Cleft

Clefts are animate rock enemies that appear in the Paper Mario series. Their name comes from the word "cleft", which can alternately refer to a crack in a rock or an indentation of the chin, both of which are characteristics of the Clefts. In the first Paper Mario game, Clefts are brown with red shoes, but in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, they are gray with black shoes, while the original coloration is seen in Moon Clefts instead, albeit much brighter.

Clefts inhabit Mt. Rugged in Paper Mario, and Boggly Woods in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, though their many sub-species can be found in a variety of other areas as well. In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, if three questions of the Super Fun Quirk Quiz are answered incorrectly, the player will have to face four Clefts. Although regular Clefts don't appear in Super Paper Mario, Moon Clefts do, as well as Bald Clefts and the new Dark Clefts.

They are mostly seen disguising themselves as normal rocks, but they will ram into Mario, if he comes too close, triggering a battle with a First Strike, if they manage to hit him. All species of Clefts have high defense and high attack, and will attack by ramming Mario in battle, just like in the overworld. They also have spikes, which hinder Mario in jumping on them, although a derived species of them called Bald Cleft doesn't have this advantage. If Mario flips them over with an explosion or a Quake Hammer, their defenseless undersides are exposed to attack. Earth Tremor does not flip them, but if executed well enough, it can defeat them automatically.

Their related species include the aforementioned Bald Cleft, which lacks spikes, the Moon Cleft, which is more powerful and inhabits The Moon, and the Dark Cleft, a shadowy version that resides in the Flopside Pit of 100 Trials. Other species include the Hyper Cleft, a Cleft that can charge itself up, increasing its attack power, the Hyper Bald Cleft, which is a cross between a Bald Cleft and a Hyper Cleft, and lastly the Iron Clefts, which are larger-than-normal Clefts that are made of impenetrable metal, and can only be defeated with Mini-Yoshi's Gulp.

Names in other languages
Kirk Teschiolito