Franchise: Mario

Mario's hair is brown, while his mustache is black. This was because around the time of Super Mario Bros. 3, Mario's creators wanted him to have a definite hair color in game, while it was easier to draw his mustache by extending the black outline of his nose.

During the development of Star Fox, Shigeru Miyamoto began conceiving a 3D Mario game using the SNES' Super FX chip, but contrary to popular belief, a build using the chip was never developed. According to Argonaut Software programmer Dylan Cuthbert, the Super FX chip was codenamed "Super Mario FX" during its development, and the original line of chips have the name "MARIO CHIP" printed on them, which is possibly where this misconception stems from.

Bowser's Japanese name, Kuppa (pronounced Koopa), was named by Shigeru Miyamoto after the Korean dish Gukbap, roughly known in Japan as 'Kuppa'. Other dishes considered were Yukke ('Yukhoe' in Korean) and Bibinba ('Bibimbap' in Korean).

According to a 1993 Nintendo Character Guide, Yoshi's full name is T. Yoshisaur Munchakoopas.

Nintendo has depicted Mario (previously Jumpman) with hair and no hat since the NES and Famicom. But in the early artwork for Donkey Kong, Mario was bald.

Ever since Mario's debut in 1981, there hasn't been a single year that a Mario game hasn't been released.

Before he became the voice of Mario, Charles Martinet was a Shakespearean actor. He even based his Mario voice on the character of Gremio from The Taming of the Shrew.

Koji Kondo, the composer of various Mario games, tries to make music that people can repeatedly listen to without getting sick of. He would listen to his own music for hours to see if he would get sick of it or not.

A street in Spain, in the suburb of Zargoza, was named "Avenida de Super Mario Bros." as a tribute to the Mario series. The name was chosen via an online poll for the newly built neighbourhood with plans to name more streets after other video game series.

The 'P' in "P-Wing" stands for Paratroopa or Patapata (Japanese name for Paratroopa).

All 8-bit sprite tiles have only three colors plus transparency as a fourth color, but Bowser's original sprite from Super Mario Bros. appears to have four colors as well as transparency as a color. This is because the black background is what gives Bowser his black spiked collars around his wrists. Due to this, using cheat codes so Bowser appears in a non-castle level will look like his hands are separated from his arms. This occurs again in Super Mario Bros. 3 where Bowser's sprite is designed to exploit the black background and use it as an outline element.

Charles Martinet (the voice for Mario, Luigi, Wario, and Waluigi from 1990 to 2023) was actually not invited to the auditions to be the new voice of Mario. He crashed the auditions and was just asked to do an Italian accent until he ran out of things to say. He knew nothing about Mario going into the audition, and since he was told that he was going to talk to children throughout the game, he started to do a more playful and gentle voice instead of the traditional gruff Italian accent that Mario had before. Martinet left so much of an impression at the recording that his tape was the only one sent to Nintendo.

Luigi's name comes from a pun on the Japanese word ルイージ¸ or ruiji meaning "similar". Since all of his sprites in earlier games were just recolors of his brother's sprites, and his name was Italian like Mario's was, it seemed to fit him.

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.

According to Shigeru Miyamoto, neither Mario or Luigi have surnames. The Super Mario Bros. film has Mario and Luigi's last name as Mario, but this was because of a scene where the two had to provide their full name.

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.

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."

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'".

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.