Is Mario Gay?

You know, I've been doing some thinking lately, and like usual most of my thought cycles were devoted to video games. Then the other day it hit me. You see, despite the fact he's become a universally recognized pop culture icon, we really don't know much about Mario. We only recently found out his last name from that horrible movie. The only game to really tell us much about Mario's personality is Super Mario Brothers 2.

What does this game tell us about Mario that the others don't? Mario 2 is the only Mario with a twist at the end - a Dallas-esque it was all a dream. But wait a second - Mario Brothers 2 was the only one to have another gameplay feature. Multiple characters. You could play as Mario, Luigi, Toad, or Princess.

That's right. While I won't criticize Mario for dreaming he was a little half mushroom-half manwho picks up vegetables and throws them at an evil frog emperor, I have to question the sanity of a man who dreams he's a flying Princess who can pull rocket ships out of the ground. Freud would have a field day with this one.

But that's not all. Let's not forget about Ostro, the only cross dresser in the history of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Don't believe me? Check out the Super Mario Bros. 2 manual and check out bad guy #25, Ostro (also known as Birdo). And I quote from the holy scripture of Nintendo....

Ostro - He thinks he is a girl and he spits eggs from his mouth

There it is. Proof of Mario dreams he is a midget version of his brother beating up a cross dressing dinosaur creature by throwing the eggs he spits out back at him. All to get his magical ball.

I don't know if Super Mario Bros. 2 was meant to be open for a Freudian interpretation, and I'm not sure I care. By taking the universally respected Freudian theories, mentioning them by name and then making up my own version of what they are, I have proven Mario is either gay, nuttier then elephant dung, or both. And my High School English teachers said I'd never do anything.

Perhaps this is true, but perhaps Mario just has a lot of weird dreams because his diet consists almost exclusively of mushrooms and brightly colored, flashing flowers.

In Super Mario Land (for Gameboy), the objective of the game is to rescue Princess Daisy. The game is divided into four worlds, and, after defeating the boss at the end of each world, Mario is reunited with the Princess. He runs up to her and several hearts float up.

Unfortunately, if this is one of the first three worlds of the game, the princess is actually a monster in disguise. It reveals its true form in a puff of smoke and then leaps off the screen.

If, however, you have completed the game, Mario and the princess walk off to the right, enter a rocket ship, (don't worry, it's not at all phallic) and fly through the sky as the credits display. I believe there are copious quantities of hearts displayed in this sequence, as well, although it's been a while.

Based on the evidence, I think we can conclude that Mario is not, in fact, gay. It is still unknown, however, exactly what is in the mushrooms.
Oops. Land, not world. Silly me. Thanks, yerricide.

As fun as it is to analyze 8-bit era video games which are obviously not designed for such things, let's not get carried away here.

First of all, Mario would fall under the category of "silent protagonist". It's generally hard to ascertain the sexuality of one such character, since, well, they kind of never say anything, you know?. They also tend to act fairly neutral. In RPGs and platformers alike, they usually represent the will of the player, and nothing more. And in a platformer, that is usually limited to "finish level get points". It wouldn't be fitting for Mario to speak while engrossed in saving a princess, he never has, why should he start now?

And that's another good point. If he's gay, you'd think he wouldn't spend so much time trying to save the embattled princess(es). He must have some affection for them if he'd go to such lengths to save them from Bowser.

Also, I don't think Nintendo, who is known for being particularly conservative with the content of their North American releases, would be willing to portray a gay main character. In fact, I don't think any aspect of Mario's personality or biography besides his occupation as a plumber was on the Nintendo devs' minds when they were creating him.

Finally, I think the ill-fated dream in Super Mario Borthers 2 can safely be attributed to psychoactive mushrooms. Who knows what you'll dream when you eat some of those? Again, that was obviously not Nintendo's intent, but we threw that out the window a long time ago with this node, didn't we?