- "Now it is time! Now we will fight! Then you will lose! And you will cry!"
- —Midbus
Midbus is Fawful's minion and right-hand man, and the secondary antagonist in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story and its remake Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey. He is Fawful's personal enforcer and Bowser's arch-rival throughout the entire game up until his final defeat.
Profile[]
Personalty[]
Midbus is shown to be dimwitted, as he is shown to speak in sentences in poor English, but is full of pride as he was a rival towards Bowser in terms of strength. He is also shown to be very gluttonous as a pig as he was shown to be eating food thrown by the crowd watching him and Bowser fight. He was also shown to be loyal to Fawful and very protective towards him. However, in the end, his persistence became his undoing.
Biography[]
Past[]
Sometime after the events of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Fawful found and made a very close friend out of Midbus. It is clear that he was probably found before Partner's in Time since Fawful clearly had some form of takeover plan in that game. It is unclear how they met, since this wasn't relevant to the game's plot, but it is possible that Fawful saved his life or rescued him. He became Fawful's second-in-command.
In Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story /Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr.'s Journey/Bowser Jr.'s Journey[]
After finding out that Fawful is the person who fed him the Lucky Shroom and wants to conquer the Mushroom Kingdom, Bowser quickly attacks him. Midbus enters and pushes him back, saying that he is foolish. Bowser does not like what he hears and the battle commences. During the battle, Fawful gives a tutorial and alerts Midbus about Bowser's attacks. After Bowser takes a hit from Midbus, he feels cruddy from swallowing the Lucky Shroom. Midbus sees how weak Bowser is and exclaims that it is pointless, and says he should challenge him again when he gets stronger. Fawful then tells Bowser that he will now take over his castle first, then carry out the rest of his plan.
They leave headed toward his castle, with Bowser following all the way. After Bowser and the Elite Trio fired on Bowser's Castle, Midbus ordered the castle take flight to protect Fawful who was inside the Castle and they crush Bowser. He is utterly horrified at Bowser after he grew giant and led the attack using Bowser's Castle but it was defeated and cripplingly damaged. Midbus re-emerged afterwards and was set on fire only to withdraw back to Dark Land, refusing to fight Bowser until he shrunk down.
Later, in Fawful's Theatre, Midbus was summoned by Fawful to defend him and fight it out. When Midbus is defeated, he is dragged off-stage by some Goombas and Fawful uses the Boos to make Bowser chubby by forcing him to eat a lot of the food Fawful made for whoever won the battle. Midbus is then seen along with Fawful when he changes his plan by getting Princess Peach out of Bowser's body in order to get the Dark Star. He then provides a treadmill below Bowser and then walks away as Fawful was struggling to carry Princess Peach, making Fawful angrily call out Midbus for help. Midbus later confonts Mario and Luigi when they arrive at Princess Peach's Castle. He sends a robot named Junker to take them down. When Bowser finally explores the depths of Peach's Castle (which Fawful now controls), he confronts Midbus for the final time. However, Fawful upgrades Midbus to a stronger version of himself known as "Blizzard Midbus". When Blizzard Midbus is defeated, his entire body except the head freezes up with the head spewing ice cold breath. You can access the Airway when this occurs at which point Mario and Luigi go after the Dark Star which had fled into Bowser.
After Fawful and the Dark Star's defeat, it is unknown what happens to Midbus afterwards since he remains frozen in that spot for the remainder of the game. Given his frozen status, he was probably placed into cold storage in Bowser's Castle like the Shroobs were.
Attacks[]
Normal Midbus[]
- Roll Attack: Midbus curls into a ball and rolls at Bowser. Bowser has to punch Midbus in order to stop the attack.
- Swelled-Up Punch: Midbus fills himself with air and tries to strike Bowser with a powerful uppercut. Bowser has to hit Midbus with multiple punches in order to stop. Midbus also will jump a little closer to battle letting himself opened for attack.
- Belly-Flop Stomp: Midbus starts jump belly-flopping multiple times and reaches high enough to attack Bowser. Bowser must pay attention to where Midbus will land. He can land on Bowser,whose he must curl into his shell in order to dodge the attack, or, Midbus can land in front of him creating a shock wave. Bowser must punch Midbus before he lands.
- Iron Ball Swing: Midbus goes to the back and comes again spinning an iron ball. Bowser must once again pay attention to where Midbus throws the Ball. If thrown low, Bowser has to punch. If thrown high, Bowser has to hide in his shell to dodge.
Blizzard Midbus[]
- Snowball Throw: Midbus jumps and hangs on the walls and starts throwing snowballs that can make Bowser sick. When Midbus is looking at Bowser, he throws the snowball at Bowser, when looking elsewhere, he throws it somewhere else. Bowser has to hide in his shell in order to dodge the attack. If Bowser dodges at least 3 snowballs, Midbus will land and make a sliding punch. Bowser has to punch Midbus in order to not get attacked.
- Freeze Slam: When Midbus is healed by his Snawfuls he will curl into a ball and hit the left wall and start scaling the right wall. Bowser must pay attention to where Midbus might hit on Bowser or in front of him however this attack is very tricky to defend because the Snawfuls also throw ice balls in order to confuse Bowser and let him open to Midbus' attack.
- Bob-Omb Snowball: Midbus will go off-screen and return walking on a giant snowball to run at Bowser, however this attack can be dodged by punching the Bob-Omb on the snowball. However, sometimes he will bring the Bob-omb to the top and hide it. In order to dodge this, you have to remember where the Bob-omb is and then punch it.
Trivia[]
- The sign on Midbus's arm bears a resemblance to the logo seen on Pigmask machinery in MOTHER 3. Coincidentally, both Bowser's Inside Story and MOTHER 3 were composed by Yoko Shinomura and published by Nintendo (although made by Ape).
- Additionally, Midbus himself resembles the Hog's Breath mascot (minus the sunglasses).
- Midbus' name is a pun on the phrase "mid boss".
- Midbus can be seen as a contrast to his boss Fawful, although he is far less intelligent, he is far more muscular than him.
- Midbus is the only RPG secondary antagonist who didn't battle Mario and Luigi at some point in the series.
- However, he does meet Mario and Luigi once in the game. But instead, he uses the Junker to deal with them.
- Just as Bowser seems to be a cross between a dragon and a turtle, Midbus appears to be a hybrid of a warthog and an armadillo.
- Midbus seems to be the opposite of Bowser, seeing as Bowser uses fire powers and Midbus uses ice powers.
- Midbus's signature "MUH MUH MUH!" is German for "Moo Moo Moo", which is odd, as Midbus is believed by many to be a pig of sorts.
- Midbus is the only boss that Bowser fights which the Mario Bros. cannot contribute to defeating.
- Midbus may be loosely based on Ganon from The Legend of Zelda series.
- In a few ways, Midbus can be considered Bowser's own twisted rival; similar to Wario and Mario.
- Bowser is a reptilian mix of turtle and dragon while Midbus is a mammalian mix of boar and armadillo.
- Bowser has multiple spikes on his shell while Midbus has a single spinal razor on his.
- Bowser always prefers to be in charge while Midbus is content with working as an underling.
- Bowser usually has powers affiliated with fire while Midbus gains ice powers later on.
- Midbus' skin were originally seen as a screenshot, and reveals that Midbus skins are originally replacement for the pig skins in Minecraft: Wii U Edition.