Everybody zombie night, round and round and turn and die
More pointless trivia about the Mario games. I've probably said most of this stuff before, but no one reads this blog anyway so I'm sure no one will notice.
Shigeru Miyamoto seems to go back and forth on whether or not Mario and Luigi have a last name. Currently, the answer is yes, and it's "Mario", which means their names ARE actually Mario Mario and Luigi Mario. Which means the movie was right all along.
The Super Mushrooms in the Mario games are modelled after a real life toadstool called amanita muscaria, also known as fly agaric. These toadstools have hallucinogenic properties when consumed, causing people to feel like they're growing in size. The same concept was also used in the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which is where Miyamoto got the inspiration from.
While it's often believed and shown in parodies that Mario breaks blocks by hitting them with his head, this isn't actually the case. If you watch closely, when Mario jumps, he raises a fist and the fist hits the block, not his head. The only time Mario does break blocks with his head is when he's holding an item like a Koopa shell, and this is just because of sprite limitations.
Similarly, people often depict Mario hitting Yoshi in the back of the head to make Yoshi stick out his tongue, with many crying animal abuse. In fact, sprite limitations are to blame again - official artwork makes it clear that Mario is actually pointing forward at their target, not hitting Yoshi. This is how it is consistently depicted in newer media featuring Yoshi.
"Yoshi!" is a Japanese exclamation meaning "Alright!" or "I did it!", as well as an actual Japanese name. Yoshi can frequently be heard exclaiming "Yoshi!" when he accomplishes a task, playing off the double meaning of his name.
Luigi's name is a pun on the Japanese word "ruiji", meaning "similar", which is also how Luigi is pronounced when translated into Japanese phonetics. Since Luigi was initially just a palette swap of Mario, it makes sense to name him "similar", and Luigi being an Italian name went well with Mario. Waluigi has a similar case - his name is pronounced "waruiji" in Japanese, which can be reversed into "iji waru", meaning roughly "bad man". Wario's name comes from Mario and "warui", Japanese for "bad". An evil counterpart to Peach, known as Warupeach (or Warupichi in Japanese pronunciation) was planned to be included in the Mario Tennis games, but ultimately Miyamoto shot down the idea.
Wario's excessive flatulence is most likely due to his diet. Wario's favourite food is garlic, which he apparently eats whole cloves of day and night. Garlic is high in starch, which means it's hard for the body's digestive system to break down completely. In short, eating lots of garlic, as Wario does, can give you serious gas.
The "Lazy Shell" item in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars was actually a mistranslation. The Japanese name for the Koopa Troopas is Nokonoko, which is a Japanese onomatopoeia word for doing something nonchalantly or unconcernedly. This was "translated" as "Lazy" by the localisers, when in fact it should have just been called a Koopa Shell.
Similarly, "Kuribo's Shoe" in Super Mario Bros. 3 should have been "Goomba's Shoe" - Kuribo is the Japanese name for the Goombas, roughly meaning "chestnut people" (possibly due to someone at Nintendo mislabelling the sprite thinking they resembled chestnuts, as Goombas are actually based on shiitake mushrooms). The joke was that the Goombas were planning to use the shoe to stomp on Mario, just like Mario stomped on so many of them.
In Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, the ghost Doopliss steals Mario's identity, and tells Mario that the only way to recover it is to guess his name. His English name comes from the word "duplicitous", meaning deceptive or tricky, but his Japanese name is more thematically appropriate. In Japan, he's known as Rumpel, which comes from the fairy tale character Rumpelstiltskin. In the tale, Rumpelstiltskin is an imp who comes to help a young girl in her time of need, but demands her first child as payment for his services. When she refuses, he tells her that he'll give up if she can guess his name within three days. The ghost Rumpel/Doopliss also wants you to guess his name, giving a pretty strong connection between the two. The tale of Rumpelstiltskin has the girl finding out his name by eavesdropping on him talking to himself while hidden. In Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, you find out Doopliss's name by eavesdropping on his talking parrot while hidden.
In the Japanese version of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Vivian is actually a male-to-female transgender. There are several interesting changes between Japanese and English dialogue to reflect this. When you first meet the three - Vivian, Marilyn and Beldam, whose name is Marjorie in Japanese - Vivian refers to them as "the three Shadow Beauties", which Beldam corrects her to "Shadow Sirens", saying "I don't see three beauties here. I see two, but then there's you, and you're PLUG-UGLY!", with "plug-ugly" being written in red text, usually reserved for important information. But the fact that she thinks Vivian is ugly surely isn't important, is it? Well, in Japanese, the group's official name is "Kage Sannin", meaning "Shadow Trio". Vivian refers to them as "Kage Sanshimai", which means "Shadow Sisters", and Marjorie responds "What do you mean, Shadow Sisters? You're a boy, aren't you!" with "otoko" (boy) being written in red text. Vivian's character description in the Japanese version states "Kage San'ningumi no hitoridatta. On'nanoko no yō de, honto wa otokonoko." meaning "One of the Shadow Trio. Vivian appears to be a girl, but is really a boy." ("otokonoko", literally "male girl", is a term for male crossdressers in Japanese). When using Goombella's Tattle ability on Vivian in Japanese, she'll say "'Vivian' yo, Kage San'ningumi no hitori de ichibanshita no imōto - janakute, otōto ne." translated as "That's Vivian, the youngest sister of the Shadow Trio - I mean, brother." In the end of the game, Goombella identifies Vivian as female. This is vindication, and shows that Goombella is finally accepting Vivian's gender identity. This was left out of the English translation, which made Vivian physically female, but kept in some other translations such as Spanish. The Italian translation says that Vivian is a girl, but used to be a boy.
Birdo is also transgender in the Japanese games. In Japanese, her name is Catherine, and she's explicitly stated to be a male who identifies as female. This was again changed to her just being plain female in the English games.
The character Rawk Hawk (Gold Hawk in Japan) in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is based on professional wrestler, actor and entertainer Hulk Hogan. In the Spanish translation, he's even called Hawk Hogan. His fighting style is based on lucha libre, involving flashy acrobatic moves, and in wrestling terms he would be considered a heel; a villain (within the wrestling lore, not within the game's lore) who uses dirty, underhanded methods to win and makes the audience hate them (though Hulk Hogan is actually a face in the real WWE). The fact that Rawk Hawk acts the same way both in and out of the Glitz Pit refers to the wrestling practice of kayfabe, which essentially means that wrestlers have to always remain in character, no matter where they are or what they're doing.
Shigeru Miyamoto seems to go back and forth on whether or not Mario and Luigi have a last name. Currently, the answer is yes, and it's "Mario", which means their names ARE actually Mario Mario and Luigi Mario. Which means the movie was right all along.
The Super Mushrooms in the Mario games are modelled after a real life toadstool called amanita muscaria, also known as fly agaric. These toadstools have hallucinogenic properties when consumed, causing people to feel like they're growing in size. The same concept was also used in the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which is where Miyamoto got the inspiration from.
While it's often believed and shown in parodies that Mario breaks blocks by hitting them with his head, this isn't actually the case. If you watch closely, when Mario jumps, he raises a fist and the fist hits the block, not his head. The only time Mario does break blocks with his head is when he's holding an item like a Koopa shell, and this is just because of sprite limitations.
Similarly, people often depict Mario hitting Yoshi in the back of the head to make Yoshi stick out his tongue, with many crying animal abuse. In fact, sprite limitations are to blame again - official artwork makes it clear that Mario is actually pointing forward at their target, not hitting Yoshi. This is how it is consistently depicted in newer media featuring Yoshi.
"Yoshi!" is a Japanese exclamation meaning "Alright!" or "I did it!", as well as an actual Japanese name. Yoshi can frequently be heard exclaiming "Yoshi!" when he accomplishes a task, playing off the double meaning of his name.
Luigi's name is a pun on the Japanese word "ruiji", meaning "similar", which is also how Luigi is pronounced when translated into Japanese phonetics. Since Luigi was initially just a palette swap of Mario, it makes sense to name him "similar", and Luigi being an Italian name went well with Mario. Waluigi has a similar case - his name is pronounced "waruiji" in Japanese, which can be reversed into "iji waru", meaning roughly "bad man". Wario's name comes from Mario and "warui", Japanese for "bad". An evil counterpart to Peach, known as Warupeach (or Warupichi in Japanese pronunciation) was planned to be included in the Mario Tennis games, but ultimately Miyamoto shot down the idea.
Wario's excessive flatulence is most likely due to his diet. Wario's favourite food is garlic, which he apparently eats whole cloves of day and night. Garlic is high in starch, which means it's hard for the body's digestive system to break down completely. In short, eating lots of garlic, as Wario does, can give you serious gas.
The "Lazy Shell" item in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars was actually a mistranslation. The Japanese name for the Koopa Troopas is Nokonoko, which is a Japanese onomatopoeia word for doing something nonchalantly or unconcernedly. This was "translated" as "Lazy" by the localisers, when in fact it should have just been called a Koopa Shell.
Similarly, "Kuribo's Shoe" in Super Mario Bros. 3 should have been "Goomba's Shoe" - Kuribo is the Japanese name for the Goombas, roughly meaning "chestnut people" (possibly due to someone at Nintendo mislabelling the sprite thinking they resembled chestnuts, as Goombas are actually based on shiitake mushrooms). The joke was that the Goombas were planning to use the shoe to stomp on Mario, just like Mario stomped on so many of them.
In Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, the ghost Doopliss steals Mario's identity, and tells Mario that the only way to recover it is to guess his name. His English name comes from the word "duplicitous", meaning deceptive or tricky, but his Japanese name is more thematically appropriate. In Japan, he's known as Rumpel, which comes from the fairy tale character Rumpelstiltskin. In the tale, Rumpelstiltskin is an imp who comes to help a young girl in her time of need, but demands her first child as payment for his services. When she refuses, he tells her that he'll give up if she can guess his name within three days. The ghost Rumpel/Doopliss also wants you to guess his name, giving a pretty strong connection between the two. The tale of Rumpelstiltskin has the girl finding out his name by eavesdropping on him talking to himself while hidden. In Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, you find out Doopliss's name by eavesdropping on his talking parrot while hidden.
In the Japanese version of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Vivian is actually a male-to-female transgender. There are several interesting changes between Japanese and English dialogue to reflect this. When you first meet the three - Vivian, Marilyn and Beldam, whose name is Marjorie in Japanese - Vivian refers to them as "the three Shadow Beauties", which Beldam corrects her to "Shadow Sirens", saying "I don't see three beauties here. I see two, but then there's you, and you're PLUG-UGLY!", with "plug-ugly" being written in red text, usually reserved for important information. But the fact that she thinks Vivian is ugly surely isn't important, is it? Well, in Japanese, the group's official name is "Kage Sannin", meaning "Shadow Trio". Vivian refers to them as "Kage Sanshimai", which means "Shadow Sisters", and Marjorie responds "What do you mean, Shadow Sisters? You're a boy, aren't you!" with "otoko" (boy) being written in red text. Vivian's character description in the Japanese version states "Kage San'ningumi no hitoridatta. On'nanoko no yō de, honto wa otokonoko." meaning "One of the Shadow Trio. Vivian appears to be a girl, but is really a boy." ("otokonoko", literally "male girl", is a term for male crossdressers in Japanese). When using Goombella's Tattle ability on Vivian in Japanese, she'll say "'Vivian' yo, Kage San'ningumi no hitori de ichibanshita no imōto - janakute, otōto ne." translated as "That's Vivian, the youngest sister of the Shadow Trio - I mean, brother." In the end of the game, Goombella identifies Vivian as female. This is vindication, and shows that Goombella is finally accepting Vivian's gender identity. This was left out of the English translation, which made Vivian physically female, but kept in some other translations such as Spanish. The Italian translation says that Vivian is a girl, but used to be a boy.
Birdo is also transgender in the Japanese games. In Japanese, her name is Catherine, and she's explicitly stated to be a male who identifies as female. This was again changed to her just being plain female in the English games.
The character Rawk Hawk (Gold Hawk in Japan) in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is based on professional wrestler, actor and entertainer Hulk Hogan. In the Spanish translation, he's even called Hawk Hogan. His fighting style is based on lucha libre, involving flashy acrobatic moves, and in wrestling terms he would be considered a heel; a villain (within the wrestling lore, not within the game's lore) who uses dirty, underhanded methods to win and makes the audience hate them (though Hulk Hogan is actually a face in the real WWE). The fact that Rawk Hawk acts the same way both in and out of the Glitz Pit refers to the wrestling practice of kayfabe, which essentially means that wrestlers have to always remain in character, no matter where they are or what they're doing.
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