Super Mario Bros; The Misconceptions, Canon and Various Mysteries Solved!

When it comes to the Mario series, there is a lot of misinformation and general mystery floating around on the internet. Many people before this have wondered some obvious questions, such as Birdo's gender, the backstory of the Mario Bros, any form of timeline and many more. For that matter, some people seem to have made massive mistakes with their understanding of the series and it's content, often stemming from them not seeing the series has at least somewhat changed since the original Super Mario Bros on the NES back in the 80s. But that's already gone. I started back a few months ago with an article about the deadly sins not to make when writing about the Mario series, and I intend to sort out these miscellaneous queries, thoughts and mistakes once and for all.

Note: I do not have any connection to Nintendo. Anything posted below is probably relevant until the next Mario game is released, which will likely be New Super Mario Bros Wii. I do however do the research, so there shouldn't be too many inaccuracies in this blog article.

Mario; Not a Sugar Bowl Universe

Quick recap:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SugarBowl

Yes, to the person who's only played Super Mario Bros 1, it probably DOES seem like that kind of setting. But let's quickly look beyond that for a minute. It's not at all peaceful in the slightest... when we get to see it. Usually it's Bowser's army attacking something, although to be bluntly honest, how close he comes to being a harmless villain varies based on the game.

But just because it looks peaceful (ish), and isn't rated [insert high age rating here] for blood, explosions, sexual content, swearing and... being highly cynical, doesn't mean it's some utopia of happiness and joy to everyone that visits.

Nope. One look at the RPGs, and this view will get shattered further apart that anyone might imagine. Paper Mario 2 has Rogueport, filled with criminals, low lifes and general crooks. It has two rival gangs, including the Mafia equivalent (in Japan, I think it's the Yazuka), a demon that once half destroyed the world in darkness, the depressing Twilight Town where the townspeople get turned to 'realistic' looking pigs whenever the bell tolls, Doopliss stealing Mario's entire identity, pirates... terrorist type threat against the train... Super Paper Mario has Count Bleck, driven to insanity by the Dark Prognosticus and something about love... the upcoming end of the multiverse, of all existance, a whole universe get blanked out of existance into a white void, Bleck's Castle in pure monochrome in the void, Mimi's transformation form... Dimentio sending you to 'hell' in a cut scene... Mario and Luigi Partners in Time includes aliens attacking the past Mushroom Kingdom, and using Toad life energy for UFO fuel, Mario and Luigi 3 contains much brainwashing/mind control vs the locals (thanks to Fawful) Super Mario Galaxy nearly has the universe destroyed again... Luigi's Mansion has the ghost backstories and such like.

This does not mention how Mario gets skeletonised when electrocuted in Mario Galaxy, or literally turned to atoms/disintegrated when he falls into Dark Matter.

It's more than a tad past the 'happy go lucky everyone loves each other and nothing happens' worlds 'Sugar Bowl' usually defines. It may have an all ages rating, but it's way beyond the kind of the environment found in those early afternoon/morning kids shows.

Is Birdo Male/Female?

Both, and neither. Strange answer? Well, there's more than one Birdo, like there being more than one Yoshi. It's a name, and the name of a species. Of course, if you're a Birdo called 'Birdo', you've got an awful name in the first place, and it's as confusing as a person called 'human'.

But let's think of it this way. The character Birdo from the original, may have been male or female. The one from the spinoffs is probably female, and the one from that Captain Rainbow game people have heard of I think is also female (this is proved as a mission in the game).

Canon/Continuity

Quite frankly... there is none. Yes, this makes the whole blog only debatably useful in any particular fashion, and it's probably the reason Waluigious and Coin Heaven avoided timeline related articles.

But let me explain it nicely. Mario has Negative Continuity. Liberal use of the Reset Button after every adventure. Many, many 1 ups and characters being brought back from the dead at a moment's notice.

From Mario Wiki:
Miyamoto, although the source for this seems to be lost to history, actually mentioned in the past that the reason this exists is to not limit future games. In simple turns, it stops things like some fan saying:

'But in 1993, in Super Mario Bros [name], said character was the other side of the map and another character died, hence it couldn't have happened like that!'

Basically, they don't want plot holes. Or people complaining like those arguing for hours over the Legend of Zelda time line, nor people debating whether expanded universe sources are to be treated seriously or not.

Is Mario officially from Brooklyn?

Depends on the source. Of course, there's no or limited canon to go by, and it's quite plausible the movie and such like take place in a wildly different universe to the games.

But I'll answer it for each possible universe. For the video game series, he's from the Mushroom Kingdom. That's it. There's no real world mention in the actual games themselves, and he's seen as born there according to Yoshi's Island, DS and Mario and Luigi Partners in Time (as well as in game where Baby Mario is present).

In the movie, he's from Brooklyn, Earth, and the Mushroom Kingdom is an alternative universe. His life before finding the Mushroom Kingdom is pretty damn dull in this version.

In the cartoon series (Super Show, Super Mario Bros 3 TV show, Super Mario World, etc), he was from Brooklyn, found the Mushroom Kingdom through the plumbing and... well, his life in Brooklyn was a tad more interesting due to having weird creatures, TV characters and famous celebrities visiting for no real apparent reason.

In Super Mario Bros.: Peach-hime Kyushutsu Dai Sakusen!, he was from... I don't know. It doesn't say on Mario Wiki, other than that in an hilarious meta referencing intro, Mario is playing a game based on Super Mario Bros for the NES. It might be Japan, might be Brooklyn, might be a random non Mushroom Kingdom alternate universe location... but let's be honest, I don't know, and that's as good as you'll probably get here.

As for Super Smash Bros, he's probably an animated trophy played with by Master Hand. Or an animated trophy living in the World of Trophies, depending on the game. Is this the same Mario as the main series games? God knows, at this rate it's hard to tell where fanon, canon and plain guessing begins and ends.

You might have realised from the above that... a lot of stuff contradicts with other stuff. To put it very bluntly... the Mario series not having a strict canon is probably for the best because of the sheer twenty two different origin stories given to Mario, Luigi and any other character ever wrote about in the series. Is Mario from Brooklyn? Appears to be no for the video game series (Earth as a whole is never mentioned in the Mario series in most cases), yes for the cartoons, yes for the movie, God knows for the anime series, don't read German to know about the comics, don't think the manga mentions it and I will seriously go insane if someone even tries to get me to consider the Ice Capades as remotely decent.

The Mushroom Kingdom is not on Earth...

Regardless of what the likely funny and interesting Excavation of the Mushroom Kingdom book may have suggested to some, the Mushroom Kingdom is not on Earth in the Mario series. Yes, some parts of the Mario series have explicitly said they take place on Earth, but not the main series games.

Taking place on Earth in the Mario series are Mario is Missing, Mario's Time Machine, probably Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games and sequel... that's about it. It however is portrayed as a seperate universe or parallel to the Mushroom Kingdom, not the same. Note how the Koopas and such like are seen as invaders in the educational games, not just the standard.

But as said, the Mushroom Kingdom is very much on a seperate planet from Earth, and in a seperate 'universe' or 'dimension'. Too many people seem to make the assumption the universe is the same one we're in now... it's not. It's not a fictional depiction of a place in the real world, just a strange alternate universe kind of location.

The other spinoffs make this very, very clear. Mario cartoon series said they got sucked into this strange world when trying to fix some plumbing, the Mario movie said it was formed by the meteorite that supposedly killed the dinosaurs (yes, really, really bad science here, even for the Mario series), and the anime series had it as a video game setting Mario and Luigi apparently ended up in.

A problem in a lot of fan work however is that many, many people do not understand this point. There seems to be an assumption that every non stated location equals a version of Earth of some kind.

What confuses this, is that the planet Mushroom Kingdom is on... is like Earth, in some of the spinoffs and such like. It's got one moon, it looks like Earth from space and some characters in WarioWare potentially refer to it as such. But in other games, like Super Mario Bros 3 and the adaptations, it's made clear that the location is not Earth.

Mario Physics Do Not Equal Earth

Similarly, the other major problem a lot of article writers get trapped by and fall into. There is a very much strong assumption online of the Mario series having a perfectly real world like reality where everything obeys the same physical laws, and where this and that can't happen because of this and that reason.

The problem is that it is extremely blatant that the Mario universe practically defies all real world physics and logical rules. Blocks and objects float with no visible means of support. Pits go down forever with no end. Water can form straight walls, upside sections and a full blown rollercoaster meets corkscrew with loop in mid air. Did I mention air control/jump physics? You see, Mario can do things like apparently turn around in mid air and various more things, which are a blatant disregard for gravity. Platformers as a whole do it. The platform game genre cannot work in a realistic setting.

Another element of the physics side people forget is that their attempts at telling people what 'realism' is in game design blatantly contradict any laws of physics the universe might have had. Apparently, this makes it fine for SOME objects to defy gravity... but not any other other objects.

Many of these misconceptions are based on familiarity with real world physics. Now, rule of thumb... whether you should apply real world physics to a series is based on how close the series is to the real world (basically, if it's actually set here, then I'd assume any scientific knowledge holds firm unless handwaved by magic or advanced technology, while if it's a fantasy land with contradictions, don't think too much). Basically... for stuff like Soap Operas or Sit Coms... yeah, it's going to be obeying Earth's laws of physics and science to a tee. For 'hard' science fiction... it will probably have differences, but they'll be real world explainable. For something like Harry Potter or Doctor Who... it's got real world physics, but either magic or alien tech can probably explain away inconsistencies based on the series canon. For something... weird, like a kids cartoon show or the Mario series... best bet is to take what's said in the show or series itself as how the universe physics world, because at the least the creators probably don't give a damn about how science says anything should go, and at most they'll say 'screw this, it's cooler in a different way'.

Take that as you will.

Mario's Name

First, the obvious... you don't need to know this. Mario's FIRST name is Mario, and Luigi's first name is Luigi. That's the bit everyone CAN be 100% sure of.

But his surname? Only stated as 'Mario' in the movie. In the games, it ranges from 'possible but not stated' to people saying that Miyamoto actually said his last name WAS ANYTHING BUT Mario, to 'he has no surname'. Keep this in mind a bit here. The Mario as surname bit applying to everything is damn unclear, and possibly fanon.

Finally, as far as I know, he most definitely IS named after Nintendo of America's Landlord. Yes, some people doubted that, at least in this article:

http://kidicarus222.blogspot.com/200...everybody.html

However, I will now present some pretty decent obvious for the 'real person based name' theory. From two of Nintendo's websites:

http://nintendo.co.uk/NOE/en_GB/serv...rate_2001.html
Also, from a Japanese official Nintendo magazine:

http://translate.googleusercontent.c..._WDEBpTehKlUdQ

A pretty big Japanese wiki also mentions this as well:

http://translate.google.co.uk/transl...%3Den%26sa%3DG

Excuse the poor English from the translations, machine translation fails horribly at grammar.

As does Mario Wiki:

http://www.mariowiki.com/Mario#Creation
Now, I'll be perfectly honest... the situation is not perfect. Nintendo of America USED to have a good history page, but now it became a console list. Nintendo itself seems almost relunctant to accept it's history of making arcade games at all, and as you guessed, the Virtual Boy has pretty much been erased from Nintendo's history books. As a result, various other possible sources, like the few Japanese Mario game official sites with history pages start straight from Super Mario Bros on the NES and continue, treating Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, 3 and Mario Bros as pretty much outside the main Mario series.

This is my best answer.

The Koopalings and information

Another point of confusion among Mario fans seems to be the Koopalings, who have more fan fiction and facts associated than pretty much anyone else in the series, yet so much fanon that it's nearly impossible to seperate from the canonical.

However, first things first. In the Japanese Super Mario Bros 3... they weren't named. I don't think they were originally classed as Bowser's children either, but they were as far as I know, designed by members of the programming team. Then, the game got translated to English, and the names were given based on pop culture icons/musicians and such like. This is why each and every name has a basis in the name of a real world famous indivual.

Then... Super Mario World came, and the Japanese designers adopted the English first names of the Koopalings as the names in Japan, so as you may have figured out, the names are now the same across the world in general. However, only the first names apparently made it, losing the Jr, O and Von in various Koopaling names in the process. And Reznor got named after Trent Reznor. But in case you want a list of their Japanese names, which are just translations of the English with some differences due to the Japanese language and R and L being the same:

Japanese

Igī

Mōton

Remī

Rudowiggu

Roi

Wendi

Rarī

Source:

http://themushroomkingdom.net/mlss_j2e.shtml

However, the big mistake people make is due to the cartoon series. In the games, the Koopalings aren't really given personalities, other than to be 'mean' or 'evil'. Okay, some stuff is hinted in Super Mario World's castle destruction sequences, such as:

Ludwig composing Koopa symphonies (musician, I'd assume based on his namesake Ludwig Van Beethoven)
Larry as interested in Sports (Yoshi's Safari, Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga)
Wendy as singing (and a spoilt brat)
Morton as a grouch (Player's Guide)
Iggy as a crazy genius (he's referred to as 'demented')
Lemmy as immature (in one spinoff, he went out to play in snow rather than help Bowser, has that whole clown thing going on)

Etc. However, many people take the personalities from the cartoons (as well as the completely different age order) as canon, which causes problems.










There is no Permanent... In Mario

A side effect of the lack of canon or continuity, there is by no means any time where a character or place is completely without possibility to be brought back. Okay, it's unlikely Nintendo give a toss about Wart right now, or the bosses from Wario Land 1, or Fred:



But basically, with no continuity... no one is really staying dead if Nintendo doesn't want them to. Can they die? Yes. Can they be brought back? Also yes. Remember, anyone who thinks a character's death is the end of the line in the series fails to consider that Bowser has gone through enough brutal injuries to pretty much disintegrate most living beings. He returns due to popularity and developer liking as a character. Every villain in the series has survived drops, lava and multiple explosions. Fawful survived being thrown out a castle floating a few miles above the ground and even appearing as a ghost in the final battle, and went on to become a main villain. If Nintendo wanted to revive Dimentio, Fawful or Cackletta, they most probably could at any instant. I'm not mentioning Smithy because the Mario RPG rights seem all over the place, and I'm actually not mentioning Princess Shroob... you know why?

Because she's already potentially still alive, said elder version is actually frozen solid in the background of the battle vs the three Shroobs in the cold storage room in Bowser's Inside Story:



Note the massive ice blocks in the background. You've pretty much got Shroobs, Shroids, Junior Shrooboids, Commander Shroob and apparently Elder Princess Shroob enshrined in ice back there. My bet? Next game will have Shroobs and Midbus as major threats.

To be fair, I don't think death can really be permanent in the series. What with those 1 up Mushrooms, Life Shrooms and the Underwhere/Overthere providing conveniant 'back to living civilisation; three miles that away'.

Something on Character Names

Minor issue, but no article could be said without thinking back to the Mario Banned article and the numerous instances of people not knowing their Mario character names at all:

http://dsultimate.net/Board/upload/blog.php?b=584

As well as the above, remember a few other things. Fireballs = Podoboos. These things:



Are properly named 'Roto Discs'. Nothing to do with waffles. Especially not atomic ones.

Similarly, those stone creatures that fall on you? Thwomps. Those paving slabs that move and fall on you? Whomps. Don't get them mixed up.

Annoys me to no end when people make these mistakes.

Koopaling Names

Another question that has bugged many, many Mario fans are the surnames of the Koopalings. More precisely, it's the name of Morton Koopa Jr, or the 'Jr' aspect which is driving these questions.

In case you did not know this, the Jr in someone's name pretty much means that they've got the same name as their parent, hence have the suffix applied to distinguish them from the former in any formal context.

But as we know, while this nicely explains Bowser Jr, it makes the name 'Morton Koopa Jr' confusing as heck. Because Bowser's name, neither in Japan or America is called 'Morton'. It shouldn't apply. It can't particularly be due to his grandfather or another relative either, at least according to Wikipedia:

Well, maybe this not being the case is for the best somewhat, being that 'Morton Koopa the Second' is not particularly a... normal name. Considering Bowser is not exactly called 'Morton Koopa Sr' is probably a good thing too.

Of course, how you would answer this depends very much on whether you're a Watsonian or a Doyalist in terms of writing about the series (Watsonian, only things that make sense in the story's reality, Doyalist, treating thing as created work based on the author themselves). If you're a Doyalist, you can nicely sum this up by saying 'Morton got his name, just like that what was given to Wendy and Ludwig from a real world celebrity 'Morton Downey Jr', who does have an actual reason for his name.

Of course, the Japanese version nicely sidesteps these problems, in that they took the Western names given in the translation of Super Mario Bros 3 and simply used the first names of each Koopaling, so Morton Koopa Jr is just Morton Koopa, Ludwig Von Koopa is just Ludwig Koopa and Wendy O Koopa is Wendy Koopa. Perhaps this is the best explanation, just to go with the first names rather than the name suffixes.

Bowser Didn't Die Between Games

A popular, relatively modern fan theory based on Luigi's Mansion and the words of Madame Clairvoya, there is an idea hovering around that between Super Mario 64 and Luigi's Mansion, that Bowser died in some kind of plotline significant way and hence the ghost was prophesising his return with the final battle of said game.

Now, it's debatable enough whether the final boss was King Boo controlling the semi ghostly posssessed body of Bowser or merely a very lifelike robot of him, but the idea he actually died in between games is more than a tad absurd. He survives more things than any other villain I have ever seen for example, such as lava (twice before Luigi's Mansion, once after with New Super Mario Bros), long drops down multiple story buildings (Super Mario Bros 3), exploding clown cars (Super Mario World), exploding mines (Super Mario 64, three times, 5 mines), being beaten up by Yoshi multiple times (Yoshi's Island), flying into space (Mario Party), Star Rod countered magic and attacks (Paper Mario) and falling + being sent flying out of his castle (Super Mario RPG). The poor guy is basically made of titanium, the possibility of him truly dying is practically non existant (not that dying stops people either, Mario characters have returned from hell in one piece, had their skin magically returned to them and brought back from possibly becoming ghosts). See the point above ' There is no Permanent... In Mario'.

There's also the question of how good any mystic sage is. Or where they are when you actually need them. I think those Star Spirits, Rosalina, Dr Toadley's crystal ball and this 'Madame Clairyoya' have some explaining to in regards to why they never actually just say 'screw this for a game, I'll just tell Mario how to end his quest in ten minutes'. Or the character might have only localised knowledge. Either way works.

Did Mario and Luigi live in Brooklyn for a time?

Hard to say. On the fence about this personally, although Mario Wiki seems to support it. On one hand, we have evidence they can visit a fictionalised version of our Earth via warp pipes (Mario is Missing, Mario's Time Machine). On the other hand, there's no evidence they went there on various other instances, and there's a distinct feeling of Mario fans trying to mix and match the game and TV show continuities despite obvious clashes.

In general though, those a few important things you should know about the Mario series before writing about it. Especially the canon ones. Especially the naming ones. And overall... I don't know, just chill out.