Nintendo made sketches of Mario’s parents that were never used, brought back for the movie

The Super Mario Bros. Movie director Aaron Horvath has revealed that Nintendo previously made sketches of Mario’s parents that went unused. However, they resurfaced from the company’s vault for the new film.

The Mario family is brought in a bit for the new movie, and it turns out that Nintendo was “fully on board with this cinematic representation of Mario and knowing that he’s not just going to be a guy who appears from a pipe and says ‘Wahoo!’ and then he’s off on his adventure,” according to Horvath. He told Polygon that the idea here was to show that “he’s a real guy with a real life and real problems.”

Horvath went on to speak about Mario’s parents – the sketch for his dad is apparently very close to Nintendo’s original design, and while a “few more changes” were made for his mom, “she’s very close to their original design.”

Horvath shared the following:

“They did send us character sketches that that they had done years ago that they had never used; Mario’s dad is almost like a one-to-one design adaptation of [Nintendo’s] original Mario’s dad design that they provided us. That was really great to be able to get that in the movie.”

“We made a few more changes on her, but she’s very close to their original design. And Mario’s grandpa in our movie looks a little more like Mario, but like he used to be a boxer or something. We strayed a little bit from their designs in some of the other family members, but Mom and Dad were very close. Very close.”