Talk:Frost Piranha

Weren't Frost Piranhas in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, in Fahr Fahr Outpost? -- Son of Suns

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Is the alternate costume in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate actually based on Frost Piranhas? The Piranha Plant's blue coloring has a yellow stem, rather than blue or green, making it resemble their underground Super Mario Bros. appearance instead. -- 09:04, 4 November 2018 (EST)
 * Probably neither, given the underground one is deep teal with a dark orange stem, and has dark orange spots. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 14:47, 4 November 2018 (EST)

Putrid Piranha
Why is this considered a variant of Putrid Piranha? I get that they have the same sprite, but Ice Piranhas have the same sprite as Fire Piranhas, and the former are just counted as a Piranha Plant variant. Besides, facing sideways seems to be standard for the spittier Piranhas and Goombario's tattle basically treats it as a Piranha Plant, but icier. 85.243.109.179 16:00, December 29, 2020 (EST)
 * The information is derived from the first Paper Mario where indeed, the Frost Piranha appears as a stronger variant of the Putrid Piranha, as Frost Piranha is a recolor of Putrid and shares Putrid's attacks (except the element is ice). As for facing sideways, I can find only two Piranha Plants that do face to the side in the first Paper Mario, and that's Putrid and Frost Piranha. For the later games, this isn't really the case any more (in Thousand-Year Door, Frost lacks a breath attack). I think Piranha Plant should be listed as an additional variant to account for the later games, but the Putrid Piranha listed as a source species makes sense to me. 16:20, December 29, 2020 (EST)
 * Actually, the Tattle in Paper Mario and the log in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door both refer to it as a variant of the Piranha Plant, and listing it as a variant of Putrid Piranha contradicts the opening paragraph of this article a bit, which also calls it a Piranha Plant variant.
 * ....except by default, being a variant of Putrid Piranha automatically makes it a variant of Piranha Plant. The fact remains that regardless of what later appearances did, it was initially envisioned and/or implemented as a variation on how Putrid Piranha worked, which itself was a specialized version of Piranha Plant originally based off P. Plant's SMW2 sprite at the time. I'm personally against putting "retroactive" parent species in in general as that opens up many cans of worms, with the few more clear-cut examples (such as Bomp and Tox Box) gaining a new Language-of-Origin name suggesting it regardless. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 01:17, December 30, 2020 (EST)
 * That might be true in the first game, given by the similarity between Putrid and Frost. The next games do show Frost Piranha being a variant of the Piranha Plant/Pale Piranha as opposed to a stronger variant of Putrid Piranha, shown by sprites and the attacks they do. In Thousand-Year Door, the recolored red-yellow Putrid Piranha comes before Frost Piranha (Pale Piranha is the first variant) and the misleading "original" Piranha Plant is the strongest variant. And this is changed yet again where the original Piranha Plant is encountered first, then Putrid Piranha, then Frost Piranha. How the species are organized in the later games do matter and probably should be accommodated for, that Piranha Plant should be listed alongside Putrid Piranha as a derivative, maybe with a small indicator for only Thousand-Year Door and Super Paper Mario. 16:56, January 1, 2021 (EST)
 * Now we're just making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be.
 * Given Killer Packun is a different thing and Pale Piranha is the normal Piranha Plant (which the English script alone can't make up its mind on, but all the others are explicit on), the chronology in all three games is Piranha Plant->Putrid Piranha->Frost Piranha. And while it doesn't have the "breath" attack in TTYD, the causing status ailments in general is still notable. Also, it's not just "facing sideways" in the original; Putrid and Frost were gigantic compared to normal Piranha Plant. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 21:40, January 1, 2021 (EST)
 * The order of appearance isn't always how RPG species are listed (eg. Spunia is considered a variant of Spinia instead of Spania), but I think the size difference is noteworthy. LinkTheLefty (talk) 09:09, January 20, 2021 (EST)
 * Okay, fair enough, I hadn't realized they were larger than normal Piranha Plants. But if Frost is a variant of Putrid, shouldn't Ice be a variant of Fire? Or is this different because Paper Mario is an RPG? Blinker (talk) 07:13, August 4, 2021 (EDT)
 * Considering in Paper Mario, "Fire Packun" was a giant-sized boss, I'd say keep that part as-is. We list Cheep Chomp as being derived from Blurp despite them not really being around anymore outside of SMM reskins. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 16:09, August 4, 2021 (EDT)

A little old, but I figured this should have attention in light of the Ice Piranha merge. Does it still make sense to consider it a Putrid Piranha variant now? It somewhat broke the rule that we follow for RPG enemies, in which subsequent variants are generally considered variants of the base variants instead of variants of variants unless stated otherwise. They're also a depicted a bit inconsistently in the Paper Mario series to begin with, both appearance and attack-wise (e.g. no Putrid-esque attack in at least one of the games). Would it be better to list Putrid Piranha as a relative instead, a la Fire Piranha? LinkTheLefty (talk) 04:48, May 20, 2023 (EDT)