Talk:Black Chest Demon

Name

I personally do not think these creatures are "demons", but are more of ghosts, or monsters. They lack the typical features of a "demon", as they are simply a face.

TurtleShroom! :) ^†Jesus Loves You and Died for you!^† 09:33, 7 January 2008 (EST)

But they are officially called demons in those stories told by that mouse who hangs out near Bobbery's roof.User:/sig 13:25, 7 January 2008 (EST)

Name

Should this article be moved to Black Chest Demon? --KPH2293 19:42, 14 January 2007 (EST)

I thought so, too. HOWEVER!, I realized that these are exceptional creatures and they are not a species, but multiple specie. If this should be moved to anything it should be Four Heros. Para Yoshi ^Wahoo! 19:48, 14 January 2007 (EST)

Yes, I agree with parayoshi, this should be moved to nothing...execpt the Four Heroes.

XzelionYepee.^ETC

This page was moved to Black Chest Demon over two months ago. --KPH2293 20:37, 20 March 2007 (EDT)

I think a separate article should be created for the Four Heroes.User:/sig 20:56, 20 March 2007 (EDT)

Our maybe one for each hero. Maybe? --YellowYoshi398 16:11, 3 April 2007 (EDT)

Sounds good to me. They are more important than the characters Luigi encountered, that's for sure.User:/sig 13:23, 7 January 2008 (EST)

The chests in Rogueport and Hooktail Castle

How do you know which of the legendary heroes is in which chest? Grifty talks about the Goomba hollowing out the Great Tree, and tells of the Toad giving the star to the healer, but doesn't say where. So both of these boxes could hold either one of those two heroes! Unless I missed something... Avengah 14:00, 24 February 2008 (EST)

OK, according to a GameFAQs topic, this article is incorrect. The Wise Goomba who hollowed out the Great Tree was in the chest in Rogueport Sewers, and the Toad hero collapsed in Petal Meadows, which means his chest is in Hooktail Castle. I'll just change the article - if anyone has any proof the other way, then feel free to change it back (but please post the proof). Avengah 05:45, 1 March 2008 (EST)

Name

So, any evidence of this name? At all? Niiue - Who has lost his tail?

Split-off articles

Very tempted to put "not about the name". I noticed Tube Mode lacks its own article and redirects here, where the others have their own pages - and neither it nor the Paper Mode are listed on the templates. I'm about to do some serious dozing potentially, but thought I'd raise the question before then. -- Lord G. matters. 15:28, July 1, 2021 (EDT)

Name

No proper name for Black Chest Demon. The Nintendo Power Player's Guide just uses the pronoun it or a nondescript thing in all four instances where a new curse is granted, but it is already an article as well as thing. On page 33, it says Like a demonic Richard Simmons, which I find rather hilarious. --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) ^{(Stats - Contribs)} 16:31, December 17, 2021 (EST)

I'd say rename the article "four heroes" since that's what the game calls them. While that term refers more to what they were than what they are during the events of the game, but it's the most official term we have, and a slight rewriting of the article can compensate for that. 20:15, December 17, 2021 (EST)

Honestly, I still don't think that's very fitting or accurate for this article. Nightwicked Bowser 20:36, December 17, 2021 (EST)

Does anyone have a better idea, then? I don't like the current title since the term "demon" is inaccurate - they're not demons, they're ancient heroes who have been cursed by a demon. At the very least, the title needs to be lowercase to abide by our policy on conjectural names. An alternate solution is to simply merge the black chest phantoms to the black chest article, since the two essentially go hand-in-hand - you never encounter one without the other - while moving the four heroes content to the list of implied characters. 21:18, December 17, 2021 (EST)

I guess my find in the guide doesn't legitimize to some degree the usage of the word "demon" as a title name? /s

More serious note, I've had this game since around 2005-ish and I never once looked into talking to Grifty on the roof of east Rogueport. I learned that a Toad, Goomba, Koopa, and Boo suffered a grim fate and turned into what we know now as that grinning face.

I wouldn't mind merging with black chest and separate the modes into four distinct articles. --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) ^{(Stats - Contribs)} 23:52, December 18, 2021 (EST)

The modes already have articles. (Well, Tube Mode didn't at the time of your post, but it does now.) 19:21, December 19, 2021 (EST)

Now that all of the curses are split, I would be okay with the merge suggested as well. Nightwicked Bowser 19:46, December 19, 2021 (EST)

Richard Simmons Mentioned in Nintendo Power Guide

7feetunder (talk), any reason you want to omit the Richard Simmons trivia piece? Am I missing a bit of Super Mario Wiki policy? The information is from an official source, which is why I included it. --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) ^{(Stats - Contribs)} 11:44, December 20, 2021 (EST)

I simply don't think a random simile from a strategy guide that was included purely for humor value is so noteworthy that we have to bring it up in the article. The guide was just making a joke about how the Hooktail Castle chest gives Mario the ability to "get skinny", since Simmons was a fitness instructor. It doesn't mean the black chest thing actually has anything to do with the guy. As far as actual policy goes, I don't think we have anything pertaining to this issue specifically, but MarioWiki:Trivia discourages the bloating of trivia sections in general, and this article already has four of them. 19:34, December 20, 2021 (EST)

I kind of interpreted the statement as a part joke and part description about the personality of what the four heroes became. I never meant for it to be a direct relation to the real life person. I don't think adding one extra bullet point in the trivia section contributes to the bloat. I can understand adding inferences and conclusions to the trivia section can bloat things, kind of like grasping at straws, but this is just straight up word from an official source that can be an interesting read. If you want to cut down on the current trivia section, maybe two or three of these bullet points could either be moved to List of implied characters or integrate them into the history section of the article. --Wildgoosespeeder (talk) ^{(Stats - Contribs)} 09:16, December 21, 2021 (EST)

It ultimately doesn't matter if the trivia currently has too many bullet points or not, a throwaway gag from a strategy guide that was clearly never meant to be taken seriously is not trivia-worthy to begin with. The Richard Simmons connection is extremely tenuous, given that the Paper Mode ability doesn't actually have anything to do with fitness or weight loss. The writer obviously just added it for flavor. Given the context of the line, I cannot imagine how it can be interpreted as anything other than a one-off joke, let alone "description about the personality of what the four heroes became". It has nothing to do with personality, lore, or anything. The reference was made was purely because the Paper Mode ability involved making Mario "skinny", even though it's just Mario turning his paper body sideways. 21:34, December 21, 2021 (EST)

What to do with this article

This talk page proposal has already been settled. Please do not edit this section or its subsections. If you wish to discuss the article, please do so in a new section below the proposal.

merge with black chest 6-12-1-0
Basically, "Black Chest Demon" is a poor conjectural title for this article. These aren't demons, they're four heroes who saved the world 1,000 years prior to the game's events and got cursed by the Shadow Queen. They are never called "demons" at all, only the Shadow Queen herself is. There have been a few discussions regarding the name and state of this article but all of them have fizzled out with no conclusion. So let's fix that already.

• Rename to four heroes: Per Grifty's tales, this is the most official name we have. While that term refers more to what they were than what they are during the events of the game, a slight rewriting of the article can compensate for that.
• Merge with black chest: The black chests and the beings within them essentially go hand-in-hand - you never encounter one without the other, so we could just merge them. Meanwhile, we could move the four heroes content to the list of implied characters, though this is bit dubious since they do physically appear in the game, just not in their original forms.
• Rename to a different conjectural name:: At least let's not pretend these things are something they're not. I don't have any specific ideas for an alternate conjectural name, which is part of why I don't particularly like this option, but I'm open to suggestions.
• Do (almost) nothing: "Almost" because even if we do nothing else, we still need to move this to lowercase per site policy.

Any other ideas are welcome and may be added to the proposal if there's enough support for them.

Proposer: 7feetunder (talk)
Deadline: May 27, 2023, 23:59 GMT

Rename to four heroes

1. 7feetunder (talk) Preferred option.
2. Spectrogram (talk) Per proposal.
3. Hewer (talk) Per proposal, and I don't really understand the logic of merging the characters with the objects they're contained in.
4. Dine2017 (talk) Per proposal and Hewer. It would be strange to categorize the black chests as characters since they don't speak.
5. ThePowerPlayer (talk) After thinking about it, even though Glowsquid has a fair point and the name "four heroes" doesn't exactly reflect their in-game role, it is a non-conjectural name, and it makes more sense to keep the characters split from the objects, because that allows the character articles to touch on their history as told by Grifty before the events of the game.
6. MegaBowser64 (talk) I mean, this name makes a lot of sense, and since these guys are big enough characters to deserve their own article, this option is the logical choice. If we delete the article and merge to black chest, we’re basically demoting them to characters minor enough to only be mentioned within another article.

Merge with black chest

1. 7feetunder (talk) Second choice.
2. Swallow (talk) My preferred choice
3. Glowsquid (talk) Splitting them as is is redundant and I'd rather the subject be listed under a page whose name doesn't immediately spoil their true nature.
4. Koopa con Carne (talk) per 7feetunder
5. ThePowerPlayer (talk) Second choice.
6. Ray Trace (talk) Have to agree that having those be separate is redundant as their existence is intrinsically linked to each other (and really the heroes don't really have a physical appearance anyway) plus the connotation of them being heroes cursing the player just works better under a black chest article.
7. Mario (talk) Most players in the gameplay context encounter these as black chest demons which are completely tied to black chests, and the wiki would describe them as such in most cases, so probably better idea to categorize it as such.
8. Shokora (talk) – Per all.
9. LinkTheLefty (talk) I agree with Glowsquid.
10. Tails777 (talk) While my initial thought was to do nothing, the name isn't official, it's true that they are never called "black chest demons" at all and they are indeed the heroes from the game's lore. But my preferred choice is to merge them with the black chest overall. These "demons" are only ever encountered with the chests so it just makes the most sense. So per Ray Trace and Mario.
11. SmokedChili (talk) Per Mario. Grifty's tales are optional.
12. Camwoodstock (talk) - You'd be fine to mention the whole "they might be the identity of the four heroes mentioned by Grifty" thing in the article body itself, but for the sake of actual organization, yeah, the chests and the guys inside are treated as one in the same.

Rename to a different conjectural name

1. 7feetunder (talk) It's better than nothing.

Comments

@Glowsquid: Since when do spoilers affect how we cover things? 08:24, May 14, 2023 (EDT)

I don't read that as the crux of his vote. -- KOOPA CON CARNE 08:55, May 14, 2023 (EDT)

I never said it was, but he still brought it up in a way that implies that it's relevant. 09:22, May 14, 2023 (EDT)

Because the two options are otherwise equally valid in my eyes and the one that does not inherently spoils the nature of the characters gets an edge due to that. "The wiki does not concern itself with warning readers about spoilers" and "It is nice when the wiki avoid going out of its way to spoil readers when other options exist" are not mutally-exclusive clauses. --Glowsquid (talk) 14:33, May 14, 2023 (EDT)

I'm a bit conflicted. While I would prefer the black chest... cursees, to keep their own article, for they are their own entity, and have the article named after something they're actually called as, I think "four heroes" as the article name is a bit weird on a couple levels:

1. Now, it's true that they are in fact the heroes of Rogueport that sealed the Shadow Queen away all those years ago, but that is mostly backstory told by a random, minor NPC character, and the fact that they're the same as the creatures locked in the black chests is pure implication. In terms of the main story, the one that Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is about, they're mostly rude and unfriendly monsters that curse Mario with something they think is terrible... which doesn't really scream "four heroes" to me.
   Now, it's only one minor thing, and if it was merely that, then I doubt it's a sufficient enough reason to not rename them to an actual name of theirs. However...
2. ...their actual name of "four heroes" is REALLY non-specific, too; it could refer to any set of four heroes. For instance: Mario, Luigi, Peach and Toad in Super Mario Bros. 2; or Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Dixie Kong and Cranky Kong in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. If their English name was something along the lines of their Japanese or Spanish names, that translate to "Rogueport's Millenary Four Heroes", or something simple like "The Four Heroes of Rogueport", then that would be sufficiently clear enough, but no, it's just "four heroes".

But they are also important enough to have their own separate article, instead of being relegated to the black chest article, so merging with that page is also out, I feel. And moving to another conjectural name, or keeping the conjectural name they already have, is also weird when they do have an actual name. I... literally don't know what to do here. rend (talk) (edits) 06:25, May 19, 2023 (EDT)

We've lost the battle, folks BOWSER... (talk) 10:55, May 27, 2023 (EDT)