Time Turner
You are filled with determination. (R/GD/TT)
The franchise has a reputation for either comical villains (Bowser is the butt of every joke, King K. Rool steals all of the bananas which is Very Important) or comically megalomaniacal villains (Shadow Queen wants to take over the world, Bleck wants to destroy literally everything). However, I think that it's rare for one of the villains to actually do something that goes beyond clichéd and actually makes the player feel something more gut-wrenching than just a desire to do good and stop bad. Most of the time, you're never concerned about not stopping the villain, to the point where you don't even consider what might happen if you lose, so it's worth noting those situations where sometime stops being high-fantasy evil and becomes morbidly evil.
I'll start with my wheelhouse, Mario's Time Machine. Bowser travels back in time and steals a lot of important items, usually just when they're needed. This ranges from comical, like stealing the Apple that fell on Newton's head only after it had already fallen, to more legitimately concerning but not unsurmountable, like stealing America's Declaration of Independence before it was even signed, which would confound the founding fathers for all of a couple of hours before they grab a blank parchment and write it again. Most of these thefts become mild inconveniences if you think about what would happen afterwards, but there's one that goes too far: Louis Pasteur's Flask. This flask contains the vaccine for rabies, and just before Bowser stole it, it was going to be used for the first time on a human subject, to great effect. They don't have a back-up, either: Louis is actively panicking when he can't find the vaccine. I don't think that it would be impossible for him to synthesize the same vaccine again, after having done it once already, but in that time, his live subject might die. Even if he is able to then test it on another human, his reputation would have already been ruined by the previous death. That was the human that his vaccine was supposed to save, and it failed. This is bad, because Pasteur was one of those people who helped create vaccines and his techniques were a crucial stepping point for modern vaccines. There were other people working separately, sure, but there's no guarantee that they would have been able to produce a rabies vaccine, not to mention that his anthrax vaccine might have also gone down the drain due to his reputation. It's worth pointing out that both rabies and anthrax are very deadly, and again, if Pasteur was disgraced, his research might have not been taken into consideration by others, and plenty of other vaccines could have been set back as well. Bowser could have caused thousands, if not millions, of deaths across the globe, just so he could have something neat for his museum. At the very least, Mario saved the life of one person, and likely saved the lives of many more, whether he knew it or not (and I'm going to say he didn't know, considering that he didn't know what a vaccine was).
this is what happens when you spend too much time doing research in the middle of the night
I'll start with my wheelhouse, Mario's Time Machine. Bowser travels back in time and steals a lot of important items, usually just when they're needed. This ranges from comical, like stealing the Apple that fell on Newton's head only after it had already fallen, to more legitimately concerning but not unsurmountable, like stealing America's Declaration of Independence before it was even signed, which would confound the founding fathers for all of a couple of hours before they grab a blank parchment and write it again. Most of these thefts become mild inconveniences if you think about what would happen afterwards, but there's one that goes too far: Louis Pasteur's Flask. This flask contains the vaccine for rabies, and just before Bowser stole it, it was going to be used for the first time on a human subject, to great effect. They don't have a back-up, either: Louis is actively panicking when he can't find the vaccine. I don't think that it would be impossible for him to synthesize the same vaccine again, after having done it once already, but in that time, his live subject might die. Even if he is able to then test it on another human, his reputation would have already been ruined by the previous death. That was the human that his vaccine was supposed to save, and it failed. This is bad, because Pasteur was one of those people who helped create vaccines and his techniques were a crucial stepping point for modern vaccines. There were other people working separately, sure, but there's no guarantee that they would have been able to produce a rabies vaccine, not to mention that his anthrax vaccine might have also gone down the drain due to his reputation. It's worth pointing out that both rabies and anthrax are very deadly, and again, if Pasteur was disgraced, his research might have not been taken into consideration by others, and plenty of other vaccines could have been set back as well. Bowser could have caused thousands, if not millions, of deaths across the globe, just so he could have something neat for his museum. At the very least, Mario saved the life of one person, and likely saved the lives of many more, whether he knew it or not (and I'm going to say he didn't know, considering that he didn't know what a vaccine was).
this is what happens when you spend too much time doing research in the middle of the night
