The latest Super Mario Bros Movie trailer opens the door to some truly deep Mario lore.
Yesterday's trailer introduced Mario and Luigi's plumbing business, complete with an advert introducing a phone line and website - SMBPlumbing.com. In real life, that website offers a chance to see the trailer again, as well as some humorous career opportunities and testimonials to the brothers' work.
Those testimonials feature someone who sounds suspiciously like Mrs Bros, as well as a customer who claims the pair wrecked their house, which presumably is a plot point from the film. The final message, however, comes from a character that's only reared his head a few times over the past three decades.
True Mario experts will be familiar with Foreman Spike, a character who first appeared in 1985's Wrecking Crew. Broadly understood to have been Mario and Luigi's boss, his varying designs draw from ideas that would come to be familiar with Wario and Waluigi. Since that debut, however, he's only appeared half a dozen times, often in titles exclusive to Japan, and rarely as more than a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo. Most recently, that was in 2018's WarioWare Gold, where he would sometimes appear in the background of a specific minigame.
In the upcoming movie, however, it looks like he'll be a little more established. His 'testimonial' complains that Mario and Luigi have "no loyalty," having worked for him in the past "until they decided to break off and start there own business [sic]." While the web page doesn't fully confirm that this is the same Spike, we do know that the character will feature in the film, and the profile picture is reminiscent of some of his early appearances. While it's not clear how he'll fit in, it does seem as though the movie is pulling on nearly 30 years of Mario lore, at least for its first act.
Check out our list of every upcoming video game movie heading to cinemas soon.
