Top: In Super Mario 3D World, rare enemies called Madpoles appear in a few levels. While they are named such because they gain an angry expression when seeing Mario next to them in the water, this creates an unintentional humorous effect when seeing their official artwork.
Madpoles only have two pieces of official artwork: a render from the game’s guide (left) and a 2D drawing used as a Miiverse stamp in the Wii U version/sticker in the Switch version (right). In both of them, they have highly calm expressions making the name appear unfitting.
This is due to the fact that their original Japanese name is simply “タマオ” (Tamao), an anagram of “otama”, the first part of the Japanese word for “tadpole”, “otamajakushi” (also known for being the basis for the Otamatone musical instrument). As such, there is no reference to them being mad, making the artwork appropriate to the Japanese name.
Bottom: the actual mad expression of the Madpole that was used as the basis for the English name, for reference.
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In Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story + Bowser Jr.’s Journey, during one cutscene, Bowser leaves his castle while flying his Koopa Clown Car. Due to a layering error, he is placed in front of it instead of inside it.
While the screenshots here have been captured at a higher resolution than is displayed by the original hardware, this is also possible to notice on a Nintendo 3DS when looking extremely closely.
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Raccoon Mario interacting with a live-action dog in a commercial for a Super Mario Bros. 3/McDonald’s cross-promotion.
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Officially licensed action figure of a Goomba from the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie.
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According to internal Nintendo documents, the development names for Mega Mario and Mini Mario in New Super Mario Bros. are “Jumbo Mario” and “Chibi Mario”, respectively.
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Unused animation of Bowser looking left and right before laughing, found in development files for Super Mario World.
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Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time contains a music track that is exclusive to non-American versions of the game.
In the European and Japanese version, there is an extra music box song that plays at the end of the credits, whereas the North American version has only silence.
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Concept art for Super Mario RPG reveals that the Shaman species from the game was supposed to have a fighter counterpart that looked physically similar but wore a completely different outfit.
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Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga contains a debug menu that allows access to different debug rooms. One debug room has a particularly glitched spot where Mario and Luigi will teleport around in an extremely erratic manner, as seen in the footage.
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Officially licensed Mario Kart 64 jigsaw puzzle from Japan (please zoom in to view details).
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