History NightmareFuel / SuperMarioBrosZ

* Think about Mario and Luigi. These two talking hedgehogs save them from being incinerated and ask them to help find some gems. It all seems like a standard treasure hunt. Then, out of nowhere, some missiles blow up a cliff edge, sending Yoshi falling into the forest, and Luigi, who was with him, had come to tell the others what mess just happen. With Luigi's warning, everyone rush to Yoshi’s aid, only to find him beaten and severely wounded, close to death, while a robot flees the scene. Then, they discover these two strangers have something to do with the assailant. Whoever they are, they’ve brought something terrible into the Mushroom Kingdom.

* Turbo Mecha Sonic himself is ''the'' epitome of this trope, '''FULL. STOP'''. [[FusionDance For one, he's Metal Sonic combined with]] [[EvilKnockoff other Sonic robots]]. Not long after his creation, he destroys the Death Egg (Eggman's ''moon-sized'' base of operations for measure) and [[ColonyDrop forces it to crash land into Mobius]]. [[ApocalypseHow The result is life becoming completely unsustainable from the impact and explosion]], but wait, there's ''more''. Mecha Sonic ''[[MadeOfIndestructium survives the event]]'', even ''without'' a single Chaos Emerald. Seeing the damage he's wrought [[OmnicidalManiac triggers a thirst for power and a lust for destruction in him]] and he becomes the villain of the first season. He's not done proving to the viewers how nightmarish he is, oh no. He sets out to collect all seven Chaos Emeralds and kills everyone who isn't named Sonic, Shadow, or Eggman, turning more than half the planet into a burning wasteland in the process, and [[NearVillainVictory nearly kills Sonic]], [[BigDamnHeroes only being stopped from doing so by Shadow showing up in the nick of time]]. This does ''nothing'' to deter him from chasing after the Chaos Emeralds, which end up in the Mushroom Kingdom along with the two hedgehogs. Once he makes it to the Mushroom Kingdom, he wastes no time [[NoKillLikeOverkill slaughtering a Goomba]] [[DisproportionateRetribution simply because the poor sod didn't give a Chaos Emerald to him]] (and it wasn't like the Goomba could have known what it was anyways). The next time he shows up is his [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown infamous fight with Yoshi]], almost killing the poor dinosaur to get the Chaos Emerald (and says that he would have killed him anyways even if he simply handed the gemstone over).

* The end of Episode 8, made such with that damn {{Cliffhanger}}: Basilisx petrifies Luigi, Sonic and Yoshi with his stare, and then a battle ensues. At first, Mario has control over their battle, but then, he uses Luigi as a human shield and hits him with his petrified body. This messes up with Mario's battle style and causes him to be unable to focus and fight properly because he's scared that he might hurt his brother and doesn't want to cause accidental friendly fire, then he ends up poisoned and too weak to keep battling because of two Poison Mushrooms thrown by Basilisx, who is about to kill him, and everyone else still petrified and unable to save him. And given that Episode 8 was the last episode before the series was [[{{Cancellation}} cancelled]], ''[[NoEnding this is what the series ended with]]''. Only in 2012, three years after Episode 8's release, two clips from what could have been Episode 9 reveal that Mario survives thanks to Luigi saving him by breaking free from Basilisx's petrification curse thanks to his Tanooki Suit, smashing Basilisx away with his hammer and healing Mario with a 1-Up, but since the episode was never completed and the series was cancelled, the impact is not diminished '''AT ALL'''.

* The first annual Smash tournament has been drawn out to its finals, and just as Team Mario and Team Wario are about to have at it, a Bulky Bob-omb crashes the fight and blows the entire ring up. Guess who's back? Bowser. Just like in the previous series he gets his shell soundly handed to him, but it's not as if he didn't count on it happening. He had a backup plan involving ingesting a Metal 'Shroom, and it turns him into a new form of Koopa. In short order, Mario is quickly shown to be horribly outmatched by him; [[LightningBruiser Bowser's faster than before, more offensive than before, and is impervious to everything Mario can possibly throw at him]]. Mario is left charred after the grossly one-sided battle and would have been finished by Bowser, but then Luigi comes in to protect Mario, knowing full well that he has ''zero chance'' of doing that anyways. The Koopa King was stopped only by the very fortunate timing of Sonic and Shadow's capsule landing squarely on top of him, destroying his metal form. We all knew Bowser was a badass, but this series turns him into a legitimate terror, more like how he was portrayed in a few choice Mario titles.

** Yoshi lays an egg with Metallix trapped inside, and because he's powered by a Chaos Emerald, the egg goes off in a FantasticNuke. [[HopeSpot Having bested the killer machine, Yoshi walks away from the flaming wreck]]... [[OhCrap and slowly looks back]] as he hears [[HellIsThatNoise a drone-ish sound]] coming from behind. In what almost looks like a shout-out to Film/TheTerminator, Metallix [[OutOfTheInferno rises from the flaming crater]] with the angriest DeathGlare a robot can express, and makes it known to the soon-to-be-dead Yoshi that he's not playing games anymore.
** During the ensuing beatdown, Metallix grabs Yoshi by the tongue and uses it to slam him against the ground, rebound the dinosaur towards himself and hurl him into the nearest mountain. [[TongueTrauma You would almost think his tongue was about to snap in half from how much it's stretched thin.]]

* Think about Mario and Luigi. These two talking hedgehogs save them from being incinerated and ask them to help find some gems. It all seems like a standard treasure hunt. Then, out of nowhere, some missiles blow up a cliff edge, sending Yoshi falling into the forest. They rush to Yoshi’s aid, only to find him beaten and wounded, close to death, while a robot flees the scene. Then, they discover these two strangers have something to do with the assailant. Whoever they are, they’ve brought something terrible into the Mushroom Kingdom.

** The backstory of the war between the Koopas and Queen Pesca is also disturbing in its own right, highlighting that for all of the black and white nature of the current fights between Mario and Bowser, or Sonic and Shadow vs Mecha Sonic, that even the Mushroom Kingdom has its darker underbelly, with a past ruler being willing to commit an open act of '''genocide''' against a defeated enemy to get what she wanted.

** The backstory of the war between the Koopas and Queen Pesca is also disturbing in its own right, highlighting that for all of the black and white nature of the current fights between Mario and Bowser, or Sonic and Shadow vs Mecha Sonic, that even the Mushroom Kingdom has its darker underbelly, with a past ruler being willing to commit an open act of '''genocide''' against a defeated enemy to get what she wanted. It's an extremely dark thing for a series that has otherwise not focused on those kinds of implications.

** The backstory of the war between the Koopas and Queen Pescha is also disturbing in its own right, highlighting that for all of the black and white nature of the current fights between Mario and Bowser, or Sonic and Shadow vs Mecha Sonic, that even the Mushroom Kingdom has its darker underbelly, with a past ruler being willing to commit horrific deeds against a defeated enemy to ensure peace. It's an extremely dark thing for a series that has otherwise not focused on those kinds of implications.

** The backstory of the war between the Koopas and Queen Pescha is also disturbing in its own right, highlighting that for all of the black and white nature of the current fights between Mario and Bowser, or Sonic and Shadow vs Mecha Sonic, that even the Mushroom Kingdom has its darker underbelly, with a past ruler being willing to commit horrific deeds against a defeated enemy to ensure peace. It's an extremely unexpectedly dark thing for a series that has otherwise not focused on those kinds of implications.

** The backstory of the war between the Koopas and Queen Pescha is also disturbing in its own right, highlighting that for all of the black and white nature of the current fights between Mario and Bowser, or Sonic and Shadow vs Mecha Sonic, that even the Mushroom Kingdom has its darker underbelly, with a past ruler being willing to commit horrific deeds against a defeated enemy to ensure peace. It's an extremely unexpectedly dark thing for a series that has otherwise avoided focusing on those kinds of implications.

* The Minus World is historically referred to by the simple, cold moniker of "World 36" and is revealed to be a pocket dimension from which there is no escape. During an ancient war between the Mushroom Kingdom and the Koopas, it was used as a method of execution by both sides, who would throw their prisoners down the warp pipe to starve to death; their corpses, as well as those of anyone unfortunate enough to stumble inside, litter the ground of the zone.

[[caption-width-right:350:"[[YouMonster Monster?]] I'm not a monster. '''''[[AGodAmI I'M A GOD!!!]]"''''']]