Trivia / Wario

• Exiled from Continuity: Despite being a part of the Mario universe, characters from the Wario series are almost never acknowledged in the Mario games, with minor cameos and references being extremely sparse and rare. The only game to feature Wario characters in a major capacity is Dr. Mario 64, which features characters from Wario Land 3. There is no official reason for their absence.
• Fandom Life Cycle: Despite being a sub-franchise of the media giant that is Mario, the Wario franchise has hovered between Stages 1 and 2. Despite many of the games selling at least a million copies, the series' fandom is rather disjointed, barely scraping cult status. Theories as to why this is range from the fact that Wario's Anti-Hero isn't quite as marketable as the friendlier Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, or Donkey Kong, or the fact that Wario's franchise is uncharacteristically disjointed, as not only do the Mario spinoffs, Wario Land, and WarioWare not share any characters, Wario almost feels like three different characters in these series. The constant long gaps between new releases is also a likely factor.
• Franchise Killer: Wario Land: Shake It! served as this for the platformer branch of the franchise. Despite garnering positive reviews, initial sales numbers were very weak, which Nintendo attributed to a weak economy at the time. The game went on to sell over a million copies, but this was seen as too little, too late for the Wario platformers, relegating Wario to WarioWare and Mario spin-off appearances ever since.
• Incidental Multilingual Wordplay: Wario is a portmanteau of the Japanese word "warui," meaning bad, and "Mario." Some English speakers interpret it as vertically mirroring the M in "Mario," which helps establish Wario's Evil Twin nature. Other English speakers notice the string "War" in the beginning of his name, which has negative connotations as well.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: Wario's attributes stem from the limitations of the original Game Boy, which struggled with the fast-paced precision platforming of the Super Mario Bros. series because of Screen Crunch and other factors. Wario's Foe-Tossing Charge Signature Move and lack of verticality prevents the player from constantly having to make Leaps Of Faith. Wario's Greed is the In-Universe explanation for the games emphasizing collecting coins and treasures and achieving 100% Completion (which worked better with the Game Boy's limitations than common Platform Game tropes like the Death Course).
• Word of Saint Paul: In fact, multiple! One of Wario's voice actors, Thomas Spindler, confirmed that one of Wario's catchphrases is "So ein Mist"^note German for Oh, Crap!, not "D'oh, I missed!". Longtime Mario-universe voice actor Charles Martinet, however, claims he was the one who said it, and that it indeed was "D'oh, I missed."

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