Pre-Release
There will be a Greater-Scope Villain who caused the worlds to merge.
Even though it's unlikely now.- Somewhat confirmed — it's a Scaredy Rat, though it probably won't be playing a role in the game at all. And probably got stomped on off-screen, or something.
The Underwhere will be involved in the main story in some way.
Allowing not just past vanquished Paper Mario villains to return, but also Mario & Luigi villains.- Oh God, it's a Fawful and Dimentio team up.
- If that's the case, he will definitely have chortles!
- And for Fawful and Dimentio to team up, that will truly be a match made in the Underwhere!
- Or Antasma and the Shadow Queen.
- Or even worse...ALL FOUR OF THEM!!
- Or maybe... just maybe, it's an RPG villain that preceded all of them. Smithy's Gang. Although this is probably unlikely.
- Especially unlikely since Square Enix owns those characters. But hey, maybe they could be a bonus boss.
- Petey Piranha is back after having been defeated in Paper Mario: Sticker Star, so it's possible.
- But that was Paper Petey Piranha who Mario fought in Sticker Star.
- Don't forget, Petey also appeared in Partners in Time, as well!
- But that was Paper Petey Piranha who Mario fought in Sticker Star.
- Unfortunately Jossed. The game doesn't have any new characters, nor do any previous RPG-exclusive characters return, with the exception of Starlow.
There will be a Papercraft battle where Papercraft Mario has to fight Giant Bowser.
Granted, considering Bowser can breathe fire..- Confirmed, but it's not just that—it's Papercraft Fire Mario versus Papercraft Bowser, which serves as this game's Giant Bowser stand-in.
Alternatively, there will be a Papercraft battle with...
Papercraft Bowser from Sticker Star. This one seems more likely, since Paper Bowser likely can't burn paper or cardboard with his flames.- Or give Paper Bowser a Papercraft form similar to Paper Mario, with regular Bowser on the sidelines like the M&L bros are.
- Or use Bowser? from Paper Mario 64.
- Not quite, although the final boss DOES have a similar form which Paper Bowser uses... Which Bowser is inside of!
- Or use Bowser? from Paper Mario 64.
Elements and characters from other Mario games will be included.
Maybe characters from the platformers like Nabbit and Rosalina? Or even spin-off titles like the sports games? Donkey Kong and Wario? Princess Daisy? Even Waluigi?- Maybe Bowser Jr. will return as an Ascended Extra.
- Seeing how he was prevalent in Sticker Star, that could be a possibility.
- Confirmed, Bowser Jr's a primary antagonist — both of him.
Bowser will betray Paper Bowser, like he did with Antasma.
Or vice versa.- Subverted. Oh, he tried. He tried his darndest, but he never got the chance to do it.
Paper Luigi will be playable sometime later in the story.
With the great potential of the two Mario pairs and Luigi teaming up against evil, why waste the opportunity?- Sadly Jossed. Paper Luigi only gets a cameo.
Paper Jam will begin with a Storybook Opening, a la the regular Paper Mario games.
The book will open, and the narration will begin with the typical "Today, I'm going to tell you..." intro. Then once the premise of the story has been established, the narrator will be revealed to be M&L Peach, or at least someone within that world. Deciding to set the book aside to continue reading it later, they'll set it down on the location from which Luigi will eventually knock it down and kickstart the main plot of the game.- Jossed.
The Plot Coupons will be a magical item from the Paper World.
- Alternativly, it'll be literal jars of "Paper Jam" that can send anything paper it touches back into the book or freezes them in time.
- Jossed.
The game's final dungeon will be within the book.
Considering the whole game seems to be taking place within the M&L world, making the Paper characters the odd ones out. It would be a missed opportunity to not have at least one level where it's reversed, and M&L Mario and Luigi are the odd ones out in a paper world. What better time to do that than the final dungeon.- Jossed. It's Neo Bowser Castle again.
Paper Luigi will show up and have a speaking role.
And when he does speak, M&L Luigi will freak out.- Um, why? Both series make it clear that Mario and Luigi can talk, it's just we can't hear them.
- (OP here) Because characters in Mario RPGs tend to display varying levels of Medium Awareness, so M&L Luigi would be shocked by Paper Luigi speaking in a way the players can understand.
- By that token, Luigi would literally be startled by the dialogue balloon coming out of Paper Luigi's mouth!
- Jossed. Although if there ever is a sequel, this would be interesting to see.
- (OP here) Because characters in Mario RPGs tend to display varying levels of Medium Awareness, so M&L Luigi would be shocked by Paper Luigi speaking in a way the players can understand.
This game will explain EVERYTHING about Paper Mario
The plot as we know it so far has Paper Mario be a book in M&L. And going by this, this can make a LOT of things about the Paper Mario series make sense! Let me give examples:- One of the primary things about the battles in Paper Mario TTYD was the audience. In fact, it was SO prevalent that Hooktail, Cortez, Magnus von Grapple 2.0 and the Shadow Queen could use them as weapons or to heal themselves. Maybe this audience are the actual book readers!
- The paper themes in the PM series can be EASILY explained with "it's all in a book", because books are usually made of paper and/or leather!
- And most of all, this game could very well explain the Narrator! In the first three games, there has been an unseen narrator that explains the backstory in each game and each interlude/end of chapter. He could very well be an ACTUAL narrator telling us the story as if it's a book, which it IS!
- And since there are "chapters" in each game that ends usually when you get the Plot Coupon, this can ALSO be explained by "it's all in a book".
- So apparently, EVERY game that uses the term "chapters" is set in a book. Good to know.
- I'm not trying to imply that ALL games that have "chapters" are set in a book. I'm just saying that the Paper Mario games might. And keep in mind that this is ONLY a theory.
- So apparently, EVERY game that uses the term "chapters" is set in a book. Good to know.
This game will have a twist ending...
In which it turns out the entire game was actually a story... being told by Paper Peach to Paper Toads, whom will then complain to Peach about how they felt insulted that the "side closer to real life" was from a book, say the paper idea made no sense and say they want "the door book" again. And then everyone stares at the camera- Jossed.
Paper Luigi will save the day
Throughout the entire game, it'll be made clear that nobody has seen him in a while. And then, right before the final world, Mario, Luigi and Paper Mario get captured by either the Bowsers or some kind of threat. All hope seems lost... until Paper Luigi (possibly dressed as Mr. L) shows up out of nowhere lightning fast. And then you'll be able to play as him for the remainder of the game.- Jossed.
The final boss will be Bowser and Paper Bowser fused together.
Confirmed. This game will completely ignore ''Sticker Star''
- As much as I hope that's true, something's telling me they won't be that merciful. What I've seen tells me that there will be at least one Sticker Star element...
- Or, alternatively, the writers may nod towards Sticker Star, but in a Take That! form. For example, Paper Bowser may recall his past actions in his own series but find he had trouble recalling the events of when he touched the Sticker Comet (obviously due to the Royal Sticker's influence), only to conclude it probably wasn't worth remembering anyway.
- (In response to directly above) That's exactly pretty funny to think about; how Bowser is just like that, always forgetful, and often speaking in such a way that kind of pokes fun of himself.
- Almost impossible. It's still part of the Paper Mario series and was on the same console as the previous Mario & Luigi. You can't just expect Nintendo to suddenly write it off as if it never happened. It's going to be referenced just like the other previous games.
- Whatever people's feelings on Sticker Star (and regardless of the fact that some creators actually have backpedaled shortly after releasing a bad story)...jossed. Shiny enemies
and Sticker Star imagery abound!
Both Princess Peaches will be kidnapped, likely at the same time.
Naturally, in grand Mario tradition, this will get a heavy dose of Lampshade Hanging.- Confirmed, though they actually manage to rescue themselves.
At some point, Mario and Luigi and Paper Mario will have to fight each other or vice versa.
Possibly because of mine control.- Or Paper Mario could be the tutorial battle, before the whole 'Paper folk are friendly' part of the story is established. Could also explain why Bowser and Paper Bowser don't see eye to eye.
- Jossed. Not only does Paper Mario not fight them, he saves them when he makes his big debut! Bowser's just an egomaniac who can't stand having an equal around, in both cases.
The Bowsers undoing will be trying to play Xanatos Speed Chess with each other so they can backstab one another and have the glory all to themselves.
Considering Bowser betrayed the last M&L villain and hijacked the plot, Paper Bowser will likely see this coming and try to do the same before he can. This will result in them spending most of the game fighting each other instead of focusing on the Mario bros., which will be their undoing in the end.- Confirmed. No sooner than they get their final fortress do they begin conspiring with their Kameks to backstab their counterpart.
The game is meant to be a Milestone Celebration.
Notice that it's coming out in 2016, which just so happens to be the 15th anniversary of the Paper Mario series. The game will have a sister game for Wii U.
Notice how the game seems to lean more towards the Mario & Luigi side of things, with the Paper Characters in the Mario & Luigi world. The sister game will lean more towards the Paper Mario series, with Mario & Luigi in Paper Mario's world. Mario & Luigi will act like partners to Mario, both counting as one partners with mechanics based on their series. Storywise, it takes place immediately after the events of Paper Jam, with Paper Mario returning to his own world, but inadvertently sucking the characters from the "real" world in with him. The story will be based around them trying to find a way out. The game will feature a cameo from a Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars character.
Probably won't happen due to the legal spaghetti between Nintendo and Square Enix that forced Paper Mario to be called, well... But as long as we're throwing all of the Mario RPG characters together into one universe. It helps that we previously got an appearance from Geno in the first Mario & Luigi.- Jossed. No RPG characters.
The Paper World is not actually part of the book
Rather, the book that Luigi knocks over is a spell book, and he either accidentally caused a spell to activate or messed one up. There will be no RPG antagonists.
It's literally just Bowser and Paper Bowser. Nobody else. Not even the Elite Trio, or Bowser Jr., besides maybe a new character as the Greater-Scope Villain.- Nah, Bowser Jr, Paper Bowser Jr, the Kameks and the Koopalings are known to be in on this, too.
Wiggler will be a boss
Wiggler has been a boss in every single game so far, with the second game having a Shroobified version and a third game also having a "worm" version.- Confirmed; takes inspiration from the Sticker Star version, too! Cute lil' fella.
The game will have segments set in the 3D "real" world and the literally 2D "paper" world.
Both of the last two games featured action split up between a top-down overworld and a 2D alternate world (inside Bowser for Bowser's Inside Story, the dream world for Dream Team), so this would be keeping with the theme.- Jossed. It's all overworld.
The ending theme from Superstar Saga will appear a second time.
Presumably the ending would involve the Paper characters returning to the book. Both times the song has been used before, it was in an ending scene that involved one group of characters seeing another group off back to their homeland/original time.- It doesn't. So, jossed.
The Bowsers will be the main villains of the game, but not the only ones.
Other villains like Grodus, the Shadow Sirens (minus Vivian, but with Doopliss), Bleck and Dimentio could appear as well. They'd either work for the Bowsers or go about their own thing. And to further bring nostalgia back, the paper bosses could have their own Fight Wooshes, with the standard one being replaced by the Paper Mario games' classic curtain woosh.- Jossed. no original characters.
Mario's partners in the previous Paper Mario games will make appearances
Either as cameos, more special attacks for Paper Mario to use, side-quest givers, or friendly Optional Bosses.- Jossed.
Stickers will play a minor role.
This game follows the standard Mario & Luigi leveling-up formula, but stickers could play a minor gameplay role nonetheless, as equippable gear for Paper Mario, cameos in some of his attacks, or his equivalent of beans.- Jossed. Thank Christ. We have cards for battle effects, though; acting in place of badges.
Popple and Jr. Troopa will team up
- Popple may even steal Paper Mario. Before spouting a one-liner, of course. "I'll be taking this paper-y palooka, see?"
- Alternatively perhaps he could appear with another masked amnesiac, this time dressed in green.
- Jossed. Neither one of them appear in the game.
The Paper characters see the Real World characters directly as themselves
Judging from what appears to be Paper Bowser calling Real World Bowser a knockoff, and Paper Mario seeming to mistake Luigi as his Paper counterpart, there may be some case of Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder.- Basically confirmed. They see the 3D, but otherwise perceive all counterparts as identical, and it's the same for the real world cast.
Alternatively to Sticker Star being outright erased, Paper Jam will imply a more detailed account of the former game happened.
For example, a new paper character not actually in Sticker Star shows up and reminisces with Mario about their adventure in the Yoshi Sphinx. While everyone's confused with this claim at first, Starlow quickly remembers "the public copy" of "that sticker story" left out a lot of details compared to "the book in the castle".- Jossed. Also, the real-worlders apparently never read any of the Paper Mario books.
In the event Square Enix isn't involved, yet AlphaDream still wants to reference SMRPG, they'll get around the lack of characters from that game by having those from the platformers and other RPGs double as stand-ins.
For sake of example, Twink or a certain Mr. Blizzard could stand in for Geno ("a being who left for the stars, and returns to said stars after their task is complete").- Jossed. Only main series characters.
We'll actually get to hear all of a story from the Merlon family.
Because only Paper Mario will fall asleep.- Jossed. Merlon isn't here.
Bonechill will be a Papercraft Boss.
He's more or less as big as Papercraft Mario, he travels around via cannon tank, and he has at least two ways to attack from his source game. Most important, his very design follows similar ideology to the other Papercraft characters revealed so far.- Jossed. Bonechill isn't here. The Superboss is, however, rather skeletal in nature.
The Bowsers will not be the main antagonists.
Since Bowser can be used as a support card via amiibo, they could actually side with the Bros. and Paper Mario...wittingly.- Jossed. They still are.
The Final Boss will be very unexpected.
Whether it be a returning RPG character, or an established character pulling a plot twist.- Kinda confirmed. Who expected Paper Bowser to pull that off?
There are multiple storybooks holding different versions of the Paper Mario universe.
Yup, and each book details the events of each game in the series. That sticker story was written by a different guy than the first three.In fact, there are probably more of these "books" out there, based on Mario's real adventures- new and old- all authored by a variety of people. The book that Luigi knocked over just happened to be an in-universe storybook retelling of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which explains why we've only seen paper versions of non-RPG characters so far.
- Weren't there Biddybuds in a video? Maybe Luigi knocked over the Super Mario 3D Land or Super Mario 3D World books?
- In an additional guess, the storybook that holds Super Paper Mario is a pop-up book, and the "flipping into 3D" is where the popping up occurs.
There will be Paper versions of the Koopalings
The Koopalings were recently confirmed to appear in the game and they appear in their "Mario and Luigi" forms. However, as everyone else seems to have counterparts (Bowser Jr, Peach, Bowser, and such in particular), it wouldn't be too surprising if the Paper counterparts of the Koopalings appeared as well.- Nope, le jossed, since they never were in the Paper series. Roy and Wendy actually lampshade this, humorously enough.
A character will die.
And they won't just die — both versions will be killed. Paper Luigi will turn out to be the villain.
He deliberately brought Paper Mario into the M&L dimension so that he could rewrite the book to chronicle his legendary adventures in the Waffle Kingdom. And he also wants to destroy the M&L dimension in order to take revenge on Nintendo for the abysmal failure of The Year of Luigi.- Jossed.
Bowser Jr. will be the final boss.
Considering how attached he is to his paper counterpart, he'll grow to be desperate to keep Paper Jr. with him, to the point of initiating one final battle with the trio.- Jossed — The Bowser Jr.s are defeated before the finale.
Post-Release
By the time the next M&L or PM game comes out...
...Both Bowser Jr.s will not have recovered by that point, going through their Despair Event Horizon. Through their DEH, this could make them a much more dangerous threat, or e̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ a weaker threat.- This may be why Paper Bowser Jr. doesn't show up in Paper Mario: Color Splash despite the premise being something he loves to do — painting. He's too down about losing his friendship with his counterpart to take part in Black Bowser's schemes.
The events in both worlds normally line up.
But we only see one version of each adventure. They end up as Broad Strokes versions of each other, due to the differing physics of the worlds, but the end result is mostly the same. This is supported by the Star Spirits and Goomba King from Paper Mario 64 reappearing in 3D games — the latter in a main series game, even. The Paper Toads built the Trio Attack hammer from the same technology as the Sling-a-Thing booth.
For one thing, the game is shown to borrow mainly from the Paper Mario: Sticker Star portion of the guest series. Second, the hammer turns enemies to paper in a very similar fashion to how Sling-a-Thing turns Things into stickers. While the former has the device hitting the target and the latter has the target hitting the device, it's more or less the same kind of force.Because dang it if I'm going to let the real Paper Mario games be non-canon! You may be asking what kind of book? A combination sticker/coloring book, of course!- They never said the events of the Paper Mario games were non-canon, just like they never said the events of Super Mario 3 were non-canon. There was probably a "Not-Paper" version of the story, just like the GBA version of SMB3 wasn't a stage play.
The Paper Goomba of great importance is the one from the Luigi intermission of Super Paper Mario.
He still allies with the bros for his own reasons. He greatly values the stronger player (Bleck in SPM, his allies in Paper Jam). He betrays them when the chance arises. In fact, it's possible Paper Luigi never told his brother about that incident, due to what the betrayal lead to. Paper Mario isn't a story in the M&L universe.
It's an entirely different universe that is accessed by a book, normal stories don't have characters coming into reality after a book is knocked over, this also makes Super Paper Mario not irrelevant since Dimentio's plan WAS a danger to the multiverse instead of just something from a story The book is not the Paper World, it's simply the gateway to it.
So if something happened to the book, the worst that would happen is the Paper Characters would lose access to the their home. Which is still a major Tear Jerker, but not Nightmare Fuel that the book being the world as well would imply genocide if destroyed. The events of the first three Paper Mario games actually happened in the M&L universe.
If you talk to the Toad writer in west-side Rogueport in The Thousand Year Door after beating the game, he talks about how he adapted Mario's adventures into a book called Paper Mario and how popular it became. The theory is that he went on to write about the events of Super Paper Mario due to how popular the first book was and then began writing original stories about Paper Mario (hence the more "paper-y" asthetic of the last two games), one of which ended up in Peach's library. The book is an enchanted copy of Herringway's original novel that took on a life of its own.
A variant of the above theories of the first few games still being canon within the Mario & Luigi titles. Herringway's accounts of the events of the first Paper Mario took liberties here and there but were, by and large, faithful to the events that really happened. This particular copy of the book was enchanted to continue recording similar adventures Mario partakes in, and recorded the events of The Thousand-Year Door next, taking further creative liberties by simplifying the nature of the Black Chests' "curses" into a paper origami nature. By the time the book got to recording the events of Super Paper Mario, the enchantment on the book was starting to become more overt with its creative liberties, as the complex multidimensional "Flip" ability seen throughout was expressed in-story as a two-dimensional being or object flipping into a three-dimensional environment. By that point, the "universe" within the book had gotten so complex that it had taken on a life of its own, and the adventures expressed from then on were purely them rather than a reflection of the "real world". This is why Sticker Star and onward began a greater emphasis on the world and its inhabitants being literally papercraft creations in-universe.