Franchise: Mario

Years prior to the animation studio Illumination having a film based off the Mario franchise with the 2023 film "The Super Mario Bros. Movie", the series had been referenced in a handful of films by the same studio, including Donkey Kong references in "Dr. Seuss' The Lorax" and "Despicable Me 3", and an homage to kicking a Koopa Troopa shell featured in "The Secret Life of Pets".

In 1983, an album was released on vinyl by Kid Stuff Records titled Donkey Kong (alternatively called Donkey Kong Goes Home), retelling the story of the video game of the same name. It is notable for not only potentially being the first time Mario was voiced (having an unknown release date in 1983, which was also the debut year of Saturday Supercade), but also giving Mario a stereotypical Italian accent with an "-a-" verbal tic as opposed to the gruff Italian-American accent that would be used in multimedia projects for the rest of the 80s (including Saturday Supercade), predating Charles Martinet's debut as Mario in Mario Teaches Typing by 8 years. According to Kid Stuff Mario voice actor Pat McBride, the reasoning for this voice direction was


Nintendo never gave the team behind Donkey Kong Goes Home any form of guidance for the project, and did not give any word - positive or negative - about the finished album beyond approving it.

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

Princess Daisy's country of origin, Sarasaland, takes its name from the calico textiles imported by Portuguese traders from India to Japan during the Edo Period. Calico became widely popular in Japan to the point the Portuguese word for it, sarasa, was adapted into the Japanese language.

Calico (or sarasa) textiles are most commonly flower patterns made up of multiple, contrasting colors. This is why it is ruled by Daisy, a flower-inspired princess. And just as animal color patterns are named after the fabric (i.e., calico cats, calico goldfish, etc.) it's name alludes to the fact it is comprised of multiple, diverse kingdoms. The reason it is written as "Sarasaland," is because of the poor localization for the English release of Super Mario Land. In Japanese, it is: サラサ・ランド. Properly translated to English, it would be: Calico Land. A space or hyphen can be used in place of the interpoint.

Subsequent descriptions have rendered the name differently, as well:
• The ''Official Game Boy Players Guide'' omits the word land completely: "Sarasa"
• The Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins manual spaces the name out, but still leaves calico untranslated: "Sarasa Land"
• The Daisy trophy in Super Smash Bros. Melee hyphenates the name and leaves the 'L' in "Land" lowercase: "Sarasa-land"
• Daisy's Mario Superstar Baseball profile misspells sarasa with "ra" added on the end: "Sarasara Land"

There is a pornographic parody film released in two parts based on Mario called "Super Hornio Brothers". Nintendo purchased the rights to the movies following their release to make sure they would never be released again.

Shigeru Miyamoto had originally intended for Bowser to be an ox, and based him on the main antagonist from the animation "Alakazam The Great". This is likely why his modern design has horns and a defined muzzle, despite him being a turtle.

According to Mario Bros. developer Takashi Tezuka, there was a stage in Super Mario World's development when Yoshi was a Koopa. A relic of this idea is Yoshi's shell-like saddle.

Shigeru Miyamoto wanted Mario to have a dinosaur companion ever since Super Mario Bros., but it wasn't thought to be possible at the time due to the technical limitations of the NES. He wanted to implement Yoshi in Super Mario Bros. 3, but again could not. Two power-ups were created to fill the gap - Raccoon Mario and Frog Mario. Co-worker Takashi Tezuka once speculated that Miyamoto's love of horse riding had influenced Yoshi's creation.

According to Shigeru Miyamoto, the Koopalings aren't actually Bowser's children, despite the Super Mario Bros. 3 manual stating that they were.

According to series creator Shigeru Miyamoto, Mario's appearance was the result of graphical limitations in the original Donkey Kong: his overalls allowed his arms to be visible against his body (as there was no room for outlines), his hat substituted for hair and eyebrows (and did not need to be animated when he jumped), and the large nose and mustache made up for the lack of space to depict a mouth.

Miyamoto additionally stated that the design was influenced by the decision to make Mario Italian-American, identifying his large nose in particular as a distinctly western feature.

An issue of Nintendo Power revealed that Shigeru Miyamoto got the idea for Boos from the wife of his co-worker and close friend Takashi Tezuka, as she is shy but one day got very angry at him for coming home late from work. Boos were also originally named "Boo Diddleys" after the late blues singer and guitarist "Bo Diddley".

Super Mario Bros. 3 marked a permanent shift in the color scheme of Mario's overalls and sweater. Between the box arts and sprites of previous games, Mario would often switch from wearing a blue sweater and red overalls, to wearing a red sweater and blue overalls. The latter outfit would become the unified standard appearance for Mario in all subsequent games starting with Super Mario Bros. 3.

A tech demo developed by Shigeru Miyamoto over a number of years titled "Mario 128" was shown off at Nintendo's Spaceworld 2000 trade show and was designed to showcase the GameCube's ability to utilize multiple AIs. The demo featured 128 Marios dismantling a pseudo-8 bit Mario sprite composed of several blocks by picking up and carrying them away. This project had a tumultuous development cycle with little to no details coming out over the years until 2007 when he revealed at a GDC Keynote that some parts of the project were utilized in two games he produced in the 2000s. The general concept and some other parts of Mario 128 were developed into Pikmin after Miyamoto asked his team to create an entirely new game that would be nothing like a sequel to a Mario game. As for the second game, the ability to warp the terrain seen in the tech demo as well as "different sizes of spherical items" influenced the free-form gravity and ability to walk around entire planets in Super Mario Galaxy.

Luigi's design was partly due to the result of memory limitations during the development of Mario Bros. Mario was duplicated to create the second player, Luigi, and unable to produce any additional colors, the color palette of the Shellcreeper was reused resulting in Luigi's iconic green appearance.

According to Nintendo via a Nintendo Direct "Year of Luigi" announcement, Mario and Luigi are twins. It's also been stated that Luigi is the youngest.