Charles Martinet, the guy who’s been canonically voicing Mario for 30 years, partially based his portrayal of him on Petruchio from Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. Martinet is a classically-trained actor and improv’d his whole audition by himself, so it’s not like he was some loser off the street who was…

Why does nobody ever mention 1986's Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach? It was a Japan-only movie but not obscure (there are fansubs/dubs online), and while the ending was disappointing it was a much more faithful Mario movie than the 1993 English-language live-action one (especially given…

Dude I highly recommend a non-hyped Mario game then (like the first two Paper Marios, SMRPG, etc.), plenty of hidden gems. The whole franchise isn’t all NSMB clones.