The Earthbound/Mother Iceberg(s) Explained

all right you all know what an iceberg image is and chances are if you clicked on this video you know what these are too cool now that that's out of the way let me explain my thought process for this video one night when i was doing my routine of staying up way later than i should i suddenly thought man i wish someone made a mother iceberg video so i looked on youtube and sure enough i found one which covered this iceberg made by this guy on reddit and after watching it all i could think to myself was man i wish someone made a good mother icebreak video and with that i got to work and found the original reddit post but along the way i found two more iceberg images made by these fine individuals and they were both much meatier than the other one so because i'm indecisive and didn't feel like making multiple videos i decided to make one big video covering all of them and for the viewing pleasure of the audience i combined the images into one big neat and organized iceberg plus i added a few points of my own while working on this i was in contact with the creators of these two images who all refer to as star and game throughout the video big thanks to them as they clarified and explained to me some of the points that i hadn't heard it before and this video probably wouldn't exist without their help now then what awaits us on this iceberg will we find something cool something strange or perhaps something a bit more sinister only one way to find out so let's begin earthbound 64. this one's pretty well known by now for those unaware mother 3 originally started development on the n64 dd and was shown off at space rule 1999 due to a ton of problems with development the game was cancelled later that same year but was later brought back onto development in 2003 for the gba and eventually completed and released in 2006. there isn't much but the footage and screenshots of the beta that we do have are very interesting and i highly recommend you look into them yourself tony is gay in an interview with shigesato toy in 2003 he says there's a gay person in mother 2 a really passionate friend who lives in an england-like place obviously he's referring to tony jeff's roommate he then said that because gay children exist in real life and that he has several gay friends he decided to add one in the game too nice gigas fetus theory this is probably the most widespread earthbound theory of all even people who never played any of the games have probably at least heard of this for those who somehow don't know there is a distinct outline of a human fetus in the background of gaigas's fourth phase for years people speculated that gigas is a fetus when ness encounters him in the cave of the past and that killing him is aborting the fetus some evidence people use for this theory was that the devil's machine is supposed to represent the uterus with all the intestine-like dudes leading up to it and that the entrance to gigas's lair is supposed to be a well you know however this theory isn't true itoy explained that the fetus shape and the giga's background is just a coincidence due to how earthbound generates its backgrounds plus the theory contradicts it to his explanation of gaigas's inspiration which has nothing to do with abortion fetus theory also falls short when you take gaigus's origin story from earthbound beginnings into account as well as other plot details although it's not specified how far into the past ness and his friends travel to fight gallus the cave of the past looks drastically different in the past than it does in the present so it's most likely hundreds or even thousands of years ago and there's just no way gigas could have been born that long ago when he was just an infant in the early 1900s plus he's part of an alien species from another solar system why would he be born deep underground on earth it just doesn't add up cursed images with earthbound music in early 2019 there started a trend of videos of still images with various battle themes from the mother games playing over them on the internet i remember seeing a lot of those videos but they died out in popularity around may of that same year not quite sure why this is on here the eight melodies they're the things you have to collect in earthbound beginnings in earthbound specifically this refers to what they actually are in game like how in the first one they're part of the lullaby used to defeat gigas while in the second they're the song that embodies the power of the earth psi was stolen from gigas race while george and maria were being held captive by the aliens george began studying psi without their permission he then somehow escaped back to earth with this information and continued studying it not much more to say here this is basic war told in earthbound beginnings plus it's the entire reason geiges invades earth in the first place localization changes there are a metric fuckton of changes made from mother 2 to earthbound more than i could possibly fit in this video there's literally a 432-page book on earthbound's localization that goes into great detail on what changes were made if you really want to know about all the changes made just go to the cutting room floor or just buy the goddamn book yourself and read it earthbound's anti-piracy measures earthbound has very infamous anti-piracy measures coded into the game which are split into five different layers so to speak the first layer is just the region locking it simply checks if you're playing the game on a palace nest and if so it will show this screen and freeze the second layer is the sram check this is the first actual barrier against pirates the game checks that there's only eight kilobytes of sram on the cartridge since cartridge copiers by their nature tend to have more than that if there's more than eight kilobytes the game shows this warning screen and freezes the third layer is where things get interesting if the game detects that the previous two layers were disabled then enemy spawn rates are ranked up to insane levels that make the game nearly unplayable so much so that enemies start to spawn in places they shouldn't like spiteful crows spawning in the pyramid some areas try to spawn so many enemies that the game just crashes these are usually peaceful areas that don't normally spawn enemies like the three tunnels and even the tubular theater main office if the game doesn't crash then the player will see glitch enemies with very strange properties they'll appear as npcs or player characters in the overworld and use garbage data values for item drops and exp rewards dropping things like backstage passes and absurd amounts of exp often reaching in the millions of course you'll only get these drops if you use an auto win every fight code as confronting them normally will crash the game the fourth layer is called six times during the game but no one actually knows what it does finally if you somehow get through the entire game the fifth layer is the most evil one of all once porky turns off the devil's machine the game performs one final checksum routine to see if the previous layers were activated if it detects anything wrong the game will freeze and delete all save data diabolical super smash bros saved the series from obscurity yeah pretty much prior to smash mother one was only released in japan and when earthbound was brought over to north america it completely bombed hell it never even released at all in europe i think it's safe to assume that the vast majority of mother fans myself included were introduced to the series because of nes and lucas being in smash the fact that ness is more well known for his appearances in smash than in his own game much like another smash 64 veteran is pretty telling the halloween hack in 2008 toby fox released a rom hack titled earthbound halloween hack for starman.net's halloween fun fest the hack's pretty notable for being the star of toby's career as well as the first appearance of the song megalovania and a couple of ideas from the hack were later used for flowey in undertale nowadays the hack really isn't looked upon very highly due to its colorful language musical references the mother series is filled to the brim with musical references some more obvious than others i'd be here for an eternity if i were to list all of them so i'll only mention a [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] couple [Music] food [Music] she this barely scratches the surface but just go look them up for yourself queen mary's true identity at the end of earthbound beginnings queen mary is revealed to be the same maria that was abducted in the opening text of the game and that she raised gigas again this is literally stated in game not sure why it's here sans is ness stop me if you've heard this one before i'm pretty sure everyone and their grandma has at least heard of vanessa sans game theory video by now there are so many holes logical errors and wild assumptions made in that video that it's actually insane how many people used to believe it not to mention that it's straight up contradicts itself at multiple points i'd go into more detail on why it's completely false but so many others have done so already and i don't want to continue beating the ashes of a dead horse so let's move on boss backsprites every enemy in mother 3 has a backsprite for when you turn them around or approach them from behind including some bosses and mini bosses however since bosses can't be turned around and can be approached from behind it's impossible to see their back sprites in game thus making them unused casey bat backstory the casey bat in earthbound is named after the pwn casey at the bat where a star baseball player casey gets cocky and purposely doesn't swing the first two pitches but then misses the third pitch striking out this is why the casey bat has a 75 percent chance to miss ness's magic hand sprite in mother 2. in mother 2 ness is naked during magic instead of in his pajamas this is because nudity is a symbol of purity in japan this was changed in earthbound for obvious reasons rare equips and enemies there's a few enemies that are especially hard to come by but usually give great rewards as a result i'll be listing the most notable ones in earthbound the criminal caterpillar and master criminal worm are super rare enemies only found in dusty dunes desert and skarava respectively they don't give you any money but they give you insane amounts of exp for killing them with the master criminal worm giving the most exp from any enemy in the game the soot dumpling and beaning enemies on mother 3 serve the same purpose the last rare enemy i'll mention is the bionic kraken in earthbound which can rarely spawn in the cave of the past the reason i'm mentioning this one is because it segues into the other part of this point rare equipment in both games the absolute best equipment for certain characters is only obtainable via rare drop from an enemy which is usually a 1 in 128 chance in earthbound and a 3 chance in mother 3. these weapons typically increase more stats than just offense and have other effects which is why these items are usually dubbed as the ultimate equipment the most famous ones are probably the sword of kings on the gutsy bat as the former is poo's only weapon in the game and can only be dropped by a limited time enemy and the latter is only dropped by the bionic kraken an already rare enemy to begin with in the last area of the game the usefulness of the gutsy bat is debatable due to this gigas inspired mew and mewtwo there's no official confirmation for this but there's way too much circumstantial evidence for it not to be true aside from the fact that mewtwo looks like the result of putting gigas and frieza into a blender they're both cat-like creatures that use psychic abilities hate humanity and are incredibly powerful it's important to note that ape inc one of the devs of the first two mother games rebranded as creatures inc in 1995 and have co-developed in nearly every pokemon game meaning that it's very likely mewtwo is made as a callback gen 1 pokemon already has a lot of similarities to earthbound beginnings so it wouldn't even be that out of place phil sandhop phil sanhob was the localization producer and english scriptwriter for earthbound beginnings in an interview he answered a lot of questions fans had about the leaked earthbound prototype and confirmed that it was in fact a real localization done by nintendo of america and not just a bootleg he also gave details on how the game was pretty much completed and the only major thing that stopped it from releasing was a lack of marketing i'll link the full article in the description for anyone interested flint's doorknob flint's doorknob is a running gag in mother 3 that can be found or referenced in every chapter except 2 5 and 6. in chapter 1 thomas accidentally breaks off flint's doorknob when trying to summon him when flint answers the door thomas quickly throws it off to the side bouncing on top of bony's doghouse and landing behind a wall in chapter 3 you can find the doorknob in nippolite's potato patch if salsa tries picking it up facade will yank it from his hands tell him not to pick up cheap doorknob like things and then chucks it into the river from this point on the doorknob is only mentioned and isn't actually seen until much later in chapter 4 an npc in the tasmania jail was arrested for picking up a doorknob he found on the ground presumably flint's doorknob at the beginning of chapter 7 on the bridge where ionia is found a bald npc says he found adornov the other day but he was very frustrated so he threw it as far to the east as he could dislocating his shoulder in the process in chapter eight a pig mass captain in the lobby of the empire pork building says he discovered a doorknob in the clayman factory but like the npc in chapter 7 threw it as far away as he could out of irritation later in chapter 8 when the party is traveling underneath newport city the doorknob can be found in plain sight sitting on a ledge but attempting to pick it up will cause lucas to accidentally knock it off the ledge finally in the end screen the player themselves comes across the doorknob picks it up and puts it in their inventory finally obtaining it once and for all itoy deliberately left it ambiguous as to what the doorknob represents and it spawned a lot of fan theories and speculation one of which is even on the iceberg the lazy mole one of the moles in chapter 5 tells a weird story about a lazy mole he doesn't remember it very well so he skips to the end saying that the mole lived happily ever after not much else to say here mr saturn font the mr saturn is talking a very weird looking font in both versions of the game but their font mother 2 was based on itoy's daughter's handwriting at the time unused assets there's a lot of unused assets in these games a good number of which have their own entries here this is just a general summary of the less interesting ones for graphics there's this animation of food jumping this unused sprite of nessa's mom sitting these sprites of nessen paul is sitting with their eyes closed these sprites of nest the photographer and the escargot express delivery man clearly meant for the lost underworld this unused item in mother 3 called the memory snake some animations for the barrier trio various animations for the mask man and this animation of porky seemingly dying mother 3 also has this large unused room as well as a debug room which gives you access to quite a number of things interestingly the zap eel enemy in earthbound's overworld sprite is partially obscured by the water as it always spawns in there in the deep darkness however it is possible to see their entire sprite by luring them out onto land but doing this is very hard and can only be done in like one or two spots as for audio there's a bunch of unused music tracks in earthbound to mother 3. i'm not going to play them here but you can find them pretty easily on the cutting room floor if you want mother 3 ending is the afterlife the end of mother 3 shows the nowhere islands getting destroyed by tornadoes volcanic eruptions earthquakes all caused by the dark dragon being awakened after all this though you're able to talk to all the characters throughout the game who say that they're all okay after that a lot of people interpret this end sequence as the afterlife as who the hell could possibly survive what just happened moments before right well the canon explanation for mother 3's ending is that whatever you the player truly wanted to happen when lucas pulled the final needle happened the ending was purposefully left open and up to the player's interpretation so there's really no wrong answer for what happens after the dark dragon awakens my personal take on it is that the dark dragon reset the nowhere islands rid them of all the evil influence in the world mainly the pig mask army but let everyone else survive which is why everyone is okay afterwards again though that's just my interpretation and you're free to disagree ness is theories these are theories in the same vein as sansa's nest but sansa swapped out with character of choice consequently they're all really dumb so i'm not gonna waste my time going over them except for one which i'll get to later buzz buzz is prophecy buzzbus's prophecy at the beginning of earthbound has some very weird subtext that never gets addressed with things like shatter the nightmare rock and see the light the prophecy as a whole is obviously about the quest to stop gigas but there's little details like that which stand out mother cognitive dissonance cognitive dissonance is a fan game that takes place shortly after earthbound beginnings and details events that happen between that game and earthbound i ended up playing this game while working on this video and it's very good the soundtrack is mostly great and the story is really well done and expands on the alien lore something the actual games never talk about i highly recommend playing it if you're a fan of the series which you probably are i mean why else would you be watching this video i do think it has some problems though but this isn't a contest review so i'll stop talking now and move on the franklin badge was made by benjamin franklin the item description for the franklin badge and earthbound beginnings reads legends says that ben franklin wore this reflective badge during his experiments with lightning i guess this isn't the weirdest thing in the world seeing how earthbound beginnings takes place in america but it's still kind of weird pig masks represent america it's the common consensus that the pig mask army represents capitalism and by extension in america i mean they're literally pig masks there's a location literally called new pork city and they introduce money and greed to tasmania two things associated with capitalism plus the invasion of the nowhere ons could be a reference to america forcing japan to modernize but that one's a stretch but upon looking into it that's really all the pig mask army has going for them for this comparison if anything they're more similar to the nazi regime in north korea with a little bit of america mixed in they're an armed organized force led by an absolute dictator conduct cruel biological experiments in the form of chimeras their soldiers are practically walking propaganda machines to the point of blaring their anthem out of their saucers and anyone who doesn't accept their propaganda in the form of happy boxes is punished also their salute looks like this yeah mother won soundtrack with english-speaking singers in 1989 some of the music from the game was recorded as a studio album by keichi suzuki and hirokazu tanaka in collaboration with various artists it has 11 tracks seven of which have vocals that despite the game not releasing outside of japan are entirely in english the album actually goes really hard and i highly recommend giving it a listen kindness and consider consider is an unused battle action in mother 3 nothing happens when using consider in battle via hacking and it's unknown how it would have worked though maybe it would have been this game's equivalent of sing and pray and have had an end game use as for kindness it's a sort of unused stat with its description in the unused memo screen reading this is one of the most important things for us humans so let's be kind to others if your kindness goes up something good is bound to happen some sprites of porky's death flint killing the mecha drago and a happy end graphic might indicate that the stat might have triggered alternate story events notice how i said sort of unused that's because it actually is used in the final game can be increased through normal gameplay and even has gameplay effects but you just have no way of seeing it whenever the message you felt something warm inside your heart appears kindness increases by one for the whole party it directly influences the amount of hp restored when lucas uses psi life up but no other known effects appear for other characters not even kumitora another user of life up however since opportunities to raise kindness are so rare it never exceeds the single digits and as such its effects during gameplay are unnoticeable the make believe theory this is a theory suggesting that ness paula jeff and pooh are all little kids and earthbound is based on what they imagined during playtime essentially it's just saying that the whole game was their imagination i have two problems with this one this theory only works when looking at earthbound as a standalone game and falls apart when you throw mother one and three into the mix and two can i just say how much i [ __ ] hate it was all a dream or x characters and a coma theories they feel so lazy and uninspired you can literally apply one of those to any piece of fiction while i do appreciate that the post that this originated from actually gave some details and connections i'm still pretty biased against these kinds of theories if you couldn't already tell curvy and earthbound in the boot up debug menu the menu cursor is kirby weirdly enough this kirby sprite is from kirby's dream course which didn't come out in japan until about a month after mother two did hal was working on both games at the same time so they probably just used this kirby sprite as both an easter egg and because it was the most readily available dungeon man is the first chimera think about it in mother 3 porky forced doctor antonauts to make mechanized animals combine animals and completely new animals like the ultimate chimera in earthbound the doctor makes dungeon man by combining brick road with a dungeon so technically dungeon man is the original chimera many many statues sprite error the man and manny statue and nessa's nightmare might have accidentally had their sprite swapped since ness's nightmare has the colors of the real statue while the manny manny statue fight in moonside has a different color palette than its overworld sprite granted several enemies in earthbound have different color palettes than their overworld sprites but these are just stronger versions of weaker enemies from earlier in the game many older games do this to save memory but this is the one case where the weaker enemy or boss in this case has a different palette than its overworld sprite and the stronger one has the correct palette if i'm being honest i was never sure if this was a mistake or intentional maybe i'm just so used to it that it doesn't seem off sunset at the log house there's a hidden warp out of bounds in club titty boo in the far left of the lobby when accessed you'll get warped outside of alex house there appears to be a sunset happening and your inventory will be replaced with a new one that contains some unused items this might have been used for a cut scene in the prologue before chapter 1 begins but that's just me speculating mother 3 memo menu try saying that 5 times fast in the japanese version there's an unused feature called the memo menu these memos describe various game mechanics and characters as well as some old mechanics and scrapped features the menu was restored in the english fan translation and can be accessed by pressing lnr while selecting status a few of the memos are unlocked through normal gameplay but many never get triggered rendering them unused hank's bat is a reference to hank aaron hank aaron is a former mlb player who played from 1954 to 1976 and was inducted into the baseball hall of fame in 1982. ninten's strongest weapon hank's bat says it's personally autographed and it doesn't take much to connect the dots the apple of enlightenment this thing is mentioned a couple times in earthbound and while it sounds like it's very important it's never actually seen in game after nest defeats his nightmare in magican his consciousness tells him the apple of enlightenment has foretold that geigis's attempt will fail however in mother 2 he says that the apple is actually a prophecy telling machine that gigas has and it has foretold that his plans will fail at the hands of a child named ness that's really the most information there is on the apple of course the apple of enlightenment is a pretty big part in the story of cognitive dissonance but fan games aren't canon the pointlessness of reindeer and earthbound beginnings this one sort of explains itself the town has a department store that sells items the same level as other towns it has enemies that can be fought elsewhere and the only unique place in town the mansion where you give the guy dentures so he can give you infinite mouthwash is useless because only a few towns later is the man who gives you free life upgrade i feel like the only reason this town exists is because everything is closed in spookane so they probably added reindeer just for a convenient rest stop but that's just what i think someone related but that mouthwash guy isn't totally useless once you complete the old man's side quest the mouthwash he sells there is way cheaper than anywhere else meaning that you can sell them at a department store for more than you buy them so that's technically infinite money right there then again you can also do this with the life of cream guy and those sell for more and you also get those for free damn this place really is useless the gypsies are the main reason why mother 3 hasn't been released outside japan there's a lot of things possibly getting in the way of mother 3 getting localized but this one specifically is because the magipsies are perceived as trans stereotypes and would probably be seen as offensive i asked star why they thought this issue in particular was the main reason to which they responded it's because with how nintendo is as a company they don't want to be seen as some political entity because the game was made over a decade ago well before anything we're discussing now is discussed it's likely they don't want to deal with americans trying to interpret a japanese perspective from 2006 and 2021 making harsh moral judgments based on outdated taboos from different cultures suspicious osohei garbage can this refers to the garbage can he gets sent back to if you get caught by the magic brooms upon asking gabe why he included this he just said he finds it weird that there's a 21st century trashcan in this old castle it is slightly larger than the other trash cans in the game but it's still just a trash can peepee fight there's an unused enemy in earthbound beginnings that appears to be peepee and it's just called gang zombie it's possible that peepee was originally supposed to attack ninten when she was freed from the coffin and defeating her could have brought her back to her senses the identity of the actors for the live-action mother 1 commercial there was a commercial for mother 1 in japan when the game was released that featured real kids in it apparently nobody knows the identity of the kids used in that commercial or maybe someone does i don't know i couldn't find it the military policeman and the dismembered beauty murder scene when etoy was a child he accidentally walked into the wrong theater which was showing an adult film called the military policeman and the dismembered beauty he saw what he thought was a rape scene and was deeply scarred by it this event was later used as the main inspiration for the gigas fight in earthbound which aimed to recapture that sense of childhood trauma and fear this is why all of his lines in that fight appear to be him in pain or occasionally pleasure however itoy admitted that his memory of that scene was fuzzy at best and as it turns out the movie doesn't even have a rape scene what he actually saw was a woman being strangled to death and then having her body cut up into pieces by her killer she never says anything like it hurts the only sound she makes is one squawk takeshi's challenge nearly made nintendo cancel mother one according to star nintendo was hesitant to work on another celebrity tie-in game after takeshi's challenge tanked fearing that mother would do the same they only remember hearing this from some youtubers so unfortunately the sources on this one might be a bit shoddy duster's broken base no this isn't talking about the jealous base he's still a perfectly usable base in mother 3 each party member has an attack instrument and one of six different three-part melodies of that instrument will play when performing a combo [Music] however due to a bug duster's chosen attack melody isn't randomized like everyone else's being 0-0 all the time meaning he will always use this melody when attacking but that's [ __ ] i hear you saying yes i can hear you i'm inside your house duster used more than that melody when i played the game that's because this was fixed in version 1.2 of the english translation patch so most non-japanese players never encountered this apple kid and orange kid are steve jobs and bill gates i couldn't find anything on this one the only thing connecting apple kid and steve jobs is the word apple and maybe you could say orange kid sorta looks like bill gates i don't know this is just comparing apples and oranges at this point okay tough crowd jesus twinkle elementary school time machine after lloyd blows up the lab in twinkle elementary school if you go back inside it the mysterious teacher will be inside and sells items that boyd can use most of these are joke items and complete wastes of money but in mother 1 one of these items he sells is the time machine once bought he'll activate it by accident and transport the party back in time to when the lab was destroyed for whatever reason he doesn't sell the time machine in earthbound beginnings and instead sells super bombs which is no doubt an improvement don't get me wrong though with a bit of hacking the event can be restored as seen in the background footage both the item and the event don't exist in the gba port however happy happyism's connection to am shinrikyo aom shinrikyo is a japanese cult founded by shoko asahara in 1984. the cult symbol and his attire are the same color as happy happyism being all blue the cult eventually became big enough for members to attempt to run for public office though none succeeded their political campaign was known for being happy and using cheerful slogans dances singing and smiling balloons their headquarters was located on a dairy farm which is probably why there's a blue cow in happy happy village home shinrikyo was responsible for two terrorist attacks in 1994 and 95. the former known as the matsumuto saren attack involved a chemical weapon named sarin and left 8 dead and over 200 injured the latter known as the tokyo subway sarin attack killed 13 people and affected 980 others thankfully happy happyism in-game never exceeds being a silly cult that wants to paint the world blue but their striking similarities to am shinrikyo make them feel way more sinister mother 3 hot dog stand theory this refers to an insanely detailed theory about how the hot dog vendor in mother 3 is actually an older nest who is brought to the nowhere islands from another timeline and brainwashed by porky i'm not even going to try to summarize it here i'll just link it in the description for you guys to check out if you want let me warn you though it's really [ __ ] long ninten's love of the san francisco giants according to the mother encyclopedia ninten is a big fan of the san francisco giants and he has assigned baseball from them as one of his most prized possessions dirty cafe assassination attempt this refers to a cut item sold at the dirty cafe in mother 3 called suspicious tea that deals damage to enemies when used the description said it was made by a disgruntled employee meaning it could have been made by an angry employee with the intent to poison or even kill whoever drank it happy end this is an unused graphic for the ending in mother 3 that just says happy end this implies that there were multiple endings at some point possibly being triggered by this sort of unused kindness stat the ghost of the hot spring there's a random chance that an old man will be sitting in a hot spring in mother 3. you'll probably see him at least a few times while playing the game however sometimes a woman will be found in the hot spring instead but she's much rarer i don't have exact numbers but to put it in perspective i've played mother 3 3 times and i've seen the old man plenty of times in all three of those playthroughs but i've never seen the hot spring woman i didn't even know she existed until making this video piggy jelly and peanut cheese piggy jelly and peanut cheese bars are food items only found in saturn valley peanut cheese is basically the japanese word for peanut butter and piggy jelly might be aspic or something just some weird naming conventions to fit in with the overall vibe of the mr saturns pedophile pig mask in thunder tower for starters this pig mask isn't even in thunder tower he's in the factory before the highway he gives lucas a secret herb as a present from the bottom of his heart and that he always wanted to do this for you not for any weird reason though strictly in a friend sense gabe said it struck him as suspicious but i really don't see anything the contents of the overcoming shyness book once you lend the overcoming shyness book to the leader of the tender tribe he reads it to the whole tribe and after that they are all cured of their shyness and are more than happy to talk to nes and company from this we can infer that whatever is written in that book is capable of instantly curing someone's shyness just by reading it once this is a subtle reference to how earthbound is a work of fiction open bracket file equals quotation mark dot minus eight e dot txt quotation mark close bracket [ __ ] this refers to an unused block of text and mother 3 that just reads there's not much else to say it's just really weird for a block of text to display whatever that was earthbound crypt of the ancients this one refers to an earthbound creepypasta of the same name i'm not gonna describe it here go look it up yourself avgn's gigas theory i forgot about this one until working on the video towards the end of the episode the nerd talks about how he interprets gigas basically he says that geiges is an eternal being of evil that is reincarnated as ness and that the end of the game involves him and his friends going back to the point ness was born and deriving gigas from nessus fetus kind of like some sort of exorcism obviously this contradicts a lot of things stated in the game as well as events from earthbound beginnings but the nerd said that he isn't aware of what happens in that game and that this theory probably isn't true overall it's a unique take on the gigas fetus theory that i've never seen anyone else think of before [Music] gigu is ninten's father [Music] what porky's true age in mother three we literally have no idea he claims he's aged rapidly due to his time traveling making him one thousand or even ten thousand years old but he's still a kid at heart and is also somehow immortal now now he could be exaggerating his age but he's our only source plus he looks really old and can't go two sentences without gasping for air so he's probably right even so we still don't have any exact numbers on his age and probably never will lucas and klaus are based on the notebook the proof and the third lie the notebook the proof and the third lie are a trilogy of books about two twins named lucas and klaus in world war ii europe who end up getting separated from each other itoi himself confirmed this in an interview which i'll link in the description club titty boo's empty room i have no clue what this means and neither does gabe because he lost his notes on it next original final boss backgrounds in mother 3. this needs a little introduction itoi mentioned in an interview that he originally wanted the final boss to be a nightmare sequence with no dialogue but he toned it back due to it being too dark however there are still remnants of that plan in the game these backgrounds are probably the most infamous unused assets in mother 3 since not only are they for lack of better words [ __ ] terrifying but they're actually used on some placeholder enemies there's a video of them in action uploaded all the way back in 2008 so i'll link that in the description how ghigu became gaius to clarify this is specifically asking how he went from this to this the only thing we know for sure is that he somehow became so powerful that his mind and body were destroyed and had to be stored inside the devil's machine for his mind to stay intact there's not a whole lot else to say here as information on this subject is very scarce the official images for items in earthbound beginnings in japan there's an assload of different strategy god books and such for the first two mother games with tons of very nice artwork for the games both of the family computer mother perfect strategy books have a lot of artworks of various items in the game however i don't know if those are official this point probably refers to the images found in the mother encyclopedia since everything in that book is canon speaking of the mother encyclopedia was an official guidebook that released around the same time as the game and features a ton of artwork and background information about various characters and items unfortunately the books all in japanese and although someone did make a fan translation of it a while ago it was a long time ago and it's really not that good maybe one day that guy will go back and re-translate it but if you want to read it before then hope you know japanese teddy died in the original ending of mother one no he didn't unlike earthbound beginnings of mother one plus two mother one ended immediately after guy gets to ship left earth and didn't have the scenes of what happened afterwards one of which saying teddy fully recovered from his injuries because of this his fate was left unknown in mother 1 but nowhere does it say he died if you talk to him in the hospital bed after he gives a speech there's just silence but if you check him it will say that he's still breathing albeit very softly mr perkle and miss lardness love nest there's unused text in mother 3 that says i'm the producer for mr perkle and miss lardner's love nest this references two characters from earthbound the mayor of anna and porky's mom respectively and being the producer implies that it's a film of some sort and with a name like love nest i'll uh leave you to interpret what kind of film it could have been it's stored in an empty room in the mayor's office in tasmania village so i don't know where it could have been used the people from the white ship so we all know about how all the residents of tasmania came to the nowhere islands on the white ship once the world ended we know that they removed all their memories and put them into the egg of light then adopted their fabricated memories and lives but who were these people before they lost their memory the only person with any info about them before the egg of light stuff is kumitora which is that she was an orphaned infant but that's really all we have who were her parents and how did they die what was everyone else like before they sealed their memories away with as little information on this as there is your guess is as good as mine i guess you could say he's gigasy another unused block of text in mother 3 this time located in the chimera lab it's probably referring to the ultimate chimera before it escaped as for how this guard knows about gigas it's just a case of a line not translating well into english see in the original script he was trying to put the feeling into a word that didn't exist and it just happened to come out as gigu which is gaigas's name in japan japanese uses sound words to express feelings all the time so this isn't anything unusual in fact ito even said that he came up with gigu's name from the fact that it simply sounded unpleasant and disturbing earthbound beginnings takes place after mother 3. this theory stems from some questions people have had about the inconsistencies or lack of ties between the first two games such as why is america never mentioned at all in earthbound why does gagas attack earth again so soon after his first invasion why doesn't anyone in earthbound acknowledge gaigas's existence if he attacked before why does gaigas look entirely different in earthbound than he does on earthbound beginnings how do ness and paula have psi powers couple these with mother 3's ending and it's possible that earthbound beginnings takes place in a rebooted timeline which is why it has no ties to the subsequent games personally i don't buy this theory because i feel most of these questions have answers i've heard from star that america straight up does not exist in the world of earthbound but that would mean there are only three continents in the entire world which doesn't sit right with me we also never see a map of the world in game so i think that america does exist in earthbound but you just never visited during the game because there are no sanctuaries located there if i'm right about the first question then this one's easy to answer gaigus only attacked america in beginnings so it makes sense that no one mentions him in earthbound because again you don't visit america as for why he looks so different it's stated in earthbound that it became so powerful that his mind and body were destroyed we don't know how that happens exactly but the important thing is that it does as for the other two questions i have no idea mother 3 political stances prevented localization anyone that's played mother 3 knows that there's very not so subtle criticisms of capitalism and are occurring society tasmania village starts off as a society with no money with all work being voluntary and everyone seems to be happy but once porky and the pig mask army introduce money to tasmania and start to make their presence more known we see the alienation of the citizens they begin gossiping and the general vibe of tasmania becomes more selfish the clayman factory is portrayed as people doing mundane tasks for a set wage and after finishing for the day they spend their time at a bar because they're too tired to do anything else because of these underlying tones among some other reasons i mentioned earlier people have speculated that nintendo doesn't want to localize the game because they don't want to deal with any controversy it might spawn despite how loud and how long people have been requesting it [Music] from here on out it's mostly fan theories and speculation the bird of light the bird of light is mentioned in the unused memo menu as the counterpart to the dark dragon that of the dark dragon is in the antithesis darkness and light despair and hope destruction and creation interestingly though this bird is never mentioned anywhere in game the painting in the forest prayer sanctuary depicts two dragons the dark dragon and another lighter one possibly the bird of light the painting might be a remnant of the bird of light and they just forgot to get rid of it when they scrapped the idea it also might have had connections to the egg of light since that isn't really explained all too well either this concept was probably more expanded upon when the game was still on the n64 dd kumitora's understated importance in mother 3. as stated in letter's monologue kumator was given to the magypsies to be raised despite being a human and given the role of princess of a sohe castle there's no reason as to why they did this other than the fact she was an orphaned infant leonard did state that the story that the people of the white ship wrote was rushed so maybe they couldn't think of anything else to do with her role but that still doesn't explain why they sent kumatora specifically off to the gypsies in the first place and no one else perhaps there was another reason that they just didn't have time to record the cliff that time forgot and cave of the past oddities this area is [ __ ] weird earthbound has a lot of weird locations but this one is just inexplicable it's barely talked about in game and there are so many questions that arise from it why is there a random cliff with lush green grass deep underground in the middle of an empty black void why is there a weird tentacle here what's the significance of it it almost seems like something you'd find in magic hat or something why does it look completely different in the past what's at the bottom of the cliffs and what personally confuses me the most is why the hell is there an entrance to the lost underworld here i never hear anyone talk about this it literally has no reason to even be there you're just stuck on an island if you come through that entrance there's nothing to do furthermore why do you need the phase disorder to get here when you can just enter through the lost underworld why is the cliff even connected to the lost underworld at all why does said entrance not exist in the past so many questions and practically no answers fun fact the layout of the final cave in mother 3 is nearly identical to the game of the past i don't think this has any war significance and is probably just a call back by the devs but it's a pretty cool detail lost underworld oddities speaking of the lost underworld let's talk about that now this place didn't strike me as too odd when i first played the game i guess dinosaurs just feel par for the course after fighting alien octopus robots and sentient trees that explode but this place gets really weird when you stop and think about it starting with the dinosaur in the room how are they still alive maybe they survived the asteroid because they were underground but how did they get there that entrance hole in lumen hall is way too small for a dinosaur to fit through i guess they could have been much smaller in the past and just evolved to be bigger over the 60 million years since the dinosaur extinction but enough about them how are there trees and vegetation down here if there's no sunlight what the [ __ ] is this thing what's the deal with the fire spring specifically the area with the tiny volcano is also in an empty black void and it's just south of where the cliff that time forgot is are the two connected when playing the game i never thought too much about this but i realized something pretty unsettling about firespring while writing this there are humans down there what the [ __ ] these guys are so out of place almost every other human enemy in the game is in some kind of man-made civilization like a town or city or something but these guys are so far removed from any kind of human activity how and why are they down here and more importantly why are they wearing salt shakers i think i'm looking too deep into this lucas dies in chapter six no he doesn't there's two chapters after six where he is clearly alive i could understand the argument that chapter six was a dream but the boy ain't dead that's for sure the doorknob is hinawa recall that the doorknob breaks off at the beginning of chapter 1 right about when hinawa would have died the theory is that hinawa exists within the doorknob and that's why it follows the party around and appears throughout their journey basically it's saying that hinawa's spirit was watching over lucas and his friends honestly it's not too far-fetched but the doorknob's physical appearances are way too far and few between for me to believe it it only appears in three chapters the end sequence and is mentioned but not seen in two more if it physically showed up in every chapter aside from six then i believe it more but hey at least this one makes sense manny manny statue melted by porky to create the nice person hot springs in one floor of the empire pork building there are a ton of tubes with people and animals floating in them called the nice person hot springs talking to these people shows that the liquid turns anyone that soaks in it loyal and obedient to porky kind of like how the manny manny statue corrupts people and spreads gaigus's power and influence since the statue doesn't appear in porky's little earthbound museum gabe told me that maybe porky melted it and used it to control people himself thing is there's a lot of those tubes i don't think melting a single statue could produce that much liquid if anything those tubes are very reminiscent of the tubes gigas forces used to store humans in the previous two games in both mountie toy and the stonehenge base respectively they could be using the same technology but we don't know for sure the gods of skaraba the hieroglyph in the summers cultural museum says a lot of interesting [ __ ] including mentioning the gods of skarava but also what may have been humanity's first encounter with gigas race many years ago to fight against the invaders we built this pyramid fortress however our efforts were futile and we lost nonetheless our pyramid was protected by the gods of scaraba the invaders will be reborn every millennium and will attack again even now the invaders hide beyond space and time and build their evil stronghold a place out of time is beyond the dark and is even farther beyond the lost underworld the deep darkness is shrouded it is without light only one with the hawkeye can pierce the dark the sphynx now watches over everything waiting for the coming of a truly brave hero amateurgamer on starman.net made a really good theory about what this all means which i'll link in the description as well as briefly summarize here basically we know that the ancient people of scarab lost against the alien invaders but that their pyramid was protected by the gods of skarava what the gods probably did was possess the hieroglyphs inside and reanimated the defeated bodies of the scorabians like the shatterman and royal guards the gods used psi to defend the pyramid as shown by the hieroglyphs that inhabit the pyramid being capable of psi this also explains why they're called guardian hieroglyphs because they're guarding the pyramid its inhabitants and the hawkeye from the invaders the original post goes into more detail and covers other topics mentioned in the hieroglyphs 2 so go check it out if you're interested mother 3 is communist propaganda c pig masks represent america and mother 3 political stances prevent a localization tenders and mr saturns have a common ancestor this is pure speculation but it's interesting to compare the two species they're both really weird small creatures with vaguely human characteristics that live in isolated regions of the earth and their villages contain the only hot springs in the entire game which both have some strange pink liquid in them of course their speaking mannerisms are vastly different but even though the tenders talk normally and act much less peculiar overall they're just as if not more isolated from human contact than the mr saturns are they also both seem to enjoy putting lsd in their beverages these are probably coincidences but they're interesting to think about unused clumsy robot alternate ending using a walkthrough balls cheat if you go and beat the clumsy robot before paying off the runaway 5's debt once defeated it will spew out smoke and teleport the party outside of the monatoli building it's impossible to see this without cheating since freeing the runaway 5 has to be done before paula even gets kidnapped and you can't even access the upper part of the monotoly building until she's kidnapped as well as doing several other events maybe at one point in development the diamond fetch quest in the desert was supposed to happen after paula got kidnapped possibly after the trough yogurt dispenser is obtained and if you try to go get her before freeing the 105 you'd just be sent out of the building personally i'm glad this isn't the case because imagine having to do the mold dungeon with only nessen jeff no thanks mother 3 evangelion connections neon genesis evangelion and mother 3 have a couple albeit most likely coincidental similarities most notably the main characters in both are all motherless and both mother 3's ending and the end of evangelion involve everyone seemingly dying resulting from the dark dragon being awakened and the completion of the instrumentality project respectively also some people think that the mineralia enemies found in the last cave in mother 3 are a reference to the angel ramil but they're probably referencing the octahedron over world sprites that numerous enemies used in earthbound as their overworld sprite is nearly identical to that however earthbound was being developed around the same time sega genesect lime gelatin was airing so they could have been referencing ramil all along but who knows there's a blog post that goes into more detail on this topic that i'll link in the description what did porky do most of porky's attacks in mother 3 are just a statement what did porky do followed by one of several attacks it's just to call back to gigas incomprehensible attacks since it wouldn't be an endgame mother boss without attacks you can't decipher pk abilities are transferred through child sex abuse this is a joke based off that scene in chapter 4. it's very clearly just a visual gag and not at all what it looks like moving on mother 3 is a posadist allegory posadism is a set of beliefs primarily defined by the works of j posadas an argentinian political theorist from the 50s to the 70s centered around communism aliens and the apocalypse posadas believe that nuclear war is inevitable necessary and will lead to the demise of capitalism mother 3 as a whole already has some anti-capitalist themes and the consistent themes of alien forces and anti-industrialization can be compared to poseido's thought the pulling of the needles could be compared to nuclear war and porky's forces could be compared to america as previously discussed in this video the biggest issue with this theory is that posadas believed aliens would be benevolent which is the exact opposite of the mother series and i really don't think that itoi was inspired by posada's thought while making mother 3 but i will admit the idea that the apocalypse is the only way to destroy capitalism is sort of shared between both why ninten's dad was calling at the end of earthbound beginnings the extended endings of earthbound beginnings and later mother oneplus 2 have a scene at the end showing ninten's dad calling him saying that something new has come up obviously we have no idea what he's talking about since ninten's story is never continued i think this could have been etoy teasing the idea of a sequel and maybe mother 2 was originally going to be a direct follow-up but later became a more separated story there's no source for any of this i'm just spitballing mother 3's undercurrent of neglect and abuse there's a somewhat constant theme of abuse throughout the game that's never fully addressed some cases like salsa in the entirety of chapter 3 are obvious and mostly addressed but others are rarely if ever addressed almost everyone you play as faces some kind of neglect aside from flint and bony lucas seems obvious with him losing his mom and brother but they never really touch on how flint spent pretty much all his time searching for klaus in the mountains and not really being there to support lucas or how everyone calls him a wimp and a crybaby even after the events of chapter one like god damn [ __ ] i'd be crying if i saw my mom get killed duster's relationship with wes is pretty not good either with how harsh he treats duster in chapter two and the fact that he's responsible for giving duster his limp however if lucas returns to west in chapters 5 or 7 west is shown to legitimately care about duster's well-being and is glad he got to see him again but that's seemingly the only case of abuse that gets resolved whereas the others are rarely mentioned the other dimensions the pig masks were kicked from aside from the gypsies and the residents of tasmania everyone on the nowhere islands including the pig masks were brought there from other dimensions by porky it's mentioned by letter briefly in his monologue but we have no clue what these other dimensions are or why nowhere islands were the one place they weren't kicked from how exactly do you get kicked from a timeline anyway come to think of it how does time travel even work in the mother series does it operate like back to the future or does it use multiverse theory it's probably multiverse theory god i hate time travel nintendo allows the mother 3 fan translation to exist because mother 3 will never re-release without heavy censoring isn't it strange how the mother 3 fan translation has existed for over 10 years now and not once has nintendo issued it to be taken down especially given their track record when it comes to these kind of things it is a rom hack after all a lot of people have theorized that this isn't coincidence and that is because nintendo knows of its existence and chooses to let it stay up because not only would it save them the work of having to censor the game but because the fan translation is better than anything they could do a pretty big piece of evidence for this is the mother 3 email in october 2008 about a night before the translation patch was officially released glide tomato mandolin the head of the translation project got an anonymous email claiming to have been sent from somebody inside the gaming industry which warned that the fan translation would destroy any incentive for an official release as its quality outmatched what an official localization could provide they encouraged the team to cancel the translation patch despite it being literally the night before release by checking the email header info it seemed to have originated from japan but that's all that could be figured out neither tomato or the rest of the team were certain about the credibility of this email so they released the patch the next day to this day we still don't know if that email was legitimate or a hoax maybe tomato really did do such a good job to the point where an official localization would be inferior to his or maybe nintendo just doesn't care enough about the series to take it down it's anyone's guess really frightbot's story the frightbots are used by the pig masks in saturn valley as a way of psychological torture for the mr saturns in an attempt to make them tell the location of the nearby needle the fright bots also tell stories in battle in fact that's all they can do the stories don't actually do anything to the party but what story are they telling well whatever it is it's apparently so scary that it'll chill you to the bone curdle your blood and make you cover your ears in fear pee your pants and never want to go to the bathroom at night ever again perhaps humanity would be better off if this mystery remains unsolved earthbound's influence on the modern rpg genre there's a reason i've saved this one for last this is a topic that you can make an entire video on in fact many people already have it's no secret that earthbound is one of the most acclaimed jrpgs of all time and that's because there truly was nothing else like it when it came out i'm sure you've heard time and time again about how it's modern setting flat colors weird enemy design well-written dialogue made it stand out blah blah blah yadda yadda but the mother series's influence is far bigger than most people realize practically every jrpg that came out after 1995 be it india aaa has at least a speck of influence from earthbound in it the first generation of pokemon games shared a lot of developers for mother and earthbound trey parker cited earthbound as an influence for south park the stick of truth the lisa games along with literally countless other indie rpgs we're all greatly inspired by earthbound we got oddity formerly mother 4 coming out in the near future [ __ ] even animal crossing is technically the evolved idea of what earthbound 64 was originally supposed to be haley tilly was originally a death for it of course you can't talk about earthbound's influence without mentioning what is probably the biggest and most impactful indie game of the last decade that being undertale game was literally made by a former earthbound rom hacker and when it came out it blew up unbelievably hard not only has undertale been released in japan sooner than mother 3 has been officially released in the west not only is it on the switch but we even have a sans me costume in [ __ ] smash bros we live in a timeline where a song originating from an earthbound romhack is in smash as a new arrangement made specifically for the game it's like it came full circle what i've talked about here is only a brief summary of the impact of earthbound so i strongly recommend watching one of the many videos on the subject or to research it yourself [Music] well that's everything i don't usually do videos like this but working on this was really fun but don't expect more like this in the near future hopefully you learned something new from this iceberg i know i certainly did it's super fun to research something you love and enjoy so i hope you check out the resources i linked in the description no really if you have some time go read the cutting room floor page on a game you really like and chances are you'll come out with something you didn't know before this took way longer to finish than i expected i started this back in mid-november and i wanted it to be done by the holidays but come thanksgiving i was beginning to think i bit off more than i could chew and once finals picked up i basically had to stop all progress so i can study for those consider this video a late christmas present special thanks to the creators of the iceberg images that inspired me but even special thanks to these two as well as to the lovely people over at starman.net earthbound central the cutting room floor mother forever various other websites and most importantly to viewers like you if there's anything i didn't mention that you think should have been on here or if i got something wrong then let me know how much of a stupid idiot i am in the comments and i'll probably see it i don't really have anything better to do oh [ __ ] the script just hit 26 pages i think i'll take that as my cue to stop talking so merry christmas happy holidays happy new year and i'll see you when i see you [Music] you

Channel: JonahZgo

Views: 402,089

Rating: 4.9115548 out of 5

Keywords: earthbound, mother, mother3, smashbros, nintendo, supersmashbros, mother2, earthboundbeginnings, ness, lucas, pkfire, iceberg, smashultimate, explained

Id: c2iebJIc8uk

Length: 58min 1sec (3481 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Equal_Campaign_3602]

Amazing video