Franchise: Mario

The sounds that Donkey Kong makes in many earlier Mario spin-off games starting with Mario Kart 64 comes from "Chimpanzee Screeches and Vocalizes", a recording created by the stock audio company The Hollywood Edge in 1995.

The sounds used for Yoshi's voice in Super Mario World were created by composer Koji Kondo by playing an orchestral hit keyboard preset and pitching it both higher and lower. This sound would go on to be used as Yoshi's voice in several of his appearances throughout the Mario series, even in some instances after Kazumi Totaka became his voice actor.

At the time Wario was created, he was originally intended to be German. In the Japanese version of Mario Kart 64, the western versions of Mario Party and all versions of Mario Party 2, Wario says the line "So ein mist!" (often misheard for many years as "Doh I missed!"), which means "Such a crap!" in German. These voice clips were provided by German translator Thomas Spindler, who lived in Japan at the time and was contracted by Nintendo to translate their games. During the development of Mario Kart 64, Spindler attended a voice recording session with French translator Julien Bardakoff (who would provide the voice of Luigi) and was picked by producer Takashi Tezuka for the role of Wario for his deep, German-accented voice because "You have the voice of a bad guy!" When Charles Martinet took on the role however, he was not made aware that Wario was supposed to be German, and voiced him with an Italian accent like he did with Mario and Luigi, which would then become a staple of the character's personality. Even though the idea of Wario being German was dropped after this change, his theme music in Mario Strikers Charged would be stylized off of German folk music.

According to Mario and Star Fox series creator Shigeru Miyamoto, the creation of spin-off games in the 2020s centered around other Mario characters like Peach and Yoshi, as well as the 2026 remake of Star Fox 64, were all created as a kind of case-by-case brand synergy in tandem with the development of licensed Nintendo films created by animation studio Illumination:

When Birdo (known in Japanese as Catherine) was first introduced in Yume Koujou: Doki-doki Panic, the game's manual gave this description:


This carried over to the manual for the game's Western reskin as Super Mario Bros. 2 (known as Super Mario USA in Japan), where it instead states that Birdo's preferred name is "Birdetta". Starting with the commercial for Super Mario USA, Birdo was depicted in Japanese media as a flamboyant and flirtatious okama (a Japanese-language derogatory slur used to refer to gay men, transgender women, male crossdressers, and/or effeminate men) in both her voice acting and mannerisms for comedic purposes. However, this depiction, as well as the Western Birdetta name, were largely omitted from English localizations of future Mario games, with some exceptions:

• Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, where Birdo appears as an accomplice of Popple, who feels confused and discomforted by her.
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl, where Birdo's trophy description calls Birdo "gender indeterminate", uses "it" instead of a gendered pronoun, and includes the omitted Birdetta name.
• Super Mario Party, where Birdo is referred to with she/her pronouns in the American English script, he/him pronouns in the British English script, and no gendered pronouns in the Japanese script.

Birdo's Japanese depictions drew characteristics from drag queens and transgender women in Japanese pop culture, and Birdo would retain toned down elements of these in subsequent reappearances. Birdo frequently refers to herself in Japanese media with both the first-person feminine pronoun "atashi" and the gender-neutral first-person pronoun "watashi", invoking the latter in a feminine manner. In the Satellaview game BS Super Mario USA, the three types of Birdo are voiced by Shiroi Heya nightclub performers Jun Donna, Rika, and Akemi, all of whom identified as newhalves (a Japanese term interchangeably used to refer to transgender people and male crossdressers). Birdo's gender is most explicitly addressed in Captain Rainbow, where she is depicted again as an okama and is arrested for using a women's restroom. This forms the basis for a sidequest where she can only be exonerated once the player finds a censored item in her house called the "female proof" that is strongly implied to be a vibrator. In one trailer for the game, Little Mac describes Birdo as a "young lady", before pausing and restating: "Depending on one's view point, she is a young lady."

In 2015, a representative for Nintendo told the Japanese news site Netorabo that Birdo, as well as Yoshi, were neither male or female, or even dinosaurs; Birdo was "someone who believes they are a girl [...] 'Yoshi' is 'Yoshi' and 'Catherine' is 'Catherine'".

According to former Nintendo of America localization manager Leslie Swan, the production of the North American manual for Super Mario Bros. was outsourced to an unspecified American advertising agency. In the process, they were the ones who coined Princess Peach's original western name, Princess Toadstool. During the development of Super Mario 64, series creator Shigeru Miyamoto relayed his confusion about this change to Swan and his preference for the original name. To compromise, Swan came up with the idea of Princess Toadstool using Peach as an informal nickname, and at the beginning of the latter game, Peach formally signs her invitation to Mario as "Princess Toadstool" before writing "Peach" on top of it to appear more casual.

The Japanese name for the recurring Mario series enemy Dry Bones is "Karon" ("カロン"), which is derived from "karakara" ("からから"), a Japanese ideophone that can be used as an adverb for clattering or rattling, or as an adjective meaning "dry". While one would presume that the English name "Dry Bones" was derived from that, it has instead been theorized by some that the name could have been taken from an episode in the Book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament. In Ezekiel 37:1–14, the titular prophet describes an event where God leads him to a valley full of skeletons, referred to as "dry bones" in multiple English translations of the passage. Ezekiel then restores them to life by preaching to them, with the book stating:


Although Dry Bones in the Mario series don't regain their flesh, they otherwise bear similarities to the Biblical prophecy in that they are undead, skeletal Koopa Troopas that can reform moments after being stomped on while making a rattling sound. Despite this, it's unknown if Nintendo has ever officially explained the origins of its English name, or intended these similarities in the enemy's design.

At an unknown time, Archie Comics pitched a comic adaptation of Super Mario to Nintendo, written by Ian Flynn with art by Tracy Yardley and Ben Bates. The existence of the pitch was first discovered after concept art was released on the site Comics Art Fan in 2015. Flynn would later post a thread about it on Twitter in 2019, revealing it was planned to begin as a four issue miniseries that would have become ongoing had it been successful. It would have focused on "narrative-driven adaptations of the games with stories bridging the canon", similar to that of Flynn's previous work on Archie's Sonic The Hedgehog and Mega Man comics. However, while the pitch was apparently well-received by Nintendo of America, it was rejected by Nintendo of Japan. Flynn later felt that the pitch was not how he would approach a Mario project in the present day, as it had "too much drama, not enough whimsy".

In 2022, Flynn revealed that Archie Comics' editor at the time Paul Kaminski had hoped to include Mario characters in "Worlds at War", a planned third crossover between the Sonic the Hedgehog and Mega Man comics. The story (which was noted to be similar to the "Secret Wars" storyline by Marvel Comics) would have taken place on a "battle planet" within the multiverse's nexus, and the Mario cast's unfamiliarity with the other heroes would have been used to help explain the crossovers to newer readers. This idea would not come to pass either, as Kaminski left Archie shortly after the second crossover "Worlds Unite" wrapped up, before having a chance to pitch the idea to Nintendo.

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.

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 (although he did entertain the idea of them traveling between universes for crossover appearances), 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.

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.

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".

There is a cactus prop at Universal Studios Japan's 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 the mod's desert levels alongside official images of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, meaning that the cacti was likely mistaken for official Nintendo material. This error was corrected in 2025 with the Yoshi's Adventure ride at Universal's Epic Universe park in Orlando, Florida.

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.

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.

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.

Yoshi's Story was the first Mario series game to be rated E for Everyone instead of K-A for Kids to Adults due to the changeover by the ESRB from the previously used K-A rating in 1998.

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.

As of 2023, Mario has prominently appeared in at least one theatrical film per decade since he was created in 1981:
•1986’s Super Mario Bros: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach, which is one of the first film adaptations of a video game.
•1993’s Super Mario Bros, the first live-action film adaptation of a video game.
•2007’s The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, a documentary that revolves around Steve Wiebe attempting to usurp Billy Mitchell’s high score on Donkey Kong.
•2015’s Pixels, which incorporates Donkey Kong as the final boss of the film’s climax (alongside Mario making a brief cameo).
•2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which is the first video game film to make $1 billion dollars at the box office.

Interestingly, the two films that weren’t direct adaptations of the games, The King of Kong and Pixels, were directed and produced respectively by Seth Gordon, who considered making a 3D film adaptation of Super Paper Mario back in 2008.

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.