Here’s one more, though I should say that it was most recently brought to my attention by my friend Ryan. The following screen should look familiar to anyone who’s made it past the first boss in the original Super Mario Bros.:

Straightforward, yes? A grateful Toad — held captive in an empty brick room and probably bored to tears as a result — must be the bearer of bad news and tell Mario that the princess is somewhere else. Pointing towards where she is would be more helpful, sure, but whatever. We’re lucky he hasn’t developed Stockholm syndrome.
Or has he?

Here we go: irrefutable evidence that Toad isn’t so happy to see Mario. He’s totally giving a double-barreled “fuck you” in the form of matching middle fingers. What a jerk. You’d think a midget wearing a turban and a bikini top would be jollier. Of course, it’s worth noting that Toad’s rude seemingly behavior could actually result from the limitations of the graphics of the time, which weren’t good at demonstrating gratitude or really anything else, abstract emotion or not. Lest we forget, here’s the blocky monstrosity that was supposed to be Princess Toadstool:

Here’s her father, the Mushroom King:

And here’s Princess Toadstool’s mother, Queen Moldspore:

A profound context for this little examination: Sometimes the captive does not want to be rescued.
Game geek? Subscribe to the video games-only feed for Back of the Cereal Box.
We always thought she looked like she had a big ol', bushy, red moustache. Any way you slice it, she's certainly gotten prettier over the years.
ReplyDeleteHuh. I always viewed the two stubs as thumbs, so that Toad (or just a generic toad?) was making a "praise God" sort of look. Compare to Touchdown Jesus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Kings_(statue)
ReplyDeleteVJ: Yeah, that red smear can hardly be called a decent approximation of lips, much less pretty ones. Maybe the success of the original Mario Bros. got her the money to rearrange her pixels into a more pleasing configuration.
ReplyDeleteGodaigamer: For sure it's not SUPPOSED to be middle fingers, so your guess is as good as anyone's. Maybe he's stretching out his arms for a hug?