YMMV / Bowser's Fury

• Alternative Character Interpretation: The ending, where after calming Bowser down, Bowser Jr. somberly approaches Mario, only to roar at him and leave. Was Junior reluctantly making a token gesture to save face in his father's presence, or baiting Mario into thinking he would show gratitude, just for the sake of being a Jerkass (or rather, to maintain a facade of being a Jerkass)?
• Awesome Bosses:
  • The Fury Bowser battles have a pure sense of fun and epicness as you fight against the giant beast as a gigantic Cat Mario. The fight's open design allows you to hurt Fury Bowser in multiple ways and interrupt his attack patterns, aligning with the modern standard and offering a perfect feeling of power and control in the fight to contrast the helplessness Fury Bowser can evoke while Mario is small.
  • The final battle against Bowser is just as awesome. Bowser is still gigantic, but he steals the Giga Bells so you can't use them against him. So what does Mario do? He hops on Plessie and chases him throughout the entirety of Lake Lapcat, dodging a storm of fireballs and spikes as well as enormous jets of fire so he can launch Plessie into the Bell container and slam it into Bowser! And if that wasn't cool enough, the music is a fast-paced mix between Fury Bowser's theme as well as the World Bowser theme from base 3D World.
• Awesome Music:
  • Scamper Shores, the first theme that begins your quest, is an upbeat and cheery piece that unironically sounds like it would fit for an optimistic stroll in town.
  • Crisp Climb Castle, a whimsical waltz that fits the high climb up the level the song plays on. Many find it soothing and reminiscent of an upbeat version of Bonneton's area music from Odyssey.
  • Mount Magmeow, the theme for Lake Lapcat's resident Lethal Lava Land areas. The violin, brass and flutes complement each other quite well, giving a sense of scorching heat, and the whole song has an almost mechanical beat, fitting for the Eternal Engine aspects in some of the aforementioned areas.
  • This incredibly fast-paced, intense and freaking awesome heavy metal track perfectly represents the fact that Bowser is furious. The second and final variations used later in the game ramp up the intensity even more.
  • This theme used for the Giga Bell battles against Fury Bowser is an epic and intense metal symphonic boss theme that is essentially Bowser's equivalent to One Winged Angel.
  • The theme that plays in the section against Giga Bowser combines the already intense theme of Fury Bowser with an orchestrated reprise of the World Bowser theme, making for a badass and intense mix that is perfectly suited for Bowser's final attempt to defeat Mario in the mode.
• Common Knowledge: The new form of Bowser is not known as "God Slayer Bowser", and he hasn't ever been. A joke spread on Twitter that a "Japanese press release" revealed the "God Slayer Bowser" name, although this was disproven when no such source can be found and Matt McMuscles (the original source of the tweet) admitted to it being a joke. He's known as Fury Bowser in both English and Japanese.
• Evil Is Cool: Fury Bowser has received universal acclaim for his intimidating and dark design, being a darkened, corrupted, giant version of himself. It didn't take long for artists to start drawing fanart of Bowser's new form.
• Fan Nickname: Before the form's official name was revealed, some fans referred to Fury Bowser as "God Slayer Bowser" thanks to a joke by Matt McMuscles that was initially passed around as real. Even after it was revealed to be a joke, some fans still like to refer to him as "God Slayer Bowser" due to how badass the name sounds.
• Fanon: Instead of putting the blame on Bowser Jr. for causing Fury Bowser as canon does, many fans opt to take the route that Fury Bowser was instead the culmination of Bowser's endless defeats and his hatred towards Mario reaching a boiling point, with Jr.'s prank simply happening to be the straw that broke the camel's back, if nothing else.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Bowser Jr. is broken in several ways, even in single player, to the point where some players joke that he had to be given the inability to collect Cat Shines or else there wouldn't be a game. Firstly, by using the touch screen you can have him pick up any Cat Shards you come across, saving Mario the effort of perilous platforming. Second, if you set his AI to help out a lot, he'll take out any enemy, miniboss and even Fury Shadow he comes across, allowing you to almost literally sit back and do nothing. This especially helps with any cloud mission where you have to defeat all the enemies in one go, as if you've missed one you can just send him back to get it.
  • The Propellor Box is just as broken as it was in past games, allowing you to bypass entire courses for a Cat Shine or two under the right circumstances. Nintendo is clearly aware of this, as you lose the box when you get hit by an enemy or hazard, go into water that's deep enough, jump onto Plessie, grab a key, or become Giga Cat Mario, all of which are commonplace enough to keep the game well-balanced.
• Just Here for Godzilla: It’s safe to say many only became interested in the Switch port of Super Mario 3D World due to Bowser’s Fury, which, unintentionally befitting the trope name, has heavy kaiju elements.
• Low Tier Let Down: Unlike the base game, Fire Mario and Boomerang Mario really drew the short end of the stick here. Both of these are specialized in defeating enemies, something that isn't as much of a focus in this game. There also aren't even puzzles requiring them to solve. Compare them to the cat bell, which has multiple Cat Shines designed around it and the super leaf which can help out with tough platforming segments. The most use you'll probably get out of them is using them as damage sponges against Fury Bowser instead of your better items.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Bowser's Furry"/Bowser's a Furry^ExplanationA typo which often involves Bowser's Cat form in some way. It also didn't take too long for fans to start editing the logo for the new mode to say this, either, similar to the "#pokemonmastersex" meme. Streamers on Twitch—particularly ones who happen to be furry—would typically describe streams of this game as "Bowser's a Furry"
  • Super Saiyan Mario^ExplanationThe Giga Bell Mario uses to confront Fury Bowser every-so-often makes him look like a Super Saiyan, in a cat form while giant. This form has also been compared to Super Sonic, including people drawing similarities to the final boss fight of Sonic Adventure. This itself became Hilarious in Hindsight considering Bowser's final phase is fought similarly to Perfect Chaos, with Mario gliding across the water using ramps and speed boosts to catch up and hit him. Someone even made a music swap of sorts depicting this very thing.
  • Calamity Bowser^ExplanationFans drew similarities to Fury Bowser's design to the form Calamity Ganon has in Breath of The Wild, as both look huge, intimidating, dark, and corrupted.
    • God Slayer Bowser^ExplanationThanks to a joke from Matt McMuscles, fans everywhere referred to Bowser's new form as "God Slayer Bowser". His actual name ended up being Fury Bowser, with fans commenting that they prefer God Slayer.
    • Mario Eternal: Icon of Koopa^ExplanationAt least a few people have likened Bowser's new form to the Final Boss of Doom Eternal, the Icon of Sin; even altering the infamous dialogue of "The longer the Icon of Sin is on Earth, the stronger he will become!" to have it refer to Bowser and the Mushroom Kingdom.
  • Fury Bowser's giant size, coupled with Mario also becoming giant to fight him, has lead to many references to Godzilla, a franchise well-known for its giant monsters, which are often pitted against each other. Similarly, Pokémon fans have been making jokes referencing the Dynamax mechanic, in which Pokémon grow to an enormous size to become stronger, when discussing their fights.
  • Final Fantasy X.^ExplanationThe tropical setting, the narrative of Bowser Jr. fighting his dad, Bowser being a giant kaiju who causes storms, and the usage of heavy metal music call to mind Final Fantasy X in multiple ways, with more than a few fans drawing comparisons between the two.
  • Peeved Mario◊ ^ExplanationDuring Bowser's Fury cutscenes where Bowser Jr. is talking to Mario, the latter near-constantly has a look on his face that amounts to "I'm feeling real tired of your bullshit right now, Jr.". Pictures and gifs of Mario's very unamused expressions quickly became reaction images.
  • One Winged Angel: Act 2^ExplanationThe fans were very quick to compare the music from the showdown with Fury Bowser to Sephiroth's "One Winged Angel" with how similar they are in tone, even saying that Bowser took a page from Sephiroth's playbook after his inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
  • "Sounds like it would fit for an optimistic stroll in town."^ExplanationVideos featuring the music for Scamper Shores have an inexplicably high amount of comments consisting of nothing but this sentence.
• Moe: The friendly Disneyesque colorful cats are a perfect encapsulation of the Cute Kitten trope.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Fury Bowser is terrifying. Along with being one of his biggest incarnations to date, he sports a pitch-black color scheme and constantly exhales fire. The scariest part of him, however, is how he features in gameplay; over time, Fury Bowser will slowly rise from the black goop, and when he fully awakes, he instantly casts dark rainclouds over Lake Lapcat and starts attacking Mario and Bowser Jr. from anywhere in the map. He'll rain down meteors, attack you with his fire breath, and turn even the docile cats into enemies. If you don't have the Giga Bell or can't find a Cat Shine, you're damn near screwed. Also, once you have 47 shines, he won't go away once he appears. Until you get the final three shines needed to unlock the Giga Bell again, you'll have to deal with with this monstrosity constantly stalking and terrorizing you around the map. Even death won't save you: while he does go away like normal when you respawn, he immediately awakens and begins chasing you down all over again.
    • The reason for Bowser's state? Junior thought it would be funny to paint Bowser black, and Bowser got so mad his hate corrupted the paint, which in turn turned Bowser into a Not Zilla. Yup, the whole reason Bowser turns into this mindless monstrosity is all because of a little prank. And his history with Mario does not help, To be fair, Junior used his Magic Paintbrush to paint Bowser, but still, he had no way of knowing that Bowser's hate would have corrupted the paint - and by extension himself - into this.
    • While he's not as powerful or scary looking when he shrinks down to Giga Bowser, he can arguably be considered to be even more dangerous thanks to his mind now being just clear enough to strategize, preventing you from accessing your strongest powerups by locking them in a magic shield and launching a Bullet Hell worthy stream of attacks at you as you chase after him. And if you're bad at dodging and don't have enough backup reserve items to restore Mario's health, you're in big trouble. Just think about what Fury Bowser would've been like if he attacked like that.
  • Those adorable little kittens? They turn black and gain glowing red eyes when Fury Bowser's storm spreads across Lake Lapcat.
• Older Than They Think: Bowser's Fury isn't the first time Mario had to fight a massive Bowser empowered by dark paint that corrupted his mind.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Fury Bowser himself. Many of the islands require precision platforming and have no defense from Fury Bowser's Fury Blasts and the additional powerups and platforms present during his wrath don't quite compensate for his threat, meaning the only thing the player can do is just wait until Fury Bowser leaves. Inversely, Fury Bowser doesn't appear when you want him to (such as for Fury Blocks and the Lucky Isle), making 100% completion also a waiting game. Hope you have a Bowser amiibo at the ready.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Fury Bowser's battle music is very similar to "Otherworld", the final boss theme from Final Fantasy X.
• Tear Jerker: You can stumble upon an upset calico cat crying because she can't find her kittens. The sight of her in such distress is definitely sad, especially for cat lovers, but thankfully you can cheer her up by finding her babies.
• That One Attack: During the later battles with Fury Bowser, he gains an attack that has him retreat into his shell and spin around the lake on his side like a wheel. Thanks to the speed he rockets around at and the camera's painfully slow movement, Bowser will be offscreen for a majority of the attack's length and even with a marker indicating his position, it's still all too easy for him to combo you to death by constantly running you over in quick succession.
• That One Boss: The very last Bowser battle is relentless, especially when compared to previous games. You are forced to use Plessie and chase down Bowser, while he has three separate attacks he can use in between the ramp jumps. The thing is, that Bowser can and will throw out all of these moves at once, which include shooting waves of spikes, sweeping fire breath, and rings of fireballs. On his last hits, Bowser will do nothing but use his spam attack, forcing you to deal with a ridiculous amount of Bullet Hell. The attacks cover up your only options well, dive to avoid the fire and you will hit the spikes; jump and you will hit the fire. You will often need to bring plenty of powerups even though you can't use their abilities (since you are stuck on Plessie) just for the extra hitpoints.
• That One Level: Mount Magmeow and Roiling Roller Isle are a rather high Difficulty Spike compared to the rather easier levels beforehand. They are home to one of the very few One-Hit Kill hazards in the game in the form of lava, and Mount Magmeow in particular is designed in a way that makes it very difficult to cheese with the Super Bell or Super Leaf, forcing the player to make use of the Switchboards if they want to fully traverse the level. Because of this, both levels are even more difficult when Fury Bowser awakens as there is little space to hide from Bowser's flame breath. At least the music's nice.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • At the end, it's revealed that the Bowser's drastic transformation and Unstoppable Rage was the result of him getting very, very mad after Bowser Jr. covered him in paint while he was taking a nap as part of an innocuous prank. For many, this comes across as an incredibly cheap Hand Wave that renders the entire game into yet another Excuse Plot, especially since Bowser has always been a reasonable parent, which makes it hard to believe that he would ever get this upset at Jr.'s antics. It also fails to address how some of Bowser's more "out-there" powers came to be, such as turning the friendly cats hostile and monstrous, or secreting a seemingly endless amount of black goo.
  • During the final battle, Bowser gets ahold of three Giga Bells. But rather than using them himself, he instead just holds them captive. So much for a potential Giga Meowser.

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