Luigi Mario

"I was one hot sacrifice, Bro." - Luigi, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

Luigi (Japanese: ルイージ) is Mario's younger, taller twin brother and the deuteragonist of the Mario franchise. Throughout his life, he has lived in Mario's shadow, developing both cowardly and heroic tendencies. Despite this, Luigi has helped and fought alongside his brother on many occasions. Mario Bros. marks his first appearance in the Mario franchise and his debut in general. Originally an exact copy, then palette swap of Mario, Luigi was created to facilitate a second-player option. Since the two-player mode was dropped from most main Super Mario games beginning with Super Mario Land, Luigi has gained his own identity and personality, becoming a co-starring character of the Mario franchise. This is especially noticeable in installments for the Luigi's Mansion and the Mario & Luigi series of games. Luigi's notable traits include his green cap, his smooth mustache, his cowardly personality, his Italian accent, his heavy use of power-ups, and a superior jumping ability to Mario.

Why He's More Than A Cowardly Brother

 * 1) Depending on the game, he may move a little faster or even jump higher. He is also slightly taller and more physically trim than his brother.
 * 2) Due to being the little brother with little self-esteem and rational fears, many find Luigi to be very relatable as a character, and are able to sympathize with him, unlike with Mario. Also, being scared isn't his only personality trait, as he will occasionally compete with his big bro from time to time, and having a sibling rivalry is another thing that many people can relate to.
 * 3) *Speaking of Mario, Luigi has a strong brotherly love for Mario. In the first Paper Mario game, he writes in his diary how much he loves Mario and how much he wants to be like him.
 * 4) *Even without Mario, he will save anyone he cares about no matter the costs. Throughout the Luigi's Mansion series, for example, he battles his own crippling fear of ghosts to save his brother (as well as Peach and several of her Toad attendants in the third installment, Luigi's Mansion 3). Likewise, in "The Subspace Emissary," the story mode for Super Smash Bros. Brawl, he joins Ness and King Dedede to save everyone from Tabuu, a mysterious being who puts the universe at stake.
 * 5) The thing that’s funny and relatable about Luigi isn’t that he’s a coward, it’s that he’s a coward with no sense of scale. He reacts to literally everything with exactly the same level of "oh-gee-I-dunno" apprehension, whether it’s hearing a noise in a dark house at night, or coming face to face with a world-devouring horror. This is more or less the root of his self-esteem problems; he’s the universe’s second-greatest warrior and doesn’t realize it because as far as he’s concerned, being scared of a spider in the bathroom and being scared of Cthulhu are the same thing – he just totally lacks the necessary context to appreciate that managing to grit your teeth and deal with the second one is any sort of achievement. It’s all spiders in the bathroom to him. He’s equally terrified of everything, and that makes him invincible.
 * 6) He has an adorable love chemistry with Princess Daisy of Sarasaland, established since the 1993 Super Mario Bros movie, where she made her second appearance.
 * 7) He is a great pet owner to his ghost dog, Polterpup, whom he adopted in Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon.
 * 8) He's had great voice actors over the years, ranging from Danny Wells, Tony Rosato and of course, Charles Martinet. Even after the hilarious Mario Movie cast was revealed, Charlie Day as Luigi has been one of if not, the most well received choice.
 * 9) Like Mario, Luigi has the strength to lift castles. He also has fire and thunder manipulation.
 * 10) He remains his lovable self in his appearances in TV, most notably, the DiC Entertainment's Super Mario cartoon trilogy, where he actually talks, is the first time he has a personality before the examples mentioned above, and is a funny coward. But like his video game counterpart, he’s not afraid to be brave in order to help the ones he cares about, especially his brother, Mario, as well as Princess Toadstool (Peach), Toad, and Yoshi.
 * 11) Speaking of Yoshi, Luigi is very close to Yoshi and cares very much about him. This is especially shown in the Super Mario World TV show, where it showed how the 2 first meet and how Yoshi refers to him as "Mama Luigi".

Bad Qualities

 * 1) In the games, Luigi isn’t recognized by a lot of people. For example, in the Mario & Luigi RPG games, he is referred to as either "Green 'Stache" or "Green Mario".
 * 2) While still likable for the most part in the DiC Entertainment's Super Mario cartoon trilogy, he can be annoying sometimes in the first Super Mario show, as he and Mario act too much like Italian stereotypes often, especially the Italian food puns.
 * 3) Even though it was cool to see him as a playable character in Super Smash Bros. 64, he was not a good character to play as, mainly due to the fact he was very underpowered and his entire move set plagiarised Mario's moveset, even his voice lines are just Mario's voice lines but higher pitch.
 * 4) *Thankfully, he become more of a unique fighter in the later games and his voicelines were changed in Brawl.

Trivia

 * He has spawned several memes focusing on him, such as "Luigi's Death Stare", where it refers to the angry, determined staring expression that he occasionally shows in Mario Kart 8 when passing by opponents, and "Luigi wins by doing absolutely nothing", a series of videos where he is completely immobile but somehow wins (usually minigames from the Mario Party series or fights in Super Smash Bros.) as the other CPU-controlled opponents defeat themselves due to their very low AI.