Everyone knows what a Mario game looks like, right? You've got your mushrooms, your moustaches, your bright green pipes, etc. All very normal, all very friendly. But Mario fans are a observant bunch, so it's no surprise that a ton of weird and wonderful (but mostly weird) design secrets have been touted over the years.
A YouTuber has gathered together some of the creepiest Mario myths in one nightmare inducing compilation. Did you know that Mario has no pupils in reflections? Did you know that Mario can get in 'dead mode' in Super Mario 64? Infinite Bits' video rolls out a bunch of dark Mario design myths, and proves that most of them are actually true. As a bastion of cute and friendly character design, Mario is now dead to me – quite literally in one example below.
Not every creepy myth turns out to be true, however. For example, it turns out that 3D models of an unused ghost enemy called 'Scripulous Fingore' were all all an elaborate hoax, and no such unused character exists. But there are plenty of real ones here, including the ability to freeze Mario's sprite with crossed-out dead eyes, and there aforementioned terrifying plain white eyes when Mario's face appears in reflective surfaces in certain games.
Indeed, it seems the world of Super Mario is the gift that keeps on giving – just yesterday we saw a fan recreate Super Mario World in 3D using Unreal Engine 5. And this is by no means the first nightmarish Mario vision we've been treated to – from Toad without his hat to Princess Peach's teeth, it turns out there's plenty of nightmare fuel out there in the Mushroom Kingdom.
