Video Game / Super Paper Mario

Bold new dimension, same old craft-action.

"Ahem! Today... I'll tell you the story of the lost book of prophecies. This prophetic book was a mysterious tome full of stories of future events. Of course, many people desired this book, wishing to glimpse their futures. But no person, after obtaining this amazing book, ever found happiness. The reason? The book held frightful secrets not meant for people's eyes. The book came to be called the Dark Prognosticus and was sealed away. This... is the tale of the forgotten book's last owner. It is a tale of love..."

The third installment in the Paper Mario series of RPGs, Super Paper Mario (Wii, 2007) mixes it up a bit by being... well, totally different from its predecessors. Instead of being a turn-based RPG with action elements like the first two games, Super Paper Mario is a side-scrolling platformer with RPG elements. One of the most interesting features of the game is the ability to switch between 2D and 3D view at will — a lot of puzzles can only be solved in 3D, and switching to 3D will often show enemies and items that you couldn't see (or interact with) before.

The plot is noticeably darker than the previous entries. It is said that a book called the Dark Prognosticus exists that can tell the future. But no one who has found it could ever be happy again, for the book foretells the inevitable end of all existence. The Ancients were the keepers of this dark book, but one day it was stolen by former ancients who would create the Tribe of Darkness, who would watch over the book themselves and ensure it is never opened. However, a day came when it fell into evil hands...

Mario and Luigi hear that Princess Peach has been kidnapped (again) and go off to Bowser's Castle, only to hear that he didn't do it. At that moment, the real culprit, Count Bleck, appears with Peach and declares his intent to destroy all dimensions to replace them with perfect new ones, as foretold in the Dark Prognosticus he wields. He then takes Bowser, the Koopa Troop, and Luigi to his stronghold, Castle Bleck. Mario is left out cold until he is awoken by Tippi, a being called a Pixl in the shape of a butterfly who brings him to the town of Flipside, a place between dimensions. Here he meets Merlon, who holds the Light Prognosticus, a book created to counter the Dark Prognosticus and foretells of a group of heroes who will save existence. Meanwhile, Bleck forces a marriage between Bowser and Peach, summoning the Chaos Heart and causing a rift called The Void to appear, which Bleck plans to use to destroy all dimensions. Mario and Tippi must journey throughout dimensions and collect the Pure Hearts, which can counter the Chaos Heart, and fight Bleck and his strange team of villains — the Secretary Nastasia, the brutish O'Chunks, the shapeshifting Mimi, and the jester Dimentio — to save the multiverse... and, in the process, figure out just why Bleck seeks to destroy everything.

---

Super Paper Mario contains examples of:

#-C

• 1-Dimensional Thinking: Mario’s power to flip into 3D is one massive aversion of this trope.
• Abnormal Limb Rotation Range:
  • Bowser's arms flail around in circles when he's surprised or having an Oh, Crap! moment. Lampshaded by Dimentio, who refers to him as "the arm flailer" at one point.
  • Mimi cracks her neck and spins her head around in circles before turning into a Giant Spider.
• Absurdly High Level Cap: You will need more than 20 million experience points to reach Level 99. For reference, most players finish the game around Level 20.
• Abusive Parents: Blumiere's father is of the emotionally abusive variety; he refuses to let his son leave the castle, isolates him from Timpani, attempts to ruin what he loves, tells him a lie that she was only deceiving him, withholds affection as punishment, and accuses him of disgracing him and their entire tribe.
• Action Girl: Princess Peach, believe it or not, after getting rescued in the second chapter, decides that it's time to stop getting kidnapped, go out there, and kick some ass.
• Actionized Sequel: One turn-based fight aside, Super Paper Mario is the only entry in the series that is completely real time.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Wracktail, the evil prototype of Fracktail, was locked away by the Tribe of Ancients for being violent.
• Alas, Poor Villain:
  • After you defeat King Croacus in Chapter 5, the Floro Sapiens will come by and tell Mario and the gang that he only kidnapped and brainwashed the Cragnons because they were dumping their trash in the river and contaminating the water the Floro Sapiens drank from. Fortunately, he survives his defeat.
  • Also applies to Count Bleck once you discover that his actions were all due to depression after losing his One True Love.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: Before Dimentio allows you to fight him at the end of Chapter 8-3, you first have to chase him through sections from the seven previous worlds.
• All There in the Manual: A lot of supplementary information can only be heard from Garson and Carson. Information ranges from the origin of the Flipside to the backstories of Count Bleck and his minions.
• Ambiguous Syntax: During the 66th Annual "That's My Merlee!", you can ask the Merlees "[w]hat is the first thing you wash in the bathtub?" The real Merlee takes it as meaning "what part of your body do you wash first when bathing" and says her hair gets cleaned first. The fake Merlee reads it as "what part of the bathtub do you wash first when cleaning it" and replies that the tile mold and hot and cold water faucets are washed first.
• And Now You Must Marry Me: Bowser and Peach are forced to marry each other by Count Bleck. Bowser is obviously more than happy to take part in the wedding, but Peach has to be literally forced into saying "I do". Bowser obviously doesn't have to be forced to say the same.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Whenever Mario takes damage from the Flip Gauge emptying, the gauge is immediately reset to full to prevent the player from taking lots of unavoidable damage.
• Anti-Grinding: You level up by gaining points from beating enemies and collecting power-ups ala the original Super Mario Bros. platformers, and like those platformers, you gain more points for consecutively jumping on enemies. However, if your jump combo gets too high, the game starts subtracting points from your score. This does not cause a Level Drain, but it does make it harder to reach the next level threshold.
• Anti-Hero: Given that Bowser, the regular Big Bad of the Mario series, is on the side of the heroes, he is definitely this. You even have to fight him a few times and he's mostly down for the quest because for one, if all of the worlds are destroyed then he won't have anything left to rule over, two, he enjoys taking on and defeating enemies, and three, he does it to try and impress his supposedly new wife, Princess Peach.
• Anti-Villain: Count Bleck, who — despite wanting to unmake the world — genuinely cares for his henchmen, and is driven by the loss of his love rather than actual evil (even helping the heroes near the end after being reunited with her).
  • It's also implied that the cold and heartless Nastasia is loyal to him because she used to be a bat which he freed from a trap, leading her to take on a humanoid form in order to repay him. After Count Bleck dies/disappears at the end of the game, she has a complete breakdown and starts crying.
• Apocalypse How: Count Bleck's plan is to bring about a Class Z, summoning the Void to consume every last dimension there is.
• Apocalypse Maiden: Luigi. No, really. He gets Brainwashed by Nastasia and further manipulated by Dimentio.
• Applied Mathematics: The first few levels feature "joke" equations in the background, made up of random numbers and mathematical symbols combined with famous Mario icons such as the Fire Flower and mushrooms.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: One active main character (and one Pixl) at a time, even though for much of the game all four, or at least more than one, of the main characters are traveling together, along with considerably more than one of the Pixls.
• Arranged Marriage: The Chaos Heart can only be awakened to its full, reality-sundering power by the marriage of two individuals never meant to be together. Count Bleck invades Mario's reality to abduct Peach and Bowser for his attempt to engender a Reality-Breaking Paradox, and Nastasia is forced to take control of Peach to get the doom train out of the station (Peach, naturally, would never agree to wed Bowser).
• Arc Number: 256. It's the number of Catch Cards in the game, Dimentio's Dimension D makes its inhabitants 256 times stronger, and in Chapter 5, Monzo and Hornfels crew say they have heard about Flint Cragley fighting Rainbowzilla 256 times.
• Arc Villain:
  • The odd-numbered chapters, except for Chapter 1:
    • Chapter 3: Francis, where the conflict in that chapter is having to rescue Tippi from him.
    • Chapter 5: King Croacus IV, who had the Cragnons kidnapped and enslaved after he was driven insane by drinking the water the Cragnons constantly polluted.
    • Chapter 7: Bonechill, leader of the Skellobits (and an Expy of Lucifer) who invaded the Overthere.
  • Chapter 2 also has Mimi, a henchwoman of Count Bleck, who feigns her position as Merlee's handmaid, only to make life in the mansion a hellish nightmare, and eventually becomes the chapter boss.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In Chapter 7-2, when you encounter Bowser, he complains that he's hungry, among other things.
• Art Shift: While characters from the Mario universe retain their appearances from Thousand Year Door, new characters created for this game are more stylized, being made of disjointed shapes and lines. It typically changes based on which world you're in, highlighting the fact that they're alternate dimensions and not just different places in the same world.
• The Artifact:
  • Luigi usually wears overalls, which have buttons. As Mr. L, he wears a one-piece black suit, but the buttons are still there.
  • The most common healing items in the game have been changed from Mushrooms to Shroom Shakes (since Mushrooms are now auto-used after finding them in blocks), but cooking them still results in the same Fried Shroom Plates as the Mushrooms in previous games. The same goes for the better Shroom Shake variations.
• Artifact Name: Keel Mangos, found in the Land of the Cragnons, originated in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, where their name came from their land of origin, Keelhaul Key. Because Keelhaul Key is absent from this game, therefore Keel Mangos are found elsewhere, the name loses its meaning.
• Artifact of Doom: The Chaos Heart, a shadowy heart created from the marriage of Bowser and Peach. It is used by Bleck to create the Void, which will eventually destroy all worlds if it isn't countered with the Pure Hearts.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Luigi was mostly in the background in the last two games and basically only existed to provide optional and humorous dialog like his diary or his Marvelous Compass quest stories. In this game, he plays a huge part in the plot as one of the 4 heroes as well as the game's final boss, alongside Dimentio.
  • While Bowser was the Big Bad in the original Paper Mario, he was Demoted to Extra in the previous game. Here, however, he plays a big part in the plot once again.
  • Merlon and the other wizards return and play a much bigger role in this game than they did before. In the previous games, they were wizards and fortune tellers who assisted Mario on his quest but were not relevant to the main story. Here, Merlon acts as your guide, and some of your missions involve seeking out the other wizards and fortune tellers.
• Ascended Fridge Horror:
  • Doubles as an Internal Deconstruction. The game shows what kind of person would seek to destroy all the worlds and the implications of doing so. Count Bleck is in truth a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds who sees no value in anything ^note including his own life, and he destroyed his home dimension, wiping out his entire people in the process.
  • At one point Lord Blumiere tells his father that Timpani was his entire world. The latter banishing her to walk all the worlds until she dies resulted in the worst possible way: Blumiere crossed the Despair Event Horizon and started seeking to destroy every world, transforming into Count Bleck in the process.
• Ascended Glitch: Well, not exactly, but there is a throwaway line referencing the original Minus World from Super Mario Bros..
• Ash Face: Subverted; after tricking you into opening an exploding chest, Mimi complains when this doesn't happen.
• Asshole Victim: Blumiere's father, (See Honor-Related Abuse, Parental Marriage Veto and Self-Made Orphan.) and Dimentio. (See The Starscream)
• Bathroom Brawl: The boss fight against Mimi in Chapter 2-4 takes place in the ladies' room in Merlee's basement.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: No he can't. Mario needs a space helmet to breathe in space, unlike the previous game. You can be a smart ass and refuse to put it on when Tippi instructs you to, with appropriate results if you do.
• Batman Gambit: Dimentio needs the heroes to retrieve the Pure Hearts and use them to beat Count Bleck in order to steal the Chaos Heart and remake the universe. If the heroes fail, Dimentio cannot get the Chaos Heart and would end up getting erased from existence just like everyone and everything else.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: When you begin the game Luigi is talking to Mario saying that he wants some "KERBLOOEY" events to happen. Needless to say they end up meeting Count Bleck who plans on ending all of existence. And later on in the story the game has plenty of Wham Moments, starting in Chapter 6 when the entire world of Sammer's Kingdom gets destroyed. And then there's Luigi, himself.
• Beware the Silly Ones:
  • Francis can be deadly if you don't take him seriously as a boss because of his character. But you just know you can't take him seriously.
  • Dimentio. He's just a fun-loving comic relief who loves to crack jokes with his enemies, right? He's actually an Ax-Crazy Knight of Cerebus who backstabs his boss just so that he can be the one to rule all worlds. And then he decides to spitefully destroy them after he is beaten. When all is said and done, he might quite possibly be the darkest Mario villain in the entire franchise.
• Big Bad: Count Bleck, who wants to destroy all worlds using the power of the Chaos Heart, forcing Mario to gather the Pure Hearts to counter it. He leads a colorful group of characters and sends them to stop Mario's progress. However, one of said characters usurps the position of Big Bad at the last second, and proves to be a much more vile villain than Bleck was.
• Big Boo's Haunt: Merlee's Basement (Chapter 2-4), and the Underwhere (Chapters 7-1 and 7-2). The latter is justified, since it's the afterlife and is the Mario Universe's equivalent of Fire and Brimstone Hell.
• Big Fancy Castle: Castle Bleck and Fort Francis. Bleck being a villain, a Man of Wealth and Taste, and filthy rich, it's obvious he'd get such a gorgeous castle, but you wouldn't really expect an otaku as big as Francis to live in a massive castle. (On the other hand, Francis' castle is a giant eight-bit assembly staffed by Catgirl Maid Weapons Systems).
• Big Good: Merlon deciphers the Light Prognosticus, and instructs the heroes on where to go and what to do.
• Big, Thin, Short Trio: For around half of the game, your party consists of Mario, who is shorter than the other playable characters, Peach, who is slimmer than the other playable characters, and Bowser, who is much taller and wider than the other playable characters.
• Blackout Basement: Underwhere Road. Certain segments become incredibly dark; the only way to alleviate this is to light a torch with Bowser's fire breath, and that only lasts for a short time.
• Blank White Void: The aptly named World of Nothing , which results from the annihilation of the Sammer's Kingdom, is little more than a very long white level devoid of anything save for the occasional monochrome debris.
• Body Horror: Mimi's Transformation Sequence is quite freaky for an E-rated game.^note She basically spins her head like in The Exorcist, only instead of turning around sideways, her head turns vertically. It certainly doesn't help that the end result is a Gonkified version of her with giant spider legs coming out of her upside-down head. Plus there's the whole cracking neck thing...
• Bonus Dungeon:
  • The Flipside Pit of 100 Trials. 9 floors of fighting enemies to find a key, 1 floor with treasure, an exit, and a door to the next 9 floors. Repeat this until you fight the Optional Boss, Wracktail, on floor 100.
  • The Flopside Pit of 100 Trials. Imagine the above, but all the enemies are tougher and look like black silhouettes, and the Superboss is silhouettes of the playable characters. And you have to complete it twice before you can face the boss and get the reward, for some reason.
  • The Duel of 100 in the postgame. Take on 25 Sammer Guys, one by one, for 4 levels. (It's not quite the same thing, though - you still have to do it all at once, but you have the option to save every 25 fights and you can leave at any time instead of every 10 floors.)
• Book Ends:
  • Mario is the only playable character in World 1 and most of 8-4. Lampshaded by Tippi: "It reminds me of when we first met..."
  • Also, the introduction sees the wedding of Peach and Bowser, which causes the Void to open. The final scene sees the "wedding" of Timpani and Blumiere, in the same dimension, at the same altar (lampshaded by Luigi: "Hey, I remember this place!"), which causes the Void to close. Interesting in that the first occasion was a wedding that wasn't for true love, and the second wasn't really a wedding, but was for true love.
  • And the game begins with Tippi waking up Mario, then taking him to Flipside, where we see the Void for the first time. The final scene sees Luigi, the first character alongside Mario to be seen in the game, waking up Mario on Flipside tower, where we see the Void for the last time.
    • Flipside tower is also the first playable area in and after the game.
  • The first and last scene are the only scenes in the game in which the player doesn't know where Tippi is.
• Boss-Altering Consequence: Prior to the final fight against Mimi, she will approach the player disguised as Merlee and ask them which three things they're most afraid of. If you're smart enough to see through Mimi's disguise, you can trick her into giving you helpful items, but if you're being willfully dense, you'll have to fight three different enemies, including Francis.
• Boss Bonanza: Castle Bleck is divided into four sub-chapters, each of which ends in boss fight: O'Chunks, Mimi, Dimentio, and Count Bleck, respectively. After Bleck's defeat is the Super Dimentio fight.
• Bowdlerise: The post-Chapter flashbacks has a scene where an injured Timpani rejects Blumiere, leading him to wonder if his father was behind it. The North American release replaces her being injured with her crying.
• Bittersweet Ending: In order to stop the Void from consuming all of Flipside, Tippi and Count Bleck renew their vows to each other to create more Pure Hearts to stop the Chaos Heart, but neither of them return to Flipside, leaving the other heroes heartbroken. However, they all celebrate with a dinner, and its implied that they have settled somewhere where they are both happy.
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • Most of Bowser's troops are brainwashed by Nastasia into serving Count Bleck. Luigi also gets brainwashed by Nastasia and turned into Mr. L.
  • O'Chunks, or rather, O'Cabbage also qualifies, as Dimentio was testing the Floro Sprout the Floro Sapiens used to brainwash and slave the Cragnons on him, which he then uses on Luigi during the final boss fight.
  • Fracktail also qualifies. His is more of a case of forcibly-induced programming error, but same principle.
• Brainwashed Bride: The pre-title cutscene shows Count Bleck forcing Bowser and Princess Peach to marry to fulfill the requirements for summoning the Chaos Heart. While Bowser, with his longtime Villainous Crush, is eager to go along with this, Peach is not, so she is magically made to say "I do."
• Breather Episode: Chapter 7, at least relative to Chapter 6 and Chapter 8. Though more intense than the first five chapters, it's far from the Wham Episode of Chapter 6 or the overall bleakness of Chapter 8.
• Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: When Timpani almost dies from being doomed to wander between dimensions forever, she gets transformed by Merlon into the butterfly-shaped Pixl we all know and love.
• But Thou Must!: Subverted, in which you can refuse to save the world and get a Nonstandard Game Over before the real game even starts.
  • When you’re talking to Francis in his Dating Sim program, you can either have her accept or consider it. Peach, regardless of your answer, will break the fourth wall and demand to know who’s choosing her answers.
  • You can also vehemently refuse to wear a helmet... in space, resulting in another Nonstandard Game Over.
  • And also if you refuse to look for Luvbi when Jaydes asks.
  • And again in Chapter 8-3 if you agree to help Dimentio overthrow Count Bleck.
  • In a different vein, the interaction with Carrie the Pixl in Fort Francis has her asking you what you thought of Francis. She'll agree completely with you no matter what you said.
  Carrie: So what you're saying is, Francis is awesome and irresistible. A stallion basically. I was thinking the exact same thing!
  • There is one time in which it is played straight: when "Merlee" (who is actually Mimi in disguise) asks you to sign a contract that is obviously bad for you, if you select "Sign" twice, the next set of choices are "No way!" and "Forget it!".
• The Caligula: King Croacus, who more or less declares an incredibly one-sided war against the Cragnons while spending his fortunes on making everything, especially himself, "beautiful". We later learn that he was a wise and just ruler in the past, and only started acting badly after he got poisoned from polluted waters. His last sane order was that none of the defeated Cragnons be killed, just held prisoner until they stop poisoning the water supply with their trash.
• Call-Back: And a pretty funny one at that. At the beginning of the game, Bowser yells at one of his minions for not locking the gate to the castle. When you reach Fort Francis at the end of Chapter 3, Bowser questions what the castle has over his. What's the first obstacle you need to get by? A locked gate.
• Calling the Old Man Out:
  • It's implied that Blumiere's first act as Count Bleck was to kill his father. It's also implied that he wiped out the Tribe of Darkness.
  • When Luvbi discovers her true identity as a Pure Heart she is extremely annoyed at Grambi and Jaydes’ overprotectiveness, claiming that they did not let her enjoy life, knowing that her time was short.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Count Bleck. Or is he?
• Cartoon Meat: The Power Steak and Bone-In Cut items, which are cartoonish depictions of a steak and a piece of meat on a bone, respectively, with the latter being drawn in the game's characteristic Retraux blocky style.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The darkest Mario game yet. The game starts to go into this full-stop in Chapter 6 and its aftermath. Basically, the main characters actually witness a world getting destroyed, and they have to explore the empty void to look for the now defunct Pure Heart. After the end of the chapter, Dimentio murders the entire playable cast. They get better, but damn.
• Chain of Deals: There's a very long one that makes you backtrack across all the worlds you previously visited, but thankfully, it's optional.
• Chaos Is Evil: The villains are trying to destroy The Multiverse with the Chaos Heart.
• Checkpoint Starvation: You cannot save during either of the Pits Of 100 Trials at all. If you get killed by the enemies or exit the pit before making it to the 100th floor, you will be forced to do the whole thing from the beginning again.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The Floro Sprouts are initially just a part of King Croacus IV's plan in Chapter 5, with Dimentio using one to make O'Chunks more dangerous in a fight. Much later it is revealled that Dimentio has more and uses them to brainwash Luigi as the last step of his Evil Plan.
  • If you look carefully, you can see a bunch of tiny houses and pipes in the chapters before you get Dottie, hinting early on that you'll need to be small to fully experience that world.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The Interspecies Romance between Blumiere and Timpani in the post-Chapter flashbacks seem irrelevant right up until The Reveal that they are Count Bleck and Tippi respectively.
• The Chessmaster: Dimentio, outwitting everyone by the end of the game.
• The Chosen One: It's stated that Mario, Luigi, Peach and Bowser are the Heroes of Light chosen by the Light Prognosticus. Luigi is the Chosen One for the Dark Prognosticus, being the Apocalypse Maiden.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Kammy. She was a major character in the first two games, but is absent from this one with no explanation. This might have been done because giving her a role alongside the now playable Bowser would be awkward.
  • It could be argued that she died after the fight in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door since if you "talk" to her after the fight she just says "...". Stars around her head similar to Bowser imply that she is still alive when we last see her, but then, the dragons definitively die in a similar way.
• Cloudcuckoolander: The Pixls (except for Tippi). They don't have many lines, but what little dialogue they do have is extremely bizarre.
  • More heavily implied by the wacky theme you hear every time you meet one.
  • Although, given the fact that some of them have been locked up for 1,500 years, it's somewhat understandable that they wouldn't be fully sane.
  Thoreau: I express concern when the Ancients stuffed me in that chest 1,500 years ago. But now I see my worries were unfounded!
  • Although, even the ones like Barry and Dottie that weren't imprisoned anywhere (we don't know how Dottie got in the Floro Caverns, and Barry was just kinda wandering around the Bitlands) are a little strange (although, they may be the most normal).
• The Collector: Francis has a massive collection of nerd memorabilia in his fortress, and is constantly trying to get more, which even leads him to kidnap Tippi.
• Collision Damage: Being based on traditional Mario platform games than turn-based RPGs, it plays this straight with pretty noticeable knock back. Which is odd, because 2D Mario games have never had knockback before or since.
• Common HTTP Status Code: One of the lines Fracktail says after being corrupted is "404 computer hamsters not found".
• Complaining About Shows You Don't Watchinvoked: Mocked with one of the True or False questions Francis's door gives to Peach before entering Francis's room.
  Question: I love going on message boards and complaining about games I've never played!
• Console Cameo:
  • The recipe computers look like Nintendo DS Lites, and the cards needed to expand their list of suggested recipes resemble DS game cards.
  • One item in the Chain of Deals is called the Training Machine, which looks like a DS. Merluvlee says she uses it to train her brain, a reference to Brain Age.
  • Every Nintendo console to ever exist up to the Wii can be seen in Fort Francis.
• Continuity Cameo: It's hard to make out due to the low resolution, but group pictures of the partners from the first two games can be seen in Mario and Luigi's house. You can later get catch cards depicting them by beating the Flopside Pit of 100 Trials and the Duel of 100 in Sammer Kingdom.
• Counting to Potato: Slim (who does, in fact, count to ten).
  Slim: OOOOONNNE! TWOOOOO! THREEEEE! FIIIIIIIVE! FOUUUR! EEEEIGHT! SEVENTEEN!!!! THREE-POINT-ONE-FOUR!!!! ONE MARZILLION!! TENNNNN!!!
• Court Jester: Dimentio is a harlequin jester and one of Bleck's main minions, mostly serving to make weird jokes and be the brains behind a few plans like the Floro Sprout production in Chapter 5. Most of this jesting is an act; beneath it all, he's a maniac who's been manipulating the whole plot for his own means and planning to betray Bleck at the last minute.
• Creepy Circus Music: This type of music is used in association with the sinister Magical Clown Dimentio:
  • Dimentio, Charming Magician is Dimentio's leitmotif, which combines a sort of swanky, circus/magic show tune with a feeling of power and dread.
  • "It's Showtime," Dimentio's Boss Remix, starts out with chaotic fast notes, creating a feeling of overwhelming power. However, the more "magical" elements from "Dimentio, Charming Magician" slowly come in, and this trope comes into full effect later (0:47 in the linked video), as the song switches to a dark waltz-like reprise of "Dimentio, Charming Magician"'s main melody.
• Cute, but Cacophonic: Mimi, judging by the jagged purple Speech Bubbles. Of course, in that form, she's not so much "cute" as OH MY GOD WHAT IN THE NAME OF MIYAMOTO'S FLOOPY HAIR IS THAT.
• Cutting Off the Branches: The pictures at the beginning of the game canonize that Mario recruited every optional partner in the previous two games and that the baby Yoshi was green.
• Cumulonemesis: The Ruff Puff return once more, appearing fittingly enough in the Overthere.

D-G

• Darker and Edgier: Downplayed, in that the game is also Denser and Wackier to offset it, but the game's plot is noticeably darker than usual, even darker than its already dark predecessor. The stakes are high from the start, Count Bleck's backstory involves him losing his true love, going mad from grief and trying to exact revenge on the entire multiverse by wiping out everything, a dimension gets destroyed, and in the end, Tippi and Count Bleck sacrifice themselves to stop the apocalypse. Super Paper Mario may well be the single darkest game in the entire Mario franchise, let alone the Paper Mario spin-off series.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • As creepy as the Underwhere is, the people there are all pretty nice.
  • Flopside is Flipside's dark counterpart, but it isn't evil either.
  • The Tribe of Darkness. While they did some sketchy things like taking the Dark Prognosticus and had darkness-related powers, they were only trying to prevent the book from being misused and mostly kept to themselves for safety reasons.
• Dating Sim: Parodied in Chapter 3-4. Francis can't speak to females (like Peach) directly, and instead uses an interface that plays like one of these. You can choose Peach's answers for her.
• Deadly Euphemism: Variations of the phrase "end of your game." Fairly funny in some contexts, such as wedding vows lasting "'till your games be over." Really freakin' creepy when "I'll end your games" is used as a death threat.
• Deadpan Snarker: Peach, surprisingly enough. The standout example is her scene with Francis, where her patience with Francis and his dating sim wear thin and she begins pelting him with snark.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Despite all the euphemisms and deconstructions in-story, it doesn't apply to gameplay, getting a Game Over for real only sends you back to your last save point. No visits with Jaydes or any of that.
• Death Mountain: Mt. Lineland in Chapter 1-2 is a single mountain level with a village at the top. There is also Mt. Crag which is the setting for Chapter 5-1 and Chapter 5-2.
• Deep South: Chapter 2 seems to have a Louisiana aesthetic, starting in a swamp and transitioning to Merlee's large wooden mansion.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Subverted more than once with Bowser, who joins due to reasons completely different from the defeat, and clearly states the first time that he is only doing it for his own benefit, not that of the heroes. Specifically, so he can take his castle back AND ensure there's a world that he can actually take over in the first place. Acts as a nod to another game in the series.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Castle Bleck. Nothing but pure blackness with white outlines. Also, Sammer's Kingdom after it's destroyed in chapter 6: Nothing left but empty white space and occasional blackened ruins.
• Denser and Wackier: Although the plot is noticeably darker than usual, the game also has plenty more humor to offset it, with more goofy moments and situations than before.
• Descending Ceiling:
  • Merlee's Mansion has a room with a button panel that, when pressed, causes bars to fill the room's windows, and makes the ceiling start to lower with spikes. If Mario flips, however, it reveals that this ceiling only covers half the room, so he can avoid it and jump on top of it to ride it when it rises back up.
  • Following the battle with O' Chunks in Castle Bleck, the ceiling drops, threatening to crush everyone in the room. O' Chunks tries to save everyone by catching the ceiling to keep it raised, but Bowser chooses to stay behind and lift it as well. While the other three heroes get to safety in the next room, the ceiling finally collapses with Bowser and Chunks still inside, though it's later revealed that they actually broke through the floor instead of getting crushed.
• Designated Girl Fight: Peach and Mimi face off one on one in the last chapter of the game.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • At one point, the player can use a Koopa to repeat the "infinite lives" exploit from Super Mario Bros., which in this game would grant infinite experience points instead. Do it for more than a few seconds to try and level up, and it will deduct experience points from your score to prevent you from staying there to max out your level.
  • It's possible to skip certain Pixls if you use items right, and doing so will change the post-chapter dialogue from summarizing the events of the last stage to giving you the Pixl anyway (since you need them to get to the next Heart Pillar). This message exists for Thoreau, Boomer, Slim, Carrie, and Dottie.
    This Pixl heard all about your adventures while waiting in a basement in Yold Town. Thoreau the throwing Pixl is now your friend!
  • Before Chapter 2, you need to get some Spicy Soup to wake up Peach. If you talk to Saffron, she makes some for you. If you make soup during Chapter 1 and have it in your inventory, she'll respond to that and advise you to go save Peach.
• Dialogue Tree: Inverted. You can only have one of the heroes out at a time, and the dialog of other characters (say, pre-fight Boss Banter) will change to reflect that.
  • In Chapter 3, super nerd Francis will use an interface reminiscent of a dating sim to converse with Peach. The player can choose Peach's responses.
• Did Not Do the Bloody Research: Just before Luigi fights Dimentio, Dimentio provokes Luigi by calling his mustache a "Shag." This term did not reside well in Great Britain, as the word is a coarse verb for sexual intercourse, so it was changed to Dimentio calling Luigi a pushover.
• Dimensional Traveler: Mario, Peach, Bowser, and Luigi travel through various dimensions to prevent the end of all existence. Also, Count Bleck and his minions can travel through various dimensions.
• Disc-One Nuke: It's possible to clear the first Pit of 100 Trials and get the optional Pixl, Dashell, before you finish Chapter 2. Much more devastating is the number of levels you will gain from completing the pit. You'll have far more hit points and attack power than you should have by chapter 2. Of course, this is more of an example of Level Grinding than disc one nukage.
• Disney Death:
  • Timpani is alive in the form of the Pixl Tippi, much to Count Bleck's remorse.
  • At the end of Chapter 6, Dimentio inflicts this on Mr. L, turning him back to Luigi, then the other three playable heroes. Given where they're sent, it really looks like they died until Jaydes tells Mario and Luigi they were sent to the Underwhere alive.
  • Damn near every heroic character by the end. Bowser gets crushed under a Descending Ceiling, Peach falls into a pit (but gets her fall broken by Bowser), and Luigi gets trapped in an exploding box Dimentio used to inflict Disney Deaths earlier. During the final boss, they all show up and they're just fine. However, in Luigi’s case, it was so Dimentio can implant a Floro Sprout into him for his plan.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Blumiere's father cursed Timpani to wander between dimensions until her death as punishment for her engagement to his son. In response, Bleck took the Dark Prognosticus and sought to destroy reality in revenge for his lost love. Like Father, Like Son...
• Dreadful Dragonfly: Planet Blobule is the home to weird dragonfly-like aliens called Choppas. They are dangerous foes, as they can freely shift between 2D and 3D, have a very unpredictable movement pattern and are as big as Mario.
• Dub-Induced Plot Hole: In Chapter 1, Tippi instantly recognizes Dimentio when they first meet him. How Tippi knew him or why she recognized him was never explained or mentioned again afterward. That's because in the Japanese version, she was simply repeating what he just said back to him.
• Duel Boss:
  • In Chapter 3, Bowser separates Peach from Mario before his boss fight, forcing you to fight him as Mario.
  • The first three segments of Chapter 8 end with a rematch with one of Bleck's minions where you are forced to play as a specific character. These bouts include Bowser vs. O' Chunks, Peach vs. Mimi, and Luigi vs. Dimentio. All three of these fights end with both opponents seemingly being killed.
• Dueling Player Characters: After the group has been split due to Dimentio seemingly killing them all, Mario and Luigi manage to find Bowser after some exploration, and they have a fight due to some misunderstandings. Once they defeat Bowser, he comes to his senses and rejoins the party.
• Dying as Yourself: Fracktail. Right as you deal the final blow his software reboots, allowing him to leave you with an apology for his errant behavior.
• Dying Smirk: Dimentio. He's got a reason to be happy, though, as he's taking the whole multiverse with him.
• Eating the Enemy: During the fight with Francis, he might swallow you with his tongue which will cause gradual damage. You'll have to shake the controller to break free.
• E = MC Hammer: The background of Lineland features floating mathematical equations consisting of random symbols and various Mario icons such as Fire Flowers and mushrooms.
• Elopement: Blumiere tried to run away with Timpani in order to find a place where their love would survive. Before they could do so, his father cursed her to wander between dimensions to near death.
• Emergency Transformation: Tippi, who had to be turned into a Pixl by Merlon.
• Enigmatic Minion: Dimentio. Even Count Bleck himself doesn't know quite what Dimentio is or where his true allegiances lie.
• Escaped from Hell: An interesting heroic case: Mario and friends are thrown into the afterlife, and Mario fights his way in the Underwhere to find his brother Luigi. Queen Jaydes, who is not actually an evil person, allows them to return to the living world, and the duo continue to Chapter 7, which is... you guessed it, the afterlife again; but this time Mario and Luigi have to find Bowser, who is imprisoned in the Underwhere, and Peach, who is somewhere in the Overthere.
• Escape Rope: The Return Pipe, which lets you return to Flipside at any time, with a few exceptions.
• Everybody Hates Hades: Subverted. Queen Jaydes, ruler of the Underwhere, seems pretty intimidating at first, but it's quickly revealed that she's pretty nice off-duty.
• Everybody Knew Already: Merlon claims that only he and Nolrem know about Flipside and Flopside existing within their own towns. There are a few NPCs who mention the opposite town and mention having been to the opposite town. Also, it's mentioned that Bestovius only teaches his flipping technique to the hero. Several NPCs make reference to going places they can't possibly go without flipping, and many Mooks can flip as well.
• Even Evil Has Standards: If you enter the destroyed Sammer's Kingdom while playing as Bowser, even he will be shocked by what he finds.
  "This is messed up. I'm all for being evil, but this is just overkill."
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Dimentio used the Heroes to get the Pure Hearts, and allowed them to use them on Count Bleck so that he could get the Chaos Heart easily. He honestly thought that the heroes using the Pure Hearts meant that they were gone for good. He ended up legitimately shocked when, due to Bleck/Blumiere, Tippi/Timpani, O'Chunks, and Mimi's love for one another, the Pure Hearts had returned and stripped him of his invincibility.
• Evil Counterpart: Each of the four members of Count Bleck's team serves as a counterpart to one of the four heroes, battling them one-on-one in the final chapter: O'Chunks and Bowser, Mimi and Peach, Dimentio and Luigi, and Bleck and Mario. Nastasia could be considered one to Tippi as well.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: After you free Gnaw, the giant dog creature in Merlee's Mansion, it immediately proceeds to chase after Mimi. Tippi's description implies Gnaw is trying to protect Mario and co. from Mimi. His reaction to seeing "Merlee" for the first time in the chapter is also a nice bit of foreshadowing.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: Bonechill, leader of the Skellobits. Like the name implies, he has An Ice Person powers.
• Evil Versus Oblivion: Bowser and Count Bleck. Later, Count Bleck and Dimentio.
• Eviler than Thou:
  • Count Bleck proves himself the far greater evil than his father and Bowser by destroying many dimensions including his own, causing Bowser to have an Even Evil Has Standards moment.
  • Dimentio betrays the aforementioned Count Bleck after the latter's defeat, revealing that he was the true mastermind who played everyone all along and plans to remake the universe in his image.
• Exact Words: The prophecy only said that the Man in Green would harness the Chaos Heart to destroy the universe. It never said anything about the Man in Green doing so willingly...
• Face–Heel Turn: Count Bleck is revealed to have gone through one in flashbacks after losing his fiancée due to dimensional banishment. He betrayed the Tribe of Darkness and stole the Dark Prognosticus, and then proceeded to enact his plan to destroy all dimensions out of grief.
• Fairytale Wedding Dress: Peach's, even though it was just a white version of her usual dress (and which she doesn't like in the slightest, funnily enough).
• Fake King: The first time you meet King Sammer, he's real. The second time, it's actually Mimi impersonating him.
• Fake Longevity: The Flopside Pit of 100 Trials. The voice at the end refuses to reward you the first time, and makes you go through the entire area a second time to claim your prizes and your Superboss battle.
• Fake Weakness: Mimi tries shapeshifting into Merlee and asking Mario his weaknesses...in a place where Merlee has no business being. She'll put power-ups and helpful items out if you tell her you're weak to them. And you can even get her to spawn a boss from a previous chapter.
• Fallen Angel: Bonechill is implied to be a fallen Nimbi.
• False Prophet: Count Bleck claims that he wants to destroy the multiverse so that he can create a new one without any of the original's flaws. He's telling the truth about destroying the multiverse, but lying about the part where he'll replace it with a new one. And the reason he's doing this? He couldn't find any joy in life after he believed that his lover was dead, so he decided that everyone had to die with him.
• Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables: In the Overthere Stair, Peach eats a Golden Apple that puts her into a 100-year long slumber. There's also the Pink, Blue, Yellow, Red, and Black Apples that can be found nearby and have different effects on whoever eats them.
• Fantastic Racism: Implied. Judging by the first conversation between Blumiere and Timpani, there seems to have been some tensions between the Tribe of Darkness and the humans.
• Fartillery:
  • O'Chunks uses this as his exit in the first three encounters, but he actually uses this as an attack against Bowser as Super O'Chunks.
  • This is possibly how the Cherbils attack. If you use Tippi to tell you about the creatures, she says "some say the gas comes from its mouth. Others say it comes from... elsewhere." Due to the creature's appearance (basically a set of eyes and a large pair of cheeks), it's difficult to tell which end it's coming from.
• Faux Affably Evil: Dimentio, who's charming, funny, and guilty of some particularly monstrous things.
• The Ferryman: Charold, for a fee of four coins, will take people across the River Twygz, allowing them to avoid the Underhands.
• Fighting Across Time and Space: When Mario and Luigi confront Dimentio in the innermost interiors of Castle Bleck, the wicked jester makes them go after him on a dimensional goose chase across every location the heroes have visited (including the destroyed Sammer's Kingdom) just to toy with them. After their chase ends back in Castle Bleck, Luigi becomes annoyed and furious at Dimentio because of his antics and offers to battle him alone, telling Mario to go on ahead without him and face Count Bleck.
• Final Dungeon Preview: After the first and second chapters, there are short segments featuring Peach and Luigi waking up at Castle Bleck, trying to escape, only to be tracked down by Bleck's assistant Nastasia. Peach manages to escape (thanks to Dimentio, and he presumably did the same thing with Bowser off-screen), but Luigi is not so lucky. It is not till the final chapter where you actually travel to Castle Bleck for the final battle with Count Bleck and Dimentio.
• Fishbowl Helmet: Mario and his party need a fishbowl helmet to be able to breathe in space. Yes, one. Even though there's three characters in Mario's party (at the time), they apparently only need to breathe when they're the active character. It even changes size depending on who's wearing it.
• Flies Equals Evil: Inverted with the "That's My Merlee" quiz show, where the real Merlee has flies buzzing around her (like when you first meet her in person) while Mimi has none. Justified since Merlee was hiding in the toilet.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Early on in the game, Princess Peach gets unexpectedly teleported out of Castle Bleck. While many characters and enemies can teleport like this, this instance is accompanied with the visual effect exclusive to Dimentio's style of teleportation. All the way toward the end of the game, Dimentio affirms that it was he who saved Peach.
  • When you encounter Thoreau, he makes a comment about Tippi's appearance being quite different from other Pixls wondering if she's a new type of Pixl. Tippi pauses a moment before regaining her composure. Tippi wasn't originally a Pixl made by the Ancients.
  • At the end of the first chapter, there's a flashback sequence showing dialogue between a human (Timpani) and someone she rescued (Blumiere). Aside from pained grunts, the first words out of Blumiere's mouth: "Where... am I? Is this... a human's home? Bleccch!" Blumiere eventually became Count Bleck, who says "Bleck" like a Verbal Tic.
• Foul Flower: The Floro Sapiens are a race of sentient walking flowers who brainwash and enslave the caveman-like Cragnons. Subverted when it is revealed that they only turned evil because the Cragnons polluted their water, which drove their king to insanity. Once the problem is solved, every Floro makes a Heel–Face Turn.
• Four Is Death: Prince Croacus of the Floro Sapiens is mentioned to have suddenly died wilted in the year 444.
• The Four Loves: All four kinds of love show up in the game, since the Power of Love is extremely important to the plot. Agape and eros are the most prominent of the four. Bowser's one-sided eros for Peach nearly causes the destruction of the multiverse and it ends up being saved by the eros (which also has traits of agape) between Lady Timpani, aka Tippi, and Lord Blumiere, aka Count Bleck. Nastasia's love for Count Bleck is definitely Agape because she loves him despite the fact that he does not return her feelings and goes so far as to take a bullet for him. In fact, many of the games chapter's have different forms of love as their theme. At the end of the third chapter, the needed Pure Heart suddenly appears in response to the philia that Tippi felt when she is rescued. The fourth chapter's theme turns out to be Storge, in the form of Squirps's love for his long-dead mother. The seventh chapter's theme is Storge in the form of Jaydes' and Granbi's love for their daughter Luvbi when it is revealed that they created Luvbi out of the final Pure Heart in order to disguise it, but they did care for her just as they would if she was their real daughter. The characters Francis, Mimi, and Luvbi all badly want to have Eros, although for Francis and Mimi it is on a much more shallow level.
• Free-Sample Plot Coupon: Mario gets the first Pure Heart handed to him before the player even officially has control of him. Hilariously, you can avert But Thou Must! by refusing multiple times to accept the item, eventually leading to the giver just giving up and a Non-Standard Game Over before the game even begins.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: During the Playable Epilogue, Heronicus (a Retired Badass who lives behind Saffron's shop) will tell you the story of how he spent most of his life seeking out a legendary Pixl. Just when he finally spotted it, a rock slide occurred and Heronicus was forced to choose between saving his friend or the Pixl. He chose the former, and the Pixl was lost forever.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • A number of 2D Mario games don't use breath meters when Mario's underwater. Water breathing was explicated lampshaded as an actual ability Mario has (and it justifies how he's able to use a fishbowl as a space helmet).
  • Tippi will not be able to help you find hidden objects or read enemy descriptions when she's been kidnapped by Francis and after beating the game because by then she and Blumiere have permanently disappeared.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Floro Sapiens still appear as enemies in chapter 5 even after you complete it, likely because you'd have no way of getting the Sap Syrup item they drop, which is used for some recipes if they didn't. However, the brainwashed Cragnons no longer appear as enemies.
  • No matter how long you take to defeat Mimi in Sammer's Kingdom, whether it's two seconds or ten minutes, she will still taunt you about her wasting "LOTS of your time."
  • Koopa Troop members still patrol the worlds and attack the player characters after beating the game, at which point Nastasia would presumably undo their brainwashing. If this weren’t the case, the game would lose many of its enemies.
  • Despite being treated relatively seriously in the story, Getting a Game Over for real doesn't send you to the Underwhere or the Overthere. You just go back to your last save point.
• Gameplay Protagonist, Story Protagonist: Uniquely for the Mario series, while you play as Mario and the other three heroes of the Light Prognosticus, it gradually becomes clear that Tippi is the actual protagonist, as the story is driven by her tragic romance with Count Bleck and her mission to stop him from destroying all worlds.
• Gemstone Assault: Mimi frequently uses sharp Rubees as weapons. Mario and his team can pick them up and throw them back at her, too.
• Genocide from the Inside: Blumiere is implied to have destroyed his people, the Tribe of Darkness, after transforming into Count Bleck.
• Genre Blind: When Toad mentions at the beginning that Peach is kidnapped, Luigi ponders who would do such a thing before deducing it must be Bowser. At this point in the series history, it shouldn't take more than 1/64th of a second to figure that out. Of course, it doesn't help it's also one of the few times it's not him.
• Girls with Moustaches: Peach briefly grows a moustache if you feed her an Orange Fruit (instead of the story-progressing Black Fruit) while she's asleep in the Overthere Stair.
• Global Currency Exception: In Chapter 2-3 Mario and company end up in debt to Mimi after they break her vase, and she will only accept payment in Rubees. This is the only level in the game where such currency comes into play.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: "DOOFUSES!" from Mimi; it makes sense, though, as she's intentionally meant to be childish.
• Gravity Screw: On the Planet Blobule, Mario can jump much higher than usual. The Whoa Zone allows him to walk on the walls and ceiling.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Blumiere's father is the one responsible for the disappearance of Timpani that left his son with the desire to destroy everything, setting off the chain of events leading to this game.
• Green Aesop:
  • The Cragnons learn one at the end of Chapter 5.
    "I mean come on! Water is easily our most precious natural resource!"
  • Sure enough, if you come back to Chapter 5-1 after clearing Chapter 5-4, the water will have cleared up after the Cragnons learned that throwing garbage into the river is bad.
• Green Hill Zone: Chapter 1-1, Lineland Road, is a grassy plain with easy obstacles and layout and music that make it a Nostalgia Level. Chapter 3-1, the first area of the Bitlands, has the same environment, just with more blockiness.

H-L

• Happy Harlequin Hat: The Monster Clown Dimentio has a variation of this.
• Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: Unlike the first two games, which were pretty even for both stages and bosses, Super Paper Mario has rather easy enemies and bosses with very simple strategies required to defeat them. Many stages, on the other hand, can be surprisingly challenging in no small part thanks to how the levels are laid out, as well as some puzzles.
• Healing Boss: Mr. L has an infinite supply of Shroom Shakes at his disposal. If left alone long enough, he can use one to heal 10 HP.
• Heart of the Matter: The villain wants to summon the Chaos Heart, which powers a universe destroying rift known as the Void while making its summoner practically invincible.
• Heaven Above: The dreary underworld of the shades, the Underwhere, is located in a dark cavern. The Overthere, where blessed souls and angelic beings reside, is high up in a Fluffy Cloud Heaven reached by a long stair through the sky.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Most of the main villains, including Count Bleck, team up to help you stop Dimentio.
  • For most of the game, Bowser, who was Big Bad of the first game and, like in the main series, a long-time enemy of Mario, is only fighting alongside Mario so he can rule the world himself, and reminds us of this just before entering Castle Bleck. But after seeing O'Chunks hold up the ceiling to save the party from being crushed, he does the same, even telling O'Chunks to get to safety once Mario, Peach, and Luigi are out of the room, and afterwards makes no more implications that he will turn on Mario when the worlds are saved, and returns to Flipside from the Mushroom Kingdom with Mario, Peach, and Luigi in the post-game, which is said to be a long time after.
• Hell Invades Heaven: An army of Skellobits from the Underwhere invades the Overthere, where an army of Nimbis rises to fight it.
• Hellhound: The Underchomp is an obvious parody of the typical Cerberus, being a three-headed Chain Chomp that guards the last door between the Underwhere and the Overthere.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Count Bleck and Tippi know that they may disappear from existence when they destroy the Chaos Heart, thanks to their links to both it and the Pure Hearts. They go through with it anyway, as it's the only way to stop the destruction of all worlds.
  • Bowser and O'Chunks hold up a collapsing ceiling in 8-1 to keep the others from getting crushed. Averted, however, as both fall through the floor and survive.
• High-Class Glass: Count Bleck wears a monocle over one of his eyes, going along with his presentation of a suit-and-cane gentleman.
• High Collar of Doom: Count Bleck, the game's main villain, wears a suit with a collar that rises higher than his head.
• Hollywood Chameleon: Francis. He can turn completely invisible and move around the battlefield like that. Even more bizarrely, he cannot be hurt or touched while invisible.
• Honor Before Reason: Subverted with the Sammer Kingdom. In order to reach the Pure Heart, you have to fight the Sammer Guy's 100-Man Army one by one. Once it becomes apparent that it won't be long before the Void destroys the Sammer Kingdom, however, they allow you bypass the fighting in order to hurry you to the Pure Heart. You don't even come close to making it.
• Honor-Related Abuse: Deconstructed with Blumiere. He fell in love with a woman named Lady Timpani and eventually got engaged to her, breaking his tribe's taboo against marriage outside of them in the process. In response, his father cursed her to wander between dimensions until her death, and then callously scolded him for disgracing him and their entire tribe by his engagement to a "dirty" human girl. He eventually snapped and lashed out on "everything that had taken her away from him", even going as far as killing his father and seeking to destroy reality. Fortunately, he gets better upon finding out that his love is still alive.
• Hub Level: Flipside is the biggest city of the dimension Mario has been transported to, and he explores it fully to place Pure Hearts into Heart Pillars to unlock the doors to new Chapters. It contains many other services like shops, a chef, and an arcade. Halfway through the game, he unlocks Flopside, a mirrored version of Flipside that contains the remaining Heart Pillars and some extra services.
• Humanity Ensues: One of Carson's stories is about a man who saves a bat from a trap while on a journey; the bat falls for him and turns herself into a human so she can accompany him. The implication is that the bat was Nastasia, and she was rescued by Blumiere while he was searching the dimensions for Timpani.
• Humongous Mecha: Mr. L fights with the Brobots, machines built in the shape of his head. The first is a spaceship that serves as the boss of Chapter 4 once he's defeated in person, and he upgrades it to the Brobot L-Type (which walks on land and uses Giant Hands of Doom) when he fights as the last boss of Chapter 6.
• Hurricane of Puns: Listing all the punny names, events, and other innuendos in this game could take up an entire article on its own.
  • Each and every one of the Sammer Guy's 100-Man Army has a punny name (examples: See Shout-Out), complete with pre- and post-battle text.
• Hurt Foot Hop: The playable characters have a special "hurt" animation when they land on something sharp, humorously clutching their foot as they fall backward.
• Hypnotize the Captive: Peach in the beginning of the game refuses to cooperate with being married to Bowser, so Nastasia uses brainwashing to force her to say "I do".
• Ignored Enamored Underling: Nastasia has a rather obvious crush on her boss, Count Bleck, though she must know that it could never possibly be anything but unrequited, since Count Bleck has an extreme case of Single-Target Sexuality, and losing the woman he loved was his entire reason for becoming an Omnicidal Maniac in the first place. O'Chunks' crush on Nastasia also counts, since as Bleck's Dragon she outranks him.
• Incoming Ham:
  • Bleck precedes his grandiose entrances and speeches with his Evil Laugh. "BLEH HEH HEH! BLECK!"
  • Dimentio provides one of his bizarre similes whenever he warps in. "We meet again, like two angry, burly dinosaurs with indigestion!"
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog:
  Mr. L: I uh... got to go deflavorize the Brobot's uh... Flavorizer.
• Inevitable Tournament: The Sammer's Kingdom storyline, where Mario's party has to fight 100 Sammer Guys in the Duel of 100 to obtain Chapter 6's Pure Heart. They don't get to finish the tournament initially, as Bleck shows up after the 20th opponent and commands the Void to consume the world, leaving them to get the (temporarily disabled) Pure Heart by fighting Mr. L in the destroyed kingdom. In the post-game, the Duel of 100 can be attempted for real, with Catch Cards of Mario's partners from The Thousand-Year Door as a reward.
• Informing the Fourth Wall: Bowser, when he attempts to climb ladders.
  [Bowser flails his arms, attempting to climb the ladder]
  Bowser: (under his breath) Can't climb this!
• I Was Quite a Looker: The Three Hags, old crones from the Underwhere based on the Greek Fates, claim that they looked a lot better in their youth. One of them, Hagnes, even competed for Grambi's love back in the day, though she lost out to Jaydes.
• In Medias Res: The wedding scene that plays during the Attract Mode. Chronologically, that scene occurs during the span of time when Mario is blacked out, after Count Bleck captures Bowser, the Koopa Troop and Luigi partway through the introduction.
• In the End, You Are on Your Own: Subverted when Mario gets separated from his teammates one by one in Chapter 8, but they come back together to assist him in the final boss fight.
• Inn Between the Worlds: Flipside and Flopside, which are said to exist between dimensions.
• Innocent Innuendo: A lot of what Squirps says, like wanting to be squeezed and twisted into small spaces and also twice asking the player if they were in love with him (whether it was Mario, Peach, or Bowser didn't matter).
• Invincibility Power-Up:
  • The Mega Star turns the character into a giant 8-bit version of themselves that can rampage through everything in front of them with no danger of taking damage.
  • The Block Block is an inventory item that makes you invincible for a short time when you use it. It can be cooked to make a slightly better version, the Block Meal, which lasts a bit longer.
• It Makes Sense in Context: "Look, nobody likes having their butterfly kidnapped by a geek, but it's dangerous!"
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Blumiere's father started out as refusing to let his son leave the castle. When he found out his son fell in love with Timpani, he blackmailed her into breaking up with him from behind the scenes. When that failed, he cursed her to wander between dimensions as a last resort, almost killing her in the process.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Blumiere's father told his own son that Timpani was just deceiving him. Deconstructed, as it backfired.
  • Nastasia is killed by Dimentio shielding Count Bleck from one of his attacks. His response: "What an adorably hopeless gesture".
• Kill and Replace: Shadoo explicitly attempts this with the heroes after they make it to the bottom of the Flopside Pits of 100 Trials for the second time, making clones of the heroes to try and kill them off in an attempt to steal their Pixls so that he can escape the Pit and take revenge on the Ancients.
• Kill Enemies to Open: In the Flipside and Flopside Pits of 100 Trials, Mario and his companions go through 100 rooms, and each one has assorted enemies which the player must kill to find the one that has a key that opens the door to the next room. If they fail to get the key from the enemies in under 5 minutes, they will receive an instant Game Over.
• Knockback: Taking damage makes your character bounce back a considerable distance, certainly enough for Ledge Bats to be a problem. Tippi even lampshades it one of her enemy tattles, telling the player to be careful near narrow ledges.
• Lampshade Hanging: The game has a lot of fun with commenting on aspects of the story and standard Mario conventions, advancing the trend started by the first two Paper Mario games.
• Large Ham: O'Chunks, Francis to an extent, Squirps to an extent as well, possibly Super Dimentio, and so on. The characters that end up memorable tend to be this.
• Last of His Kind: Count Bleck is implied to be the last of the Tribe of Darkness.
• Late Character Syndrome: Luigi joins the party in Chapter 7 meaning he’s only playable for two chapters and sees very little use as a result. Even worse is that he isn’t playable (along with the rest of the cast save for Mario) for the final level and isn’t available for the Final Boss due to being used as host for Super Dimentio.
• Leap of Faith: Some of the levels are designed to require jumping into or over unseeable gaps to progress, though since bottomless pits aren't lethal, it's not much of a hassle.
• Left for Dead: Blumiere's father didn't bother killing Timpani after he cursed her to wander between dimensions until her death. She survived thanks to the help of Merlon.
• Level in the Clouds: The Overthere is a literal Fluffy Cloud Heaven in the form of a great field of fluffy white clouds home to the multiverse's blessed souls, and consequently takes this form when Mario travels there on his journey.
• Leitmotif:
  • Appropriately enough, the theme of the final boss, Super Dimentio, who is a fusion of Dimentio, the Chaos Heart and Luigi, is a mixture of their individual leitmotifs.
  • Count Bleck's theme undergoes many repeats and variations, forming the backbone of the soundtrack, along with the main fanfare and the "Memory" theme.
• Letting the Air out of the Band: In the final flashback sequence, this happens to the music when Blumiere cements his Face–Heel Turn and takes the Dark Prognosticus.
• Line Boil: The darkness effect◊ from Chapter 7-2 is a highly animated series of black lines forming a dark area around your character.
• Living Crashpad: Bowser and O'Chunks were last seen holding up a Descending Ceiling. The camera cuts to Mario and his friends in another room, and we hear the ceiling come down, suggesting Bowser and O'Chunks were crushed. Later, we see Princess Peach and Mimi fall down a hole in the floor, into their apparent doom. Eventually, Bowser and Peach return unscathed during the battle with Count Bleck.
  Tippi: You're all here... But how?
  Bowser: I fell through the floor before I got flattened by the ceiling.
  Peach: I fell through, too, and landed right on Bowser! It was a surprisingly soft landing...
• Loners Are Freaks: Francis. He gets incredibly nervous once Peach shows up and is so awkward and inept at normal face-to-face socialization that he needs to use a special program just to interact with her. On top of that, the program is a dating sim.
• Lost in Translation:
  • The English translation removes or downplays several aspects of Dimentio seen in the Japanese version, such as his frequent use of nicknames, Gratuitous French, Gratuitous English, and Gratuitous Spanish.
  • The post-Chapter flashbacks has a scene where an injured Timpani rejects Blumiere, leading him to wonder if his father was behind it. The North American release replaces her being injured with her crying.
  • After Count Bleck's defeat, he states that the Dark Prognosticus has been passed down his family. The North American translation drops this information.
  • When Count Bleck explains to Tippi his motives, he says he wanted to devote all worlds to Timpani, the love of his life. The North American release replaces it with him saying he wanted to destroy everything that took her away from him.
  • In the Japanese version, Carson states that Count Bleck saved O'Chunks from being killed at the hands of one of the latter's underlings. However, in the English translation, Count Bleck is said to have played on the guilt of this event to eventually sway him to his side.
• Love Dodecahedron: O'Chunks has unrequited feelings for Nastasia, who has unrequited feelings for Count Bleck alongside Mimi. Count Bleck has a Single-Target Sexuality for Timpani, who loved him back but lost all of her memories upon her Emergency Transformation into Tippi, after which she shows signs of liking Mario.
• Love Freak: Luvbi tends to act based on her desire to find a true love. It's most likely a side-effect of her being formed from a Pure Heart, a love-based artifact.
• Love Makes You Evil: Count Bleck's motive.
• Love Redeems: Count Bleck finally sees the error of his ways, and helps the heroes save the world by restoring power to the Pure Hearts, and then, after Dimentio is defeated, marries his true love, Timpani, to stop the Big Bad's last resort, and undoes the Chaos Heart's damage. Unfortunately, this kills them in the process. Except The Stinger reveals a shot of what appears to be a couple standing in a meadow, one of whom is wearing a top hat, which suggests that it's Count Bleck/Lord Blumiere and Timpani. Whether their location is another world or something else entirely, though, is up for debate.

M-P

• MacGuffin-Person Reveal: Luvbi is the white Pure Heart.
• Mage Species: The Tribe of Ancients are a race of magicians distinct from humans. The Tribe of Darkness, in particular, forbade intermarriage so they wouldn't lose their magic, which was said to be stronger within their parent tribe. Ironically, this law was what caused their downfall, as shown in the post-Chapter flashbacks.
• Magical Clown: Dimentio, an evil magical jester. As his name implies, he has control over dimensions, and can even create his own. His Leitmotif is even called "Dimentio, Charming Magician."
• Magikarp Power: Piccolo's ability to alter sound effects seems completely useless and gimmicky, until you find out that her Magic Music can cure all status ailments.
• Make Way for the New Villains: The game opens with Count Bleck forcibly taking Peach, Luigi, Bowser and his army into Another Dimension, then having his assistant Nastasia mind-controlling Bowser and Peach into marrying each other (well, actually just Peach. Bowser was more than happy to become Peach's husband), causing an interdimensional rip that will destroy all universes if left unchecked. (It Makes Sense in Context.) Though Mario initially thinks Peach going missing is Bowser's work, he realizes what happened when the two meet in The Bitlands, and the two join forces (among others) to take Count Bleck down. Count Bleck would then be usurped by an even more recent villain, Dimentio, who waits until Mario defeats Bleck, then takes the power of the Dark Prognosticus for himself and fuses with Luigi to become Super Dimentio.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: According to Carson, the Tribe of Darkness lived in seclusion to protect their magic from foreign contamination out of pride. Ironically, this brought their own downfall when Blumiere took the Dark Prognosticus in an attempt to avenge his human fiancée's Disney Death.
• Marathon Level: The Pits of 100 Trials. There is one in Flipside and one in Flopside. Both pits have you defeat enemies to obtain a key and advance to the next room. Each room gives you 5 minutes to get the key and exit the room, otherwise is an instant Game Over. Every ten rooms you will find a "rest room" with a chest containing a catch card, an exit pipe, and a door leading further into the pit. You cannot save your game until you exit the pit, and if you get a Game Over or exit the pits before reaching Room 100, you will have to do the whole thing from the beginning again. The Flopside Pit can only be accessed after beating the Flipside Pit, and the Boss of the Flopside Pit also has you go through the pit twice before being able to fight it, making it a total of 300 pits.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Nastasia, which means "She shall rise again". She survives an apparently fatal attack. Especially brilliant, in that most players merely see a play on words between the word "nasty" and the name "Natashia", suggesting that it's just a name for a villain.
  • Also Luvbi (as in "love" - hearts), who transforms into a Pure Heart.
• Me's a Crowd: At one point in Chapter 8-3, Dimentio floods a hallway with copies of himself. While they don't harm you, they are in your way and push you back to the center of the room.
• Minecart Madness: Mario has to ride a few mine carts in the Floro Caverns and one of them includes loop-de-loops in the track. Another one has a split that cannot be seen in 2D, so Mario's 3D flip timer is suspended.
• Mirror Boss: The boss of the Pit of 100 Trials in Flopside is Shadoo, who takes on the form of Dark versions of each of the main heroes, complete with their respective abilities. Dark Luigi and Dark Bowser are essentially souped-up versions of the Mr. L and Bowser fights from earlier in the game, but Dark Peach and Dark Mario have their own movesets.
• Mirror World: Flopside is a mirror image of Flipside with the same layout, albeit with left and right switched. The town's inhabitants are all slightly different versions of the ones in Flipside.
• Moe Anthropomorphism: A canon example: Luvbi is a Pure Heart in the form of a Nimbi.
• Monster Clown: Dimentio, who superficially resembles a jester and has truly dark machinations at work.
• Mood Whiplash: A lot of the later chapters get dark. One world gets sucked into the Void, leaving nothing but a white void left, and in the second part of the Bonus Level of Heaven, the Void actually appears in the background! What's more, the Void grows larger as the game progresses, and if you revisit an older level, you may see the Void in the background when it wasn't visible before. Revisit World 1-1 after the Void has grown a couple times to see this effect.
• Mook Bouncer:
  • The Back Cursya is a rare enemy that can send you back to Flipside Tower with a single touch. They only appear in the first stage of the Chapters they appear in though, so they won't ever cost you too much progress.
  • The Gnips guarding Merlee's Mansion will try to grab you in their mouth and will kick you right back to the mansion's entrance if they do so.
• Mook Carryover: A lot of minions generally associated with Bowser end up being brainwashed by Nastasia, and as such work for Bleck, even going against Bowser.
• Moon Logic Puzzle: At one point in Chapter 5, you progress to a series of floating blocks. The only way to make the pipe appear to get to the next area is to it the blocks in order in a long, complicated sequence. The only way to know the sequence (without using an external source) is to talk to one of the villagers, whom you have to say please to five times (by repeatedly typing the word "please") before he gives you the very long pattern. Definitely a Guide Dang It! for those who don't bother to Talk to Everyone.
• Morton's Fork:
  • When you're in Green's house to get him to activate the bridge, he asks you if red or green is a better colour. No matter what answer you give, he'll kick you out of his house for one reason or another.
    (if "Red!" is selected) RED?! Get out of here with your ugly red cap! I said GET OUT!
    (if "Green!" is selected) Hey... You're wearing red! I'm onto your lie, buddy!
    (if "Both!" is selected) Wh-What?! Both of 'em?! Grow a spine! And when you do, you can use it to get out of my house!
  • Luvbi is faced with one when she finds out that she is the last Pure Heart: if she chooses to become the Pure Heart again, she will die (and since they are already in the afterlife, experience Cessation of Existence). However, if she does not do this, then the heroes will not be able to stop the destruction of all worlds, meaning that everyone in the multiverse will cease to exist, including those who are already in the afterlife. She will experience Cessation of Existence either way. Her Heroic Sacrifice seems a little less heroic considering that. Fortunately, she appears again in the Overthere after the game is complete.
• Mr. Exposition: Merlon. While the Merlons of previous games were just helpful seers, this one is a major character who gives a lot of direction for Mario and explains a lot about Flipside and Bleck.
• My Greatest Failure: Not explicitly shown, but the Violent Glaswegian O'Chunks used to be a military commander, until a betrayal cost him the lives of all his men.
• Mythology Gag: The Pal Pills are very similar to a brigade of miniature Marios who briefly appeared in the Super Mario World cartoon episode "Rock TV". They also use the 8-bit Mario sprites, complete with death animation.
• Myth Prologue: The game opens on a tale of a legendary book, rather than showing its contents immediately. Its introduction tells the story of a fabled and prophetic book that was written by an ancient tribe. But though many sought its knowledge, none found happiness, as the tome held frightful predictions that culminated in the end of all worlds, and the fear and clamoring surrounding the book led to it eventually being hidden away. The game's story has a large focus on the Dark Prognosticus' final owner, which the same opening soon reveals to be the one known as Count Bleck using it as the instruction book for his plan to destroy every world, which he starts by forcibly wedding Peach with Bowser to create a Chaos Heart that will let him tear open an all-consuming hole in the fabric of reality. The actual book's contents are the events of the game itself to a certain extent, and the legacy of the once great tribe from which it came are prevalent throughout every world of its story, even Mario's own, as both remnants and descendants of the civilisation exist even in present day. Count Bleck's own tale is also deeply tied to the Tribe of Darkness who guarded the Dark Prognosticus, and it was the extreme traditions and foolishly cruel actions of the fatalistic sect he was born into which led to his evil plot.
• The Needless: Played with. Mario can't survive in space without oxygen yet he only needs to use a fishbowl as a helmet to avoid suffocation.
• Nerd Hoard: Francis' fortress has several rooms with shelves filled with manga and toys of his favorite shows. Said toys also reference previous Paper Mario characters.
• Never Say "Die":
  • Whenever death is mentioned, it's referred to as a Game Over if you're not related to flowers, in which case it's referred to as wilting. This is actually played for laughs, rather than censorship. At one point, your whole party visits the afterlife and gets a chance to speak with the dead, all of whom have died in ways you'd expect to die in a Mario game. When your party is ready to leave the afterlife, they even get a literal continue.
  • And the queen of the afterlife says that she has power over life and death. It seems more like the word "life" is simply interchangeable with "game".
  • Interestingly, it seems that the afterlife in the games is laid along the same lines as in Greek Mythology.
  • After the Peach and Mimi fight in 8-2, Peach saves Mimi and says "I can't leave you here to die."
  • When you encounter Wracktail, he says, "Why did you wake me from the sweet peace of slumber?! I will punish you...with death!"
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Mimi.
  Mimi: Stupid-heads... I'd mimicked her perfectly! You know it! ...I guess I'll congratulate you... by tearing you to little bits like stupid confetti!
• Nightmare Hands: The Underhands, invincible enemies that can only be found deep beneath the Underwhere's River Twygz, attack by ominously grasping at Mario and company. According to Tippi's Tattle, if you're grabbed by one, you can be killed Deader than Dead.
• Noble Male, Roguish Male: Count Bleck is the Noble Male and O'Chunks is the Roguish Male.
• No Fourth Wall: The Thousand-Year Door didn't have much of a barrier on the fourth wall to begin with, but this game takes it further with characters bringing up concepts like Game Overs and sequels naturally. Still, the game keeps itself self-contained and most of the fourth-wall breaking is just for gags.
• No-Gear Level: After Dimentio sends Mario to the Underwhere he winds up in the Underwhere without Peach and Bowser and with no Pixls or other items. His first run through the level requires only his moves to make it through the stage.
• No Hero Discount: Bestovius outright asks you why you, as the hero, should be able to learn his world-saving technique for free. (You can if you resist paying for long enough.)
• Non-Fatal Explosions: Lampshaded:
  Mimi: But... But... That explosion didn't even turn you black with soot! That totally didn't even hurt you at all! This stinks!
• Nonstandard Game Over:
  • The very start of the game, you can refuse the Pure Heart that Merlon tries to give you by saying "No" three times (with Merlon getting increasingly desperate each time). After that, he'll wander off worrying, you get a text screen saying that the universe was destroyed. Overlaps with Press Start to Game Over.
  • In the beginning of Chapter 4, you can refuse to put the helmet on while you're in space and then say you enjoy not breathing. You'll obviously die from lack of oxygen.
  Tippi: Ugh. Who's stupider? You? Or me, for listening to you... No more... Good-bye.
  • If you refuse to help Queen Jaydes find Luvbi, she strikes you with lightning and kills you.
  • In Chapter 8-3, if you agreed to join Dimentio, he brainwashes you, and it's Game Over.
• Noodle Incident: One of the Sammer Guys was King Sammer's personal trainer, until an unfortunate sit-up incident.
• No Power, No Color: The 8 Pure Hearts are all powerful and colorful artifacts, and when the violet one loses its power, it gets turned into a gray stone. When the violet Pure Heart's power gets restored, it regains its color as well.
• No Sneak Attacks: Averted; at one point, Dimentio DOES appear in Merlon's house as the heroes are delivering the petrified Pure Heart, and, after a brief dialogue, sends them to the Underwhere them without giving them a chance to fight. However, he only did this to send them to the afterlife so they could get the eighth Pure Heart, as well as to reunite Mario and Luigi, as part of his grand Batman Gambit.
• Nostalgia Level: A room in chapter 3-1 is identical to level 1-2 from the original Super Mario Bros, complete with warp zone.
  • A mine passage in chapter 5-3 is identical to level 2-1 from the same game, complete with the hidden vine that takes you to coin heaven.
  • The entirety of Chapter 1-1 is a reference to level 1-1 from Super Mario Bros. complete with a remix of the music.
  • World 2-2 was recreated in Chapter 3-2.
• Not Me This Time: Mario and Luigi are told by Toad at the beginning of the game that Peach has been kidnapped. However, Toad failed to tell the brothers who actually kidnapped Peach, so naturally Mario and Luigi go to Bowser's castle to rescue her. It turns out that Bowser was in the middle of a rallying speech in preparation for invading Peach's castle and did not actually do anything yet.
• Number of the Beast: Well, sort of referenced. They used 667 instead of 666 for one of Dorguy's questions referencing the unlucky numbers.
  "Shayde B buys 667 pens for 13 coins and buys 108 notebooks for 42 coins each.
• Off the Rails: Instead of finding Slim and emptying the rubee vault in Chapter 2-3, the player can get all 1,000,000 rubees they need by simply earning the cash they need. It'll take about six hours to do (minimum!), but it's possible.
  • You still need Slim to reach the end block though.
• Oh, Crap!: More specifically, "OH CRAG!"
• Omnicidal Maniac:
  • Count Bleck. Until he learns that the love of his life is still alive, that is. Then he becomes more of a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
  • Dimentio's goal is to destroy the entire multiverse and then recreate it in his own image, but after his loss as Super Dimentio, he attempts to destroy everything out of spite.
• Ominous Floating Castle: Castle Bleck.
• Optional Party Member: There are a few Pixls that aren't required to beat the game, but can be recruited by completing sidequests.
  • Barry will join you if you return to his hiding bush in Chapter 3-1 after clearing Chapter 3-4.
  • Dashell can be earned for clearing the Flipside Pit of 100 Trials.
  • Piccolo requires you to complete a Chain of Deals with various characters throughout the game, which ends with you earning the key for a house with Piccolo hidden inside.
  • After clearing the game, you can visit Francis in Chapter 3-4, where he will allow you to purchase Tiptron, a robotic replica of Tippi, for 999 coins.
• Overlaid Societies: The Hub Levels Flipside and Flopside are identical mirror copies of each other, right down to having Mirror Character NPCs, only being separated by dimensions and having reverse layouts. With the exception of Merlon, Nolrem and a select few of NPCs (like the one that builds a shortcut pipe between the cities), most of them are not aware of each other's existence.
• Overly Long Gag: Super Paper Mario loves these, least of all being the repeated block-hitting and hamster-wheel running in Merlee's Mansion.
  • "Um...Um...Um...Um...Um...Um...Um...Um...Um...Um...Um...Um...Um...Um...Um...Um...Um...Um...Um...Um...Um...A girl fell from the sky!"
  • Tippi, upon realizing you can't breathe in outer space: "Oh... Oh, gracious me... What I am to do? Um... Well... Let me see... Um... Hrm... Urm... Hm... Then... Well... Well... But... So... NOOOOO!"
• Painting the Medium: Tiptron's tattle cursor moves more slowly and hesitantly than Tippi's, hinting at her serious identity crisis. Her text boxes are also shaped like other machines', while retaining Tippi's rainbow border.
• Paper-Thin Disguise:
  • Pun aside, no one on Mario's side ever knows who Mr. L really is. Not even Mario himself, who only finds him "familiar."
  • Inverted and played with in Mimi's first appearance. She disguises as Merlee to fool Mario, leading to a Quiz Game Show in which you're supposed to guess which one is the real deal from the answers. But there's no info on the real Merlee to be used as reference at that point, so it would seem like it's merely a lucky guess, and Mimi's plan would have worked greatly, were it not for the fly that was fluttering around the real Merlee all the time due to hiding in the toilet.
• Parasol Parachute: Peach can use her umbrella to float and descend slowly or to reach far away places that the other characters can't.
• Parental Marriage Veto: Blumiere's father to Timpani and Blumiere. Of the 'she's the wrong race' type. This involved banishing Timpani to the edges of the universe, as well as almost killing her. Let's just say it didn't turn out well for the father.
• Party in My Pocket:
  • To the point where if a cutscene calls for more than one playable character to be on camera, the others have to appear or disappear Behind the Black. A notable instance takes place during the Overthere Stair level — in the cutscene where Peach returns to your party, whichever character you are using (Mario, Luigi, or Bowser) feeds her a black apple to wake her up, which tastes disgusting. Her Wild Take knocks the single character off camera, then Mario, Luigi, and Bowser all walk back on camera. After a while of discussion, Luvbi interrupts, and the camera moves to get her in frame, conveniently leaving Mario, Luigi, and Bowser out of the shot again. Peach remains on camera for the rest of the cutscene, and when gameplay returns, Mario, Luigi, and Bowser are no longer standing there — you're controlling Peach now, but you can switch back to one of the others.
• Party Scattering: Dimentio sends Mario and gang to the Underwhere, the Mario-verse equivalent of Hades. Mario wakes up alone and has to team up with Luigi before they can escape, then go back and reunite with Bowser and Peach so they can advance the plot.
• Perky Female Minion:
  • Inverted with Count Bleck and Nastasia. He is cheerful in embracing his over-the-top villainy and magician-like looks and personality. His secretary, Nastasia, is gloomy, precise, and organizes most of the actual plans. Subverted as he turns out to be a Stepford Smiler.
  • Mimi is Count Bleck's perky female minion in contrast to the more enigmatic Dimentio.
  • Gender Inverted with O'Chunks. He is a stereotypically Scottish big dumb guy.
• Perspective Magic: Much of the game's puzzles and level navigation focus on flipping from 2D to 3D and back to manipulate the perspectives on scenery elements.
• Pet the Dog: Count Bleck may be an evil world-destroyer, but his treatment of his minions, while sometimes involving manipulation, are the first sign that he's not as straight-evil as he likes to present himself as.
• Playable Epilogue: Once you beat the final boss, Super Dimentio, you can reload your save and continue to play the game. Some of Count Bleck's minions are now in Flipside and you can talk to them, and some post-game challenges like the Duel of 100 become available.
• The Player Is the Most Important Resource: Played for Laughs; the "Almighty Player Who Watches Over Us" is said to be the only one who will understand the fourth-wall breaking control instructions.
• Poison Mushroom: The Poison Shroom is an inventory item that inflicts poison on you when used, causing you to slowly lose health over time until you're cured. There's no reason to use it by itself, and its only other purpose is to be used in specific recipes.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • In the opening cutscene, Toad never actually mentions to Mario and Luigi who kidnapped Princess Peach this time, so the Bros. jump to the conclusion that it's the work of Bowser as usual. This results in them unwittingly leading Count Bleck straight to the other half of the pair needed to set the prophecy of doom into motion.
  • Blumiere's father only told him that Timpani was no longer a part of "this world," which a heartbroken Blumiere took to mean that she had died. Turns out his father meant it a bit more literally, in that he only banished Timpani from their dimension, but Blumiere kills him before he can clarify the difference.
• Pop Quiz:
  • The "That's My Merlee!" contest in Mimi's Mansion to determine which Merlee is the real one.
  • The doors in Francis's Mansion will give a pop quiz with nerdy questions. Only Princess Peach is allowed to take the quizzes, since she's a "totally sexy lady".
• Portal Crossroad World: Flipside and Flopside are described as "stuck between dimensions" and while the former has dimensional doors for all dimensions at the top of its tower, the latter only has one big dimensional door to go at the center of the Void.
• Potty Emergency: In Chaper 4-2, Squirps ends up having to go to the restroom, but the only one nearby is occupied by Fleep. You have to find some paper so Fleep can finish up and Squirps can get his turn.
• The Power of Love: The game's main theme.
• Press Start to Game Over: You can end the game right at the beginning by repeatedly refusing to help Merlon.
• Press X to Die:
  • You can die before the game even officially starts. Just tell the character telling you about the rift in the world that you don't want to do anything about it. He will ask if you're sure and tell you the world will end without your help. Say yes and he asks if you are REALLY sure. Say yes again and he then says something like "Well... I guess there is nothing to be done about it then. This world and all who live in it will be destroyed." And you get a Game Over, even before you can officially control your character.
  • When you enter level 4-1, which is set in outer space, you can choose not to put on your air helmet. Do that 3 times and after Tippi mocks your ineptitude, BOOM — game over.
  • Another We Can Rule Together happens in the next-to-last chapter. Cue another few "Are you sure"'s from the same character from the previous example before leaving you at the Big Bad's mercy.
• Pride: According to Carson, the Tribe of Darkness avoided mixing with other people out of pride.
  • This was the Fatal Flaw of Blumiere's father. He doesn't take it well when he felt that his honor has been disgraced by his son's engagement to Timpani. His pride is his downfall, as it makes him commit horrible deeds without understanding the value of love to restore his honor, which indirectly caused his death.
• Promoted to Playable: Bowser, Peach and Luigi; the latter two were only playable through interludes and Luigi wasn't even playable at all in the previous games, but here they become full-fledged playable characters.
• Prophecy Pileup: Zigzagged; both the Light and Dark Prognosticus tell the tale of the end of the world and the heroes who would challenge it, but Merlon openly states that the Light Prognosticus was only written to counteract the Dark one, and isn't actually prophetic. Though the game is very confusing on this point; the characters all act as though the Light Prognosticus is just as valid and consult it for advice, and in the end, it is the one that ends up fulfilled.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: Mimi, possibly.
• The Psycho Rangers: Count Bleck and his main henchmen/henchwomen serve as this opposite to the main heroes. It's only very fitting that they fight each other separately in Castle Bleck.
  • Count Bleck is the game's Big Bad (or rather the central antagonist, as Dimentio ultimately betrays him) opposite of The Hero to Mario. He is the supreme leader of his army, and his desire to destroy all worlds (in response to seemingly losing Timpani) is what kicks off the main conflict of the story.
  • While he isn't Count Bleck's second-in-command (that honor goes to his secretary, Nastasia), Dimentio is The Dragon opposite of The Lancer to Luigi, as he is arguably Bleck's most active and dangerous lieutenant. He ends up becoming The Starscream after the heroes defeat Bleck and becomes the game's true Big Bad and Final Boss, the latter alongside Luigi himself (albeit as another Mr. L fused together with Dimentio).
  • O'Chunks is easily The Brute opposite of The Big Guy to Bowser, as he is Count Bleck's largest and most physically imposing henchman. He also just happens to be Count Bleck's resident Dumb Muscle.
  • Mimi is opposite of The Heart to Peach, being Bleck's most feminine lieutenant who has an obvious crush on him.
  • Nastasia is The Evil Genius opposite of The Smart Guy to Tippi, being Bleck's personal secretary who gathers his minions behind the scenes and does not appear to have any known combat skill (if you don't count her brainwashing ability). Much like Tippi has the closest attachment to Mario, the same goes for Nastasia to Bleck.
  • Mr. L is considered the Sixth Ranger, as he (unwillingly, being a brainwashed Luigi) joins Count Bleck's inner circle partway through the story and doesn't appear to have a distinct Good Counterpart. He reverts back to Luigi and joins the heroes after he is defeated in Chapter 6.
• Punny Name: Every Pixl has one based on their ability - Tippi gives you tips, Thoreau throws things, Boomer blows obstacles and enemies up, and so on.
• Purple Is the New Black: The Void summoned by Count Bleck to destroy all worlds appears as a purple and black hole absorbing purple and black pixels with a lightning on the center.

Q-T

• Quirky Miniboss Squad: Count Bleck has a squad of elite minions who work to stop Mario from getting the Pure Hearts, and they all have standout odd appearances, personalities, and speech patterns. The main quartet (O'Chunks, Mimi, Dimentio, and Mr. L) get at least three boss fights each across the game; the last one, Bleck's second-in-command Nastasia, is never fought but still plays a big role in his enforcing.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Your partners are the lady who's typically your Damsel in Distress, the giant monster who's typically your arch-nemesis, and your typical sidekick, who bears a striking resemblance to one of the Big Bad's minions. And you have about a dozen Fairy Companions, all of whom have their own eccentricities from thinking a princess in a pink dress is worth lots of girth to constantly singing in a French accent.
• Really 700 Years Old: Squrips acts quite childish throughout Chapter 4, but at the end, it's revealed that he's been in the hibernation capsule for 1,500 years.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Mimi gives one to Peach. Big mistake.
• Record Needle Scratch: Happens to the music played during Tippi's Flashbacks when she realizes Count Bleck is really her lover, Blumiere, who presumably kills his father in vengeance for banishing Tippi to walk all the worlds until she dies.
• Refusal of the Call: At the very beginning of the game, Mario is given a yes/no choice when Merlon asks him to take the Pure Heart and save the world. There's nothing stopping you from saying no, and if you pick it three times in a row, Merlon just gives up, resulting in a Non-Standard Game Over before you even reach the gameplay.
• Reluctant Warrior: Fracktail initially intended to simply let Mario pass on by to acquire the Pure Heart without any conflict. Unfortunately for the both of them, Dimentio took care of that.
• Replacement Goldfish: Tippi disappears permanently after clearing the game, but if you visit Francis, he will reveal that he's created a robotic replica of her called Tiptron, and will let you purchase her for 999 coins, allowing you to use Tippi's abilities once again.
• Retraux: Done in an odd way with Bitlands, which is made to resemble mosaic art rather than pixel art.
• Robot Maid: Fort Francis is inhabited by a series of cat-like robots called Meows that act as Francis' maids, patroling the fortress and doing his bidding.
• RPG Elements: This game is a platformer with RPG elements like attack stats and health. This is the inverse of the other Paper Mario games, which are RPGs with platform elements.
• Rule of Three: In the final chapter, three sets of Pure Hearts were used up to counter the Chaos Heart: One set, which Mario and the Party spent the entire rest of the game acquiring up to that point, was used to remove the barrier protecting Count Bleck; The second set, created from Bleck/Lumiere and Tippi/Timpani reigniting their love for each other, was used to do the same to Dimentio when he usurped Bleck's control over the Chaos Heart; And the last set, created when Bleck and Timpani got married, was used to stop the Chaos Heart from destroying all worlds.
• Save the Villain: As she begins to fall, Peach grabs Mimi, surprising her into turning good.
• Saving the World: Or worlds, rather. The Void threatens to destroy all worlds, and Mario has to collect all the Pure Hearts to counter the power of the Chaos Heart to stop it.
• Scoring Points: Though due to the RPG Elements the score also doubles as an experience system.
• Sdrawkcab Name: The Flopside counterpart of Merlon nicknames himself "Nolrem" to avoid confusion.
• Searching the Stalls: Towards the end of Chapter 2, Merlee is found hiding inside a toilet in a restroom at the bottom of her mansion.
• Secret Diary: Dimentio quotes Mimi's and asks if she was dreaming about "pools of gems and hunky pool boys." Mimi turns into Bowser as she yells at Dimentio for reading her diary, in a Continuity Nod to the first Paper Mario.
• Seemingly Hopeless Boss Fight: Two of them in quick succession. First, Count Bleck is impervious to all damage until Mario's companions arrive, giving the Pure Hearts the power to nullify Bleck's invincibility. After Bleck is defeated, Dimentio goes One-Winged Angel. Because the Pure Hearts were depleted in the fight with Bleck, Super Dimentio is invincible until the Pure Hearts are restored in another cutscene.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: By banishing Timpani/Tippi to "save" the Tribe Of Darkness from its destruction, Blumiere/Bleck's father indirectly made his son its eventual destroyer.
• Self-Made Orphan: Blumiere, a.k.a. Count Bleck, is heavily implied to have done this. To be fair, his father was a Jerkass (see Parental Marriage Veto above).
• Sequel Escalation: The previous game merely involved Saving the World; this game has you traveling across dimensions to save the multiverse. As a point of fact, the Saving the World aspect of The Thousand Year Door only became a factor near the end of the game. The stakes of this game are established in the introductory cutscene, before you even press Start.
• Serious Business: It's implied left and right that Francis lost friends over arguments about their favorite shows.
• Shabby Heroes, Well-Dressed Villains: Mario and Luigi wear work clothes. Count Bleck, the Big Bad, is a Man of Wealth and Taste.
• Shaped Like Itself:
  • The Flopside Pit of 100 Trials gives us the "Dark Dark Boo", a dark version of an already dark enemy.
  • When introducing himself, Luigi says "I'm my bro's bro."
  • Tippi's Catch Card describes her as being Mario's friendly... friend.
• Shared Life-Meter: There are up to four playable characters, but only one can be present onscreen at a time, and they will share one health pool that only grows with the player's level.
• Shell Backpack:
  • The Koopa Striker enemies wear soccer uniforms that cover half of their shells.
  • Bowser also wears a white tuxedo during his wedding with Peach in the introduction.
• Shifting Sand Land: Yold Desert in Chapter 1-3 is a vast desert where the Yold Ruins are located. The sandy terrain is almost completely flat, and there are plenty of quicksand pits Mario has to avoid falling into.
• Shipper on Deck: Luvbi spends at least half of her screentime speculating about relationships between the characters.
• Shout-Out: Tons.
  • Nearly every Sammer Guy has a Punny Name of some sort, mostly relating to other characters or elements in the greater Mario series. See here for a full list.
  • Francis has a Pink Princess poster.
  • The Underchomp battle is an Unexpected Gameplay Change based on the old-school Dragon Quest games. And just like the Cerberus, putting it to sleep with Piccolo is the easiest way of dealing with it.
  • Nastasia's dialogue in the English version is very reminiscent of a certain office manager.
  • One of the worlds is called "Lineland", after a location in Flatland, which is, of course, about a 2D being who gets introduced to 3D.
  • Also, Fracktail ends up being driven crazy by the Big Bad, forcing Mario to fight it and only regains control over itself when Mario delivers the final blow and perishes soon thereafter, just like Volvagia and Link from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's manga.
    • Speaking of Fracktail and Zelda, one of the phrases Fracktail spouts while glitching out is "I AM ERROR."
    • When Fracktail is searching his databases for Mario, his eyes turn into the Wii Shop loading logo, and the sound plays as well.
  • Chapter 7 involves you starting from hell and going up to heaven to defeat a Satanic Archetype in a similar vein to Kid Icarus.
  • Dimentio challenges Luigi to a duel, "like two gleaming banjos on a moonlit stoop!".
• Shows Damage:
  • Mimi's true form has six large spider legs, one of which breaks off each time she is damaged. She is defeated once all six legs are gone.
  • The panels making up Bonechill's face gradually fall off as he takes damage.
• Sickening "Crunch!": Mimi's transformation sequence to "True Mimi" has some painful-sounding cracking noises when her head spins around, as if she's breaking her own neck.
• Sissy Villain: King Croacus IV, the latest in a line of flower rulers of the Floro Sapiens and the boss of Chapter 5. He's got a beauty mark and big lips, and he's very flamboyant and obsessed with beauty.
• Slapstick: Nobody's spared from the hijinks and jokes of the Paper Mario universe.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Firmly Idealistic. This game runs on White-and-Grey Morality, Screw Destiny, themes of hope, redemption, friendship, and love, with the idealistic Mario and friends meeting and for the most part redeeming the cynical Count Bleck and his crew, with the most depraved characters (Dimentio and Bonechill) fully losing out to the heroes' idealism.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Flint Cragley, one of the Cragnons. He's a famous explorer among his people, but he's moreso focused on news filming and gets pretty cowardly when actual danger arises. He's something of a successor to Kolorado and Flavio from the preceding Paper Mario games, and is also a focus of Chapter 5 like they were.
• The Sociopath: Dimentio checks off every aspect of a sociopath in his characterization: he doesn't care for anything or anyone besides himself, he lies and schemes constantly to set up his plan, and he wants to create a world in his own image rather than eradicate everything like Bleck.
• Sorry I'm Late: Midway through the battle against Count Bleck, Bowser, Peach, and Luigi all catch up with Mario after having been presumed dead earlier, and join him in the battle, allowing him to use the power of the Pure Hearts to break through the Count's shield.
• Space Zone: The first and third parts of Chapter 4 take place in outer space, where the heroes swim through the vast sea of stars thanks to the absence of gravity.
• Spider Limbs: Mimi can twist her head upside-down to grow long spider legs out of it. They give her a big height and speed advantage, but they break off as she gets hurt.
• Spoiler Title: Once you enter the second segment of Chapter 6 and see that it's titled "The End of a World", you know what's coming.
• Stalked by the Bell:
  • Mimi on level 2-4, where she'll show up if you linger in a room for too long.
  • In the Pits of 100 Trials, you have 5 minutes per room to get the key from a random enemy and enter the next room. Any longer and you get an instant Game Over.
  • There are enemies known as Megabites that can spawn during certain parts of the game by spending too long in one room.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Count Bleck (AKA: Blumiere) and Tippi (AKA: Timpani), on account of the Parental Marriage Veto. Even when they reunite, it's under dire circumstances, and they are only able to affirm their love when it coincides with them destroying the Chaos Heart and banishing themselves from all known worlds. Nastasia and The Stinger hint that they were finally able to be together somewhere far away, so it's possibly subverted.
• The Starscream: Dimentio actually usurps the throne at the end of the game.
• Start of Darkness: The post-Chapter flashbacks reveals Blumiere's descent into villainy. He fell in love with a human girl named Timpani. However, his father banished her from their home dimension, pushing him beyond the Despair Event Horizon. He snapped and sought Revenge by becoming Count Bleck and siccing the Dark Prognosticus on his father.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Before their showdown in Chapter 8-2, Mimi mocks Princess Peach for her title and her tendency to be kidnapped and rescued by the Mario Bros. It was really big mistake, and Mimi is reduced to a emotional wreck afterwards.
• Stealth Pun:
  • The River Twygz in the Underwhere is a parody of the River Styx in Greek Mythology. Now say them aloud. Styx sounds like sticks, Twygz sounds like twigs.
  • You can ride a mine cart. It's a...Mario Kart.
• Storybook Opening: As with the previous games, the introduction starts with a narrator detailing a major importance to the story.
• Straw Fan: Francis is the absolute epitome of this trope. In one of his private rooms, you can find and read this "Geeklog" entry:
  Geeklog Date: 11.26
  Mood: Ranty
  
  The sun is bright outside so I'm going to stay in and watch "The Blubbening".
  Season One has better writing and voice acting than the later seasons.
  I mean, COME ON. Everything went totally downhill after the big dream sequence.
  Still, the animation in the scenes where Tubba Blubba battles robots is schweet.
  Season Three was obviously just a vehicle for selling action figures and vehicles!
  I never understood why they changed the sound effect when the princess appears.
  It was "Deet-dinga-deet-ling!" then suddenly it was "dinga-deet-dinga-ling!"
  As if no one would notice! Pffft! True fans care about important stuff about that.
  They should totally run the show without commercials and let fans suggest story lines!
  That's what fans want, and we're the only ones that matter.
  I guess I'll still buy "The Blubbening" box set. The preorder bonus is a costume!
  While I wait for it to come, I'll go online and tell everyone it's stupid.
• Stupidity Is the Only Option: In 2-3, you wind up having to pay off a 1,000,000 Rubee debt for breaking Mimi's vase at the very beginning of the level. You could just ignore the vase, thus never bringing up the debt in the first place... but the game won't let you leave the area this way, so you have no choice but to break it.^*Slightly justified in that, without going through the level, you wouldn't be able to get Slim, who is needed for the rest of the game.
  • And another when Merlon makes you hit a block, opening a pit beneath you that you fall into, despite his dialogue heavily hinting that something is amiss. If you refuse enough times, he even lampshades it, explaining how event flags work and how you need to fall for the trap to progress the game.
• Super Cell Reception: The Queen of the Underworld makes a phone call to the King of Mario's-equivalent-to-Heaven. That's not a normal phone whichever way you look at it.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: Unlike the previous games.
  • Except for a small pool of polluted water in the Cromag village. Which foreshadows the true motive behind the Floro Sapiens' invasion.
• Super-Speed: The secret pixl, Dashell, allows your character to run much faster. Mario, Luigi, and Princess Peach can be seen to outrun a sound wave without Dashell, though Bowser is just barely slower.
• Superboss: Three: Wracktail at the bottom of the Flipside Pit of 100 Trials, Shadoo at the bottom of the Flopside Pit if you go down twice, and End Boss, the 100th Sammer Guy. They are also the only optional bosses in the game, barring the Francis rematch. While End Boss is the only one that can't be fought until the postgame, Shadoo is considered to be the hardest of the three and must be defeated after Wracktail.
• Supporting Protagonist: Mario. Despite being the main hero of the Light Prognosticus, the game isn't about him. It's about the tragic romance of Tippi and Bleck, Luigi's role in the Dark Prognosticus, and Dimentio taking advantage of the three. The introduction narration even outright tells you who the story is really about.
• Supreme Chef: Like in the previous games. This time we have two chefs, Saffron and Dyllis. Saffron lives in Flipside, is nice and caring and can cook delicious dishes with one ingredient, whereas Dyllis lives in Flopside, is pushy and somewhat aggressive but just as talented as Saffron and requires two ingredients to make a dish.
• Sympathetic Villain, Despicable Villain: Count Bleck is the initial main antagonist who created The Void to destroy all worlds. But he has the tragic backstory thinking his lover was killed, and realizing she is still alive, wants Mario's party to kill him to end the prophecy. Only, his former minion, Dimentio, takes the position of the true Dark One, and he is a psychopath lacking any of Bleck's tragic or sympathetic qualities. In the end, Dimentio is killed, but Bleck has to sacrifice himself to stop Dimentio's final attempt at destroying all worlds.
• Take That!:
  • "I love going on message boards and complaining about games I've never played!"
    • More like Francis himself. They even parody the fact that the Internet itself is a cat-person with Fort Francis being full of cat robots (Either that or parodying Catgirls).
  • The 82nd Sammer Guy, Bullet Bull, mockingly believes in Real Is Brown.
    ''Why must all things be so bright? Why can things not appear only in hues of brown! I am so serious about this! Dull colors are the future! ...The next generation!
• Taking You with Me: Dimentio decides that if he can't create his own perfect world, then he'll destroy all worlds instead.
• Talks Like a Simile: Dimentio. His talent for weird similes that still somehow make sense is rivaled only by his prowess in dimensional magic.
  "And so I arrive, like a sudden windstorm at a kindergarten picnic!"
• Temple of Doom: The Yold Ruins in Chapter 1-4. The boss battle with Fracktail though is fought on the surface.
• That Man Is Dead: Subverted. Count Bleck gives this speech, but ends up turning good at the end all the same.
• The End of the World as We Know It: Count Bleck's trying to cause the end of The Multiverse as we know it.
• Theme Naming: Fracktail and Wracktail.
• Theme Song Reveal: There's a clever one hidden rather well: Count Bleck's theme is the "Memory" theme played in ragtime and transposed to a different key.
• There Are No Therapists: Despite all the dysfunctional things Count Bleck went through, no one in-game mentions the concept of therapy.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Very possible to pull off. The basic Goomba has one single hit point. There is an item that temporarily doubles your attack. There is a Pixl that doubles your attack with a butt-stomp. There is a card that globally doubles your attack. By leveling up and obtaining certain power-ups, you can reach a maximum of 198 attack for Bowser (the other characters cap at 99). Finally, you can hold a maximum of 99 cards of an enemy, and each card multiplies the damage you deal to it. So in conclusion, with the maximum circumstances, you can give a poor weak Goomba a total damage of 2 x 2 x 2 x 198 x 100 (99 cards = 100x damage). This sums up to a brutal 158,400 points of damage.
• Third-Person Person: Count Bleck. He is probably reading his own dialogue from the Dark Prognosticus, so this is justified. Or it's just a Verbal Tic. However, he does occasionally refer to himself in first-person, which gives further weight to the quoting-from-the-Dark-Prognosticus theory.
  • Squirps and most of the Cragnons also do this.
• Throw-Away Country: Sammer's Kingdom is completely destroyed by the Void before Mario and company can obtain the Pure Heart there, and when they try to return, all that remains is an empty white nothing with only small pieces of the kingdom remaining.
• To Hell and Back:
  • Your whole party is seemingly given a Game Over, and end up in The Underwhere. Luckily, the Queen is pretty friendly and gives you a Continue when it's revealed that you aren't really dead and shouldn't be there.
  • And then the door to Chapter 7 brings you right BACK into the Underwhere, because that's where the final Pure Heart is located. And then you get back. So it's a double dose of this trope in the same game. Although the second trip was via dimension-hopping both ways, not death.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Dark Prognosticus is a book of prophecies that details a future leading to the destruction of all worlds. The intro point-blank states that no one who ever obtained the book has ever found happiness thanks to the dark secrets written within its pages.
• Tomes of Prophecy and Fate: The Dark Prognosticus and the Light Prognosticus.
• Too Dumb to Live: In one of the Non-Standard Game Overs, you can actively refuse to wear a helmet... in space! Tippi even ditches you for your stupidity.
  Tippi: Ugh. Who's stupider? You? Or me, for listening to you... No more... Good-bye.
• Took a Level in Badass: Peach who is a fully playable Action Girl is this game compared to the first two games where she is only playable during intermissions as a Spanner in the Works.
• Totally Radical: The Floro Sapiens, once you get to know 'em. Their hippy-like speech patterns may be a bit of a Stealth Pun — they're flower children!
• Tragedy: The post-Chapter flashback storyline concludes with Blumiere losing his beloved Timpani after she is banished to the space between dimensions by his father, and in his grief, he turns to the Dark Prognosticus and becomes Count Bleck.
• Treacherous Spirit Chase: In the final chapter, Mimi appears before you disguised as Merlon and Merlee, both of which are so ridiculously obvious that if you keep talking to her, she'll lampshade the Stupidity Is the Only Option of this situation, as Mario falling for her extremely obvious trap is the only way to progress.
• The Trickster: Combined with Monster Clown with Dimentio.
• True Companions: Perversely enough, Count Bleck and his henchmen (except Dimentio, The Starscream).
• Tsuchigumo and Jorogumo: Mimi has some characteristics of a jorogumo: her true form resembles a robotic Giant Spider, but she usually presents herself in less-unnerving, humanoid disguises.

U-Z

• Underground Level: The first example is a part of Chapter 3-1, which is also a Nostalgia Level. The later parts of Chapter 5 also take place in an underground mine called the Floro Caverns.
• Under the Sea: The Tile Pool in Chapter 3-2 is an underwater stage hearkening back to the underwater levels from Super Mario Bros..
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: The battle with the Underchomp in Chapter 7-2 is the only turn-based battle in the game, though it plays more like a spoof of Dragon Quest then the usual Paper Mario gameplay.
• Unexpected Shmup Level: Outer Space has sections where you can freely swim around in all directions and use Squirps to fire beams at enemies. The boss battle with Brobot pushes the shoot-em-up influence even further, with power ups you can grab to temporarily improve your firepower.
• The Unfought: Nastasia is the only one of Count Bleck's main minions to not have a boss fight. This is probably justified, because she doesn't seem like she has any combat abilities apart from her ability to brainwash others.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: Mimi, in one of the few video game examples of this trope. She goes through ten separate outfits in the relatively short game. Contrast the Limited Wardrobe that applies to every other character. However, she may be using her shapeshifter abilities to change her outfit.
• Unwinnable by Design: Early in the game, when asked to help out, you can ignore it, by choosing the "No" option three times. You'll get a game over, and since there hasn't been a Save Point yet, have to start over at the very beginning. Before you even take control of Mario.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Blumiere's father, who kickstarted the events by banishing his son's love into another dimension and leaving her for dead.
• Vague Age: The game doesn't establish whether Mimi is meant to be a creepy young girl or a childish adult. The in-game theories of her origin paint her as being made in the times of the Ancients, though it's unclear how that would translate to age in human years. There's also the chance that she's some form of machine.
• Verbal Tic:
  • ...said Count Bleck!
  • Nastasia has one too, 'k?
  • So does Squirps! SQUIIIIIIRP!!!
  • There's also the Crags, brah.
  • Flint Cragley should be here too, Cragley ho!
  • Francis thinks that TV Tropes is hi-technicaaaaaaaaaaal, NERR!
  • And Old Man Watchitt, WATCH IT!
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can find a cute and friendly creature named Whacka, and if you hit him, you can get a bump that serves as a healing item. The game does harshly remind you of what you did to get it: "A bump from a poor, defenseless Whacka. Restores 30 HP and cures poison. Worse, if you hit the Whacka eight times, he disappears, with the implication that he died. Afterwards, you can find a Cragnon woman in his place waiting for him. She figures out he's gone and cries "Bring back my Whackaaaaaa". As if you needed to feel even worse.
• Villainous BSoD:
  • When the Pure Hearts depower Dimentio allowing you to defeat him.
  • Before that, Count Bleck goes into a mild one after getting overthrown by Dimentio.
• Villainous Harlequin: Dimentio, of course.
• Villain Teleportation: Done repeatedly. Dimentio and Bleck even have the nerve to do it during battle!
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Well, game, rather. But Count Bleck's pretty vile for a villain in a Mario game, wanting the destruction of all worlds. Of course, Dimentio is MUCH more vile.
• Violent Glaswegian: O'Chunks.
• Visual Pun: At one point, you have to feed Peach the correct apple to wake her up. One of the incorrect ones turns her into a literal peach.
  • The trees in the background of the Underwhere are composed of rectangles hanging from branches, making them resemble family trees. Probably best not to dwell on that for too long.
• Voice for the Voiceless: Tippi speaks on Mario's behalf in most scenes if you're playing as him.
• Void Between the Worlds: The Void (which also hides Castle Bleck) appears in all dimensions including the Overthere and except for Sammer Kingdom (which, according to Tippi, was closer to the Void than other dimensions), they are all destroyed or nearly-destroyed during the final battle.
• We Can Rule Together: Much like the Shadow Queen from the previous game, Dimentio does this. Also like the Shadow Queen, accepting this offer rewards you with a Nonstandard Game Over.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 6-2, in which Sammer's Kingdom succumbs to the void, making the Pure Heart useless, followed by Dimentio sending the party to the Underwhere, setting up Chapter 7.
  • Chapter 8 is one, where seemingly Bowser, Peach and Luigi seemingly die throughout Castle Bleck and then there's The Reveal in Chapter 8-4 that Dimentio is the true main villain of the game after you defeat Count Bleck.
• Wham Line: Several of them.
  • Two very important ones late in the game, which both change everything about the seemingly irrelevant post-Chapter flashbacks:
    • One by Count Bleck in Chapter 6-1; he mentions Timpani, a name only cited in the flashbacks so far, implying he might be Blumiere. This also makes Tippi slowly remember her past as Timpani.
      Count Bleck: [To Tippi] All things...are meaningless. Aside from Timpani, no treasure mattered in the least to me...
    • One said by Nastasia to Count Bleck near the end of the game (after completing Chapter 7-4), trying to convince him to back out of his plan after learning that Timpani might be still alive as Tippi and giving to the player the ultimate confirmation that Count Bleck is Blumiere.
      Nastasia: [To Count Bleck] Yeah, I'm on board with what you're saying...but there must be a way. There must... Lord Blumiere!
  • The reveal of Luvbi's True identity:
  Bonechill: "I speak of the Pure Heart... And I speak of you, Luvbi... IT IS YOU!"
  • Why the Floro Sapiens went to war with the Cragnons:
  Floro Sapien: WATER, man! I'm talking about WATER! The Cragnons were polluting our water!
• Where I Was Born and Razed: It is implied that, after the heartbreak of Blumiere's (Count Bleck's) love, Timpani (Tippi), being exiled to multiple dimensions by his father and presumably killed, that Blumiere ended up wiping out his race, the Tribe of Darkness.
• White-and-Grey Morality: Mario, Luigi, and Princess Peach are undeniably good. Bowser is thrust into an Enemy Mine situation because he has standards. Count Bleck is the bad guy initially, but is tragic, and undergoes a Heel–Face Turn in the end. Mimi and O'Chunks turn face likewise. The only true villain of the entire game is Dimentio. He plays everyone and everything behind the scenes in his plot to destroy everything and make a new world in his image.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Chapter 7 is The Divine Comedy.
• Wicked Cultured: Count Bleck and Dimentio.
• Wicked Heart Symbol: While it is countered by the benevolent Pure Hearts, the Chaos Heart is an incredibly dangerous artifact that can destroy every single dimension in existence.
• Wild Teen Party: It is implied that the remaining unbrainwashed members of the Koopa Troop intended to throw one of these while guarding Bowser's fort in the Bitlands when he joins Mario and Peach.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Count Bleck. Hoo boy.
• Word Salad Title: Parodied with Francis's manga collection: Android Love Patrol.
• World Tree: The Dotwood Tree, the only level where the player has to Rise to the Challenge.
• Wutai: Sammer's Kingdom. Which is completely wiped off the map by the Big Bad.
• Wrong Side of the Tracks: Flopside is like a run-down, depressing version of Flipside.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: The Nimbis speaketh this way (albeit with decidedly modern language thrown in as well).
• You Bastard!: The description for Whacka Bumps, obtained by bashing the perfectly nice Whacka over the head with a hammer, now contains this little tidbit:
  Whacka Bump description: How do you sleep at night?
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
  • Dimentio ends Mr. L's game after he loses to the heroes the second time. This serves the secondary purpose of allowing Luigi to join the heroes.
  • Dimentio does it again in the final chapter. After Count Bleck's defeat, he shows his true colors by attempting to assassinate him. Once he steals the Chaos Heart from his former boss, he sends him to Dimension D and declares that he will kill him later. In the Japanese version, he actually says this line to a T.
    Dimentio: Count Bleck! You look so tattered and pathetic, I nearly forgot about you. I'll squeeze the life out of you later. Just wait over in that dimension, OK? Great.
• You Have Researched Breathing: Downplayed. Several Pixls bestow on Mario and crew abilities that should already be in their repertoire, including turning sideways, ground pound, or even just hammering things.
• Your Door Was Open: In the opening cutscene, Mario and Luigi simply walk into Bowser's castle.
  Bowser: What? My front gate was open?! How many times have I told those idiots?! If you're the last in, LOCK THE GATE!
• Your Makeup Is Running: Mimi taunts Peach this way right before their duel.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: Catch Cards capture an enemy's soul and turn them into Cards. The more Cards one has of a species, the more power Mario (and the other heroes) have in their attacks on them.

---