why was mario reduced from protagonist to deuteragonist
why was mario reduced from protagonist to deuteragonist
He's the only character in it. Well, apart from Mario, but we'll get to that later.
NARRATOR: From the magic within us all, [A clip of SMG4 saying "Are you ready" plays.] to the adventure beyond our wildest dreams. [A clip of Meggy saying "Let's go!" plays.] There is only one Puzzlevision.
I heard this was supposed to be a parody of a Disney ad, so I won't dwell on it too much. However, in the WOTFI 2021 rap, Mario says "Are you ready let's a-go!" which is extremely similar to what the clips say.
A test card plays and turns into another testcard.
TV: And now, ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for:
[The TV grows arms and legs and turns into Mr Puzzles.]
MR PUZZLES: Mister Puzzles! Gracias, merci, [unintelligible], you all look exceptional!
Mr Puzzles can turn into a TV which disproves one of my earlier theories that the gang had bought the TV in NTVMMNOD before then, as he would've had to stay as a TV (kinda hard to do plans when you're immobile) or have no head (disproved by WOTFI 2023).
Mr Puzzles 2: Great to have me on the show. Now tell me about my exciting new business venture.
[The scene zooms out to reveal another Mr Puzzles on a different chair.]
Mr Puzzles 1: Of course, you charming devil you. [He turns to the audience.] As you've just heard I'm ready to expand my episodes globally with a revolutionary new streaming service. I've done... PUZZLEVISION! [Mr Puzzles 2 claps in the background.]
Apparently this is a reference to Hazbin Hotel. This trailer was apparently done inside the simulation as there are two Mr Puzzles's, so unless the movie somehow introduces a (new) company which produces TV Guy's, the simulation is what I'll point to.
Puzzlevision is a streaming service apparently, and he had it engraved on him back in WOTFI 2023. So Puzzlevision is a company which is a streaming service as well.
Mr Puzzles: Your destination for the most thrilling and unforgettable media experiences. [Western Spaghetti and WOTFI 2023 play on TV's in the background.]
I'll stop here because of something really interesting: those movies aren't on the website. What could this mean? No idea.
[Mr Puzzles glitches out to reveal SMG4 inside his head, while the TV's in the background go to a test card.]
SMG4: What's happening. (more frantically) Where am I? WHAT'S GOING ON? [Mr Puzzles bangs his head with his arm, causing his head and the TV's in the background to go static. It then fades to SMG4 inside Mario's Mysteries, while the TV's in the background go back to the test card. Mario pops out of the bottom-left to look around, and quickly ducks again. The camera closes in on Mr Puzzles's head before fading to static.]
There's a lot to go through here. I don't think the TV's in the background mean anything and are probably just an artistic choice. However, this scene reveals that there are... two simulations? This is complicated and I'm compelled to say there's only one simulation some way or another, but I don't think that's the case. Let's get some terminology in place.
The lower simulation is the one in Mr Puzzles's head, where SMG4 seems to be.
The upper simulation is the one this trailer takes place in.
I'm going to analyse what SMG4 says. As a reminder it was:
SMG4: What's happening. (more frantically) Where am I? WHAT'S GOING ON?
SMG4 is seen mainly confused rather than fearful at the first sentence. We have to remember that the upper simulation is probably a WESTERN SPAGHETTI style one, so him getting tranquilised and put inside Mr Puzzles's head is possible. If you think back to Mario's Mysteries though, SMG3, Meggy, and Tari were all inside a black void too, yet they were all actually inside the simulations (Once Upon An SMG4).
I don't know how to build up to this, so my best guess (so far) is the lower simulation isn't real, Mr Puzzles is just seeing where SMG4 is, and he acted on instinct/programming to spy on SMG4 since he was realising, only to remember he was doing a trailer. The fact it goes to Mario's Mysteries is probably him replaying a part from it.
Now to get to a pretty big part. The timeline is:
Mario gets filled with static in the last episode.
He punches through the TV, leaving a mark which Mr Puzzles noticed and fixed trying to make everything perfect.
Now he's spying on Mr Puzzles when the coast is clear.
Mario is definitely gonna be a big part of the next movie, like in all the other movies before this one (especially WESTERN SPAGHETTI).
Mr Puzzles 1: (somberly) I'm going to get real with you for a moment. I'm not at all happy with the ratings of the last few episodes. None of them have hit a full five-star rating, although they obviously should have.
(excited again) SO, what am I gonna do?
[He turns the camera around to Mr Puzzles 2 wearing a wig next to a Wheel of Fortune thingy which says _ N__ M_V__. He spins to the right revealing it to be saying A NEW MOVIE. Mr Puzzles 1 walks toward the camera, next to a big TV.)
Mr Puzzles: That's right. In order to push my ratings to five stars, I'm releasing a SPECIAL movie in 72 hours. Right here! Introducing... PUZZLEVISION!
Most people have figured out he wants high ratings, which gives us some idea that the movie in-universe probably won't go into his backstory or anything. This doesn't have much to talk about.
Mr Puzzles: And let me tell you. Once I reach five stars, nothing will ever be the same again. Good night, everyone.
[He starts laughing evilly. The channel goes back to SMG4.]
SMG4: Someone. Anyone! PLEASE, (pounding Mr Puzzles's head) LET ME OUT OF HERE!
[Mr Puzzles turns the channel back, then places his head on the floor. Mario goes out of hiding once again to look around. Text on the TV screen reads "GO back to the youtube channel... | I'll be waiting..."]
Remember when I said the lower simulation isn't real? Yeah, I was wrong. Turns out he actually is trapped in Mr Puzzles's head. How will this play out in the movie, considering we don't see anyone else trapped in his head. Now I was proven wrong, I'm inclined to say: The upper simulation isn't real, as Mario literally punched himself out the simulation. I don't know how I didn't think of that earlier.
So now there's two possibilities. Either:
The Mr Puzzles we saw in the last videos was a fake one controlled by the real Mr Puzzles.
This one I fully agree with, as it means that Mr Puzzles can't rewind time when he faces off against Mario, making it a fair fight.
Mr Puzzles has the powers in the real world.
That would mean that he literally never rewinded time in any of the SMG4 videos ever, which unless there's a crazy plot twist that he rewinded time to make SMG3 lose the YouTube Arc so WOTFI 2023 could happen, sounds infeasible.
Can someone find the moments where Mario appears in the newest stream and put down the time stamps on the wiki page?
Episode is named
"Meggy and mario are cooking!,what could go wrong?"
Plot:
As we know meggy and mario are shit at cooking,
Smg4 decided to put his trust to them, cooking a macaroni and cheese!,but as meggy puts her finger on the stove, it catches on fire, creating a literal demon in the pot,mario thinks it's a part of it and boils it, then dances,then as they make the sides, it fucking explodes and implodes somehow,sng4 regrets of putting his trust to them, the end
Episode is named
"Meggy and mario are cooking!,what could go wrong?"
Plot:
As we know meggy and mario are shit at cooking,
Smg4 decided to put his trust to them, cooking a macaroni and cheese!,but as meggy puts her finger on the stove, it catches on fire, creating a literal demon in the pot,mario thinks it's a part of it and boils it, then dances,then as they make the sides, it fucking explodes and implodes somehow,sng4 regrets of putting his trust to them, the end
Note: This is all my opinion. uhh yeah.
I'm not gonna sugarcoat anything here; Mr. Puzzles is a fucking joke.
Now, admittedly intimidating at first, before we actually got to see a proper look at this guy. I mean, this Mr. Puzzles guy had been orchestrating all sorts of catastrophes in the background for over a year before the PUZZLEVISION Arc even officially began. He was responsible for huge events in the series, including IT'S GOTTA BE PERFECT and Western Spaghetti sagas, as well as War Of The Fat Italians 2023. He's even almost directly responsible for why the SMG4 Castle was built on the Showgrounds.
Back then, Mr. Puzzles was an ominous, mysterious looming threat over the SMG4 series. His motives and powers were completely unknown and he was messing and manipulating the cast's minds like it was nothing. For these reasons, Mr. Puzzles was seen as this enigmatic, sadistic, guy. This was made especially true at the end of WOTFI 2023, in which he made his first official appearance, giving a slow clap from the shadows before talking to the audience while giving this twisted face. And honestly, in this appearance, he was actually pretty intimidating. This was probably the peak of Mr. Puzzles's status as a villain.
So, 5 months go by, and the PUZZLEVISION Arc finally officially starts. Mr. Puzzles gets a proper introduction in Mario's Mysteries; and he's not intimidating at all. It starts out with his name alone: Mr. Puzzles. How can I possibly take somebody whose name is Mr. Puzzles seriously? This "ominous," "sadistic" guy who I'm supposed to be scared of and intimidated by is named Mr. Puzzles? Not to mention that Mr. Puzzles himself looks goofy as hell.
I mean, look at this guy. His head is a literal TV. He's wearing puzzle suspenders on top of puzzle-patterned pants and a bow-tie. His arms go down to ankles, he wears Mickey Mouse gloves, and his shoes are too big. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying his design is bad. In fact, I really like his design. But it's just impossible for me to take him seriously when he's constantly looking like a clown. (Also, I don't think that he really needs to be taken seriously, either, which I'll go more in depth about later. I just think that he's waaaaay too overhyped.)
Anyways, enough about his name and appearance. If a villain is evil enough, they can still be scary and intimidating even if their name and appearance makes them seem like a circus attraction. So, is Mr. Puzzles as much of an evil, terrifying threat to the show like everyone makes him out to be? Well, not really.
In all of the episodes he's been in so far, he hasn't been a scary villain at all. And with his over-the-top voice acting reaction to things (including him throwing his computer over not getting a 5-star rating on his new shows), he was honestly more funny than anything. But even when he was trying to be intimidating, it honestly fell flat. In Mario's Mysteries, while the trapped in the TV scene was slightly unsettling, it wasn't really because of him. And the weird hand-rub-while-giving-an-evil-face thing that he did in that episode wasn't helping things, either.
In Once Upon An SMG4, while the scene where SMG3 realizes he was trapped was, again, unsettling, Mr. Puzzles's nonchalant and cheery voice while "handling the situation" still didn't help, either. In both of these episodes, while I do fear the situation that the SMG4 cast is in, I don't fear Mr. Puzzles himself.
In fact, the only episode where Mr. Puzzles has been actually intimidating in this arc was in Scooby Mario, Where'd You Go?, when Mario and Luigi wandered into the control room where all of the shows were airing, only for Mr. Puzzles to appear behind them and rewind time, making them completely forget. But even that is undermined by Mr. Puzzles's over-the-top acting throughout the rest of the episode.
The truth is that Mr. Puzzles is not intimidating. In fact, he's the goofiest SMG4 villain since Francis. With that being said, however, I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I kind of miss the goofier villains of SMG4. After all, the SMG4 series, at its core, is a comedy series. Therefore, most of the villains in the series were comedic villains. SMG3, who was the main antagonist of the series for nearly 10 years, was a comedic antagonist.
However, I do think that Mr. Puzzles is incredibly overrated. Everywhere you go in the fandom nowadays, you find people talking about how "ominous" this guy supposedly is when he's literally just a washed-up producer who wants better ratings. They call him "sadistic" and say that he's the "first pure evil SMG4 villain" when he literally got the Squidward treatment last episode.
Don't get me wrong: I really like Mr. Puzzles, and I'm not going to deny him credit when credit is due. The powers that this man has are incredible. The fact that he could really rewind time like that in Scooby Mario was kind of awesome, not to mention his mind-control powers, as well as his power to simply mute people at will.
With that being said, he doesn't stand a chance against most SMG4 characters; even other joke villains, like the Ztar, were powerful enough to nearly destroy the world. Mr. Puzzles doesn't have that power. And he definitely doesn't stand a chance against the universe avatar, and this was even proven in the last episode. Even with mind control, you can never truly control a being as chaotic and powerful as Mario. You know, up until now, I thought that Mario being an animal in every episode was some sort of weird, condescending way to symbolically dehumanize Mario. And while I still think that's true, I also now believe that him being an animal was the only way he could control Mario. As soon as that Italian gets a body, it's over. And unfortunately for Mr. Puzzles, there's no place for an animal in a game show.
Mr. Puzzles may be a great villain, but that's more because he's a great joke villain. He's way too overhyped, and to anyone expecting him to be some sort of sadistic, enigmatic evil mastermind, he honestly is disappointing and falls flat. If I wasn't able to appreciate him as a joke villain, then I honestly probably wouldn't like him.
Announcer: Up Next, It's "SMG4 & Friends", On Nick.
Nickelodeon c) Paramount Global.
SMG4 And Meggy Spletzer c) Glitch Productions.
Super Mario And Splatoon c) Nintendo.
Meggy by using One Shot Wren
SMG4 Team (espcialy SMG4) by using Keyboard and Demonic Goop
SMG3, SMG4, and Mario: by using the Sussy Notebook and Marty
SMG4 Crew by trapping them inside a Show
Personally, I think Mario is immune to the whole mind control thing, probably due to the avatar thing. I believe, that both in here and Western Spaghetti, he knew exactly what was going on, but was simply being too idiotic to make that clear to anyone watching him, or decided to do nothing.
A little off tho. It was the fourth episode with Mario instead of Tari.
"I think Show 5... will end with [Tari] and clench escaping, with Mr. Puzzles apologizing for the "Technical Difficulties" " (from a comment last week)
I predicted the future guys !!
I had kind of low expectations for this arc but it grew on me once I saw that new episode. It genuinely had me wondering what’s next in the arc and I am actually looking forward to next week’s episode. Mr. Puzzles is such an interesting villain with a lot of personality to him. I’m just here hoping they don’t try and redeem him because he has done all kinds of terrible things to be redeemed.
In the "Thatwasrude.png" picture as the SMG4 banner and on the Puzzlevision website, it shows Mario's fist punching right through the third episode of Puzzlevision. That episode happens to be Scooby-Mario, Where'd You Go!
...
That means Mario hates Scooby-Doo lol
Gotcha
Wow that was insane. The game show went from chill to just complete chaos and also the ending with all the static as the backround while Mario is walking casual and gets static all over his body was insane and creepy at the same time. Oh and i bet Mario is going to be the one saving everyone from Mr. Puzzles craziness of a simulation. Mr. Puzzles is to be 5 star perfectionist famous dude in the world and there's only more Puzzlevision show episode left and i think this is officially where we get even more answers to what's going on right now. And other hand, this episode got some annoying moments most of the time and Mario was also kinda annoying but for a good reason i think? Whatever this episode gets an honest 8/10 and that's it!
Mario during the entire episode was causing enough chaos to keep reducing the ratings since he wasn’t an animal this time around. Is that why Mr puzzles usually gives the animal character to Mario since he can’t actually mind control him?
23 Votes in Poll
So even though we know there's probably not gonna be any other Western Spaghetti/ IGBP style shows because of PUZZLEVISION, I decided to write down a Show theory I had a while back. As continuation from Mario's Tunnel of Doom and those episodes, Tari feels she's gotta prove she's brave because people keep treating her like a baby. (This is before anyone knows Clench exists) She asks Clench for help, and he says she should go into a video game, a Scary one. Tari's nervous, but then Clench pulls out Super Mario 64. Tari isn't scared anymore, and tells Meggy and the crew what she's doing. Everybody cheers her on except Mario, who doesn't get what the deal is "It's just mario". But when Tari doesn't come back for a while, they get nervous. Then it clips to Tari. She is going up the stairs to beat the game when she sees that instead of the Bowser hole, there is a door. Of course, she enters it. SMG4 looks at the game, and realizes that it's the 1995 rumored cursed build. Him, Mario, and Bowser go into the still-open game portal to save Tari from the Personalization AI before it's too late.
Depresso is undoubtedly connected to Mr. Puzzles somehow. He somehow shows up throughout many episodes of the saga, normally the victim of some kind of abuse (but he deserves it, so no Depresso abuse controversy pls)
Not only that, but he is shown to be living on the showgrounds since Our New Home, as a failed clown hobo. But my theory is: What if he's more than that?
At the start of No TV Make Mario No Okie Dokie, he is shown riding full speed towards the Showgrounds on his bike, even in a thunderstorm. So either he is trying to get out of the storm, or... he knows something. With the same episode being when the Crew gets kidnapped by Mr. Puzzles, it's more likely that he was trying to warn them. But how did he know? Post your ideas in the comments below!
Here's the criteria. (Before you talk about the game show, I think that'll be the last episode.)
More intense than Scooby Mario (The show gets more intense every time)
A kids show (This is speculation but considering the shows went from educational kids show, to a show that was literally created because parents thought superhero shows were too violent, it's probably a good guess.)
Have a similiar premise to a show that's already been parodied (I think someone will die in this arc by their data getting so corrupted they end up unalive)
Since Mario's Mysteries has already been parodied, it makes the most sense for something similar to a Disney princess movie to get parodied next.
I gave it to ChatGPT, and it suggested Avatar, which makes sense considering it's referenced in the Genesis Arc. So my guess is Avatar will be the next show. Avatari, perhaps?
The fourth Puzzlevision episode of SMG4 released on April 6, 2024 should be a parody of the moon episodes of Nelvana's 1991 Tintin series. SMG4's role is similar to Tintin, Alolan Vulpix's role is similar to Snowy, Mario's role is similar to Captain Haddock's role, Toad's role is similar to Professor Calculus' role, Axol's role is similar to Frank Wolff's role, Boopkins and Bob's roles are similar to Thomson and Thompson's roles, and SMG3's role is similar to Colonel Boris Jorgen's role.
Please note that Axol is like Frank Wolff. Axol sacrificed himself like Frank Wolf. Frank Wolff sacrificed himself so his friends have enough oxygen while Axol sacrificed himself to defeat Niles the first time.
Toad can be seen in You Made Mario Do It and You Used to Be Cool, so he couldn't have stayed in the castle when it sunk.
On an unreleated note, Malice Transformed Beast Princess Peach will portray an alien even though there were no aliens in the moon episodes of Nelvana's 1991 Tintin series.