Super Mario Low Poly Papercraft by PaperBotz

22 Sep, 2021

Mario, an iconic character from the Nintendo universe, is one of the most famous characters and mascots in the world. His popularity even surpassed other characters such as Sonic and Zelda.

From the arcade game Mario Kart to platformers like Super Mario Bros., Mario has an outstanding reputation in the video game industry. While there are some things that are known about Mario, in fact there are other interesting facts about Mario that are not known by many people and only known by true fans.

1. Mario's last name is Mario

This is both interesting and ridiculous. In 2012, the creator of Mario – Shigeru Miyamoto mentioned that Mario and Luigi actually have last names and that is Mario. This last name was given when the film adaptation, Super Mario Bros., was released in 1993.

At that time the film producer suggested that the Mario brothers have a family name and finally the name Mario was chosen. So, Mario has the full name Mario Mario while Luigi, Luigi Mario.

2. Mario was originally a carpenter

Mario's first appearance in the game occurred in the game Donkey Kong, where he became the protagonist character referred to as "Jumpman". Now in the game, Mario is depicted as a carpenter, not a plumber.

Donkey Kong itself is set in a construction site, so it can't be helped that Mario must be described as having a profession related to it. Meanwhile, the reason why his profession changed to being a plumber is because the game – Mario Bros., is set in the underground.

3. The voice actor Mario also voices Luigi and a number of antagonist characters

The sentence "it's a-me, Mario!" with an Italian accent comes Charles Martinet who has voiced Mario since 1990. This may be known to many, but few know that Martinet also voices a number of other characters in the Mario franchise.

Some of them are Mario's brother – Luigi, and the antagonist brothers, Wario and Luigi. This is arguably one of the reasons why the four of them have excellent chemistry in the game.

4. The Super Mario Bros. movie was a huge flop

All Mario games may get tremendous success, but that's not the case in the film adaptations. In 1993, a Mario film adaptation entitled Super Mario Bros, starring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo, was released.

Unfortunately, the film, with a production budget of US$48 million, only managed to earn US$21 million. It was far from what was expected of course, considering that at that time, Mario was getting quite a big hype around the world.

5. Mario has five different English voice actors

Mario's most famous English voice actor is Charles Martinet who has been voicing since the early 90's. However, Martinet was actually one of five voice actors, who contributed their voices to the English version of Mario. The other four are Ronald B. Reuben who voiced Mario Teaches Typing, Walker Boone in The Adventures Of Super Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario World, Marc Graue in Hotel Mario and Lou Albano in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!.

6. Mario almost has the name “Mr. Videos”

One of the reasons why Mario is so famous is his iconic and memorable name. However, Mario is not the first name that Shigeru Miyamoto thought of when creating Mario.

Initially, Mario wanted to be named “Mr. Video” and is planned to appear in every game it makes. However, Miyamoto rethought the name and decided not to take it on the grounds that the name “Mr. Video” is not impressive at all.

7. Mario's name comes from the name of a Nintendo investor

The name Mario that Shigeru Miyamoto gave was not a name that suddenly popped into his head. After Investigating a calibration, after deciding to discard the name “Mr. Video '', Miyamoto looked for new sources for the name of the character which eventually fell into the name of one of Nintendo's investors.

He is Mario Segale, an entrepreneur and investor who rents out his warehouse to Nintendo Of America. It is known, when Segale demanded late payment of warehouse rent, that's where the idea of naming Mario came about.