Fawful

**Fawful** (also known as **Lord Fawful** to his minions) is an eccentric Beanish character and a major antagonist in the *Mario & Luigi* series. He is the secondary antagonist of *Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga* and its remake and the main antagonist of *Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story* and its remake. He also appears as the shopkeeper of Fawful's Bean 'n' Badge in *Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time*. Fawful is a mechanical genius, but his common sense suffers due to his uncontrollable anger, which often causes him to act in a delusional manner. His name comes from the words "guffaw" (a term that refers to powerful laughter) and "awful."

### Appearance

Fawful, like other members of the Beanish species, is a green-skinned character who wears eye glasses, has a single strand of hair and is always seen with a big grin throughout his appearances in games and is relatively the same height of both Mario and Luigi, sharing a lot in common with Professor E. Gadd. In *Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga*, Fawful wears a red cloak that looks ripped and torn from the bottom and is commonly shown with his headgear. His cloak hides most of his body, leaving only his head and legs visible. During his encounter in Bowser's Castle, he is seen with a pink, V-neck suit with wing-like that covers his arms and legs, but visibly shows them. He also has a large antenna sticking out of his head, replacing his single-strand hair.

In *Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time*, Fawful is initially seen with a hooded cloak, though after Baby Mario and Baby Luigi hear his story about his past events in the previous game, he appears with a white suit and large antenna, reminiscence of his appearance during his encounter in Bowser's Castle from *Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga*.

In *Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story*, Fawful now wears a black suit with black gloves and grey sandals, which is hidden underneath his red and grey coat. Most of the time, he is shown on a green, circular hovercraft. Once he transforms into Dark Fawful by absorbing some of the Dark Star's power, his glasses turn red and both sides of his coat are separated, revealing his suit, which now has a black star on it. His coat also gains a purple and red color scheme, and the collar is opened and looks spiky in appearance. After his defeat at the hands of Bowser in the Conference Hall, Fawful turns into a small, black "bug" that has two arms (switchable between four legs) and a star antenna, still keeping his red eye glasses and trademark grin. Once his bug form transforms inside Bowser during the final battle against Dark Bowser, it transforms into a larger form with three leg appendages. It still retains the two arms and antenna, which has the Dark Star Core at the top. Though currently is now living the life with his wife.

### Personality

Fawful's motivation is usually driven by his anger, and he rarely shows concern for anyone else besides Cackletta, whom he served with blind devotion in *Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga*, and Midbus, who showed the same devotion to Fawful himself in *Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story*. He enjoys taunting his enemies and thinks he is infallible. While initially content to be Cackletta's lackey, when Fawful becomes a villain in his own right, he proves to be incredibly narcissistic, building statues of himself, selling merchandise and pasting his likeness everywhere wherever he goes, hosting shows and delivering speeches about himself, and even having much of his army physically resemble him, typically with green coloration and his trademark wide grin. Even prior to Cackletta's final defeat, however, Fawful when about to fight the Mario Bros. for the final time briefly considers the possibility of rising beyond a "toady" of Cackletta's. He is also shown to be manipulative, which can be shown in how he feigned "acceptance" of defeat from Bowser and even orchestrated a "victory feast" specifically to fatten Bowser up (with it being implied that he did this specifically to draw out Princess Peach), and in the alternate story mode *Bowser Jr.'s Journey* in the remake, it is heavily implied that he had arranged for Bowser to not be invited to the emergency conference dealing with the Blorbs in order to force a confrontation between the two parties.

### Speech

Fawful speaks in Engrish, often saying things that are redundant or hardly make sense (if at all). Fawful is made even stranger by his uses of several food metaphors and references throughout his speeches (*"I drizzled rage dressing on the country next door. Rage dressing on a salad of evil!"* or *"Two pieces of Fawful chortle bread get put together on Beanbean Kingdom, making a danger sandwich!"*) and refers to the Mario Bros. as "fink-rats".

Fawful often speaks about himself in a third person point of view, only speaking in first person when saying phrases such as *"I HAVE FURY!"*. In *Mario & Luigi Bowser's Inside Story*, he often replaces the word fury with other odd words, such as "chortles" or "excitement " or "uneasiness". When talking to Baby Mario and Baby Luigi in *Partners in Time* he often skips words such as *do* or *are* in the beginnings of sentences resulting in him saying things such as *"You wearing this now?"*.

Fawful usually rhymes his sentences and/or sing-songilly says them, though there are times where not even he can think of a rhyme to his sentence (*"Fawful sings a song of bad! Mushroom Kingdom is so sad! All of it is for Fawful! And the... rhyme... with... that..."*).

In Japanese versions, Fawful adds strings of "ru" (る) onto every sentence, sometimes even saying "Fururururu" (ふるるるるるる﻿ ). In French versions, Fawful speaks with a strong accent, exaggerating when aspiring the letter *R*, and frequently saying "Fuyuyuyuyu" ; he also does strange metaphors. In German versions, he stutters. In the American Spanish Versions, he speaks a literal translation of English to Spanish. In the European Spanish versions, he speaks in a very refined Spanish with a lot of set phrases. He speaks, also, with a slight tone "enthusiastic". In the Italian versions he speaks with lots of invented words such as "disgustevole" (disgust able). In the Korean version, he talks in a similar way in Japanese version, adding strings of "rong" (롱) in every sentence as in "Rongrongrongrong" (롱롱롱롱). In the Russian version he speaks with many mistranslations and grammar and syntax errors, thus parodying 90s and early 2000s poor quality bootleg translations of video games.

### Powers and abilities

Though he is a bit of a loon, Fawful is a genius, shown by how complex his Vacuum Helmet is. He uses the rocket-jets on his Vacuum Helmet to get around places. There is also a vacuum peripheral on the helmet, which can be used to shoot energy balls and was also used to suck in Cackletta's spirit to transfer to Bowser and create Bowletta. He also sports a laser gun which he can use to power up his minions or fire beams. In *Bowser's Inside Story*, many enemies have masks resembling Fawful's face, making it possible that they were invented by him.

### Attacks

Fawful is the second boss of *Superstar Saga*. When fighting him, he has little HP. Being an early battle, Fawful does not have a large variety of attacks. In his first attack, he shoots green energy balls at the Mario Bros. from his Headgear. In order to avoid the attack, the player must look at the color of the text when he calls the heroes "Fink Rats". If the text is red, he shoots at Mario, but if the text is green, he shoots at Luigi. Then, later in the battle, Fawful will say "Have you readiness for this?!?", in which he will shoot two energy balls - one at each brother, although the color of "this" indicates which brother Fawful will target first. After 18 points of damage, the bean's helmet will fall off, making him unable to shoot fire balls. In this state, Fawful has only one other attack. He can run up to a bro. and try to roll into him. This can be countered by a well-timed jump.

Later at the end of the game, Fawful is fought again as the penultimate boss. This time, he is much stronger with more than 12 times his original health and fights from within a giant ship resembling his head. This dome-shaped ship completely protects Fawful and shoots powerful lasers at both bros. Unlike in the first battle, Fawful has many different attacks, some of which can last for a long time. During the battle, he hides in his ship, defending him from all attacks.

He uses his ship to perform some of his attacks. The main attack used by his ship is shooting laser eye beams, which move around the bros., trying to hit them. As the battle progresses, this attack lasts longer. Sometimes when it is the bean's turn to attack, he exits his ship for a short moment and shoots more laser bolts from his antenna. The shadows created by the bolts appear above one of the heroes, letting the player know which character is being targeted. To avoid the attack, the Marios need to hit the bolts with their hammers and send them flying at Fawful, giving him a small amount of damage. In addition, when the ship gets hit four times, Fawful gets enraged and spins around, shooting more laser bolts at the heroes for them to counter with their hammers. After the bolts spin around the area twice, the Bros. are no longer able to use their hammers, making them jump over the remaining bolts. After hitting his ship four times (eight times in the remake), the ship eventually overheats, causing Fawful to stay out of the vehicle for three turns. When this happens, the bros. can deal more damage to him. Fawful does not attack at all during this state.

After taking enough damage, he starts charging a laser beam while putting a Fawfulized block over the heroes' heads, making them rapidly jump to break it. Shortly after the blocks appear, the laser beam swoops across the stage, trying to hit the Marios. If the blocks are still intact and above the two heroes, they are unable to jump over the beam. Fawful's final attack is charging at the bros. The player has to hit his body with the brothers' hammers to counter him as he swoops down at the heroes. During the attack, he flaps his right arm when attacking Mario and flaps his left arm when attacking Luigi.

In *Bowser's Inside Story*, Fawful drains the Dark Star's power with his Vacuum Helmet and is fought by Bowser as Dark Fawful. He's shown to have many more abilities, including very high speed, dark magic and other powerful attacks. His Vacuum Helmet is also with him in this battle and can give him 300 HP when needed. After being beaten, Fawful collapses into the Dark Fawful Bug and escapes from Bowser. Despite all his genius, Fawful is physically frail, to the point of finding Princess Peach a huge burden. As such, it is logical to assume that Fawful meant Midbus to carry anything heavy for him.