Video Game / Luigi's Mansion 3

Come and stay at the Last Resort. You may never lea- er, want to leave.

Luigi's Mansion 3 is a third-person adventure game developed by Next Level Games for Nintendo Switch. The third entry in the Luigi's Mansion series, the game released on October 31, 2019, on Halloween.

Luigi has received an invitation to go on vacation in the Last Resort, a luxurious hotel. Naturally, he jumps at the opportunity and brings along his brother Mario, Princess Peach, and 3 Toads, with the Polterpup from the previous game tagging along as well. Unsurprisingly, it turns out to be a haunted hotel and a trap set by King Boo and the owner of the hotel, Hellen Gravely, to capture Mario and company. With the help of E. Gadd, the new Poltergust G-00, and even a slimy clone of him known as Gooigi, Luigi must once again conquer his fears and rescue everyone. But it won't be easy...

After the mission-based structure of Dark Moon, this game returns to the more open-ended style of the GameCube original. Luigi must explore each themed floor of the hotel while fighting ghosts, solving puzzles, and defeating bosses to obtain elevator buttons that he can use to reach more floors, meeting a strange cast of ghosts along the way. The Poltergust G-00 gives Luigi several more tools to play with, such as Suction Shot plungers, and he can now summon Gooigi to reach new areas and provide extra firepower. The ScareScraper multiplayer mode returns from Dark Moon, now supporting up to eight players at once.

The teaser trailer can be viewed here, and the E3 2019 trailer here. Nintendo Treehouse's gameplay presentation can be watched here.

---

Tropes found in Luigi's Mansion 3 include:

• 1-Up: This game has Gold Bones, carried over from the last game, which you can purchase from E. Gadd's shop for 1000 money each that allow Polterpup to bring you back to life if you have them. Otherwise, you'll just start from your last autosave point.
• Ability Required to Proceed: Most of 12F (The Spectral Catch), including the Captain Fishook battle, is blocked off by a ship bow that's too large to suck up normally. You need to come back later once you've acquired the Super Suction upgrade (which itself requires a second trip to B2), allowing you to destroy the bow and expose the restaurant's entrance. Curiously, this is the only mandatory use of Super Suction in the game, as the other areas where it can be used only help with collecting some gems.
• Accordion to Most Sailors: The Spectral Catch is a pirate-themed floor. Unsurprisingly, its soundtrack prominently features the accordion, as heard in the Elevator Hall, Grotto Lounge, and Ghost Catching themes.
• Achievement System: This game has four different types of achievements: Collection, Hotel, Battle and Scarescraper. The collection achievements relate to collecting all the gems on each floor and the type of money you amass. Hotel achievements are more miscellaneous, involving such things as riding the elevator 50 times, finding and interacting certain objects, etc. Battle achievements involve defeating different types of ghosts while Scarescraper achievements revolve around clearing floors and defeating rare ghosts.
• Action Commands: Something the game doesn't directly state is that when slamming a ghost, if you press the button just as the ghost hits the floor, you'll slam it again faster than you would just by Button Mashing. Mashing usually gets you 4 slams, but good timing will net you 5 (and it's upgraded to a possible 7 after you acquire the Super Suction, another thing the game neglects to mention). This is also important when fighting Boos, as they can be slammed indefinitely until a dropped input, and will cough up gradually bigger amounts of cash for bigger slam chains.
• Alien Kudzu: The Garden Suites has a tree that grew and extended to the point of turning the whole floor into an indoors forest. The overgrow is caused by a ghost, Dr. Potter, never ceasing to feed the tree with water.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The final battle has King Boo pick up and tear open E. Gadd's portable lab to imprison him and the three Toads in a painting.
• Alternate Species Counterpart: Gooigi is a being made of Goo that resembles Luigi.
• Ambiguously Evil: Hellen (and Polterkitty by association) and King Boo are the only clearly evil ghosts in the hotel. While the regular ghosts were under the influence of King Boo's crown and are freed when it is destroyed, the boss ghosts are unaccounted for in the ending and may or may not have been in the same boat. The issue is further muddied by the Retcon of the ghosts always having pupil-less eyes, whereas in Dark Moon this only happened when they were under King Boo's control.
• And I Must Scream:
  • King Boo imprisons not just Mario, but also E. Gadd, Peach and the Toads in portraits.
  • This is also Luigi's fate in the "Good Night!" sequence.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • A lot of fans were divided about Dark Moon's mission-based structure where Luigi always goes back to the lab after finishing one of many missions in that game. This game, however, usually allows you to keep advancing after getting an elevator button, unless something takes it away from you again or Gadd has an upgrade for you. In addition, Luigi can willingly go back to the lab at any time, leaving it up to him for the most part. Even the first Luigi's Mansion had mandatory returns to the lab after defined episodes of the game, but here, there's only a few required returns tied to the plot.
  • The Dark-Light Device no longer has an overheating problem and a meter, allowing Luigi (and Gooigi) to use it for as long as they want without harm. This helps greatly in catching Boos, and makes the possessed enemies much easier to defeat than they likely would have been with the old mechanics, as they require a few seconds of exposure to the Dark-Light once stunned.
  • Gold Bones can now be purchased at any time and last as long Luigi doesn't die. He can also purchase multiple ones if he has the money for them. In Dark Moon, Gold Bones can be found in random objects, one per mission, and only last for that certain mission (meaning a Gold Bone found in Mission 1 can only be used for that mission and nothing later).
  • Items like gems and keys are no longer vacuumable, making it easier to prioritize objects and money around them and preventing Luigi from sucking up a collectible and the objects around it fading during the animation.
  • Luigi and Gooigi can normally only have one plunger fired at a time each, but for objects requiring two, if one of them vacuums the other's plunger, the first character can create a second plunger to streamline things and let the two slam an object without having to make the other character let go and create their own plunger.
  • In Dark Moon golden animals were intended to be burst with the Strobulb and simply vacuuming them rewarded absolutely nothing. Here, doing the latter also gives you the cash bonus.
  • Gem Goobs are hard to catch, sure, moving in the same erratic patterns as Golden Goobs, but unlike the latter, they never actually flee, preventing you from missing out on a gem simply because you weren't fast enough.
  • If you spend too long in a room or boss without solving the puzzle, E. Gadd will call in with a hint.
  • Small creatures such as mice, spiders, and bats will now drop money whether they are flashed by the Strobulb or vacuumed up with the Poltergust, preventing any cases of Damn You, Muscle Memory! from players more familiar with the mechanics of the first or second game respectively.
  • During the battle against Nikki, Lindsey, and Ginny, if you fail to find the last one enough times during the Shell Game, she'll mockingly wave at you while the hats are spinning, giving you another chance to see where she is in case you lost track.
  • If you make it to the top of the Scare Scraper with less than three players, Boolossus will spit out a large blue bomb (or two if there's only one player) in addition to his regular ones. Firing it at him keeps the boos stunned longer, allowing each player to catch more per opening to make up for the missing team mates.
• Art Evolution: Luigi looks way more detailed in the final build than he was in the reveal trailer. The same goes for a lot of the environment. The aesthetic of the ghosts is also much more detailed than Dark Moon, and the bosses are just as, or perhaps even more defined than the Portrait Ghosts from the first game.
• The Artifact: Like previous installments, the game features a gallery in which you can contain and view ghosts you’ve captured, except that it doesn’t determine your rank like in the first game, nor does it give hints on how to capture ghosts like in the second game. You aren’t even required to drop off captured ghosts there in between areas. It’s only there as an option if players want to keep track of their collection, and nothing else.
• Artifact Title: Even more so than the previous game. While Dark Moon still took place in mansions, even if they weren't specifically Luigi's, this game neither takes place in a mansion nor is it Luigi's.
• Artistic License – Physics: During the puzzles requiring weighted objects to be placed on the ground, Luigi with Gooigi in the Poltergust weighs less than Luigi plus Gooigi outside of the Poltergust.
• Ascended Extra: Gooigi first appeared as the 2nd player in co-op mode in the Nintendo 3DS port of the original Luigi's Mansion. Here, he's a core game mechanic, required for many puzzles and boss fights.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Super Suction upgrade to the Poltergust. It allows you to suck anything and everything into your vacuum, even tearing apart the room itself to suck up walls. It also eliminates the need to stun ghosts before sucking them up. However, you need to use a special socket to provide the Poltergust with the power needed to use this function, and you can only use it when you're standing right next to the socket, limiting you to a very small area. Your first opportunity to use it is on 12F, right after you first obtain it. Excited to find another socket and use it again? Possibly use it against a boss? Don't be. There's only two more in the entire game, and you won't even use them unless you're collecting the optional gems.
• Bad with the Bone: Ug's third phase involves him swinging around a T-Rex bone like a club. He also uses it to block Luigi's Strobulb flashes.
• Bag of Spilling: Averted with returning Poltergust mechanics, as Luigi's behavior with features such as the Strobulb and the Dark-Light clearly indicates he remembers them, and the controls are explained to the player with on-screen instructions rather than in-universe by another character. However, this trope is also played straight with the Dark-Light Device itself, which isn't attached on the Poltergust to begin with and must be reclaimed on the second floor.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • When King Boo shows up in the Master Suites after Yellow Toad is rescued, he decides to take one of the two remaining paintings (Mario & Peach) for a scheme of his own. Someone familiar with the series' conventions would expect him to take Mario's painting, but it turns out to be Peach's painting he brings with him, and Hellen is guarding Mario.
  • When Morty suddenly notices Luigi, grabs him and says "YOU! Wait a second! Hold it right there!", one might think that he recognises Luigi from the wanted posters and become the usual hostile kind of ghost despite Luigi getting back his beloved megaphone for him. In reality, Morty declares that Luigi has some nice features and a good build, perfect for starring in his next film!
• Banana Peel: If Luigi steps on a banana, it will cause him to slip and lose 1 health point (Gooigi also slips on them, but he doesn't take damage). Oozers like to make these a hazard.
• Bandit Mook: The Thieving Slinker, a boss variant introduced in Scarescraper's first update. If it grabs a Luigi, it will teleport his Poltergust to a random location in the boss room. While not as much of an inconvenience as the events that scatter the team's vacuums across an entire floor, it can lead to some dangerous situations, especially paired with Lethal ghosts.
• Batman Gambit: King Boo pulls an implied one. The reason he chooses to guard Peach's painting over Mario's was because he expected Hellen to fail and let Mario get freed, since he had lost confidence in her at that point. However, as long as he had Peach, both Mario brothers would come after him anyway (like they always do with Bowser), allowing him to set up another trap at the roof.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: King Boo is the primary threat as normal, but this time he is being aided by the hotel owner, Hellen Gravely.
• Big Boo's Haunt: Like Dark Moon and unlike the first game, 3 plays with it. The game takes place in a haunted hotel which has several themed floors (of which the fifth one, which is actually the first that is playable, showcases the trope in a straight form), once more allowing crossovers into other tropes, even including Gangplank Galleon and Build Like an Egyptian.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Right when King Boo has Luigi and co. finally cornered and ready to turn them into a portrait, Polterpup appears and pushes Luigi out of the way before the frame drops on them.
  • Polterpup also saves Luigi in the Boilerworks from potentially drowning when knocked into the water by Clem. (While Luigi can swim in other games just fine, here the Poltergust G-00 appears to drag him down in this scene.) Polterpup thus essentially acts as a life ring.
  • And in the ending, when the hotel collapses, Polterpup grabs Luigi just before he hits the ground.
• Big Eater: As soon as the group arrive at the hotel, Mario is already eyeing up the buffet and when you enter his room later, there are several empty pizza boxes, implying Mario just had a big ol' feast for himself.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: Across the series, Professor E. Gadd creates a new Nintendo console-based device to contact Luigi. In the first game, it's the Game Boy Horror, and in the sequel, it's the Dual Scream. Those following the pattern would likely be expecting something like a DSI or Nintendo 3DS, or maybe a jump to consoles with a Wii U gamepad. But in the third game, Professor E. Gadd's newest communication device is the "Virtual Boo"! He plans on selling this on the market, predicting that it'll be a huge success. Anyone who knows their Nintendo history will no doubt be in hysterics over this little nod to one of Nintendo's most infamous failures.
• Bizarrchitecture: The hotel's construction is highly eccentric. Alongside more typical amenities such as a shopping center and high-class restaurant are features such as a vertical botanical garden with overgrown hotel suites, a medieval jousting arena, multiple fully-equipped filming stages, a recreation of an Egyptian pyramid, a pirate-themed restaurant with an entire lagoon and pirate ship inside, and a swimming pool several stories above ground level—which is a very unsafe place to put it. Moreover, the entire hotel seems to be Bigger on the Inside since several "floors" are multiple stories in height and their floor plans seem to clash with the hotel's outer facade. Perhaps the most bizzare part, though, is that everyone has to use the elevator to get to every floor past the second—there is no stair access between floors aside from a flight connecting the basement to the lobby.
• Black Comedy: After rescuing E. Gadd, who was sealed in a portrait shortly before the events of the game, E. Gadd tries to suggest to Luigi that they escape the hotel immediately, only for Luigi to point out that the rest of his friends are still trapped inside. He responds with visible annoyance that Luigi wants to stay behind and rescue his friends and treats Luigi's friends' potential fates of being stuck in paintings to be hung on King Boo's wall for the rest of eternity as just another inconvenience blocking their escape.
• Blob Monster: Gooigi (who previously made a retroactive appearance in the 3DS remake of the first game, justified via Time Travel) was created by Professor E. Gadd after an accident involving ectoplasm and coffee. While vulnerable to water and fire, he's immune to sharp objects and can squeeze through grates and pipes that Luigi cannot.
• Book Ends:
  • The game opens with Luigi, Mario, Peach and the Toads coming to the Last Resort, and ends with them all leaving the rebuilt Last Resort (now managed by the ghosts no longer under King Boo's control).
  • In the intro, Luigi is sleeping in the van when Polterpup jolts him awake; in the ending, Polterpup jumps into Luigi's lap, and they fall asleep together.
  • The first elevator buttons Luigi recovers are 1 and 5; conversely, the last one recovered is 15, comprising of both digits.
• Boring, but Practical: It seems the ghosts know they don't need to flex their supernatural muscles when mundane approaches prove just as effective.
  • To keep Luigi sealed in the hotel, the ghosts don't create supernatural barriers like they do to trap him in smaller rooms...they just board and chain the front doors to heck and break the garage gate.
  • In several places, Luigi is forced to take roundabout paths through the hotel simply because the ghosts left things in front of doors, preventing him from pushing them open.
  • Hellen Gravely's boss fight is mostly fought by her high-tech security system, with her having a single simple attack that's not even supernatural in nature. The security system is more than enough to make her a challenge, though, with most of the fight being about trying to shut off its laser barriers with Gooigi (who will also be occasionally washed away by water) while Luigi is in harm's way.
• Boss-Arena Idiocy: Some of the bosses in the game also fall into this category:
  • Chef Soulfflé has some melons in his kitchen that can be used to knock his frying pan out of his hands, though this is not the only way to make him vulnerable.
  • Clem’s arena has spikes around his pool of water, and since he spends his fight dueling in an inflatable tube, Luigi can take advantage of him getting stunned and launch him into the spikes, sending him to the rim of the pool and knocking him out momentarily.
  • Johnny Deepend would be untouchable since he’s in a pool, but the pump for the pool is in the area, and thus the pump can be turned off to trap him in the drain.
  • But perhaps the biggest ghost who made the mistake of choosing a poor arena is Ug. Ug possesses a T-Rex fossil to attack Luigi, but there are dinosaurs eggs that can be shot into the fossil to destroy it. To Ug’s credit, he does catch wise and smashes one of them after taking the first hit, but there’s another way to damage him that he doesn’t expect.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: The Hammer with boxing gloves is fought in the Fitness Center. It can block Strobulb flashes (your only way to make ghosts vulnerable to your Poltergust) with its gloves and unlike other Hammers, it pursues you throughout the room, giving you only a split second to dodge its punching attacks. To defeat it, you have to bait another Hammer into throwing a weight at it, thus making it dizzy and vulnerable to the Strobulb, but there's not much to indicate that.
• Boss-Only Level: There's the ninth floor, Unnatural History Museum. It has only two rooms: A small square corridor with some prehistoric exhibits, and the larger hall where the skeleton of the Tyrannosaurus rex is shown; this skeleton is possessed by the boss to challenge Luigi right away. The brevity of this area is to make up not only for the longevity of the previous floor (Paranormal Productions), but also for the extra work to retrieve its Plot Coupon after Polterkitty steals it and Luigi has to chase her through that floor as well as the preceding one. To a lesser extent, this is repeated with the twelfth floor (The Spectral Catch, which has three rooms) to make up for the need to replay an old floor in order to learn a skill that will be called for use here.
• Boxing Battler: Two Hammers, one of them having boxing gloves and the other constantly chucking weights, attack Luigi in the Fitness Center. The boxing gloves block Luigi's Strobulb flashes, so he has to bait the one with the weights into throwing them into the other, rendering it dizzy and vulnerable to Luigi's Strobulb. It's much harder than it sounds.
• Build Like an Egyptian: The Tomb Suites floor is themed after ancient Egypt, so all the usual tropes are in full effect; hieroglyphic wall art, snakes, mummies, a big pyramid full of booby traps, and an Egyptian queen boss ghost who sleeps in a sarcophagus.
• Bullfight Boss: King MacFrights charges at you in a joust while wearing armor, and must be stunned and slammed around.
• The Bus Came Back: Boolossus returns as a boss in the Scarescraper after being absent from Dark Moon.^Though...this is only the case in the non-Japanese versions, as the Big Boo in Dark Moon shares a name with Boolossus (as Jumbo Boo) in the Japanese version.
• Busman's Holiday: Luigi wins an invitation to a luxury hotel to which he also brings along Mario, Peach and her Toad attendants. Unsurprisingly, the hotel is haunted and is a trap set up by the hotel owner Hellen Gravelly and King Boo. Everyone is captured except for Luigi who must once again don a new Poltergust and capture ghosts that he's extremely terrified by.
• But Wait, There's More!: A gloriously cheesy (and official) advert invoking the style of the Infomercial, complete with a Laugh Track, uses this line when explaining the capabilities of the Poltergust G-00. Can be viewed here.
• Call-Back:
  • The final fight against King Boo has him duplicate himself into two and later three, with the decoys bearing his old design from the original Luigi's Mansion.
  • King Boo describes the Poltergust as making a "SHWEEERRPP-SHLOOOOP-WHOOORPP-SHLEEEOOORG" sound. Exactly the wording he used in the final battle of the first game.
  • Symbols of the Dark Moon appear in various places throughout the game, and in a couple of spots, there are scale models of Gloomy Manor, that game's first mansion.
• Canine Companion: Since becoming his pet, Polterpup is such for Luigi throughout the game, popping up from time to time as he explores.
• Cap: Unlike previous Luigi's Mansion titles, Luigi has a cap of 99 HP instead of 100. Gooigi also has his HP halved from 50 to 25.
• Cats Are Mean: Hellen owns a ghost cat named Polterkitty, who turns out to be just as eager to steal key items as Polterpup was in Dark Moon, and more malicious in doing so. When you finally corner her, she then proceeds to promptly turn into a spectral cat-beast to violently resist giving the buttons up.
• Cat Scare: Done several times, with Polterpup and even a freed Mario popping out and startling Luigi off his feet while trying to guide him.
• Catch a Falling Star: When the Last Resort falls apart after the Final Battle, Polterpup quickly and successfully breaks Luigi's fall a foot before he hits the ground.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • Some bosses will test you on mechanics you've learned earlier in their associated floor. For example, Kruller can only be accessed via Gooigi phasing through the gate separating them, Dr. Potter's plant needs to be cut off with a saw, and Clem must be fought while riding a duck pool floatie.
  • If you mess around with the Toads immediately after rescuing them from certain bosses, you may find that they can be sucked up and launched into the air as projectiles. It's harmless and amusing at first and often grants treasure bonuses, but you're later required to do this during an Escort Mission with the red Toad, as he can break down walls and reach areas that Luigi himself can't get to.
• Chest Monster: The game introduces a new type of Spirit Ball in purple, which doesn't hide objects, but instead infests and curses them, turning them into these. Luigi can come across innocuous trash bins and treasure chests only for them to wake up and attack, so he must find a way to stun them and then drive the Spirit Balls out with the Dark-Light so he can vacuum them up and return the object to normal.
• Clipped-Wing Angel:
  • Paranormal Productions's boss is just a Goob wearing the top half of a monster suit. Luigi has to knock the monster suit off by propelling three energy balls into the ghost, and afterwards, it becomes a standard enemy that Luigi can defeat to end the fight.
  • Ug himself is significantly more straightforward than the T. rex skeleton he was possessing.
  • King MacFrights is left with only a pathetic Spin Attack once you destroy his armor.
  • Johnny Deepend cannot move once he's trapped in the swimming pool drain, and has very low HP.
• Closed Circle: The first visit to the lobby after the trap has been sprung shows the ghosts barricading the main door to keep Luigi and co. trapped. All other exits and even phone lines have also been tampered with to ensure no chance of escape or contacting outside help until King Boo and Hellen Gravely are both dealt with. However, some of Professor E. Gadd and King Boo's comments imply that Luigi could escape at any time if he really wanted to, but, to Gadd's frustration, he refuses to leave without saving Mario, Peach, and the Toads first.
• Combination Attack: Hammers and Slinkers have two tails. If two players team up and each grab a tail in Scarescraper (or by using Gooigi in the story mode), they can slam the ghost onto the floor together, and the resulting attack deals twice as much damage and creates a damaging shockwave.
• Company Cameo: Floor 11 of The Last Resort has three ghosts as the boss. In many languages, their names start with the same letters as the game's developers, Next Level Games — among others, they're Nikki, Lindsey, and Ginny in English and French; Nova, Luz, and Gala in Spanish; and Nina, Loes and Guusje in Dutch.
• Company Cross References: Paranormal Productions has several posters in the Entrance Hall, all of which reference previous Next Level Games creations:
  • On the left in front is Luigi facing down King Boo, which is of course a reference to this game's predecessor, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon.
  • The back-left poster is a nod to their work with Metroid, Metroid Prime: Federation Force.
  • The front-right and middle-right posters reference Mario Strikers Charged; the former has Mario preparing to kick a ball that looks identical to that of Strikers Charged in a style that looks identical to a Super Strike, while the latter shows the main characters of the series in silhouette over an icon of the same ball.
  • The back-right one depicts Little Mac and Doc Louis from Punch-Out!! - specifically based on the Wii title that Next Level Games made. If you break the poster, some money will spill out, as well as a green boxing glove resembling Little Mac's which you can shoot out from the Poltergust.
• Console Cameo: As in the previous two games, Gadd gives Luigi a Nintendo system to communicate with him. This time, it's the Virtual Boo, based on the Virtual Boy, complete with red and black graphics.
• Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: In the early parts of the game, you are mostly free to explore, but if you don't go immediately after the current objective, E. Gadd will chime in periodically to remind you of your goal, and sometimes Polterpup will railroad you into completing a certain action before you can leave the area and do something else. After a certain point, Gadd's hints can be turned off in the game's settings, making this less of an annoyance.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Luigi isn't fazed by the doors eating the keys, as he had already witnessed them disappearing last time. (The "key eating" animation was also planned for that game as well.)
  • The Giant Spider who acted as the first boss of Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon appears as a prop in one of Paranormal Productions' movie sets, with the music alluding to the theme that played during the boss fight.
  • Wolfgeist's strategy of taking control of large inanimate objects to fight Luigi with is similar to what the Harsh Possessor did in Dark Moon.
  • The game once again features pearls as money collectibles after they were absent from the second game, though they aren't dropped by bosses and don't come in multiple sizes.
  • The Hotel Shops floor revolves around hunting for keys with playing card symbols to progress through it, which was the structure of the entire first game, having playing-card keys behind each area boss that unlocked the next section of the house.
  • Another reference with keys is that one is obtained by running on a treadmill, much like the one in Biff Atlas' room in the first game.
  • The Garden Suites floor is a large vertical space overgrown with plants, much like the Haunted Towers mansion in Dark Moon.
  • Paranormal Productions on the 8th floor revolves around unlocking portals so Luigi can carry items between themed areas to solve puzzles, with the necessary items in the wrong rooms. This is the exact same gimmick as Dark Moon's Treacherous Mansion, even using a similar surrealist conceit with the cameras to the Poltergeist fight in the Treacherous Mansion's third mission.
  • There's an Egyptian area with ghosts that dress up as mummies, and they work the same way as in Dark Moon, though multiple ghost types can be "mummies" in 3.
  • Boss ghosts Nikki, Lindsey, and Ginny are young girl magicians, and one of the rooms on their floor has the directions inverted, with the floor really being the ceiling and furniture seemingly obeying multiple axes of gravity by being placed on the walls as well. This likely evokes Sue Pea in the first game, a young Portrait Ghost girl whose bedroom is completely upside-down when you fight her.
  • There's a white beach ball in the Sandy Great Hall of the Tomb Suites with a Boo face, looking extremely similar to the Boo Ball decoys that could fool Luigi's Boo Radar in the first game.
  • Some of the boss ghosts seem to evoke previous ones. There's a pianist^note Amadeus Wolfgeist, following Melody Pianissima from the first game and the first Poltergeist from the second, a buff athlete^note Johnny Deepend, following Biff Atlas from the first game, and Nikki, Lindsey, and Ginny are a trio^note like Dark Moon's Three Sisters or the first game's Clockwork Soldiers and multiple young ghosts serving as one boss^note like the first game's Henry and Orville. One method for making Chef Soulffle vulnerable matches the method for weakening Chauncey in the first game. Also, like the first game, there is a lone friendly character ghost in Morty and he's also an optional capture, much like the first game having Madame Clairvoya as an ally and featuring a few Portrait Ghosts that were purely optional fights.
  • During his boss fight, King Boo will create copies of himself that have two fangs rather than the standard row of four Boo teeth the real one has. The two-toothed design of the copies is a reference to the original Luigi's Mansion Boos, who, including the King, had fewer teeth.
  • Just before King Boo is finally captured, he stares down Luigi, mirroring a piece of promotional artwork◊ from Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon.
  • When Luigi finally captures Captain Fishhook, he takes a stance appearing as if he is fishing. The manual for the original game had a section explaining the new at the time ghost capturing mechanic as if the player was fishing and suggested to them to pretend it was that.
• Cosmetic Award: Getting all the gems rewards you with a diamond plunger, all the Boos with a Boo flashlight lens, and all the achievements with a golden Poltergust.
• Crazy-Prepared: For some reason, Luigi decided it was necessary to bring a torch (AKA, a flashlight) in his luggage to what he believed to be a luxury hotel. Of course, this is just as well, since it's the only thing Luigi has until he gets the Poltergust G-00.
• Critical Annoyance: The beeping heartbeat sound which plays when Luigi is at low health. It gets faster and louder the lower he is on health and the rumbling in the Joy-Con gets stronger too.
• Cruelty Is the Only Option: In order to defeat the boss of the Unnatural History Museum, you must let it chew on Gooigi. This actually One Hit Kills him, though fortunately, he can regenerate. Granted, it's debatable if Gooigi feels any pain from this given how expressionless and alien he is, but Professor E. Gadd clearly feels bad when giving you the hint nonetheless.
• Cutscene Incompetence:
  • Luigi gets taunted multiple times by the Boss Ghosts in cutscenes, yet doesn't try to capture them, even when they're vulnerable.
  • Did Luigi launch an elevator button out of his vacuum in any direction except the center of the room? If yes, expect something to go wrong with the retrieval.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: King Boo's portrait attack has the power to instantly seal away any character, even Mario, and only sheer dumb luck prevents Luigi from suffering the same fate the two times he tries to use it on him. He would be a lot more threatening in his Final Boss battle if he just kept trying or used his Reality Warper powers to make landing the portrait easier, but instead, he uses more generic attacks, only bringing out a massively enlarged portrait as a last-ditch attempt to trap Luigi. Even then, rather than slamming on Luigi immediately, it takes 4 minutes for the portrait's full effect to work, giving Luigi ample time to defeat King Boo and stop the attack.
• Dance Battler: The ballet ghosts on 4F and the disco dancing crew on 14F. Both groups are minions of the floor's boss, and serve as the first-phase obstacle in the fights.
• Damsel in Distress: Princess Peach chooses to accompany the Mario brothers to the hotel. To no one's surprise, she winds up being put in a painting and abducted. At least Bowser didn't do it this time.
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to Dark Moon, at least. While still having plenty of cartoony goofiness, the game has an overall darker atmosphere closer to the first game, the ghost designs lean more on the uncanny valley compared to the cuter ones of the previous game, there are some surprisingly brutal traps and attacks from some of the bosses, and the game has one of the bleakest Game Over sequences in the entire Mario series.
• Death Glare: The normally Perpetual Smiler King Boo does this quite a few times in this game, just to show how absolutely fed up he is with Luigi's continued resistance.
• Defiant to the End: King Boo sees Luigi as this when he narrowly dodges getting trapped in a portrait with his friends right before the final boss. In reality, Luigi was frozen in fear! It was Polterpup that pushed Luigi out of the way of the portrait right before King Boo slams it on them all, and King Boo somehow failed to notice.
• Demoted to Extra: The regular Boos. Unlike previous games, fighting them is not required to progress through Story Mode (though like the gems, there is a Bragging Rights Reward for defeating all of them). There isn't a mandatory Boolossus/Big Boo fight either, with the former only appearing in ScareScraper.
• Descending Ceiling: Two of the trap rooms in the Tomb Suites operate on this. To the left, there's a room with a spike ceiling that lowers after you solve a scale puzzle, forcing you to solve it two more times to finally shut it off for good, and in the room to the right, there's a ceiling suspended by chains, which three laser statues slowly melt and shatter, forcing Luigi to push the sand around so he can climb up to the statues and shut them off before they break the chains and the ceiling crashes down.
• Desperate Object Catch: Luigi catches the falling portrait with everyone in it just before the hotel starts to collapse.
• Destructive Saviour: Luigi will completely demolish all the rooms inside the hotel in his quest to rescue Mario and the others, and in the Final Battle with King Boo, the entire hotel itself is reduced to rubble in the fight. Thankfully, it's rebuilt in the credits.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • During the Gooigi tutorial, if you decide to have Gooigi move around the puddle of water before you're supposed to learn he'll melt upon getting wet, Gadd will ask you to just move him into the puddle to humor him.
  • The cutscene after beating Kruller is different depending on if the game is in single player or co-op, with Luigi and Gooigi's reactions being adjusted to match.
  • The boss of 2F (Chef Soulfflé) does not spawn until the boss of 3F (Kruller) is defeated to prevent Sequence Breaking, as 2F is reachable by stairs and the elevator button isn't required to get there.
  • The same goes for Captain Fishook, to a greater extent. It's normally impossible to reach 12F's beach without Super Suction, since there's a blockade in front of the main entrance, but if you somehow get past that (i.e. clipping through it), Fishook won't spawn until you acquire the upgrade you're supposed to have.
  • Morty will have unique dialogue if you talk to him with certain items, such as the flaming sconce and a clapper board.
  • A sidepath which requires rescuing Red Toad from the Boilerworks requires you to take a new long way around because a Hammer fell asleep in front of a door directly to the elevator. If you try to use the instant Lab teleporter from the Virtual Boo, E. Gadd tells Luigi that it, rather inconveniently, just stopped working. He even lampshades the situation.
  • After every Toad rescue, you have to take the Toad to the elevator, and during the time between saving him and sending him to the Lab, you can fire him from your Poltergust to hit and break objects you couldn't interact with otherwise. Most of the time, there's just money you can only obtain with the Toad, making it a bonus with a set window for claiming it. However, on 12F, there are gems and an achievement, completion rewards, that are obtained by launching things from the Poltergust to break objects. In this case, however, the bones from the broken dinosaur skeletons remain on the floor as projectiles in case you missed your chance to use the rescued Toad, keeping those rewards obtainable.
• Didn't See That Coming: Hellen's scheme to help King Boo mostly went off without a hitch, but upon Luigi reaching the top floor, she grouses about the glaring flaw that really should've been obvious in hindsight: that Luigi is a coward. She didn't expect him to run away in the intro sequence, thinking that he'd instead try to bravely fight King Boo and fail. This costs her big time once Luigi returns armed with the Poltergust and goes full Cowardly Lion, taking out every ghost in the hotel below her and finally reaching her office.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: The original Luigi's Mansion theme appears in references and rearrangements in multiple places, the Dark Moon theme is used for the elevator, and the upright piano in Amadeus Wolfgeist's dressing room plays the "Library Piano" theme from Dark Moon once you fix it.
• Disco Sucks: The Dance Hall is a disco-themed area filled with ghosts. In other words, they are as dead as disco.
• Distressed Dude: Mario is once again trapped inside a painting. This time, he's also joined by several Toads and Peach, as well as E. Gadd!
• Diving Save: Unintentional, but an affectionate tackle from Polterpup pushes Luigi out of the way of King Boo's final trap, setting up the Final Battle.
• Drives Like Crazy: In the opening cutscene, Red Toad drives the bus that's carrying Luigi and co. swerving all the way to the hotel, partly hitting the entrance gate, running over the curb and flooring a sign before stopping, presumably because he isn't actually tall enough to see over the steering wheel.
• Do Not Go Gentle: When Luigi finds the rooms his friends were kidnapped from, there's evidence of a struggle, with Mario's room having overturned furniture and scattered pizza boxes, and Peach's parasol being bent as if she tried to whack some ghosts with it. Even Red Toad may be a case, as his golf club ended up through an armchair...but he may just be really bad at putting practice.
• Donut Mess with a Cop: The security guard is an overweight ghost named Kruller. (His name is a pun on "cruller", a type of donut.)
• Downloadable Content: The game saw the release of extra multiplayer modes.
• Down the Drain: The Boilerworks become an example of this once Clem floods the place. Reaching him requires shutting off the water to reverse this state.
• The Dragon: Hellen Gravely serves this role to King Boo.
• Dynamic Loading: The elevator that Luigi travels in allows the game time to load the next floor. If you look at the mirror, the elevator doesn't take the actual number of floors travelled into account regardless of where the player is going to and from. However, Luigi can still move about and perform various moves (and hum the elevator music to himself if he stays still), and since it would naturally take some time for an elevator to go between floors in a hotel, it doesn't even feel like loading. ^note  Also; sometimes before getting to enter, ghosts pop out of the elevator, and in one instance, you have to battle INSIDE. Freshening things up, keeping you on your toes, and the such.
• Easter Egg:
  • Activating the radios found around the hotel plays various renditions of the Luigi's Mansion theme, including the Dual Scream version from Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon.
  • The Gloomy Manor from Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon appears in several artworks throughout the hotel.
  • Vacuuming one of the exercise bikes in the Fitness Center will make it play the Hammer theme from Donkey Kong.
  • When near a Boo, the controller vibrates Morse code for "BOO".
• Elite Mooks: The Rare Ghosts found on the fifth floor of a ten-floor run in the Scarescraper are considerably stronger than their base counterparts, having more HP and stronger moves, like being able to throw bombs.
• Escape Artist: One bathroom in the Twisted Suites has a walk-in shower made up like an escape tank, chained shut and with the pipes to the bathtub diverted into the shower as if to fill it for an escape act. When the magician triplets summon ghosts and scramble the rooms, a Hammer bursts out of the tank.
• Escape Sequence: The prologue ends with King Boo attempting to trap Luigi in a picture frame, just like he did with Mario, Peach, and the Toads. Since Luigi is completely defenseless at the moment, all he can do is run to the end of the hallway and jump down a laundry chute to escape.
• Escort Mission: At one point, Red Toad goes missing in the Boilerworks with an important Poltergust upgrade, causing Luigi to go after him. Toad and the upgrade (which requires Toad to get) are actually recovered rather early, but because the normal entrance to the level becomes blocked by a sleeping Hammer, as well as the fact that the transporter directly back to the lab gets disabled (which E. Gadd quickly Lampshades if you try to use that), the player will be required to look for an alternate exit (that can only be accessed with Toad too, conveniently enough). This segment also introduces a new behavior for certain Slinkers where they pursue and attempt to capture Toad and pull him away into a portal, thus introducing the escorting aspect and a "fail" condition for the mission.
• Exact Words: E. Gadd explains that he was lured to the hotel on the promise of encountering a collection of ghosts from all across the world. Sure enough, among the ones Luigi encounters are a French chef, a German pianist, a medieval Scottish king, an Italian film director, an ancient Egyptian queen, a Deep South-style redneck, and even a brutish caveman ghost. Of course, nothing in the invitation said that the assembled ghosts were actually in captivity, or that they were friendly.
• Feed It a Bomb:
  • Captain Fishook is defeated by rolling ignited gunpowder barrels into his mouth as his face slides across the possessed ship's deck.
  • The final boss can only be damaged by the bombs that King Boo creates after throwing a spike ball, where Luigi can suck it up and fire into King Boo's open mouth.
• Female Feline, Male Mutt: The rough-and-tumble good-boy Polterpup and his male owner Luigi are countered in this game by the female Hellen Gravely and her slinky, feminine Polterkitty, creating this gendered pet dynamic.
• Fisher Kingdom: Each floor (outside of the Lobby first floor) is home to a boss ghost that reflects said floor's theme, such as;
  • Clem, a mechanic ghost for the Boilerworks B2 floor.
  • Steward, a bellhop that is fought in the Basement B1 floor.
  • Chef Soulfflé, a chef ghost in the Mezzanine second floor, which boasts a beautiful dining room and large kitchen.
  • Kruller, a fat security guard ghost that is fought in the Hotel Shops third floor.
  • Amadeus Wolfgeist, a pianist ghost for the Great Stage fourth floor.
  • Chambrea, a maid ghost for the RIP Suites fifth floor.
  • King MacFrights, a king/knight ghost for the Castle MacFrights sixth floor.
  • Dr. Potter, an old gardener ghost for the Garden Suites seventh floor.
  • Morty, a film director ghost for the Paranormal Productions eighth floor.
  • Ug, a caveman ghost for the Unnatural History Museum ninth floor.
  • Serpci, a pharaoh queen ghost for the Tomb Suites tenth floor.
  • Nikki, Lindsey, and Ginny, a trio of magician ghosts for the Twisted Suites eleventh floor.
  • Captain Fishhook, a shark ghost for The Spectral Catch twelfth floor.
  • Johnny Deepend, a swimmer ghost for the Fitness Center thirteenth floor.
  • DJ Phantasmagloria, a DJ ghost for the Dance Hall fourteenth floor.
• Fluorescent Footprints: The ghost cat Polterkitty will attempt to steal an elevator button from Luigi twice, and in both cases get away with it. Luigi can find her easily by using the Dark-Light Device to follow her luminous ghostly pawprints.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Hellen Gravely seemingly always carries a powder puff to apply her makeup, and the top floor where she lives features some large makeup cases and a broken vanity mirror in her bedroom. She really looks like a monstrous hag, and uses her makeup, presumably with some supernatural magic, to maintain her beautiful facade.
  • Polterkitty is normally the same size as Polterpup and looks like the spectral version of an ordinary cartoon housecat, but when she's cornered, she suddenly transforms into a much larger, panther-like beast. From this, one may assume that her owner, Hellen Gravely, also has a deceptive initial appearance...
• French Accordion: Chef Soulfflé is a French-inspired chef ghost hauting the Last Resort Mezzanine, and his battle theme is dominated by accordions.
• Fun with Acronyms: The bosses of the Twisted Suites are the sisters Nikki, Lindsey, and Ginny. The initials of their respective names match those of the game's developers, Next Level Games.
• Game-Over Man: King Boo gazes at the paintings of the captured Luigi and the others, before turning around to laugh at you.
• Garden of Evil: The seventh floor is a large tower of suites that may have started out tasteful, but ended up ridiculously overgrown in the care of Dr. Potter, the boss ghost there.
• Genie in a Bottle: In the desert room of the Tomb Suites, you can uncover a magic lamp buried in the sand. Suck it onto your nozzle and hold on it for long enough, and a Golden Goob emerges.
• Ghostly Glide: Hellen Gravely wears a floor-length dress, and glides smoothly around the hotel. As if the fact that she has purple skin and a suspiciously grim name weren't enough of a hint that she's a ghost!
• The Glomp: Mario jumps in Luigi's arms and gives him a big hug when Luigi frees him.
• Goggles Do Something Unusual: As in Dark Moon, one of the items you can find in the Scarescraper is the Dark-Light Goggles which lets you see the transparent forms of otherwise invisible items and ghosts at all times.
• Gold Makes Everything Shiny: In the prologue, the hotel initially appears to be this as befitting its luxury status, with gold floors, gold walls, gold bathrooms and even gold furniture making everything ludicrously glitzy. Naturally, it's all a trick and Luigi sees the illusion fade away as soon as he sets outside his room.
• Go-to-Sleep Ending: The game ends with Luigi zonking out with Polterpup in the van.
• Gotta Catch Them All: The game's main objective is capturing all boss ghosts (equivalent to the Portrait Ghosts in the first game) in order to retrieve the elevator's buttons, each taking you to a new floor. Each floor also has six hidden gemstones and one hidden Boo, the latter of which you can only find after beating the floor's boss. As before, you can also collect a ton of money. You don't buy upgrades to the Poltergust G-00 in this game, but you can buy extra lives as well as locator devices for the Boos and gems until you've collected them all.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: While Luigi is slamming ghosts caught in his vacuum, he can whack them into other nearby enemies in order to stun and weaken them.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • As noted above, it is possible to slam a ghost five times (seven times once you get the Super Suction) with proper timing, just as the ghost hits the floor, as opposed to just Button Mashing. Also, most of the achievements are blanked out with little clue on how to unlock them unless you look them up, interact with everything or stumble into them by chance.
  • The game never tells you this, but (similar to the first game) the amount of money you collect factors into the ending (even if only slightly). You have to collect a minimum of 70,000 G to get the "Rank A" ending.
  • Collecting gems. While some are in plain sight and the surrounding areas do provide hints (such as the shadows or reflections of missing furniture), for the most part, you're left to figure out how to obtain the gems by yourself.
  • The Hammers in the Weight Room almost seem impossible to defeat at first, since they block your Strobulb. The solution? You need to lead the boxing glove Hammer into the range of dumbell throwing one. Not only is this significantly different from any other puzzle solution (most involve shooting, suction, Gooigi, or a combination.) these are some of the only Hammers that need to disarmed, the only other instance being in Dr Potter's floor. Plus, the boxing glove ghost has very dangerous, nonstop attacks for a basic mook and will hunt you down with unrelenting determination.
• Healing Hands: The green Medic Goob, a boss variant introduced in Scarescraper's second update, can restore the health of every other ghost in the room if left unchecked.
• Hell Hotel: The Last Resort qualifies due to its paranormal nature, and the fact that it was created by King Boo in the first place as a trap for Luigi, Mario, Peach, the Toads and E. Gadd.
• Heroic Canines, Villainous Felines: Polterpup is Luigi's loyal and affectionate sidekick, while Polterkitty is Hellen Gravely's antagonistic Right-Hand Cat.
• Holler Button: Pressing on the D-Pad lets Luigi and Gooigi call out for Mario in Story mode, or request help from teammates in Scarescraper mode.
• Hope Spot: Sometimes after Luigi beats a boss ghost, its associated elevator button is stolen at the last second, and he has to backtrack to acquire it for real. This first happens with a mouse scurrying around the Mezzanine floor, then later occurs twice with Polterkitty, who must be chased through multiple floors.
• Improbable Weapon User: The ghosts use a variety of non-weapon environmental items to attack Luigi with, including books, billiards cues, gym weights, etc.
• Incredible Shrinking Man: One of the movie scenes in Paranormal Productions is based on this kind of plot, being a macro-scale work table with a box, bottle, and nails, coins, bills, and packing peanuts that dwarf Luigi. Topping it off is an animatronic spider inside the box which is giant at that scale.
• Inescapable Ambush: Like in Dark Moon, it's not a door being blocked, but a magical gate popping out of the floor and barricading anything from an opening to a set of stairs until all nearby ghosts are caught. This is also marked by the lights immediately going off whenever an ambush occurs.
• Inn Security: A free stay in a luxury hotel? Every video game veteran should know what usually happens then...
• Instakill Mook: Well, perhaps Mini-Boss, but the Lethal variants of the ghosts found on Scarescraper will defeat a player in a single hit (though this isn't extremely devastating, since they can be revived).
• Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Played with, as the keys instead get sucked into the keyhole when put in.
• It's All Upstairs From Here: The hotel that is the game's setting, obviously, but the Garden Suites floor in particular is specifically about climbing a huge flight of stairs to retrieve one of the elevator buttons, after Dr. Potter grows a plant that takes it above. The game's path isn't entirely straight up the hotel (the fifth floor is visited second, and the sub-basement floor is visited twice later in the adventure), but the goal is to reach the top.
• It's a Wonderful Failure: The "Good Night!" sequence treats the player to a scene of King Boo gazing at Luigi and the rest of victims trapped in paintings, before turning to the player and laughing.
• Jump Scare:
  • In a cutscene in the Lobby area, one ghost starts to leave, looking as if it hasn't noticed Luigi, only to quickly fly up to him and scream at both him and the camera.
  • The balcony to E. Gadd's room on the fifth floor features a telescope. Look through it for a few seconds and a Gem Goob pops up in the view and can be subsequently caught.
  • In the Master Suite, you can uncover a model of Gloomy Manor in a glass case. Look into it for a few seconds, and a Golden Goob appears in your face.
• Kill Enemies to Open: The game does this rarely, preferring instead to employ scripted ambushes where Luigi has to capture all ghosts in order to dispel the life-force barriers that prevent him from leaving the current room.
• Kill It with Water: Gooigi melts if he gets wet.
• The Klutz: Luigi inadvertently draws attention to himself from ghosts at least twice by not fully being aware of his surroundings. For example, he accidentally knocks off a piece of glassware in the dining room whilst trying to sneak past a group of ghosts. Later, in the Boilerworks, Luigi comes across a sleeping Clem and whilst trying to back away, stands on a loud rubber duck, which wakes up Clem who then proceeds to cause Luigi a lot of trouble. Luigi has a tendency of dropping the elevator buttons either by being startled out of his wits, thus letting the buttons go in the process, or just plain having them snatched out of his hands. If Luigi kept a better grip on them or just put them away immediately, he wouldn't spend as much time getting them back.
• Knife-Throwing Act: There's a chest of blades and a knife wheel in the Twisted Suites. Vacuuming the wheel to spin it will see some blades appear, throwing themselves into it with perfect accuracy. This grants Luigi a gem.
• Laser Hallway: The final floor features several rooms with laser security that will damage and knock Luigi back if he comes in contact with them, while instantly destroying Gooigi if it comes in contact with them, and the hallways also have lasers skimming across the floors during a ghost brawl. Bizarrely, one of the most heavily guarded rooms in the building is Hellen Gravely's bathroom, which has multiple moving lasers down its paths.
• Last Episode Theme Reprise: Clearing out a key room in the Master Suite also rewards you with the BGM of the floor changing thereafter to a variation of the title theme.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Luigi adopting the Polterpup was only revealed in the ending of Dark Moon, but this game made it obvious starting with the E3 2019 trailer.
• Laughably Evil: The ghosts, especially the boss ghosts, tend to be goofballs.
• Level Scaling: Averted. Not only does Luigi not receive any upgrades to his abilities like he did in Dark Moon, but the enemies never increase in health or difficulty and do not have stronger versions, which is contrary to both previous games. Instead, Luigi's tools and combat capabilities remain the same strength (with only a slight upgrade to his Slam capacity after getting Super Suction), and enemies have more HP from the start, but don't change as the game goes on (although Gem Goobs tend to have higher HP the higher up the hotel you go).
• Load-Bearing Boss: Once King Boo is defeated, the entire hotel falls apart. Luigi survives thanks to Polterpup, while everyone else was still relatively safe in the painting. Once the ghosts free themselves from the containment unit and King Boo's control gem breaks, they realize that their home is now gone. Fortunately, E. Gadd uses the money Luigi found throughout the game to construct a new hotel, with the heroes and ghosts working together to build it.
• Lost Food Grievance: Chef Soulfflé is introduced cooking a very smoky fish meal in a pan. Luigi vacuums up the smoke so he can see through the kitchen; a startled Chef Soulfflé accidentally drops the fish from the pan and angrily attacks Luigi in response.
• Lots of Luggage: Peach brings a large pile of bags and suitcases, which her Toad attendants struggle with.
• MacGuffin: The elevator buttons, each one in the hands of the floor bosses, are required to reach the top of the hotel.
• Mad Love: Hellen Gravely is deeply infatuated with King Boo. So much so that she broke him out of his containment and lured Luigi and friends to the Last Resort to trap them into paintings, all to impress King Boo. King Boo doesn’t seem to notice or care at all about her affections, and is only interested in her effectiveness in helping him catch Luigi.
• Marathon Level: The 20-floor option added as Scarescraper DLC. Runs are roughly 2 hours long on average, with the boss floors adding new and tougher ghosts, mix-and-matching them to make devious teams, and even giving Boolossus additional attack patterns.
• Marilyn Maneuver: For the brief time in the opening of the game when E. Gadd is following you, using the Strobulb on him results in him pulling one of three comical poses, including one mimicking Marilyn Monroe’s iconic dress pose with the tails of his lab coat fluttering!
• Meaningful Background Event: In the elevator cutscenes just before Polterkitty ambushes Luigi and steals the button he just retrieved, you can see a purple haze behind him in the mirror, and the lighting in the cutscene is slightly different. Also counts as Five-Second Foreshadowing.
• Meaningful Name: The Last Resort is owned and operated by ghosts and is the site of King Boo's latest scheme, and its owner is Hellen Gravely.
• Men Like Dogs, Women Like Cats: Luigi's pet is the ghostly Polterpup he adopted at the end of Dark Moon. The other pet owner in the game is Hellen Gravely, the woman who owns the hotel and who has a ghostly Polterkitty for a pet.
• Metronomic Man Mashing: Luigi can perform this on ghosts while they are being sucked by the Poltergust G-00, taking the place of the Power Surge mechanic from Dark Moon. This can do immense damage to both the ghosts and the surroundings (which can include other ghosts hit by the ghost Luigi is mashing with). This is also the only way to damage Boos.
• Mickey Mousing: During the first phase of the fight with Amadeus Wolfgeist (the phase where he throws chairs at Luigi), the score syncs up with him throwing the chairs; lower-pitched chords when the chairs rise up off the ground, and higher-pitched flourishes when the chairs are launched at Luigi. Justified, as in this scene, not only is Amadeus attacking Luigi, he's also providing the background music for the fight.
• Mini-Boss: Polterkitty, who is fought twice over the course of the game. In both cases, instead of guarding an elevator button like the boss ghosts, she steals the one Luigi just got and does everything in her power to keep it; this forces Luigi to chase and confront her across previously-cleared floors.
• Mini Mook: The Mini Goobs and Mini Hammers. They always show up in swarms, but they all get sucked into the Poltergust instantly without putting up much of a fight. Scarescraper occasionally has capture floors that consist of nothing but these.
• Monster Compendium: The game brings back E Gadd's vault from Dark Moon, serving once again the purpose of storing the ghosts (both the mooks and the bosses) captured over the course of the adventure.
• Monster Closet: One of the tricks added to the DLC floors for Scarescraper. Savvy players might find an invisible door leading to a secret room and expect to find the usual chest full of powerups; instead, they wind up in a mosh pit with six 300-HP Hammers at once. Said Hammers are variants unique to these rooms, so if you want to complete your ghost gallery, you'd best find some flashlight and vacuum upgrades to survive the ordeal.
• Monster of the Week: Each floor of the hotel is haunted by a major ghost that Luigi encounters as he tries to catch them.
• Mook Bouncer: The Warp Slinker, a boss variant introduced in Scarescraper's second update. If it grabs a Luigi, it will teleport him out of the boss room to a random one elsewhere on the floor, harking back to the boss Sneakers from Dark Moon.
• Mook Maker: The Diffusing Goob and Hammer, boss variants introduced in Scarescraper's second update. They can spit out swarms of Mini Goobs and Mini Hammers respectively, adding a ton of extra bodies to the fight that can be difficult to control without a flashlight upgrade.
• Mouse Hole: Multiple ones are featured around the hotel, and usually give money if vacuumed. On the second floor, they become escape routes for mice that take your elevator button, forcing you to chase them between rooms.
• Multiple Endings: Professor E. Gadd is rebuilding the hotel. And just like the original game, the scope of the hotel depends on how much money you collected throughout the game. There are three ranks that players can have at the end: A, B, and C.
• Mundane Solution: Most horror games taking place in a haunted building use some kind of supernatural force to impede or outright remove the exit and keep the hero trapped inside. In this game, however, the entrance to the hotel is simply boarded up and the garage door breaks if you try to open it, ensuring Luigi has no way out.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Luigi doesn't exactly have defined muscles but he's nonetheless capable of swinging various heavy objects over his head including toolboxes, benches and even vending machines with nothing but a suction plunger for better grip.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Some of the pipes which Gooigi can travel through are more realistically-depicted versions of the standard green Warp Pipes of regular Super Mario Bros. games. However, these ones can only travel between areas of the same room, and Luigi himself cannot use them at all since they're barred.
  • In the lobby at the beginning of the game, standing near Mario causes the background music to adopt the melody of the Super Mario Bros. overworld theme, and standing near Peach causes it to adopt the melody of the Super Mario 64 Peach's Castle theme.
  • Mario has been in his hotel room for less than a day and it's already a mess covered in pizza boxes. Luigi has noted his untidy habits before. Additionally, the pizza boxes read "Since 1983", the year in which Luigi debuted in the Game & Watch Mario Bros. game.
  • Luigi once again finds the latest Poltergust model in E. Gadd's car.
  • In the Hotel Shops, Luigi collects and uses various keys bearing the four playing card suits, much like he did in his first haunted adventure.
  • During his battle with Luigi, Amadeus Wolfgeist possesses his own piano to attack Luigi with, referencing the haunted piano in Super Mario 64's Big Boo's Haunt.
  • When being launched upwards in the Garden Suites, Luigi makes the iconic "punch the air" jump pose.
  • Two of the movie posters in Paranormal Productions are depicting Mario Strikers.
  • Nikki, Lindsey and Ginny aren't the first trio of ghostly sisters encountered by Luigi.
  • Captain Fishook wouldn't be the first shark pirate captain with a hook for a fin in the Mario franchise.
  • One puzzle in the Dance Hall involves pushing a section of a brick wall out and having Luigi hit it by burst-jumping underneath it for money and a gem, a clear nod to the standby Mario mechanic of breaking blocks by jumping under them. It even adopts the appearance of a used block when Luigi finishes.
  • This isn't the first time King Boo is fought and defeated by burning his mouth, although admittedly the first time was a different King Boo.
  • Some of the rare ghosts in the ScareScraper reflect older Luigi's Mansion ghost types. The Goob-only Medic class has a familiar green color, which, paired with their base species being analogous, makes them evoke Greenies from Dark Moon. Likewise, the Oozer-only Electric class evokes Hiders from Dark Moon due to their light blue color and comparable species. Also, the Diffusing ghost class, which spews mini ghosts, appropriately includes a Hammer type, since their function of spawning distracting mini-mooks is the same as the Beetle Whisperer class in Dark Moon which was based on the Slammer species.
  • King Boo's fake copies in his Doppelgänger Attack have no middle teeth, reflecting the Early Installment Character-Design Difference of all of the Boos in the first Luigi's Mansion.
• Nekomata: Polterkitty has multiple tails, is a shapeshifting ghost cat, and even has traditional Japanese music as her Leitmotif. Taking her down involves pulling off her tails, and the second time she's encountered, the last one allows Luigi to fully vacuum her up.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Captain Fishhook, the boss on the pirate-themed Spectral Catch level, is a ghostly pirate shark.
• No OSHA Compliance:
  • The Boilerworks on the lower basement level would not be safe for the living to work in due to the presence of spikes, hazardous walkways, and frequent flooding. Though considering the hotel staff are all ghosts, this isn't much of an issue for them.
  • In the credits, everyone helps re-build the hotel. Cue pictures of Luigi and co. sitting on girders and the like without any kind of safety equipment to stop them from falling off.
• Non-Standard Game Over:
  • If you fail to outrun King Boo at the beginning of the game, you'll be treated with a cutscene where King Boo corners Luigi and throws the portrait frame on top of him as Luigi screams in terror. Luigi also happens to be in the same pose that you would see in the standard Game Over sequence.
  • This also happens if you let Toad get taken away by a ghost while escorting him back to the elevator.
• Notzilla: One boss fight of the game is a big homage to Kaiju films. Luigi meets a ghost film director named Morty who casts him in a giant-monster movie... as one of the monsters, meaning that Luigi gets to fight a ghost wearing the top half of a Godzilla-like costume in the middle of a miniature city.
• Numbered Sequels: An interesting case, as the previous game didn't make use of this in North America. This was due to the game being released with less of a gap since Dark Moon than Dark Moon had since the original, so the number felt more like it was cementing the game as part of an established franchise, rather than it being a surprise sequel over a decade later like Dark Moon was.
• Ominous Pipe Organ: Ominous organ music plays whenever you enter a room where a Boo is hiding.
• One-Winged Angel: When you finally corner Polterkitty, she will Hulk Out into a big, teleporting hunting cat which promptly attempts to maul Luigi.
• Out Of Control Popcorn: One of the collectibles is obtained through a popcorn machine that bursts under the expansion of its popcorn.
• Painful Pointy Pufferfish: Before the boss fight with Kruller in a storage room, the ghost frantically searches for a weapon in a cardboard box, and one of the items he pulls out is a pufferfish. Cue Kruller screaming in pain while shaking the fish off.
• Panthera Awesome: While Polterkitty is usually a ghostly housecat, she will transform into a large, dangerous panther-like monster whenever cornered.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: The hotel staff are obviously ghosts in masks, complete with plainly visible straps. They also plainly have no ankles and one of them even floats out of his boots if interacted with. None of our heroes fully catch on, but Luigi will make a perturbed face around them.
• Permanently Missable Content: While not game-breaking, there are several puzzles and interactions granting money that are only available at specific points of the game. This is most common with things that can only be done while you have a Toad with you to launch during an escort sequence, but there are other cases, like an electrical box in the Boilerworks that can only be opened while the water is filling the place, since you can't open a pipe for Gooigi after the water drains to reach it, and a Golden Goob that will only appear if you run the film in Morty's room before the floor's boss fight. None of these interactions are tied to achievements or gems, but they could impact your end-game rank by denying you some treasure.
• Phantom-Zone Picture: Mario, some Toads and Princess Peach get caught in paintings by King Boo. He also manages to capture E. Gadd (though he's rescued fairly quickly) and, if you get a Game Over, Luigi himself finally gets caught! The most extreme example, however, happens in the final phase of the Final Boss, where King Boo gets so fed up with Luigi that he produces a picture frame large enough to swallow up the whole hotel, himself included, if you don't beat him in four minutes.
• Pickup Hierarchy:
  • Primary: Elevator buttons.
  • Secondary: Keys, Boos.
  • Tertiary: Cash.
  • Extra: Gems (you usually have to go out of your way to obtain those).
• Piñata Enemy: Gold rats, spiders, ghosts, fish, and crows are hidden throughout the hotel and give a large amount of money if you manage to defeat them.
• Piranha Problem: For whatever reason, there are red-bellied piranhas in the sewers and tunnels underneath the hotel, although they're not much more than a minor nuisance.
• Platform-Activated Ability: The Super Suction, a very powerful ability that allows Luigi to suck nearly everything next to him with an electrified wind vortex created from the Poltergust G-00, can only be activated when the Poltergust itself is plugged via a cord-like electric beam to a special socket which, depending on the case, is either erected from the floor or placed in a wall.
• Plot Hole: If King Boo's painting is E. Gadd's favorite, why did he sell him at a garage sale in Dark Moon?
• Point of No Return: Before going through the door that leads to the rooftop in Hellen Gravely's office, Luigi receives a call from E. Gadd, who asks if he is ready to continue going. You won't be able to go back if you do, unless you quit the game and load your last save.
• Pre-Final Boss: Hellen Gravely is the owner of The Last Resort and the one who set King Boo free. Luigi faces her on the hotel's top floor. After her defeat, all that remains is an obstacle-free climb to the roof, then the fight with King Boo.
• Pretty in Mink: Hellen Gravely comes down in style with sunglasses and a fur stole. However, she's a Rich Bitch who is part of a Big Bad Duumvirate with King Boo in capturing everyone and getting revenge on Luigi. Also, she's not really pretty and is using some kind of glamor to look beautiful.
• Production Foreshadowing: The Poltergust G-00 debuted in the reveal trailer for Simon and Richter Belmont in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate one month before the reveal trailer for this game. In the former trailer, Luigi fired one of his plungers at a Mummy. In the game proper, his front and back throw resembles the new Slam mechanic.
• Production Throwback:
  • Prior to his boss battle, Amadeus Wolfgeist is heard playing a piano arrangement of the Metroid Prime: Federation Force title theme, as a Musical Nod to the previous game developed by Next Level Games.
  • The posters of the movie-themed floor feature past Next Level Games creations, including Punch-Out!!, Mario Strikers Charged, Metroid Prime: Federation Force, and of course Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon. If you break the Punch-Out!! poster, some money will spill out, as well as a green boxing glove resembling Little Mac's which you can shoot out from the Poltergust.
• Pull a Rabbit out of My Hat: An unsurprising motif in the magic show-themed Twisted Suites. There are several stuffed rabbit dolls you can vacuum up for an achievement, and one of the magician bosses pulls another one of the dolls out of her hat in a cutscene. There's also a topsy-turvy image that shows a magician from one angle, but a rabbit in a hat when vacuumed to flip it, and some purple Spirit Balls turn a key into a golden rabbit that you have to catch and revert to normal.
• Rage Against the Reflection: Used as Foreshadowing. Hellen Gravely's bedroom features a vanity mirror with deep cracks. You later find out that the seemingly beautiful Hellen is actually a monstrous hag if she doesn't apply enough of her magic makeup.
• Recurring Boss: Polterkitty, who occasionally steals your elevator buttons and has to be hunted down. Unlike the Polterpup, she fights back viciously when cornered.
• Recurring Riff: Unlike the Theme-and-Variations Soundtrack of the previous games, every floor of the Last Resort Hotel has its own ambient theme and often with one or more variations. Naturally, the final floor's is an arrangement of the title theme music.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: The Lethal variants of the boss ghosts, introduced in Scarescraper's first update. They all have black bodies with glowing red eyes and auras, and they can all knock Luigi out in a single hit.
• Retcon: A small one: Polterpup has pupil-less eyes in this game yet is still the friendly, helpful dog he is even though Evershade Valley's ghosts only lacked pupils while going berserk due to the Dark Moon being shattered.
• Rooftop Confrontation: Since the game has all its boss fights take place on various floors of the Last Resort hotel, of course the final battle with King Boo takes place on the rooftop. Well, that and the reason the battle takes place outside of the hotel is because the final phase has him create a magic picture frame large enough to swallow up the whole building.
• Sand Blaster: The boss ghost Serpci uses this when battling Luigi, protectively encasing herself in a sandy replica of her head while creating giant sand snakes to attack him.
• Saw a Woman in Half: This trick appears in the Twisted Suites, and using the Poltergust to move the saw will reveal the two Golden Goobs who would presumably play the "head" and "legs" roles in the trick.
• Schmuck Bait: Luigi and friends get lured into yet another trap on the promise of being invited to a luxurious hotel. Even King Boo didn’t expect them to fall for essentially the same trap as in the first game. He prepared for it all anyway.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: E. Gadd attempts this upon being rescued, only to be stopped by Luigi who tells him that his friends are trapped inside the hotel. E. Gadd then begrudgingly agrees to stay behind and help Luigi rescue them.
• Self-Deprecation: Professor E. Gadd talks highly about his newest invention: The Virtual Boo. He tells Luigi about his plans to publicly market it and it'll "fly off the shelves". Anyone who knows about the history behind the console will see how heavily the irony is being coated on. Even the visual graphics when compared to the Game Boy Horror and the Dual Scream are worse.^note The Game Boy Horror was capable of a full-quality video call between Luigi and E. Gadd, whilst the Virtual Boo's E. Gadd Hotline uses a low-res display with a very low framerate which makes the video communication look like pre-rendered sprites with only a red palette to work with.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Luigi and Mario, as per usual. Highlighted during the climb to the final battle, where Mario cheerily barrels ahead and uses his jumping skills to easily clear the same obstacles that require Luigi to carefully maneuver around them. Mario even accidentally causes a few Jump Scares for his poor brother.
• Sequel Escalation: Downplayed. In the original Luigi's Mansion, King Boo concentrated on having Mario captured, while in Dark Moon he repeated the plan alongside a scheme to destroy the universe. This time, he captures Mario and Luigi's other friends, and in a Freeze-Frame Bonus, you can see King Boo holding an empty portrait in front of a cowering, poltergust-less Luigi. E. Gadd is also captured as well in a painting, but unlike Dark Moon there's no universe-destroying aspect. That being said, the ScareScraper multiplayer mode can now allow up to 8 players, compared to Dark Moon's 4, and this is by far the largest location the series takes place in.
• Shark Fin of Doom: Worn by some ghosts down in the Boilerworks who will pop your rubber ring given the chance. Also naturally used for introducing Captain Fishook on The Spectral Catch floor.
• Shell Game: The three ghost magicians; Nikki, Lindsey, Ginny, in the boss fight. After one of them gets captured, one will replace the missing member with a bomb, forcing the player to pay attention in order to avoid the trap. This becomes more difficult when there's only one sister left as the lights will start flickering once the hats start spinning faster around, requiring the player to account for the hats' motion during the brief blackout to keep tracking the correct one.
• Shifting Sand Land: Floor 10, the Tomb Suites. Its starting area is a very wide sand-filled room whose main attraction is the pyramid located at the center. The boss is Serpci, who sends Luigi into the basement of the pyramid and he has to make his way back to confront her.
• Shock and Awe: King Boo and the boss of the ScareScraper, Boolossus, can call down several bolts of lightning from above, forcing the player to find a safe spot before they strike.
• Shockwave Stomp: Hammers can slam the ground, sending out powerful waves to hurt Luigi. This is also one of the attacks used by Boolossus in the Scarescraper though its range decreases as Boolossus decreases in size. King Boo can also use this move.
• Shout-Out:
  • When Luigi and Gooigi are about to finish off the Notzilla for Morty's movie by blowing the fireball back at it, it looks like they're crossing the streams. Bonus points for also setting a giant monster on fire.
  • Again on the movie-themed floor, Luigi encounters a stand-in for Sadako Yamamura and her American counterpart Samara Morgan.
  • The fire helmets in Paranormal Productions' fire set have the number 237 on them. Later, in the Twisted Suites, there's a rug in one hallway with a distinctive grey and orange pattern, but with the colors reversed.
  • The Giant Spider prop on the Paranormal Productions set that has Morty's megaphone is clearly based on Kumonga, having his distinct brown and yellow stripes, spiked legs, and hairy joints. You even have to burn the web and can burn the prop down, similar to what happens in Son of Godzilla.
  • At one point, Luigi gets to a museum themed floor with a skeleton T-Rex coming to life and attacking the poor plumber.
  • In the firefighter themed scenario, yet again on the movie-themed floor, there's a very familiar looking bicycle with a wrapped up blanket in a basket. Unwrapping it reveals a gem Goob.
  • Two of the pool floaties in the Boilerworks are a black swan and a white swan.
  • In one section of the Boilerworks, there's a lone balloon down in the pipes, and paper boats are present throughout the area.
  • King MacFrights, being a ghostly king with a clearly Scottish-sounding name, seems like a loose allusion to Macbeth, a play featuring regicide and ghosts set in Scotland.
  • On the second level of floor three (the Hotel Shops), there's a chance that the chairs on the right of the escalator will be balanced on a nearby table, as in the famous dining room scene from the movie Poltergeist (proof◊).
  • One of the ending pictures◊ shows Luigi — along with Polterpup, Mario, Peach, Professor Gadd, Toad and some of the newly-turned good ghosts during the construction of the new hotel — re-enacting the iconic Lunch Atop A Skyscraper photograph.
• Songs in the Key of Lock: One of the collectible gems is unlocked by using the air from Luigi's Poltergust to play the franchise's main melody on a group of bottles.
• Sorting Algorithm of Threatening Geography: Bizarrely played straight then averted at the end. The hotel follows a Bizarrchitecture where the lower floors are rather mundane, but the higher floors become increasingly more nonsensical as you proceed, featuring castles, a pirate beach and even an ancient pyramid. Then you reach the 13th Floor, which is a rather standard Fitness Center that wouldn't be out-of-place in your average 4-star hotel, followed by a typical nightclub that's not really outside the realm of possibility for fancier buildings. And then there's the penthouse, which, when you ignore the insane security measures and the King Boo theming, is close to what an actual penthouse suite can be like.
• Sound Test: Although this wasn't originally included within the game at release, patch 1.3.0 added this to the in-game gallery, each separated into albums that contain all the specific music heard on a floor or in selections for tracks that fit elsewhere (such as the themes for Polterkitty).
• Spanner in the Works:
  • Polterpup helps out Luigi at various moments but most notably before the final battle when he pushes Luigi out of the way of the portrait King Boo slammed down on Mario and Peach. King Boo doesn't even seem to notice Polterpup.
  • Hellen Gravely also inadvertently creates her own spanner by inviting Professor E. Gadd to the hotel under the pretence of holding a ghost convention in order to kidnap him. While this seems like a great idea as E. Gadd's inventions are responsible for capturing King Boo as well as other ghosts, E. Gadd decided that he not only would he bring along some ghost portraits to show off at the 'convention', he'd also bring Gooigi and the latest Poltergust G-00 too, the very thing needed to defeat King Boo.
• Special Effect Failure: Deliberately invoked in a filming room that parodies The Ring. The Sadako/Samara prop that's supposed to be a Jump Scare has a rubber ducky resting on top of its head.
• Stage Magician: Nikki, Lindsey, and Ginny, the triple boss of the Twisted Suites. Their magic is more than an illusion, and the entire floor is based on magic shows.
• Stealing the Credit: After beating Kruller (the mall cop ghost boss), which is fought entirely with Gooigi, Luigi exclaims "I did it!" from outside the boss arena. In co-op mode, this is followed by Gooigi parroting him from inside the arena, causing Luigi to cringe in realization. However, it's complicated by the fact that it's ambiguous whether Gooigi is really autonomous or sentient.^note It's all but stated that when Gooigi is active, Luigi is controlling him (which is why Luigi himself is not able to move during this).
• Stealthy Mook: Slinkers act much like Sneakers from Dark Moon. They're prone to approaching Luigi to hound and then grab him, inflicting damage during the time they do so. If a Toad is around, they can sometimes use him as a hostage.
• Studiopolis: The eighth floor of the haunted hotel is Paranormal Productions, a movie studio themed floor which is the residence of a creatively blocked movie director ghost. Each room is a separate movie theater set modeled after a different genre of film with plots that must be acted out by the player in order to progress.
• Stylistic Suck:
  • The Virtual Boo, in keeping with the Self-Deprecation, can only display red and black graphics and the video calls with E. Gadd are very low res and have an extremely choppy framerate.
  • The ghost girl prop in Paranormal Productions is less scary when you see the sunglasses and rubber duck on her head.
  • The boss of Paranormal Productions is a basic mook wearing a cheap Notzilla costume that only covers half of its body.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: During the brief period when we get to see Mario in action, where he effortlessly wall jumps to the roof of the hotel (something which takes Luigi a good few minutes to do) while showing no fear whatsoever, it becomes clear that this would be a very different game if he were the player character.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The game has all-new ghost types (excepting Boos), but most of them are extremely similar to those of Dark Moon.
  • Goobs are like Greenies, being the most basic type of ghost with the lowest health, and employing weapons and protection from Luigi's Poltergust.
  • Oozers are this game's equivalent to Hiders, being skinny ghosts that hide in furniture and throw things at Luigi while he's busy catching other ghosts. Additionally, their ability to leave tripping hazards in the form of banana peels is similar to both Dark Moon's Gobbers and the first game's Garbage Can Ghosts. Going a step further, the first time you meet these slim ghosts is in a pool hall, and they attack by throwing pool balls at you, not unlike Slim Bankshot from the original Luigi's Mansion.
  • Hammers are the most...transparent copy, being large red ghosts with heavy attacks like Slammers in Dark Moon. Their faces are almost identical to Slammers' as well.
  • Slinkers are like Sneakers, as they sneak behind Luigi to startle him out of a suction, and can target Toads. They can also latch on to Luigi like the first game's Grabbing Ghosts.
  • Trappers, being the least obvious example, still share similarities with Creepers, being anchored ghosts without HP that can incapacitate Luigi. They also have the undetectable nature of the first game's Ceiling Surprises, which also inspired Creepers. Trappers render Luigi completely helpless, however, and Gooigi is required to save him and defeat the ghosts.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity:
  • Early in the Garden Suites, you come across an elevator button, with no boss ghost in sight. That was quick! Or at least it would be, if it weren't for Dr. Potter growing a plant underneath and taking it up several stories high up the flight of stairs.
  • While it's a very short level, the Dance Hall also has this scenario. The button is out on the floor, but as you approach it, DJ Phantasmagloria and a Goob dance crew appear and take the button.
• Swallow the Key:
  • Luigi is haunted twice over by Polterkitty, who pops out of the elevator control panel with the button he just tried to install, subsequently swallowing it whole and forcing him to chase after it. It gets away via detachable tails, but it only has so many of those. No need to ask why he doesn't try to use the elevator anyway; even if the hotel wasn't haunted, Luigi's a plumber, not an electrician.
  • One of the elevator buttons also repeatedly gets stolen and swallowed by some of the rats around the hotel, though they're considerably easier to deal with compared to Polterkitty.
• Taking You with Me: Attempted during the final boss. After Luigi and Gooigi wail on King Boo twice, he angrily initiates a Last Ditch Move where he enlarges the painting that Mario and co. are trapped in to building size and tries to bring it down on the entire hotel to finally seal Luigi inside, except while sealing himself inside in the process. The player only has four minutes to vacuum King Boo before it plummets down on the building, ''Majora's Mask'' style.
• Teamwork Puzzle Game: Thanks to Gooigi's presence, this is now possible. Many puzzles require the player to switch between Luigi and Gooigi in order to progress through levels or beat certain bosses.
• Terrifying Tyrannosaur: Ug, a ghost caveman who haunts the Unnatural History Museum and guards the Blue Toad portrait, decides to give Luigi a real scare by possessing the skeleton of a T. rex and then eating the portrait just as Luigi is about to save Blue Toad. The T. rex skeleton breaks free from its display after Luigi damages its ribcage in the first two stages, and goes on a berserk rampage to crush the scared plumber with its footsteps, sonic roars, and tail slaps. When Luigi destroys the rest of the ribcage, the T. rex falls apart and leaves Ug in the open.
• Time-Limit Boss: The fight with King Boo turns into one after landing two hits on him, for he summons a giant painting that will consume the entire hotel with Luigi inside in four minutes unless you deliver that final blow.
• Undead Fossils: The boss in the Unnatural History Museum is a T-Rex skeleton that is being controlled by Ug the ghost caveman.
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: The Master Suite is heavily guarded with security lasers all around, but you wouldn't know it until you stumble into one. To make them visible, you need to perform a Burst to throw up some dust, which is how beams of light and lasers work in real life, requiring some kind of fog or haze to scatter them so they are visible.
• The Unfought: Unlike the other boss ghosts, Morty is the only one that doesn't fight Luigi despite the built-up suspense around getting his megaphone back and getting him to notice Luigi. Instead, the boss of his floor is the monster-suit ghost in his film, and he happily gives Luigi an elevator button once Luigi helps him finish his film (by defeating said monster-suit ghost). You can suck up Morty once you get the button from him while he's finishing up the movie, or after he's done if the player decides to leave him alone and go after a few more floors.
• Verbal Backspace: The narrator of the E3 2019 trailer says of the hotel "You may never leave...ergh, want to leave."
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • You can capture Morty in his room, after he willingly gives you the elevator button. He's a completely optional capture, and deciding to go through with it gives you an achievement, though Luigi doesn't sound too proud. What's more is that if you choose to catch him before he finishes editing the movie you helped him make (it gets finished after the first fight with Polterkitty), the movie will never get completed.
  • You can zap the Toads and Professor E. Gadd with the flashlight.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: The majority of the game is cute and funny even when scary, except for King Boo, who's gone even more insane, looks more terrifying than ever, and is doing everything possible to ensure his victory. This includes capturing both Professor E. Gadd and Princess Peach in paintings (capturing the former leaves Luigi on his own in the beginning, while he seems to have captured the latter purely out of spite), and blocking off the entrance/exit so that Luigi is actually trapped in the hotel. And unlike the first two games, this one has a Game Over cutscene in which we get to see King Boo admiring his collection of paintings (now including Luigi) before turning to the player with a devilish grin.
• Villain Shoes: In most of the movies in Morty's floor, Gooigi still plays the role of the hero, defending a castle and helping Luigi against a kaiju. But, to advance at one point, he has to play a part in a movie where a house is burning and he attacks the firefighters.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Once Luigi reaches the hotel roof, King Boo drops his Slasher Smile entirely, and opts to trap everyone in an ensemble portrait. But after Luigi narrowly escapes, thanks to Polterpup, he finally loses it and threatens to kill Luigi in the Final Battle.
  • Hellen Gravely becomes increasingly unhinged as Luigi gets closer to the top floor, to the point that when they finally meet for her boss fight, she's seething in rage at his presence. It's enough to make her drop her beauty facade and reveal that she's really an ugly hag.
• Villains Out Shopping: You come across a lot of ghosts (including several of the bosses) just minding their own business, and they can be just as startled by Luigi as Luigi is by them!
• Visual Pun:
  • Amadeus Wolfgeist becomes extremely unhinged and angry after you survive the first two rounds of his fight, and he dives into his piano to possess it in fury. It seems like there may be a "mad pianist"/"mad piano" pun in reference to the Mad Piano from Super Mario 64, the Mario world's only other haunted piano that became infamous as one of the scariest things in the series.
  • If you spin the clock hands in the kitchen, it will spew out dollar bills... because time is money, you see.
  • There are some places where the toilet-paper rolls are made of dollar bills, suggesting a joke about the ghosts "being so rich, they wipe their asses with money".
  • One bathroom inside the Great Stage contains a tuba stuck inside the toilet. Blowing into the tuba causes it to play a note and produce a gem from the other toilet. Hmmm....
  • Polterkitty basically runs from Luigi all the time, and even when cornered and assuming a stronger form, she only attacks him from behind. One of the ways to call a cat is pussy.
• Vocal Evolution: Luigi's voice in this game is noticeably deeper and raspier and became even more nasal, almost like Waluigi's, to the point that some didn't recognize Charles Martinet's voice at first. Mario's voice is also deeper than usual here. This is especially noticeable when Luigi screams, as his screams are less intense, especially compared to Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, which was released six years earlier and had Luigi letting out hysterical and high-pitched screams, causing him to come off as older and wearier in Luigi's Mansion 3. The reason why the voice is so different is because Charles was aging, as he was 64 by the time of the game's release, and his increasingly old age was starting to change his voice.
• Walk Like an Egyptian: The final barrier to return to the bedroom in the Tomb Suites is a wall. Inspecting it shows a graphic of Luigi in this pose, so he imitates the pose and lines up with it, activating the panel, which spins him back into the bedroom.
• The Walls Are Closing In:
  • Castle MacFrights' dungeon cells include a spike wall trap that incrementally closes in, trapping Luigi. Gooigi must deal with the scene outside the bars in time to save Luigi.
  • The Tomb Suites feature a room with a scale that must be weighed so that the counter above matches the image thrice. Once Luigi completes the first image, the ceiling begins to descend. Fortunately, completing the second image raises it a bit so he can solve the puzzle a third time and stop the trap for good.
• "Wanted!" Poster: After his first run-in with and narrow escape from King Boo, the ghosts put up wanted posters of Luigi throughout the hotel, along with a reward of a bag of gold under his head.
• Waterfront Boss Battle: Clem's fight takes place in a pool of water and involves him and Luigi floating around in inner tubes, with Luigi having to avoid the Spikes of Doom around the edges of the pool and the naval mines Clem tosses.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Despite the boss ghosts all being captured and Morty possibly left alone, none of them (sans Polterkitty and Hellen with King Boo) appear again during the credits or ending sequence along with the rebuilt Hotel, despite the vault being emptied in the ending cinematic and releasing the standard ghosts.
• What the Hell, Hero?: If Luigi attempts to leave a room before freeing one of his friends from a painting, E. Gadd immediately expresses dismay that Luigi would even do such a thing.
• Wolfpack Boss: Nikki, Lindsey and Ginny. The three magicians challenge Luigi at the same time during their boss battle in the Twisted Suites.
• You Have to Burn the Web: Occasionally, Luigi needs to suck up an incendiary exponent with the Poltergust G-00 and push it against the web in order to progress.
• Zerg Rush: Attempted by the ghosts before you unlock the final door to go and fight Hellen Gravely. Luigi has to fight off swarms of ghosts whilst also periodically jumping over lasers.
• Zero-Effort Boss: You literally cannot die against Kruller as he can only be reached by Gooigi who can be endlessly regenerated. Besides, his main method of attack is a water gun- sure it works on Gooigi, but it would have no effect on Luigi.

---

"Bye, everybody."