Mario & Luigi/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The whole Beanbean Sewers part in Superstar Saga annoys me. Why would fixing a sewer system disable the security on the Beanstar? It's just a little too ridiculous. Also, do Beanish people even excrete? Or are they photosynthetic?
    • Three words: Rule of Funny.
    • Since when has Plot ever mattered in a Mario game?
      • It never has. That's what makes them fun.
    • This is a Mario game. Their technology usage is questionable at best (looks at Bowser's Airships and the inward facing flamethrowers). Considering their university has doors opened by reflecting sunlight through half the facility using mirrors, it's not really that odd any more.
    • Actual serious response: Perhaps there's some device that regulates or tests the water further down the line, which uses up more power when the water flow is higher. Now, suppose that device is on the same circuit as the Beanstar's security system. Fixed plumbing = higher water flow = more power used up = less power to the security system = force field fails. Any questions?
    • In addition, it also makes sense to have the key to taking out the security be the last thing one would suspect... and in the last place anyone would want to go.
  • So, after Fawful's plans are stopped and all is said and done, has anything changed regarding Bowser? He still has that Vacuum Block, and we didn't see him regurgitate any pipes. Can the Mario Bros. still enter and exit his body at will? There could still be some very strange days and battles ahead...
    • It's not like Bowser has ever really be consistent with his abilities. One day he's a fifty-foot incarnation of evil capable of incredible dark magic, the next he's an eight-foot doofus barely smart enough to breath fire. If the game designers want him to he'll have that power, if not, then he won't.
    • Shouldn't you really be wondering how the pipes can connect from outside Bowser to inside, even when he moves around? ;)
      • We're talking about pipes that just about teleport you, in a realm well versed in magic. Obviously, A Wizard Did It.
    • Bag of Spilling applies to Bowser too.
  • Exactly why did Fawful bother with spreading the Blorbs? His (apparent) plan for Bowser could have been accomplished at any point, so they didn't help there. The disease only affects Toads, and they've proven to be only slightly tougher than old cheese, so it doesn't really help him get rid of guards. What was the point?
    • Presumably to get everyone important in the Mushroom Kingdom into the same room at the same time. He would have been far more successful in his plan if Dr. Toadley had made the meeting.
  • Why didn't the Toads in Bowser's gut simply take the pipes out? They all talk about how much they want to leave, but they've got a ticket straight to Toad Town in an easily accessible area of Bowser. Even worse, Starlow, whose been out of Bowser every time the Bros. left, started complaining about how to leave! Did they just forget?
    • Maybe to move around anywhere in Bowser's body, you have to go through the areas. To get to the pipe areas alone, they would have to go through places where there were enemies. Toads can't fight all that well. It may be Gameplay and Story Segregation, but it's at least plausible...
    • Even after the red one broke, the pipes they need to cross are very high up. And those Toads can't duck for several seconds to increase their jump height anymore.
    • In one of the cutscenes, a toad had no trouble jumping into one of those fleshy, pseudo pipes in Bowser's body. The real pipes were no higher. They've also had no problem traversing Bower's organs at will. It's not like they had much else to do, so why not leave?
    • Because Mario and Luigi still had stuff to do in Bowser's body and they wanted to help out their heroes, maybe? Or maybe Toads can't take warp pipes...no, wait, that's not possible...Eh, first one is the best I've got.
    • Because they're weak puny toads, unsure of where blorbs come from, and know that Bowser's tummy is the safest place in the Kingdom until the whole Fawful/Dark Star threat boils over.
  • I know it shouldn't, because of all the rest of Bowser's weird biology, but the Spike Ball move really bugs me. I thought turtle shells were hard and solid! And, more importantly, how does he grow double the spikes when he's curled up? And where do the white parts of his shell go?!
    • Stupid answer: The sprite you see is actually Bowser rolling really, really fast, so fast you can't even see him moving. Actual answer: I got nothin'. See stupid answer.
      • But you see the same sprite even if he's not moving. That's not it. Instead, remember that Bowser is a Koopa, and not technically a turtle - presumably Koopas have weird shells.
      • That was what I meant - that the sprite you see while he's sitting still is actually him rolling in place really, really fast. Yeah.
        • If he's rolling in place really really fast, why can you see individual spikes?
          • Because he's rolling at 60 Hz.
          • SPIN DASHING
          • Perhaps he can bend his shell?
          • The games are very inconsistent about Bowser's shell. A good example would be how much of Bowser's body is shell, and how much is just his body. Half the time the green part with spikes on his back is his shell. The other half the back part and his front part are the entire shell. The Smash Bros. series is a great place to see this.
    • Classic Rule of Funny. The same reason that Bowser can slim down by doing crunches really fast.
    • Better question. How does he roll up walls? Even forgiving his ability to stay anchored on the wall, it would require him to place his own center of gravity not only outside his own body, but inside the wall! I'm all for the MST3K Mantra, but the line has to be drawn somewhere.
    • For that matter, if he can't use it on the field until Mario and Luigi fix his back, how can he use it every single time he does his Shy Guy Squad move? Seriously, what is up with that?
      • He could always roll up like that, he needed to fix his back to be able to roll around on his own. The Shy-Guys help slingshot him at his opponent, something he couldn't do on his own.
  • Crawful. Seriously. WHAT. THE. HELL. It's a giant dinosaur with Fawful's face and huge teeth, who primarily attacks by tripping over rocks and banana peels. I'm thinking it's either a reference to a "Famous Japanese Comedian", or just absurdity for absurdity's sake.
    • Its name in Japanese (and every European language bar English) is a pun based on Fawful's name and alligator, which it looks like. Note:
    • Japanese ゲタゲター Getagetā From Gerakobittsu, Fawful's Japanese name, and English "alligator".
    • To be more relevant: Crawful = Crocodile + Fawful. Class dismissed!
      • Moreso: 'Craw' means mouth... so, it has a mouthful.
    • Am I the only one that's freaked out by that enemy? That smile is freaky as hell... and the fact that you can suck its teeth out, leaving only a black hole of evil and despair.
      • And then they choke on their own food.
      • On Crawful, does anyone else notice that if you're fighting more than one Crawful or a Crawful and something else, should you get hit by the other enemy... Crawful laughs at you? I'm still torn between being seriously annoyed at the chortling gits and being slightly freaked out by them.
    • Was I the only one who took forever to realize that Bowser counters BOTH of their attacks by punching (rather than punching to counter one attack and crouching to counter the other attack)?
  • What would happen if Bowser went through one of those pipes leading into his own body?
    • Malkovich Malkovich!
    • He spits the pipes (and everyone/thing he swallowed) in the ending of the game, so he wouldn't be able to go down them into himself. Also, he can't exactly jump.
    • I believe he'd just get to walk around inside himself, and when he walked inside himself, the himself he is walking on would walk inside himself. Kind of like Rule 34 of Portal.
  • Why does nobody seem to remember the Shroobs in the second game? Yeah, there was a lot of screwing around with the time stream, but that didn't cause the invasion. The people who weren't babies should have been at least mentioned something about the near-destruction of the Kingdom 20-30 years ago.
    • How exactly is near-destruction of the kingdom anything new? They don't remember it because its in no way unusual. They're used to it by now.
    • If you speak to Madame Broque with Mario and Luigi, she sometimes mentions the Shroob invasion. Plus, Mario and Luigi tell Starlow about it after the three Shroobs are defeated in Bowser's Castle. A Continuity Nod is even made to the fact that it was Luigi, with his baby tears of Shroob smelting, who really destroyed the Shroobs in the end. Otherwise, there's no real reason for anyone to mention the Shroobs: everyone's got enough on their plate worrying about Fawful.
      • And before Fawful, they never mentioned it because they were more worried about Bowser, the Shadow Queen/X-Nauts, Smithy, Kamek, Bleck...
    • I think you're misinterpreting the question: In Partners in Time, the Shroobs invade the past Mushroom Kingdom. During that game, the present-day characters treat this as a new development. Why? It's like if someone from the present-day U.S. went back to the 60's and brought back the exciting new information we were involved in the Vietnam War. The Shroob invasion happened independently of the time travel (Peach only arrived after they had already invaded), so the other Timey-Wimey Ball explanations don't really seem to apply.
      • Mario, Luigi, and Peach were babies during the invasion so they were too young to remember. Egadd is old enough to remember but he was wrapped up in his own research and likely missed the whole thing. If you visit a room off to the right of the library late in the game a Toad mentions finding a book about the invasion written by Kylie Koopa. So SOME people do remember the invasion.
        • Does it really matter how young they are? They are clearly old enough to handle weapons, to talk, and perform other basics actions that babies in general aren't old enough to do. Is it really so much of a stretch to say that they should remember going on a huge adventure filled with peril, danger, and many near fatal incidents that finally ended with them saving the entire world from an insane alien species. Even if they can't remember it exactly, they should atleast have some memory of it.
          • Who survived to remember it? Toad Town was completely taken out, save two very old women--assuming Toads have a terribly long lifespan to begin with. The Yoshis are distant and carefree, and didn't see the bulk of the invasion. Everyone else... not as many creatures seem to be sentient as in Paper Mario.

Toadsworth has no excuse, though.

  • There's a little piece of brilliance here if you look a little further - A time machine appearing would also include a very large amount of energy being released, theoretically, so the Shroobs detected that and worked from there. If Peach hadn't traveled back in tine, the Shroobs would never have found the Mushroom Kingdom.
    • Peach arrives at the past castle after the invasion is already well underway, though.

What I want to know is, what happened to the Beanbean Kingdom when this was happening? Apparently nothing too serious, if it turned out okay without needing to be saved...

          • It might also be worth mentioning that the Mushroom Kingdom constantly suffers from one problem or another. Back story for Super Mario Bros. says most of the population into blocks. Bowser has been and will be a constant problem on many levels for the kingdom, not counting at least two alien invasions other than the Shroobs. But for Me It Was Tuesday may apply here. In addition, the people in the past might not have been able to understand why the Shroobs disappeared without a trace thanks to the Baby Tears. Add all this together and it might just be a particularly odd footnote in the history of a rather odd kingdom in constant war with other odd kingdoms.
  • Why did Fawful decide to give Bowser a treadmill to unchub him? He just threw a wrench into his own plan.
    • The primary purpose of that treadmill wasn't to slim Bowser down. It was to get him heated up so he'd blow himself out of the castle.
      • Which raises another question: how could they be so Genre Savvy about cartoon physics to know that doing exercises would cause him to light on fire, yet be so unsavvy to not realize that any resulting explosion would be comedic and nonfatal?
      • Who's to say they didn't realize the latter point? What mattered was that it got Bowser out of the way for a while.
    • Bowser already beaten up Midbuss, loads of Fawful's minions, and his own castle. Leaving Bowser there, even morbidly obese, would mean leaving him in a castle full of his own former minions. Since Fawful didn't have anything that could get rid of him permanently, a series of temporary setbacks was the best that he could do.
  • In the middle of Partners in Time, after Mario and Luigi rescued "Peach" (actually Princess Shroob in disguise), they all rejoice and such and even say they can relax and everything is back to normal even though the past kingdom is still infested with Shroobs. That would make it even worse, as the past would make the present also ruled by Shroobs. Is Princess Peach that much more important than an entire kingdom? Its like it's a GOOD thing that Bowser kidnapped the fake princess.
    • Mario and Luigi don't seem like the type that would drop everything and walk away after rescuing their princess. They were probably just going to take a well-deserved break before continuing to save the kingdom. Bowser's intervention just cut the break short.
    • No i think Mario and Luigi FORGOT about it. Because Toadworth says Just relax, everything turned out just fine, even though Shroobs were still in the Kingdom.
    • Even with the confusing time travel mechanics, it was still the past. They probably figured that since there aren't any Shroobs now, something had to take care of them in the past.
    • Yes, but... Baby Mario, Baby Luigi, Baby Peach, and Young Toadsworth are STILL in the present which is not ok, and would mess up a paradox.
      • As I said earlier, they were probably just taking a much-needed break.
        • Well, it still bugs me a little bit. I mean, why would they take a break? They're Mario and Luigi! Theyre kickass! But I guess they do. What really bugs me is why Mario goes the entire way just to rescue a princess in the other games. They don't even marry, princess peach only gives him a smooch on the CHEEK, and in earlier games she didn't even do that. And you can see how much hell hes been through to her. He died like millions of times to get to her.
          • Actually, Present Toadsworth is the one who suggests to them to take a break when they ask the two to teach them their latest move, but Young Toadsworth DOES point out that the Shroobs are still running amuck, and there's no time for breaks. So, Headscratcher solved.
    • This question reminds me of one of the least popular aspects of the NES game The Magic of Scheherazade. At one point a character asks the player if he is afraid of monsters. If you answer "Yes", the game takes it to mean that you're giving up and you get a Game Over.
  • What happened the the Firebrand and Thunderhand powers? They saw a lot of use in the first game and just disappeared later. Did the Bros. simply forget they could do that?
  • How the heck was the future not affected when the past was invaded by Shroobs?!
    • Because presumably, Mario and Luigi had already gone back and fixed it. This isn't Chrono Trigger, okay?
    • My theory is going to burn some brains so sit down and relax: Theoretically a possible future with a link to the past (no reference intended) is not affected by the past until all links are severed like at the end of the game. Also the future/present may or may not snap into the future/present whereas the Shroobs had won, that is; if the Marios and Luigis had relaxed until after the holes had closed the future would have perhaps snapped into the shroob-conquered future, whether anyone had Time Traveller's Immunity is another question.
      • Yeah, I'd say that this game works in a single time stream and that when the game began, all of the actions done in the past had already happened. In other words, the Mario Bros. were pretty much destined to defeat the Shroobs, acting out stuff exactly the way people who lived back then had remembered it.
    • Or there could be something completely different going on. It really depends on your idea of how time propagates changes in the timeline. Anyone who played Achron knows what I'm talking about and for those who don't, it's like this: Changes in the past don't propagate to the present instantly, but they take some time. And the farther back the change is, the longer it takes for that change to propagate to the present. That is basically the gist of it. Seeing as we're talking about chronal entities (so, beings that are affected by changes in the timeline) and seeing as the time of the Shroob invasion is 20-30 years in the past, it would probably take at least a few years for the existence of Shroobs on the planet to propagate to the present. However, this would mean that Shroobs can act in the past, meaning that they also have time-traveling abilities. But there's nothing that contradicts that.
    • First, isn't there an event where the Bros. do something in the past that changes E. Gadd's memories, inspiring him to make that large-scale water pump? Second, the Shroobs invaded prior to any time travel takes place, so technically it just seems to be a historical event that everyone forgot about for some reason. (Maybe full-scale invasions of the Mushroom Kingdom happen so often that no one really keeps track of them?)
  • Of all three games, there are two things that bug me. one: Why is everything that has to be done by the bros together ALWAYS colored red and green? and second, are mario and luigi some sort of martial art experts, given how they (or the player, depending on your point of view) almost always seem to be able to determine which of the bros is about to be attacked, and how?
    • First off, Gameplay and Story Integration. Second, it's fairly easy to tell if something's flying right at you if no one ends up attacking from behind save atleast two or three cases per game. It's less foresight and more reflexive.
  • Fawful, in all three games, speaks of how "red and green puts the fog of rage in [his] eyes". His cloak is red. His skin is green. Is Nintendo making a funny, or..?
    • He doesn't use mirrors very often.
    • Fawful often refers to the Mario Bros. as "Red" and "Green", he's talking about them rather than the colours.
    • To be honest, to me it just ends up sounding like he somehow gets roid-rage-induced bloodshot eyes from smoking too much weed.
    • He's so insane he makes Deadpool look like a perfectly sane and reasonable individual.
  • In the second game, our heroes get eaten by Yoob, a Shroobish Yoshi monster. Now you see, baby tears are highly corrosive to the Shroobs and all of their biological creations. The very first thing Baby Mario and Baby Luigi do after landing in Yoob's small intestine is cry. Shouldn't that kinda dissolve Yoob's flesh?
  • At the end of the second game, what happened to Yoob? Did he disintegrate, turn into a normal (possibly still giant) Yoshi, or was he unaffected? The third game's Fawful Guys and Dark Fawful Guys add even more confusion to this: one of their attacks has them get eaten and spit out as eggs by some offscreen, Yoob-like creature (and this can happen even after Bowser inhales them!).
  • Yoob has a factory inside it. How did this exist and function before the Make My Monster Grow sequence?
  • In the first game, if Toadsworth was in on the "swap Birdo with Peach" plan, why did he just give Mario & Luigi a suitcase and send them on their way as if he had no idea about it?
    • Maybe he was playing dumb in case Cackletta had left a spy behind?
    • He didn't want Bowser to get too involved?
      • Exactly. Bowser was there. Toadsworth was probably just going to let the Bros. in on it, but then Bowser stormed the castle and got involved. If the Bros. hadn't have gone, Bowser would have gotten suspicious. Plus, it's a game. If they hadn't have gotten involved, it wouldn't have been nearly as fun.
  • In Superstar Saga, it is revealed that Birdo's voice was stolen instead of Peach's. While this was a great relief to the heroes, what about Birdo? Shouldn't there still be great concern about Birdo's explosive vocabulary?
    • The proper solution is and has always been mushroom-shaped blocks.
    • Although, when she appeared later alongside Popple, she didn't have the lethal voice. Either the problem was fixed off-screen or there are be two different Birdos (they are a species, after all).
  • With everything in all of the Mario & Luigi games being color-coded red for Mario and green for Luigi, how does someone who's red-green or entirely color-blind play this game? Any guesses would be welcome, but I would like to hear from someone who has such color-blindedness.
    • Many of the red and green elements are also marked with M's and L's. Not all, but many.
      • True. There are the stuff like that hammer minigame in the third game with the synapses or whatever they were though, and the Thwacks on Thwomp Volcano in the second game, where it's simply indicated by color. But yeah, color-blind people might still get hindered, but not as much as I initially thought.
    • Color-blind person here. The colors may look the same, but the intensities are different. It's like how two different shades of blue can be easily distinguishable even though they're both blue. Other games that use closer-together shades ARE impossible for me to play -- for instance, the card game SET.
  • How did the Mushroom Kingdom economy crash so bad at the end of Superstar Saga? And what does this mean for everything else in the series concerning the value of coins?
    • Likely it was just Peasley messing with everyone and being stingy. Rule of Funny, I guess.
  • In the second game, you can fight as both the adult Bros and the baby Bros at once. Shouldn't it therefore be impossible to lose when the baby Bros are in a fight?
    • I'm not sure what you're asking. It's perfectly possible to lose if you're hit enough times.
      • I believe he was pointing out a time paradox. If the young Bros. were killed in battle, then the adult Bros. shouldn't have been able to team up with them. The best answers I can come up with are that either the game is very lax with its time paradoxes or it's a very good reason for a Game Over.
      • The Time Paradox CAUSES the game over.
  • Am I missing something? Nintendo Power keeps going on about how apparently Superstar Saga is the funniest game in the world. I've played through it a few times. It's got some good lighthearted humor, but nothing really spectacular in terms of amusement, unless it's about Luigi being a Butt Monkey.
  • What was that thing in the sky with Cacklettas Mug at the start of Superstar Saga? Did she have her own unexplored airship or something?
    • I think that was just for dramatic effect.
  • Why don't Mario and Luigi gain a level every time their baby selves do? For that matter, how can they be weaker at the beginning than their baby selves by the end? ( Yeah, Gameplay and Story Segregation, but still. )
    • Perhaps since their childhood was mostly uneventful, they forgot their abilities and went back to level 1 after the game was over?
  • In Superstar Saga Bowletta refer's to Joke's End as "that crypt for cruddy jokes." What exactly does that mean? In either a literal or metaphorical sense?
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