Franchise: Mario

A popular internet joke upon the release of Super Mario 64 was "What happened to Super Mario 4 through 63?" If one is to calculate every Mario game released before Super Mario 64, including outliers such as ports and titles not released on Nintendo hardware like Mario Teaches Typing, the game would be the 113th title on the series. However, if you were to only count games released on non-devoted Nintendo hardware and remove ports, the title would be, very anti-climactically, the 63rd Mario game.

On February 14, 2013, Satoru Iwata announced the "Year of Luigi" in honor of the character's 30th anniversary. Over the next 13 months until the end of the Year on March 18, 2014, Nintendo released several games starring Luigi, including New Super Luigi U, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, Dr. Luigi, and Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. Additionally, Luigi was prominently featured in Super Mario 3D World and NES Remix 2, along with being featured in merchandise.

Beffitingly for Nintendo's famous underdog, Nintendo later reported $457 million in annual operating losses for 2013, making it one of the worst years in the company's history.

The audio used for Bob-ombs, Monty Moles and Goombas in various games starting with Super Mario 64 is actually pieces of Mario's voice saying "Here We Go" from said game after being pitch-shifted. This would continue being the case even after Charles Martinet was replaced with Kevin Afghani starting with Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

Charles Martinet, the voice actor for Mario from 1990 to 2023, first officially voiced the character as part of a motion-capture Silicon Graphics interactive exhibition used at Nintendo trade shows (with the role at the time sometimes split between him and musician Steve Coyle). The first commercially-released product to feature his voice acting is purported to be the Super Mario Bros. pinball machine released in 1992 and produced by Gottlieb. According to Martinet when asked by a fan in 2018, Gottlieb "stole" his voice clips and did not credit or pay him for his acting. While the 1995 PC game Mario's Game Gallery is often cited as Martinet's first official role as Mario in a video game, the actual first credited video game to feature him as Mario is the 1994 PC educational title Mario Teaches Typing, where he replaced the DOS version's voice actor, Ronald B. Ruben.

There is a cactus prop at Universal Studios' Super Nintendo World that does not originate from an official Mario game, but rather the fanmade mod Newer Super Mario Bros. Wii. At the time of the park's opening, a Google search for "new super mario bros wii cactus" would show images of Newer's desert levels alongside New Super Mario Bros. Wii, meaning that the cacti was likely added by accident, being mistaken for official Nintendo material.

One criticism that the 2023 film "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" received is that while composer Bryan Tyler collaborated with Nintendo veteran composer Koji Kondo to create a score that incorporates orchestrated rearrangements of iconic songs from the Mario franchise, there were too many moments of Illumination-mandated pop songs replacing the score in certain scenes. The most infamous example of this being the replacement of the original composition "Driving Me Bananas", a medley of songs from the Donkey Kong Country games, with a-ha’s "Take on Me" feeling somewhat out of context.

According to Jamey Scott, who worked in the film's sound department, Tyler fought hard to keep his orchestrated rendition of the Super Star theme in the film over the studio's suggestion of Van Halen's "Jump", and succeeded.

When Super Mario Bros. 35 and Super Mario 3D All-Stars were released, they were criticized for being preemptively planned to be pulled from digital storefronts on March 31, 2021. This, along with the DIC Mario cartoons coincidentally being moved from Netflix to Paramount+ on the same day, spawned an internet meme depicting Mario as receiving a medieval public execution by Nintendo on that date.

According to Super Mario Bros. Wonder's art director Masanobu Sato, Shigeru Miyamoto reportedly explained during the development of the first Super Mario Bros. that the reason why Goombas damage Mario when walking into them is because they bite Mario on impact. Due to graphical and hardware limitations, this could not be shown at the time. However, while Super Mario Bros. Wonder is thought to be the first game in the mainline series that shows this detail in gameplay, it's not the first game in the overall franchise to show it, as Goombas had been seen biting in earlier spin-off games like Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.

In the 2023 film "The Super Mario Bros. Movie", Mario and Luigi's family are prominently featured. This includes:

• Their Father, voiced by Charles Martinet (and bears a resemblance to Talon from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time)
• Their Mother, who previously appeared in "The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!" and is voiced here by Jessica DiCicco
• Uncle Arthur, voiced by John DiMaggio
• Uncle Tony, voiced by Rino Romano (and was coincidentally mentioned in live-action segment "Glasnuts" from the TV series "The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!")
• Aunt Marie, who's presumably married to Uncle Arthur
• An unnamed niece, who's most likely Marie and Arthur's daughter, being a first cousin once removed that's referred to as a "(second) niece"
• An unnamed grandfather, who's implied by the co-director Aaron Horvath to previously have been a boxer and wears an outfit similar to Luigi in the 1983 commercial for the Atari ports of Mario Bros.

Interestingly, all of the credited voice actors for the family are all of Italian descent to stay true to the family's Italian heritage.

According to Shigeru Miyamoto, the design of the family were based on character design sheets that former Nintendo illustrator Yoichi Kotabe drew decades before the film began production.

There are a total of 19 modern-day countries Mario has been to in an official Mario game to date.

Mario’s Time Machine has him visit Greece, Egypt, China, France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, United States, Austria, India, and Japan.

The Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series adds Canada, Brazil, and Russia.

Finally, Mario Kart Tour features tracks based on cities from a few new countries: Australia, Singapore, The Netherlands, Thailand, and Spain.

While Mario's mustache, red shirt and blue overalls were described by Miyamoto as the result of technical limitations, there's a possibility that they were also inspired by an issue of the Japanese men's fashion magazine Popeye, named after the fictional character that Mario was already partly inspired by. The March 1980 issue of Popeye magazine features cover art of a man with a mustache wearing a red shirt with blue overalls.

In the 2020 Sonic the Hedgehog film, Sonic’s disdain of mushrooms could be a jab at his rivalry with Mario in the 90s. This is reinforced in the Thai dub of the film, where the joke about Tom saying that Sonic won’t be the only “fungi” on the mushroom planet is replaced with “at least you can have a mushroom forever,” to which Sonic replies with “No. I’m not Mario”.

Nintendo possibly “returned the favor” in 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie, where the Super Mario Bros. Plumbing advertisement features a map with one of the landmarks listed as “Mushroom Planet”.

In the E3 2019 Nintendo Direct presentation, the new CEO of Nintendo of America, Doug Bowser, was introduced with a joke comparing his last name to the antagonist of the Mario series, Bowser. However, in Japanese, the character’s name is “Koopa”, so in the Japanese broadcast of the Nintendo Direct, they clarified the joke with subtitles explaining that his name is Bowser in English-language releases.

Ever since Samantha Kelly became the voice of Peach, Toad and Toadette starting in 2007, she would always record her voice lines for Peach first whenever recording new dialogue. This is because her voice is unable to go high enough after doing the more extreme sort of voice that Toad has.

In a 1996 interview with Shigeru Miyamoto published in Super Mario 64's first Japanese strategy guides, he revealed that Mario's running animation, speed and movements in that game were influenced by Arale, the main protagonist of the 1980 Akira Toriyama manga/anime "Dr. Slump":


However, Dr. Slump's influence throughout the Mario series could trace back even further. Some particular examples from Mario games include:

• His running speed, animation, the Racoon and Tanooki Suits from Super Mario Bros. 3
• The Wing Cap from Super Mario 64
• The Cat Suit from Super Mario 3D World

Even traits of Mario's happy cartoonish personality, his short stature and gloves, and blue-red-overalls color scheme bear enough similarities that they all could have been taken from Arale's appearances and other elements throughout Dr. Slump. Despite this, outside of Miyamoto's comment, these connections are not known to have been elaborated on by any other employee from Nintendo.

Mario Tennis on the Game Boy Color and Mario Kart Tour are the only Mario multiplayer games where Mario is unlockable. In terms of single-player games, Mario is also unlockable in the single-player mode of Mario Golf on Nintendo 64, as well as Super Mario 64 DS.

In a 2023 interview done to promote "The Super Mario Bros. Movie", Shigeru Miyamoto shared his thoughts and opinions on certain aspects of the character Mario that the filmmakers could easily take from the video games that made him endure over time and become so beloved the world over:

"It's the very fact that he is not your typical superhero that makes him such an interesting movie character[...]He's so relatable. He's an Everyman character. He never gives up. He always keeps coming. Those qualities make for a very compelling central character.

I think part of it is the idea that Mario never gives up[...]And he's kind of got this shy side to him. When all the attention is focused on him, he's a little bashful and doesn't maybe want that. That speaks to me. He might seem brave, but that's still a fundamental core essence of his character."

On April 22, 2015, Nintendo of America uploaded a tweet with an image of a Waluigi plush doll riding a Wiggler plush doll, with the caption:


Someone at Nintendo of America forgot to spell-check Wiggler's name, because the term "wigger" describes a white person who emulates the cultural behaviors attributed to African-Americans.

Shortly after finding the mistake, Nintendo of America took it down and apologized for the error.

A common belief relating to Rare's work with Nintendo in the 1990s is that the Banjo-Kazooie series and the early family-friendly iteration of the Conker series were originally intended to share a universe with Donkey Kong. By extension, this would also connect them to the Mario series. This belief stemmed from Banjo and Conker's debuts as playable characters in Diddy Kong Racing, other shared characters (e.g. Gnawty, a beaver who appears in both Donkey Kong Country and Banjo-Kazooie), and other planned appearances like the Ice Key from the Banjo-Kazooie series' unused Stop 'n' Swop feature being found in the data for Donkey Kong 64. This interpretation was so popular at one point that the largest English-language Mario fan wiki, Super Mario Wiki, hosted articles about Banjo-Kazooie and Conker characters.

However, Banjo-Kazooie creator Gregg Mayles has stated that Rare's non-Donkey Kong games were never intended to share a universe with Donkey Kong, while Conker's Bad Fur Day director Chris Seavor has gone on to say that Banjo-Kazooie and Conker also do not share a universe.

Concept art for Paper Mario: Color Splash shows that the captain of the Violet Passage was at one point going to have a dark skin tone. This would've marked the first instance of a Toad with a distinct skin color (not counting usually-pale Toads under a transformation) in a Mario game, but not the first instance of a non-pale Toad in the Mario franchise as a whole. The Super Mario Bros. Super Show featured a one-off Native American Toad named Pronto, a parody of Tonto from The Lone Ranger, in the episode "The Provolone Ranger".