The Super Mario Bros. Movie is finally here and whether or not you think it’s a good film, it is a love letter to fans of the Super Mario Bros. video games and all that Nintendo has come to symbolize over the years. There are plenty of little nods and references to not only the Mario franchise, but several other Nintendo classics throughout the film.
To be sure, the entire Super Mario Bros. Movie could be called an easter egg. Almost everything we see is a reference to one Mario game or another, but here we’re focusing on the little things that are references to games outside of the Mario franchise that aren't core to the plot but are clearly there to be noticed by eagle-eyed fans.
Jump Man
The Super Mario Bros. Movie introduces us to Mario and Luigi in a commercial for their plumbing business, which, bonus easter egg, uses the same song that used to be part of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show from the late 1980s. After the TV spot, we meet Mario and Luigi standing in a pizza parlor. Next to them is a man playing a very familiar-looking arcade game.
A look at the screen tells us that he’s playing the original Donkey Kong arcade game, which included the first appearance of both DK and Mario. However, he wasn’t actually called Mario in that game. The character was referred to simply as Jump Man, which, it turns out is the name of the arcade game in the movie, since calling it Donkey Kong would be weird since Donkey Kong is an actual character. Also, another bonus easter egg, the voice of the guy playing the game is that of Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario in the most recent Nintendo games.
Punch Out Pizzeria
The references in the pizza parlor don’t stop with the arcade cabinet, however. In fact, the pizza parlor itself is another Nintendo easter egg. We can see on the windows that the name of the establishment is Punch Out Pizzeria, and Punch Out is another popular Nintendo franchise – one that originally included Mike Tyson as the final opponent.
The games follow a character named Little Mac, and the pizza parlor is full of Little Mac memorabilia, with pictures, belts, and other references to him on the walls. Maybe this is Mac’s pizza parlor that he opened after retirement, or maybe the owner is just a really big fan and has dedicated the place to a local hero the way your neighborhood pub might celebrate the local sports team.
Wrecking Crew
We still haven’t left the Punch-Out Pizzaria because before Mario and Luigi make it out the door, they’re met by Spike. Spike runs a competing plumbing service, one that the Mario Bros. apparently worked at before they decided to go out on their own. This is a very fitting, and pretty obscure easter egg because Mario and Luigi were in an old-school Nintendo game by exactly that name.
Wrecking Crew was a launch title for the Nintendo Entertainment System alongside Super Mario Bros. It saw players control one of the Mario Bros as they walked through levels with a hammer smashing everything they came across. Spike appears as an enemy in the game who tries to knock the player down from platforms and prevent them from being able to complete the level.
Pikmin
When Mario and Luigi get their first job as new business owners, they find themselves in a very nice house fixing what should be a very simple leak. Unfortunately, the family dog doesn’t get along with Mario or Luigi and things go bad. At one point the dog goes flying out the window and Mario and Luigi have to dive after it to keep it from falling. In the shot where we see the brothers save the dog, while the homeowners are sitting quietly, you’ll see a small glass figurine that might look familiar if you look to the right side of the screen.
The glass statue is a Pikmin, The Nintendo franchise of the same title follows a space traveler who crash lands on an alien world and befriends the small Pikmin creatures, using them to help him fight off monsters and accomplish tasks to help him fix his spacecraft.
Kid Icarus And A Classic NES
Mario’s first appearance may have come in arcade games like Donkey Kong and the original Mario Bros., but he’ll always be more closely associated with home consoles, like the original Nintendo Entertainment System. One of them does make a brief appearance in the film. After Mario has a fight with his family, he goes to his room and we see him playing a classic NES console in the dark.
Unsurprisingly, the game he’s playing is also a classic Nintendo title. It’s the original Kid Icarus, a game loosely based on Greek mythology. Mario isn’t very good at the game, as we see him die fairly quickly, but honestly, that’s fair, because the original Kid Icarus was not an easy game. Bonus easter egg, there’s a StarFox Arwing model hanging over Mario’s TV.
Duck Hunt
One of the elements of the original Nintendo Entertainment System that set it apart from home consoles before it was its light gun, and just about everybody that had the Zapper also had the classic game Duck Hunt – where you shot ducks out of the sky that were retrieved by your hunting dog (who would memorably laugh at you if you missed).
When Mario and Luigi go to help out with the massive flood that is submerging Brooklyn, there’s a French restaurant that can be seen, which is visible again near the end of the film, called Chasse au Canard, which is French for Duck Hunt, and one of the ducks from the game serves as the restaurant logo. No word about what happened to the dog.
“Just Blow In It”
Most of the easter egg references in The Super Mario Bros. Movie go away once Mario finds his way to the Mushroom Kingdom, as the movie then is focused not on simply making reference to games like Super Smash Bros and Mario Kart, but very specifically working the various games directly into the plot. That being said, there is one great moment as Mario is walking through the town with Toad for the first time when he walks past a stall selling antiques. You hear one Toad ask if something for sale still works, and the Toad working there says that it will, “just blow in it.”
If you know, you know. The original Nintendo Entertainment System had a tendency to eventually have trouble reading its own cartridges. Believing that the problem might be dust or some other detritus getting into the contacts, users got in the habit of either blowing on the cartridge or inside the machine itself.
These are far from the only easter eggs in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, but these are the ones that old-school fans will most appreciate and were the most satisfying to discover. To catch every easter egg will probably require watching The Super Mario Bros. Movie several times, and honestly, that’s maybe not a terrible idea.
