Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door/YMMV

• Anticlimax Boss: Macho Grubba from Chapter 3. Despite having a whopping 60HP, which is massive for this point, considering the last boss only had 30HP and the next one will only have 40HP, he's still incredibly easy to beat and also pretty easy to superguard as well. Although only if you do it quickly, as he uses his turns to buff himself up to monstrous levels.
• Catharsis Factor: Let's be honest: using Vivian to beat the ever-loving pigshit out of Beldam near the end of the game is ridiculously satisfying.
• Complete Monster: If her backstory alone is anything to go by, the Shadow Queen is one of the most evil characters in the entire Mario franchise.
  • Grubba is a lot lower key, but still pretty vile. Only someone as sick and vain as him would lure unwitting people to his battle tournaments only to drain the life out of them and absorb it in order to keep him eternally young and good looking.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Bowser's battle in Chapter 8.
  • Pretty much all of the bosses have wonderful music. Notable mentions are Hooktail/Gloomtail/Bonetail's boss music and Rawk Hawk's kickass battle theme.
  • Also, the Rogueport Theme, the Rogueport Sewers theme, the X-Naut Fortress theme... hell, this entire game is a Crowning Music of Awesome.
  • Crump, Grodus, and the Shadow Queen's battle themes as well, only fitting as they are the main antagonists.
• Demonic Spiders: Even at level 28 near the end of the game, I dare you to go back to the haunted woods and go toe to toe with an Amazee Dayzee. Even the Crazee Dayzee can still kill you if you've got less than ideal luck.
  • Some of the later monsters in the Pit of 100 Trials can be BRUTAL. Namely, Wizzerds of any sort, Arantulas, and even the dreaded Amayzee Dayzees can show up (sometimes not alone!).
• 8.8: Game Informer originally gave the game a 6.5. This would have been bad enough, but the reviewer's primary complaint? The writing was bad. The ensuing fan backlash actually prompted two letters of apology. The first one claimed that the reviewer gave the score not of his opinion, but guessing how well consumers would like it. This caused more complaints about the review, so a second apology letter was written with the exact opposite message.
• Ensemble Darkhorse:
  • You can find a lot of fan art of Vivian...usually with, ah, exaggerated assets. She's also popular in general for being an absolutely adorable Woobie who is a very useful partner in combat.
  • Another incredibly popular partner is the Yoshi Kid you hatch in Chapter 3. The fact that he can come in several different colors, can be named, and is very spunky and entertaining help make him one of the game's most memorable partners.
  • And rounding out the triumvirate of popular partners is Admiral Bobbery, for putting the Badass in Badass Grandpa.
  • For a character that only plays a major role for a short time, Jolene is pretty popular with the fans.
  • Rawk Hawk, for his hilarious and incredibly entertaining Heel personality and kickass boss music.
  • Doopliss. The Chapter 3 and 4 areas are chock full of darkhorses it seems.
  • Flavio. See Unpopular Popular Character below.
• Fridge Brilliance: Defeating Bonus Boss Bonetail nets you a grand total of... one Star Point. Players will naturally rage at this... until realizing that this is the game's way of saying "You just beat the hardest enemy in the entire game. You don't need to level up anymore!"
  • It's the same with the Shadow Queen, as she was beaten by the legendary heroes a long time ago. They must have already gotten the Queen's star points when they defeated her!
  • Cortez's forms. First, a four-armed skeleton holding each of his weapons. Then, a hunched-over skeleton with some gem in the torso. And finally, his head and his weapons. Why do his forms progress like this? He's falling apart.
  • How come the impenetrable defenses of the Iron Cleft brothers never manage to get further than 10th place in the Glitz Pit? Because the guys directly above them are Spike Tops. Iron Cleft have unbeatable defenses, but only have an attack of 4, Spike Tops have a defense of 5.
    • However, one of the Iron Clefts explicitly states that their spikes can "penetrate any substance" (exact words), so it's Fridge Logic, really.
• Fridge Horror: At the bottom of the Pit of 100 Trials is Bonetail. This means that a giant, skeletal dragon has been living underneath Rogueport all this time. Who knows? What if it didn't start out skeletal?.
  • At one point you must look behind a crate. You'll see a few of Mario's new friends lying on the ground, not moving. You can say they're stunned, until you see the flies.
  • In Rougeport, there seems to be some dried reddish-brown stuff on the ground. One could easily pass this off as dirt, until you realize that it's next to the gallows, and that it's found nowhere else in town...
• Fridge Logic: Glitzville is presumably in the skies of the Mushroom Kingdom, yet pretty much nobody there recognizes Mario or Bowser!
• Hell Is That Noise: The sound the Fuzzies make when they bounce? That now belongs to the Stock Sound Effects. Good luck not worrying every time you hear it.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Years earlier in the live action parts of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show, a professional wrestler took on the role of Mario. In Glitzville in this game, Mario takes on the role of a professional wrestler, the Great Gonzales.
• Nightmare Fuel: The bathroom in the glitz pit. Seriously, what the hell, Nintendo?
  • Even worse is finding King K. and Bandy Andy on death's door in a sealed-off closet in the Pit.
  • The tune that comes with X's e-mails (from the ice world in Super Mario Bros. 3)
  • The 'victory' music that plays at the end of a battle and your partner has been knocked out. Ugh...
• Moral Event Horizon: Sir Grodus shutting TEC-XX down. As the player's guide says: "If you don't feel much animosity toward Sir Grodus at this point, you will by the time the event is over."
  • He gets another loathsome moment whenever he's holding Peach hostage in a barrier and threatens to kill her if Mario continues to fight him. He takes advantage of this by torturing Mario and his partners with a continuous stream of lightning bolts knowing full well that Mario wouldn't dare fight back.
  • Chapter 3's villain Grubba started out on the wrong side of this by luring unsuspecting fighters to his arena so he could drain the life from them and use it to remain young and spry forever.
• Nightmare Retardant: Doopliss's abilities remain terrifying throughout Chapter 4, but that doesn't change the fact that the one responsible for the town's curse is a Bedsheet Ghost in a party hat and bowtie who is sitting in an easy chair watching TV when you first meet him.
• Player Punch: Sir Grodus shutting TEC-XX down, if you really felt for TEC.
  • Seeing Doopliss possess Mario's body and running around pretending to be him, while the player is unable to do anything about it just yet or even return to Rogueport, can be a little jarring. Especially whenever you fight him for the final time and he's assisted by your partners, who are all hell-bent on beating you senseless while you can't do anything but either focus on taking down Doopliss or beat them down as well.
• Spoiled by the Format: Did you really think Chapter 4 would be finished in about 15-20 minutes?
• That One Boss: The Shadow Queen is quite hard, even by Final Boss standards. Despite having only 1 Defense and her Attack being outmatched by a boss from 10 minutes ago, she gets multiple attacks per round, as well as being very difficult to time for dodges, so the damage starts racking up very quickly. She also has an attack that will drain your HP, and at one point, eats the audience's SOULS to restore her health. Oh, and there's a pair of very long unskippable cutscenes before the real fight starts. Have fun.
  • Magnus 2.0. He's got That One Attack where he sucks up the audience in a hose and rapid-fires them at you, dealing completely massive damage unless you can block correctly.
  • There's also Bowser's appearance out of nowhere in the Palace of Shadow, primarily because, Mario is probably on low health from the preceding battle with Grodus, and Bowser and Kammy have quite a bit of health for this battle.
• The Scrappy:
  • Flurrie is easily the least popular partner, which can mostly be attributed to her design.
  • TEC is also one for people who are really disgusted the subplot involving him and Peach. To the point where Grodus deleting him causes celebration rather than being a tearjerker.
  • Beldam however beats them both out for being an incredibly revolting and unlikable old crone. She does nothing but belittle and antagonize Vivian with every chance she's given, and acts in many ways that a real-life emotionally and verbally abusive family member towards her. And this is just the Engish translation, in the original Japanese translation Vivian is biologically a male, but identifies as a female. Beldam flat-out misgenders her and insists on calling her a man, which is an incredibly dickish thing to do to a transgendered person. Fortunately, Beldam can be fought at the end of the game with Vivian, who even gets special dialogue just for her if she's your partner when the battle is initiated where she calls out Beldam and swears to punish her instead.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Jolene's brother and the Glitz Pit's first champion, Prince Mush. After you beat Grubba and the Crystal Star releases him, he could have been a good Bonus Boss along with Bonetail and the Atomic Boo.
  • He was at one point intended to be a bonus boss... but instead, after the end of Chapter 3, you never see him again.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Despite being universally hated in-game, Flavio has a surprising fanbase.
• Unfortunate Implications: Fahr Outpost features an all Bob-omb cast of townspeople. Okay. Then they start speaking with Russian accents and vehemently denying that they have a superweapon... eeesh.
  • Though it's only a weapon by real life standards. In the game's world, it's only treated, referred to, and ever thought of as a mode of transportation.
  • It's probably meant to be a Shout-Out to popular-culture images of the Russian space programme and the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
• The Woobie: Vivian. Oh God.
  • Hell, Bobbery qualifies too.