Dimentio

"Master of dimensions... Pleaser of crowds... I am... Dimentio!"

- Dimentio

Dimentio is one of Count Bleck's minions. He is the tertiary antagonist of Super Paper Mario, but is revealed as the true main antagonist of Super Paper Mario. He battles Mario and his allies several times during their quest to stop the Chaos Heart and the Void.

His name is derived from the words "dimension" and "dementia".

History
After Count Bleck is defeated by Mario, Dimentio attempts to kill him but Nastasia takes the hit. Dimentio then he seizes the Chaos Heart for himself, thinking that the Pure Hearts were drained of their power, and transforms himself and Luigi into Super Dimentio. He banishes Count Bleck, Nastasia's dead form, and Tippi to his own Dimension D, a dimension of his own creation, where anyone inside becomes 256 times more powerful than normal. Mimi and O'Chunks arrive there to tell Count Bleck they'll aways stick by him, replenishing the power of the Pure Hearts. Tippi brings Mario the Pure Hearts which negate Dimentio's barrier, making him vulnerable. Mario, Bowser, and Peach defeat Super Dimentio, freeing Luigi and defeating Dimentio. However, Dimentio leaves behind a shadow of his power to keep controlling the Chaos Heart. With the destruction of all worlds upon them, Count Bleck and Tippi proclaim love towards one another, then seal the Chaos Heart away. Dimentio is consistently described as psychotic and insane.

"Loyalty" to Count Bleck
Apparently, Dimentio approached Count Bleck on his own at first, offering to serve him. Bleck turned him down, however. It was only after reading about him in the Dark Prognosticus that he allowed Dimentio into his forces. Dimentio is seen with O'Chunks, Mimi, and during several of the meetings with Bleck's henchmen. Even before betraying the Count, he holds disdain for all of Bleck's other followers. He takes every opportunity to mock his fellow minions over their failures, and even persuades them to disobey the Count's orders on one occasion. Dimentio eventually learns that Bleck has a more emotional side when he eavesdrops on him and Nastasia talking. Dimentio also learns of Tippi's connection to him and uses this to weaken Bleck emotionally to make him more easy to defeat. Dimentio is apparently "the dark one" mentioned in the Dark Prognosticus as opposed to Bleck. If Bleck read this in the Prognosticus, he might have intentionally enlisted Dimentio's help in order to ensure his successful suicide and destruction of the universe. However, Dimentio eventually turns on Bleck, and starts trying to thwart Bleck's plans. He casually begins to help Mario along, and even tries to convince the party to join him. Bleck wants to end all worlds in order to end his own life, whereas Dimentio wants to end all worlds in order to become king of a universe of his own creation. Their difference in motive is the reason Dimentio gives for betraying Count Bleck. However, it is also possible that Dimentio only feigned allegiance to Count Bleck in order to obtain the Chaos Heart.

Encounters with Mario and company
Mario's first encounter with Dimentio comes before fighting the Chapter 1 boss: Fracktail. Initially, Fracktail is only a security device meant to deliver the Pure Heart to the legendary Prognosticus Hero, but Dimentio appears and threatens Mario before using his magic to turn Fracktail on the plumber. This results in the death of Fracktail. Dimentio fights Mario himself near the top of the Dotwood Tree, transporting himself and the party to Dimension D, a creation of Dimentio's meant to multiply his power by 256 times. The plan backfires when Mario's power is amplified as well, and Mario defeats Dimentio. However, Dimentio was merely testing the heroes, to see if they had the potential to fight Bleck. Dimentio later encounters the party in the Floro Sapiens' lair, where he uses a Floro Sprout to brainwash O'Chunks into a more powerful "O'Cabbage" who randomly shouts the names of vegetables. After Bleck successfully destroys Sammer's Kingdom, Dimentio appears before a distraught Mr. L(Luigi) and supposedly "kills" him in a magical explosion. He then appears before Mario's party in Merlon's house and appears to in the same manner. Mario and his party are sent to The Underwhere (The Hell of ended games), but are reunited with Luigi and able to return to Flipside with the approval of Queen Jaydes. Dimentio serves as Luigi's final boss in Castle Bleck, with hundreds of Dimentio clones appearing throughout the mirror halls in Chapter 8-3. He forces the Mario Bros. to play "tag" by chasing him through all seven areas of the game. After the Brothers catch him, Dimentio reveals his intentions to betray Bleck and asks Mario and Luigi to join him. Agreeing, however, results in a game over after Dimentio brainwashes Mario with a Floro Sprout. When the brothers refuse his offers, he insults Luigi's mustache, leading to a one on one clash between the two. When Luigi defeats Dimentio, the twisted jester acknowledges his power and pretends to blow them both up in a magical explosion, knocking Luigi unconcious to keep "the man in green" out of Bleck's "velvet-lined gloves". Luigi survives, however (as does Dimentio), and returns to Mario just in time to face Count Bleck. After Mario and his party defeat Count Bleck, Dimentio appears and fires a lethal shot of energy at the Count in a final attempt to kill him. Nastasia jumps in the way to absorb the blast and is seemingly killed instead. Dimentio takes this opportunity to mock Mario's party before stealing the Chaos Heart and transforming Luigi into a large puppet which he took control of, creating Super Dimentio, Super Paper Mario's final boss. Like the final bosses of the previous two Paper Mario games, Super Dimentio is invincible at first, but Tippi, Count Bleck, O'Chunks, and Mimi are able to use the power of the Pure Hearts to negate this invincibility. Super Dimentio has 200 HP, but Mario, Peach, and Bowser were able to defeat him. Dimentio was reduced to just a head, but left behind a shadow of his power to control the Chaos Heart. With a final "Ciao" Dimentio was killed in an explosion, leaving only Luigi and the Chaos Heart, which threatened to destroy all dimensions. Dimentio's final plan was ultimately foiled by Tippi and Count Bleck, who used the power of the Pure Hearts to destroy the Chaos Heart and the Void, in the process vanishing without a trace; possibly to a paradise dimension, in their original forms.

The Dark One
In Merlon's recitings of the Light Prognosticus, he recites something along the lines of "and the dark one will use the Chaos Heart to end all worlds". While Count Bleck does attempt to accomplish this goal, and is a member of the Tribe of Darkness, Dimentio is the villain worthy of the title. Dimentio is perhaps one of the most cunning of Mario's enemies. Residing in the shadows of Count Bleck's army, Dimentio carefully plans and executes his scheme to take control of the Chaos Heart. He plans to use its destructive power and purpose to destroy all worlds and create brand new ones to control and rule over. In Count Bleck's minionship, Dimentio waits for Bleck to create the Chaos Heart and form the void. Dimentio is arguably the most powerful villain Mario has ever faced as well. His magical powers, dimension-hopping abilities, and near success in destroying the universe are feats not even Bowser could accomplish. Even Bowser puts aside his hatred for Mario (with a little persuasion from Peach), in order to help fight Dimentio and Bleck. The only villains to rival him in power are Smithy and Elder Princess Shroob. Dimentio is also one of the most evil villains in the Mario universe, as he directly murders five characters (though four were only temporarily/supposedly killed, and one came back to life) and indirectly killed one more (possibly three), all the time making jokes. The only other villains who came close to something like this were the four from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door who ate the audience members (Hooktail, Cortez, Lord Crump, and The Shadow Queen), Cackletta (who irreversably turned the professors into monsters), and Grodus, who shut down TEC (though TEC came back to life).

Trivia

 * Dimentio has features of a jester, a clown, and a magician. He wears a court jester costume with clownish colors, and he has great prowess in magic tricks. Dimentio's face is also Comedy Mask, which is a classical theatrical mask used in plays.
 * Dimentio's character design resembles a stylized version of the Jesters from Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. He also closely resembles Harley Quin, another jester character from the game Wario's Woods, and Super Dimentio's spinning cape imitates that of Harley. His face also resembles that of a Phanto from Super Mario Bros. 2. This could mean he is a Jester/Phanto hybrid. His face also looks similar to Piedmon, who is also a jester character from Digimon.
 * Mysteriously, Tippi seems to have known Dimentio before the events of Super Paper Mario. She recognizes him immediately on their first encounter in the game, during the dialog shortly before Mario battles Fracktail. However, the game never touches on this again, leaving the player to only speculate as to the meaning of it all. Interestingly enough, Tippi is never around when battling Dimentio in his standard form (as the first time, Tippi is currently captured in Fort Francis, and the second time, Luigi fights him without any Pixls). The only time he can be tattled before his transformation into Super Dimentio is in Castle Bleck, when Dimentio appears in the mirrors to attack Mario and Luigi.
 * It is implied that Dimentio has his own brand of perfume, called "Demented, by Dimentio". He offers Mario a signed bottle of it in Chapter 8-3, listing it among other bribes to persuade him to help fight Count Bleck, though it's never shown and it's not sure if he does since he was trying to trick Mario.
 * In Flopside, if one listens to the bartender Carson's stories, there is one about Dimentio that seems to hint at him possibly being the one who wrote the Dark Prognosticus, for the fact that his role was mentioned in the book sounds suspicious. The exact text that he says reads: "So Count Bleck has four minions, as you know. I hear that one of them, Dimentio, wields powerful magic. I don't know where he comes from or who he is... But I hear he approached and befriended the count all on his own. And the count even turned him away once... Until he read in the Dark Prognosticus about the role of someone similar... Why was he mentioned in the Dark Prognosticus? Sounds fishy to me!"
 * Interestingly, the seemingly good Shaman Merloo is known to have similar abilities to Dimentio (being a powerful magician who could control dimensions); Merlumina, an ancestor of Merlon wrote the Light Prognosticus, perhaps further verifying the possibility that Dimentio, who was perhaps related to Merloo, is the Dark Prognosticus's author.
 * Dimentio is never seen walking. Just floating or standing.
 * There is some speculation that the Chaos Heart is actually a manifestation of Dimentio's actual heart.
 * Like Grodus, Dimentio shares certain traits with a Bomberman villain. In Dimentio's case, his counterpart would be Sirius: Both help the protagonist fight the main antagonist to get him out of the way so he can do his own evil plan. The difference is, Sirius was mistaken for a good guy by Bomberman until he killed Altair, and Dimentio was working in secret, and never killed Bleck, who in turn became a good guy at the end. This resemblance is further enhanced by the fact that the miniboss of Sirius's level, Spellmaker, is also a jester with a similar mask. Also, the way Dimentio/Super Dimentio dies is similar to Orion/Hades from Bomberman64, as there are several explosions on them as they sink into the ground/oblivion. Except in Orion's case, he sinks into lava.
 * There has also been some very light speculation as to whether Dimentio was from the Tribe of Darkness, or further, the leader; this would mean that he could also be Lord Blumiere's father. It would explain why Dimentio knew about Count Bleck's real identity, and how he knew about and studied the Dark Prognosticus.
 * Both Dimentio and Fawful start off as a minion of the main antagonist and later become the main antagonist. They also have similar transformations when combined with a dark object, as well as similar death scenes. Indeed, the manner of Fawful's selfdestruct may have been a nod to Dimentio, as Super Paper Mario was released first.
 * Interestingly enough, Dimentio and Fawful's styles are somewhat opposites; Dimentio uses magic while Fawful uses science, and Dimentio uses similes while Fawful uses metaphors.
 * Dimentio is the only one of Count Bleck's minions to fight Luigi.
 * Dimentio shared a similar goal to Mephiles and Kefka, which was to utilize an arcane object to both ruin existence and become a god (or in Mephiles' case, re-become a god), and all three also end up defeated, although at a heavy cost. Coincidentally, Mephiles has control over time, while Dimentio has more control over the Spacial plane. Also, both Mephiles and Dimentio have temporarily killed the main character and are the most evil villain in their respective series.
 * Like the final bosses of the previous two Paper Mario series, Dimentio starts out invincible, until the items are used to take away his invincibility, although unlike Bowser and the Shadow Queen his theme song does not change afterward. Also, like the Shadow Queen and Cackletta, Dimentio is possessing one of the four main characters.

Comparisons to Kefka Palazzo
Dimentio and Kefka share many similarities:


 * Both desire absolute and utter destruction of all things in all worlds, though Dimentio was attempting to create new worlds, whereas Kefka destroyed for entertainment.
 * Both seem to acknowledge that they lack sanity and embrace it wholeheartedly.