>>40780621 MOTHER has enough X stuff for an entire thread. Itoi gave a lot of interviews around the release of the first game, where he basically said he read thousands of books on all kinds of different subjects as research before writing the games. It seems that he became absolutely obsessed with the occult, and MOTHER2 is designed specifically to incorporate as many occult themes as possible.
Just think for a moment about all the locations in MOTHER 2, and you'll realise that they are set up for the express purpose of introducing a different occult theme in each chapter.
Onett is an american mountain town shrouded in trees. The first sanctuary is "giant step" made by bigfoot.
Twoson is a town that's been overrun by a cult that references Aum Shinriyko (who bombed a subway 1 year after this games released). Their cult leader is also named Carpainter, which is a reference to Jesus.
Threed pretty much speaks for itself, a place where Giygas has resurrected the dead to do his bidding.
Winters has the loch ness monster, and more importantly, stonehenge, which you later find out is an alien base.
Fourside has you go through a psychedelic trip.
In summers you're fed "magic cake" which is obviously laced with drugs, and allows you to contact Poo through the spirit realm.
Scaraba takes you to the Egyptian Pyramids, where you have to push buttons in the shape of a pentagram to gain access to a sacred temple.
There is much much more, but the point is that Itoi became absolutely obsessed with the occult while making these games, and actively designed the entire game around showcasing these themes. There's definitely more though, and I might go into more detail in an actual thread.
