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. Although only if you do it quickly, as he uses his turns to buff himself up to monstrous levels.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Bowser's battle in Chapter 8.
  • Hooktail/Gloomtail/Bonetail's boss music also qualifies.
    • 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.
• 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.
    • Becomes Fridge Horror when you discover canonically, Vivian is really a MAN in the Japanese version of the game
  • For a character that only plays a major role for a short time, Jolene is pretty popular with the fans.
  • Rawk Hawk.
  • 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!"
  • 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?
  • 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."
• Narm: The scene where everyone cheers you on in the fight with the Shadow Queen is frequently considered to be this.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.