Pennington

Pennington (or, as he prefers to be called, The Penguin with The Improbably Large Brain) is a Bumpty detective from Poshley Heights in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Mario first meets Pennington on the Excess Express, where he takes Mario under his wing (so to speak). Pennington and Mario must solve the many mysteries that occur on the train. Of course, Mario solves all the mysteries with no help from Pennington, who often takes the credit for solving them and treats Mario as an apprentice.

When the Excess Express arrives in Poshley Heights, Mario heads to Poshley Sanctum to find the Garnet Star. However, the sanctum curator is unavailable and the entrance is locked. Though this is to Mario's dismay, Pennington soon arrives and unlocks the door, revealing that his real profession is being the manager of the sanctum. (Being a detective is just a hobby of his.)

Although he is the curator of the sanctum, he does not know where the Garnet Star is located. The only item on display is a replica of the Garnet Star, probably to protect the real star from falling into the wrong hands. Although Pennington claims to be a great detective, he constantly mistakes Mario for his brother Luigi.

When everybody is cheering Mario on when he's fighting the Shadow Queen, Goldbob, his family, and Toodles are shown cheering him on, and they call him both "Gonzales" (Mario's Glitz Pit pseudonym that some of them knew him exclusively by) and his actual name, which causes Pennington to be surprised and ask if it's Mario or Gonzales. Even after Mario beats the Shadow Queen and returns to Poshley Sanctum, he first calls Mario Luigi again, but quickly corrects himself.

Trivia

 * Francis in Super Paper Mario has a Pennington plush doll.
 * Whenever Pennington says the word "Luigi", it appears in green text. This may be a reference to the Mario & Luigi series, where Luigi's and Baby Luigi's names and nicknames are almost always written in green (usually to indicate who the player should control next), although it may have been done for reasons unrelated to in-jokes. The latter, however, may be unlikely, as Bowser simply states Luigi's name in normal, black text the one time he mentions him in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, rendering Pennington's nack for name coloration unusual.