Trivia / Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story

• Acclaimed Flop: While the original 2009 release was last reported to sell 4.5 million units and took its place as the most successful Mario role-playing game, the remake landed on the complete opposite side, selling barely over 20,000 copies in its debut month, despite generally pulling in the same 8's, 9's, B's and A's on reviews as the original game. It's generally believed to be the result of being released near the end of the Nintendo 3DS's lifespan on top of the fact that one could already play the original game on the 3DS for a much cheaper price.
• Creator Killer: Bowser Jr.'s Journey ended up being one of the worst-selling Mario games ever (For context, in Japan it sold 340,000~ copies over its entire lifetime, on par with Virtual Boy games and download cards for digital-exclusive games), accelerating AlphaDream's demise, as the company had already been struggling with declining sales, increasing costs and a failure to transition to "HD" development platforms. The company would file for bankruptcy in October 2019, 9 months after the release of the game.
• Dummied Out:
  • There was a Mushroom item that allowed the Bros. to heal Bowser during a battle inside him (for the Sea Pipe Statue, which could damage Bowser from the inside). It was taken out, presumably because only that one boss had that sort of attack.
  • The Underground Tunnel was originally planned to be explored by Mario and Luigi too, but was taken out.
  • The Choomba enemy has sprites and attacks that it would use if it faced off against the Bros. instead of Bowser, along with the Naplock and Dark Mechawful enemies. The Dark Mechawful's attack was unfinished, however.
  • Presumably this is the case for the Nuclear Drumsticks that can be found in an item roulette within Peach's Castle. Despite having a different name, they act exactly like the TNT Drumsticks. It's possible it was originally meant to heal even more HP.
  • Hidden among the overworld sprites for the Bros. is a bizarre set of sprites depicting Mario in the shape of a key, being carried by Luigi.
• Franchise Killer: The failure of the remake, Bowser Jr's Journey, not only led to AlphaDream going out of business, but also pretty much destroyed any chance of a new Mario & Luigi game as no new game seems to be coming anytime soon.
• Orphaned Reference: The ending credits theme features a medley of various tracks from the game, ending with a triumphant reprise of the title screen music. The 3DS remake replaces the title theme with a completely different track, but the remastered credits music retains the original title theme.
• Screwed by the Network: The remake had a lot of misfortune coming for it. First of all, it was released on the tail end of the Nintendo 3DS where the Nintendo Switch was starting to build a solid library for itself and many people were starting to move on. For that reason, it also had little to no marketing for people who don't keep up with Directs, with only a few small ads in Japan. Secondly, it was released in January, considerably one of the worst times to release a title, as Christmas had passed. Then if things couldn't get any worse, the North American version literally had the same release date as the worldwide release of New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe, which sold more units overall.

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