Petey Piranha

Petey Piranha (, Boss Packun), is an antagonistic character and leader of the Piranha Plants in the series.

Origin
Petey Piranha made his debut as a boss in , and has become a recurring boss in the Mario series. He is a larger version of a Piranha Plant with a red-and-white spots head with iridescent petals and big green lips, leaf-like arms, stubby legs, and a pair of pants with the same color scheme as its head.

Petey Piranha first appeared as a boss in episodes 2 and 5 in the area. In the second episode, he is seen spitting large amounts of brown goop from atop a windmill, and in the fifth episode, he is seen sleeping on a cliff, where he can be awakened with a. In both boss battles, he attacks by spitting his brown goop on Mario, and if the player gets close enough, hitting Mario with his head by spinning it around himself. In the fifth episode, he gains the ability to fly and swing his arm to cause a tornado that sends Mario flying upward. He can be defeated by using F.L.U.D.D. to spray large amounts of water in his mouth before he spits out his goop to expose his belly button on his engorged belly, which can be ground-pounded on three times.

Petey Piranha also appears as a boss in  as the boss of. In that game, he flies above the player and will try to stomp on them.

As a boss
Petey Piranha appears as the first boss of the Midair Stadium level in The Subspace Emissary. Prior to the battle, during the Subspace Army's invasion on the stadium, Petey Piranha blasts away with a cannonball and captures both  and  in cages, leaving  to battle him. He can be defeated by destroying one of the cages. The player can also attack his head, which splits the damage received to both cages.

Once one of the cages' health is depleted, the cage will break and free one of the princesses inside while Petey Piranha catches on fire, collapses, and explodes. If both cages' health is depleted simultaneously via an attack on his head, the game will randomly decide which princess is freed. The unsaved princess will be turned into a trophy by. At the last level, Tabuu resurrects Petey, along with the other bosses, and sends him after the heroes in The Great Maze.

Petey Piranha can be battled in Boss Battles Mode. During this mode or in The Great Maze, his cages will be empty, and the sky in the arena will be blue, in comparison to the Midair Stadium level, where his cages will contain the two princesses and the sky will be an ominous red.

Rather than being voiced by Toru Minegishi who voiced the character in Super Mario Sunshine, Petey Piranha has a set of realistic monstrous beast roars, similar to how Donkey Kong, Bowser, and Diddy Kong were given realistic animal sounds.

As a playable character

 * Main article: Petey Piranha (SSBB)

Like all Brawl bosses, Petey Piranha can be played as in Boss Battles through hacking, which will assign debug controls to Player 3. Only the Cage attacks are available to deal damage, causing him to be extremely bare-bones and by far the weakest of the game's bosses.

Moveset
Petey has only two main attacks. The first involves swinging one of the two cages along the ground. The second is a jumping attack, where Petey tries to stomp the player while holding both cages vertically. Any contact with Petey or his cages during this attack will meteor smash the player as he comes down from a jump.

When either cage is reduced to 1/3 health, Petey will roar and its body will glow momentarily, surrounded by a red aura. Petey will then speed up its attacks and often jump in a different pattern, usually two times in a row; his attacks will also deal slightly more damage and their knockback will be boosted.

Like all bosses, Petey Piranha can be controlled with hacks in Boss Battles Mode. The start button will, like all bosses, self-destruct him. Unlike any other boss (besides of Meta Ridley), when controlled by a human, Petey Piranha will wait in a T-pose after either roaring or performing a cage attack.

HP and damage taken
The resistance values above apply only when hitting Petey's body, which will deal the resulting damage to each cage. When hitting an individual cage, no resistance modifier is applied. When either cage's HP is depleted, Petey is defeated.

Like all bosses in Brawl, Petey gains an additional ×0.6 damage resistance modifier when fought in co-op mode, effectively gaining 67% more health. This modifier is applied whenever the second player is in-game and is no longer applied if the second player loses all their stocks.

Trophy
The Petey Piranha trophy can be obtained by using the Trophy Stand on Petey Piranha on Hard or Intense difficulty in The Subspace Emissary.

In
Despite Petey Piranha making no appearance whatsoever in either version of Super Smash Bros. 4, he has unused animations in the Wii U version that are unique and are separate from Brawl.

Even more curiously, there are no leftover models, textures, sounds or parameters with which these animations would correspond, as only the animations appear to remain in the game. The lack of leftover assets would appear to imply that Petey Piranha was scrapped at a very early stage in development.

As a Final Smash
Petey Piranha appears as 's Final Smash, using the cages from The Subspace Emissary.

Cosmetically, Petey Piranha has a more saturated color scheme than he did in Brawl, and is more smoothly textured (i.e. no cracks in his skin as in the aforementioned title).

Additionally, he is mentioned in the Palutena's Guidance for Piranha Plant, as well as Paper Petey Piranha and Petea Piranha.

Spirits
Petey Piranha also appears as two different primary spirits. He can be obtained by enhancing the spirit at level 99.

The Spirit Battle for Petey Piranha (Super Mario Strikers), though his artwork is from Mario Strikers Charged, uses a Giant puppet fighter and is fought on the Wuhu Island stage's Swordplay Colosseum layout. During the battle, the Soccer Ball item will appear, referencing the game of soccer in Super Mario Strikers, which features Petey Piranha as a playable character.

Trivia

 * Oddly, while Petey Piranha is seen spitting out a cannonball at Mario in the Subspace Emissary, in the Mario series, Petey Piranha has never had the ability to do so.
 * If the player battles against Petey using Peach or Zelda in their default costumes, they will still be seen in the cage with the same costume.
 * The models used for Peach and Zelda in the cages are of much lower resolution than the characters themselves and do not have fingers or legs.
 * If one looks closely at the cages in the cutscene "Princesses, Both Captured and False", the cages that hold the trophies of Peach and Zelda are the exact ones Petey used.
 * When idling, if Zelda's cage is attacked, Petey will make a deep grunt, but if Peach's cage is attacked, he will make two sharp grunts. He will not respond to hits on his head.
 * Petey Piranha is the only boss to have two health bars, with both being dedicated to objects outside of himself. During the Midair Stadium battle, "Peach's Cage" and "Zelda's Cage" are displayed next to the health bars; in The Great Maze and in Boss Battles, the cages as aforementioned are empty, and the health bars are simply labeled "Cage".
 * The cages' designs have several easter eggs, some of which can only be seen via mods that remove the ingame camera limitations:
 * The rears of the hooks have a small Chain Chomp attached.
 * The interior roof is patterned with Bob-omb and Blooper sprites.
 * The bottom trim is patterned with various Piranha Plant, Fire Piranha Plant, Muncher, and Nipper sprites. In addition, the back features a human face of unknown origin; this face is modeled as opposed to textured and is reasonably large in Petey's texture files.
 * After Giga Bowser, Petey is the second boss to appear in a Final Smash.
 * Much like Bowser and the characters, rather than being voiced by  with cartoonish voice clips, Petey's voice is comprised of monstrous roars in Brawl.
 * In the series, Petey's neck is located behind the petals on his head, however in Brawl his neck appears in front of the petals. This was apparently an intentional design choice as it was carried over to Ultimate.