Let’s see: Mario is a sociopath, Peach is
a bipolar dictator commanding an army of brainwashed fungi, and Bowser is a struggling single parent. Is there anyone left? Well hello… [Intro] Hello Internet! Welcome to Game Theory, where today, you’re
going to learn how you’ve been brainwashed without even knowing it! But more on that later. At this point, you’d think we would be able
to just leave the Mario franchise alone. I mean, is no corner of the Mushroom Kingdom
sacred?! No, no it’s not. And let’s face it, if my Mario theories
have shown us anything, it’s that Luigi is probably the best of the bunch. Although most of the 160+ games he’s appeared in have kept him in the background, yeah 160...I was surprised too. When he’s not there to just fill out the
doubles for Mario’s tennis games or ride in the back of Mario’s Kart, we get the
sense that he’s an awesome guy. Sure, he may be a coward, but even in the
face of fear, he still gets the job done. He clearly loves, admires, and respects his
brother, as we see countless times throughout the series. Specifically on Star Hill in Super Mario RPG
and from his journal in Paper Mario. I mean, the guy's willing to suffer through
haunted mansions and horrendous spinoff titles whenever Mario goes missing. And he’s even been known to cry tears of
joy when he successfully saves his brother. He’s just cool. More psychologically deep than pretty much
any other character in the franchise; with fears, hopes, dreams, wishes. And let’s face it, he wears green; Game
Theory’s color is also green, match made in Heaven. I kinda like the guy. You know what? It’s long past time that we give Luigi some well-deserved love. AND YET, once again, as we've seen time and time again in this franchise, looks may be deceiving. Because in researching the lovable underdog Luigi, one particular appearance of his stood out from the rest. If we’re talking about really diving deep
to find out what makes Luigi tick, we need to look no further than a game where we get
to see all the sides of him… all TWO sides, that is. Because the most insightful title for talking
about Luigi is Super Paper Mario. Admittedly, while the characters may seem
“flat” at first, let me tell you there are a lot of "dimensions" to explore here. Get it? They're all paper jokes. I'm sure you got it, and you're just cringing
and hoping that the script moves on. Hey, PewDiePie, put this in your next cringe
compilation, huh? In case you haven’t stumbled into this particular corner of Mario games, I can’t really blame you. This game is perhaps the most unusual in the
official Mario lineup. Outside of the gameplay being completely unique,
and completely bonkers. Requiring you to hop into and out of 2D and
3D environments, the tone of this game is just so much darker, so much more sarcastic and incredibly cynical. Whole worlds get ripped to shreds, leaving
only nothingness in their place. Mario and the gang quite literally travel
to hell, known here as the Underwhere. And breaking all rules, Bowser and Peach pretty
much get married! You know all the creepy music I used in my
early FNAF theories? A bunch came from this game. Yeah, we’ve come a long way from your parent’s
Mario Athletic theme. Regardless, even if you didn’t play Super
Paper Mario, here’s what you need to know: the big baddies for this game aren’t Bowser
and Peach, it’s Count Bleck. Not “Ech,” Jontron. BLECK. And his, like, totally angsty counterculture business associate Nastasia. At an early point in our story, Luigi finds
himself to be the first responder on the scene at Count Bleck’s castle, where he gets duped
by two goombas, who lead him straight to Nastasia. What happens next is why this game will end
up being important for Luigi: Nastasia uses her hypnotic laser eyes to instantly hypnotize
him, turning him into the evil Mr L. "Mr. F" Nope, Mr. L, an arrogant villain with an
attraction to Peach and a jealousy of Mario’s jumping abilities. He fights viciously against Mario and the gang in multiple forms across the entirety of the game, up to and including the final boss. He's violent, he's aggressive, and he is out
for blood. And if you're upset that I didn't put SPOILER
tags before revealing that THIS GUY is Luigi, well then...I just...I just have no words
for you. NO WORDS, I SAY! To understand why this is important for Luigi,
we have to talk about hypnosis. In all the official game wikis, Nastasia is
referred to as having “instantaneous hypnotic powers,” and Luigi is referred to as being
hypnotized. In game, though, Nastasia refers to her power as both hypnosis and as “brainwashing.” So which is it? We need to start off by figuring out the differences between the two. In most definitions, brainwashing and hypnosis are different, but they’re not necessarily completely unrelated. It's probably best to think of brainwashing
as a spectrum: you can brainwash people in a whole bunch of ways with some being way more extreme than others. When you think “brainwashing” I’m sure
you think about things like the Winter Soldier in Captain America, or worse, cult leaders
who brainwash their followers into doing crazy things, like fearing babies toting nuclear
warheads. Actually, yeah, I’m NOT brainwashed and
that thing scares me, so uh...good job cult? Anyway, there are actually three major types
of brainwashing that exist: educational, persuasive, and suggestive, with hypnosis being one of
the stops on that spectrum. The most extreme type of brainwashing is known
as the “education method,” and is the kind of stuff you see in the movies and most
associate with the concept of brainwashing. This is your Winter Solider or CoD: Black
Ops styles of mind control, where torture and isolation are working to alter the way the
mind feels and thinks. As a result, it’s the only type of brainwashing
that literally reprograms the concepts of right and wrong in the human brain. It takes weeks, oftentimes months for someone
to be affected by the educational method, which is why cults indoctrinate people over
the course of years until they’re finally ready to ask them to drink the Kool-Aid...literally. One of the most famous cases of this kind
of brainwashing is the Patty Hearst case. In case you don’t know this one, 19-year-old
Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974. After she was kidnapped, she was left in a
closet for weeks on end with nothing but Liberation Army pamphlets. Every time they let her out of the closet,
they talked to her about politics, threatening to kill her until one day she announced that
she wanted to join their cause. After that, she became one of the most vocal representatives of the Symbionese Liberation Army. She even changed her name to Tania before
robbing a bank, kidnapping two people, and even building bombs to help murder police
officers. And this wasn’t an act to make nice with
her captors. She never attempted to escape and even went to prison for her actions as a member of the army. So you can see the educational method is pretty scary…but it’s also pretty hard to pull off. For example, during the Korean war, North
Korea tried to re-educate tens of thousands of South Korean and American prisoners of
war in special camps designed to brainwash prisoners into being sympathetic to the North
Korean cause. At the end of the war, though, only a few
hundred POWs, including 21 Americans, were reported to have voluntarily remained loyal
to North Korea. Long story short, this kind of brainwashing
is NOT what we’re seeing in Super Paper Mario. This takes years and usually involves extreme
physical and mental torture. What we see happen in the game is practically instantaneous – Nastasia barely has to blink her laser eyes to change Luigi into Mr L.; it’s not possible that this is the educational method. So we move down the spectrum to persuasive
brainwashing. And this is the form that all of us, myself
included, have gone through. Did you ever get a compliment on something
you wore, so you started wearing it more? Or stop doing something because your parents
yelled at you? Well then, congratulations on a successful
brainwashing! Another name for persuasive brainwashing is
simply classical (Operant) conditioning—something a lot of us are familiar with—where our
behavior changes because we get a reward or punishment for doing something. Our beliefs aren’t different, but our expectation
for reward IS. Think about it this way, when you bribe someone
to go against their morals, since that’s a scenario I’m sure happens to you all the
time, that person probably know what they’re doing isn’t right, but they also know they’re
going to get paid for it, so they’re acting based on where they’re going to be
rewarded. You’re not changing their moral code, you’re
just changing their expectation for reward every time they break that moral code. So is that what’s happening with Luigi? Again, no. The dialogue at the beginning of the game
is clear, Nastasia and Count Bleck haven’t offered Luigi anything to cross over to the
dark side and become Mr. L. There’s also no major threat, either. Once Luigi becomes Mr. L, he starts actively making evil decisions on his own, without Nastasia interfering. So that’s not it either, meaning we have
to move to the third and final form of brainwashing: suggestive brainwashing, A.k.a Hypnosis. As I mentioned, Nastasia herself says that
her power is hypnosis, but what does that actually mean? Personally, I always thought that hypnosis
was just a magic trick. There are plenty of people out there, though,
who practice hypnosis as a profession and they’ll tell you a much different story. According to statistics from the Society of
Clinical Hypnosis, hypnosis is a state of selective, focused attention and about 85%
of people can achieve some kind of hypnotic state. But still, this is still just a bunch of malarchy, right? Well...no. Last month I went to a YouTube event in New
York where JackSepticEye and I happened to win a taco challenge judged by world-renowned
chef Rachel Ray...sorry, I had no other opportunity to really brag about that, so I figured I'd
shove it in here. But more to the point, we got to see a real
hypnosis demonstration done on YouTubers who I know and I'm personal friends with. And let me tell you, these guys weren’t acting. And, of course, because it happened to YouTubers, duh, it’s all over YouTube. Cue the clip! At first it starts out fine, the hypnotist just asks
them to relax. That’s nice. Then they start falling over. Then they start licking ice cream…aggressively. And then there come the cows. That, of course, have to be milked…enthusiastically. Joey’s name got switched to EIEIO and FouseyTube
became a fairy. It was…a weird day. Afterward, you can see in Joey Graceffa’s
vlog that he felt awake and aware during the whole experience. "Like, in the moment, like my mind was like, 'Oh, you can do this', like this is what you're supposed to do." Looking at my own personal experience watching that show, it seems pretty clear that the hypnosis happened pretty fast, as quickly
as you saw in the video. It’s just a matter of finding people whose
minds are open to accept the power of suggestion. And look at Luigi -- he’s a textbook candidate: he’s used to taking direction from everyone! He’s been controlled by people all his life,
he’s already used to taking action based on what’s suggested to him.This is also
definitely the closest thing we see to Nastasia’s powers in Super Paper Mario. She’s described as having “instantaneous
hypnotic powers,” which is a little faster than happened at the YouTube event, but frankly
not by all that much. The hypnotist wasn’t shooting hypno-lasers
out of his eyeballs or anything. We also see characters in the game going in
and out of this hypnotic trance: Luigi flips back and forth between himself and Mr L as
fast as you see YouTubers falling asleep and waking back up in the video. Ok, great! So Luigi is hypnotized! That explains what happens to him and why
he becomes the evil Mr. L, right? Actually…no. It turns out that Luigi’s behavior can’t
be explained away by hypnosis. Listen to this clip from the beginning of
my YouTuber hypno-sesh: Stare straight ahead for just a moment. I'll count to three, but not to four, when
I do reach three, all you have to do is just close your eyes, that's all I'm gonna ask
you to do. One, two, and three. Close your eyes. Good! Open them back up. There ya go, there's no motion, potion, magic
pixie dust, Harry Potter's not going to run on stage with a magic wand. There is no "feeling"of hypnosis. All hypnosis feels like is what you imagine
it to be. Hypnosis is what you imagine it to be. This is really important because once in a
trance, you’re essentially only as hypnotized as you let yourself become. In my research, one of the most common questions that hypnotherapists get is, “Will I be forced to do things that I don’t want to
do?” And the answer they all give is NO. That even if the hypnotherapist wanted to
make the patient do something that they wouldn't otherwise do, they wouldn't be able to, quote:
“If you hypnotize someone, they'll not do anything against their morals.” And here's another quote: ”No, there is
no loss of control. Hypnosis allows clients to be more focused
and actually achieve more, not less control.” Remember, you’re not changing what they
believe in, you’re not bribing them and you’re not forcing them. You’re just making suggestions that, based on the patient’s existing morals, sound like a really good idea. Yeah, Joey, you milk that cow! You milk it good and hard! So what's that mean for Mr. L and Luigi? Well, considering Luigi has been hypnotized
and that those under hypnosis won’t break their moral codes, that only leaves one possibility:
Luigi ISN’T acting against his own will in Super Paper Mario when he becomes Mr. L! When Nastasia hypnotizes him, his morals aren’t changing. Under that sweet, doofy Luigi exterior we
all know and love, has existed Mr. L all along. He didn’t need to be re-educated, he didn’t
even need to be threatened! He just needed to find himself in a hypnotic
trance where he lost all his inhibitions and fears and for once in his life, wasn’t afraid
to show how he really felt. And it makes sense, doesn’t it? Sarcasm for Bowser? Feelings for Peach? Open antagonism for Mario? When he falls into a trance, the real Luigi
comes out, unearthing what seems to be some pretty intense feelings for the gang. They might not think he’s in control, that this is all some alternate persona, but he most definitely is. That man, Mr. L, is the true form of Luigi,
his thoughts, and his ambitions. So there you have it, the most real Luigi
has ever been with us was under hypnosis in Super Paper Mario. So the next time you’re playing a game with
Luigi, just remember there’s a lot more underneath that cute little green ensemble
than you think. Hah, and you thought that the Luigi death
stare was just a meme...think again. But hey, that’s just a theory! A Game theory! Thanks for watching.
Under Real-Life conditions this might be true. It's obvious but it's pretty much a magical Hypnosis which has way more possibilities than normal one. I mean in the world of Mario there is magic all the time.
But still, I liked the video.
But the paper characters are shown to be different from their normal counterparts in Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam!
I was really impressed by this theory, Matpat! You've managed to analyze Communism, Family Issues and Power through mushrooms through the Mario series.
Best episode in a long time. I suppose I have some bias on that since I love Super Paper Mario so much (highly underrated game), but I still enjoyed the main point of the episode with Luigi revealing his true colors under the guise of Mr. L. My only big criticism is that the hypnosis discussion felt drawn-out, especially considering it ended up being a false lead altogether. I also don't agree with the whole YouTuber hypnosis demonstration (which was painfully fake), but I found the episode to be enjoyable overall and hope to see more like this.
What's the song that starts at 2:10?
That's if it's a singular form of brainwashing. I put forth this theory: Her ability allows for two types of conditioning, and why she says both of those. First, she puts him into a suggestive state (the third form), then she uses the first form to reshape his outlook. In the suggestive state, he would be inclined to listen to her and accept the information. Since his resistance wouldn't have to be broken, the re-education aspect would work far quicker. That way, she would be able to change the minions loyalty and alter Luigi's personality.
This theory doesn't work for a lot of reasons. If you research a little into Nastasia's actual hypnosis, as I'm sure MatPat did, you find that she hypnotizes five characters in the game: a Koopa Troopa, a Hammer Bro, a Goomba, Peach, and Luigi.
The enemies all immediately pledge loyalty to Count Bleck directly after being hypnotized. It can be argued that they would have pledged loyalty already but their loyalty to Bowser was stopping them, so the hypnosis as presented in the theory would have applied.
Peach, however, is a different story. She is hypnotized to do something very clearly against her will: marry Bowser. It's also shown that it takes several bouts of hypnosis to make Peach say "I do", including Nastasia's "super hypnosis". This doesn't make sense for the suggestive hypnosis. What would make more sense is a fast-acting educational hypnosis. It's clear that Peach is under distress as she is being forced to agree to marry Bowser. Essentially, it's just compounding the psychological distress of educational hypnosis into a few seconds.
Luigi is therefore not evil. He was being forced against his will to fight his friends.
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