5 Curious Facts About Mario Games Most Fans Don't Know

Trumpets blare!!!

We’re kicking off a new section Curiosity Sundays at Tech Lurker, and to start things off the right way, here are the 5 curious and surprising facts about Mario!

5 - Mario was first a carpenter, not a plumber

Before all the pipes and underground adventures, Mario was actually a carpenter. His first appearance wasn’t in his own game, it was in Donkey Kong (1981), where he climbed scaffolding and smashed barrels with a hammer. No pipes, no sewers, just construction chaos.

He was a carpenter simply because Donkey Kong takes place on a construction site. That’s it. The job fit the setting. It wasn’t until Super Mario Bros. (1985) that Mario officially became a plumber, since that game focused on pipes, sewers, and underground levels, so Nintendo updated his profession accordingly.

4 - Mario Once Starred in a Typing Game... on PC

Yep, Mario, Nintendo’s poster boy, once headlined an educational game made exclusively for PC.
In Mario Teaches Typing (1992), players had to type correctly to help Mario run, jump, and talk.

It’s one of the rare times Mario appeared on non-Nintendo platforms like MS-DOS, Macintosh, and Windows.

Before Super Mario 64 (1996), Mario was helping kids learn to type on beige computers with CRT monitors!

3 - The Luigi in Mario 64 Rumor Was True (Decades Later)

For years, players believed Luigi was secretly in Super Mario 64 (1996). It all came from a blurry in-game plaque that seemed to say "L is real 2401", sparking one of the most iconic gaming rumors of the '90s.

Turns out... it was true.

In 2020, during a massive Nintendo source code leak (nicknamed the “Gigaleak”), fans discovered a fully modeled Luigi hidden in the game’s files. He was originally planned for multiplayer but was cut before launch and left buried in the data for over two decades.

The internet went wild. After 24 years, Luigi was finally found.
And that weird little plaque? Let’s just say it aged perfectly.

Mugs

2 - Super Mario Sunshine Almost Didn’t Star Mario

Super Mario Sunshine (2002) is one of the weirdest Mario games ever: water jetpacks, tropical islands, graffiti clean-up duty. But here’s the real twist: Mario almost wasn’t in it at all.

During early development, Nintendo considered using a completely different character. They thought cleaning up an island didn’t feel very “Mario” and also even tested a more realistic human as the protagonist.

In the end, that version felt too weird for the world they were building.
So they scrapped the idea and brought Mario back just in time for his weirdest vacation ever.

1 - The Infamous “Minus World”, Endless Level in Super Mario Bros.

Back in the NES days, Super Mario Bros. (1985) had one of the most iconic glitches in gaming history: World -1, also known as the Minus World.

By performing a precise trick at the end of World 1-2 — involving crouching, jumping backwards through a wall, and entering the wrong warp pipe — players would be transported to a glitched underwater level labeled "-1". The catch? It never ends. You swim endlessly in a loop until the timer runs out or you reset the console.

Nintendo didn’t add this on purpose, it’s the result of how level data was handled in memory. But that accident turned into gaming legend. For years, it felt like discovering a secret level you weren’t supposed to see, a kind of haunted Mario myth passed around in playgrounds and magazines.

The Minus World became one of the first viral gaming mysteries, decades before YouTube or social media existed. And honestly? It’s still kinda creepy.

Movies & TV

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Final Thoughts

Mario is one of the most important and fascinating icons in video games and pop culture.
Nintendo built an entire identity around him and his universe is packed with fun facts, surprises, and curiosities that will keep growing as the Big N continues the journey of its eternal hero.

See you next Sunday for more Curiosity Sundays, right here at Tech Lurker,
where we just want to chill, relax, and enjoy a moment full of fun facts, easter eggs, surprises, and more!

Until next time 🍄