More about Francis...
Games: Super Paper Mario
 
Francis is at once the ultimate nerd at the ultimate single piece of fan service, courtesy of Super Paper Mario.  He obsessively watches the Grodus Chronicles, which seems to be the Mushroom Kingdom's version of Star Trek or something; has built himself a fortress staffed by robotic cats that I take as some kind of Japanese or Anime reference; has no social skills whatsoever but frequently posts online, his forum of choice being digibutter.nerr; and lives to collect rare thing especially if he thinks it will impress his online friends.  That latter interest seems to be the reason why he stole Tippi, who he took to be a butterfly.  Butterflies don't really seem to fit in with Francis's main interests, but bragging about her online certainly does.

It isn't clear whether Francis is also into videogames.  Mostly he seems to be concerned about whether his shows get recorded.  In his room he has several pieces of Mario paraphernalia, including a Yoshi doll and a poster of Bow, however Francis doesn't claim to recognize Mario or Peach as he would surely have to if he'd played their games.  It's possible he knows Yoshi and Bow from media other than the games.  For example, he also is shown to own a movie called Larry Koopa: Zombie Heartbreaker, so maybe all these characters have appeared in obscure movies.

Not even the resourceful Mario is able to get into the chamber where Francis has holed up with Tippi, but the electronic cat door lets in Peach.  The nerdy Francis is no fool - if a pretty girl wants to come in and see him, he's all for it!  Francis tries to woo Peach, but since he has no social grace he tries to use a dating simulator of sorts called the Swoone.exe to communicate digitally with Peach.  Despite his paying her a few compliments, Peach refuses his advances (she did just get married to Bowser, after all!), and the software breaks.  Since a date is now of the question, Francis then resorts to fighting in order to be able to keep Tippi.

Unlike the stereotypical unathletic nerd, Francis does put up some fight.  Of course he doesn't do it by swinging his fists, though!  He is a chameleon, so he does use camouflauge to his advantage as well as his long tongue.  He'll use his laptop to summon his explosive cat robots, and he'll flash his camera to temporary blind the heroes.  Despite these tactics, he's not all that difficult and Francis was knocked aside rather easily as Tippi was rescued.

While Francis mainly appears in Chapter Three of Super Paper Mario, he also can appear in Chapter Eight if you answer one of Mimi's (disguised as Merlon) questions for him to appear.  He'll then fight the heroes with the same attack pattern as before.  He can also be visited in his fortress during the postgame, after Tippi has left.  He will have built a robotic Tippi called Tiptron that he'll sell for 999 coins.  Tiptron can also be used to scan objects and will comment on most things just as Tippi herself would, but has some different things to say about objects most central to the heroes, including herself.

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