Small Mario Findings

Cover of a 1997 issue of the Next Generation magazine, featuring the head of a Mario render (particularly his punching render from Super Mario 64) behind shattered glass.

Source: VGArtAndTidbits

Unlicensed Korean Mario toys, featuring a combination of redrawn artwork originating from various games and Mario cartoon series.

Source: 396kancho

Print ad for officially licensed 1993 Super Mario Bros. cookies.

Source: anguilline, discontinuedfoods

In Paper Mario: The Origami King, Luigi is found in a broken-off piece of Peach's Castle near the beginning of the game (left). Much later, Peach's Castle itself is visited, where the room that contains that broken piece can optionally be entered (right).

Almost all of the details about the piece and the room line up, with small missing pieces being explainable as having been broken off and scattered.

However, one discrepancy is the carpet. The room shows the carpet went clearly all the way to the edge of the broken piece, while the carpet in the broken piece has a gap between its right edge and the edge of the floor. It is unlikely that the carpet was intended to look like it was torn away in the cataclysm (since that would not have created such a clean geometrically aligned cut), and appears to actually be an oversight.

Source: noclip.website

Design from an officially licensed 1989 "Mario Madness" T-shirt. In a rare instance for official Mario merchandise, this uses neither a Mario game logo nor any actual Mario imagery.

In the February 2019 announcement trailer for Super Mario Maker 2, the Twisters in the Super Mario World game style resembled the Foo enemies from New Super Mario Bros. Wii, instead of their minimalist circular design from the finished game.

Below is a recreation of the pre-release design and spinning animation, which can be reasonably assumed to be completely accurate due to the high resolution of the trailer allowing the pixels to be reproduced clearly.

Source: DogToon64

Rare officially licensed 1995 Cranky Kong plush from Japan.

Source: japantreasureguild

On Roll 'em Raceway in Super Mario Party Jamboree, the players can roll four Dice Blocks at once. As an extension to the "matching 7s" bonus that is a longstanding tradition in the series and would grant (often 50) coins upon rolling two or three 7s, rolling four 7s on this board rewards the player with 70 coins.

Top: Luigi's 3D model has two hair tufts on the back of his head that are visible whenever he takes off his hat.

Bottom: in the Nintendo 3DS version of Luigi's Mansion, these are stored at a small size inside his head at all times, since storing them in their proper location would make them clip through the hat. They only emerge whenever his hat is off. Note that in the original GameCube version of the game, the tufts are absent to begin with.

Source: Fristi

Promotional 2007 Mario Strikers Charged pin.

Source: cakehoardergames

Color-changing wall test room found in the files of Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. There are no walls in the finished game that use that kind of effect for their appearance.

Source: alexsstuff2801

In Super Mario Galaxy 2, a large amount of unused paths are found in Boss Blitz Galaxy, suggesting that multiple planetoids/boss battles were removed from the finished version of the galaxy.

Source: SunakazeKun

The WarioWare: Get It Together microgame "A Call to Fall" revolves around making posters fall off a whiteboard by removing the magnets holding them up. Interestingly, the graphics used for the posters have an absurdly high resolution, being 3200x1800 pixels, which would be too large even if it were filling out the entire screen, much less for the small size at which they are actually seen during the microgame.

An upside to the high resolution is that the graphics can be used as desktop wallpapers. Here is the Fronk poster design, extracted from the game's files.

Source: DogToon64

Officially licensed 1981 Donkey Kong arcade shirt with an original drawing of Donkey Kong, Pauline and Mario in their designs from the cabinet artwork.

Source: folkpunk_detective

It has been reported that on extremely rare occasions in Mario & Luigi: Brothership, the characters may have more than their maximum HP after being healed in battle, which should obviously be impossible. The reason for this is currently unknown.

Source: Saturn_V42

Officially licensed camo pattern Mario New Nintendo 3DS cover plates from Japan (please zoom in to see that the color splotches are actually silhouettes of various Mario characters).

Source: blacktangent

Rare artwork of Mario hitting his head on a pipe in World 4-Fortress 2 of Super Mario Bros. 3, used only once at a small print size in the official 1988 Nintendo Power guide for the game and nowhere else.