 3 and all the characters thank you for guiding Lucas and saving their world.
• Aerith and Bob: Lucas, Claus, Flint, Duster... Kumatora? Hinawa? Of course, these are all the characters' default names that you can change if you're so inclined, anyway.
• Affably Evil: Some of the Pigmask NPCs you can talk to aren't actually all that bad, even if they're working for Porky.
• After-Action Villain Analysis: Twice:
  • When you defeat Porky, he seals himself away in the Absolutely Safe Capsule, never to escape for all of eternity. Dr. Andonuts then asks if it's wrong that he feels sympathy for him, and questions if maybe it's what he wanted after all.
  • Then, after the Post-Final Boss...
    You'll forgive your hasty brother, won't you?
• After the End: Tazmily and the Nowhere Islands were the only things left in the world after the world that came before was annihilated by what Leder implies to have been weapons of mass destruction. Everyone on the Islands except for him brainwash themselves into forgetting that they ever escaped an apocalypse.
• Age-Appropriate Angst:
  • When Hinawa dies, everybody reacts differently. Lucas, her younger son, can't do anything but cry his little heart out at her grave. Claus, her older son, foolishly tries to avenge her, fails, and goes missing. Flint, her husband... breaks, then spends the next three years shut off from everybody and everything other than searching for Claus. Alec, her elderly father, seems to be the least affected, though it's implied he's just putting up a face for the sake of coping.
  • Three years later, Lucas, having gotten stronger and more mature over the course of the adventure, has to fight a brainwashed Claus and ultimately have him die in his arms. He still feels grief, but it's not crippling enough to prevent him from finishing his quest to save the world.
• Alcohol Hic: Matt, a resident of Tazmily, seems to have this. We found out much later, though, that it was just an irregular case of the hiccups.
• All in a Row: Like the two games before it, but it's lampshaded early on by Thomas (a temporary party member):
  Thomas: I'll follow behind you. What? What's so wrong with that? I happen to like following behind people!
• All of the Other Reindeer: Interestingly, at the beginning of the game, this trope literally doesn't exist In-Universe. Everybody in Tazmily is friends with everybody else, and differences are respected and even embraced. After the Time Skip, however, this trope is in full effect against anybody in Tazmily not in ownership of a Happy Box.
• Always Check Behind the Chair:
  • At the very beginning, if you run into Hinawa's chair, she will give you a recovery item.
  • Also, there is a Magic Butterfly under the Pigmask's hat on Snowcap Mountain.
  • There's a box behind Wess's house that contains a Thunder Bomb. The best part is, it automatically refills whenever you go to the crossroads and back, even after the time skip.
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: Like in EarthBound, every battle has a colorful moving background.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Averted with the Return of Octobot enemies based on the Octobot from EarthBound. Their right-facing sprite shows off their shiny metal half, and their left-facing sprite shows their dingy metal half.
• Ambiguous Ending: The game ends with Nowhere Islands, the last place in existence, getting destroyed to point of blackness, but apparently everyone survived? It's not clear what the fate of these characters is or if they came back in a new world.
• Ambiguous Gender: The Magypsies. They use female pronouns for themselves while most of the other characters refer to them with male pronouns, though according to Alec, they have No Biological Sex, implying that it's up to the characters' interpretation. Most of the game's animals (except Boney and Salsa, who are male, and Samba, who is female) also apply here.
• Ambiguously Human: The Magypsies look like Drag Queens, but apart from that they are humanoid beings with No Biological Sex and the ability to use PSI (which only a few beings can do), and have their lives tied to the Needle they are guarding, being immortal until said Needle is pulled.
• Ambiguous Innocence: Porky clearly seems to have some idea that what he's doing is wrong, but since he sees all of it as just one gigantic game that he'll do anything to win, exactly how wrong he sees it is up to your interpretation.
• Ambiguous Situation: We don't know if Porky time traveled backwards or forwards in time, or if he traveled between dimensions to get into the world of Mother 3.
• Ambiguous Time Period: Takes place on the Nowhere Islands, completely isolated from the broader world. Suggested by Leder's story to be After the End very late in the game, although Porky never actually states the era in relation to the previous game — it could just as easily be Before the Beginning, taking place before recorded history in the MOTHER world.
• Amicable Ants: An unnamed ant NPC in Osohe Castle gives the player helpful advice about the game's rhythm battle mechanics.
• Amplified Animal Aptitude: Boney is extremely competent in battle, spends a good portion of Chapter 4 walking on two legs to fool guards into thinking he's a person (though it does wear him out some), and it's implied that he can understand human speech. Good dog! Although, in Chapters 5 and 7, he doesn't bother donning an entire Pigmask outfit — yet somehow wearing just a mask manages to fool the real Pigmasks.
• Anachronism Stew: Despite being mostly mundane and human, technology and culture doesn't really match up well to any specific time or place. Totally justified after a certain late-game revelation.
• And Knowing Is Half the Battle: There are a few signs around the game that present you with very out-of-the-blue, but accurate, scientific facts about animals. Considering the series, its almost certainly in a self-aware manner.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: This trope is in effect with the game in general, as it is extremely different from its two predecessors both in its tone and methods of storytelling. You play through the prologue as young Lucas, then the next three chapters are played by four completely different characters (Flint, Duster, Salsa, and Kumatora) before going through the rest of the game as Lucas again. Fortunately, Duster and Kumatora rejoin Lucas permanently later (and Salsa temporarily does the same briefly), so the time spent as them isn't wasted, as they return with the skills and levels they had prior.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: Electric Torture and both verbal and physical abuse aside, threatning to have Samba killed is how Fassad makes Salsa obey him.
• Animalistic Abomination: The Dark Dragon, a creature so incredibly immense that it's said the entirety of the Nowhere Islands rests on its back, is so powerful that it protected the islands from the rest of the world becoming uninhabitable, was so feared that he had to be put to rest with Seven Needles that are each guarded by Magypsies (ageless beings capable of using PSI that cannot die unless their Needle is pulled) but can only be pulled by people capable of PK Love, and, if woken up, will cause The End of the World as We Know It (although it can create a better world in return, depending on who pulls the Needles).
• Animals Lack Attributes: Averted with the Agitated Boar enemies, who have a visible anus in their backsprites.
• Animate Inanimate Object: From living yams (baked or otherwise) to beans, musical instruments, bathroom signs, and animated suits of armor, sword and shield included!
• Anthropomorphic Zig-Zag: Boney pretends to be a human boy in Chapter 4 in order to sneak past some guards. He does a good job at it, but since walking on two legs wears him out, he switches back before long. (This is almost certainly a reference to Mick and the Duncan Factory dog back in EarthBound Beginnings.)
• Anti Poop-Socking: Mostly done as reminder to save your game. If you play continuously without saving, Leder's bell will be heard and tell you to save and take a break. It takes quite a while to trigger however, and if you save often it is most likely you wouldn't ever get this message.
• Antlion Monster: Several of these appear in the desert area, and one has a save frog caught in his whirlpool of sand. Defeating the antlion frees the frog, allowing him to save your game.
• Apocalyptic Montage: During the ending, attempting to move around at the "END?" screen displays messages from the characters of the game, indicating they somehow survived.
• Apathetic Citizens: Tazmily Village's residents, excluding the protagonists and very few exceptions like Tessie and Nana, after the Time Skip.
• Apocalypse How: A conversation with Leder near the end of the game reveals that, the entire time, Mother 3 was set in a post-apocalyptic world. Leder only gives subtle hints as to the nature of it, but from what can be gathered, much of the world was rendered uninhabitable by use of weapons of mass destruction. The survivors of this crisis fled overseas in a "white ship" and settled in the Nowhere Islands, which alone were the only landmasses to survive this apocalyptic event. The crisis was so unbelievably horrific that the villagers willingly had their own memories erased of life before the islands so that such an event could never be repeated.
• Apologetic Attacker:
  • One of Salsa's skills is to "apologize profusely" to the enemy. This is a nod to one of Porky's totally useless actions when he's your party member in EarthBound.
  • Other enemies sometimes waste their turns apologizing, such as Pigmasks. Incidentally, this is one of the first huge instances of foreshadowing to the fact that Porky is the main villain, besides the whole "pig" motif.
• Apple of Discord: After the time skip, the people of Tazmily become more selfish and greedy to each other ever since currency was first introduced.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: No more than three enemies can be present at the same time in a battle. This causes a situation of Mook Chivalry when fighting the Mecha-Porkies, which are ten, but they only fight you three at a time.
• Arcade Sounds: New Pork City has a particularly noisy arcade in it.
• Arcadia: Tazmily Village during the first three Chapters, being a small, rural-looking town where things like electric appliances or even money are absent. After the Time Skip, it stops being the case. Turns out, the village's original situation was chosen on purpose by the inhabitants of the White Ship to not make the same mistakes that caused the destruction of the rest of the world.
• Arc Number: The number 7. There are technically 7 characters that the player can control in battle in the game.^note Lucas, Flint, Claus, Boney, Salsa, Duster and Kumatora. There are Duster's Almost 7 Thief Tools, the 7 Magypsies, 7 full-length Chapters, and the 7 Needles keeping the Dragon underneath the islands asleep.
• Arc Words: It first appears on a gravestone in Tazmily's Sunset Cemetery, but is later mimicked a notable number of times throughout the game.
  "I leave the rest to you now."
• The Ark: The White Ship, which carried the survivors of the destroyed world to the Nowhere Islands.
• Armed Legs: Duster kicks to attack, using his crippled leg. It gives him the best physical attack in the party.
• Army of The Ages: Though, not neccessarily handpicking Powerful Warriors per se, Porky's Pigmask Army is mostly comprised of people he's pulled from various points in time who know of industrialized society, and bring it to the Nowhere Islands.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The battles in the tents of Saturn Valley will likely seem to play out this way:
  Pigmask Major attacked!
  Pigmask Major tried hitting Kumatora's joints!
  Frightbot (Beat)... told a story so scary you'll never go to the bathroom at night again!
• Artificial Limbs: By the bushelful, since this is a story filled to the brim with cyborgs.
• Ash Face:
  • When Flint saves Fuel from being trapped in a Burning House, the two are covered in soot, and if you go into a hot spring while like this, the only thing that'll be left covered in soot are their faces. Everyone you talk to will also immediately lampshade this.
  • In Chapter 5, while in Thunder Tower, Lucas gets struck by lightning, but it doesn't cause any damage on him. He instead just looks burnt and learns PK Flash in the process.
• Ascended Glitch: After you get the Franklin Badge from a stealthily dressed Mr. Saturn, he gets stuck in a wall. Itoi liked this glitch so much that he gave Saturn some dialogue.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Possibly. In the ending, through the Dark Dragon the impossible happens, and everyone is all together. Good, evil and neutral. Everyone is together, and happy. Glowing with a mystical purple aura of the dragon in a strange dark void. Even Lucas and Claus are reunited at least for the role-call. Beyond this, though, absolutely nothing is shown of wherever the cast of characters may have ended up.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Porky Statue when you reach New Pork City, as it actually comes to life if you interact with it and attacks your party.
• Attack Reflector:
  • The Counter and PSI Counter moves exclusive to this game reflect half of Physical and PSI damage back at the attacker respectively. As you learn more and more PSI and get stronger, more of the Bosses, especially in late game, will usually have this on at the start of battle to prevent you from cheesing them out with a lot of damage at the start.
  • The Franklin Badge, much like in Mother and EarthBound, allows Lucas to reflect all lightning-based attacks back to whoever used them. Claus uses it for tragic results.
• Autobots, Rock Out!:
  • The fight against the Natural Killer Cyborg is accompanied by this impressive number.
  • Potentially, any battle involving Kumatora, as an electric guitar riff plays whenever she lands a physical attack. You usually don't want her to attack physically most of the time however.
• Auto-Revive: The Magypsy Mementos revive the holder at full HP if they're KO'd. The game very deliberately does not tell you this.
• Awful Truth: Leder's final role is to tell Lucas how his beloved home of Tazmily was always a fabrication; a fringe village on the edge of nothing, whose people had willingly brainwashed themselves to prevent another armageddon. This is why the villagers act so cruelly when Lucas mourns for any length of time; they have a very strong reaction to "bad" feelings. Look at how they first tell Flint the bad news. And look at how Flint completely breaks down afterward.
• A Winner Is You: Played with and subverted. After pulling the final needle, the world appears to end and you get a simple "END?" screen. But, if you press on the D-Pad a little bit...
• Awakening the Sleeping Giant: The goal of Lucas and Porky in Chapters 7 and 8 is for himself and the brainwashed Claus, respectively, to awaken the sleeping Dark Dragon by pulling the Seven Needles on its back.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The New Years' Eve Bomb, it brings an enemy down to only 1 HP. The only downside is that every enemy you try to use this on that isn't the King Porky Statue will cause the item to be a Dud and fail. Because otherwise it'd be a Game-Breaker.
• Awkwardly-Placed Bathtub: Inside the flying limousine, and also inside the Chimera Lab and near the top of Thunder Tower — the latter is in an awkwardly placed room full of toys.
• Ax-Crazy: King P, aka Master Porky, aka Porky Minch.

B

• Background Music Override: Late into Chapter 7, once pretty much everyone has left the Nowhere Islands to live in New Pork City, almost all overworld music is replaced with And Then There Were None, an incredibly heartrending remix of Going Alone.
• Back Stab: If you attack an enemy from the back, you get a free round of attacks against them, but the reverse is also true. Duster, quite awesomely, has the ability to sometimes flip enemies around and force them to endure one, even if they originally sneak-attacked you.
• Badass Adorable: Lucas is probably the last sweet little boy you'd want to get in a fight with..
• Badass Boast: Out of universe, Itoi has said that after the N64 version was cancelled, he decided that instead of chasing after fancy graphics, the best course of action was to make a game that Nintendo couldn't.
• Badass Normal: Duster's got no psychic powers to speak of, but he's got more than a few tricks up his sleeve. Same goes for Boney, he may not be Human but he's still the fastest in most battles and can still kick the butt of any Chimeras the party faces.
• Bad News, Irrelevant News: "The good news is, I found a Drago fang that will make a great weapon (even though we live in a society more or less free of violence). The bad news is, I found it stuck in your wife's heart..."
• The Bait: Dr. Andonuts suggests that Lucas use Boney as bait so that he can press the off-switch on the Ultimate Chimera's back. Boney is most definitely not amused by the idea.
• Bait-and-Switch: A spoilerriffic example. Initially, Fassad is portrayed as a Les Collaborateurs human working with the seemingly alien Pigmask Army. Much later down the story it's revealed that the Pigmasks are just humans working for Porky's government and Fassad is actually a renegade Magypsy.
• Bag of Sharing: While normal items still have to be shuffled between the characters as in previous Mother games, key items are held in a shared inventory.
• Banana Peel: Used comically whenever you run over and slip on one. Even if you're driving at the time. Fassad, on the other hand, gets his just desserts in the end of Chapter 5 with one. Ancient Bananas explicitly wield this purpose as an attack item.
• Band Land: The attic of Club Titiboo is full of music-themed enemies and has a rather rockin' song.
• Barrier Change Boss: As the name may suggest, the Barrier Trio, upon striking their Barrier Pose, turns invulnerable to all forms of PSI, barring one element. Aside from which member of the trio calls the pose, there's no indication what they're vulnerable to until you have Boney sniff it out. They're still vulnerable to physical attacks, though this is mitigated by their defense stat.
• Battle Theme Music: Every enemy has their own signature theme song. Even the Faceless Goons of the Pigmask Army have a different one depending on their rank.
• Bearer of Bad News: Bronson in Chapter 1 is the one who has to give Flint the news that Hinawa was killed by a Drago.
• Bear Trap: Where you first meet Kumatora, she's stuck in one of these. Kind of funny when you realize that her name translates to "bear tiger".
• Bedsheet Ghost: The Stinky and Friendly Ghosts in Osohe Castle. Notably, the former had an appearance change from EarthBound — in that game, Stinky Ghosts were devilish-looking ghosts living in trash cans, while these are based on the Zombie Possessor.
• Bee-Bee Gun: The Honey Shower's usual attack. It doesn't do too much damage, but it's still fun.
• Beef Gate:
  • The Zombieshroom at the beginning of Tanetane Island isn't the usual "you'd better be leveled up" variety — after the previous cutscene, everyone in the part is at 1 HP, 0 PP, and lost all their items, so the unavoidable Zombieshroom fight ensures you heal up with those funky shrooms. Weirdly, once you do eat the shrooms, the battle becomes skippable.
  • Don't visit the Sunshine Forest in Chapter 4 unless your first goal for the chapter is to lose to some Grated Yammonsters.
• Beehive Barrier: Lucas's PSI shields have this design.
• Berserk Button:
  • Li'l Miss Marshmallow will not tolerate you touching her master's "Friend's Yo-yo".
  • Mister Passion will attack you for refusing to listen to his compositions. His Optional Boss form, Lord Passion, will also get violent if you don't think his new hairdo looks great.
• Berserker Tears:
  • Flint, after he gets the news that his wife is dead.
  • During the Final Battle, when Masked Man wounds Flint with TWO PK Love Omegas, Lucas can then attack him out of rage for hurting his father.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Lucas. Just because he's a sensitive little boy doesn't mean you should take him lightly.
• Big Boo's Haunt: Osohe Castle, except the chapter boss.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Lucas gets one at the end of Chapter 3, when he quits being a crybaby and becomes the main character. He calls the baby Drago from chapter 1, who in turn calls its parent and the mate of the Drago that was modified by the Pigmask army, who easily takes out the Pigmasks that were after Kumatora, Salsa and Wess.
  • Then the D.C.M.C. show up during the Mecha-Porky fight to save the day, just like the Runaway Five in EarthBound.
  • A Clayman gets one of these after the Almost-Mecha Lion fight in the Chimera Laboratory.
• Bigger on the Inside: The stretch limo. The NPC driving said limo actually lampshades this.
  • There is no way anything above the first floor in the Empire Porky Building could possible fit inside a narrow skyscraper.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Fassad pretends to be a friendly, generous peddler, when in actuality, he's a sadistic, murderous animal abuser.
• Black Bead Eyes: Much like in EarthBound, the artistic style in this game means that almost every human character has little black dots for eyes.
• Black Screen of Death: At the end of the final battle. On-screen text is the only indication as to what's happening.
• Blatant Lies: Thunder Tower is named by a sign to be the Tower of Love and Peace. It is definitely anything but.
• Bleak Abyss Retirement Home: "Old Man's Paradise", built on the site of Wess' old home after the Time Skip. It is completely run down, being infested with cockroaches and having several leaks on the roof, and is more of a prision than anything. Wess and Alec, alongside at least two other elderly citizens, are thrown there so they won't interfere with the Pigmask army's plans, and many people in Tazmily don't even show concern for the relatives they have living there.
• Block Puzzle: A rather endearing one in which you move the rocks with encouraging words. C'mon, rock, you can do it! Roll!
• Bluebird of Happiness: The blue carrier pigeon in the beginning and ending credits of the game.
• Blush Sticker: On top of being part of the art style, everybody in the party gets very vivid blush stickers after kissing the oxygen machines.
• Body Horror: The Chimeras, as well as Fassad when he's reconstructed after falling off Thunder Tower.
• Boisterous Weakling: The Mole Crickets as a species, but especially the one that tries to fight you. You end up humbling them all in the end.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Bud and Lou seem to be a parody of this.
• Bonding over Missing Parents: Unused text shows that the party was going to have a conversation about this, since none of them have mothers, but it was removed for unknown reasons. See Dummied Out.
• Book Ends:
  • The last shot of the credits is Hinawa releasing a blue pigeon, but the end screen plays with this even more by echoing the title screen.
  • The Game starts with Lucas's family all living happily together before they're torn apart by the Pigmask army, with Hinawa's death, Claus's disappearance, and Flint all but abandoning Lucas to search for Claus, leaving Lucas and Boney alone. During the Final Battle, the whole family is reunited at the Last Needle, even Hinawa through the means of appearing as a ghost to save Claus, only for them to be separated again for the final time, with Claus joining Hinawa in death.
  • The First Battle of Mother 3 has Lucas and Claus fighting a Mole Cricket together. The Final Battle of the game also has them fighting, but this time it's against each other.
  • One that's even more meta: One of the final areas of the Empire Porky Building has the music from the title screen of EarthBound Beginnings.
  • And to top it all off: The ending credits music contains the Eight Melodies from EarthBound Beginnings and EarthBound, as well as the Mother 3 Theme of Love.
• Boom Town: New Pork City. The entire populace of Tazmily moves there by the end of the game. Not to mention most to all attractions in the city are named after their founder and leader. It basically exists to feed Porky's ego. Notably, it's not as big as it looks: there are only a small number of real buildings, but to make the city seem grander in scale, it is padded out with a lot of plywood cutouts of buildings, similar to what one might find on a film set. Speaking of their leader, he has his own statue to add on to the city. Watch out, though...
• Boss-Altering Consequence: The Steel Mechorilla in Chapter 7 has a big weakness to electricity, but if it gets hit with PK Thunder three times, it'll go haywire and start using a powerful multi-target attack every turn until it dies instead of its normal moves, making the fight much harder if set off too early.
• Boss Banter:
  • Per the tradition, Porky has a rather chilling conversation with the party during his fight.
  • Played with during the second Masked Man battle. He isn't talking, but somebody else sure is...
• Boss Bonanza: Chapter 8 only featured one small dungeon, the New Pork City Sewers, the Empire Porky Building and its basement, and bosses sprinkled throughout. First off is Miracle Fassad in the sewers. After him, there's a superboss, the King Statue, that can be fought in New Pork City itself. After completing the games to see if Lucas is worthy enough to meet Porky, the Natural Killer Cyborg is fought. After a Call-Back to the previous two games, the Mecha-Porky bots are fought. Porky then reveals himself and sends Lucas, his party, and Flint to the basement, where there's a short stretch of enemies leading up to the Final Boss: Porky Minch himself. After beating him, the Post-Final Boss, the rematch with the Masked Man, is available.
• Boss Remix: Remixed and recurring motifs are used a lot during this game, and the bosses are no exception. Probably the most noteworthy example is the eerie, agonizingly sad remix of the Love Theme during the final battle with the Masked Man.
• Bottomless Bladder: Well, obviously you won't actually need to "go", but just like in EarthBound, there are bathrooms available that are simply always occupied. Parodied to the extreme with Porky's "All-You-Can-Pee Toilet Dungeon".
• Bouncer: Neckbeard and Skinhead won't let a kid and some dog-like kid get into Club Titiboo that easily.
• A Boy and His X: Boy protagonist Lucas is accompanied by faithful dog Boney, per the norm of the series. However, Boney is unique in that he sticks with Lucas throughout the entire adventure.
• Boyish Short Hair: Kumatora, as is appropriate to her personality. Weirdly enough, though, it's pink.
• Brainwashed: Everyone in Tazmily Village (except for Leder and the kids) was willingly brainwashed to prevent another collapse of society. Not to also mention how Tazmily is brainwashed by the Pigmask Army and how the Pigmask Army was brainwashed as well.
  • Claus is also brainwashed into becoming the Masked Man.
  • There's also everyone who was subjected to the Nice Person Hot Springs, which supposedly turns people (and animals!) nice, when in reality they are brainwashed to adore Porky and agree with his decisions.
• Braggart Boss: The Mole Cricket and The Squeekz.
• Bread and Circuses: Most people seem relatively pleased with the way society changes thanks to the Pigmasks. Several people express their concern for the fact that Lucas's family doesn't have a Happy Box.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: In the attic of Club Titiboo in Chapter 4, Lucas finds three presents lined up in a row. From left to right, they contain "some nice stuff", "some rice stuff", and "some nice rice stuff."
• Break the Cutie: Lucas. He goes through a lot of stuff throughout the game, culminating in the worst thing he has to do at the end.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • Sparrows explain the gameplay mechanics in what they call "game speak," and early on in the game, a character addresses you directly, asking you to enter your name. There is also a character who is induced to be sick because you (the player) just won't let up on hitting A to advance the dialogue. And let's not forget that imagining "something called a B button" is how you learn to dash.
  • The player gets directly asked their name, and then told to forget that they were ever asked. You're asked again in a later chapter, having the asker being very nervous about breaking the Fourth Wall, and telling Lucas to be careful or he might inconvenience the player.
• Brick Joke: Flint's traveling doorknob. Also Mike's "slightly unclean and not very tasty" cookies are mentioned again in Chapter 8. He even asks if you forgot about them.
• Broken Bridge: Parodied over and over again:
  There are ants under your feet. You might accidentally step on them, so please don't continue in that direction.
• Broken Record: Many of the hallucinations in Tanetane Island repeat the same phrase over and over again.
  "You haven't eaten? You haven't eaten? You haven't eaten? You haven't eaten?"
• Brown Note: The extremely distorted house theme remake that plays when you enter the Dur-T Cafe.
• But Thou Must!: It doesn't really matter what option you pick in any choice; all that'll happen is you'll get a slight change in the dialogue, and sometimes be forced to answer again.
  • An interesting variation occurs at the end of Chapter 4. If, somehow, you lose to O.J. in Stone-Sheet-Clippers, a man will come in and tell you to keep the noise down. O.J. won't remember his (winning) result, and you get to try again.
  • Special mention goes to the final choice of the game — choosing not to pull out the last needle results in Lucas doing it anyway, actively defying the player to do what he knows is right. There was even special Unused text that was supposed to show if you chose No, which was "No one can stop Lucas from pulling the needle. No one.
  • A particularly cruel example occurs throughout the entirety of Salsa's first chapter. The player can refuse to do everything Fassad tells Salsa to do, but he'll just use his remote for the shock collar he has on Salsa to electrocute Salsa over and over and over again until you agree to do it.
• But Not Too Challenging: At one point in The Empire Porky Building, the player has to play three games against Master Mini-Porky, a robotic copy of Porky. In order to progress the player has to lose, but just barely. The reason being is that while Porky is too much of a Sore Loser to accept being beaten, he's also too proud to accept an easy win, meaning that you have to lose by such a small margin that it makes Porky's victory seem more impressive.
• Butt-Monkey: Duster just can't seem to catch a break, can he?
• By "No", I Mean "Yes": During the Mushroom Samba trip, when looking in one of the mailboxes, this text pops up:
  There's nothing inside...except for hundreds of rat corpses.

C

• Cain and Abel: Claus ends up fighting Lucas to the death for the final Needle. Not that they want to be.
• Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": Psychic Points, or PP, take the place of standard MP to match with PSI being the series' equivalent of standard RPG magic. Also, critical hits are called "SMAAAASH!!" hits instead.
• Call-Back:
  • The game starts off the same way EarthBound did, with a boy sleeping in his pajamas being woken up by loud knocking on the door.
  • Also, the start of Chapter 4 mirrors Chapter 1's aforementioned Call Back, with EarthBound's iconic "Rise and Shine" music playing while Lucas wakes up in his pajamas at home. Except this time he has no mom or brother to wake him up by knocking on the door.
  • The Magypsy Houses are nearly identical to the Shell Houses in Magicant in EarthBound Beginnings.
  • The Hall of Memories is one big Call-Back to EarthBound, featuring several objects and characters involved in said game, and they even have the exact same sprites.
  • The Runaway Five in EarthBound save Ness and Jeff from the Clumsy Robot by joining in the fray and fighting him, flipping his switch to deactivate him. DCMC come to the rescue when Lucas and co. are fighting a Hopeless Boss Fight against the Porky Bots.
  • When Ness got all the Melodies from the Sanctuaries, he has a flashback of when his parents were doting over him as a baby. In the Final Battle of the game, Lucas and Claus have a flashback to their parents watching over them as babies, which helps bring Claus back to his senses.
  • "Thank you for taking the time to read this sign. This sign loves you," is a Call Back to a mouse from EarthBound in Threed that said pretty much the same thing.
  • The Mischievous Mole will sometimes waste its turn feeling homesick, which was a status effect exclusive to Ness.
• Camp Gay: Subverted with the Magypsies. Their personalities and physical appearances fit the camp trope like a sock, but according to Alec, none of them have genders. They just act and dress that way because it's how they like to act and dress.
• Canine Companion: Boney expands on King's role at the beginning of EarthBound by being a near-permanent party member from Chapter 4.
• Can't You Read the Sign?: There's a sign in the game telling you not to step in a bed of flowers. You have to stand on the flowers in order to read it. This also serves as a Call-Back to EarthBound as there's a similar sign in one of the earlier towns.
• Carry a Big Stick: Lucas and Flint primarily use sticks as weapons. Lighter carries a 2x4 of wood everywhere (which you get to use as a weapon at one point).
• Carrying the Weakness:
  • Boa Transistors and Mecha-Turtles, both robotic enemies, have a chance at dropping the Saltwater Gun, which heavily damages robots.
  • Sticky Slugs drop Saltwater Guns as well.
  • Mobile Graves, which are weak to explosives, drop Running Bombs.
  • The Mecha-Mole! is also weak to explosives, and occasionally drops Bombs when defeated.
• Caught with Your Pants Down: Very rarely, you can have the chance to catch the otherwise terrifying Ultimate Chimera sitting on a toilet in the Labs.
• Celebrity Endorsement: The commercials advertising the game consisted of a post-gameplay interview with Japanese singer and actress Kou Shibasaki.
• Cerebus Roller Coaster: There's a good reason the game's tagline is "Strange, funny, and heartrending".
• Cerebus Syndrome: This game is this to the Mother series.
• Cessation of Existence: Believed to be what will happen to the entire world, and even the Dark Dragon itself, if the heartless Masked Man awakens it.
• Character Catchphrase: "Tonda Gossa!", D.C.M.C.'s trademark greeting.
• Cheerful Child: Claus, at first. What happens to him afterwards is an entirely different story.
• Chekhov's Gift: The Courage Badge Flint gives to Lucas (through Nippolyte) turns out to be the Franklin Badge.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • As early as Chapter 2, when you play as Duster with Wess in your party, you can see a needle stuck in the ground sparkling across the balcony overlooking the courtyard outside. Wess will only give a brief mention of a legend and then quickly dismiss it because "he's not looking for that". That needle happens to be Aeolia's end of existence and one of the Seven Needles Lucas has to pull before the Masked Man does first, which could cause the entire world to cease to exist.
  • Early into Chapter 7, Lucas gets the Courage Badge, which is then taken by a Mr. Saturn shortly afterwards. Near the end of the Chapter, you find out it's a Franklin Badge. Furthermore, and compared with previous games in the series, it cannot be equipped, and will only reflect Electric attacks directed at Lucas. Depending on how well you do against enemies with Electric attacks, you might not even remember you had this item in this inventory, but don't worry — it gets a critical role at the very end.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Leder, who vanishes from the game after the Time Skip, only for him to suddenly come up in Chapter 8 to fully explain the current situation. Also Salsa, who saves Lucas and Kumatora in Chapter 7 after last being seen in Chapter 3.
• Classical Anti-Hero: Pretty much everybody in the main party. Hence why they work so well with one another.
• Climax Boss: The third Chapter Boss, the Pork Tank. It comes during a fast paced escape from the Pigmasks as they start to take over and comes right before the return of Lucas and the time skip.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: Played with during the battle with Porky. After defeating his Spider Mech, he seals himself away in the Absolutely Safe Capsule. You can't hurt him, but neither can he hurt you... eventually allowing you to simply move on.
  Because Porky is sealed inside the Absolutely Safe Capsule, the battle is, by definition, over.
• Close-Knit Community: Tazmily Village, at first.
• Les Collaborateurs: When you explore the Empire Porky Building, you'll find a shell house belonging to the missing seventh Magypsy, Locria. From what can be gathered, Locria is incredibly likely to be the same person as Fassad.
• Collision Damage: The Ultimate Chimera. Simply brushing the thing will result in an immediate game over.
• Combat Medic: Lucas provides all the healing and most of the support PSI, but he's also very strong physically and can unleash increasingly damaging PK Love.
• Comfort Food: Hinawa's fluffy omelets (Or whatever you put as your favorite food).
• Company Cross References: The pork beans resemble the various hovercrafts from the F-Zero franchise.
• Composite Character: The Tree enemies, which look like the Woodohs from the first game and explode like the BigWoodohs/Oaks from both.
• The Conspiracy: Both the Pork Army's real plans for the island, and the villagers true past.
• Constantly Lactating Cow: There is a cow which you can milk if you interact with to receive the HP-restoring item, Fresh Milk. More Fresh Milk can be obtained in this way at any time so long as there is no other Fresh Milk in your inventory. There isn't a calf to be seen.
• Continuity Cavalcade: There's a room near the end the Very Definitely Final Dungeon where you walk down a Long Corridor and the title music to EarthBound Beginnings plays as you walk along it. It then leads to a place that's basically a gallery for iconic objects from EarthBound, complete with a joyful rendition of Pollyanna.
• Continuity Nod: Both of the previous games in the series are repeatedly referenced, most notably on the boat ride in New Pork City. Also, of course, the fact that the theater in New Pork City plays a film consisting of the important moments from EarthBound. There are also three residents of Tazmily who look like Jeff, Paula, and Picky.
  • In the Chimera Laboratory, you can find the book "Overcoming Shyness" and, of course, the hilarious magazine excerpt from the $7,500 hovel in Onett.
  • Dr. Andonuts is first found in the Chimera Laboratory hiding in a trashcan, much like how Lloyd was first met on the rooftop of Twinkle Elementary.
  • One of the Saturns in Saturn Valley sells Strawberry Tofu (which was previously localized as Trout Yogurt).
  • Porky's room in Thunder Tower has a few too. The Teddy Bears that were NPC party members in EarthBound ("You almost feel like it could take your place for you"), and a jukebox that plays the shop and hotel themes from EarthBound.
  • And, on a sadder note:
  "Dad... I thought you said anything could come true, as long as we prayed from the bottom of our hearts?!"
• Conveniently an Orphan:
  • Deconstructed heavily with Lucas. Although he technically isn't an orphan since his dad is alive, he is still left all alone and it's not just for plot convenience.
  • A more straight example would be Kumatora.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: The Pigmasks resort to some... highly unorthodox means of coercion to make the Mr. Saturns say where the Needle is.
• Cool Helmet: Misdirecting names aside, the Masked Man's helmet is very cool.
• Cool Shades: The Rock Lobster enemy has a pair that sorta resemble Kamina's shades.
• Cool Train: There's two trains to ride in Tazmily village; a regular red one and a special green one. What makes the green one so special? It allows you to experience the joy of riding a green train.
• Coordinated Clothes: Claus and Lucas, but with opposite coloration.
• Cornered Rattlesnake: Miracle Fassad starts out just like New Fassad. Once you hit him enough, however, he shows that he's been holding back the entire game by revealing his incredibly powerful PSI skills.
• Cosy Catastrophe: The residents of Tazmily Village are revealed to be this because they brainwashed themselves into forgetting that the rest of the world was destroyed and technology existed in order to live comfortable lives in ignorance of this fact.
• Cower Power: Fassad will do this sometimes in Chapter 3. Made more irritating by the fact that he's much stronger than the character being played.
• *Crack!* "Oh, My Back!": Alec will occasionally waste a turn "complaining about his lower back pain".
• Crapsaccharine World: Quite possibly the most outstanding example of this trope, and definitely one of the most subtle.
• Crapsack World: New Pork City, and the Nowhere Islands after the time skip. Highways, concrete, steel, and technology have dominated the island, practically all of the local wildlife has been changed into robots or hideous chimeras, Tazmily has been abandoned after it was formed into a modern suburban-style town, and the familiar townsfolk of Tazmily have become distant from each other. Some are now jerks to Lucas and his party when they once were kind to them. In New Pork City, Porky rules with an iron fist. Lights, noise, junk food, media propaganda, and other artificial distractions are the way of life, and nature does not exist outside of a polluted trash dump.
• Credits Montage: Every character and location you visit plays throughout the credits.
• Creepy Child:
  • The Masked Man is about twelve.
  • Played with in the case of Porky: He's physically thousands of years old, but still has the mental age of a bratty child.
• Creepy Cockroach: The Violent Roach and Filthy Attack Roach from EarthBound are back. A third variant, the Metal Attack Roach, is also introduced, appearing in the New Pork City sewers and the Empire Porky Building's bathrooms.
• Creepy Gas-Station Attendant: In the middle of the desert, in a parking lot next to the road, there is a clearly extremely dilapidated and run-down building with cracked windows and worn-out paint. Inside, it is quite possibly the nastiest, filthiest restaurant of all time. The floors are extremely covered with dirt and mold, there's somehow still a ceiling fan, the walls are heavily cracked, all of the chairs (along with the pool table) are busted. Even the jukebox has rotten anchovies inside it. There is one woman still "working" at this horrifically decaying "restaurant" (at least, standing behind the counter). There is also a built-in bathroom. "Don't run inside. You'll kick up the mold spores."
• Creepy Good: The Friendly Ghosts with Black Bead Eyes in Osohe Castle. Their comments are creepy, but they won't harm you. They even offer things for you to buy.
• Crime of Passion: In the first chapter, after finding out that his wife Hinawa was killed, Flint falls into a rage and attacks everyone near him. He ends up being placed in jail as a result.
• Critical Hit: The satisfying SMAAAASH!! attack.
• Crosshair Aware: The Natural Killer Cyborg's End of the Century Beam sets a crosshair over each characters' life meter. They're just for intimidation, though.
• Crossing the Desert: Salsa the monkey in Chapter 3.
• Cue the Rain: In Chapter 1, Ed says the only thing that can make things stranger is if it were to start raining. Guess what happens.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Lucas's party vs. the King Statue. Due to the way the fight works, one side will end up curb stomping the other; either the statue with its incredibly powerful attacks or the party with either PK Flash or a New Year's Eve bomb.
• Curtain Call: The game has a character roll at the very end right before the production credits, just like EarthBound.
  • The title of the music track accompanying said character roll is named after this trope.
• Cute Critters Act Childlike: The Mr. Saturns. They're cute, innocent, playful, friendly, have a bizarre speaking syntax and their dialogue is even written in in a font resembling loopy, childish handwriting. Despite this, however, they are extremely intelligent and capable of building technology light years ahead of what humans can.
• Cutscene Incompetence: On more than one occasion, Lucas and his friends will find a Needle before the Masked Man and the Pigmasks — only for them to show up seconds later and spend elaborate several-minute-long sequences landing and setting things up, which is more than enough time for Lucas to pull the damn Needle.
• Cut the Juice: The only way the Ultimate Chimera can be defeated is by pressing a button on its back.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Almost all^note If one heads left after entering New Pork City, there's a person there who says some of the reconstructed are still tame. of the "reconstructed" animals are made violent and murderous by their "enhancements". (Then again, so are the purely biological Chimera.) In addition, this isn't an unexpected side effect. The corker? After the experiments, knowing full goddamn well what the effects would be, Porky ordered the reconstruction of Claus, resulting in his transformation into a virtually soulless killing machine who Porky can use to pull the Needles.

D

• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: After Lucas loses his mother, followed shortly afterwards by his brother going missing, his dad Flint becomes extremely distant from him and spends almost all of his time away from home. What did he spend all that time doing? Either grieving at his wife's grave or searching for his missing son.
• Daddy's Girl: Hinawa seems to be close to her father, from what little we see.
• Darker and Edgier: Considerably so compared to the first two games. To name a few examples; you know how Ness from the previous game couldn't go far without having to call his mother for support, due to homesickness? Lucas can't, because his mother was violently killed in front of him when he was younger. And Ness having a young, sweet sister? Lucas's twin brother essentially commits child suicide at the end of the game.
  • Hell, the game was originally going to be even DARKER than the final version. The Dummied Out "nightmare" backgrounds show that some of these elements were in the GBA game for a part of its development, too.
  • It could even be argued that this is Nintendo's darkest game (not counting Eternal Darkness), period.
• Dark Reprise: The best songs from the first two games, and light reprises later.
  • A minor-key version of the new party member theme plays when Fassad joins Salsa.
  • A slower descending variation of the key item theme plays when the party finds an item they had hoped not to find — most prevalent with the Happy Boxes in Chapter 3.
• Damage Over Time: Whenever a character receives damage or healing, their Life Meter rolls down or up to the new value over time (rather than instantly), and the rolling can be slowed down by Guarding in order to give your party more time to heal the wounded member. Side effects like Critical Existence Failure do not trigger based on the raw damage a character has received, but the value that's currently shown on their meter instead. When a fight ends, the rolling stops, regardless of what value it was progressing toward.
  • There's more traditional examples that exist as well, with status ailments like poison, which simply deal steady HP damage each turn (or while walking around the overworld).
• Dead Character Walking: Literally, since the characters walk one after another, they are still able to walk around, but their sprite looks excessively tired. Also, you're prevented from running so long as any of your party members are downed, which, naturally, can be problematic if you're caught in the middle of a dungeon, surrounded by enemies and without a way of reviving them.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: You go back to your last save point and the money you currently have in your inventory is halved. That's it. Not only is money not even a issue for the first three chapters, but it automatically goes into a bank, so you probably won't be carrying much of it around.
• Death Mountain: Mt. Oriander is a whole mountain range with a high cliff side. Only Duster's wall staples can reach certain areas. Argilla Pass is located the base of the mountain range and the Drago Plateau is at the top.
• Death Seeker: Implied with Lucas, twice. First time is a little-known dialogue chain from Mr. T" if you try to go down the train tunnel without first talking to Old Man Wess. It's very funny. The second is during Chapter 6, when he sees his mother's ghost walking through a sunflower field. While he tearfully chases after her, in an act of desperation, he ends up pitching himself off a cliff trying to reach her. It's not funny at all.
• Debug Room: Only accessible with Codes, the Debug Room has many NPC's (even NPC's of formerly playable characters) that you can talk to to mess around with all the stuff in the game. You can manipulate your party to be whatever of the 7 playable characters you want, along with Guest Star Party Members, have up to 5 people in your party (though, if all 5 of those people are Playable characters, only the first 4 will show up in battle), start any chapter of the game and start at any point of each Chapter, manipulate your levels, and look through all outro and intro effects, even ones that are unused in the final game.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: Sadly enough, Hinawa is killed in the first few minutes of the game. While the game exemplifies that Hinawa is a great mother throughout the whole game, Flint, on the other hand, is seen as neglectful and distant towards Lucas after her death (that is, in the search of Lucas's brother, Claus).
• Decomposite Character: Both of the last two bosses take different elements from Giygas, both in terms of story and gameplay. Porky Minch inherits his status as the Big Bad and as an alien (albeit one through time rather than space) along with his inability to be conventionally defeated and incomprehensible attacks. The Masked Man gets his personal connection to the protagonist, a buried longing for maternal love, and a more defensive battle that requires using said maternal love to end the fight.
• Defend Command: Not only does it lower damage taken, it also greatly slows the rate your rolling HP meter decreases during that turn. It could potentially be what a mortally-wounded character needs to stave off KO just long enough to be healed.
• Defiant Stone Throw: Wess speaks out about the horror of what happened to Tazmily Village in the town square, but gets silenced soon after in Chapter 3.
• Deflector Shields: Counter and PSI Counter, reflecting half of physical or PSI damage (depending on the ability) back at the opponent. Shield and PSI Shield accomplish a similar effect of halving damage but without returning damage to the attacker.
  • The Franklin Badge reflects all lightning-based PSI back from Lucas back to his attacker. It seems great... until the last battle.
• Depopulation Bomb: Leder states that the Nowhere Islands is the last bastion for those who escaped from the previous cataclysm.
• Depraved Bisexual: It's speculation, but if the occupants of his "Fan Room" are anything to go by, possibly Porky.
  • Bestiality Is Depraved: And the "Fan" in question who raises this speculation? He's a robotic centaur.
• Description Porn: Inverted with the Dur-T Cafe.
  "A very filthy pool table." "It's dirty, but it's a jukebox. It's a jukebox, but it's dirty. It's covered in cigarette stains and old ketchup. Moldy rotten withered old anchovies are stuck to the record, but it somehow managed to spin anyway." "Lots and lots of old chewed gum is stuck to the bottom of this table." "These chair cushions have huge springs sticking out of them." "Don't run inside. You'll kick up the mold spores." "An old piece of paper. The letters are so dirty and faded that they are unreadable."
• Detachable Doorknob: When the Pigmask Army sets the Sunshine Forest on fire in Chapter 1, Thomas, Tazmily Village's fireman, runs over to Flint's house for help. Since it's the middle of the night, Flint isn't awake, resulting in a desperate Thomas pounding at his front door and tugging at the doorknob, prying it off in the process. This sets up a Running Gag throughout the game where the broken-off doorknob ends up traveling all over the Nowhere Islands through various mishaps.
• Detect Evil: On Tanetane Island, Boney is the only one in the party who can tell the enemies are bad news. He's the only one who's sober at that point, and the enemies would otherwise be obvious.
• Deus ex Machina: When Lucas and the party fall from the flying ship, all four of them land in safe places. Lampshaded by Alec, who remarks that the fact that Hinawa showed up in a dream to warn everybody where they were going to fall is "As strange as strange can be."
• Deus Exit Machina: In Chapter 4, when Violet (Kumatora) makes Lucas and Boney go through the attic, one of the most difficult areas in the game, by themselves to avoid conflict with the guards. The worst part? A few sniffs from Boney will reveal that nearly everything in there, including the Jealous Bass, is weak to Kumatora's PK Fire.
• Developer's Foresight: This game is full of it if you know where to look.
  • During the forest fire, after you save Fuel from the burning house, both of you will be covered in soot. If you choose to take a dip in the hot springs, you'll be cleaned off from the neck down once you get out.
  • After Hinawa's funeral, but before Flint sets out to rescue Claus, if you go down past Scamp's house to where the Pigs are, you'll find Fassad who's about to go and start talking to the Village about the concept of money. Makes sense continuity wise, granted that he arrives in the village and introduces money the very same day.
  • After going through the dark cave in Chapter 1 with Alec (shortly before you fight the Drago that killed Hinawa), you can climb up a ladder and startle two Pigmasks, who scramble down the cliff and retreat into their saucer... or you can avoid them entirely. If you do, a cutscene will play as you leave the area, showing the saucer taking off normally, unaware of your characters.
  • The flowers at Hinawa's grave change with every chapter.
  • When you start Chapter 2, chests that were already opened remain open and empty.
  • As you make your way to the graveyard in Chapter 2, you meet a certain guy in a turban with a monkey. After the encounter, if you visit the Yado Inn, the second room in the hallway (the one with the frog), cannot to be entered.
  • In Chapter 2, if you talk to Pusher on you way back to the castle with Wess, he mentions plans on building an old folks home.
  • The first time you meet Kumatora, she attacks you with PK Freeze. After she joins your party, the exact amount of PP used from the attack has been deducted (which can also be explained by the pendant she dropped also adding on the same amount of PP).
  • An amnesic Duster is dubbed Lucky at a point in the game. If you named him Lucky, the nickname will be changed to Gorgeous. Likewise, Kumatora goes undercover and briefly takes up the name Violet. If you named her Violet, the name will be changed to Kumatora.
  • Early in Chapter 2, Wess tells you to check behind the house to find a Thunder Bomb. If you check behind the house in later chapters, even after the timeskip and Wess's house was torn down and a senior citizen's home was built where his house stood, you can still find Thunder Bombs. They re-appear every time you go to the crossroads and back.
  • There's a newspaper in a nursing home that the player will likely never check more than once, but its contents change with each new chapter, sometimes more often.
  • Prior to Chapter 4, one of the gravestones in the cemetery says it's reserved. If you check it again after the three-year skip, you'll find that Scamp is buried there. Checking the scenery in his house will refer to Scamp in the past tense.
  • When fighting New Fassad, if you were to attempt using Kumatora's PSI Magnet she can steal PP from him, despite him not using any PSI for the entire battle. This is because he actually is a PSI user, the traitorous Magypsy Locria.
  • If you need to heal by hot spring in Tanetane Island while in Mushroom Samba mode, Boney will opt out of it. When you meet the Magypsy of the island, Mixolydia, after healing there, she will comment on how you stink. Rely only on Lifeup, Items, and the shrooms at the entrance to heal yourself without the hot spring, and she won't say this. Pass by that area outside the influence of the shrooms and you'll see why... that's a sludge pool, not a hot spring!
  • Remember the locked rooms in the Toilet Dungeon? Remember the one with water leaking outside? If you use a walk through wall code when you're in a room next to it, you can enter and see the flooded room, entirely programmed!
  • When Lucas and his friends travel to Thunder Tower by commandeering the Pigmasks' "Pork Bean" hovercraft, the Pork Bean will crash at a predetermined point, leaving the player without a method of quickly traveling back to that area once they return to Tazmily. However: if you return to the hangar under the cemetery after the group travels to Saturn Valley, you'll find that the Mr. Saturns have left a new Pork Bean for the group as a gift—built to look like a Mr. Saturn instead of a Pigmask.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: After Claus comes back to his senses and regains his memories, he electrocutes himself. In his last moments, he embraces Lucas like a brother should, and is cradled by him until he dies.
  I'm glad you could be with me just before the end...
• Died Standing Up: Parodied by the Pigmask who watches you crash the Pork Bean.
  He's passed out.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: The band D.C.M.C. plays "King P's Theme", and the song "The D.C.M.C. Theme" is Duster's theme song.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: The dragos, animals who are indistinguishable in every way from tyrannosaurus rexes, except for the fact that they're as friendly as puppies. The only exception is the Drago that was kidnapped and turned into the Mecha-Drago.
• Dirty Harriet: Kumatora gets a job as a waitress in Club Titiboo in order to get information on Duster's condition. While not explicitly a sexual occupation, it clearly involves a lot of sensual behavior.
• Disability Superpower: Itoi deliberately left it up to interpretation, but it is inferrable that Duster's crippled leg makes him better at his thief arts.
• Disappeared Dad: He's alive. He still lives in the same house. He's just... not really there.
• Disappears into Light: The Magypsies.
  • There's also an unused sprite of Hinawa's ghost dissapearing into light.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • The Squawking Sticks outside the factory in Chapter 4 have a 5% chance of dropping a Good Stick. There'll be no better weapon available for Lucas for the next couple of chapters, so it may be worth your time to try and obtain it as soon as you can.
  • At the beginning of Chapter 5, you can backtrack to Osohe Castle and defeat Lord Passion; for doing so, you'll get the Mystical Shoes, which will last Duster all the way through to Chapter 7, if not the rest of the game.
  • Black Beanlings give way too much experience upon defeat. If you can kill just one in Chapter 4, you'll skyrocket by like 10 levels, and steamroll everything.
• Disney Villain Death: Fassad ironically slips on his own banana peel and falls off of the very top of Thunder Tower. Somehow, he is reconstructed into a horrifically ridiculous cyborg machine that "speaks" through trumpets jammed through its nose, and thus needs a robot interpreter to translate what he is saying
• Disproportionate Retribution: Anyone in Tazmily that doesn't get a Happy Box and refuses to embrace change is shamed by the rest of the townsfolk and has their house detroyed by lightning. The last bit is somewhat justified, as the Pigmask army is targeting the houses of those who don't own a Happy Box in order to force them to do so.
• Dissonant Serenity:
  • Every line of Porky's dialogue, considering how bombastic his theme music is and the fact that he's trying to destroy the island for a quick laugh.
  • The Masked Man never emotes. Ever.
• Distant Sequel: Mother 3 is set an indefinitely long amount of time after the events of EarthBound; by this point, the world already experienced an apocalypse, with the survivors deliberately erasing all of their memories about life before the cataclysmic event.
• Distressed Dude: Duster, in Chapter 7. He wasn't in much danger, though, just bored beyond belief of "scary" stories.
• Does Not Like Spam: Every character except Flint, Lucas and Duster is not fond of cheese. Yes, really.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • The process of learning new PSI abilities is deliberately evocative of menstruation; Lucas and Kumatora suddenly get a high fever, which temporarily disables the run feature, as the party can't move around too quickly without agitating them. After walking around enough, the fever dissipates and the PSI ability is learned. The metaphor is further heightened by the fact that Lucas doesn't learn PSI until after the Time Skip — puberty typically begins later for AMAB kids (though in real life, only AFAB people menstruate).
  • One room in the Empire Porky Building dedicated to his 'biggest fans'. The only people in the room are a harem of scantily clad girls (plus a male-presenting Oxygen Machine, which kisses people to give them air), the furniture consists of recliners, and the music is slow and sultry.
• The Dog Bites Back: Dr. Andonuts gets back at Porky's abusive treatment of him by tricking him into using the Absolutely Safe Capsule, which imprisons him for all eternity.
• Doomed Hometown: Sort of. It's not destroyed, but corrupted, turned into a modern city, and eventually completely abandoned. And it ends up being destroyed in the ending.
• Don't Ask, Just Run: The advice you're given on how to deal with the Ultimate Chimera. You better follow it.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: Porky will force you to play a series of competitive challenges against his pathetically inept Porky-bots during the ascent through the Empire Porky Building. The only way to progress is to give a 90-99% percent effort and lose by a hair or else he will get mad and accuse you of cheating (win a game) or losing on purpose without trying (lose a game by more than a hair).
• Downer Beginning: Did we mention already that Chapter 1 is called Night of the Funeral?
• Dragons Up the Yin Yang: The two dragons in the sanctuary just outside of the Sunshine Forest. Oddly enough, they shape a Yin-Yang symbol.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • After Claus goes missing, Flint spends the next three years desperately searching for him. However, at the end of Chapter 1, the audience sees that Claus is lying collapsed and motionless, as Flint obliviously goes in the other direction.
  • Everytime Lucas and the Masked Man come face to face and don't recognize their twin.
• Dramatic Timpani: The whole soundtrack has some form of a timpani, but the Big Bad's theme is more recognizable.
• Dramatic Unmask: The Masked Man removed his mask. His face looked just like Lucas's. It was Claus.
• The Dreaded:
  • Master Porky, who else?
  • Lucas and co., to the Pigmasks, once they've gotten themselves a reputation.
• Dreadful Musician: When you come across Mr. Passion in Chapter 2 while storming Osohe Castle, the first thing you hear is a strange static noise that sounds nothing like music and the whole room and items in it shaking violently. He says that he is playing a Beethoveen piece, but his attempt sounds nothing like anything of the sort of piece he's trying to construct.
• Dressing as the Enemy: Lucas and company go undercover as Pigmasks at least twice.
• Driven to Suicide: Claus, realizing what he's done as the Masked Man, asks Lucas to forgive him and then unambiguously kills himself so he can be with his mother again.
• Drop Ship: You can see these used by the Pigmasks.
  • Flying Saucer: You can see a shadow of one just as Hinawa releases the carrier pigeon of the prologue.
• Dub Text: The Fan-translation has this, but it's loosely based on the Japanese text.
• Duel Boss: The final battle with the Masked Man, though it's quite tragically one-sided.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: The Barrier Trio, once defeated, has a five turn long death animation where they charge, introduce PK Starstorm to the game, charge, try to use PK Starstorm but be too weak to, then strike one last Barrier Pose.
  "It was spectacular." FWOOSH!
• Dying Town: Tazmily Village gets progressively abandoned in Chapter 7 as everyone moves to New Pork City. By the time of Lucas's last visit, the place is nearly empty.
• Dysfunction Junction: The moment tragedy strikes the village for the first time, no one knows how to react. And when Fassad shows up with money shortly afterwards, nearly everyone gets easily persuaded and corrupted by it. And then it turns out this is all a result of them not wanting to deal with these same issues again.

E

• Early-Bird Cameo: Fassad makes an appearance at the beginning of Chapter 2, and more obscurely, halfway through Chapter 1.^note just south of Wess' house, you'll see him trying to persuade Butch to sell his pigs to him.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: There are multiple ways to interpret the ending, but if you interpret it happily, definitely this.
• Easily Conquered World: To Porky, this may be the case for Tazmily Village and even the Nowhere Islands after the time skip.
• Easter Egg: There's lot of 'em.
  • If you talk to one of Butch's Pigs in Chapter 2, he'll say that he knows a Pig who has inside information on "Something-or-Other 3."
  • When a Pigmask offers Lucas a gift saying it's "strictly" on a friend basis, if you talk to him again and pay close attention, you'll notice that Lucas actually says something and talks back to him, being the only time in the game (besides in the Debug Room) that you see Adolescent Lucas's talking sprite. Most people miss this because Lucas just repeats exactly what the Pigmask says to him, and assume it's another case of Welcometo Corneria.
  • If you show the Friend's Yo-yo to the Masked Man in the middle of the first fight with him, the text will say "The Masked Man was happy for Lucas!"
• Easy Exp: There's a dung beetle in Chapter 3 who will give you experience points in exchange for balls of dung.
• Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: While the enemies can usually be dealt with in a couple of turns, the bosses are all really tough, especially from Chapter 3's final boss onwards.
• Egg McGuffin: The Egg of Light. Though it doesn't really do anything.
• Elemental Tiers: Elemental attacks have different areas of effect. Freeze is a single-target, Fire hits every enemy but does less damage, and Thunder targets a random enemy, but bypasses PSI Counters and PSI Shields unlike the other PSI attacks. So if you're fighting multiple enemies that are weak to Fire or Ice but have Shields, you'll want to use Thunder if you don't have the Shield Snatcher, and if you have enemies without Shields, Fire is your better option for clearing out enemies quicker.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: PK Love Ω for Lucas and PK Starstorm for Kumatora, both of which are learned at the end of Chapter 7. Also, chances are that Lucas's Refresh and Kumatora's PK Ground won't be learned until near the very end of the game, unless you grind a lot.
• Emperor Scientist: Porky would be one, if he wasn't stealing all his technology from either Dr. Andonuts, the Mr. Saturns, or possibly Giygas.
• The End... Or Is It?: The end of the game seems to be this, but if you walk around when you get to that screen, it turns out everyone's alright. They're only just out of this world.
• Ending Theme: A medley of the three most important songs in the series, The Eight Melodies, Smiles and Tears, and the Love Theme.
• "End of the World" Special: The entire journey of Mother 3, or late into the game in Chapter 7, is to see who will pull the majority of the 7 Needles sealing the Dark Dragon, allowing that person's heart to influence how the world will be recreated. In the end, the Needles are all pulled and the world is destroyed, but since Lucas pulls the majority of the Needles, the ending implies that the world is recreated in such a fashion that everyone is still happy and it was for the better.
• Enemy Chatter: You overhear several conversations being held by the Pigmasks.
• Enfant Terrible:
  • Porky may be physically thousands of years old, but he still has the mindset of an immature spoiled brat. An immature spoiled brat who wants to destroy the world for a quick laugh.
  • Tragically subverted with Claus.
• Enraged by Idiocy: Wess really can't stand it when Duster shows "incompetence" as a thief.
• Epic Hail: Wess asks Boney to go fetch Duster in Chapter 1.
• Escape Sequence: The Ultimate Chimera in the laboratory complex. Forget about fighting it — you can't even touch the thing without suffering an immediate game over.
• Eternal Engine: The Factory that digs up soil to make into Claymen, and for that matter the Claymen Factory as well.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: There's a restaurant in New Pork City run by robotic versions of Lardna Minch. Yeah...
• Everyone Has Standards: The Pigmasks spend their time turning animals into the chimeras that the players face... but as it turns out, they're completely horrified of the Ultimate Chimera.
• Everything Has Rhythm: A whole battle mechanic is built around it, as a matter of fact.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: Zombies pop up in Tazmily Village's Sunset Cemetery at night.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Seemingly inanimate objects attacking you is in all of the Mother games.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: There is a segment in the game where Lucas, Kumatora, and Duster eat some unusual mushrooms while desperate for food. The mushrooms cause them to hallucinate that the monsters in the area are characters from their pasts and are tormenting them with their fears. The party dog, Boney, is the only one not fooled, and whines and barks when hallucinations begin to talk to the characters, attempting to warn the rest of the party as to their true nature. He also refuses to get into a beautiful sauna the party can rest in — if you visit it again after the effects of the mushrooms have worn off, you'll find the humans were deliriously bathing in toxic sludge.
• Evil Laugh: Both Fassad and Porky. The former is bombastic and humorous, while the latter is downright chilling.
• Evil Laugh Turned Coughing Fit: In the Empire Porky Building sometimes Porky's laughter will get cut off by him coughing and wheezing.
• Evil Old Folks: Porky, at least physically.
• Evil Reactionary: All of New Pork City and King P's Playroom is this. Heck, you can argue that all of Tazmily Village is this as well after the time skip.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: Two, actually: Thunder Tower (A.K.A. The Tower of Love and Peace) and the Empire Porky Building.
  • The Empire Porky Building has some interesting floors, and can be considered a Big Labyrinthine Building once you reach them:
    • The Fan Room. There are no enemies here, unlike the other dungeon floors, but some of the dialogue from the NPC's here may make some players feel squeamish.
    • The quirky, like this game isn't enough, "all-you-can-pee" dungeon floor. Potty Emergencies can happen here from your fellow NPC's, understandably enough that this game, even the series, lampshaded on.
    • The construction zone floor. Why this floor is in the middle of all the other ones is beyond anyone's understanding. Oddly enough, you can sense that this floor has the same kind of symbolic meaning as the title, what with the concrete and lumber and all.
    • The high-tech lab.
• Exposition Break: You're given one by Leder near the end of the game. To call it boring would hardly be appropriate.
• Extra Turn: Should you succeed in sneaking up on an enemy, or if Duster is in your party and you get lucky, you're rewarded with one of these.
• Eye Awaken: The Ultimate Chimera's reawakening is displayed by a shot of it opening its eyes.
• Eye-Obscuring Hat:
  • Flint's cowboy hat.
  • Technically, the Masked Man does not wear a mask, just a helmet that covers most of his face.

F-G

• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Deftly subverted. Throughout the entire game, we have no indication as to what the Big Bad looks like, other than the fact that he's Porky from the previous game. Come the final chapter, and we're taken to New Pork City, and his face is absolutely everywhere. He still looks exactly the same as he always did, like a less-than-intelligent but still normal pre-teen kid. Then, you confront him, and this is actually the case; he hasn't changed a bit since the final battle with Ness. Psych! Actually a Doombot! Turns out, Porky has changed appearance since his blond bowlcutted days. Oh boy, has he changed...
• Face–Heel Turn: Though the actual turn isn't seen in-game, it is suddenly made clear that Fassad may have once been Locria, one of the seven Magypsies, and secretly allied himself with the Pigmask Army. Later, it's revealed that Claus has one of these, although this was against his will. And then there's Dr. Andonuts from the previous game, though that was also against his will and he gets his revenge in the end.
  • Isaac becomes a Pigmask in Chapter 8. Although he doesn't do anything evil, he says he'd have to be your enemy if you did anything to oppose Porky.
• Faceless Goons: The Pigmasks. Slightly deconstructed in Chapter 7, when the injured Pigmask on Lydia's bed is seen without his mask after Lydia's Needle is pulled, and turns out to be a fairly nice regular guy who even volunteers to look after Lydia's rabbits, and urges that Lucas and his party get a move on despite his duty to dislike them. Also seen in Chapter 5, when some of the Pigmask NPCs wonder if they're doing the right thing when operating the Thunder Tower; and in Chapter 8, when a Pigmask in full uniform and face-concealing helmet, if spoken to, identifies himself as Isaac, having just recently joined the Pigmask Army.
• Face–Monster Turn: The Mecha-Drago is the first significant Chimera you face in the story that's had this. All of the Chimeras are this, they were once just normal, peaceful animals that've been warped by the Pigmasks. But the most tragic, and memorable example of this is definitely The Masked Man, AKA Claus.
• Failure-to-Save Murder: Implied; after Lucas and Claus are found in Chapter 1 but before you learn of Hinawa's death, if you talk to Claus multiple times you hear him saying to himself "Darn it... Darn it...". It's hinted that this is why he rushes back to avenge her.
• Fake Difficulty: Mildly. For almost every random battle music (and even some boss battle music) with regular beats (for the purpose of combos), there's a remix where the beginning sounds the same, but partway through the music there is sped up/slowed down/skipped in almost random places just to trip you up.
• Fake Memories: Nobody in Tazmily Village other than Leder knows of its true origins.
• Fake Town: New Pork City. It was built by the leader of the Pigmasks as a monument to their power. However, more than 99% of the buildings are plywood cutouts.
• False Utopia: Tazmily Village. It was created by people brainwashing themselves into forgetting everything bad about life, and implanting False Memories to make them think that their society had always existed in perfect harmony forever, even though it was actually recently established.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: Even though Mother 3 isn't really aimed at kids per se, but how Hinawa's and Claus's death was treated can be quite mature to a child audience.
• Fan Disservice: The Magypsies live and breathe this trope. They dress like women, but have masculine features up to and including Perma-Stubble.
• Fan Fare: Bum ba-bum bum bum bum bum, bum ba-bum bum bum....
• Fantastic Rank System: The Pigmask Army has a small ranking system that you meet throughout the whole game:
  • Aquatic Mook: The Navy SQUEAL's surround the underwater area of Cerulean Beach.
  • Mooks: Regular ol' Pigmasks in pink uniforms.
  • Elite Mooks: Both the Pigmask Captain and Pigmask Major can qualify as this. The Captain shines a blue uniform while the Major enrobes in a green uniform.
  • Mook Lieutenant: The Pigmask Colonel who dons a cape in a white uniform.
  • King Mook: The Pork Trooper, also called the "Scary Womanizing Pigmask", has his uniform that would be classified as a Heavily Armored Mook.
• Fan Translation Name Change: Yokuba to Fassad, "Yoshikoshi" to "Violet", "Tamekichi"/"Umemaro" to "Lucky"/"Gorgeous", and many more (mostly in an attempt to mimic EarthBound). Hinawa was almost changed to Amber to retain the Theme Naming with Flint, but was ultimately left as Hinawa due to Super Smash Bros. Brawl using that name.
• Fat and Skinny: Bud and Lou, as well as Neckbeard and Skinhead.
• Fate Worse than Death: It honestly doesn't get much worse than being trapped in a tiny capsule, completely alone, with absolutely no way of getting out for all of eternity.
• Fight Woosh: Like EarthBound before it, it comes in three colors depending on how you start the battle. The blue woosh means that the battle will go on as normal. Sneak up behind an enemy to get a green woosh and surprise attack. Red wooshes are when the enemy sneaks up behind you and gets a surprise attack on you! The blue woosh is also used for Boss Battles, but with a different, more dramatic tune.
• Final Boss: Porky Minch is the final opponent of the game with a feasible chance of winning, and is fittingly the central antagonist. See Post-Final Boss below for the fight that comes after.
• Final First Hug: Claus, fatally wounded by his own lightning, stumbles towards Lucas and hugs him for the last time.
• First-Episode Twist: Hinawa's death, which signals the first big turn in the plot, as well as the first big Mood Whiplash.
• First Town: Tazmily Village is a quaint village where everyone gets along. Three years later in Chapter 4, Pigmask technology has modernized it but made people colder, and by Chapter 7 everyone is moving to New Pork City.
• First Law of Tragicomedies: Mother 3 takes a drastic turn for drama during the final hours of the game, where nearly all silliness is dropped. It can also be argued that this happens in the first chapter as well. Other than that, the game is fairly silly and comedic.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: The main trio of offensive PSI: PK Fire, PK Freeze and PK Thunder.
• Flashback: This tends to happen to Lucas often throughout the game.
  • Lucas first gets a couple at the start of Chapter 4, where he's reminded of the painful absence of his mother when he tries to leave the house before getting dressed and how she used to comb his hair while he's dressing himself alone.
  • It happens again in Chapter 6, when he gets one right before he sees his Mother's ghost.
  • A very important one happens in the Final Battle. Lucas and Claus are fighting each other in a heartrending "I Know You're in There Somewhere Fight, and Hinawa's ghost pleads with them to remember their past and stop fighting. The two then have a flashback to when they were babies, when their parents hoped for the best for their futures and had faith that they'd grow up to be wonderful people. This is what finally gets Claus to return to his senses.
    Hinawa: Claus...Lucas...Make us Proud.
• Flavor Text: The main function of the Battle Memory is to expand on several concepts and creatures with information that ultimately has no influence in gameplay.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Li'l Miss Marshmallow, the robot maid that gets furious upon trying to take the Friend's yo-yo and is armed with drills and scissors.
• Flushing-Edge Interactivity: Surprisingly averted. Chapter 8 has a whole toilet dungeon, but none of the toilets there can be flushed.
• Food Chain of Evil: If you get into a fight with a dung beetle and a sand lizard at the same time, the lizard might eat the beetle to recover health.
• Foreshadowing: Tons of it, if you know where to look.
  • Probably the most Notable examples are the Foreshadowing towards the fact that Claus is actually the true identity of the Masked Man, Commander of the Pig Army. First it's implied when Lucas is somehow mistaken for the Masked Man and is said to look exactly like him. Then after Lucas finds out that only he has the power to pull the Needles that can awaken the Dark Dragon and use PK Love, something that not even the Magypsies can do, he later discovers that the Mysterious Masked Man is also able to pull the Needles and use PK Love just like him. This one is especially telling if you remember that before Claus went to fight the Mecha Drago, the Magypsies said that they awakened the power of PSI inside him, and gave him a "Very Special PSI Technique". There's also the fact that when you fight the Masked Man, his Physical Attacks have the same Musical Riffs as Claus's did back in Chapter 1. And finally, everytime Lucas and the Masked Man meet face to face, they both are at a loss for words and have Flashback Stares, implying that they recognize each other on some level. It's easy for people to see the Plot Twist coming very early on with how much Foreshadowing is laid out for it.
  • During the Mushroom Samba most of your party is experiencing on Tanetane Island, one of the hallucinations is of Claus, who will tell you "he'll be at the end" and that he's "the Claus you can't see," which is more foreshadowing to the final battle against the Masked Man.
  • All the way back in Chapter 2 during nighttime, you can find Nana, a girl that lives in Tazmily Village, watching the Ocean near the Beach. If you talk to her, she'll mention that Tanetane Island is supposedly an island of nightmares, but doesn't know why it's known as such. You later find out when the party visits the island and eat the mushrooms on the island to survive that this is because the Mushrooms cause people to have a bad hallucinogenic trip and experience their worst fears come to life.
  • Again with Nana later on in chapter 2. If you talk to her after getting Wess to accompany Duster, she'll comment that she finds it strange that none of the people in Tazmily Village take after their relatives in terms of appearance which hints at the fact that the few people who arrived at the Nowhere Islands after having survived the end of the world built Tazmily Village and erased all their memories of the previous world, essentially taking up new identities with made up pasts and believing that they hald always lived in peace and harmony with each other, in hopes of preventing themselves from destroying what little was left from the world.
  • In chapter 2, if you talk to Dona after getting Wess to accompany Duster, she'll say that she sometimes thinks of leaving Tazmily village, but then realizes that she can't imagine what life outside would be like. Then you get to chapter 7 and everyone in Tazmily talks about moving to New Pork City, deeming Tazmily as a boring place. They eventually do that and abandon Tazmily.
  • There are countless hints about Fassad being a Magypsy, but one of the earliest might be easy to miss. At the start of Chapter 3, Fassad asks the then nameless Salsa to come up with a name for himself, which in turn means that Fassad can understand animals, thus hinting he can use PSI.
  • When Fassad is trying to sell the idea of Happy Boxes to the villagers, he mentions the horrible things that could happen if they don't embrace happiness, such as lightning bolts striking them on a daily basis. This is exactly what happens, in a deliberate way, during the Time Skip.
  • In Chapter 5, if you go back to the Clayman Factory near Club Titiboo and head to the last room in the Factory and talk to the Pigmask there, he'll mention that there are rumors of the Pigmasks having an ulterior motive of searching for a Dragon that's supposedly buried underground and is larger than the islands themselves. Naturally, he dismisses this as false.
  • Also in Chapter 5, if you talk to a Pigmask in the next Clayman Factory you find, they'll mention how the guy who came up with and made the Claymen is a genius, but they can't remember his name and keep mispronouncing it as "Ando, Antoine, Adamantium, Androgyny". You later find out the scientist's name is Andonuts, the same Dr. Andonuts from EarthBound.
  • One of the Moles in Chapter 5 mentions that Omelets came up in a dream and he had no idea why. It's a hint that Hinawa will eventually show up to influence things from the grave.
  • At the start of Chapter 7, if you talk to the people in Tazmily, you'll find they're all talking about "New Pork" and "the Big City", and all of them are heavily considering leaving Tazmily to move there. When you hit Chapter 8 you'll find out that they were talking about New Pork City, the Ultimate Hub of corruption on the Nowhere Islands created by Porky, and the location of the Final Needle.
  • Also in Chapter 7, when you're in the Chimera Lab, if you look in the room on the first floor where they're holding Chimeras, and read the Plaque where there's no Chimera inside, it'll say "PORKY 08, SOLD OUT". Later in Chapter 8, you're attacked by the Porky Bots, all of whom are named "PORKY 00" to "PORKY 08", implying they were made at the Chimera Lab.
  • When you're first in the Chimera Lab, you can find that in one room, there's a projector displaying an image of a "Creature that you've never seen before", but due to the angle of the projection, you as the player can't see what it looks like. If you go back to the lab after Salsa de-activates the Ultimate Chimera, you'll find a Scientist in front of the projector who'll explain that the creature is a Mr. Saturn, the same creatures from EarthBound, and that they've constructed a village to the East of the lab and talk in an unusual way.
  • When you go to the Theater in Chapter 8, you'll find a guy who says that "Your leader is locked up in the MI Hotels", but Lucas and the others have no idea what he means. After you go through the sewers and reach the hotels, you then see he was talking about Leder, who was imprisoned there by the Pigmasks.
• Forced Level-Grinding:
  • The Barrier Trio and the Masked Man can easily be That One Boss for any player... unless you learn PSI Shield Ω (for the former) and Lifeup Ω and PK Ground (for the latter), after which their difficulty is immediately slashed.
  • If you don't grind on Dung Beetles at the beginning of Chapter 3, Salsa will get decimated later on.
• Forgiveness: What makes Claus's final words even more tragic. All he asks for is for his brother to forgive his wrongdoings.
• For the Evulz: Porky's ultimate motivation was that he wanted entertainment.
• Freak Out: When Flint's wife dies, he starts violently lashing out at the other villagers. They can't calm him down and can only stop his rampage by knocking him unconscious.
• Free-Range Children: Like the rest of the series, though it makes more sense this time around since Lucas doesn't really have anybody to look after him and the rest of the party is older.
• Friendly Ghost: The ghosts in Osohe castle who don't have red eyes and actively chase you. They offer you stuff to buy, offer food to you at their party, and when Osohe Castle is invaded by Fassad's troops, they lock themselves up in the kitchen, sad that they don't get to party more. One of the mice in the castle lampshades their friendliness.
• Full-Boar Action: Several enemies. In the words of the Agitated Boar's description, "Calm boars don't deserve to be called boars!"
• Gag Nose: Like in EarthBound, the Mr. Saturns have amazingly bulbous noses.
• Gaia's Lament: According to Leder, civilization collapsed and most of the world become uninhabitable. A group of people used a white ship to flee to the last part of the world that had not been corrupted, the Nowhere Islands, and debated what it was about the old world that made it unstable. After reaching an agreement, they brainwashed themselves to preserve nature and themselves, founding Tazmily Village and unknowingly starting over. When the Pigmasks took full charge, though, their efforts were ruined, and the islands were irresponsibly twisted into a mess of futuristic machinery and modern infrastructure. Either way, Lucas changes it in the ending when he pulls the last Needle... Maybe.
• Gaia's Vengeance: What can be inferred as to what happened before the Nowhere Islands were found. This can be seen in the cancelled N64 version's screenshots showing a ruined Onett.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Chapter 5, Thunder Tower. There is a save frog who is susceptible to trap you in the scenery, rendering the save file useless. Thankfully fixable with a Walk Through Walls cheat code (0200C492:FFFF, you're welcome).
• Gas Mask Mooks: The Pigmasks, used to make them resemble pigs. Despite their helmets, they are susceptible to crying, which is only caused from light flashes or eye contamination.
• Genericist Government: We really don't know what kind of system the Pigmask Army governs. Capitalism? Dictatorship? Fascism? Totalitarianism? Is there even a government established? We may never know for sure.
• Genre Deconstruction: It's Mother. It deconstructs the Japanese RPG genre; no surprise there. However, this game goes even further than its predecessors. Look no further than how the concept of currency is introduced for a singular example.
• Ghost Town: Tazmily, eventually, is wholly abandoned.
• Global Currency: DP, short for Dragon Power.
• Global Currency Exception: The first three chapters have no money at all, since the very concept was foreign at the time.
• Gluttonous Pig: Double-chocolate fried pork chips.
• Golden Snitch: Parodied in the Empire Porky Building, where you have to play a series of minigames against a robotic version of the Big Bad. The final game is apparently worth enough to win, but the point is moot since you're supposed to lose.
• Golem: The Claymen are a near-textbook definition, being artificial humans made of clay that only do what it's told to do.
• Gone Horribly Right: Yes, the Absolutely Safe Capsule will keep you absolutely safe from harm. Nothing can get in it, and nothing can get out of it. Nothing can hurt you, not even yourself. Ever.
• Good Morning, Crono: The Game starts off with Lucas being woken up in bed by Claus's pounding on the door.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: Rope Snake is a living example. He has a weight limit, and ends up losing his grip several times through the story.
• Grand Finale: And how! It's no coincidence that the credits song, "16 Melodies", is a medley of the three main themes of the Mother series ("Eight Melodies", "Smiles and Tears", and "Theme of Love").
• Grapes of Luxury: The women in the Porky's harem room feed him grapes.
• Gratuitous English: "Welcome to MOTHER3 world" (changed to "Welcome to the World of Mother 3" in the Fan Translation).
• Grave Humor: The Sunset Cemetery provides a lot of groaners if you check the headstones.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Actions of Giygas rearing Porky to be his Dragon and inducting him to help with Earth's invasions led him to become the sociopath who goes on to take over the Nowhere Islands and corrupt the wildlife and people. Thanks Giygas.
• Guest-Star Party Member: During the first three chapters, there are various "guest" party members that can (sometimes) help out in battle. Most of them aren't very useful, but Wess certainly fits this trope, and Fassad in Chapter 3 is far more powerful than the main character at that point (which isn't saying a lot, so he's essential to have in battle).
• Guide Dang It!: Done to great effect with the Magypsy mementos. The game gives no indication that they will automatically revive you if you die, and realizing it by yourself can be a Tear Jerker and/or a Heartwarming Moment.
  • There's also no indication anywhere in the game that revisiting Osohe Castle in Chapter 5, to fight an Optional Boss, will yield any kind of reward.
  • Completing the Battle Memory involves fighting the Zombieshroom before eating the mushrooms, even though you'll be guaranteed a Game Over. Fighting him after eating the mushrooms doesn't count. Interestingly, the Zombieshroom becomes skippable after eating the mushrooms...but if you want the Eerie Smile entry, only one particular enemy will give you it. Of course, it's the Zombieshroom. And then the Zombieshroom disappears after you're cured from the mushrooms, so you can't skip it and come back when you actually stand a chance and aren't on a massive drug trip.
  • How to trigger the event flags in Sunflower Fields, which can kind of ruin the impact the chapter for it has. If you just walk to the left, the event flag that triggers Boney won't trigger. You're suppose to zig-zag up and down as you walk instead of walking in a straight line. It's admittedly simple, but it can trip gamers up since it's something that one wouldn't think of, with most likely thinking a Game-Breaking Bug has happened or some form of Copy Protection is taking place.
  • The game is significantly harder if you don't develop a firm grasp of the Sound Battle combo system. And there are 56 battle songs in the game that you need to memorize in order to do so. This can unfortunately come off as impossible for players who have a poor sense of rhythm or tone.

H-M

• Happy Ending Override: This entire game essentially serves as one for EarthBound. If this game actually takes place after EarthBound.
• Happy Rain: Played With in Chapter 1. The start of the rain coincides with Lighter reuniting with his son, which is a somber, but happy, moment. As Tessie points out, the rain is also a good thing because it will help put out the forest fire. However, several other things happen during the same rainstorm that are less than happy.
• Harmless Electrocution: When climbing Thunder Tower, Lucas gets hit by a stray bolt of lightning. Not only does this not hurt him at all, he even gains a new PSI from it, PK Flash.
• Hate Sink: The game will make sure that you feel nothing but disdain for Fassad. He both verbally and physically abuses an innocent little monkey and threatens to have his girlfriend killed if he doesn't obey him, and is responsable for the changes Tazmily village undergoes, including turning its residents into uncaring, self-centered assholes and destroying the houses of those who refuse to get a Happy Box.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Master Eddy, and the Almost-Mecha Lion. Defeating the latter is extremely difficult, considering you've (most likely) only got two party members. If you do, all that happens is it gets back up in the cutscene afterwards. You do get a nice pile of experience, though, so it's not totally pointless to try to win.
• Healing Boss: Both New Fassad and Miracle Fassad are capable of eating Luxury Bananas in the middle of their fights to recover large chunks of HP.
• Healing Spring: In the form of hot springs throughout the whole game. You'll even (somehow) find a hot spring inside a present box. It's the second-to-last spring in the entire game.
• The Hedonist: Porky has traveled through time and space to experience every little bit of joy he can in his extremely long life. After perhaps thousands of years, he has decided to end all existence, just because it's the only thing he has yet to do. Eventually, he's sealed in a capsule that cannot be broken into or out of, forever, and he enjoys it.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: When you put an enemy to sleep, you can hear its heartbeat. Knowing said heartbeat will help immensely when using the Sound Battle mechanic.
• Heel Realization: One of the Pigmasks in Thunder Tower apparently had one of these when visiting Tazmily a day or so prior to speaking to him, having seen how charred the place was from all the Thunder Tower attacks.
• He Knows About Timed Hits: A Mole Cricket informs Duster in Chapter 2 that you can combo hits in battle to the beat of the music.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Comes up every time you name a new Party Member that isn't part of Lucas's family.
• Helpful Mook: The Walking Bushie constantly heals you until either you're fully healed or you K.O. it.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Wouldn't be a Mother game without this trope in place. This time, Lucas's dog Boney is a permanent party member.
• Heroic Mime: Played with even more than in EarthBound: the role of protagonist is shuffled around between characters before the Time Skip, and whoever holds it at the moment is silent, but these characters are perfectly talkative when someone else is in the lead. The exception is Salsa, who never talks at all. Granted, he's a monkey.
  • Lucas hugely deconstructs this trope: it's strongly implied that the reason he doesn't talk much for the vast majority of the game is because of the horrific trauma from watching his mother be mauled to death in front of him. The most dialogue he ever gets is at the very end of the game, after the Dark Dragon is awakened and the Pigmasks are purged from the world; by this point, he's shown to have come to terms with his trauma, allowing him to speak out again.
  • One scene, at the start of Duster's chapter, is a repeat of the same scene in Flint's chapter, except Flint talks at the end, symbolizing the role of Player Character moving to Duster, who doesn't talk for the rest of the chapter.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Bronson speculates that Hinawa risked her life to protect Lucas and Claus from the Mecha-Drago. Also, during the last battle, Flint jumps out to protect Lucas from PK Love Ω twice.
• Heroic Suicide: Claus's suicide in the Final Battle, presumably to leave Lucas as the only one who can pull the needle and rebirth the world.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Everybody in the main party. It seems all they've got is each other, and the occasional friendly animal.
• Hey, Wait!: When Lucas and Boney first arrive at club Titiboo, the guards interrogate them, only for Violet (Kumatora) to come save them. As they finally enter the club, one of the guards says "Hey, kid... (pause) Have fun."
  Boney: (Whew, that was scary.)
• Hidden Depths:
  • Who knew Duster was so good on the bass?
  • Kumatora, of all people, has a soft spot for the Magypsies, though we don't know why for a while. As it turns out, they were her adoptive parents.
  • A screenshot◊ from the Mother3i CD's booklet shows young Kumatora playing the piano in Osohe Castle.
• Hijacked by Ganon: Sort of. The villain turns out to be Pokey (Porky) from EarthBound (1994).
• Hollywood Darkness: Lampshaded in Club Titiboo, when it experiences what is described as "a pitiful excuse for a blackout".
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The Zombieshroom, if you try to fight it without eating the funky shrooms on Tanetane Island (although, this is necessary to do to complete the Battle Memory). The entire party will have 1 HP and 0 PP each with no other way to restore themselves, guaranteeing they will be KO'd on its first turn. If you cheat to beat it without the funky shrooms, after the fight you'll just be standing in front of it again.
• Hot Springs Episode: They're this game's equivalent of a Trauma Inn, so there's inevitably going to be a couple. For a straighter example, there's the part where Lucas learns PSI for the first time.
• HP to One: The New Year's Eve Bomb (which is one of two ways to defeat a certain superboss ^note you can use PK Flash, but it will be harder unless you get lucky) has this effect. Sometimes it's a dud, and it never works on bosses except for the King Statue.
• Humans Are Bastards: In interviews, scriptwriter Shigesato Itoi has said that Porky Minch is a representation of mankind. Ouch.
• Humans Are Flawed: However, the game does feature Hinawa and Lucas (who are both human), who are nowhere near the bastards Porky and Fassad (who is a Magypsy) are. Even in the case of Tazmily being influenced by the Pigmasks, it's arguable that it's just as much that several of them are ignorant from years of living in a controlled environment After the End as it is that they are inherently morally questionable by virtue of being human. Despite this lingering fact, there still seems to be a Rousseau Was Right theme in there, just like all of the Mother games.
• Hurricane of Puns: Alec sure enjoys his da-vine puns, doesn't he?
• Hypnosis-Proof Dogs: Zigzagged. Boney is the only member of the party who doesn't trip on the Mushroom Samba but that's because he refused to eat the mushrooms, not because of any immunity. Also, when the hallucination of the protagonist's assumed-dead brother joins the party, Boney indicates its true nature before it attacks.
• "I Am" Song: I Am Porky
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Once Miracle Fassad is backed into a corner, he reveals he's a PSI user. If you weren't already suspecting it, this is also a hint toward his real identity as one of the Magypsies, who have already been established to be well versed in PSI.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: Lucas is blond, Claus is a redhead.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Both played straight and inverted with the tower the Pigmasks built: to the public, it's The Tower of Peace and Love, to the Pigmasks, it's Thunder Tower.
• Idle Animation: Each Character, even guest star party members gets one of these. For Example, Kumatora yawns and Boney scratches his side with his leg.
• Ignorance Is Bliss: This may be the reason as to why the Tazmily villagers wiped out their memories before settling on the Nowhere Islands. This comes back to bite them later on.
• I Have Your Wife: Fassad and the Pigmask army kidnap Salsa and Samba, a monkey couple. Fassad has Samba put under surveillance and threatens to have her killed if Salsa doesn't obey him.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Indirectly made by Porky, though it's more along the lines of "I Will Not Let Anybody Not Be My Friend Or Else".
  • Played straighter, though, in his relationship with Ness.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: As it's implied by the Tanetane Island trip, one can argue that Lucas blames himself for his brother's death, since while Claus told him not to go with him knowing the dangers, Lucas still didn't stop him from going on the journey that killed him. Same goes for Flint and Hinawa.
• I'll Never Tell You What I'm Telling You!: A variation; in the Chimera Lab, one of the Pig Mask Soldiers will say this to you:
  Pig Mask Soldier: I'm all ticked off 'cause the part-timers who're supposed to come today are late. You're in the way, so go on, get outta here. And don't you even dare think about checking inside the lockers and putting on any pig masks you find.
• Im Dying Please Take My Macguffin:
  • A very rare inversion: the Magypsies will never die unless somebody takes their MacGuffin.
  • Played straight with their mementos, though that's more "I'm Dying, Please Take My Auto-Revive Item".
• I Miss Mom:
  • Lucas shows many signs of this throughout the game, one of the the most notable moments being Chapter 6 when he tearfully chases his mother's ghost through a field of Sunflowers and jumps off a cliff trying to reach her.
  • Claus definitely shows signs of this too, which is why he heads out in Chapter 1 to avenge her death at the hands of the Mecha-Drago. And if the final battle is anything to go by, even 3 years of being brain-washed as a killing machine didn't change this sentiment one bit.
• Immortal Immaturity: Porky Minch, rendered immortal due to time travel abuse, fits the Psychopathic Manchild trope to a T.
• Immune to Mind Control: Despite most of Tazmily and the Nowhere Islands getting corrupted by the Pigmasks and Porky, there are a few characters who stay in their own mind and remain allies to the heroes right to the end, such as Leder, Dr. Andonuts, Lighter, Fuel, Alec, Wess, Bronson, and the boys from DCMC. All of them except for Leder (who is chained up) even stand with Lucas's party in confronting Porky when he reveals himself.
• Improbable Parking Skills: The Pigmask who take you to the Thunder Tower.
  That was some pretty sweet piloting, if I do say so myself.
• Improbable Weapon User: Yo-yos, lumber, banana peels — Duster uses giant staples, a loud insect, a feather, and other "thief tools" to supplement kicking with a crippled leg.
  • Since Boney only gets one relatively weak weapon at the very end of the game, one could argue that his collars are his weapons, since some of them increase offense.
  • Duster's weapons are shoes and he attacks by kicking. His disability is a club foot, yet he is not hindered by his crippled leg because that is how god-tier badass he is.
• Inconsistent Spelling: Despite being a Japan-only game, there are multiple English names used in the fandom for the same things due to a combination of the 1997-1999 EarthBound 64 coverage, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Clyde Mandelin's translation and attempts by other fans. For example, the Mandelin translation follows the lead of Super Smash Bros. Brawl and uses the proper translation of Porky's name, instead of using the erroneous "Pokey" spelling used in EarthBound's official translation.
  • Also, the debacle about the number of possible translations of Tazmily Village's name, including Tazumili and Tatsumairi. Tazumili was used in the NTSC version of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Tatsumairi was the most common interpretation before then. The fan translation went with Tazmily, which comes from both the PAL version of Brawl and a few English sources such as the N64 MOTHER 3 website and Nintendo 64 magazines◊.
  • Some of the names of the characters and places, such as Lucas, Claus, Salsa, Wess, Isaac, and Club Titiboo, were known as Ryuka/Ryukka, Kraus/Klaus, Sarusa, Wes, Yosaku, and the Chichiboo (respectively) in EarthBound 64 materials.
• Infinity -1 Sword: The Real Bat for Lucas (also comes with 50 Extra PP), the Ultimate Shoes for Duster, and the Angel Gloves for Kumatora have the highest attack stat raise. They can be found in presents without needing to roll with low drop rates.
• Infinity +1 Sword:
  • The Mystical Stick for Lucas, Mystical Gloves for Kumatora, and Mystical Shoes for Duster, all granting bonuses to HP, PP, IQ and Speed along with Offense. With the exception to the Mystical Shoes, which are obtained from beating Lord Passion, they have a low drop rate from enemies in chapter 7.
  • The Awesome Equipment, meant for Lucas. The Cloak (lowers fire and ice damage) is a rare drop from the Pigmask Colonels, the Crown (halves the chance of Forgetful status) is guarded by an optional boss and the Ring (increases PP by 30) has to be stolen by luring the Ultimate Chimera away.
• Informed Equipment: Most of the armor and equipment you'll find are badges, charms, rings, bracelets, and other kinds of accessories which would be too small to be visible on the over-world sprites. Played straight with the much less common shirt and hat accessories.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: It's more of a parody than anything when you come across this when trying to leave Argilla Pass in the prologue. This is just one example of the quirky humor in this game.
  "There are ants at your feet. You might accidentally step on them, so please don't continue in that direction."
• Intellectual Animal: Quite a lot of them, but especially Boney. It actually makes Porky's plans seem a lot more sinister the more you think about it.
• Interface Screw:
  • If you win/leave a battle with one or more party member affected by Feeling Strange, your walking controls will be reversed for a short time.
  • Most battle themes have a "Hard" version that plays later in the game and is very similar to the one you are used to combo with... except for certain sections that accelerate, slowdown or outright stop to ruin your rhythm in the middle of a combo.
• Interface Spoiler: Of a sort. When an enemy tries to steal something, but fails, the message is "In the confusion, [enemy] tried to steal an item, [beat] but failed!" Obviously, the beat is there to add a bit of suspense. One problem: when an enemy successfully steals an item, the message is different: "In the confusion, [enemy] stole [a/an/some] [item]!" which makes the "suspenseful" beat pointless since you already know it didn't succeed.
• Intergenerational Friendship:
  • Lucas forges this with Kumatora and Duster, with Lucas being around twelve or thirteen years old after the Time Skip, Kumatora being around sixteen and Duster appearing to be somewhere between his late twenties and early thirties.
  • This could be said of most of the people early on in the game due to the tight knit community that they had.
• In the End, You Are on Your Own: The Final Battle has Lucas alone facing off against his Brother, and being unable to bring himself to attack.
• In Their Own Image: If the Big Bad had his way, the world would be recreated as a world of nothing, essentially. This is due to Claus, remade into a chimera and Porky's puppet as the Masked Man, being so brainwashed that when the Magypsies try to determine what kind of heart he has they simply see nothing there. The Big Bad is aware of this fact, and welcomes it.
• In the Style of: Oddly enough, this game is sort of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Animal Farm.
• Involuntary Group Split: At the end of Chapter 5, when the entire party plummets from a flying ship.
• In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves: One possible moral to the story of this game. It may explain why what happened happened before the game and what became of after the game.
  • Porky mentions this in the first confrontation about the Tazmily villagers.
    Porky: No matter how much you change the rules, no matter how much you refuse to admit defeat, in the end, the creatures known as "people" will always sign their own death warrant by acting out of stupidity and evil.
• Ironic Nickname:
  • Tower of Peace and Love: STAY AWAY!
  • The Old Man's Paradise Retirement Home is anything but. It's more of a prison than anything.
• Irony: At one point or another in the game, you get to play as most of the members of Lucas's family. The only family member you never get to play as is actually Hinawa herself, the Mother in a game named Mother 3. But at least she still is a major focal part of the story given the game's name.
• It Amused Me:
  • Ultimately, Porky's motive was that he was bored.
  • Why does the Jealous Bass fight Lucas and Boney? It's angry because it was replaced by a brand new bass, wants to take out its frustrations on someone, and Lucas and Boney just happened to be there.
• Item Caddy: Boney. While he's not especially powerful, his high speed stat helps a lot when using things like shield killers and bombs.
• It's All About Me: Porky. Minch. The man, er, boy, even has his own Egopolis that serves as the final stage of the game.
• It's All Upstairs From Here: The Empire Porky Building. Then you fall down a shaft/elevator for what seems like forever and descend a long staircase to get to Porky, The Masked Man, and the final Needle.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: How Porky refers to the Masked Man, the commander of his army. Who turns out to be Claus, completely stripped of his memories and emotions.
• It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: While Lucas isn't officially name-dropped as the Chosen One (though he is called this by Leder, in Chapter 8), the fact that he's one of only two people in the whole world who can use PK Love and pull the 7 Needles to awaken the dragon in a time where the world greatly would need its' power as prophesied hints at it. The Magypsies flat out point out this fact too. As such, Lucas definitely fits this trope, given all the traumatizing things that happen to him as he goes on his journey.
  • The trope also applies to Claus as well, as he fulfills the same criteria as Lucas under "Chosen One" status, and because of this, he is robotized and brainwashed into becoming the Masked Man, where his ability to pull the needles and his Psychic Powers are exploited for Porky's personal gain.
• Jail Bake: Flint is locked up in prison at one point, so his son Claus sneaks him a nail file disguised in... an apple.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Downplayed with Kumatora. She's not a jerk, per say, just brash, short-tempered, and a bit of a potty mouth. Regardless, she's still got her heart in the right place.
  • Old Man Wess is more of a straight example. He does care about his son, he just really sucks at showing it.
• Joke Character: Salsa is sort of a Deconstruction: He has terrible attack power, unimpressive stats, and only a few decent special abilities, but he goes through so much abuse at the hands of Fassad you can't not root for the poor guy.
• Joke Item: Lucas and Kumatora both can get the Fake Bat and Fake Frying Pan respectively, as nods to them being the successors of Ninten and Ana and Ness and Paula, due their roles as The Hero and The Smurfette who are the Combat Medic and Black Mage respectively. They even change their instrument sounds when they attack in battle, Lucas's becomes a Wooden Block, and Kumatoras' a Jaw Harp. However, these weapons are weak compared to what you should be equipped and are so expensive that it's not worth wasting your DP and inventory over.
  • The doorknob.
• Just a Machine: Porky believes that the Masked Man is nothing more than his robot slave and has no humanity left in him. Heavenly intervention from Hinawa proves him very wrong.
• Justified Save Point: The save frogs want to record your memories for you, just in case you forget them.
• Kaizo Trap: Some enemies explode upon being defeated, which can take down multiple party members if you aren't careful.
• Kangaroos Represent Australia: The Parental Kangashark enemies are chimeras that are, as the name implies, crosses between kangaroos and hammerhead sharks. They come complete with wall-eyed babies in their pouches.
• Karmic Death: Fassad slipping on a banana peel he himself dropped, so he falls off the Thunder Tower in Chapter 5. Subverted though, as he is revealed to have barely survived the fall later on and turned into a cyborg. Twice over.
  • Remnants of the Pigmask Army tried to escape the cataclysm as it goes into full swing... and couldn't.
• Kick the Dog: Fassad forces Salsa the monkey into slavery and takes every opportunity to abuse him with an electric shock collar, even when Salsa has done the tasks flawlessly.
• Kid Hero: Lucas.
• Kids Are Cruel: Played with in the case of Porky, who may be physically hundreds or thousands of years old, but he still has the mind of a thirteen-year-old, and he is extremely cruel.
• Kids Prefer Boxes: Isaac seems to be more interested in the cardboard his Happy Box came in rather than the actual thing, at least at first.
• Killed Off for Real: Hinawa and Claus.
• Killed Offscreen; We only learn of Hinawa's death by Bronson's account. Her body isn't shown either.
• Killer Yoyo: The Friend's Yo-yo. Three guesses who it used to belong to.
• Kitchen Sink Included: Lord Passion is a ghost who has the ability to hurtle various objects in your direction. Inevitably, this joke ends up being used.
• Knight of Cerebus: As if the game wasn't dark already, the introduction of Fassad as a cruel animal abuser is what makes the player realize that the game won't be cute and innocent colors ever again. And then when the Masked Man and Porky turn up, the line that the game already crossed no longer exists.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Happens to Duster post-Time Skip.
  • The Egg of Light is an artifact capable of inducing and reversing this. Incidentally, it's how Duster's aforementioned amnesia is cured.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Fassad treats Salsa the monkey like a personal slave, constantly insults him, and abuses him with an electric shock collar at every given opportunity no matter how well he carries out Fassad's orders and also threatens to have his girlfriend Samba killed if he refuses to obey him. Fassad gets what he deserves by falling 10,000 feet from slipping on a banana peel, being revived as a human/machine hybrid, and being killed off for good in the sewers of New Pork City. Exploring the Empire Porky Building shows evidence that that Fassad was Locria, the otherwise unseen seventh Magypsy and keeper of the final needle, essentially marking them as a traitor.
• Last Disc Magic: PK Ground, the last PSI move Kumatora learns, is the most powerful PSI tech in the game.
• Last Ditch Move: If you want to survive the battle with the Mecha-Drago, you must have at least sixty hit points at the end of the battle, or his final move will take you down before he is defeated.
• Last Note Nightmare: Both "A Railway in Our Village?" and "Happy Town?" Appropriate, considering the Uncanny Atmosphere of their situations.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Super Smash Bros. Brawl contains many spoilers for the game, including no less than five major plot points.
• Later-Installment Weirdness: The game is this to the Mother series. Not only do you start off on a rural town on a group of Islands that aren't remotely like a Modern Era continent that resembles America, and the fact that there isn't even a concept of Money in your hometown, the villains aren't aliens from outer space, they're humans who've been corrupted by their own greed and selfishness that are working for the Big Bad in order to industrialize the Islands.. This is the only game in the series in which the Starman enemy and all of its variants don't make an appearance. You don't play as the true main character until Chapter 4, and even then the main party doesn't consist of four kids anymore, but of a Kid, his Dog, and a Thief and Princess who are way older than him (the former an adult and the latter a teenager). Each character who dons the role of the main character for each part of the game are Silent Protagonists, but the game fully acknowledges and shows you that when they're not in that role, they all speak normally like any other NPC and have their own personalities, including main protagonist Lucas. That being said, even while in this role, all of the characters still react to the situations around them and don't just act like a blank slate, such as when Flint lashes out at the villagers after he finds out his wife is dead or when Salsa starts crying because of the abuse Fassad puts him through. This is most notable with Lucas in particular, as his sensitive personality bleeds through his silent exterior during particular (especially emotional) moments of the game despite him being this, completely changing the formula that Ninten and Ness set before him. And lastly, the game deconstructs the Artifact Title that Mother 2 brought to the series, by having Lucas's own Mother be a focal part of the story through her death, and how that event sets the tone of the story and influences the actions of the characters from then on, as well as her role in the Finale. Overall, the world and setting are much more medieval and fantasy inspired than before, deconstructing the series to the point of bringing it back to more traditional Eastern RPG roots like Final Fantasy. Which is to be expected, when you end up deconstructing a game series that is known for deconstructing the RPG Genre to begin with.
• Lazy Alias: Defied. At one point, two of your characters adapt aliases. If the names you gave your characters are similar to what their alias would have been, the game provides them a different alias.
• LEGO Genetics: Chimeras are given this treatment.
• Leitmotif: Many, but most notably the militaristic-yet-juvenile Pigmask Anthem and the poignant Love Theme.
• Lethal Joke Item: The Honey Shower usually just summons a swarm of bees, which don't do very much. Once in a while, though, a bear will show up.
• Lethal Lava Land: Fire Mountain is an active volcano just north of Saturn Valley. One of the seven Needles is located here.
• Let's Meet the Meat: In the Good People Spa, you can find a cow in a tube. It says it will make a wonderful steak for Master Porky.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!:
  • Not done intentionally, but forces conspire to separate Lucas and Boney from Duster and Kumatora in Chapter 7. They find Kumatora safe with a Magypsy, and Duster ends up with the Mr. Saturns. Which would be fine and dandy if they weren't being attacked by the Pigmasks.
  • This also happens on a small scale when the group need to search for a jar of pickles. They go their separate ways in the immediate area, rather than sticking to the usual All in a Row setup.
• Let the Bully Win: The only way to pass the "competition" against the Porkybots in the Empire Porky Building is to lose, as the entire thing is organized just to stroke Porky's ego.
• Letting the Air out of the Band: If you feel like it, you can make Salsa fail the special dance that opens the Osohe Castle doors, resulting in this trope.
• Light 'em Up: PK Flash! Although, it's actually mostly an ailment-inflicting technique.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: Lucas realizes PK Flash after being struck by a random bolt of lightning inside Thunder Tower. And Kumatora learns PK Starstorm after Ionia strikes her with Lightning using PSI.
• Literal Genie: The Absolutely Safe Capsule is a particularly horrifying example. True, it will protect whoever is inside it from absolutely anything, but it will also protect everything else from them. As a result, when Porky crawls into it when he believes his luck is running out, neither he nor the good guys can do any harm to each other. That's not the worst part, though. The worst part is that its safety cannot be compromised. Once it's been sealed shut it will never open again, and since it cannot be destroyed by anything in the universe, whoever is inside it will never get out.
• Live Item: If you carry a Fresh Egg with you for too long, it will hatch into a Chick and grow to a Chicken. You can sell the Chicken for a good sum.
• Living on Borrowed Time: Implied to be the case with The Masked Man. Either this, or being saved from the verge of death via machinery.
• Load-Bearing Boss: Mr. Genetor causes the Thunder Tower to fall apart when you defeat him.
• Logical Weakness: Most enemy weaknesses can be intuited, even for moments when Boney isn't around to sniff them out (or when his sniffing ability fails for a reason or another).
• Long-Lost Relative: When your twin brother goes missing and you spend the good part of three years mourning his loss, having him be forced against his will to try and kill you is definitely not a nice way to reunite.
• Lost in Translation: The fan translation, though quite thorough and professional, loses two Punny Names that don't translate well into English; Salsa ("saru", Japanese for monkey, and "salsa") and the Oh-So-Snake ("Osohe" and "hebi", meaning snake).
• The Lost Lenore: After Hinawa is tragically killed, Flint... doesn't exactly recover. Maybe he'd have taken it better, if not for the fact that his son went missing less than a day later.
• The Lost Woods: The Sunshine Forest. Later on in the game is the Murasaki Forest.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: The Masked Man turns out to be Claus.
• MacGuffin:
  • The Seven Needles.
  • To a rather lesser extent, there's also the Courage Badge. It turns out to be the Franklin Badge. And if you take the appearances of the Franklin Badge in previous games to heart, this could be a series-wide Chekhov's Gun.
• Made of Explodium: The Tree enemies and their relatives that explode upon death, as per usual.
• Made of Indestructium: The Absolutely Safe Capsule.
• Magic by Any Other Name: PSI, just like in its predecessors. Interestingly, though, at one point, Mother 3 actually was going to feature more traditional RPG magic, but ultimately, Itoi opted to bring back PSI instead.
• Magic Is Rare, Health Is Cheap: Magic Tarts and Puddings are rare as they ever were, but thankfully, this only really affects Lucas and Kumatora. Boney is an Item Caddy, and Duster (as well as Guest Star Party Members Flint and Salsa) can use skills infinitely with no restrictions. Early game, you can even get lots of HP restoring items for free, since the citizens of Tazmily don't know what money is yet.
• Magikarp Power: A minor example, but Old Milk only heals for 10 HP. Keep it in your inventory long enough, however, and it becomes Yogurt, which heals for 80 HP.
• Mama Bear:
  • The scene at the end of Chapter 3 when the baby Drago calls his momma to flatten Fassad and his men.
  • It's implied that Hinawa once stood up to a fire-breathing robotically-enhanced tyrannosaurus rex in order to save her sons, and sacrificed herself in the process. And even when she's gone, she still works from beyond the grave to help them, saving Lucas's life twice.
• Manly Tears: Flint, when he's informed of his wife's demise.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Kumatora is easily the most masculine character in the main party, despite being the only girl.
• Mature Animal Story: Kinda. Most of the main characters are all human beings, but one portion of it is seen from the perspective of a sentient monkey, and one of the main party members is a "talking" dog. That, and animal life in general plays a very significant role in the story.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The Dark Dragon that lives beneath the Nowhere Islands. Whether or not its metaphorical is never clear, since we never actually see it.
• The Maze: The Mole Cricket Hole is a large maze filled with...well, Mole Crickets.
• Meadow Run: An extremely sad, platonic version of this happens between Lucas and Hinawa's Ghost in a field of sunflowers during chapter 6.
• Metal Slime: Beanlings, Black Beanlings, Soot Dumplings, Bright Smiles, Top Dogfishes and more... and it's perhaps the only game to subvert it with the Mystery Metal Monkey, which gives you good experience when you beat it... just not in the Character Level sense.
• Minimalistic Cover Art: The box art for the game, which serves as the image for this page! Follows the trend of Mother 2 (at least its Japanese box art) with just the Mother 3 logo on top of a plain red background.
• Misplaced Retribution:
  • The Jealous Bass at the attic of Club Titiboo is so jealous of the bass it was replaced with, that it decides to vent its frustrations on Lucas and Boney just because they happen to be there.
  • Fassad blames Lucas and co. for his fall off Thunder Tower, even though it was caused by his own carelessness and habit of throwing banana peels once he is done eating them. For bonus points, his battle theme is called "Unfounded Revenge".
• Missing Mom:
  • Hinawa, who is violently killed in the first chapter of the game, for Lucas and Claus
  • Duster has his father Wess, but there is never a single mention of Duster's mother.
  • Kumatora is an orphan who was raised by the Magypsies.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: The Chimeras that weren't combined with machines (or otherwise made into cyborgs of some kind), which include such wonders as the Batangutan, Horsantula, Ostrelephant and Kangashark. They even provide the page image.
• MockGuffin: The Noble Spittoon.
• Modest Royalty: Princess is Kumatora's title, yet she only sports simplistic purple attire. Subverted as she is not actually royalty and was only given that title by the Magypsies.
• Momma's Boy: Per the course of the series, both Lucas and Claus adore their mother to pieces, and the feeling is mutual. Sadly...
• Money Spider: Enemies don't specifically drop money, but money gets deposited into your bank that you can extract through Save Frogs from Chapter 4 on. But this is purely aesthetic, money does get deposited into your account because you defeat the enemies.
• Monster Compendium: The Battle Memory. Also used as a place where you can replay the scenario of battle with them (enemies won't attack you though) in order to practice your timing at the Combo System with enemies and the song that goes with them.
• Mook Chivalry: Near the end, you fight ten Mecha-Porkies, but only three of them are onscreen at any one time, in part due to the game engine's limitations. This is also done a couple other times, such as the fight against the four zombies. If you get enough enemies in the same spot, you'll only fight three at a time as well (this is easiest in the room in Thunder Tower with the five or six Whatevers).
• Mooks: The Pig Mask Army. They're actually perfectly normal people doing their work.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: The Ultimate Chimera. To the point where it's basically a giant scowling maw with legs.
• Mouth Flaps: Unlike EarthBound Beginnings and EarthBound, Mother 3 features characters' sprites visibly moving their lips whenever they talk.
• Multi-Gendered Outfit: The six Magypsies are genderless snail people, resembling affectionate stereotypes of Camp Gay bearded drag queens. Most of their clothing leans heavily femme, but Doria dresses like a lavender leatherman with suspenders and heels, while Lydia looks more Shakespearean with a ruff or boa. They all guard the Seven Needles with their lives, and each one passes on a Tragic Keepsake to Lucas's party in the form of a razor paired with a tube of lipstick.
• Mr. Exposition: This is Leder's entire purpose. He was the only one not mindwiped on the "White Ship", in case of a crisis.
• Mushroom Samba: Mixed in with some horror. After washing ashore on an island, your starving party is forced to eat some mushrooms. This results in a very bad trip. On the way to sobriety, you can look inside some mailboxes, which are not really there, and find things like "expanding darkness", "an image of yourself, crying", a rotten plate of your most cherished meal made by your mother, and you see images of your friends and family who insult and threaten you. Designer and Mother series mastermind Shigesato Itoi described this as his worst fear, and had to tone down the original script for this area because he was scared to read it.
• Musical Gameplay: In Battle when you choose the Basic Attack command, if you time your A button inputs to the beat of the song, you'll do more hits to the enemy and additional damage, up to 16 hits are possible per Party Member.
• Musical Pastiche:
  • The music when fighting the bat enemies in the first chapter starts with something that sounds very like the "Nananananananana Batman" theme.
  • Ninteen seconds in, the theme for the Natural Killer Cyborg references the the opening bars of Wily Stage 1 from Megaman 2.
• Musical Spoiler:
  • Amongst the many, many things foreshadowing that the Masked Man is Claus, one of them is that his attacks in Chapter 7 use the same "attack riff" as Claus's attacks from the prologue.
  • When Fassad returns with his new "horns", they're squeaking out the sax part of the Magypsy theme.
  • Similarly, if there's any doubt that Lucky, DCMC's bassist is actually Duster, you may recall that his attack riff is a bassline.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Only applies in Japan, but Tessie and Jackie were named after certain characters in EarthBound who themselves had their names modified^note They were originally Tassie and Boris. from Mother 2. "Alec" and "Isaac" were also exclusively from EarthBound, as alternate names for Ness and Jeff respectively.
  • One of Negative Man's turn-wasting lines is to say "Life is but a moment, a meaningless grain of sand...", a paraphrased lyric from Flying Man, one of the songs from the MOTHER album.
    • In addition, he will sometimes refer to himself as a worthless protoplasm.
  • Back in EarthBound, due to limitations, map sprites would often not fit the enemies they belong to. It was especially noticeable in the final visit to Onett and the Cave of the Past, where every enemy would be shown as a weird floating cube (even the two Starman types, considering their weaker variations do have their own overworld sprites, and the Bionic Kraken and Squatter Demon, Palette Swaps of earlier bosses) until the battle starts. Once you reach the caverns under New Pork City, the unfitting sprite makes its grand return... except this time, the enemy behind it, the Minerali, actually is a weird floating cube.

N-S

• Named by the Dub: The character "Elder" was given the proper name of Scamp in the Fan Translation. Trailers for the cancelled N64 version called him Syd.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: "Fassad" is this, if you know Arabic.
• Nature vs. Technology: A major theme of the game involves the conflict between the more nature-leaning heroes who come from Tazmily Village, a town that initially lived in harmony alongside nature without much development, and the more technology-leaning villains, the Pigmasks who modify nature to not only create modern technology but also change the animals of the land into chimeras fit to their views. Narratively, the game starts out very nature-settled especially in Chapter 1 where technology is only somewhat influential but starting in Chapter 4, it moves away into technological landscapes transitioning with an in-between state, finalizing with Chapter 8 taking place entirely in the technologically advanced New Pork City. The logo itself reflects this dichotomy as it is made out of wood, but is shown covered in metal reflecting the transition of the game, at the end of the game after Lucas pulls the last needle the logo is shown covered entirely in wood, implying that nature won in the end thanks to Luca's wish.
• Near-Villain Victory: Chapter 8 is basically a race against time between Lucas and Porky for who can find and pull the last Needle that'll determine if the world is destroyed or reborn. The Masked Man reaches the Final Needle first, and Lucas nearly dies against the Masked Man because he can't bring himself to attack his brother. Thankfully, Hinawa gets Claus to remember who he is, leaving Lucas to pull the last needle.
• Never Found the Body: Claus. Presumably, this is why Flint is so adamant about continuing to search for him, even after three years. The Pigmask army on the other hand...
• Never My Fault:
  • Wess calls Duster a moron and belittles him for bringing Osohe's Noble Spitoon instead of what he was supposed to steal. However, Wess never told Duster anything about what he was supposed to steal other than the fact that it was shiny. Wess also failed to tell Duster that said item was magical and was being guarded behind a doorway that can only be opened by performing a specific special dance.
  • Fassad says that Lucas and co. pushed him off the top of Thunder Tower despite the fact that the fall was caused by his own careless habit of eating Luxury Bananas and then tossing away the peel without bothering to see where it has fallen.
• New Media Are Evil: One interpretation to the Pigmasks and their industrialization of the islands.
• New Neo City: New Pork City.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: You have to leave the Osohe Castle gate open when you leave it. This allows the Pigmask Army to go right on in.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • King P invites and takes you to New Pork City, the location of the final needle. A bit later, he drops you down to the underground area containing it. Had he not done either of those things, he would probably have had the final needle all to himself. It's almost as if he wanted to lose.
  • For some strange reason, instead of pulling the Last Needle when he gets there before your party, the Masked Man just kneels there until you show up.
• Night of the Living Mooks: Zombies come out early in Chapter 2 in the graveyard north of Tazmily Village.
• Ninja Maid: Li'l Miss Marshmallow, the robot maid who works for "King P", will get very, very angry indeed if you try to take her master's precious "Friend's Yoyo".
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: One of the few works to deconstruct this trope. One of the music tracks is called "Tragic Reconstruction" for a reason.
• No Biological Sex: The Magypsies. They are immortal, after all.
• Nobody Poops: Like in EarthBound, averted, and how! Toilets (and people using them) are everywhere. There's even a dungeon made of them in the Empire Porky Building, and you can find many Pigmasks doing their "business" there. Beware the PK Starstorm-using Men's Room Signs, though!
  • One small cutscene features Pigmasks having a conversation that revolves entirely around what to use the hooks in the bathroom for.
  • Not only the Pigmasks use the bathrooms, but the Ultimate Chimera does too. All those Pigmasks it ate have to come out sometime. He doesn't take it kindly if you disturb him on loo. The worst part is that you need to piss him off if you want to get the treasure chest inside the Ultimate Chimera's bathroom stall.
• No Ending: No matter what way you look at it, in terms of literary devices, Mother 3 seems to be lacking a resolution. However, Itoi would rather let the player imagine the ending instead.
• No Immortal Inertia: The protective vines around Chupichupoyoi Temple.
• Nominal Importance: Averted. Minor characters are given names, many of them shout outs to famous people, such as Bronson, Paul, Linda, Nichol, Richie. And of course, Bud and Lou.
• Non-Human Sidekick: Boney to Lucas, sticking by his side throughout all the story and always fighting with him.
  • Tragically subverted with Salsa and Fassad, as Salsa is the one you play as being dragged to fight with Fassad against his will.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: Unlike the first two Mother games, characters who get KO'd in combat don't become ghosts. Rather, they then essentially sleep walk while unconscious once you return to the overworld alongside the current conscious party members. They return to their normal state at 1 HP once a cutscene occurs, though.
  • Like previous Mother games, enemy encounters don't "die" per se; for example, Pigmasks you take down instead surrender after defeat.
• Non-Nude Bathing: Averted, though it may not be immediately obvious. If you look very carefully at the characters' sprites while they are in a hot spring, you can see that they're not wearing their shirts anymore.
• Non Sequitur, *Thud*: Lil' Miss Marshmallow, after receiving one too many hits (and maybe PK Thunders) to the head:
  Ms. Marshmallow: YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW SO SEW SO-SO / GREETINGS CHEESE POPSICLE / THE NUMBER YOU HAVE DIALED / IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PORK CHOPS / FROM EAST TO WEST IT GOES GOES / BROKEN BROKEN / OH SO SOW SEW BROKEN / *whir* *clank* *clunk*
• Non-Standard Game Over: In Chapter 2 if Duster is standing on the spot where the giant ball is supposed to fall from the statue when it falls he'll instantly be crushed leading instantly to the "Retry" screen.
  • Also if the party makes contact with the Ultimate Chimera at any time there is a simple chomping sound as the screen turns red and then the "Retry" screen appears.
• Non-Standard Skill Learning: Lucas learns PK Flash by getting struck by lightning.
  • Also, Lucas learns the higher tiers of PK Love everytime he pulls a Needle, while Kumatora learns PK Starstorm when Ionia strikes her with lightning.
• Noodle Incident: Taken literally. One healing item, the Pasta with a Past, is only described as "Pasta of unspeakable circumstance."
• "No Peeking!" Request: A secret door guarding a treasure can only be opened by performing a special (and rather ridiculous-looking) dance. Before trying to open it, old thief Wess tells his son and disciple Duster, "This is embarrassing. Turn the other way." Doesn't stop Duster from turning around anyway while Wess isn't looking.
  Wess: Don't look, now! I'm not going to stick my butt or anything, though.
• Nostalgic Musicbox: The rendition of the Love Theme that plays when Lucas and Claus flashback to their parents doting over them as babies during the Final Battle.
• Nothing Is Scarier:
  • One frightening one during your first time at Tanetane Island:
    There was absolutely nothing inside the mailbox. Nothing after nothing came bursting out.
  • When Lucas is in the Chimera Laboratory and the Ultimate Chimera is on the loose, all that can be heard is its roaring and the screaming of Pigmasks. However, if you enter another room and the BGM starts again, that's... not good, either.
• Not in Front of the Kid: After Flint finds out that Hinawa is dead, he has a Freak Out and starts lashing out at the other villagers around him by assaulting them. Bronson reminds Flint that his sons are watching, but Flint doesn't care. Another villager is kind enough to shield their eyes, and this also spares them the pain of watching Flint get knocked out.
• The Numbered Things: The Seven Needles.
• Obnoxious Entitled Housewife: Elmore. She is one of the most unpleasant villagers of Tazmily, even before the Time Skip, and treats everyone with indiference because of her position as the mayor's wife. She even openly tells Lucas that she hates him, and wants her son to be a succesful person just so he will make her life easier.
• One-Time Dungeon: Most dungeons and areas in the game can be revisited in at least one later chapter (although the enemy types and layout will change with the plot). The major exceptions are the Attic Dungeon in Chapter 4, which becomes inaccessible once the chapter ends with its completion, and the Thunder Tower, which is only accessible in Chapter 5 because the story at that point involves infiltrating and destroying it.
• Only One Name: This is to all characters of the game, except the main villain.
• One-Winged Angel: Despite the fact that enemies and bosses can have two different sprites, there are only two actual examples: Li'l Miss Marshmallow and Miracle Fassad. The former simply activates an alternate form at half health which includes pincers and drills. The latter is a little more complicated. After dealing with what seems to be a powered up version of New Fassad, halfway through the fight, he reverts to New Fassad. Backed into a corner, he suddenly stops with physical attacks and reveals that he can also use PSI, at which point he spams it, save for the occasional Luxury Banana.
• Ontological Mystery: Only after the time skip does Lucas and company get the story going.
• Optional Boss: The player can engage in optional fights with the Strawberry Slime, the Ghost Knight, Lord Passion, Li'l Miss Marshmallow, the Fish Roe Man, and the King Statue to complete the Battle Memory and/or obtain hidden items.
• Organization with Unlimited Funding: The Pigmask Army did introduce money to Tazmily Village.
• Our Centaurs Are Different: Oddly enough, one Oxygen Machine has the bottom portion of his body as a horse during your exposition in the Empire Porky Building. You can still kiss him for old time sake though.
• Our Dragons Are Different: An all powerful "Dragon" living under the Nowhere Islands? It could be literal or even figurative, depending on the player.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: Deep under Cerulean Beach you encounter not mermaids, but... mermen? Anyway, these mermen, or Oxygen Machines, supply your party with oxygen, when you kiss them that is. Pucker up!
• Outside-the-Box Tactic: See Sheathe Your Sword below. Lucas will not strike down the Masked Man after he learns that it is his own brother, Claus, turned into a chimera and enslaved to Porky's will.
  • There are only two ways to defeat the King Statue: PK Flash (chance of instant death) or the New Year's Eve bomb, which reduces an enemy's health to one and doesn't work on any other boss.
  • The Barrier Trio's secret weakness. Using Defense Down or the Tickle Stick on them will cause them to repeatedly use Defense Up Omega, only stopping to perform Barrier Poses.
• Palette Swap: The Pigmask Captain and Pigmask Major's front sprites are this. Also the Tree enemies and their stronger counterparts the Tender Lovin' Trees, as well as the Balding Eagle and stronger counterpart the Blue Balding Eagle.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Boney puts on a hat and T-shirt and stands on his hind legs to trick the bouncers at Club Titiboo into thinking he is a human. It works.
• Parental Fashion Veto: Early on, Hinawa orders Lucas to change into his clothes before going outside to play with his brother.
• Parental Neglect: Flint to Lucas, unintentionally so. He's so desperate to find his older son, Claus, that he barely comes home to look after Lucas. At the end, he takes two deadly hits to protect Lucas from the Masked Man's attacks, showing that he does care for him as much.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: A late game example — near the end of the sewers under New Pork City, there is a room with a hot spring you can abuse for free unlimited healing. It's one door away from an area populated by enemies that give good EXP. Without free unlimited healing close at hand, they would be annoying to fight due to their tendency to inflict status effects, but since the hot spring means you don't have to be concerned either about that or about conserving PP, you can repeatedly one-shot them with PK Love Omega.
• Permanently Missable Content: If you don't go all the way back to Tazmily and fight Lord Passion during Chapter Five, say goodbye to Duster's Disc-One Nuke weapon forever.
• Photo Montage: The ending credits show off pictures of significant moments from each Chapter, ending with a picture of Hinawa from Chapter 1.
• Playing with Fire: The PK Fire series.
• Posthumous Character: Hinawa, killed at the beginning of the game, is the one who actually stops Lucas and Claus (mostly Claus) from fighting each other and his main motivation for killing himself is to see her again. Also, Chapter 6 is all about Lucas's memories of his mother and chasing her through a field of flowers, which could be a dream or not.
• The Power of Love: PK Love, for starters.
  • The Final Battle definitely counts. It's not the usual "attack the Final Boss until they're dead" to win the fight, but instead it has Lucas refusing to attack his Brother and Hinawa constantly trying to reach out to Claus that breaks him free from Porky's control and ends the fight.
• Power-Up Food: Ramen Noodles can bring back the dead.
• Point of No Return: Getting rid of the vines blocking the sixth needle will prevent you from ever going back to the rest of the game, forcing you to move on with the plot and enter New Pork City, which is separate from the rest of the game.
  • Once you reach the basement of the Empire Porky Building, there's no turning back.
• Polar Opposite Twins: Claus is brave, impulsive, and outspoken. Lucas is shy, gentle, and quiet.
• Polluted Wasteland: New Pork City is this if you go all the way down the escalators.
• Portrait Painting Peephole: When entering Osohe Castle for the first time, you'll notice this.
  "You get the odd feeling that the woman in the painting is staring at you."
• Post-Final Boss: The second fight with Claus, the Masked Man. While the scenario is undeniably emotional and serious, the fight itself is easy since all you have to do is defend and heal, all in addition to the fact that Porky is taken care of before this fight.
• Predecessor Villain: While unmentioned, Giygas's shadow still hangs over the world long after his death via the Big Bad being a Dragon Ascendant Porky Minch.
• Press X to Not Die: In Chapter 4 when going through the Railway, if Lucas proceeds to run straight along on the train tracks, a train will come rushing by on the tracks, and you're given the choice to dodge the train in any direction on the D-pad. Failing to move out of the way in time won't result in a game over however, but rather sends you flying across the screen and ends up with you landing back in Tazmily Village where you started, with a Mr. T lookalike mentioning how he had warned you to watch out for trains before and even calling you "Squashed Flat Man."
  • In Chapter 3, there is also some quick-time event sequences where Salsa must follow the correct instructions. Missing them won't result in your character dying, but rather getting shocked until you get them right.
• Press X to Die: While playing as Duster in Osohe Castle in Chapter 2, in order to get inside the castle, you must open a hole to get to the floor below. Fortunately, there's a conveniently placed statue holding a large iron ball. Dash into it, and it'll drop the ball, which crashes through the floor. Dash into it from the right, and it'll drop the ball, which crashes through you.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: There's a film in New Pork City depicting actual scenes from EarthBound at one point, obviously prominently featuring Ness and company.
• Primal Fear: On Tanetane Island, there are hallucinogenic mushrooms that force you to experience your greatest fears. Though it does exploit each party member's personal phobias and insecurities, it also uses something that everybody's afraid of: Being surrounded by people you love and care about, and having them physically, emotionally, and verbally abuse you.
• Prolonged Prologue: While everyone considers this to be a great game throughout, about the only thing people will admit this game has a major flaw is the prologue is a bit long. From a story perspective, it's needed to setup for the plot. However, this causes the gameplay to suffer a bit, as you end up getting bounced between three different characters with different fighting styles and reset back to level one each time, while the enemies continue to get harder regardless. Even those that think this is the peak of the Mother series will admit that they had trouble making it past the first three chapters because of how annoying it gets. Naturally though, it gets way better once you get past them.
• Proud Warrior Race: The mole crickets start out as this. After you defeat their champion in battle, they realize they aren't cut out for it and decide to become a Proud Merchant Race instead.
• Psychic Powers: Being a staple of the Mother games, this is a given with the Protagonists. This time around the Psychics are Lucas and Kumatora.
  • The Magypsies and the Masked Man/Claus also apply. Interestingly enough, the latter implies that perhaps PSI may be genetic, given his connection to Lucas. The connection between Ninten being Psychic and his grandfather stealing the secrets of PSI from aliens from the first game could also hint at this, depending on where in the timeline you believe Mother 3 takes place in.
  • The menu for PSI also includes:
  • Telepathy: Kumatora seems to be adept at doing it to communicate with Animals, and Lucas usually does the same to talk to his dog Boney and the other animals he meets.
  • Telekinesis: Several subtypes show up in combat, including pyrokinesis (PSI Fire), cryokinesis (PSI Freeze), fulgurkinesis (PSI Thunder), and psychic healing, as well as less easily defined attacks such as Lucas's signature move or PK Starstorm.
  • Psychic Barriers: Can be used to deflect or even reflect both physical and psychic attacks.
• Public Domain Soundtrack:
  • Family Matters: 2nd Movement contains bits of:
    • Beethoven's Symphony No. 5.
    • Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1.
  • Etude for Ghosts contains bits of (which sounds a bit like Saint-Saens' Piano Concerto No. 2):
    • Mozart's Symphony No. 40.
    • Beethoven's Symphony No. 6.
  • Ode to Ancestors: 8th Movement is a mashup of:
    • Beethoven's Symphony No. 5.
    • Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor.
    • Handel's Messiah.
    • Vivaldi's Spring.
  • Audacious March and His Highness' Theme have a bit of similar notes to Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No.5.
  • Leder's Gymnopedie is Erik Satie's Gymnopedie No. 1. Contrast with the second game's notorious use of Sampling.
• Pun: Oddly enough, not the only one to use it. The Hippo Launchers were created for Porky's birthday. Hippo Birthday to Porky...
• Pun-Based Creature: Fireflies — and their stronger variant, pyreflies — are flies that breathe fire.
• Punch-Clock Villain: The Pigmask Army. They attend rock concerts, stay at diners, and generally do trivial things when they're off-duty. Many of them are friendly to Lucas and his party, and some are even neighbors of Lucas who have been recruited.
• Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh...: The problem during the fight with Porky and his Absolutely Safety Capsule.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
  • One odd example when Claus visits his father, Flint, in prison.
    Claus: Dad. It's me. Claus.
  • After eavesdropping on Fassad and seeing him take Butch's money from the well, try leaving the area or heading towards him instead of heading back to the inn. Que angry shouting punctuated with Electric Torture.
    Fassad: Did you think...! *shock* ...you could run away from me?! *shock* That's why...! *shock* ...you're such a stupid monkey!
• Punny Name: There are lots and lots of these in the English fan-translation.
• Putting on the Reich: The Pigmasks' uniforms are reminiscent of German uniforms during WWII. Even their salutes are vaguely Nazi-ish.
• Puzzle Boss: The Post-Final Boss cannot be attacked. You have to constantly heal and defend until the battle wins itself. After Flint takes a couple of blows for Lucas, you can attack him. But it won't make any difference because he will not die.
• Pyrrhic Victory: The world ends. But everyone seems to be alive...maybe.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: You bet your bottom dollar that Lucas, Kumatora, Duster, and Boney are surely a group of unlikely heroes.
• Razor Apples: Claus gives Flint a razor apple after he is arrested in Chapter 1. He finds the razor after a few bites and uses it to saw his way out of the bars.
• Raising the Steaks: Features this game's Zombie Dogs, and Zombidillos.
• Random Drops: Mystical Stick and Mystical Gloves, the latter of which being a solid contender for Kumatora's best weapon, are dropped at a 3% rate by the Heftyhead and Monkalrus, respectively. Most of the ultimate armors are also 3% drops from various mobs in the final dungeon.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: At one point, you find a frog in a desert, which seems kind of odd. A nearby sign invokes this trope though, by telling the player that there are frogs that do live in the desert. Later, there is a similar situation with an underground dungeon built by moles (actually mole crickets, but the trope still applies).
• Reality Warper: Lucas and the Masked Man/Claus have the power to recreate the world to their heart's desire.
• Really 700 Years Old: As a result of constant use of time travelling, Porky is now somewhere between one and ten thousand years old (made even more confusing when he himself states that not even he is sure of how old he really is). While he certantly looks aged, unlike most examples of the trope, he doesn't appear to be that old.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: The evil Stinky Ghosts in Osohe Castle. The Friendly Ghosts don't have them.
• Red Filter of Doom: Your screen will red out if the Ultimate Chimera touches you.
• Regional Bonus: The fan translation has a few features added to the game, such as a Hard Mode after beating the game. Also, Hold L and R while going to the Status Screen to get a Dummied Out "Memo" menu, which builds as you go through the game. Keep in mind some of the features listed didn't make it into the final.
• Replacement Goldfish:
  • In the WMG vein, there's Li'l Miss Marshmallow for Electra, Pokey's human maid in EarthBound, as revealed by the enemy notes.
  • The robotic waitresses in New Pork City's burger joint look like Lardna Minch, Porky's mother.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Rope Snake invokes this on himself after failing to hold onto the Masked Man's helicopter twice. He rechristens himself "Snake Rope", implying he's more of a snake than he is a rope, and spends the rest of the game moping. Otherwise, it's entirely averted — the dragos are some of first creatures you see, and they are entirely friendly, save one-man influenced exception.
• Retraux: The battle with the Mecha-Porkies, whose theme "Porky's Porkies" has the NES chiptune-sounding music up until the last three remaining Mecha-Porkies, in which the D.C.M.C. suddenly arrive to save the day.
• The Reveal: Four big ones:
  • The "Masked Man" is Lucas' twin brother Claus.
  • The leader of the Pigmasks is Porky Minch.
  • The people of Tazmily Village are survivors of a destroyed world, who fled to the Nowhere Islands and erased their memories of their previous lives.
  • Fassad is a traitorous Magypsy named Locria.
• Rhythm Game: The combo system, which allows you to hit buttons in time with the beat of the fight music to score extra damage. The music starts out with an easy regular rhythms, but they start getting really weird with the tempo later on.
• A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma
  Wess: The Hummingbird Egg is a ball of secrets inside secrets that are inside even more secrets... Or something like that, supposedly, apparently.
• Right Behind Me:
  Fassad: Oh, did you call for me? I happen to be that screwed-up, cheap bastard you speak of.
• Rock–Paper–Scissors: "Stone-Sheet-Clippers".
• Rousseau Was Right: Like the rest of the series, though this game takes it a step further than the rest by showing just how bad we can be if we get pushed far enough in the wrong direction. See Humans Are Bastards.
• Rushmore Refacement: Doesn't that King Statue look slightly familiar to something?
• Save Point: In the form of various frogs, who also inexplicably take the place of the ATM machines from EarthBound Beginnings and EarthBound once money comes into play.
• Saving the World: The goal of our heroes is to stop the reign of the Pigmask Army, their spread of technology and their twisting of nature. This eventually comes down to a race to pull 7 needles that depending on the heart of the person who pulls it, will either rebirth the world and wash away all evil, or destroy it entirely, and the heroes are trying to save the world from a bad fate.
• Seemingly Hopeless Boss Fight: The Final Battle. The fight starts off with your entire party except Lucas being wiped out and you're unable to revive them, and Lucas is unable to attack the Masked Man at all because he can't bring himself to hurt his brother. The Masked Man keeps wailing on Lucas and easily reduces him to Mortal Damage within only a few turns, it's all you can do to Guard against his attacks and try to keep Lucas alive. It isn't until Hinawa's Spirit appears to plead with Claus to remember himself and Flint taking two PK Love Omegas for Lucas that you can finally attack, but the Goal of the fight isn't to fight the Masked Man until he's defeated, you just have to wait until Hinawa's efforts finally break through to Claus and get him to remember who he is, ending the fight.
• Sequel Escalation: It's just as quirky and humorous as its predecessors. Also has a poignant, touching story and a generous helping of Mood Whiplash.
• Sequence Breaking: After Aeolia's Needle is pulled, you can go after the rest of the Needles in any order you wish to, except for Ionia's which is saved for last (though the game does recommend pulling them in the following order: Doria, Lydia, Phrygia and Mixolydia's), which may make things a hell of a lot easier since you will have a full party by the time you get the needles other than the Chimera Lab, as you need to clear that to get Kumatora back on your team. Only real problem is trekking back to Saturn Valley because the Coffee Table that you use to ride will be gone when you go there the first time if you plan on getting Duster right after Aeolia's needle.
  • Beware that trying to go through the Mole Cricket's tunnels before pulling Doria's Needle will render you unable to complete the Battle Memory, as The Squeekz will not spawn, and, thus, you won't get to fight him.
• Serial Escalation: Can this chapter's Wham Episode possibly top the previous one? Oh yes.
• Sexophone: Played inside Porky's 'fan room'.
• Shall I Repeat That?: When Leder gives the surprisingly long explanation of the history of Nowhere Islands; he'll confirm that you understand each part before continuing to the next.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Unwelcome Gust enemy is clearly based off the Cyclown enemy from Dragon Quest, which the first two games are an Affectionate Parody of.
  • Mr. Batty's Theme.
  • Wanted! My Generation! It's a poster for a concert. Someone put this up. But.......who?
  • The Magypsies' theme songs sound very similar to Graduation (Friends Forever) by Vitamin C.
  • In Chapter 2, if you talk to one of the Pigs, he'll say "Oink-Oink-Oink-Oink-Oink-Oink-Oinka-Oink! (My Rendition of a Battle Fanfare.)" Sounds similar to a certain famous victory fanfare, wouldn't you say?
  • The Carpet Monster (or at least what we can see of it) looks like a certain "One who hides under your stairs."
  • Bud and Lou, who are always practicing their comedy routines.
  • As in EarthBound, there are various musical references: for example, two enemies are named Rock Lobster (after a song by The B-52s) and Gently Weeping Guitar.
  • Lucas and Claus are named for the twins (Lucas and Claus) in [[The Book of Lies.
  • The Masked Man is dressed up like a rebel pilot with a bomber jacket. He's even got a lightsaber.
  • Mato has recently confirmed that the name Slitherhen for the early chapter 4 chimera is actually influenced by a certain Hogwarts house.
  • Itoi has confirmed that the prevalence of chimeras in the game was inspired by Sid from Toy Story, where a child with a twisted mind reassembles toys into grotesque shapes.
  • The DCMC take their name from a combination of Australian Hard Rock group AC/DC and American Rap Rock group Run–D.M.C..
  • The elusive Soot Dumplings are almost straight out of My Neighbor Totoro (whose Japanese voice cast included Itoi as the father).
  • Sand Lizards evoke the second-to-last bit of Rhapsody In Blue when they inflict a SMAAASH! hit.
  • The Chimera Lab segment is based on the Distant Future chapter of Live A Live, with the Ultimate Chimera taking the role of the Behemoth while Lucas and Salsa share the role of Cube. Doubles as a Production Throwback; Nobuyuki Inoue, the director of Mother 3, was also the lead battle and scenario director of Live a Live.
• Schmuck Bait: In the floor of restrooms while roaming New Pork City, you come across one restroom that gives out a loud thump when you check on it, as if something big is behind it. Naturally that's a sign maybe you should leave well enough alone. Enter anyway and you'll be face to face with the Chimera, luckily you can back out out quickly if you're fast enough.
• Sexual Karma: PG-Rated example. Many adult occupants of Tazmily village are married, happy to be so, remain faithful, and have children. Porky, on the other hand, has his "Fans" to keep him company.
• Sigil Spam: Anything that the Pigmasks own have their insignia planted on it.
• Signs of the End Times: Arguably whenever a Needle is pulled.
• The Silent Bob: Leder for most of the game. When he does speak, though, good God...
• Simultaneous Arcs: Chapters 2 and 3 take place at the exact same time, only you're controlling different characters. Duster in the second, and Salsa in the third. It becomes most evident when the two characters bump into each at the same area in both chapters.
• Sinister Geometry: The Mineralis you find in the Final Dungeon, are giant Octahedrons that fly around and attack you if you get too close to them.
  • The Final Dungeon, the Resting Place of the Final Needle, is a dark, glowing wasteland with many Geometric and Jagged cliffs in it.
• Skippable Boss: After the Time Skip, Mr. Passion, the first boss of Chapter 2, returns as the considerably stronger Lord Passion, in the same spot as before. On the other hand, Osohe Castle is completely optional to explore aside for a small section in Chapter 7, with everything seemingly looking the same way it did by the end of Chapter 3, and there are no hints that Lord Passion even exists. Defeating him will allow Duster to get one of his strongest weapons, but he can only be fought in Chapter 5 as Duster loses access to the Rope Snake afterwards.
• Skyscraper City: New Pork City, especially notable in the Super Smash Bros. version. You have to climb your way up the tallest building as well, the 100 floor skyscraper.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: The possible aspects to the plot can vary in both directions.
• Sliding Scale of Video-Game Objectives: Task-Based, for Chapter 7. You can search for the Needles except the ones at the start and the end in any order. This allows you to find Duster and Kumatora first, making it much easier to get the rest of the Needles in the chapter.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Snowcap Mountain is obviously a snowy mountain. One of the seven needles lies at the top and Lucas and his friends have to scale the mountain to find it.
• Smelly Feet Gag: Duster's socks smell so bad that they can potentially cause an enemy to freeze.
• The Smurfette Principle: Though a bit more diverse than the other two games; Lucas is a preteen boy, Duster is a young man, and Kumatora is a teenage girl, so it's all good.
• Snake Whip: Duster uses Rope Snake as a grappling version of this, allowing him to swing across gaps in a dilapidated castle. In a later chapter, the entire party has to hang onto the snake while it hangs from the Pig Army's main aircraft, but it can't support their combined weight. Having thus dishonored its ancestors, it changes its name to Snake Rope and mopes.
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear: Two characters can plague you with this:
  • Flint is only playable during Chapter 1, and even if you give it to Duster before the chapter ends, he still doesn't keep any of the stuff Flint gives him regardless.
  • Salsa will also take off with your crap forever after Chapter 3 and Chapter 7, so give all of his stuff to Kumatora or Lucas/Boney before he goes. In fact, when Salsa comes back in Chapter 7, he still has all the stuff he had during Chapter 3, which gives you a second chance to have Lucas or Boney take it.
• Social Services Does Not Exist: Which Lucas could really use: his mother was killed while protecting him, his only twin was missing after he left to avenge his mother and his father (a deconstructed Papa Wolf because of these events) went off searching for said missing son, leaving Lucas with only his dog for at least three years.
• Sophisticated as Hell: One Pigmask, when talked to, enters a polite and proper soliloquy about how he isn't quite sure what to say to you before eventually deciding that the phrase he would use, were he allowed to say it and still come across as polite, is "get out of the damn way".
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Both battle and overworld themes can go from rousing, to light and delicate, to sad, to rousing again and there are tons of in game remixes and rearrangements.
• Sound-Only Death: Making Duster ram the Iron Ball statue from the right side will get him crushed.
• Sound Test: The game has one, called the Sound Player, available from the beginning, but the track names are hidden until you listen to them in the game proper. For some unexplained reason, there are a few songs not included in it, such as the Chiptune version of "No Eating Crackers in the Cinema" (commonly called "This Theater Stinks" by fans) and the song that plays in Sunshine Forest from Chapter 4 and beyond. (Called "Unsettling Preserve".)
• Spell Levels: As with previous games in the series, the tiers for PSI powers are given by the Greek letters Alpha, α, Beta, β, Gamma, γ, and Omega, Ω.
• Spoonerism: One can be easily detected in the early stages of the game:
  "The Funshine Sorest is on fire!"
• Status Effects: As well as many non-standard ones. Characters can be affected by poison, nausea, feeling strange (confusion), uncontrollable crying, etc.
• Stepford Suburbia: Tazmily Village, though it doesn't seem that way at first.
• Stone Wall: Deconstructed with the "Absolutely Safe Capsule"; nothing can hurt the person inside, yet the one inside can't hurt anything outside. Porky encasing himself in it results in the battle ending prematurely, as he's unable to hold back the heroes any longer while trapped in the Capsule.
• Storyboarding the Apocalypse: Done by the Magypsies when they reveal what'll happen if the Masked Man pulls the majority of the needles. Because he's an emotionless Chimera, and therefore has no personality or "heart"/"soul" to put into the Dark Dragon, the Dragon will then perceive that as him having no heart, and will cause the world to completely cease to exist.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Averted in that there's virtually no physical resemblance between the people of Tazmily Village and their parents. Nana lampshades this at one optional conversation. When put alongside what Leder reveals in Chapter 8, it implies they were not related to each other before they decided to get rid of their memories.
• Stupidity Is the Only Option: Even if you know that the spittoon in the castle isn't the item Wess told him to get, there's nothing you can do about it. You're only option is to take the spittoon back to Wess and have Duster get chewed out and called a moron for not realizing this wasn't what he asked for, even if the player does.
• Superboss: The King Statue can be interacted with in New Pork City to begin an optional fight with it. The statue's stats are so high (its HP alone is 99,999,999) that it'll make quick order of the party regardless of their level, with PSI Flash being the only move that'll kill it without any extra assistance (and even then, it's a gamble). The player is intended to use the New Year's Eve Bomb to reduce its HP to one before taking it out with the next attack. Defeating the boss allows the player to obtain Trivia Card 4 by speaking with the man next to the statue's pedestal.
• Super-Fun Happy Thing of Doom: The "Tower of Peace and Love". To a lesser extent, the Happy Box, that beloved opiate of the masses.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: Played with. Late in the game, the player has to get to the 100th floor of a building, and you find an Instant Revitalizing Machine and a Save Frog in the same room... but it turns out, this isn't the real 100th floor, and with each new 100th floor, there are the same two objects, again and again, until the true 100th floor is reached.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Uttered by Lucas after Hinawa's funeral.
  Lucas: N-n-n-no! He didn't take Dad's homemade knife and go into the mountains to kill the Drago!
  Alec: It's a good thing you raised him to be honest, Flint!
  • The narration at the end of Chapter 1 questions the whereabouts of Claus... when he's actually lying face down on the ground, having fallen from the Plateau after trying to engage the Drago. From the looks of it, he could either be unconscious but badly injured, or he could be flat out dead. Considering how he's only 9 years old, it's most likely that he's dead. Except for the fact that he was turned into Porky's slave before he died.
  • Right, and Wess' door opening dance in Osohe Castle didn't involve him sticking his butt out or anything.
• Sympathy for the Devil: At the end, when the players defeat Porky, Dr. Andonuts decides that maybe he deserves some pity, stating that perhaps deep down he was the same lonely boy that no one liked.

T-Z

• Tailor-Made Prison: The Absolutely Safe Capsule made by Dr. Andonuts for Porky.
• Take Your Time: When you hit Chapter 7, even after you find out that you're in a race against time against the Pigmask Army to pull the Needles before they do to save the world, and you know that they've already pulled 1 and need only 3 more to win, you can still take your time and go to each spot at your own pace. Nothing really starts until you get there, nor does the order of which needle you go after first really matter. It'll still take the Pigmasks all the time it takes for you to beat the Boss of the area before they arrive there and swipe the Needle from right under your feet, or vice versa with the party.
• Talking Animal: You come across a bunch of talking critters throughout the whole game. One you come across often is the Save Frog.
• Tagline: "Strange, Funny, Heartrending." This game definitely lives up to all of these words, being as quirky and odd as EarthBound could be, as well as having what's considered to be one of the most heart-rending stories ever in a video game.
• Taking You with Me: The Tree and Tender Loving Tree enemies, which explode when you defeat them, as per usual.
  • Also, the Mecha-Drago. If you haven't been keeping your HP high in that fight, his final attack will take you out when you beat him.
• Talk to Everyone: Featured in all Mother games, but this particular one pokes fun at this when you talk to a certain NPC.
• Telepathy: Broadly considered how Lucas and Kumatora can talk to and understand Animals.
• Temple of Doom: Not necessarily a dungeon that's ought to kill you, but Chupichupoyoi Temple is a location for one of the Needles.
• Thanking the Viewer: You are mentioned, by name, at the end of the credits. Not only that, but at The End of the game, everyone in the game thanks you, personally, for all that you did for them, including Lucas himself, and they assure you that their world is going to be okay, and hope that your world is as good to you as you've been to them.
• That Man Is Dead: After failing the party a second time, Rope Snake announces that "the heroic and cool Rope Snake you once knew is dead". In fact, it affects him so much that in the epilogue, he changes his name to Snake Rope to try and forget his old name's association to his failure.
  Rope Snake: ...The heroic and cool Rope Snake you once knew is dead. In a tiny, quiet voice, I say... so long.
• The Maze: The Mole Cricket Hole, even after you get the map. That is unless you remember an easy trick: if given a fork with the option to either go left or straight, always go left.
• Thematic Sequel Logo Change: The logo is chaged into a combination of wood and metal, with the globe that makes the "O" of previous games being replaced by a metal sphere, to represent the Pigmasks' encroachment on nature and their Unwilling Roboticisation of its wildlife. This also factors into the plot, as after the game ends and the world is remade, the logo changes to be completely wooden, with the metal sphere having turned into a realistic picture of the Earth, as opposed to the stylized versions of previous games.
• Time Is Dangerous: As mentioned above, Porky's abuse of Time Travel with the original Phase Distorter prototype caused him to age rapidly into an old man, who could be 1,000 to 10,000 years old while being rendered immortal thanks to it.
• Theme-and-Variations Soundtrack: A lot of the music in the game is composed of rearrangements of other tracks, most commonly the Love Theme, and the Pigmask Army Theme.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Despite being thieves, Wess and Duster don't really do a whole lot of stealing. As explained by Leder in Chapter 8, this is because they were only meant to steal a specific object when it became necessary - the Egg of Light, which contains all the memories the people of Tazmily Village removed from themselves. Lampshaded occassionally.
  Linda: Oh, hi, Mr. Thief-Who-Doesn't-Take-Anything.
• Thriving Ghost Town: This game is the only one in the series that doesn't avert this trope. Only a certain amount of people were able to escape the dying world, and at the rate things were going, the people of Tazmily Village would probably die out in several centuries. Porky Minch defies this trope by filling Nowhere Islands with people from different times.
• Time Skip: Three years between Chapters 3 and 4.
  • In early development, the game's plot was intended to span 10 years.
• Toilet Humor:
  • There are present boxes in Mr. Saturn Village that contain farts. Complete with descriptions of how the smell lingers in the air.
  • One of the dungeons inside the Empire Pork Building is an "all-you-can-pee" toilet dungeon.
• Token Evil Teammate: Fassad, who is one of the seven Magypsies.
• Tomato in the Mirror: The Tomato Surprise listed below is just as big a shock to the main characters as it is to the player.
• Tomato Surprise: The game actually takes place After the End. All the characters you meet in the game are the only people left in the world.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: The Tazmily townsfolk will become greedier and more self-centered once Fassad's modernized it three years post-Hinawa's death, and will badmouth Lucas for not owning a Happy Box.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Tazmily Village. Unlike most examples of this trope, no one outside of Leder and later Lucas and company know about the secret.
• Toy Time: Although it only features one enemy and a mini-boss, King P's Playroom is considered one.
• Trap Door: After Porky finishes his monologue, your party is dropped from the 100th floor all the way to the The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
• Trauma Conga Line: If you listed all the traumatic things that happen over the course of Lucas's life, you would more or less have a summary of the game's plot. To those who are curious, select the following note and grab a few tissues. ^note First, his mother gets violently killed right in front of his eyes. As a result, his father almost goes mad from the resulting grief, attacking people from the village and getting chucked into prison before he can even attend her funeral. Shortly afterwards, his older brother, Claus. goes out to try and avenge his mother's death, and goes missing in the process. All in the span of two days. Please note that this is the first time anybody in the society he lives in has experienced grief, so nobody knows how to console or comfort him. Not done yet, though. That very same day, a suspicious guy comes into Tazmily Village, telling everybody a load of waffle about "happiness" and starts peddling objects called "Happy Boxes" to everyone. These boxes essentially hypnotize the entire village, except for Lucas, who refuses to buy one, and as a result, everybody in this previously close-knit and loving community slowly begin turning into selfish, hedonistic jerks. Years later, Lucas is now considered an outcast, even a disgrace, to the village. His father, still grieving over his wife, barely talks with him anymore and spends nearly all of his time searching for Claus, who is still missing. Around this time, his adventure starts. And while he does finally make two very good friends as a result, his situation hardly improves. On top of having to constantly battle against horrifying, bloodthirsty creatures known as Chimeras, he now has an entire army set against him, the same army who was indirectly responsible for his mother's death in the first place. After disabling the army's thunder tower, he finds himself in a field of sunflowers where, out of nowhere, he sees his mother's ghost. He can't touch or communicate her, and ends up chasing her off a cliff in desperation. It's not very clear if this is a dream or actually happening. But wait, there's more. Around this time, he and his friends find out about these weird objects known as the seven needles, which will restore the entire world either full of evil or full of good depending on who pulls them. The journey to getting the seven needles leads him through countless traumatic situations, from being nearly eaten alive by a horrifying monster called the Ultimate Chimera, to accidentally sending himself on a very, very bad hallucinogenic drug trip, but he ultimately only manages to pull half of them. The other half are getting pulled by the commander of the army, known as the Masked Man. Once he and the Masked Man have both pulled three, Tazmily is now completely abandoned, so he has no choice but to finally go to the hub of all the corruption in his world, New Pork City. Once there, he has to live with the long-hidden truth about Tazmily: It was all a lie. The game actually takes place After the End, and Tazmily was set up so the last few dozen people left on Earth could live in ignorance to the world's destruction. After this, the final needle is located, and he and his friends go to pull it, as it is now the world's only hope for redemption. After defeating the Big Bad, he and the Masked Man meet in front of the final needle, ready to battle for it. As it turns out, the Masked Man is actually Claus, brainwashed and with no memory of being Lucas's brother. What follows is an absolutely heartbreaking "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight, during which Claus easily has the upper hand, and with Claus still showing no sign of remembering, his mother's ghost shows up for a second time. With her help, Claus very slowly realizes who he is and takes his mask off. He then kills himself, allowing Lucas to take the needle, and dies in Lucas's arms. Keep in mind that all of this is happening to a likable, mild-mannered boy who hasn't even hit puberty yet.
• Trauma Inn: The Hot Springs, which fully heal you of all your status ailments, revive party members, and fully restore your HP and PP. Also gives you a nice slowed down version of the Wess Dance theme to listen to while bathing in it.
• Triumphant Reprise: The theme of the first chapter boss Mecha-Drago is an imposing, melancholy tune, symbolizing the duel between Flint and the monster that killed his wife. The theme returns at the end of chapter 3, with Kumatora and company cornered, suddenly Lucas shows up and so do a pair of normal Dragos in a triumphant return that signals a change in the story, and it's also at this point where Lucas takes over as the protagonist for the remainder of the game.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior:
  • Porky may be physically thousands of years old, but he still has the mind of a pre-teen child.
  • After Hinawa dies, Claus runs away to the mountains to try and avenge her. Note that the thing that killed her is a half-robot tyrannosaurus rex , and he's a nine-year old boy armed with a steak knife.
• Turns Red:
  • Inverted with the Pork Tank. Once its health gets low, it breaks down, disabling its hard-hitting attacks and forcing the Pigmask piloting the tank to throw cannonballs at you. It'll still occasionally try to shoot its cannon at you... and have it jam every time.
  • If you take out the Jealous Bass' cronies before defeating it, it will get angry and increase his attack power.
  • Li'l Miss Marshmallow goes into "Ultra Ticked-Off Mode" halfway through the fight with her. She is suddenly armed with a large drill.
  • Near the end of the second fight with Fassad, his extra musical horns are destroyed, which angers him and causes him to start throwing out Omega-level PSI attacks
• Twin Desynch: Porky tries this with Claus, but apparently fails, as him and Lucas are still indistinguishable to the Pigmasks.
• Twin Telepathy: Clearly something is going on when Lucas and the Masked Man meet each other at each needle. The Flashing Colors and their elipses each time they see each other imply that on some level they know who they're looking at.
  • The trope can also be taken literally in terms of wording, given the fact that both Lucas and Claus are Psychic and are the only ones in the world who can use PK Love.
• Two-Part Trilogy: In terms of continuity and the battle system, EarthBound and Mother 3 are one of these. This game has more Continuity Nods to EarthBound than EarthBound Beginnings had in the latter two games. However, the first game and the second are also a Two-Part Trilogy, in terms of the setting and being an Affectionate Parody of Dragon Quest. Plus, some enemies from EarthBound Beginnings make an appearance in Mother 3 after not appearing in EarthBound
• Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: When going up the Empire Porky Building.
  • Elevator Floor Announcement: "Next stop, 100th floor."
• Uncommon Time: Due to the Rhythm Game elements, the game likes to throw in songs that are not in 4/4 or 3/4 to throw you off. The most notorious examples of this would be "Strong One" and its Masked Man counterpart, which play in 15/8 and 29/16, respectively.
• Under the Sea: The Seafloor Dungeon. For a rarity in an RPG, Lucas and his party have an air meter that must be replenished or else they are removed from the dungeon and have to start all over again.
• Unique Enemy: There are usually at least two examples of enemies with single spawn points in each chapter, and a few normal enemies like the Fish Roe Man and Negative Man show up in exactly one spot.
• Unknown Item Identification: A downplayed, and rather bizarre, example: whenever you give Wan Sum Dung some dung, he may randomly announce that the particular dung is "exquisitely-aged" or, in rare cases, "legendary", and proceeds to give you more experience than usual in exchange (10 EXP for the former, 50 EXP for the latter).
• Unusual Euphemism: A Happy Box, from the looks of it, is essentially a television. Granted, Itoi has stated that they are not televisions and are not even displaying anything.
• Useless Item: The New Years' Eve Rocket. Sure, it works on the Porky Statue, but it only works on that one enemy, if you try to use it on other enemies/bosses it always turns out to be a dud. Granted, if you could use it on other bosses, you could seriously derail the difficulty and emotional impact of the following fights (or potentially break the game in one case), such as the Final Boss Porky and Post-Final Boss Masked Man/Claus.
• Vague Age: Lucas is about 12 after the Time Skip, assuming he's around the same age as the other Mother protagonists; Duster is at least in his twenties, but could be much older, and Kumatora is around the middle, possibly around 13 pre-time skip, 16 post.
  • Nobody knows exactly how old Porky is, not even himself. What it is safe to say is that he is Really 700 Years Old
• Verbal Tic: The Mr. Saturns, aside from having their own unique font (reportedly based on a developer's child's handwriting), drop "Boing" and "Zoom" into their sentences.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Empire Porky Building, a 100-story-tall tower with SPIKES coming out of its sides. Not to mention a couple of mean-looking fire-breathing dragon statues at the entrance.
• Vichy Earth: The Pigmasks may not seem alien to us, but maybe to the residents of Tazmily Village. But, they have the same intentions as nasty alien invaders do.
• Victory by Endurance: The only way to "win" the Post-Final Boss against The Masked Man is to heal until Hinawa snaps Claus back to his senses. You can't even attack during the first phase of the fight, and even then, Claus eventually disposes of himself for you. OUCH.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Think Giygas, only more human.
• Villain Ball: Porky has a few moments, since he has the mental age of a child, and because he sees it all as just a big game. He does, at the end, just try to kill you.
• Villains Blend in Better: Well, it makes sense if you consider that the Pigmask Army remodeled the Nowhere Islands in their own image. What's makes this trope even more so is that the villains appeared well after the Tazmily civilians took residence in the Nowhere Islands, as seen in the prologue.
• Villain Has a Point: Don't deny it, Porky's "Reason You Suck" Speech about humanity's flaws struck you somewhere.
• Villain World: Porky pretty much achieved this by the timeskip, especially when you get to Chapter 8 and see how wrapped up everyone is with this new world in New Pork City. Despite the efforts of the good hearted people of Tazmily like Lucas and Wess, the world still was industrialized and corrupted for the most part.
• Visible Silence: The Masked Man speaks in ellipses, except in two cases — at the sixth Needle, most likely giving commands to his army, as what he said wasn't even written onscreen, and during the final battle, after regaining his memory of being Claus, Lucas's brother, and then suffering mortal damage due to consciously reflecting a highly-powerful lightning bolt he fired off of Lucas's Franklin Badge, apologizing to his family before dying.
• Visual Pun: Kumatora's name translates to "Bear-Tiger". When you first meet her proper, she's gotten her leg caught in a bear trap.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: The Mecha Drago. If you haven't been paying attention to using the skill-sets of your characters effectively and just have been only bashing for most of the game, you're in for a real shock.
• Welcome to Corneria: This being a Mother game, thoroughly averted.
  • One memorable subversion is when you meet a Pigmask that gives Lucas a gift in Chapter 5, saying it's strictly on a "friend basis." If you talk to him again, the same text will show and it'll seem like this is a case of this... But if you pay close attention, it turns out that Lucas, the main character who's been silent for most of the game, is actually the one speaking here, but he says exactly what the Pigmask said back to him.
• Western Zodiac: Zodiac-themed rings are useful defensive accessories.
• Wham Episode: Hinawa's death. Claus's apparent death. The time skip, and the rise of the Pigmasks. The Seven Needles and the Dark Dragon. The Big Bad and Final Boss is Porky Minch. Coming back to Tazmily Village to find it almost completely deserted. The Dragon is Claus. This game has a lot of them.
• Wham Line: One that would set the whole mood of the plot.
  "It was pierced through your wife's heart...".
  • And if you're really bad at reading foreshadowing:
    "The masked man... he's Claus."
• Wham Shot:
  • For EarthBound players at least, entering Saturn Valley reveals this games connections to EarthBound.
  • And then all the Balloons and statues of King P revealing that King P is Porky/Pokey.
  • Entering Locria's house in the Empire Porky Building and seeing Fassad's clothes and crates full of Luxury Bananas reveals the fact that Fassad was Locria the whole time.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The Egg of Light, which you spend several chapters chasing and is set up as an incredibly powerful artifact that could stop the Pigmasks. You get it back...and it's never mentioned again. The only time it's mentioned is when Leder explains what it is, but even then you never end up doing anything with it.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: In the attic of Club Titiboo in Chapter 4, you will visit two mice who have a distinct Cockney accent. Want a sample of their dialogue? Here you go, decipher it yourself:
  Mouse: ''"Squeeeeak squeak."
  "(Weh've been waitin' a bloody long 'arry Lime all pat wiv yew aht on yeh toblerone.)"
  Mouse: "Squeak?"
  "(Eh? Izzatchew, Alfie? Wheh've ya been wivaht sennin' a dicky bird? Ya dihn't come by fo' New Yeah's or Crackah Night, so yeh Grandmum an' I 'ave been all jack. So, wotcheh? Yeh mus' be bleedin' 'ank Marvin, eh? 'Eah's summadat Nut Bread fo' yeh.)"
• What the Hell, Player?: Done subtly in the final battle: If you attack Claus enough, Hinawa will tell Lucas to stop, and then a message will appear saying "sobbing sounds can be heard".
• Wheel o' Feet: Thomas's running animation invokes this.
  • The Love Walker enemy which can be found in the Empire Porky Building is a somewhat literal example.
• When Trees Attack: The Tree and Tender Loving Tree. True to the grandest of EarthBound traditions, they catch fire and explode when defeated.
• While Rome Burns: Porky's ultimate motivation for reuniting most of the human population of the Nowhere Islands in New Pork City is to see everything being destroyed by the Dark Dragon. Why you may ask? Because he was bored.
• Wolfpack Boss: The Mecha-Porkies. Even in a group of eleven, they'd be perfectly manageable if they didn't explode when defeated.
  • Earlier in the game, in Chapter 3, Salsa and Fassad fight a Wolf Pack Mini-Boss in the form of three Gooey Goos.
• A World Half Full: It is implied this after the fake END? screen.
• World Limited to the Plot: In EarthBound, you more or less travel all over the world to other continents and even uncharted parts of the world. But in this game, you only explore the Nowhere Islands. The reason for this is because everywhere else on Earth has been destroyed; People destroyed the world long before the events of the story took place, and the Islands are the only inhabitable place left on Earth.
• World of Symbolism: Itoi did say that he wanted Mother 3 to be like a mirror that reflects the heart of the person who plays it.
• Worthless Treasure Twist: A meta one: Some present boxes contain immaterial or temporary things, such as fireworks, music, or farts. Whether it's a charming surprise or a frustration depends on what kind of player you are.
• Written Sound Effect: SMAAAAAAAAAAASH!
• You Are Already Dead: Due to the scrolling health meter, it is possible to take lethal damage but still stay alive until the health meter has finished scrolling to zero. Therefore, it is possible to survive if you get off a heal or finish the battle quickly enough.
• You Are Too Late: This happens to three out of the seven Needles that are pulled by the Pigmask Army.
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: The Pigmask Army manages to claim three of the seven Needles — although on one of them, the party had firm grasp of the Idiot Ball. (Tanetane Island is one prime example. Dammit, Lucas, the needle was right next to you, and the bad guys took almost five minutes to arrive, fanfare, red carpet and all)!
• You Need a Breath Mint: Duster apparently suffers from halitosis.
• Zero-Effort Boss: The Negative Man, who actively avoids attacking you and wants you to just end it all for him. Granted, he's optional.

---

Thank you for taking the time to read this wiki. This wiki loves you.

---