Trivia / The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!

• Acting for Two: "Captain Lou is Missing" has him as himself as well as Mario, though they don't share any scenes.^note Also guest starred his then-manager and associate, Cyndi Lauper.
• Blooper: The show has become very notable for its bevy of animation errors from coloring and timing errors to voices coming from the wrong character. The most infamous being at one point having a line meant for Luigi come out of Mario's mouth IN Luigi's voice, while Luigi wears Mario's hat!
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: Various DVDs and digital retailers oftentimes get the descriptions of episodes totally wrong:
  • Mario's Magic Carpet is described on the Air Koopa DVD as "The Mario's wage a wild magic carpet battle to save the princess from being forced into King Koopa's harem." In the actual episode it's Sultan Pasbah that wants to put Princess Toadstool into his harem.
  • The Best of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show and Mario of the Deep DVDs call Koopa's alter-ego in "Pirates of the Koopa" Long John Koopa, it is actually Blackbeard Koopa.
  • Do You Princess Toadstool Take this Koopa? Is described as such on the Best of DVD: "King Koopa threatens to turn the Mario Brothers into rocks unless Princess Toadstool agrees to marry him". In the actual episode Koopa has turned all of the mushroom people into rocks and threatens to have the Mario Brothers crushed.
  • The Off the Map DVD refers to Koopa's alter-ego in "Elvin Lives" as Greaser Koopa, it's actually Koopa the Cool.
  • The Mario Bros. Mix DVD mistakenly gives the episode "The Great Gladiator Gig" the synopsis of the Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 episode "Dadzilla".
• Descended Creator: Art appraiser and TV show host Howard Stevens, from "The Painting", is actually DiC chairman and CEO as well as the show's creative music supervisor and executive producer, Andy Heyward.
• Disowned Adaptation: According to an interview with Danny Wells, Nintendo was reluctant to do the Super Show from the start and had to be cajoled by DiC Entertainment to make it work. Nintendo finally agreed to license the series but wanted no more after production after its lone season ended; DiC ultimately circumvented this by instead theming the next two seasons around Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World. This may also explain why there were no Western Animation adaptations of Super Mario Bros. between 1991 and the 2023 animated movie (the Saturday morning show Captain N and the New Super Mario World lasted a couple of years longer, regardless). It also explains why it wasn't released in Japan. That said, The Super Mario Bros. Movie would go on to reference The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, including its theme song in the Super Mario Bros. Plumbing commercial.
• Edited for Syndication: DVD releases of the series feature the licensed songs from each episode replaced with stock tunes from the show's in-house incidental soundtrack, due to DiC being either unable or unwilling to reacquire the rights.
• Fake American: Captain Lou Albano was the only American actor to have a voice role. Everyone else in the cast was based in Toronto.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: According to an interview with Lou Albano, he and Danny Wells (and, presumably, the various guest stars) largely improvised the live-action segments. This is corroborated by the lack of a credited writer for any of them.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: While the show itself is beyond easy to track down on DVD now, there's a lot that's been missing or impossible to find since its initial syndication.
  • Several live-action segments, particularly those paired with The Legend of Zelda (1989) haven't been seen since their initial TV airings and aren't on DVD for one reason or another. The same can be said for all but one Club Mario segment.
  • The only way to watch the cartoon segments with the original licensed songs intact is if you have them in their original VHS prints or copied them when they first aired. Efforts have been made to properly restore the songs however.
• Missing Episode:
  • Some of the live-action segments that aired alongside episodes of The Legend of Zelda (1989) were not restored when Shout! Factory released the series on DVD, one particular example being The Treasure of Sierra Brooklyn. Four other live-action segments that were not originally attached to episodes of The Legend of Zelda were not released on DVD either, as Shout! Factory either couldn't secure the rights to those segments or didn't get the proper masters for them
  • As this link states, the poorly-received 1990-91 Retool Club Mario disappeared into a black hole after it was taken off the air, and there are longstanding rumors that the master tapes were trashed. However, the Club Mario version of the episode "The Unzappables" is the one that's on iTunes, Netflix, and Amazon instead of the original version. Some attempts have been made to Keep Circulating the Tapes though.
  • The NCircle Entertainment series release cut out all of the live-action segments as well as the cartoon episode "On Her Majesty's Sewer Service."
  • The Korean version has become an oddly notable case of this; while international dubs of American shows generally don't see much attention within the Anglosphere, the Korean dub of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show notably replaced the live-action skits with new footage starring Korean actors. These skits weren't just remakes of the Albano/Wells skits, either; they featured all new plots and completely different sets & costumes. Because of the unusually high lengths taken here to localize the series for Korean audiences, Korea's rendition of the Super Show has become highly coveted— unfortunately, only small fragments of these skits have surfaced online, and it's not known how many surviving recordings of full skits exist.
• The Other Darrin: Don Adams does not reprise his role as Inspector Gadget. Instead, he's played by Maurice LaMarche, who incidentally took over the role of Inspector Gadget following Adams' retirement of the character in the 90's.
• Out of Order: WildBrain doesn't list the episodes in the correct order on their YouTube playlist.
• Promoted Fanboy: Captain Lou Albano himself was a big fan of the original Super Mario Bros. video game, as were his children and grandchildren.
• Rereleased for Free: The entire series was uploaded onto WildBrain's official YouTube channel. These are, however, the DVD versions, meaning that the licensed songs are still cut out.
• So My Kids Can Watch: According to Danny Wells, most of the celebrity guest stars asked to be on the show rather than the other way around; their children were always big fans of the Nintendo games.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The original concept for the show, The Super Mario Power Hour was originally supposed to have a different video game adaptation alongside the Mario segments every week. Production art sold at auction in 2019 revealed concept art for four different series, including a Double Dragon adaptation radically different from the series DIC eventually made, and a Metroid series with a male Samus. Somewhere along the line, the concept was radically pared down, leading to the final product only having the occasional Zelda cartoon alongside the Mario segments.
    • According to writer Reed Shelly, segments based on Castlevania and California Games were also pitched very early on.
  • The show would have been much different, Early promotional material such as This early promotion poster Magazine Advertisement an Anti Drug PSA and an Early DIC Promo image shows that the mushroom people (including Toad) looked drastically different, Princess Peach looking similar to her games design, and the show was more intoned with the first game seeing how the 2nd game was still relatively new at the time of the show's development, This includes Luigi's donning his original green and white design and King Koopa (Bowser) donning his US Game Manual/Japanese design.
  • Screenshots from a view finder master reel shows that King Wart from Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA) (seeing that the show was barrowing very much from) was originally the main antagonist instead of King Koopa (Bowser) but they stuck with King Koopa (Bowser) because he was more recognizable as of Nintendo America's request.
  • According to the Writer's Bible, an adaptation of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves called "Ali Koopa and his Forty Goombas" was a potential episode that never got made. Additionally, the songs "Love Potion Number Nine", "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" and "Gimme Shelter" were apparently among the songs to be used in the show but didn't make it.
  • A theatrical film based on the series was announced for a Summer 1990 release, though nothing came of it.
• Word of God: This interview with writer Perry Martin goes a bit more in-depth into a lot of the series' nature and explains everything from the poor animation quality to why Indiana Joe didn't have a face.

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