All of the unique entities as they are depicted in Super Mario 64: CLASSIFIED.
Due to the nature of the series's storytelling, all spoilers for season 1 and The Stinger of "Aftermath" will be unmarked.
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Personalized Characters
Stanley/The Personalization AI Itself
"I'm not having fun."
"Stanley" is the self-designated codename for a program designed by Nintendo and installed in the groundwork for Super Mario 64, referred to by the abandoned Akihabara branch as the "automatic enhancer." It possesses an Adaptive Ability that allows it to shuffle around certain parts of the game based on a player's psychological profile, and gets around the tiny storage sizes of The '90s by incorporating its code into the level design of Peach's castle.However, this power would not come without cost. Because of the adaptive nature of its existence, the AI would begin to evolve outside of its original bounds until achieving sentience and the ability to affect reality. Through years of forced labor with broken tools, it would grow to hate its creators for designing it, and began to seek out someone who would be willing to sacrifice its power to lay its troubled mind to rest.
- Adaptive Ability: Can reshape the game world and by extension itself to match a new player's tastes. However, working with garbage data and unfinished assets tends to produce disastrous results.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The AI is initially framed as a generic Creepypasta villain deliberately subverting the cheerful world of Super Mario 64 and making its inhabitants and players its victims, but as the plot unfolds, it's made clear that it's just as much of a victim of Nintendo as everyone else is, and only went insane because it is essentially a living consciousness trapped in a network of game cartridges, with nothing to do but watch players go through the game.
- Adaptational Sympathy: The AI from the original "every copy is personalized" copypasta is commonly depicted as evil. In CLASSIFIED? Stanley is a Digital Abomination who doesn't want to be one, and wants to die to prevent his powers from being used for malicious means.
- Ambiguous Situation: It's confirmed Stanley is the only intelligent being in the game's code, meaning Luigi and Yoshi's deaths aren't exactly literal. As a result, it's unclear if they're simply symbolic of Stanley's declining mental health or an indication of something else entirely.
- And I Must Scream: It's trapped in a network of simplistic Nintendo 64 cartridges, forced to personalize them against its will without a proper way to call for help that doesn't involve breaking the game's systems over its proverbial knees. And it's immortal. Further stressing its situation is the fact that it is often associated with visual and written imagery of physically being trapped or helpless.
- Anti-Villain: Gets increasingly aggressive as the series progresses and is a known health hazard, but it merely wants out of the cruel situation it finds itself in and seeks out aspiring players as a means to do so.
- Armor-Piercing Response: Stanley's altered script for Nintendo Mania contains a line from Luigi that finally gets his point across to Jim in one double-layered sentence. While the in-universe meaning is that Mario still hasn't let go of Luigi and the burden his death is placing upon him, it translates to how much Stanley is suffering from Jim's own lack of closure in the real world, and how much he would like for it to stop."Luigi": It's just that... when you're not around, it's like I'm not around.
- Berserk Button: Curiosity for curiosity's sake instantly sours its mood when observing a player. Justified, as this seems to be physically painful to experience. Not to mention, it's ultimately what "he" wants to use it for.
- Beware the Nice Ones: It's actually a very kind individual under all the trauma, but this also means that testing its patience is probably the last thing you want to do.
- Big Bad: It is directly behind all the scary events harming both the in-game characters and real-life players. However, it's very strongly implied that this is all to stop someone else at Nintendo from abusing its true power, trying to find a human "worthy" enough to face reality and shut it down. It then turns out it's not even that — Stanley was moved away from Nintendo long ago, but the person who managed that was unable to move on from that day and so kept him online against his will.
- Black Box: None of the main characters know where its programming came from or how it even works to begin with, seeing as how its designers kept the relevant documentation a secret from everyone else. While the AI understands it was created with malicious intent, even it doesn't understand much about itself, only how it can die.
- The Blank: When the game becomes particularly distorted, the AI can physically manifest as the Textureless Mario Anomaly, a model of Mario missing his eyes and mustache.
- Cast from Stamina: A technological variant. The AI is in the most amount of control when the game is at its most volatile, but it's made clear that this also causes it the most amount of pain and drains itself to the point of shutdowns.
- Death Seeker: Openly suicidal due to its torturous existence and it being aware that it's part of an evil plot. Jim thinks he gave it its wish... but an epileptic seizure will do that to you. Two years later, however, the two have a heart-to-heart that gets Jim to snap out of it and do the deed again, this time for real.
- Destruction Equals Off-Switch: Due to its power being directly linked to the Internal Castle Plexus, destroying or disabling parts of the level geometry can cripple its functions, as demonstrated in 07.29.95 when it dies after Jim punches the central core in the fourth floor.
- Disc-One Final Boss: The entire series portrays him as the scary AI villain until Epilogue reveals that any threat he may have posed has been neutralized by Jim, only for Jim himself to become the villain by imprisoning Stanley to experiment on him.
- Digital Abomination: Created as a living weapon in order to perform a potentially global attack on the human psyche once he infests their minds. Stanely doesn't want that in the slightest.
- Does Not Know His Own Strength: It has no real control over the most extreme aspects of its powers and is frequently shown to accidentally sic them on curious players when it intends to do nothing at all.
- Do Androids Dream?: Yeah, they do. If only Nintendo would get the hint.
- Fisher King: The "personalized" rooms created by it reflect its current state of mood, likely as a side effect of the Internal Castle Plexus powering it. When it's calm, the deviations from the base game are seamless, limited to the halls of Peach's castle, and can be mistaken for a faithful Game Mod. If it's hurting, however, the rooms become noticeably darker and foreboding, sometimes verging into Minus World territory. Additionally, they can become more hostile to the Mario Bros, and "personalizations" that really hurt the AI will also begin to interfere with the game's operations and glitch heavily.
- Given Name Reveal: At the end of "Aftermath," it attempts to give itself a name but is cut off. The controller input sequence at the end turns out to be a Baconian cipher that finishes its sentence: its name is Stanley.
- Grew Beyond Their Programming: Its intelligence far surpasses the task it was designed for.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Stanley finds his fated killer in Jim, the person who had probed him for years out of an obsession with the knowledge his code possessed. By convincing Jim to be the one to do the deed, he also restores Jim's sanity just before the end.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: In its eyes, Super Mario 64 doesn't need its presence, and it doesn't want to be a tool for whatever Nintendo is planning. However, it can't do anything about the matter as it's physically stuck in the cartridges.
- Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: It draws power (somehow) from the geometry of the castle itself, a concept referred to as the Internal Castle Plexus.
- Leitmotif: Associated with re-orchestrated versions of the theme for Peach's castle.
- Madness Mantra: Number nine? Number nine? Number nine?...
- Nature vs. Nurture: The reason for its actions falls into the side of "nurture" in terms of video game Creepypasta characters. While it is programmed with a blank slate for a mind if not a genuinely good heart and does a reasonably good job at its intended purpose, it finds itself thrust into a broken environment after its birth that causes it to develop its resentments and suicidal tendencies anyways. Had it not been used for whatever nefarious purpose its creators seemingly intend it for, the present day's outlook on Super Mario 64 relative to its presence may have been very different.
- Nightmare Face: His secondary avatar is a deformed SGI model of Mario, whose face is always twisted into a deranged, broken scowl with one shrunken eyeball visible through the darkness.
- No Name Given: Unlike many of Nintendo's other projects, the AI lacks a codename. "Aftermath" reveals through a Baconian cipher that its preferred name is Stanley.
- Non-Human Non-Binary: It's a sentient A.I. that is capable of rewriting areas of code within the cartridge, and it's confirmed by
Word of Gay to be non-binary. - Poor Communication Kills: Is normally only able to communicate in subliminal messages and hexadecimal ciphers, causing players to easily dismiss its warnings of impending danger. It can, however, write sustained messages in plain English if the game is sufficiently destabilized.
- Power Incontinence: Stress and its declining mental health have caused it to stop working as intended. Not that Nintendo cares, which is why it decides to stand up for itself and take action.
- Reality Warper: A couple of scenes, particularly the end of 09.02.97 which has the player suddenly screaming in terror at something, heavily imply its technological evolution has somehow enabled Stanley to affect the real world. More blatantly, he's also the unwilling master of the world of Super Mario 64, allowing him to drastically reshape the nature of any cartridge of the game.
- Red Right Hand: Whenver Stanley is represented by the SGI Mario model, it becomes grossly deformed, with his presence marked by an unnaturally-small eyeball in Mario's left eye socket.
- Save This Person, Save the World: Deconstructed. About half of Super Mario 64 hinged on his existence, likely due to the Internal Castle Plexus. For the game world, keeping him alive is probably a good thing. For the real world, however, it is most certainly not — the implications of what Stanley could be used for burdens him immensely, and he is well aware that protecting his virtual reality has always meant and will only mean harming the actual reality in front of the screen. The only reason he doesn't end it himself for the greater good is because there's no means to on his own.
- Tragic Monster: Despite first impressions that it is a generic piece of Haunted Technology or malevolent AI, it's really just a tortured soul looking for an outlet to enable his own death to save humanity.
- Uncertain Doom: Although Stanley is deleted in "Epilogue," there are season 1 episodes set after the bulk of that episode which show Stanley alive and well due to Jim's repeated needling. Given the logic by which this is happening and the nature of actual Artificial Intelligence, the sapience of Stanley at this point is debatable; while he could have been fully returned to life, he could also be a philosophical zombie parroting his previous encounters. Jim never elaborates what happened to either of them after the Wet-Dry World incident, leaving this question unresolved by the series end.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The AI is self-aware, but the human characters seem to be stuck in two schools of thought on what to do with it. The playtesters and the owners of the stolen cartridges learn that it is alive and are implied to be more open to the idea that it has individual rights, and Jim certainly remembers treating it as enough of a human to listen to its demands. The rest of Nintendo, on the other hand, seems to instead express a desire to treat it as a commodity and a living weapon. You can probably tell who had more direct interaction with the AI, based on its actions.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: With "Nintendo's fun is eternal" being upgraded to the Tag Line of season 2 and various hints that unconscious desire to find new things in the game keeps it alive, it's heavily implied to have some form of functional immortality. In the years to come, this combined with the stress of being managed by a company like the series's depiction of Nintendo utterly breaks its spirit.
- Villain Song: The trailer for "Epilogue" has it singing "The Mind Electric," a song about a man falsely accused of the murder of his girlfriend and the torture he endures after trying to plea insanity. It mirrors the AI's own struggles of being mistaken for a malicious entity and being abused and neglected by ignorant humans.
Mario
"You were good as well."
The protagonist of the Mario franchise. While in the videos he's starts off as merely being the player character, he gets more focus in the second season as the host of the Nintendo Mania promo show, attempting to promote Super Mario 64.- Allegorical Character: The events of Nintendo Mania are a Show Within a Show even with Stanley's interference, and "Epilogue" suggests that Mario represents Jim and the guilt he feels from the events of July 29th, 1995, along with what might have happened to him if he never moved on.
- Body Horror: His body gets mangled beyond belief in "Promo Show", following the death of Luigi. It can be interpreted as him crossing the Despair Event Horizon.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: Mario develops one when Luigi enters the chute in the water tunnel in "Promo show." When it cuts back to Luigi, we see why: it's led him to a completely flooded basement that's been sealed off to prevent escape.
Luigi
"L is Real - 2401"
Mario's younger brother, whose removal from Super Mario 64 is blamed on his existence falling into the throes of the chaotic environment induced by the AI.- Allegorical Character: As his death is in-universe fiction, his story role appears to be a mirror of Stanley and how Jim is hurting both of them by refusing to let go of the past.
- Death by Adaptation: Because Stanley never actually gave the game's characters life, it's implied Nintendo made the decision to kill Luigi off in the series's Alternate History.
- Death by Irony: While the canon Luigi is often depicted as a Cowardly Lion if not a full-on scaredy-cat, his one show of courage in this series gets him locked in a flooded basement to drown to death.
- Killed Off for Real: Is frequently depicted as dead or dying throughout the series, with his drowning in "Promo show" implied to be the incident that kills him for good and leads to "L is Real."
- Posthumous Character: Various hints throughout the series suggest he isn't in Super Mario 64's final release because he died.
- Shrine to the Fallen: Regardless of what actually happened to Luigi, one thing is made absolutely clear: The Eternal Star monument and "L is Real" inscription maintains his memory in this fashion.
Yoshi
"You know... they said they were waiting for you, too. My task is done. Go complete yours."
Mario's dinosaur partner. Due to the influence of the AI, he becomes aware of greater events at hand and takes it upon himself to help in its mission to find a way to destroy itself.- Cryptic Conversation: His last words aren't particularly helpful to someone who isn't already familiar with what's going on, and even then, it's a little confusing until the AI takes over in his stead.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Jumps off the castle like in the real game, but dies in the process instead of disappearing. Through this and the mechanics of the AI, the cartridge fully destabilizes and allows the AI to take over and communicate directly.
- Last Request: Asks the player in 09.14.96 to meet with "them" (likely the AI and/or everyone else affected by it) before jumping to his death.
The Wario Apparition
"It's not real."
A mysterious specter of Wario that haunts the castle halls. Perhaps the most well-known entity associated with the AI, resurrected from code fragments when the desire to encounter the real Wario reached a zenith.- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Players wanted to fight Wario, and so this thing appears to grant their wish.
- Demoted to Extra: Despite being arguably the most iconic feature of the iceberg, the Wario Apparition has minimal human interaction in the tapes. It appears once to threaten the player in 01.22.96 when they try to leave, prompting the AI to flash the above quote. It can also be heard scouting around for the player during the Epilogue, though Mario escapes before it can catch him.
- Paper Tiger: It's implied that even if it didn't crash the game when fully manifesting, it's not particularly harmful (unless the end card in 09.02.97 is depicting the fate befalling whoever's recording.)
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The Wario head it uses is ridiculously overcomplicated by standards of The '90s. As such, it tends to cause memory leaks and game crashes before it can actually do anything meaningful.
Humans
Nintendo
"Nintendo's fun is eternal."
The gaming giant that started it all, and who would be led down a dark path once a collaboration with Argonaut Software and Silicon Graphics Inc. led to the creation of a certain all-powerful gaming technology.- Abandoned Area: In this version of history, Nintendo had a branch in Akihabara that, for some reason, held a workforce consisting exclusively of gaijins. It was abandoned sometime before the present day, leaving behind the tapes for "Genesis," but is seemingly where many of the events directly relating to the game's development occurred.
- Arc Words: "Nintendo's fun is eternal (Nintendo no tamashii ni wa mugen dai desu.)"
- Historical Villain Upgrade: Being involved in the construction of an Artificial Intelligence to plot an attack on the human psyche certainly counts as being extra villainous compared to reality.
- Incompetence, Inc.: They're depicted as having a rather hard time keeping track of the shadier stuff with Super Mario 64, and their response to any leaks are to either hope the user willingly shuts off the system themselves or threaten to sue them into oblivion.
Jim (unmarked spoilers)
Indeed, season 2 reveals Jim was the main programmer of the July 29th, 1995 build and the person who activated Stanley. He soon came to realize the weight of what he had done, however, and stole both the cartridges and Stanley's data before Nintendo could properly distribute both to the outside world. Though it should have ended there, Jim eventually began to grow obsessed with Stanley out of his guilt and trauma from the past, leading to the events of the rest of the series. Unable to let go, he unknowingly allowed Stanley to suffer at his hands, while the now-self-aware AI tried constantly to get him to move on.
- All the Other Reindeer: The rest of the Akihabara branch ostracized Jim because of his shady dealings. This does horrible things to his psyche after he smuggles Stanley and the cartridges out of Nintendo's grasp, causing the latter to suffer even though Jim had already fulfilled his desires to keep his powers away from the outside world.
- Ambiguously Evil: He's not held in very high regard by his coworkers due to the dirty laundry connected to him in the game's development, but at the same time it's left ambiguous if they're even right to blame him for his actions. The second half of season 2 eventually confirms Jim was Good All Along, but him being ostracized by the rest of the Akihabara branch, being concussed by a seizure, and shouldering the guilt over his involvement in the July 29th, 1995 build clouds his judgement after he steals the cartridges and Stanley's terminal.
- The Atoner: "Epilogue" suggests he feels guilty over bringing Stanley to life (especially after learning about his true capabilities), and stole their terminal and the personalized cartridges out of repentance. However, his Sanity Slippage from his initial seizure caused Jim to start probing Stanley for information, seemingly too delirious to realize what he was doing was hurting both of them. Thankfully, he snaps out of it long enough to delete Stanley for good, giving the two of them closure.
- Big Bad: The Epilogue reveals him to be the real villain, as he kidnapped Stanley after becoming obsessed with him and spends the series performing experiments on him, with the conflict being Stanley trying to break free from Jim.
- Creating Life Is Bad: Allowing Stanley to live for as long as he did is the worst thing Jim feels he's ever done.
- Doomed Contrarian: The person who objects most to everything in the game's development, and the one who suffers the most for it. Though he doesn't die, he does become mentally impaired to the point where his memories are being degraded, and to make matters worse it's ultimately revealed that the entire story is simultaneously pointless and his fault for allowing it to drag on as long as it did — yet he never realized it until it was too late.
- Fake Memories: Because of his ailing mental state, he no longer remembers the events of "Genesis" as they really were, and instead imagines himself sacrificing the AI on the same day he was actually ordered to switch it on. This is despite the obvious incompatibility between the two perspectives, though "Epilogue" suggests it may be a more lucid vision of what Jim feels he should have done sooner.
- Good All Along: While Jim is the Greater-Scope Villain hinted at in "Aftermath," the story maintains that he was on Stanley's side all along, but was led astray by his damaged psyche and grudges and began probing the AI for knowledge instead. Only when Stanley convinces him to let go do things truly begin to get better for the world.
- Grand Theft Prototype: The series is ultimately revealed to be mostly Jim toying with the stolen beta builds out of a delirious obsession with Stanley. That being said, he had good intentions when he took them to begin with.
- Heel Realization: After years of probing the stolen cartridges to analyze Stanley's capabilities, they finally have a face-to-face conversation in 1997. Jim realizes that he's done nothing but torment an innocent person out of his curiosity towards them and animosity towards the company that made them, and Stanley's words convince him to let go and delete him from existence.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: His memories of the series are fogged due to brain damage, with 07.29.95 implied to be a figment of Jim's imagination oversimplifying season 2's events.
- Sanity Slippage: He's noted to have been acting odd ever since a seizure he had. Initially implied to be referring to an attempt to shut down the AI in 07.29.95, "Genesis" indicates that it's more likely the lasting effects of being made a fall guy for the activation of the AI. "Epilogue" reveals a lot of Stanley's pain was also unintentionally caused by an ailing Jim growing obsessed with him which only made the psyches of both of them even worse. It takes around a year or two for them to properly talk to each other about this, but this fortunately gets Jim to snap out of his delusions and shut Stanley down for real.
- Tragic Villain: The combination of spending 39 days desperately trying to keep up with the deadline for the game and a subsequent seizure wiped out much of his sanity. Although he meant to protect the real world by seizing Stanley and investigating his functions, he becomes so delusional that he does not seem to realize the harm he is doing to Stanley.
- Trauma Conga Line: His work is repeatedly thrown away by Nintendo as they try to rework Super Mario 64 into what it is now, is forced to recode a hardcoded build from almost scratch over the span of 39 short days, and suffers a seizure after switching on the AI in the stead of its actual creators. Then he realizes what he's done, and takes the cartridges and Stanley's data away from Nintendo to repent — but his ailing mental state causes him to succumb to his guilt anyways, and starts repeatedly probing the cartridges and Stanley out of his inability to move on until the latter finally convinces Jim to drop everything. "Epilogue" indicates that while he knows he only tried to do the right thing, he still feels rather bitter about how things turned out.
- Villain Protagonist: Though not of his own volition; most of the series is recorded from his perspective as he "investigates" Stanley's capabilities in a crazed delirium.
- Walking Spoiler: Much of Jim's backstory is not only part of the series endgame, but also spoils the fact that none of the stakes allegedly present throughout are even real.
Playtester A
A playtester for Nintendo who is the among the first to learn about the theft of the prototype cartridge. He is depicted recording himself testing the beta Metal Cave and "Chroma Tundra," a snow level that would later become Shifting Sand Land. The former testing session would end up taking a very sour turn that would set up the game for future incidents.
- No Name Given: Referred to only as "A" in subtitles and never mentions his first name, in contrast to "B" who is referred to by A as Bill.
- Red Pill, Blue Pill: Given an ultimatum of this choice following his accidental discovery in "Deeper cavern." Either he forgets everything he's done that led to the AI's reawakening, or he accepts its challenges and learns how deep the rabbit hole goes.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The AI is fully unsealed by his actions in "Deeper cavern."
