All the Classic Nintendo Easter Eggs

The Super Mario Bros. Movie utilizes state-of-the-art computer animation to bring to life the story of Mario, a humble and extremely Italian plumber from Brooklyn who gets sucked down a pipe into the Mushroom Kingdom. Thanks to modern digital technology, you can see every fiber on Mario’s overalls, every scuff on his brown work boots, and every hair in his bush mustache.

So the movie looks great. And it’s also aimed at an young audience that plays modern Mario games on their Nintendo Switch, and weren’t even alive when the original Super Mario Bros. debuted on the Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1985. (Heck, some of those kids’ parents weren’t even alive in 1985 at this point.)

And yet despite all of that, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is filled — and I mean absolutely jam-packed from start to finish — with references to the long history of Mario and Nintendo games. Some of the references are more recent, but a lot of them date back to 1985 or earlier, to the first origins of the Mario franchise and the gaming company that gave him life.

READ MORE: Our Super Mario Bros. Movie Review

The list below contains a ton of examples from the movie, although there are undoubtedly more hidden throughout its various fantastical lands of the Mushroom Kingdom and, uh, Bay Ridge. Bear in mind that while I don’t really get into the plot of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, there might be a few minor spoilers sprinkled throughout. (Then again, there’s very little in this movie that can be spoiled if you’ve played a Super Mario Bros. game in the last 40 years. If you know the games, you know the movie already.)

Here are the old school Nintendo references and Easter eggs in The Super Mario Bros Movie…