Top: in Paper Mario: The Origami King, a Toad near the destroyed bridge to Peach’s Castle mentions an “expert on bridge experts”.

Bottom: this is a reference to Paper Mario: Color Splash, where a Toad is repeatedly called an expert on bridge experts.

In Super Mario World, some of the dots representing levels on the various map screens are larger than others. Above are all maps featuring such dots, those being Vanilla Dome 1, Vanilla Dome 3, Forest of Illusion 1 and Valley of Bowser 2 (Mario is not placed on any of them in the screenshots to give a clear view).

To this day, it is entirely unclear what the significance of the larger dots is. A common misconception is that they are used to show that the level has a longer time limit; however, Forest of Illusion 1 has a regular time limit and still has a large dot. These levels have nothing in common that would differentiate them, as a group, from the other levels. The large dots may be a remnant of some aspect or functionality removed during development.

Day 2957 - 17 November 2020

Aether