Mother 3/YMMV

• Anvilicious/Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: MOTHER 3 is many things, but one thing it is not is subtle. Fans will assert, however, that the messages are valid and important, and without them, the game would lose a lot of its charm and impact.
• Awesome Music: Many, many examples.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • The old man who randomly appears in the hot springs and says "Yes?" when spoken to.
  • The item boxes that open and play music, shoot fireworks into the air, or fart, but otherwise do absolutely nothing.
  • The part where the party accidentally drop their jar of pickles. Probably the only reason it exists is to give the player a single chance to play as Boney.
• Complete Monster: Porky's actions in the previous game made him a real Jerkass, but here... What he does to Lucas' family (and what he plans to do to the world, just for kicks) is pure Player Punch.
  • Porky has no sympathetic qualities beyond acting like a twisted child, which he gleefully abuses. Maybe in the beginning, before all this, he was a Jerkasss Woobie, but definitely not anymore.
• Contested Sequel: This game caused a Broken Base in Japan considering how much it strayed from the first two games. On 2ch and elsewhere, it is often said that They Changed It, Now It Sucks. It is often assumed by international fans that the game is popular in Japan, but either its fans are a minority or its haters are a Vocal Minority.
  • This may have affected the game's stance in future material. Lucas ended up being Demoted to Extra as a trophy in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS/WiiU, alongside the other MOTHER 3 trophies that managed to return from Brawl. Most of the rest of the series' representation in that game is only focused on the first two games. Lucas eventually did get to return to Smash 4 as DLC with the primary focus of it being advertised to the western fanbase, but whether this means MOTHER 3 might get some more recognition by Nintendo in the US though is currently unknown.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Porky Minch is this all over, along with his chimeras. Good lord, the fangirls. Heck, some people make New Pork City look like a real utopia!
• Ensemble Darkhorse:
  • There's a pretty large fanbase for Kumatora. That's not to say Ana and Paula are unpopular either, but Kumatora tends to be the most beloved of the girls. The feisty attitude and frequent use of mild swearing help to set her apart.
    • In hindsight, some fans believe she would have made a better representative in Brawl, considering that most of Lucas's attacks including the Final Smash of PK Starstorm weren't even his, but directly lifted from her moveset and given to him. Some even hoped she'd replace him for the fourth game. Even after Lucas returned to the roster, a large and vocal section of the fandom still believes she would be a great addition as a third representative.
  • And Flint.
  • There's also a lot of fanart for Lil' Miss Marshmallow, an optional boss character.
  • Quite a bit of fanart exists for Fuel as well. Some people were rather disappointed he never has much relevance after the prologue.
• Epileptic Trees: Abbot explaining Abbey's injury as having been caused by a Flying Mouse and her seemingly denying it ("There was no bizarre creature. It didn’t fly. It wasn’t mousey. It wasn’t buggy. It didn’t bite me.") led some fans to believe that there was domestic abuse going on in their relationship. A later version of the fan translation revised the wording so that it no longer sounded like a Suspiciously Specific Denial.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: That freaking doorknob. People at starmen.net are insane. The best one is "The doorknob is a metaphor for happiness". Funnily enough, it made sense.
  • In an interview shortly after the original Japanese release of the game, Itoi hinted that he included to doorknob to see all of the crazy interpretations people would invent. One in particular he liked was that the doorknob is meant to be the doorknob to the world of MOTHER 3, and you can use it to go back any time.
• Fandom Rivalry: Enjoys a mild one with EarthBound, mostly in terms of which one is the better game.
• Game Breaker: Kumatora's PK Ground, which dishes out several hits of 2-13% of an enemy's HP and can cause them to trip and a lose a couple turns. This attack works on bosses. She doesn't learn it until level 60, but once she does the rest of the game becomes pathetically easy.
  • It's easy to beat the game before Kumatora reaches level 60. It breaks the game, but it's still difficult to acquire. Even intentionally trying to get it, the player is unlikely to have much use for it in the final few dungeons, which are more lengthy than challenging.
  • There's a reason Salsa never returns to the party after his brief reappearance in Chapter 7: his Monkey Mimic ability becomes a little too effective the closer you get to the end.
  • Eggs, which you can buy from the start of Chapter 4 for only 40 DP, are this on two levels:
    • You can take them to the local Hot Spring and turn them into a Hot Spring Egg, which heals 100 HP and will never spoil. Repeat this enough, and you'll have more high-end healing items than you'll know what to do with.
    • You can keep them until they hatch into chicks and grow into chickens, then sell them for 200 DP (five times what an egg costs). Repeat this enough, and you can have more than enough money to last you through the entire game!
  • Black Beanling + Enemy Bufferizer. The Black Beanling is a Metal Slime and the enemy bufferizer increases EXP gain in exchange for making the enemy stronger. However, the Black Beanling still goes down rather quickly when used on him, and even regardless of whatever level you're at, sometimes it's possible to get two-three level-ups in a single go using this tactic, making it incredibly easy to level up quickly in a short amount of time.
• Goddamned Bats: The Cleocatras at the beginning of Chapter 7, especially when they attack in groups. They have an annoying tendency to use Lifeup both on themselves and each other to heal of any damage done to them at all, and they have the ability to cast Hypnosis.
• Ho Yay: While underwater, you must fill up on oxygen by kissing robot O2 tanks who look like middle aged mermen wearing bright red lipstick. It makes Lucas, Kumatora and Boney blush. Duster blushes too, but it's difficult to see due to his sprite's cheek marks being only a single pixel big. In the last level there's a similar looking centaur that offers oxygen above water for no reason.
  • One of the Pigmasks comments that he kind of likes them, disturbing his comrade.
  • There's something fishy about how exactly Ionia showed Lucas how to use PSI, also. Though the Magypsies are neither male nor female.
  • There's also a Pigmask who nervously offers you an item when you're dressed as "the Commander" and insists it's just a friendly gift.
  • Flinty-poo ~<3 ...What? That was my Magypsy impression. Do you like it? ...Don't act so embarrassed!
• Les Yay: One village girl early in the game mistakes Kumatora for an attractive boy. Granted, it only happens once.
• Memetic Badass: Flint, who has gained such affectionate nicknames as Flint Norris and Flint Eastwood among the fandom.
• Memetic Molester: There are often questions regarding what Ionia did to Lucas in that hot spring...
• Memetic Mutation:
  • FLINT LOVES CHEESE!
  • Welcome to the world of MOTHER 3!
  •  :|
  • a Ultimate Chimera appears!
    • Ultimate Chimera is enraged
  • The Ultimate Chimera itself is considered one. Heck, it even has it's own GMod game mode. With pigmasks!
  • The [character's name here]'s shield disappeared!
  • From the early days of the translation progress: The Flint equipped the Nut Bread!
  • Wess's door-opening dance, to the point where Starmen.net had a competition for it!
  • How would you make a ladder?
• Misblamed: Nintendo often gets railed at by fans for not releasing this game in America and the rest of the world. Except the game is a landmine of licensing issues, from the direct AC-DC parody to riffs from popular shows. Additionally, it was released near the end of the Advance's lifespan, and sales in Japan were somewhat lacklustre.^[1] Not to mention the fact that EarthBound itself was a commercial failure at the time, which likely soured any attempt made. This doesn't stop the fans though, including one memorable instance where Yahtzee himself claimed it would sell better than Mario Kart.
• Nightmare Retardant: The Frightbots.
  • Well, to humans, at any rate (they're among the weakest enemies in the game). The sound they make sure works on the Saturns.
• Player Punch: If you thought Porky was bad before...
• Sacred Cow
• Scrappy Mechanic: Enemies calling for help. It's not uncommon to marathon 7 or 8 Reconstructed Moles in a single battle.
  • When either Lucas or Kumatora feels feverish, you cannot dash. It can range from annoying, when walking past an area with weak enemies, to frustrating if there are powerful enemies you are trying to avoid battling against or if you are leaving an area after a boss fight, and you are short on HP, PP and recovery items.
• Surprise Difficulty: EarthBound, for the most part, was Chrono Trigger-level easy, even without exploiting bugs. -MOTHER 3, while still not a particularly hard game, does make sure pretty much every boss is quite challenging.
  • Though the two most difficult bosses in the game become trivial once you reach 45 and 50 respectively.
• That One Attack : Some of the battle songs are a pain in the ass to combo.
  • So I heard you like songs in 29/16.
  • Porky coughed something up!
• That One Boss:
  • The Pork Tank, a nasty "Wake-Up Call" Boss fought when you have two characters under your control.
  • The Jealous Bass, a Flunky Boss that gets a massive attack buff when you take out its flunkies.
  • New/Miracle Fassad, for being fond of status effects, having high-level PSI, and being able to heal 500+ HP seemingly at random.
  • The Barrier Trio, a group of PSI-immune golems.
  • The Steel Mechorilla, who Turns Red and becomes nigh-unstoppable if you hit him with electric attacks.
  • The Masked Man, who hits incredibly hard and has a ton of HP.
  • The Natural Killer Cyborg, who is huge and extremely tough.
  • Porky, who hits hard (surprised?) and has an attack that hits your entire party for massive attack and defense debuts.
• That One Sidequest: Feel like completing the Battle Memory? Well, if you're not right at the start of the game, you're screwed. If you are, remember that you need to get back sprites as well. Yes, that means trying to back attack every enemy until you get Duster. If you haven't been turned off the idea yet, see the Trivia tab.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Quite a few people are rather disappointed that the Ultimate Chimera remains The Unfought throughout the game and is only a One-Hit Kill hazard you have to avoid. Many think it would have made for an interesting and challenging Bonus Boss.
• Tier-Induced Scrappy:
  • Possibly deconstructed with Salsa. Yeah, he's almost totally useless and needs a lot of Level Grinding to stand up to the weakest of enemies without a Crutch Character, but he's so adorable and Fassad puts him through so much that you can't help but want to hug him. Then, he manages to save Lucas and Boney from the Ultimate Chimera, so...
  • Boney and Duster are virtually superfluous and most players will end up using them simply for bashing the enemy. Duster's status moves are useful on occasion but not overly so.
• True Art Is Angsty: This is considered the closest video games came to literature (though Planescape: Torment and Legacy of Kain are mentioned pretty often when the question comes up).
• The Woobie: Lucas. At the start of the game, he's pretty shy and quiet, already making him a bit of a woobie. But then, his mother is killed by a half-mechanical Drago that was acting against its own will, and then his brother Claus goes missing trying to avenge her. His father goes nearly insane with grief, trying to find Claus every single day for three years. But that's not it. After three years, the hometown he loved has now been developed into a modern city, and eventually is completely abandoned. Then, after learning that everything he knew about his beloved hometown is a lie, he learns that the mysterious Pigmask commander is Claus, who is now a Brainwashed and Crazy cyborg. Cue an incredibly tragic "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight, which ends with Claus dying in Lucas' arms, after returning to his senses.
  • Poor little Salsa. First, his girlfriend gets kidnapped by the Pigmasks, and they threaten to kill her if he doesn't go along with their plan. Then, he gets stuck with Fassad, an unrepentant Jerkass who insults, starves, and shocks him at every opportunity, even when Salsa does what Fassad told him to, all throughout Chapter 3. Thankfully, Salsa eventually takes a level in badass, while nearly all of Fassad's future appearances end with him getting maimed.
  • The Negative Man enemy. It's just absolutely pathetic, rattling off nihilistic quotes, and it barely makes an effort to attack you. It truly makes you feel sorry beating it up in its little cave.
• Woolseyism: In the Fan Translation, Yokuba's name was changed to Fassad, possibly in reference to the facade he puts up around the public. Get it? It also happens to be Arabic for "corruption". Also, Kumatora's waitress alter-ego gets named Violet and Duster's name when he's with the DCMC is Lucky. The latter, however, was purely due to the fact that in the original, they have different aliases when they are named their aliases, and to keep this in, their aliases were changed, because "Yoshikoshi" and "Tamekichi" were too long to enter into the naming screens.
  • Averted in the case of Hinawa's name. Tomato almost gave her the name "Amber", which would have fit very well considering she's married to Flint (in Japanese, their names reference "Hinawa-juu" and "Furinto-juu", meaning matchlock and flint guns) but decided to leave that one alone due to Super Smash Bros. Brawl's use of the name.
    • Similarly, other names like Kumatora are kept, avoiding this trope as well.
  • The mice in Club Titiboo's attic spoke in an incredibly difficult-to-understand dialect of Japanese in the original game. In the fan translation, it was changed to a similarly-impenetrable Cockney accent.

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1. ↑ This game was released in 2006. The Nintendo DS was released in 2004, and by 2006 had already established itself on the international markets, with stores beginning to phase out Game Boy Advance titles as early as late 2005.