Luigi Mario

"'That's Mama Luigi to you, Mario!' *snicker* - Luigi talking in 'Super Mario World' (TV Show)" 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) Luigi is very supportive and helps Mario rescue Princess Peach of the Mushroom Kingdom.
 * 3) Although he is a coward, Luigi is not afraid to risk his life to save others. He saved Mario from his arch-nemesis, King Boo, and overcame his fear of ghosts.
 * 4) Like Mario, Luigi has many famous catchphrases, such as “Go Weegee!” being a notable example.
 * 5) He has a competitive demeanor. He participates in many sports and the Olympics, not being afraid to lose.
 * 6) In games where he is a featured player, Luigi is shown to be kind, cowardly, optimistic, clumsy, silly, caring, loyal, gentle, and loveable, making him a more developed and even relatable character than Mario.
 * 7) *While Luigi is kind, his alter ego from Super Paper Mario, Mr. L, is the opposite: a brave, but a cocky individual.
 * 8) He will do anything to fight for others to save Mario and Peach.
 * 9) *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.
 * 10) 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.
 * 11) 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.
 * 12) He is a great pet owner to his ghost dog, Polterpup, whom he adopted in Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon.
 * 13) Like Mario, Luigi has the strength to lift castles. He also has fire and thunder manipulation.
 * 14) 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.
 * 15) 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) Despite his good traits, he can be a huge coward and can screw up, much to failure, which makes him slightly dumber than Mario.
 * 2) 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".
 * 3) 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.
 * 4) He was treated as a Butt-Monkey in the RPG series, Mario & Luigi and in Super Mario Bros. 2.
 * 5) 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.
 * 6) *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.