Small Mario Findings

The model of the Koopalings used in World 6-Castle and World Star-Castle in New Super Mario Bros. 2 is extremely highly optimized. While the Koopalings do turn within a specific angle as they fly around in the background, they do not turn fully sideways or all the way around.

This allows the programmers to determine which polygons of their model will never be visible from the angles they can be displayed at, and remove those polygons from their models. This results in most of their backs being missing, as seen in this turnaround.

Source: Centrixe the Dodo

Officially licensed 1989 Super Mario Bros. 2 sweatshirt.

Source: heidimae4

In Super Mario 3D World, characters other than Mario have other, non-orange color schemes in their cat forms (left). However, in their Lucky Cat statue forms, they all become golden (middle).

It may not be obvious due to the gold filter, but during this transformation, all characters actually assume Mario's orange cat coloration, instead of having the filter apply to their existing colors (filterless look at the Lucky Cat form on the right). It is unknown why this happens, though possibly to equalize the golden appearance across all characters, as having a golden filter applied to five different colors would result in five different shades of gold.

Source: Somwonere

Promotional 2025 Donkey Kong Bananza store display.

Source: cakehoarder

Officially licensed Korean-exclusive 2026 Super Mario Galaxy Movie cup and keychain.

Source: blacktangent

According to the official Japanese guide for Princess Peach: Showtime, the horses ridden by the enemies in the Wild West plays are humorously called バッドネスホース, which is a transliteration of the English phrase "Badness Horse" into Japanese.

Most of the game's enemies have names with actual Japanese words in them in Japanese, with the few others that are also transliterated English being regular phrases ("Laser Patrol", "Little Snake"), making "Badness Horse" unique in its unusual usage of the word "badness".

Source: Arend

Officially licensed 1990 Super Mario Bros. 3 T-shirt.

Source: slimsfoundgoods

In Super Mario Galaxy, if Mario spins near a shell to pick it up underwater and is hit at the same time (as e.g. by the Urchin in the footage), the shell will remain suspended motionlessly in that spot for a few seconds before exploding.

Source: PurpleSunTAS

Officially licensed Super Mario Bros. wristwatch from Japan. Note the Super Star on the seconds hand.

Original illustration of Mario and Birdo from an officially licensed 1991 Super Mario Bros. coloring book from Germany.

In Donkey Kong 64, standing on a Lanky Pad as Lanky Kong (with the Baboon Balloon ability unlocked) and pressing Z will cause him to inflate himself like a balloon and start floating upwards.

However, if this is interrupted by being flattened by a Kosha enemy's club, Lanky will still continue rising for a brief period even though his animation will be overridden by the one of him trying to straighten himself out after being hit.

This results in the humorous impression of Lanky flying into the air through the sheer power of flapping his arms, like wings.

Promotional 2023 Super Mario Bros. movie snapback hat.

In Super Mario 64, Peach's Castle stone textures have a curious colorful noise pattern overlaid over them (original textures on the left, enhanced contrast on the right) that is not present in any other textures in the game.

Theories regarding this range from artifacts of a specific type of compression only used for these textures, to this being done deliberately to subtly make the grey textures more visually interesting.

Officially licensed 1985 Super Mario Bros. bottle from Japan.

The stone wall texture in Jolly Roger Bay in Super Mario 64 is taken from a commercial texture CD, where it was cropped from a photo of a building with plaster crumbling from its walls.

The only original unused room in the Nintendo Switch version of Super Mario RPG that is not merely a debug version of an existing room is an extremely simplistic green flat-color rectangle with a brown flat-color road on it, suspended in a black void. There is nothing else in this room.

Promotional 2001 "Ask Me About" pin featuring a Game Boy Advance displaying a scene from World 1-1 of Super Mario Advance.