Super Mario (franchise)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


These things about Super Mario (franchise) are subjective - not everyone will agree with all of them.

The Games

  • Accidental Innuendo: The Mario Bros getting larger from eating mushrooms and the general strangeness of the setting has many fans citing it as a metaphor for drugs, and is often portrayed in fanwork as such, although for laughs.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: For a series that doesn't usually develop a detailed story or detailed characters, there is a lot of room for interpretation:
    • Mario (and by extension, Luigi) himself: he is a ruthless One Man Army killing anything in his path not caring if his foes WANT to hurt him or not, captures countless lands, and basically waged a war against a rivaling kingdom with many casualties on their side just to rescue a princess. This does bring up the question of how the enemies who don't pursue Mario if he jumps over them (instead of on him) still hurt him if they touched him, and also, kidnapping another country's regent wouldn't signify an act of war?
    • Some argue that Mario and Luigi are genuinely good, but Heroic Comedic Sociopaths. They genuinely want to save Peach, but some of their ingame sound bytes would indicate that they have too much fun basically slaughtering the equivalent to entire armies.
    • Peach and Bowser have the 'kidnapping' thing going on to make money, since only Mario and Luigi can get coins out of those blocks. The paradigm of the kidnapping is itself a food for thought (with ideas ranging from Bowser's feelings being mutual, to Peach having a submissive fantasy and enjoying being kidnapped); the following websites and video channels have dug deep into this:
    • Daisy seems to come in second to Peach all the time, but that might be because she's a far more competent ruler than Peach is. Sarasaland has only faced a serious invasion once (compared to the Mushroom Kingdom, where it happens with disturbing frequency) and in games where she's playable, Daisy is often the toughest of the girls. Maybe she's just not the type guys like Bowser want to mess with?
    • Professor E. Gadd gets this thanks to Bowser Jr. using his Paintbrush in Super Mario Sunshine. An absent minded professor who gets his stuff stolen fairly often, or Chessmaster arms dealer using Obfuscating Stupidity to Play Both Sides?
    • Waluigi. He was initially added to the cast because Wario needed a doubles partner for Mario Tennis, but he creates plenty of discussion, both serious and not so serious. His mere presence has some weird implications regarding Mario, Luigi and Wario: Mario is the original, Luigi is a reflection of Mario (somewhat similar, but different in certain ways), Wario is also a reflection (Wario is Mario's Evil Counterpart). Waluigi is a reflection of a reflection.
    • Bowser. Idiotic overly macho king, or Obfuscating Stupidity on a political mastermind? I.e., his kingdom is all lava and igneous rocks. Peach's isn't. And the best way to gain political power in a monarchy is to marry into it.
    • Rosalina is officially depicted as a mysterious woman with some kind of power over the very cosmos. Much like other characters, her exact role isn't given too much detail (apart from an unlockable backstory in Super Mario Galaxy that first introduced her, and even that seems to be disregarded sometimes). That hasn't stopped fans from frequently interpreting her to be some sort of goddess (or if you go by the Judaeo-Christian line of thought, The Virgin Mary).
    • Another one is whether Bowser Jr. is a mechanical genius that builds his own machines or simply a spoiled rich kid who gets his father to buy them for him. Nothing in the main series suggests one possibility is any more likely than the other, and the spin-offs give conflicting opinions: in Fortune Street, it’s implied that Junior at the very least designs some of his own mechs, while in Super Smash Brothers it’s implied that the Junior Clown Car, at least, was indeed a gift from his father. It’s also unclear whether he does any repairs on his machines himself—New Super Mario Bros Wii seems to hint that he is indeed capable of doing his own patch-work repairs, while Mario & Luigi: Dream Team hints that he has a group of Monty Moles responsible for repairing the Junior Clown Car. A bit of ambiguity is dropped in Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle where the Mecha Jr. boss is described as "Jr's. Fave B-Day Gift!" through Boss Subtitles, but it's possible Jr. makes most himself and got the Mecha as a special present.
    • Toadette is not one of the few female presenting Toad, she is just more feminine than others and stands out amongst her androgynous peers.
  • Animation Age Ghetto:
    • The series suffers from this due to its cartoony, family-friendly nature -- especially when compared to other video game series that are popular, but have higher content ratings suited to more adult audiences, as well as its own mostly "edgier" and more "realistic" sibling The Legend of Zelda. The creators in fact actively defy this trope, as the games are for all ages. According to the late Satoru Iwata, the perception of Mario as a "childish" franchise was a problem that Nintendo wasn't too pleased about and they actively worked on having the franchise appeal to all age groups; similarly, Miyamoto has repeatedly stressed how the series' creators tend to fall victim to this trope and design the all-ages Mario games as if they were specifically for children just because they're played by kids. For example, Koji Kondo famously rejected music composed for Super Mario Galaxy that was unintentionally designed to appeal to children and was written based on the presumption of Mario being a Kid Appeal Character. Kondo refuted that "Mario is cool" and that he never thought of him as cute, and that Mario's games are "cool adventure games" at their heart.
    • If a Mario game gets mixed or lukewarm reception, fans tend to accuse it of pandering to young children at the expense of older fans; whether or not these claims are true, such criticisms usually arise from overly easy gameplay, a strong Tastes Like Diabetes aspect, or general shallowness. This sentiment was very prominent during the 3DS/Wii U era, with frequent accusations of the series being "dumbed down" to appeal to the most casual fans (a group that child Mario fans are frequently lumped into).
  • Author's Saving Throw: The Nintendo Switch era seems intent on fixing the problems that plagued the 3DS and Wii U era. All accusations of a lack of creativity were banished with Super Mario Odyssey, the RPGs got a bone thrown at them with Mario Plus Rabbids: Kingdom Battle having tight, well thought out and new gameplay plus a focus on humour the RPGs are known for while Mario Tennis Aces avoided the problems Ultra Smash faced with new assets, gameplay and a story mode.
  • Awesome Music/Ear Worm: Koji Kondo and others have composed many memorable tunes for the series. See here for more details.
  • Base Breaker:
    • Toad, while cute and funny, has many who find his voice annoying and complain about the species' utter worthlessness in protecting the Mushroom Kingdom.
    • Toadette is another example: Lazy Distaff Counterpart to the already annoying Toad, or a great female alternative to Princess-type characters? The fanbase hasn't made up their collective mind on her, though her well-received appearances in Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, Mario And Luigi: Paper Jam and Super Mario Run have made her better in the eyes of some detractors.
    • The Toad species as a whole became this, with a number of fans growing sick of always seeing them as extras in the games and insisting that they are becoming overused when there are a wide range of other Mario characters that could appear in the games. The fact that Paper Mario: Sticker Star and Mario And Luigi: Paper Jam largely featured them as cast members instead of other ally Mario characters doesn't help, and it only worsened after Paper Mario: Color Splash continued this trend along with Mario Party: Star Rush. There are still many who still like them (or at least tolerate their presence), though.
      • A specific example involving the Toads would be the Rescue V Toads introduced in Color Splash. While a number of folks love them for being a Sentai-like group of Toads, others can't get past the fact that they are yet another group of Toads in a game that's already littered with them.
    • Despite (and often, because of) her vital role in the series, Princess Peach is usually the most cited example of this as far as the main characters are concerned, along with Toad. She is no stranger to base-breaking considering her flanderized ditzyness, annoyingly high-pitched voice and constant kidnappings have grown tiresome for many; her shallow Dumb Blonde depiction in Super Mario Sunshine is brought up as a particularly sour spot. She has her fans however, particularly for her more competent spin-off portrayals and sweet nature, along with being rather pretty looking. Additionally, later appearances help address the former group's complaints, as Peach is a fully playable character in Super Mario 3D World and Super Mario Run instead of being the damsel in distress. Additionally, Peach is generally liked in the RPGs, where she is usually depicted as a more fleshed-out and endearing character and is more consistently competent. Peach's role in Super Mario Odyssey cast a new light on this debate; the game's ending depicts her as a much more independent character who refuses Bowser's and Mario's advances and goes on her own adventures, removing quite a bit of her Damsel Scrappy-dom and causing most of the debates on this specific appearance to instead be on whether her actions were fair to Mario or not.
    • Princess Daisy. Fans view her as a cool Tomboy Princess, love to ship her with Luigi, and feel that Nintendo is wasting the character by not letting her appear in other platformers and the RPGs (other than her first appearance in Super Mario Land, and in Super Mario Maker as a costume)… up until she got her playable appearance in Super Mario Run. Others can't stand her voice and think that she is a pointless Peach clone. Aside from the fact she technically only uses the line in a few games, her "Hi, I'm Daisy!" quote has become something of an online meme for her character.
    • Bowser Jr., especially when it comes to comparisons between him and the Koopalings. He was originally a Replacement Scrappy for a whole villain team, and he already got a great deal of hatedom by replacing the seven most popular non-Bowser villains in the older games. Even disregarding that, however, to a lesser degree he was also controversial for his design being little more than a redesign of the original Baby Bowser, as well as the fact that he's fought as a bland recurring boss in his early appearances. In Super Mario Sunshine, you had to pointlessly chase him for a Shine Sprite in each of the seven main levels, and in New Super Mario Bros., he is fought in every single one of the ten towers, with just two attack patterns. Some fans did start warming up to him when he was finally shown with his siblings in the sequel, New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Nowadays Bowser Jr. is more well-liked for using unique and creative Humongous Mechas to battle Mario rather than the same bland attack patterns, as well as New Super Mario Bros. U and Super Smash Bros. 4 granting him a style that was somewhat missing from Mario games beforehand. His best character traits are seen when he's working with his equally evil dad, which is both cute and frightening. However this predicament amplified when Shigeru Miyamoto stated that the Koopalings are no longer considered to be Bowser's children and only Junior was. It didn't take long for this to be completely reversed in the eyes of some fans. Since Bowser Jr's introduction, he's been in almost five times the amount of games as the Koopalings and has developed some deep character traits and a sizeable fan base of his own, causing many of Junior's fans to call the Koopalings overrated.
    • Beldam from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is loved for being fun to fight in bosses and her {{spoiler|turning out to be the Big Bad and one pulling the strings.]] She also despised by a good chuck of people for being a Jerkass toward Vivian and Doopliss (both of whom are fan favorites, especially the former) and for being a big Karma Houdini.
  • Non Sequitur Episode: The US Super Mario Bros. 2 (known as Super Mario USA in Japan) is pretty much this, as it has nothing to do with the rest of the main platformer series and is revealed to be All Just a Dream in the end. This was because it wasn't the actual sequel to the original Super Mario Bros.. The Japanese version of Super Mario Bros 2.(called Super Mario Bros.:The Lost Levels in the US) was the real sequel, directly following the previous game, while the US version was actually an entirely different game called Doki Doki Panic, only with four Mario characters added in place of DDP's characters). This was done because SMB:TLL was deemed to difficult and too similar to the original game. US players had to wait until Super Mario All Stars, a collection of remakes for the NES, came out to play The Lost Levels. So the Mario platformer series has TWO second installments, though SMB 2:TLL is the actual canon sequel while SMB 2: USA is a Non Sequitur Episode. YMMV on which you prefer though.
  • Breather Boss: Has had a few in some games, such as The Big Bully in Super Mario 64 and Topmaniac and the Undergrunt Gunner in Super Mario Galaxy.
  • Camera Screw: Super Mario 64 had a notorious camera. It was gradually fixed over the course of the series with the other 3D games.
  • Contested Sequel: Super Mario Galaxy 2, bordering on Sequelitis for those who just don't think the game needs to exist.
  • Demonic Spiders: The series has two main ones: Hammer Bros., and Lakitu. Hammer Bros. because they lob a barrage of hammers at you, which is jarring since you mostly jump over most hazards. Lakitu because they mostly float out of your reach and they throw the already hard-to-kill Spinies at you.
  • Designated Protagonist Syndrome: Mario was designed to be an extremely accessible character who can fit any role. He himself has a rather simple personality aside from his cheerfulness, but it's the colorful world he inhabits and the challenges he faces that provides the true meat of the series.
  • Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • The Koopalings. They are quite the colorful bunch, having different personalities and different hairstyles. No wonder fans were upset when Bowser Jr. replaced them.
    • Rosalina has become popular for being a princess that you don't have to rescue. Not many people were happy when Lubba replaced her in Galaxy 2 and she only appears in the end.
    • Wario and Yoshi, who both ended up getting entire series to themselves.
    • Before any of these, there was Luigi. Especially once he became one of the most rounded characters in the series. Nowadays, it's expected for him to be playable in any Mario game.
    • YMMV but Waluigi also fits this to a degree. Enough for people to actually lament his abscence from Mario Kart 7.
      • Waluigi still has plenty of haters so this would make him more of a Base Breaker
    • You can probably pin the exact moment Waluigi was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap to be riiiiight about when this comic was released...
    • In universe example is in Mario Party Advance where Mushbert brings up that Britney surpasses Jack in popularity when it comes to Toad Force V.
  • Even Better Sequel: Often what fans think of Super Mario Bros 3 compared to the original.
  • Evil Is Cool/Love to Hate: Bowser is one of the most beloved and classic video game villains of all time. He's also one of the few Mario characters that have a fleshed-out personality. Even though he suffers Villain Decay intermittently, he is able to make up for it by reversing it in games like Super Mario Galaxy.
  • Fanon: A starting point can be found here
  • Fan Yay:
    • Mario himself to a degree, but far outshadowed by Bowser. A big, hairy, strong guy wearing spikes and leather and nothing else? Bowser oozes testosterone, and attracts tons of testosterone-y fans. Though both him and Mario constantly compete for the hand of the princess, Foe Yay Shipping inevitably ensues.
    • Birdo is canonically a trans woman. Though this gets thrown under the rug due to censorship and is usually Played for Laughs, she's still notable for being one of the first explicitly trans characters in gaming, being from a kid-friendly franchise, and often being depicted in a loving relationship with Yoshi. Thus, she has a fanbase amongst trans fans.
    • Vivian is heavily implied to be transgender in Japan. Thus she has a fanbase amongst trans people.
    • Super Mario Odyssey re-introduced Pauline as the mayor of New Donk City, complete with a snazzy new work suit. Cue queer women cooing over her and shipping her with Peach.
  • Fridge Logic:
    • The manual for Super Mario Bros. 1 stated that Bowser used his dark magic to turn the people of the Mushroom Kingdom into trees and bricks and Mario spent the entire game destroying the latter. So when you think about it, Mario is actually a mass murderer.
      • On the other hand, it's never said that Mario hitting the bricks destroyed them (other than what the 8-bit pixels seemed to represent); if anything, once the bricks were broken, the people were probably returned to normal (that's the way it goes in these types of games anyway). Besides, this was never mentioned anywhere outside of the instruction manual for that one game, which is suspect as the blocks show up in almost every Mario game afterwards.
    • Another example of fridge logic: how do the many enemies that walk in a straight line and never change direction until they bump into something (such as the Koopas described under "Fridge Horror" below) get between the two objects they're walking back and forth between in the first place if they can't walk or jump over them? Does Bowser really go to all the trouble of finding countless pairs of immovable objects and putting minions between them before kidnapping Peach? Ho do the authorities not start to notice this pattern and take precautions to protect Peach whenever Bowser starts dropping minions between immovable objects?
    • Probably the most overlooked example of this trope is the fact that the Super Mushroom would technically kill Mario if not for its beneficial result. Some brightly colored mushrooms can be poisonous.
    • What about what happens to the coins you have that you collected when the brick blocks turn into coins when you hit the P Switch? If it turns all coins into bricks and all bricks into coins, what happens to the coins you carry?
  • Fridge Horror: Letting a Koopa bounce around in between blocks or pipes. Koopa Troopas can't get out of their shells if they're still in motion. They don't lose momentum when they hit solid objects. Ergo, they can possibly go on stuck there forever.
    • The Paper Mario series shows that they can stop their shells if they need to.
  • Funny Moments: Examples are here.
  • Game Breaker: The blue Yoshi in Super Mario World. If you grabbed a koopa shell of ANY color, you could fly anywhere and easily skip whole levels at a time!
    • Though to a lesser extent, the cape is also overpowered. A single swipe can kill most enemies in the game, and you can fly for as long as you like as long as you can build enough running speed.
      • Oh, and flying is the only time you can get hit without taking damage.
    • See here for more.
  • Gannon Banned: The game is called Super Mario Brothers, NOT Super Mary-Oh Brothers, as some old Mario commercials would lead you to believe.
    • Asking for Super Mario Bros. 4 to be made will lead irked fans to pointing out that it already exists-—only it was called Super Mario World in the US.
    • Mario and Luigi's last names are not Mario-—as far as Nintendo themselves are concerned, they have no last names.
  • Good Bad Bugs: The "small fiery Mario" glitch. If you hit Bowser and the axe at the same time at the end of an x-4 level, you'll start the next level as a large Mario who dies in one hit. Take a mushroom and you become small; take a Fire Flower and you become small and fiery.
    • Also, a related glitch: if you're small and you hit Bowser and the axe at the same time, Mario dies but the level still registers as a win, leaving Toad saying his "Thank You Mario/Luigi!" line to a blank screen.
    • There's also the fact that the correct pipes in the World 8-4 Pipe Maze will have the Pirahna Plants inhabiting them suddenly disappear as you approach them. This significantly reduces the potential aggravation of guessing the correct pipe.
    • If you jump on the axe just as the timer reaches zero in any castle level, you'll get a huge bonus of 50,000 points. This is because of a bug in which the timer rolls over to 999 and keeps counting down from there. However, this does not work in the NES version, since it doesn't give you a time bonus for castles. This can only be done in the "Vs." (arcade) and Super Mario All-Stars versions.[1]
  • Heartwarming Moments: THIS.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: "Who knows what Mario will look like in the future? Maybe he'll wear metallic clothes?"
  • Incest Yay Shipping: Toad and Toadette, though it seems that it's because people don't know that the two are brother and sister.
  • Internet Backdraft: Super Mario Odyssey was still universally praised within the gaming community, but its closing cinematic caused quite a stir after Bowser started shoving a bouquet of piranha plants in Princess Peach's face before Mario could get the chance to pop the question, until Peach rejects them both after Mario grabs his own flower from the ground in a fit of desperation and joins in the fray with Bowser. Considering that Mario is an avatar into his gaming world with whom it is easy for the players to imprint themselves on and that Most Gamers Are Male, a faction of them felt sorry for him and ignore the fact that expecting to get the positive response like Peach is a prize to be won instead makes Mario out to be an immature Dogged Nice Guy, and that this cutscene explicitly punishes him for it after Peach is about to leave the moon on the Odyssey and calls out to Mario just before it leaves, causing him to have to scramble and jump on. There is also a good helping of the Ron the Death Eater trope to go around, since some have accused Peach of being an Ungrateful Bitch for rejecting Mario despite the favor he did for her and felt like she owed him something in return, despite the fact that Mario has gotten kisses from her after saving her life in the past and that Peach hesitating for a second before referring to him as her friend in Paper Mario: Color Splash would imply that explicitly rejecting Mario's proposal comes from her not wanting to ruin their friendship. Since this topic concerns gender politics in video games, things can get really ugly, really fast.
  • Marty Stu: Mario comes dangerously close to being a Jerk Sue at times.
  • Memetic Badass: The Mario Brothers. With good reason.
  • Memetic Mutation: Quite a bit, actually.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: The 1-Up chime.
    • Also, the power-up sound.
    • The pipe sound and level ending fanfare, too.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Has a lot of it.
  • Real Women Never Wear Dresses: Peach has started to get flack for this reason. It peaked in Super Princess Peach.
  • Ron the Death Eater:
    • Mario himself has constantly been on the receiving end of this by a great part of the fanbase, particularly after Game Theory's infamous "Why Mario is Mental" two-parter was released. Most arguments against him cite him "being abusive towards Luigi" - with the latter's win cutscene from Mario Power Tennis where Mario lightly grinds his shoe into Luigi's foot being mentioned often, which just so happens to ignore Koopa Troopa's win cutscene from that very same game, where Mario shows concern for Luigi after he gets injured - the fact that "he would abandon Yoshi for just a few inches in a jump" despite such an action being entirely player-derived, and that "he stomps on enemies that don't even try to attack him and just mind their own business, walking in pre-determined paths where the only danger is from running into them". While it is true that technical limitations in the original Super Mario Bros. and other old 2D platformers made it so that enemies couldn't have complex attack patterns and simply walked back and forth, modern 3D platformers and spin-offs like the various RPGs make it clear that the goons working for Bowser aren't simply "minding their own business" and they do actively try to attack Mario.
    • Princess Peach also gets this sometimes, as some people felt like she was being ungrateful in Super Mario Odyssey's ending, feeling that Mario deserved something for what he'd gone through. Some even completely misconstrued the scene of Peach boarding the Odyssey as her deliberately leaving Mario and Bowser behind on the moon, even though she shouted to them, "Let's go home" as the ship was taking off.
  • The Scrappy:
    • Daisy for some. Aside from the fact she technically only uses the line in a few games, her "Hi, I'm Daisy!" quote has become something of an online meme for her character. This is also regardless of the fact Mario characters are all known for shouting annoying one-liners, so it's likely a case of bandwagon.
      • Her Baby counterpart takes it Up to Eleven in annoyance. If only because there has never been a Baby version of her, and just putting her again in the game makes it worse. Being there for a simple counterpart to Baby Peach doesn't help matters either.
    • Waluigi also has his own share of haters. He's never been featured in a non-spinoff Mario game, so he has no real place in canon, and hardcore fans generally dislike the Mario spinoffs to begin with. However, thanks to alternate character interpretation, getting some good stages and themes to his name, and getting his character taken in an overall hilarious direction, he's been somewhat Rescued from the Scrappy Heap and become a Base Breaker Ensemble Darkhorse in his own right, enough for people to actually get mad when he didn't appear in Mario Kart 7.
    • Rosalina and the Koopalings have started to become this due to their insane fanbase,
    • Replacement Scrappy: Bowser Jr. While he is also hated for his lackluster design, (he is an Expy of Bowser's baby self) he is mostly hated for replacing the Koopalings as of Super Mario Sunshine. As of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, he is forgiven by a lot of fans, as he appeared alongside all of them in the game.
    • Also Lubba for Rosalina.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: No matter how many extra lives you're gotten, in some Mario games if you save, quit, and reload your game you're back down to 4 or 5 lives.
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The original Super Mario Bros compared to Mario Bros..
  • That One Boss: Enough examples for their own page.
  • That One Level: It has its own page.
  • Ugly Cute: Goombas.
    • A lot of other enemies could count as this.
  • Villain Decay: Bowser tends to go back and forth with this to a nearly unprecedented degree; though he's usually a genuine threat in the 'core' games (ranging from downright silly plots to accidentally destroying reality after nearly conquering it.. In spinoffs, though, he's typically little more than a comic-relief nuisance, a reluctant ally or even a near Woobie level Butt Monkey as in Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga.
  • The Woobie: Luigi, being the Butt Monkey and all.
  • Woolseyism: The first Mario RPG was translated by Ted Woolsey himself. Since then, the Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi series have done their localizations in a style not unlike Woolsey.
  • What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: See World Of Chaos on the main page.


  1. ↑ not to mention most, if not all versions of the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2
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