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Unexpected Character / Super Mario Bros.

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Unexpected Character examples in Super Mario Bros..

  • Mario Kart:
  • The Mario Party series had a pretty standard roster up until the fifth game which promoted Toad, Boo, and Koopa Kid, who had traditionally been board NPCs in the previous games, into playable characters. Mario Party 6 also features Toadette as the series' first Secret Character, who had only made her debut the previous year and was relatively obscure at the time, but it was the seventh installment that really took fans by surprise when Dry Bones was announced as a playable character, which cemented him as a main-stay in most Mario spin-offs during the DS and Wii era. Later, no one ever expected to see Blooper (and to a lesser extent, Hammer Bro.) in Mario Party 8. The tenth game took players by surprise with Spike, which no one really expected either as they had never really been that prominent in the series (aside from a giant-sized specimen who served as a Mini-Boss in Mario Party 9). And Super Mario Party features Goomba as a playable character for the first time since Mario Super Sluggers, released over a decade prior.
  • Among the new playable characters in Mario and Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games are Nabbit, who had only made two playable appearances beforehand, Ludwig, Larry, Roy and Wendy, who had previously never been seen without their other siblings (Iggy, Lemmy, and Morton), Dry Bones, who, while appearing as a rival in previous Olympics titles, is a nonspecific Mook character, Zavok and Zazz, who had not made any previous playable appearances before this game, Wave, who had never appeared outside of the Riders series even as a cameo, and Sticks, a character from a completely different continuity than the other Sonic characters.
  • Paper Mario: Sticker Star was rather infamous for featuring mostly characters from the main series and had only a few unique original characters. Some of the old characters brought in make sense, such as Bowser Jr., Kamek, and Petey Piranha, but there's one odd one: Gooper Blooper, a boss from Super Mario Sunshine. Unlike Petey, who also debuted in Sunshine but went on to become a recurring participant in racing and sports titles, Gooper Blooper only made a few cameos after his debut, mostly in spinoff games. He's now the third major boss of the game and a Dance Battler.
    • Also from Sticker Star, we have the Chapter 4 boss, Mr. Blizzard (or Mizzter Blizzard as he prefers to call himself), an enemy whose first and only mainline appearance was Super Mario 64. Unlike Gooper Blooper who was still based on a common Mario enemy, Mr. Blizzards rarely appeared outside of Mario Party. Seeing one show up at all, let alone as a major boss with a surprisingly tragic backstory, was a surprise to many players.
  • Paper Mario: The Origami King has a number of enemy types that make their Paper Mario debut:
    • Sidesteppers, who have only appeared as cameos and stage hazards in spinoffs since their Mario Bros. debut, appear as enemies in the Water Vellumental Temple.
    • Crowbers, which last appeared in New Super Mario Bros. 2 and were planned to appear in Paper Mario: Sticker Star, are found in the purple streamer areas.
    • Sumo Bros., infrequently-appearing enemies from Super Mario World and New Super Mario Bros. U, are a mini-boss. Even more surprising is Boss Sumo Bro returning, after only being in New Super Mario Bros. U!
    • Galoombas, the Goomba type introduced in Super Mario World, make their Paper Mario debut, largely in Autumn Mountain and the aptly named Chestnut Valley.
    • Stingbies, found at the Spring of Jungle Mist, make their RPG debut. They were introduced in Super Mario 3D Land in 2011, making them among the most recent of common enemies in this game.
  • Mario & Luigi:
  • Super Mario Maker enables you to play as different characters other than Mario in the Super Mario Bros. setting via the Mystery Mushroom/Mystery Suit power-up, including non-Mario characters such as Link, Samus, Pikachu, and even Marth and Sonic the Hedgehog. With more than a hundred of these bonus characters, a number of them were bound to be this:
    • Waluigi, while he is an Ensemble Dark Horse in the Mario series, took people by pleasant surprise, considering he had never appeared in a platformer beforehand.
    • The eponymous character of Donkey Kong Jr., considering that the character has otherwise seen rare use since early in the GBA era outside of remakes and minor cameos.
    • A mahjong tile. True, mahjong is a popular game in Japan, but a giant walking tile being a playable character in a Mario game turned some heads. That said, the Japanese mahjong game Yakuman DS featured Mario characters about an entire decade prior to this game's release.
    • Dr. Lobe from Big Brain Academy, of all things. Seriously, did anyone see this coming at all?
    • Ashley from the WarioWare series. Characters from that series usually don't appear in Mario games proper, although this could be attributed to her incredible popularity and major prominence in the series.
    • Nikki, the Mii character host of Swapnote was met with a good amount of surprise, especially considering that Swapnote is generally considered to have been Screwed by the Network.
    • Mario. No, not just normal Mario, but Mario as he appears in the◊ Super Mario Bros. Manga Mania manga series as part of a Milestone Celebration. This also marks the first time the manga is acknowledged in an official Mario title.
    • Shinya Arino of Game Center CX was this to players outside of Japan who were unfamiliar with the show, and because he is the only Mystery Mushroom character based on a real life person. Arino himself even provides his own voice clips in the game!
      • However, him being the only real life person represented is no longer the case now that BABYMETAL has been added. And yes, we do mean all three of them as one playable character.
    • Chitoge Kirisaki, a character from a Shonen Jump manga series of all places, became a Mystery Suit character in the game to much surprise. And she's not even from one of Jump's flagship series, like Dragon Ball, Naruto, or One Piece, or even from an action series. Nisekoi is a romantic comedy.
    • An update brought in a bunch of new Mystery Suits, among them being Disk-kun, the mascot character of the Famicom (not entirely unexpected, mind you, but still surprising to see as a playable character in a Mario game), and a volleyball player from the little-remembered NES Volleyball game.
    • Princess Daisy also came as a bit of a surprise, as she hadn't appeared in a platformer since her debut.
    • Hello Kitty and her buddy My Melody were later added. They (especially the former) are major pop-culture icons, but them making an official appearance in a Mario game still took many by surprise.
    • Shaun the Sheep, of all characters, eventually debuted in the game. And unlike the other obscure costumes, he's a cartoon character that originated in the UK and not Japan. However, this can be attributed to his immense popularity with Japanese audiences.
  • Super Mario Run:
    • Toadette's inclusion as a playable character in this game came off as a shock to numerous people as her biggest role outside of the sport-related spin-offs (barring her brief cameo in the opening of Super Mario Galaxy) was in Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, which was a spin-off from the main-line Super Mario 3D World anyway.
    • The announcement that Princess Daisy (who likewise has seldom appeared outside of the usual spin-offs and makes fewer appearances in the mainline Mario titles than even Toadette does) would be added to the game in a later update makes Toadette's inclusion almost seem innocuous in comparison.
  • Mario Tennis:
    • The original installment on the Nintendo 64 not only marked the debut of Waluigi, but it also featured the returns of Daisy, Birdo, and most surprisingly, Donkey Kong Jr., all of whom had faded into obscurity in the mid-to-late 90's.
    • Open for the 3DS has a Luma as a playable character (marking the first time the character was seen without Rosalina), while Ultra Smash on the Wii U has the Green Sprixie Princess as well.
    • Aces features a Chain Chomp, a generic Mook who doesn't even have any appendages and was never playable previously (outside of being a Capture target in Odyssey) as well as Fire Piranha Plant, which follows up on Piranha Plant being playable in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
  • Super Mario Odyssey has quite a few of these. Most notably Pauline from the original Donkey Kong and Mario vs. Donkey Kong series, but also Donkey Kong himself (as he almost never appears in the main Mario platformers due to having his own series), Poochy from Yoshi's Island, Dorrie and Klepto (last seen in a major role in Super Mario 64 and its DS remake) and Toadette (a character who'd never previously appeared outside of spinoffs, not counting her brief cameo in the intro to Super Mario Galaxy). On a related note, most of the Captures are series staples, so it is a bit of a surprise to see Parabones and Ty-Foos (two fairly minor enemies introduced in Super Mario 3D World) as Capture targets too.
  • The Mobile Phone Game Dr. Mario World has the cast take up the Doctor mantle alongside Mario, including the Babies, the Princesses, the Kongs, the Wario Bros., the Koopalings, etc. There are also Assistants, which consist of many enemies and some bosses from throughout the series. Of these Assistants, three of them have become Doctors, including Dr. Lakitu, Dr. Koopa Troopa, and even Dr. Dolphin. These surprised players as they figured that being Assistants prevented them from ever being playable. Outside of Assistants, there's also Dr. Goomba Tower, who's basically just three Goombas standing on each other while wearing a doctor's coat like a couple of kids wearing a trench coat to disguise themselves as an adult, based on the Goomba Tower enemy from Super Mario 3D Land.
    • After Yoshi's Island DS, Baby Wario more or less vanished for a long while. Cue the fandom's surprise when this game brought him back as Dr. Baby Wario to start off Season 3.
  • While the roster for Mario Golf: Super Rush was more or less stock standard, it did happen to include a Chargin' Chuck of all things as a playable character! Even more shocking was when Ninji was revealed as a downloadable character later on, as that particular enemy rarely ever appears in modern Mario titles.
  • Super Mario Bros. Wonder features a relatively standard assortment of playable characters for the 2D series: Mario, Luigi, Toad, Peach... and Daisy, who had long vanished from the main series outside her debut appearance and otherwise only featured in spinoffs. To a lesser extent, Yoshi is a somewhat unusual choice for a player character, as most of his other appearances (outside his own series) have him as a Power Up Mount.
    • In terms of enemies, most of the returning ones are series mainstays, so it is a bit of a surprise to see Goombrats, a fairly minor enemy introduced in New Super Mario Bros. U, as part of the enemy roster as well. Another enemy is the Hothead from Super Mario World, which had been absent for over 20 years outside of the Super Smash Bros. series.

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