Former Nintendo employees say the photo of Mario teasing the Switch was “very controversial” in the company: “It got memed into oblivion, and people were kind of upset”
At least the controversy couldn’t kill Mario’s smile
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You know how people complain that the photos their friends take of them are so much more unflattering than the photos they take of themselves? Mario has hardly ever had that problem. Nintendo’s mustachioed plumber usually looks the same level of approachable, no matter if he’s presented as an arcade game sprite, 3D hero, orduvet cover. But on one fateful day in 2016, Mario looked creepy. Really creepy. Nintendoposted an unsettling phototo promote the Switch, and now former employees have revealed the company’s regret.
On a recent episode of theirpodcast, Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang responded to an audience question wondering where the notorious image came from. In it, a person in an overgrown Mario costume — complete with a giant, grinning head — peeks out from behind a curtain. Immediately, people began photoshopping the unblinking Mario in stillsfrom the movie Psycho, or makingGIFs of Mariopeering out in…not necessarily a threatening way, but in a way that is concerning.
“This [photo] was very controversial,” Yang says. Apparently, a former social media head commissioned a Mario costume photoshoot in the Nintendo office and “it caused some concern.”
Nintendo wanted to manage people’s expectations for their new console, Yang shares, and the Mario photo was “too much in the zone of speculation.” Without an official console asset, Nintendo worried that fans would interpret a quasi-human Mario as overpromising. In reality, fans interpreted Mario as being in the shower.
“Of course, it got memed to oblivion, and people were kind of upset about it, honestly,” Yang continues. But she and Ellis agree that Nintendo probably learned its lesson about planning official images far in advance of any announcement.
“It won’t happen again,” they both say. So it’s official: Mario will be beautiful forevermore.
Check out the15 best Mario games of all-time.
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Ashley Bardhan is a critic from New York who covers gaming, culture, and other things people like. She previously wrote Inverse’s award-winning Inverse Daily newsletter. Then, as a Kotaku staff writer and Destructoid columnist, she covered horror and women in video games. Her arts writing has appeared in a myriad of other publications, including Pitchfork, Gawker, and Vulture.
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