The Mario series isn’t exactly
known for its complex storytelling. Most games in the series boil down to little
more than stopping Bowser and saving Peach. The Paper Mario series is a welcomed departure
from this. The first three games have very detailed stories with tons of characters, and even
the more recent ones have some memorable faces. Of course, with so many characters, there are
plenty of villains thrown in the mix. So, which of these villains are the worst of the worst?
Well, that’s what we’re here to figure out today. I’m Brad with 1upBinge, and this is
Paper Mario Villains: Evil to Most Evil In order to make this list easier to follow, we’ve
split the villains up into several categories, starting with the barely evil. These are the
bad guys who have done some villainous things, but either their good actions outweigh
their bad, or their evil actions are mostly negligible. It might be a stretch
to even consider some of these people villains, but we figured it would be
best to have our bases covered. Starting with the least evil, we have TEC.
TEC was designed by the X-Nauts to be the best computer in history, and one of his main
responsibilities is monitoring Princess Peach. He quickly falls in love with her, works
with her to find data on the X-naut’s plans, and even lets her contact Mario to help him find
the crystal stars. Really, the only reason TEC can be considered a villain is because he was
built by the X-nauts and was likely used to aid their evil plans, but his sacrifice to
stop them more than makes up for it. Even if he survived in the end, the danger was very
real, and he was more than ready to face it. Right below TEC, we have Vivian. Her tenure
as a villain didn’t last long. She worked alongside her sisters, the Shadow Sirens, to
help the X-Nauts resurrect the Shadow Queen. But after being relentlessly bullied by
them, she ran off to help a shadowy figure who turned out to be Mario. She did leave
Mario once she figured out who he was, as he was initially her enemy, but she
quickly comes back to fight alongside him. Much like TEC, she was just with the wrong
crowd and her worst actions were only implied. The only reason she’s higher than TEC is because
TEC had more to lose by betraying his masters. Vivian could run off with Mario
and abandon her sisters, while TEC didn’t have that option and was doomed the
moment Grodus figured out what he was up to. Next is a series staple, Bowser Jr. Just a
quick note, for series mainstays like him, we’re only counting his actions
within the Paper Mario games. Paper Jam also doesn’t count as that’s
really more of a Mario and Luigi game. Bowser Jr serves as a recurring boss in Paper
Mario Sticker Star and an ally to Mario in Paper Mario the Origami King. All he wants is to save
his father from King Olly, and after Mario and company help him out, he leads the charge in
doing just that. He’s more than willing to put himself in danger so Mario can advance, which
is pretty heroic to say the least. And while he was a villain in Sticker Star, the
stakes in that game were kind of vague and he was doing it to help his dad, so
we can give him more of a pass than usual. Next up is the Mafia Kingpin of west Rogueport,
Don Pianta. Given his rivalry with Ishnail, the seedy nature of Rogueport, and everything about
him screaming mafia, it’s safe to say the Don has quite a few crimes under his belt. We never
actually see any of these crimes though. In fact he spends the entire game being quite helpful. He
gets the gang tickets to Glitzville and Poshley Heights, both of which are necessary to collect
the crystal stars. All he asks for in return is help finding his daughter and lieutenant, both
of whom he’s shown to care about quite a bit. Plus, west Rogueport is in pretty good
condition compared to the rest of town, so at least he’s good at his job. Still,
he’s probably up to a lot of shady business and likely would’ve been higher on the
list if we had seen some of his crimes. Next up is Rawk Hawk. This guy
serves as a great red herring. It’s constantly hinted at that something
shady’s going on at the Glitz Pit, and considering Rawk Hawk’s belt has a crystal
star on it, he seems like the most likely culprit. He isn’t though, he’s just an arrogant fighting
champion. The only reason he’s on here at all is because he locks Mario in a locker room to
force him into forfeiting the championship match. It’s a rather short-sighted plan, as he
would have to keep doing that every time Mario challenged him, but it is underhanded and
clearly worse than anything we see Don Pianta do, which is why he’s at this spot. Once you get past how much of a creep Francis
is, you realize he’s relatively harmless. He kidnaps Tippi at the beginning of the bitlands,
thinking she’s just a butterfly and wanting to take pictures of her. Sure this serves as a
massive thorn in the gang’s side, but from his perspective he was just catching a butterfly.
Even when he fought Mario and the others, it was immediately after Peach blew up his computer,
so you can understand why he’d be mad. Besides, he will sell you a replacement for Tippi after
the final chapter, so that’s helpful at least. Kamek is where he is for largely the same
reasons as Bowser Jr. The reason he’s higher than Jr is because he does more
to stop Mario in previous games. He’s a constant thorn in your side in Sticker
Star, doing things like separating all of Wigglers body segments and even turning all
of Mario’s stickers into flip-flops. Plus, unlike Bowser Jr, Kamek makes an appearance
in Color Splash as well. He still helps the good guys out in Origami King, but his crimes
in past games push him further down the list. Cortez is the ghost of a once famous pirate
captain who now resides in Keelhaul Key. When Mario and the gang set sail for the island, Cortez
has his ghost army cause a shipwreck and tries to stop them from getting to his treasure room.
Thankfully, Cortez is somewhat reasonable. When he finds out Mario’s only interested in the crystal
star, he just gives it to him. And while stranding the crew on Keelhaul Key was uncalled for,
Flavio did have a gem that was stolen from Cortez centuries ago, so there is a reason for a grudge.
Plus, once he gets it back, he buries the hatchet, helps Mario and co take down Lord Crump, and
sails the crew back to Rogueport safe and sound. Bowser is difficult to rank because of how
drastically his role changes from game to game. His worst crimes were in the original Paper
Mario, where he not only kidnapped Peach, but also imprisoned the Star
Spirits and stole the Star Rod, ensuring only his wishes would
come true. In Thousand Year Door, he’s mostly an afterthought, searching for the
Crystal Stars, which there’s really nothing wrong with. In Super Paper Mario he was at his best,
teaming up with Mario to stop Count Bleck’s plan. Paper Mario Sticker Star had him kidnapping
Peach and destroying the Sticker Comet. We don’t know much about the Royal Stickers or why
they’re important, so we can just count this as a normal kidnapping. In Color Splash he
was under the influence of black paint, so he likely wasn't in control of his actions,
and in Origami King he was mostly a victim of King Olly. It’s tough to say where this places
him on the morality scale. We’ve got 2 games where he’s a villain, one where he’s a hero,
and 3 where he’s mostly neutral. I guess this places him on the worse side of neutral, which
is still better than the people coming up. And with that, we cap off our barely evil
category. Now for a much shorter category, the unaware. These are characters
prominent enough to be considered villains, but too animalistic or stupid to
really understand what they’re doing. Starting off, we have the Smorgs. Barely
anything is known about these guys. They’re some sort of organism that
hangs out in man-made structures, given their initial appearance in riverside
station and their subsequent invasion of the Excess Express. They’re definitely dangerous,
seeing as they abducted everyone on the train, but we don’t know if this was for survival
purposes, outright malicious, or completely random Next up is Stapler. Unlike the other
members of the Legion of Stationary, Stapler doesn’t seem sentient and is more like a
rabid dog. He’s the one responsible for turning the residents of the mushroom kingdom into folded
soldiers and the last line of defense before you can fight King Olly. Despite being dangerous, he’s
more like a pet obeying his master, rather than a person actively choosing to be evil, so he ranks
lower than the other Legion of Stationary members. Rounding out this category, we have Marilyn.
Unlike the other two, Marilyn is a person who might be capable of making her own decisions,
given how close she stays to Beldam and how she gives it her all when fighting Mario. But
given the fact she isn’t capable of human speech, I think it’s a distinct possibility
she doesn’t understand what’s going on, and in that case, it’s tough to
hold her actions against her too much. Alright, now we’re at the Servants of Evil
category. These are the villains who get in your way, but not much else. They might fight
you or guard an important artifact, but their evil deeds don’t go far beyond that. Just an
important note, if they work for another villain, that villain’s goals will affect their placement.
Starting with a fan favorite from Sticker Star and Color Splash, we have the Snifits. These guys are
different from the other villains in this section, as they don’t directly work for a bigger
villain, nor do they try to fight you. Instead they just so happen to have an item you
need, and they have you go on their game show, Snifit or Whiff it, to win it. They’re not
actively trying to advance an evil agenda, they just want to put on good
entertainment. Sure, they kill Mario if he fails too many rounds, but that
goes for just about everyone on this list. Next is the first member of
the Legion of Stationary, Jean-Pierre Colored Pencils the 12th. Yes, that’s
his full name. Much like the other members, he’s charged with guarding one of the streamers,
but unlike most of his comrades, he doesn’t do anything to directly harm the surrounding toads
that isn’t necessary to get his job done. Aside from trying to stop Mario, all he really does
is vandalize overlook tower, and he mentions how much he hates it when people erase his artwork,
which is understandable, all things considered. These next few barely have any
information to rank them morally, so we’ll go through them pretty fast. Tutankoopa is a pharaoh hiding at the
bottom of dry dry ruins. He warns Mario that he’ll suffer a horrible
fate if he comes any closer, which could be considered courteous
if you really want to stretch it. Lava Piranha, as it’s name would imply, grows
at the bottom of a volcano. While it’s conscious enough to willingly work for bowser, it’s
also stated to be a plant species, so at least part of its combativeness could be seen
as a natural instinct to protect its territory. We know basically nothing about Crystal King other
than the fact Bowser hired him to guard one of the star spirits. He’s essentially the closest thing
to a true neutral we have as far as villains go. Rubber Band is another member of the Legion of
Stationary. His most notable action is trapping a bunch of toads in their seats and forcing them to
watch his play. Now, imprisoning innocent people is never a good thing to do, but giving them a
nice show to watch makes things a little less bad. Even if this guy can’t take it when
someone other than him gets the spotlight. The Koopa Bros, in addition to the obvious ninja
turtles parody, exhibit a lot of admirable traits, such as caring about each other and respecting
for Bowser. They also stole this fort from the Bob-oms who once inhabited it and
keep them prisoner in the basement, so that’s why they’re ranked as more evil
than some of the other Paper Mario bosses. Keeping with the imprisonment theme, we’ve got
Tape. Instead of trapping people in a theater or jail cell, Tape sticks a bunch of toads
to the side of his tower, which has got to be terrifying for everyone involved. That extra
fear factor is what puts him above the others. There’s something to be said about persistence
when it comes to your evildoing, and no character on this list is quite as persistent as Jr.
Troopa. He’s essentially your rival in the original Paper Mario, as you fight him a grand
total of 6 times. He’s not working for Bowser, nor is he even getting anything out of this.
He’s just a bully who can’t accept a loss. His persistence is admirable, but when you’re
going after the man trying to restore people’s ability to have wishes granted, you should
probably find a different outlet for your anger. Onto the next Legion of Stationary member,
we have Scissors. As you would imagine, he cuts up anyone that gets in his way, and
will even stick their pieces to enemies. As deadly as that sounds for people made out
of paper, cutting people up doesn’t mean killing them. As shown with Bowser Jr, people
who have been cut up can be restored to their original form with the right treatment. In
addition, he’s only shown cutting up people who actively try to stop him, so it’s not like
he’s going out of his way to do it. However, if his attitude is any indication,
he does enjoy it quite a bit. Starting with the first of Count
Bleck’s minions, we have Nastasia. While most of Count Bleck’s minions are more
sympathetic than a lot of the villains so far and even get redeemed, they’re also working
toward a much more heinous end goal, which is why they’re ranked closer to the evil side.
Nastasia’s backstory isn’t explicitly spelled out, but it is heavily implied. She was once a bat
caught in a trap, which Bleck freed her from. Afterward, she turned into a woman
and swore eternal loyalty to him. She never engages in combat directly, instead using mind control to get things done. Now,
brainwashing is a pretty uncomfortable subject, especially when done on the scale of an
entire army like Nastasia did. However, it’s not like she had any other ways to help and
it was likely necessary for Count Bleck to amass anything resembling an army. Plus, her powers
aren’t shown to have any lasting damage on the target once they’ve broken free. The reason
she’s less evil than any of Bleck’s other subordinates is the fact she’s the only one who
tried to talk him out of his plan to destroy all worlds. Sure it didn’t work, but at least
she tried to get him to come to his senses. Up next is another one of Count Bleck’s minions,
O’Chunks. O’Chunks was once a successful general who was sold out by one of his advisors and
lost his entire squadron to enemy forces. Count Bleck preyed upon his guilt,
leading him to join Bleck’s team. Not only is his guilt understandable, but
O’Chunks also has a strong sense of honor, like when he held up the crumbling pieces
of Castle Bleck so the heroes could advance. He may be aiding a horribly destructive plan,
but at least he’s honorable while doing it. Next is Mr. L. Some of you may be confused
by this choice, as Mr. L is just Luigi under Nastasia’s control. Well, that’s only
partially true. Mr. L is a personality loyal to Bleck that was created by Nastasia,
but it’s not under her direct control, as shown by Mr. L disobeying her direct
orders at the beginning of chapter 6. As such, I think it’s fair to count him. Mr. L
is very full of himself, but aside from that, he doesn’t do much other than his job, so
it’s tough to hold that arrogance against him. Rounding out the Servants of Evil category,
we have Kammy Koopa. The reason she’s ranked so much higher than her boss is because she
was right by his side for his worst actions in the original Paper Mario, but was nowhere to be
found in the games where he was somewhat redeemed. Much like Jr Troopa, she gets in Mario’s way
every chance she gets, and much like Nastasia, it feels like Bowser’s entire operation
would fall apart without her help. Unlike Nastasia though, she has no issues with
what Bowser’s doing. She played some of the most important roles in the plan, like kidnapping
the star spirits and making Bowser invincible in the final battle. She’s not any higher,
because she doesn’t do anything heinous that wasn’t related to Bowser’s plan, but her sheer
dedication and competence puts her this high. Alright now we’re at the above and beyond.
These are villains whose acts of evil extend beyond being simple roadblocks. They
often go out of their way to target innocent people and may even have their own evil
enterprises. These are the above and beyond. The first of these villains is General
Guy. In addition to guarding one of the star spirits for Bowser, he also sends his
troops to Toad Town to rob the citizens. While mass petty theft isn’t as bad
as the other crimes in this category, it was also far from necessary. If anything, it
might have actually made things harder for him, as Toad Town’s shy guy problem is what led
Mario to the toy box in the first place. Next we have King Croacus IV. He’s a narcissist
who uses his floro sprouts to enslave the cragnons and have them rebuild his castle. Now going
from petty theft to brainwashing and slavery sounds like a big leap, but don’t
worry, there’s a reason for this. After the fight with him it gets revealed that
the cragnons were polluting the water that the floro sapiens needed to survive. So despite his
vain exterior, King Croacus was doing this to save his people. Does that make it justified.
Of course not. Considering how willing Flint Cragley was to smooth things over, it’s clear
this issue could have been settled peacefully. He obviously should’ve considered his diplomatic
options before taking such drastic measures, but it’s easy to understand
why he took those measures. Keeping with our theme of monsters with
sympathetic motives, we have Tubba Blubba. He was a rather sensitive and fearful guy who was
constantly scared by the boos of Gusty Gulch. That all changed when bowser hired him to guard
one of the star spirits and removed his heart, making him invincible. With this newfound power,
he took revenge on all the ghosts that scared him by eating them. When Mario beats him and takes
him down a peg, he releases all the ghosts he ate, all of whom were unharmed, which is
why he’s not any higher on the list. He’s still higher than King Croacus
though, because Croacus’s atrocities were in service of his subjects, while
Tubba Blubba did this all for himself. Going back to mind control for
a second, we have Hole Punch. Much like King Croacus, he has an ego
and brainwashes people by disfiguring them in some way. Unlike Croacus however, Hole
Punch doesn’t do this for any sort of noble goal. He just does it so he can have backup
dancers for his big performance, and he frequently threatens to punch out the
DJ’s face if he doesn’t play some good music. Grodus’s right hand man, Lord Crump, is next.
He’s very similar to Kammy with his constant appearances and tendency to interfere with the
heroes. What separates him from Kammy is that Crump tends to go overboard in his methods. In
chapter 2 he tries to blow up the Great Boggly Tree, which would not only kill Mario and all
of the innocent Punies living there, but also the Jabbies who he had teamed up with. You
could write this off as a one-off incident, but in one of the Bowser interludes, Lord
Crump mentions he’s looking for a superbob-om to help him find the crystal stars.
There’s no way a bomb could help him unless he was planning another
stunt like at the Great Boggly Tree. Overall, it seems clear that Lord Crump has
a penchant for needless wanton destruction. Some of you may be confused as to why Mimi is
ranked so much higher than O’Chunks and Nastasia, as all 3 of them were Count Bleck’s minions and
got redeemed by the end of the game. Well there’s two main reasons for that, neither of which
are the fact that Mimi is pure nightmare fuel. For starters, both O’Chunks and Nastasia have
sympathetic motives for following Count Bleck, while Mimi’s are unknown. More importantly though, while those two only do evil acts as part of
their jobs, Mimi literally keeps slaves. Yes, Nastasia also mentally enslaved Bowser’s minions,
but that was arguably necessary for Bleck’s plan. Mimi does this for what we can only assume
is her own amusement and possibly greed, although it’s unknown what she’d even spend
rubees on. No store seems to accept them. Moving onto the last of the Shadow Sirens, we
have Beldam. What separates her from most of the villains serving another master is just
how Malicious she is in doing so. Given her constant verbal abuse of Vivian, it’s clear she
enjoys watching others suffer. Sure, that might not be as bad as mind control or slavery,
but sometimes the intent is what matters, and Beldam seems more than happy to make even her
own sister suffer. Also, given the fact Vivian never mentions the Shadow Queen, it’s
entirely possible that Beldam was the only one of the Shadow Sirens who fully
understood what they were working toward. Bonechill is another character whose evil
actions are mostly implied. He was once a Nimbi, a resident of the Overthere, before
he was banished to the Underwhere, the Mario version of Hell, for one reason or
another. By the time Mario gets to the overthere, Bonechill has already sent his army to wage war on
the heavens. Now, Bonechill’s backstory is clearly inspired by Lucifer, especially considering
how much inspiration chapter 7 takes from the christian afterlife. However, despite being based
off of Satan, we can’t put him any higher on the list because we barely know anything about
him. He gets virtually no screen time. The only action we can really judge him for is waging
war on the Overthere, which is still pretty bad. Hooktail is probably the easiest villain on this
list to understand. She’s a dragon that terrorizes Petalburg and eats the residents. Unlike Tubba
Blubba though, the people she eats actually die. Yeah, Koopley wound up surviving, but that’s
just one of probably dozens of people she’s eaten. Hooktail isn’t at the top of this
category because at the end of the day, all creatures need to eat to survive. Her
food source just happens to be sentient. Huff N. Puff is a lot more dangerous than most
of the bosses in the Original Paper Mario. He sets up his puff puff machine in Flower
Fields and uses it to cloud up the sky and prevent any sunlight from making it down. That
doesn’t sound like a huge deal, until you remember that most of the inhabitants of Flower Fields are
sentient plants, who will eventually wither and die without the sun. In other words, Huff N. Puff
is committing mass murder for seemingly no reason. Next up is the slimiest guy on this list, so
it’s appropriate that his name is Grubba. On the surface, he seems like an ordinary businessman,
hosting a popular fighting arena called the Glitz Pit. However, fighters often go missing, and
it turns out, Grubba is responsible. He uses a machine to drain them of their energy, which
makes him super powerful and reduces them to husks that can barely move. Technically they’re still
alive and are able to be brought back to normal, but if Mario hadn’t intervened, they likely
would have suffered a fate worse than death. Rounding out this category, we have Doopliss.
Some of you may be surprised to see him this high, as late in the game, he’s kind of treated
like a joke. Still, that doesn’t take away from just how diabolical he was in chapter
4. He spends the first half of the chapter turning the citizens of Twilight Town into
pigs. It’s done in an incredibly ominous way too, with everyone in town
dreading each ring of the bell, knowing they could be next to lose their
sentience and be reduced to mere swine. Things don’t get any better in the second
half when his true powers are revealed. He has the ability to steal people’s identities.
Unlike a normal shapeshifter like Mimi, Doopliss goes beyond simply impersonating
someone, and turns them into a shadowy figure, unable to be considered a person
or even tell people who they are. He also makes it clear that this is all
for his own amusement. These horrifying acts that rob people of their very identity
are just something he does for fun. That’s more than enough to put him at the top of this
category, but not enough to beat out the top 5. The final category here is the evil masterminds.
These guys are the one’s driving the conflict, and have employed many of the
villains we’ve already seen. Their resources are vast, their
goals are beyond destructive, and their regard for innocent life is almost
nonexistent. These are the masterminds. I’m sure a lot of you are surprised to see
Count Bleck this high up on the list. After all, the most notable part of his character is
his deep and incredibly tragic backstory. He was part of a tribe of ancients and fell
in love with a human woman, Timpani. However, out of fear of her diluting
the bloodline, Bleck’s father wiped her memory and cursed her to walk
the dimensions until the day she died. Bleck searched for her but was never able to
find her, and after giving up, he stole the Dark Prognosticus and used its power to destroy his
dimension and vowed to do the same to all of the others. In addition to the backstory, there’s the
possibility that the Dark Prognosticus corrupted him in some way, he clearly took no pleasure in
what he was doing, and he’s willing to die to put a stop to his plan the moment he figures out
Timpani is alive. Still, all of those mitigating factors can only get you so far when your goal
is to annihilate every world in existence, killing an unfathomable amount of people and
leaving the whole universe as nothing but a void. Next, we have King Olly. After misinterpreting
a message left to him by his creator, King Olly developed a hatred for toads, viewing them as
all the same, a clear jab at critics of the more recent Paper Mario games. In order to fix this
perceived problem, he plans to wipe them all out of existence using the 1000 cranes technique. Now,
whether or not you agree with Olly’s hatred of toads, this is still genocide. And while toads are
the primary target of his anger, he views all 2D creatures as inferior and tries to fold them all
into Origami to control them. So in other words, king Olly is a racist, genocidal dictator. The
only reason he’s not higher is his change of heart after being defeated, showing there was at least
some good in him, even if it rarely manifested. Starting off our top 3, the bronze medal of
evil goes to Grodus. Grodus has a simple goal, world domination. That’s enough to put anyone
near the top, but there’s also a certain amount of calculated sadism behind his scheming. Between his
willingness to torture his enemies, resetting TEC, and his complete lack of faith in Lord
Crump, it’s clear he’s willing to step on anyone to get what he wants. Of course,
this mentality winds up being his downfall when he can’t fathom the Shadow Queen ignoring
his orders and is promptly punished for it. A lot of people on this list are psychopaths, but
none of them are quite as textbook as Dimentio. Throughout Super Paper Mario, Dimentio
backstabs, manipulates, mind controls, and even kills people to get what he wants, all
while maintaining his cheery, playful attitude. His manipulations are all designed to make
it easier for the heroes to beat Count Bleck. Don’t be fooled though, he’s not doing this
to stop the destruction of all worlds. He just wants Bleck out of the way so he can create his
own worlds once all the existing ones are gone. The only reason Dimentio isn’t at the very top
of this list is that we don’t really know what his idea of a perfect world would look like. It
could actually be a utopia, but even if it is, it’s not worth the drastic loss of
life it would take to get there. The upper areas of this list were difficult to
rank, but in the end, we had to go with the Shadow Queen for most evil. Mainly because we know a
lot more about her than Dimentio and Grodus, and unlike Bleck and Olly, there isn’t a shred
of good inside her. According to the legends, she waged war on and destroyed the
city that now sits under Rogueport. She created monsters to help her conquer
the world, the crystal stars to remold the world in her image, and the pit of 100
trials to punish all who opposed her. While we never see what her rule looks like, it’s safe to say she’s a ruthless and tyrannical
leader. Her magic is also rather destructive. While we don’t know exactly what engulfing
the whole world in darkness will do, the cutscenes before her fight make it seem
like the end of life as the world knows it. Endlessly destructive, unquestionably
tyrannical, and ruthlessly malevolent, it’s more than fitting that this manifestation
of pure darkness takes the crown for most evil. But what do you think? Which Paper Mario
Villain is truly the worst of the worst? Let us know in the comment section.
Don’t forget to hit that notification bell and binge our Good-to-Evil playlist.
Where we break down the morality of the characters in your favorite games. But most
importantly, stay wicked.
