The animation
- Ass Pull: The end of Part 2: (The Koopas were innocent! Wart killed Mario!) There is a bit of foreshadowing, but it's blink-and-you-miss-it, and there's no way a first-time viewer would pick up the significance.
- Crosses the Line Twice: Much of the violence in the film is so extreme that it ends up being Bloody Hilarious. Special points go to the deaths of the first two Lakitu in Part 1, Bowser in Part 2, and Luigi in Part 3.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Randy Solem was directly inspired to make this series after watching the earlier fan film, Mario Brothers. In the final part of that story, it's revealed that Mario succumbs to Death by Despair after getting everyone else killed. With that context, the battle with Wart, particularly the part where Mario is thrown off the castle to the spikes below, while everyone thinks Luigi is still dead, might seem like a Shout-Out, except for the fact that Mario Brothers was not completed until after all four parts of Rise of the Mushroom Kingdom were uploaded.
- There's one scene in Part 3 where Mario throws his hat at Wart as an attack, no prize in guessing what Mario can do in a certain 3D Mario game 13 years later
- Nightmare Fuel: There's a lot of blood and gore involved. Also, the baby Yoshis are rather ferocious.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: After part 3 and 4's releases, some fans tend to question why the Toads hadn't followed and fought with Mario until the final parts after Wart's defeat nor do we ever have a potential team up with both the Mushroom Kingdom AND the Koopa Kingdom against Wart and his minions.
The Dwarf Fortress mod
- Alternate Character Interpretation: The game provides a few for a few characters, explaining their role to tie it all together. A notable one, Smithy is one of the same stars that are born from wishes, except this wish was for Might Makes Right, which was utterly contrary to all the rest. Turning into a Paradox Person, shunned by the others and cast down into the earth, this star survived long enough to encase itself in metal to keep itself alive, and set out to make its fundamental wish true by hand.
