Late Export for You: The game wasn't officially released in China until December 2003 (seven years after being released in Japan) due to government regulations in the country at the time.
Prop Recycling: Aside from some edited textures, the castle courtyard in Royal Raceway is blatantly ripped from Super Mario 64.
It was a fairly common belief that the green Thwomp in Bowser's Castle was a secret racer.
Entering Peach's Castle in Royal Raceway. In reality, this is just where the award ceremony takes place. The castle is blocked off in Mario Kart 8, which may or may not be Ascended Fanon.
Not surprisingly, a popular rumor was that Kamek/Magikoopa, despite being cut in development, was still in the game waiting to be unlocked.
In a 1996 developer interview, visual director Tadashi Sugiyama revealed that two courses had to be cut due to them being too impractical to play. The first was a multi-story parking garage, which attracted motion sickness complaints from playtesters. The other one was "a big city track" that weaved around multiple houses and buildings; this one was cut due to it taking too long to drive through. The 2020 Gigaleak, a massive leak of development assets from various projects throughout Nintendo's history, ended up uncovering remnants of both courses: the "big city track" (internally referred to as "TOWN") is fully modeled and even has a minimap, but the only assets uncovered from the parking garage were textures for level markers and an exit sign.
Pre-release builds of the game, showcased at Spaceworld 1995 and E3 1996, had an art style more akin to Super Mario RPG, still had the Feather item from the first game, and featured a Magikoopa as a playable characternote the Magikoopa is commonly claimed to be Kamek from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, but the fact that "Kamek" is also the Japanese name for Magikoopas as a whole muddies this. In the release version, the art style changed to that of Super Mario 64, the current Donkey Kong (In his first appearance outside the Donkey Kong Country series) replaced Magikoopa, and the feather was removed.
Working Title: The original name during development was Super Mario Kart R. (The "r" stood for "rendered.")
Other Trivia:
Wario Stadium is the only track from this game that has not been brought back as a "retro track" in a later Mario Kart game.
The Title Scream in the Japanese version is done by a group of children screaming "Mario Kart!", instead of Mario screaming "Welcome to Mario Kart!".
The narrator in the menu is a generic male narrator in the Japanese version, instead of Mario in the overseas release. The actor who voices the narrator in the Japanese version happens to be the same person who voices the announcer in Wave Race 64.
Luigi has a higher-pitched voice in the Japanese version, as was standard in some games as Luigi's voice hadn't been cemented yet. Said high-pitched voice was notably provided by French then-employee Julien Bardakoff, who would later work on the French translations of several N64 and Game Boy games, including the first two generations of Pokémon games and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, among others.
Wario, Toad and Peach have completely different voice clips. Wario's voice is notably provided by former German employee Thomas Spindler, whose voice clips would later be reused in Mario Party and the sequel Mario Kart: Super Circuit (Incidentally, this is where the infamous "D'oh, I missed!" line came from, actually a mishearing of "So ein mist!", which is German for phrases such as "Oh my goodness!").
, visual director Tadashi Sugiyama revealed that two courses had to be cut due to them being too impractical to play. The first was a multi-story parking garage, which attracted motion sickness complaints from playtesters. The other one was "a big city track" that weaved around multiple houses and buildings; this one was cut due to it taking too long to drive through. The 2020 Gigaleak