Monday, February 01, 2010

Mario as you've never seen him before

Did you know that Mario (full name: Mario Michelangelo Antonioni) didn't begin life as a Mushroom Kingdom-and-princess-saving plumber?

Apparently he was born in a small town in Northern Italy and his parents worked for Olivetti and Fiat. As a young adult, he moved to Rome to pursue his dream of becoming an actor--which resulted in Mario and his brother Luigi hitting the stage together in a rather homoerotic cabaret act.


It wasn't until sometime later that Mario became a plumber, moved to the Mushroom Kingdom and dedicated his life to defeating the dastardly Bowser and saving the perennially imperiled Princess Peach/Toadstool.

OK, so that isn't Mario's official backstory--it's the backstory created (some time ago) by Ishihara Gojin, aka "Japan's (gay) Norman Rockwell."

Go here to view more of Gojin's gay-ish (and slightly NSFW-ish) images of Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach and a strangely anthropomorphic Bowser.

(Via tinycartridge and watashi to tokyo)

3 comments:

Viewtiful_Justin said...

That's the strangest thing ever. I'll have to check out those pictures when I'm not at work.

Bryan Ochalla said...

Yes, *very* strange. Oh, and the only reason I labeled them as NSFW-ish is that in all of the images Mario seems to have the male version of a cameltoe :)

DinosaurPrince said...

The link no longer works. It's really hard to find these online. :(