In Mario & Luigi: Brothership, the Gulchrock Sea Great Lighthouse Island features an elevator that can stop at various floors on the way up. On all floors, Connie accompanies Mario and Luigi and needs to position herself in a specific spot on the ground before the elevator begins to move.

If the player does not go up the floors sequentially but instead decides to go back down a floor on the first visit and then up again, Connie will become glitched and, after a long wait, spawn in through the floor instead of walking onto the platform. For one frame, she can be seen actually phasing through the floor as she is pushed up, as seen in the isolated frame on the bottom.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: koribeanz

In New Super Mario Bros., the Mega Mushroom actually has a size modifier applied to it at runtime to make its model smaller than the size at which it was originally designed.

Above is what the Mega Mushroom looks like when it is allowed to spawn without size modifiers. It is likely that this was changed during development since although it does make the item look very impressive, the ability to spawn it anywhere from storage would make it get stuck on most course geometry at that size.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source

In Super Mario World, the floor of the boss battle rooms of Bowser, Reznor, Morton, Roy and Ludwig is made out of invisible Empty Blocks, while the visual tiles representing the floor do not themselves have collision.

In other words, the floor Mario appears to be standing on is actually a fake illusory floor he would fall through, and he is actually standing on an invisible floor made out of Empty Blocks. This can be seen in action by using cheats to spawn a P-Switch inside these rooms, which turns the Empty Blocks into coins and makes Mario fall through.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: Kaizoman666

Unused and mostly untextured models of Mario and Wario on scooters, found in the files of the Scooter Pursuit minigame in Mario Party 8. These were likely used at some point early in development for testing.

Note that Wario is standing backwards on his scooter, assuming a pose as though he is gripping the handles while the handles are actually behind him.

While this is most likely simply a side effect of the placeholder nature of the models, it is interesting to imagine that this could have been a quirk the developers wanted Wario to display in the finished game, whereby he would stand backwards on his scooter for humorous effect.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source

Top: in the beginning of the intro of the Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 cartoon series, the Mario Bros. Plumbing building is seen from outside for a few frames.

Bottom: the background is actually a redrawn version of a background from the earlier Super Mario Bros. Super Show cartoon series, where it was a business with signs reading “FIZ” and “CYRO’S”. While this is likely merely a reuse of a basic concept to expedite the production, one possible in-universe implication is that Fiz/Cyro’s went out of business, and the Mario Bros. moved into that building.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: SuperShowHQ

In Super Mario Sunshine, an audio glitch occurs if the map screen is opened on a specific frame after dealing the final hit to the Wiggler boss in Gelato Beach. The music will sound high-pitched and distorted, as heard in this post.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: lunjesse

Live-action segments of Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson East training with Mario, from a promotional video for the Wii Games Summer 2010 event.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: TMKvideos

Audio message of Mario talking about Super Mario Sunshine, found on Nintendo of Europe’s official site for the game in 2002.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: PortalSMario

In Super Mario Maker 2, creating the contraption shown in the footage in the Super Mario 3D World game style and collecting a Super Bell while holding a trampoline and entering a pipe will cause the player character to enter the pipe internally, but not actually follow the pipe physically.

Instead, the character will ascend toward the top of the screen in the manner shown in the footage before the screen fades out (note that the Glory ray of light effect was added by the course designer to underscore the glitch).

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: shino_5307

In Boulder Bowl Galaxy in Super Mario Galaxy 2, the “C'mere, Goomba” mission consists of luring a Goomba to a Gold Gearmo NPC who rewards Mario with a Power Star for this.

However, if the Goomba is lured to the Gearmo before talking to it for the first time, and is on the boundary of the goal zone when the task starts, the game will try to start and end the mission simultaneously. This causes everything except the Gearmo to freeze forever, requiring the game to be reset.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: CometObservator