Fridge / Paper Mario: The Origami King

Be warned. As a Fridge Page, all spoilers will be unmarked

Fridge Brilliance

• Mario is confronted with Scissors, a Man of Kryptonite with a one hit kill attack. Scissors is also an arrogant overconfident fighter and decides to give an advantage to Mario, but then they discover that Mario is way stronger than they thought. Scissors decides to use their one hit kill attack, but Mario just jumps over it. The question then is, why Mario didn't do that before? Because, he's the one giving advantage to everyone else! (And that's why he doesn't win any more levels)
  • Building on this, why is Scissors so full of himself? Because he is a Man of Kryptonite. If you were a living pair of scissors in a world of paper, you could kill anything easily and remake the world as you wish. Same goes for the other members of the Legion of Stationary, albeit to a lesser extent.
• In the shift to highlighting the "paper" aesthetic in the series, it's been demonstrated that (matted) paper is equivalent to a regular body, whereas cardboard is used to indicate something incredibly durable or powerful — usually the landscape, an obstacle, or a Final Boss's One-Winged Angel mode. Fittingly, Paper Mario's iconic mallet is now permanently portrayed as a three-dimensional cardboard construct.
• Olivia's wish to remove all of Olly's origami creations, including herself, seems a bit odd. Why didn't she word it so that she lived? Because in the end, she only wanted Olly to come to his senses and be the loving brother and king she once knew him as. Since Olly sacrificed himself so she could make that wish in order to redeem himself, she probably crossed the Despair Event Horizon and decided to be with her brother till the end.
• Olly remarks he made Olivia too perfect, too pure… (she comes to love life so much she willingly sacrifices her own to restore the destruction caused by Olly's rampage…) Olly's motivation is due to him believing his creator gave him a flawed existence using scribbled on paper to fold him; he wanted his sister not to suffer such imperfections.
• Olly logically was the one to bring the Legion of Stationary to life… so of course they're narcissistic and abusive to the Toads, much like him; after Olivia rejected his mission, he wasn't about to repeat that mistake.
• The Trial of Wisdom involves a series of true-or-false questions that test your intelligence and memory, but those don't actually have much to do with wisdom. However, the test can become nigh-impossible at times unless you pay to lower the difficulty, which makes the test notably much easier. The real test is whether or not you have the wisdom to ask for help when you need it. It's the same for the Trial of Courage, where you have to be brave enough to ask for help in the first place.
• When Bombette and Bobbery blow up, they come back real quick as if nothing happened, whereas Bobby dies for good when he detonates. For the former two, they only blow up around enemies or structurally unsound objects, and thus don't need as much powder to make the little booms required to take them down. Many of Bowser's minions were captured by the Folded, but the Bob-ombs chose death over dishonor when the Paper Macho Gooper Blooper showed up, meaning Olly needed something a Bob-omb couldn't casually blow up and expect an encore over. Bobby knew this and used all his powder for the most potent blast possible, and it was too much for his shell to handle.
  • Additionally, unlike Bombette and Bobbery, Bobby was mass-produced like enemy Bob-Ombs, :who don't come back after blowing up.
  • This could also be why Bob-Ombs don't make any appearances as folded enemies at all — only appearing with Bobby, a couple of Bob-Ombs when boarding Bowser's airship, and some Paper Macho Bob-Ombs that only appear near the end and nowhere else.
• Though it's easy to see why King Olly would keep Stapler close at hand, it shows how desperate Olly's situation really is when he brings it out. Its defeat would mean the loss of all of his Folded Soldiers, meaning this was Olly's very last resort short of a direct fight with Mario.
• In the final phase of Olly's battle, his rage manifests as a toxic cloud that acts as a time limit for the fight. When he's finally defeated by Olivia's Hammer, he falls into the poison; he's literally drowning in his own anger.
• At the beginning of the game when you inspect the remains of Peach's Castle, you see Luigi's kart… but overturned, so you don't see the Castle Key wedged inside the tailpipe.
• Olly and Olivia both act rather childish for such important characters, as Olivia is playful and unaware of how the world works while Olly had a disproportionate meltdown to being scribbled on without bothering to read what was written on him. Given that both of them were created quite recently, it's quite plausible that both of them have the mentality of children or young teens at most.
• While it's still part of the "New" Paper Mario games and their design philosophy, there is one thing it has in common with the classic games: How battles are presented. 64 had a storybook/popup book aesthetic, Super had a circus, and Thousand Year Door had live theater, Origami King… still goes with live theater. But while Thousand Year Door went with a stage, Origami King goes with park theater, as shown by the bleachers with Toads.
• Mario has a character arc as a Parental Substitute. Since Olivia is a little girl, literally born yesterday and was rejected by her original family, Mario basically becomes her surrogate parent and goes for almost all the steps. He supports her in her quest, helps her grieve, cheers for her from the sidelines in her concert and the player has the option to dote on her or teach her responsibility in some points of the game. By the end, Mario lets her go because she decided to make that wish and, if you remember how he reacted when he realized Bobby was going to detonate himself, it says a lot how much their relationship changed during their time together in the game.
• Why is Hole Punch a Disco Dan? Because they're based off of an outdated model of hole punch!
  • On another note, Hole Punch could be considered a roundabout form of a vampire in the Paper Mario universe. Think about it - they punch out the sun, forcing the desert into eternal night; create zombie-like Toads by stealing their faces; their love of disco is a Stealth Pun on how disco is considered a dead genre; and more obviously, they basically steal Mario's health by punching holes in him, like how a vampire steals their victim's blood by biting and sucking it out of them.
    • Another Stealth Pun: They use the stolen faces of the Toads as projectiles. They're literal headshots.
• It's rather fitting that the Shoe Goomba only appears in one area, since the Goomba's Shoe only appeared in one level in Super Mario Bros. 3.
• Each of the members of the Legion of Stationery save for Stapler along with King Olly likely represent a different form of art:
  • Jean-Pierre Colored Pencils the XIIth represents the art of drawing (he's a Mad Artist who uses his colored pencils as missiles).
  • Rubber Band represents the art of theater (they're a Prima Donna Director that holds a crowd of Toads captive in Shogun Studios to see his play).
  • Hole Puncher represents the art of dance (he's a Disco Dan who punched out the sun and the faces of forty Toads to have an eternal dance party).
  • Tape represents the art of crime (he's a Super Mob Boss that stuck up several Toads onto the Sea Tower).
  • Scissors represents the art of fencing/swordplay (he's an Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy knight whose individual scissor blades are treated like two swords, and considers his fight with Mario to be a duel).
  • King Olly himself represents the art of origami, seeing how he's made of it and part of his modus operandi is to turn the world into origami.
• From a comment on the final boss theme on YouTube: The game didn't do a great job at explaining Olly's motives, and made it seem childish for comedic effect. But in a way, it makes sense. In real life, the equivalent would be a parent tattooing their infant. He believed that the Origami Craftsman branded him with something shameful, so it makes sense that he would feel violated. He believed his creator and by extension the Toads to be negligent and careless. His point of view was more so: why should such an uncaring race be entrusted to create things and shape the world as they please? Which is why he acts so superior; because he believes it should be him instead of them.
  • Another commenter points out that according to spiritual origami rules, those who scribble on origami are to be frowned on, which explains why Olly is so upset about being scribbled on in the first place. Another thing that sullies the spiritual purity of origami is using tools such as scissors and staplers (which is why the Folded Soldiers are what they are; Olly used the stapler on them). This also explains why Olivia was the only pure origami — she was folded up with no scribbles or tools at all. Furthermore, Olivia's refusal to use tools when folding Bowser allowed him to remain himself instead of going Brainwashed and Crazy. In short, the reason why Olly almost caused a genocide is because of a spiritual rule that the craftsman forgot or didn't know about.
• There's something interesting about the order that the Legion of Stationery are fought. The odd-numbered Legion of Stationery members are Colored Pencils, Hole Punch and Scissors, while the even-numbered Legion of Stationery members are Rubber Band, Tape and Stapler. The odd-numbered members are based off supplies that are capable of tearing through paper (colored pencils can be sharp enough to tear through paper, hole punchers punch holes onto paper and scissors cut through paper), while the even-numbered members are capable of holding stuff together (a rubber band can be used to hold certain objects together, tape can be used to stick things together and a stapler is capable of binding things like paper). When you encounter them, they even use these things in action.
  • The Overlook Tower elevator is blasted by the Colored Pencils, the Hole Punch punches holes off from the Sun and several Toads heads, and Scissors cuts through most of the Koopa Troop.
  • Rubber Band holds all of the Toads in their seats, Tape sticks a bunch of Toads at the Sea Tower, and Stapler is responsible for creating the Origami Soldiers by "binding" them together.
• The Handaconda fight involves a Rock–Paper–Scissors fight. One way of defeating it is using the 1000-fold arms attack, in which Mario curls his hands into fists and hammers the Handaconda. Mario beats it because he uses his fists, which are rock solid, to beat the paper origami monster. Rock still beats paper.
• The first three Vellumental battles are green, blue and red. The earth vellumental (green one) is built up as this impossible to beat god, and the path to reach is has a lot of fire and spikes, meaning Mario would have to be courageous to find and fight it. The Water Vellumental's (blue one) shrine has sliding puzzles to open up the path to it, and the boss gimmick is that it summons water spouts that wash away tiles in their path, meaning that you would need to be smart to win. The Fire Vellumental's (red one) cave has lots of fire, with each room involving fire into it's puzzles, then the rings will be covered in fiery feathers, meaning Mario would either have to be very strong to survive, or be both courageous and wise to avoid getting hit.
• Snifits live in the desert because the first game they appeared in, Doki Doki Panic, had an "Arabian Nights" Days theme.

Fridge Horror

• Imagine how traumatizing the Paper Mistake Buzzy Beetle, with pieces of Mario enemies cut out and stuck haphazardly on it, would be in any medium but paper.
  • Just the amount of Body Horror this game gets away with in general just because the characters are made out of paper is staggering. As a comment on the final boss theme on YouTube puts it: Hole Punch rips off faces. Scissors is a serial killer that makes collages out of his victims. The thousand fold finishers for the Legion of Stationary are brutal. Olly literally kills his own soldiers when you enter the origami castle. Peach's body is used as some kind of sick decoration.
    • Let us repeat that last point: Olly killed Princess Peach. And he gloated about it to Mario and Bowser's faces. It didn't stick, but still, holy shit! If Olly didn't cross the Moral Event Horizon by trapping Olivia under a boulder, by indirectly killing Bobby by forcing him to commit a Heroic Sacrifice to remove said boulder, or by plotting to exterminate Toad-kind, he almost certainly crossed it here.^note We say "almost" because Olly comes back from the edge when he realizes what the scribble that infuriated him actually says, driving him to his Redemption Equals Death moment mentioned above… which still ends up killing Olivia when she wishes to undo all of what Olly has done. We honestly can't blame Mario for going so far as to outright kill Olly at this point. Come to think of it, one has to wonder why Bowser didn't threaten or attempt to burn Olly to ash just for killing Peach^note who, we should remind you, he was once married to — and quite happily from his perspective, never mind his attempt at genocide on the Toads.
• Kamek explains that shortly after the Shy Guy rescued Bowser, Mario, and Olivia at the beginning (which led to Mario and Olivia getting knocked off), the castle was overtaken and a lot of them were either captured (with Bowser being placed on a clothespin again), escaped, or were forced into servitude at Shangri-Spa (for the castle wrecking the place by accident). Imagine if Mario and Olivia hadn't fallen — they would've been faring a lot worse.
• We see Bobby's ghost after his Heroic Sacrifice by self-detonation to save Olivia. This raises a worrying question given things we learn later such as how mass-produced Bob-ombs are short-lived and hope to do something meaningful with their lives and explosions… so how many others like them are there? Are there entire legions of Mook ghosts this time around, and we just don't see them because we don't expect to?
• A lot of Mario species that were once seen in paper forms in past games only appear as origami enemies in this game, such as Boomerang Bros, Snow Spikes, and Piranha Plants. It's probably because Olly already got his hands on most of them by the time you see any. In fact, most of Bowser's paper minions are found in shockingly short order in Shangri-Spa and Bowser's Castle.
• It seems like in this game, turning into confetti is the equivalent of getting your body shredded into pieces. Enemies that you defeat turn into confetti when you defeat them, which effectively means all of the folded soldiers that you defeat in battle are Killed Off for Real. Even if defeating Stapler and undoing Olly's work changes everyone back to normal by unfolding them, all of the enemies that you've stomped have no such hope. They're dead, not even having a chance to die as themselves.
  • Not to mention that as one YouTuber describes, throughout the game you're essentially tossing around people's skin.

Fridge Logic

• If they were willing to take the time to go all the way out to the Princess Peach in order to get Bobby's fuse, couldn't they have just gotten a bulldozer or something instead?
  • Where the heck would Mario and Bobby find a bulldozer? Besides, Bobby himself decided that finding his lost fuse was the best decision.
• While the game tries to posit that Olly is being too hard on the Toads even before his full plan is revealed, it falters a bit due to some Toads, to put it simply, not being held to the same standards Olly is, making it seem as though the game’s narrative is bending backwards for the Toads and inadvertently proving part of Olly’s grudge, though not justifying his end goal.
  • The most ‪‬egregious one is the Toad who owns the Foodeatery in Whispering Woods. He is the one responsible for having the local area deforested and converting the sentient trees into different shapes like logs and a cabin, the same way Olly converts the captured Mushroom Kingdom citizens into the Folded and other shapes. This is never brought up by anyone including Olly, and the player is never given the chance to enlighten this Toad on the full scale of his deeds in any way.
  • The Shangri-Spa Toads get off way too easy for their own misdeeds. While Bowser’s Castle does fall in Shangri-Spa, that was actually caused by Olly’s forces, but only Bowser’s minions are punished, with the Folded just lounging around and weirdly not trying to capture the Shangri-Spa Toads. The lead Toad alone tacks on fees to Kamek just to be a jerk, while the rest supervise. However, the minions never really fight back in a meaningful way despite usually being invasive in most appearances (including the Paper Mario game before this), they never retaliate- not even a walk-by punch or mean comment when Kamek summons them- and it’s never explained how the Shangri-Spa Toads were enforcing the minions’ unwilling servitude (which is what Olly is also doing via the folding process) in the first place. In addition, despite how protective Bowser usually is of his forces, he never brings up any possible payback on these specific Toads either (making his total defense of the Toads before fighting King Olly even more out of character for him), and it’s Bowser’s own minions who fix his castle in the credits, rather than the minions turning the tables on the Shangri-Spa Toads. The worst the Shangri-Spa Toads suffer is watching Bowser and his minions bathe in one of the springs, which isn’t really all that bad for them. Their poor treatment of the minions is Played for Laughs mostly.
  • Though it is important to note that most Toads are innocent and some are even the victims of the establishment, the Toad who runs the shop mentioned to be working 18-hour days to support himself and several of the employee Toads in Shogun Studios working in poor conditions with No OSHA Compliance.