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| This villain was proposed but was rejected by the community for not being heinous enough or lacks what is necessary to be a Pure Evil villain. Therefore, this villain shall be added to our "Never Again List", where proposed villains rejected by the community shall be placed to prevent future proposals of the same evil-doer. They can be proposed again (with the permission of an administrator) if new elements appear in their series that can change their status as non-PE villains. Any act of adding this villain to the Pure Evil category without a proposal or creating a proposal for this villain without the permission of an administrator will result in a ban. | ||
| “ | Ninten! I am grateful to your family. Your Great-Grandparents, George and Maria raised me. But, George stole vital information from our planet that can be used to betray my people... And now, one of his descendants is obstructing our plans, and must be stopped!! Ninten! I am talking about you! Go home now! Perish with the rest of the ugly Earth People. Foolish one, you cannot do a thing with your meager powers... Powers worthy of a lowly insect. Ninten! You alone, I may save you. Just you alone. Board our Mother Ship with me... then, fall into a long sleep with your friends and the other ugly earth people. | „ |
| ~ Giegue |
| “ | Stop singing. STOP Singing! STOP! Stop the song! STOP IT!! STOP THAT SONG! You puny little Earth bugs! Shut up, and STOP Singing!! The SONG... STOP IT!!! !!!!! Stop... Pleeease stop! | „ |
| ~ Giegue's Villainous breakdown. |
| “ | So, isn't this terrifying? I'm terrified too. Giygas cannot think rationally anymore, and he isn't even aware of what he is doing now. His own mind was destroyed by his incredible power. What an all-mighty idiot! Yep, that's what he is! Heh heh heh heh... and you... you will be... just another meal to him! | „ |
| ~ Porky Minch talking about Gigyas. |
Giygas (in Japanese: ギーグ Gyiyg), or Giegue (in Japanese: ギーグ, Gīgu), also known as the Universal Cosmic Destroyer, the Embodiment of Evil or the Evil Power, is one of the two main antagonists (alongside Porky Minch) of the Mother/EarthBound series, serving as the main antagonist of Mother/EarthBound Beginnings and Mother 2/EarthBound.
Known by his aliases, he is an alien conqueror from an unknown race who wields an incredible psychic power, which would later be called PSI. Giygas' portrayal vastly differs between both games. He is a galactic conqueror in the first, but an unfathomable monstrosity in the second. Due to the far bigger impact it made on gamers, Giygas' depiction in the second is much more well-known than his previous self, which has been almost totally eclipsed.
Appearance[]
In Mother/Earthbound Beginnings, Giygas is a thin white alien with a pair of horns, no facial features except for upturned, black eyes, tentacles for limbs and a long tail. He is inside a container filled with liquid, as evidenced by the bubble and how he seems to be floating inside of it. The container is covered in grey appendages, with two red lights on each side, surrounded by red appendages, and appears white on the left but blue on the right.
In Mother 2/EarthBound, Giygas first appears in the organic-like Devil's machine, containing his essence within a spherical container reflecting Ness' face. His nightmarish true form is inconceivable for a human mind, should it wield the Power of the Earth, and his very existence is beyond rationalization, much like Azathoth. He looks like an indescribable swirling red blur evoking a twisted, screaming face, inside a chaotic, darkness with no beginning or end, being a dimension of his own. His aspect is endlessly warping, later splitting into an array of dozens of "faces".
Personality[]
| “ | So, isn't this terrifying? I'm terrified too. Giygas cannot think rationally anymore, and he isn't even aware of what he is doing now. His own mind was destroyed by his incredible power. What an all-mighty idiot! Yep, that's what he is! Heh heh heh heh... and you... you will be... just another meal to him! | „ |
| ~ Porky Minch talking about Gigyas. |
In Mother/Earthbound Beginnings, despite being ruthless and fully willing to conquer and enslave the Earth he derides as ugly and worthless, Giygas cannot be considered truly evil. He considers that his kind was slighted by the theft of PSI and remains very fond of his "adoptive parents", feeling kinship to their descendant Ninten and offering to take him in. All in all, he lacks emotion, but still feels them enough to be affected, though they ironically remain alien to him.
In Mother 2/EarthBound, Giygas' power has shattered his mind, making him totally irrational, unable to speak or even think coherently. Porky Minch attests that lost awareness of himself or his actions, calling him an "almighty idiot". So much that he needs the Devil's Machine to maintain a semblant of sapience, now irredeemably evil. Still, his calling of Ness' name and remaining weakness to emotions implies that minute slivers of his former self remain.
Powers and Abilities[]
In Mother/Earthbound Beginnings, His PSI powers are far and away beyond any human wielder, being implied to dwarf even his kind. He can mind-control the world, animate things, and shrug off anything thrown at him.
In Mother 2/EarthBound, Giygas can now only be described as pure evil. Much worse than PSI power, he is now virtually all-powerful, enough to transcend Time and Space and destroy the universe, with total control over darkness and evil. His influence corrupts people and warp things, and he commands monsters such as the cybernetic Starmen aliens.
Biography[]
Past[]
In 1909, when Giygas was an infant, aliens of his kind abducted many people including a human couple, George and Maria, who took a liking for him and raised him as their son. During captivity, George studied the aliens' PSI or PK (Psionics or Psychokinesis) powers without permission, culminating with his escape back to Earth.
In the eighty following years, George shut himself in seclusion, inventing machines and developing PSI to prepare for the alien invasion. In his latest years, PSI inexplicably spread over Earth, against the Aliens' wishes. Due to his incredibly powerful PSI, a now matured Giygas was tasked to invade Earth to take back PSI from humans before it could be used against them. To do so, he was forced to detach himself from Maria, shedding his fondness for her.
Mother/EarthBound Beginnings[]
During the course of the game, Giygas (known as Giegue in English) uses his army, war-robots, and enormous PSI powers to spread his influence, swarming the world with mind-controlling henchmen before invading with his forces. George's and Maria's great-grandson Ninten develops PSI powers and investigates strange phenomenon, first in his fictional hometown of Podunk, then all across the world. Animals become hostile, objects animate themselves, and undeads start rising, due to the aliens' PSI.
Ninten befriends Pippi, a powerful tomboyish girl, Lloyd, a nerdy yet highly intelligent boy, Anna, a PSI-wielding girl, and Teddy, a teenage gang leader. They learn about the alien invasion, and reach the spiritual Magicant Kingdom. They heal Queen Mary's amnesia, learning that she is none other than Maria, kept youthful (or having her spirit preserved, it is not very clear). She tells them about Giygas and the Eight Melodies song she used as his lullaby before dying, reuniting with George at last at the cost of Magicant, that was only her mental projection.
On Mount Itoi, the party is crushed by the powerful R7038 war-robot, only owing their lives to Lloyd who barged in with a tank (having been ironically kicked-out by Teddy for not being tough enough). They later discover George’s secret laboratory and EVE, the highly powerful female robot built to protect Ninten. Alas, EVE has no choice but to safe-destruct to save the party from the monstrous R7038XX robot.
After discovering all the aliens' captive, the party meets with Giygas at last He offers to spare Ninten, asking to come with him on his mothership, but the boy refuses for he enjoys his life and his friends too much. So begins the Final Battle.
Giygas unleashes powerful yet undefinable PSI attacks and shrugs off anything the party throws at him, until Maria's spirit tells them that raw might is useless and that her former ward can only be defeated by singing the Eight Melodies. This triggers memories of his happy childhood in Giygas, who admits defeat and leaves, telling Ninten that they will meet again when he returns to take his revenge.
Between the Games' Storylines[]
What happened after the first game, or whether both games are from the same continuity in the first place, remains unexplained. It can be guessed that Giygas was left to grieve his foster parents and his failure. His conflicting love for them and loyalty to his people later unexplainably turning him into the abomination of the second game.
Giygas returns decades later (or in a different timeline), planning to invade Earth in a more stealthy way to prevent the same resistance as last time. He learns of the Apple of Enlightenment, a prophetic machine that foretold his defeat at the end of a boy named Ness, thus decides to invade twenty years earlier than he initially planned.
What happened after is not explained, but in an apocalyptic future he has been reduced to an eldritch, horrifying, mindless entity who dominates what remains of the universe, which he engulfed in absolute darkness and reduced to ruins, nearly wiping out all life, including earthlings and his kind. Hopefully, an insectoid alien named Buzz Buzz travels back ten years into the past, in search of the prophesied heroes who could avert the impending apocalypse.
Mother 2/EarthBound[]
Ness, perhaps of Ninten's kin, finds the meteor that brought Buzz Buzz in his era, near his fictional hometown of Onett. He is told about Giygas’ threat and his role as one of the four heroes. After fighting one of Giygas' monsters who followed Buzz Buzz through time, Ness is given the Sound Stone and instructed to record the Eight Melodies, to gain the Power of the Earth and become mighty enough to face Giygas.
Giygas starts spreading his evil influence through time, all over the present-day Earth, corrupting both living beings and objects, just like in the first game albeit more sinister. As such, Ness' bratty and obnoxious neighbour Porky Minch is turned into a vicious tyrant-in-the-making.
Ness travels through his country of Eagleland, and saves the PSI-wielding girl Paula from being sacrificed by the evil Happy Happyist Cult, of which Porky is now the High Priest. They are captured in the town of Threed, but they are saved by Jeff, the nerdy yet genius son of the famous Dr. Andonuts, whom Paula telepathically called for help. In the city of Fourside, they find a Mani Mani Statue spreading Giygas' evil, having corrupted the mayor and real-estate mogul Geldegarde Monotoli. Facing Porky again, they break the statue and its illusions, freeing Montoli, and are joined by Poo, martial artist prince of the far away, Eastern-inspired kingdom of Dalaam.
After learning the last of the Eight Melodies, Ness falls unconscious and enters the Magicant Kingdom, formed from his thoughts, where he defeats his evil side, fully breaking away from Giygas' power. Unfortunately, darkness starts spreading as Giygas' influence keeps increasing. Since the Universal Cosmic Destroyer is out of reach in another era, the party has no other choice than to travel through time with Dr. Andonuts' invention. Not in the future when their enemy is fully invincible, but in the past when they still stand a chance.
The Devil's Machine
The party must transfer their minds into robotic bodies to survive time travel, not minding the high risk of remaining like this forever.
They reach a dark cave looking like a womb where a machine is staring at them with a face like Ness' (or Ninten'), ready to face Giygas with the Power of the Earth, though without expecting what awaits them.
Porky appears, now horribly twisted and piloting a spider-like machine, having sworn fealty to Giygas and having been brought to the past to serve as his right-hand and minder. Giygas is contained inside the Devil Machine, that keeps his power and mind under control, with Porky gleefully describing what monstrosity their enemy has become.
The party fights Porky and a Machine-contained Giygas, but only Porky is vulnerable, for Giygas reflects back all attacks, even those reflected back at him. Porky can disrupt PSI and inflict status, while his liege can hit many targets with PSI Flash, PSI Thunder, PSI Freeze and the deadly PSI Rockin.
The party wins the battle, but the nasty brat shuts the machine off in retaliation, unleashing Giygas in all his might (before hastily getting out of reach, but still taunting the party about what is happening). The party must then engage the extremely nerve-wracking final battle of the game, one of the most disturbing in gaming history.
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You cannot grasp the nature of Giygas' attacks, let alone his aspect.
The battle against Giygas is very long and difficult. He uses random and unintelligible attacks, which the party cannot grasp, while babbling incoherent, meaningless speeches. His repeating Ness' name and "I'm happy" being a creepy echo to his offer of friendship to Ninten in the first game. No attack can harm him, and he overwhelms the party, until Paula calls out to everyone in the Earth to pray.
The combined prayers of every character reach Giygas to exploit his weakness, which quite similarly to the first game turns out to be human emotions. Every time they do, the abomination further distorts itself, increasing his creepiness with every passing second. Alas, this is not enough to fully defeat him, until Paula can eventually reach out to a mysterious stranger (heavily implied to be the player), which finishes him off once and for all.
What Giygas has become is destroyed for good and fades to nothingness, forever erasing his apocalyptic future and his influence on the present. Ness and his friends can now return to the present and to their human bodies, free to enjoy newfound peace.
However, Porky is still around, having traveled through time until he became immortal, and bore some trace of Giygas power, becoming the primary villain for the next game. (Though Giygas was considered as the final boss yet again, either resurrected or as his essence.)
Interpretations[]
Shigesato Itoi has stated that his inspiration for Giygas' speech, but not the inspiration for Giygas himself, in EarthBound came from a traumatic childhood experience where he accidentally walked into an adult movie theater and caught a glimpse of a rape scene in the 1957 film The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty (憲兵とバラバラ死美人 Kenpei to Barabara Shibijin). In actuality, there was no rape scene in this film, instead a murder scene. As Itoi was a child at the time, he has stated his lasting memory of this experience is fuzzy at best.
Relationships[]
Family[]
- George (adoptive father)
- Maria/Mary (adoptive mother)
- Ninten (adoptive great-nephew)
- Mimmie (adoptive great-niece)
- Minnie (adoptive great-niece)
- Carol (adoptive niece-in-law)
- Ninten's father (adoptive nephew)
Allies[]
- Starmen
- Porky Minch (second in command)
- Master Belch
Enemies[]
- Ninten (arch-nemesis)
- Ana
- Lloyd
- Ness (archenemy)
- Paula
- Jeff
- Poo
Gallery[]
Images[]
Videos[]
Trivia[]
- PSI Brainshock is effective against Giygas, which will make him feel strange, causing him to sometimes attack himself.
- Giygas is one of the three characters in Mother 2/EarthBound who can use PSI Rockin (PK Kiai, lit., or PK Fighting Spirit, in Japanese), the other two being Ness himself and Ness's Nightmare.
- It could be possible that Giygas' race had the ability to mix and match different PSI attacks to form "patchwork" PSI. As these special PSI are made up of different PSI, it is impossible to see what the PSI was supposed to be like. One example is when Giygas used a PSI Freeze attack on Ness' party, targeting multiple characters even though PSI Freeze is meant to target only one target.
- The incomprehension of Giygas's true form and his influence on the people of the world shares a lot of similarities to the likes of the creatures in the works of H.P. Lovecraft. This is backed by Porky referring to Giygas as "an all-mighty idiot", where one of the nicknames of Lovecraft's Azathoth is "Blind Idiot God".
- In the GBA compilation of the first two titles, it is actually possible to defeat Giygas outside of the scripting by poisoning him. Doing so earns no experience and the ending proceeds normally.
- Giygas is considered one of the greatest and most iconic video game antagonists of all time. It has infamously become one of the most feared characters, not only in Nintendo, but in video game history. He is often known for being one of the scariest game bosses ever, alongside Flowey, Monster Ock, and Zero Two. Many videos on YouTube created by several different users go by titles such as "Top 10 Disturbing Video Game Bosses" or "Top 10 Scariest Moments in Non-horror Games", and Giygas hits the top three for many of them. Giygas and his quotes have become memes because of this.
- The fourth phase of Giygas's boss fight in Mother 2/EarthBound strongly resembles his appearance in Mother/EarthBound Beginnings when flipped upside down: his elongated jaw becomes his horns, and his skull becomes his featureless face. The repeating swirling pattern forms his body.
- The gaps in the pattern also strongly suggest the shape of a fetus, but this has been confirmed to be pure coincidence.
- Giygas and Porky are similar to the Beast and the Antichrist.
- Giygas' face is used for A-60.
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 Villains
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Giygas' Army Pigmask Army Minch Family Others | ||