Let’s all get on the identical web page earlier than going any additional: this isn’t canon. This will not be hidden lore, endorsed by Nintendo, that you must arm your self with and take with you on an official foundation each time you play a Mario sport any more. OK?
OK good. So, right here’s a panel from a 1996 manga (Super Mario 64 4Koma Gag Battle), which is suggesting that possibly 1-UP mushrooms develop out of the our bodies of the Marios who’ve died earlier than you.
Let’s improve:
G/O Media could get a fee
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Fuck.
As the ever-wonderful Supper Mario Broth level out, that is from a manga that’s “crammed with jokes and eccentric theories”, and that it “ought to be taken extra as an fascinating thought experiment than something that will truly be endorsed by Nintendo!”
Let’s do this, then. Let’s take this as a thought experiment. Imagine that is actually how this all works. What it’s suggesting for the best way the Mushroom Kingdom operates, and Mario’s relation to it, is fascinating. It’s some Returnal, Groundhog Day kind shit. Mario isn’t simply right here to save lots of the Princess. He’s trapped right here, in a spot outdoors of not simply Brooklyn, however house and time.
Every 1-UP mushroom you see is a former, failed try, the place a Mario—you, similar to you, but additionally not you—has died, his heroic spirit extracted and preserved for the subsequent Mario. Who can also be you, till his demise, when the mushroom will probably be collected by…you.
As replies to Supper Mario Broth’s tweet have identified, it’s an thought extra lately explored in this traditional Extra Fabulous comedian from 2019:
I like the concept that in 2023 lots of people’s first ideas—mine included—weren’t concerning the timeline stuff however drawing fungus analogies with The Last Of Us. And that this may be such a Nintendo tackle it. In Naughty Dog’s universe, the mushrooms rising out of lifeless persons are a menace to all of humanity, and create ravenous zombies. In Nintendo’s, they’re only a cute little factor that helps the participant by giving them particular powers. Well, “cute” supplied you don’t take into consideration the place they got here from…
