You know you've achieved success when calling your company a behemoth in its field of work sounds like an understatement. For countless gamers (across three generations) spread outthrough the whole world, Nintendo is not merely a behemoth inthe video gaming industry, itisthe video gaming industry.
It was the arcade game Donkey Kong, released by Nintendo in 1981, that becamethe company's first critical and commercial hit. The game also introduced the world to an obscure, chubby little character known back then only as Jumpman.
Fast forward a few years, and Jumpman was revamped to become Mario, the plucky little plumber that is the first love of so many modern gamers, and who became the official mascot of Nintendo following his smash hit success across countless gaming iterations.
Mario was followed by TheLegend of Zelda, Pokémon and countless other gaming franchises that Nintendo shrewdly leveraged into consolidating their multi-billion dollar empire. Today, the company still enjoys an almostcult following within the gaming community, which is a testament to the creative team behind their games that have managed to keep millions of players hooked on to theirfranchises for close to 40 years.
Naturally, such a devoted fan base has led toinnumerable memesappearing online about Nintendo's many games. Here are some of the darkest, most hilarious, or just plain confounding memes about Nintendo that the best and brightest minds on the internet with way too much free time on their hands have been able to come up with.
24 A Meme Reveals Wario's Ridiculous Origin Story
Everyone knows Wario as the evil twin of Mario who unleashes chaos wherever he goes. Fans have speculated feverishly about Wario's origin story from the moment he first appeared in Super Mario Land 2.
The most common theory is that Wario is Mario's evil twin.
But in fact, Wario is actually Mario's childhood friend who became evil after being driven mad with jealousy of Mario's good looks.
Yep, that is the in-game explanation for Wario's animosity towards Mario. Naturally, your first thoughtupon reading the meme would be, 'Wait, Mario is good looking? Does that mean dad bods and walrus mustaches are consideredcute these days?'
But consider the fact that Mario's girlfriendis a freakin' princess who also happens to be super cute. Clearly, Mario'sattacker looks worked just as effectively on Princess Peach as on Wario, but in opposite ways.
23 The Headgear Is Not What It Appears To Be
All the school learning in the world couldn't make the mushroom as fascinating to students as playing a single game of Mario. You could be moving at full speed through a level, only to bump into a brick and unearth a mushroom. That would be enough to make you forget all about finishing the level as you go tearing off after the magic fungus (that's right, mushrooms aren't fruits or vegetables, but a species of fungi).
Anyway, one of the most famous mushrooms in Mario is found on the head of Toad, the affable citizen of Mushroom Kingdom. At least, people always assumed that was a mushroom on his head. But as the cartoon spin-off forMario revealed, Toad is actually merely wearing a hat that resembles a mushroom. Stick thattidbit in your magic mushroom and smoke it!
22 TheDark Origin Of Chocobo
Everyone remembers Chocobo from the Final Fantasy series, right? Those yellow birds that keep screaming 'Wark!' instead of chirping or squawking like normal fowls? Turns out there's a disturbing theory that explains its strange appearance as well as the weird noises it makes.
It's possible that the Chocobo is the result of an unholy union between Big Bird from Sesame Street and random chickens. How did Big Bird leave the safe confines of Sesame Street and find itself in the war-torn hellscape of Final Fantasy? Well, the great thing about fictional characters is they don't have to obey the constraints of space and time and can pop in and out of different worlds in the imagination of fans. And apparently, some fans were imagining Big Bird getting it on with a chicken in the Final Fantasy universe. So basically, Chocobos are cross-species freaks.
21 Mario Is A Selfish Monster Who Doesn't Deserve Yoshi
Ouch! Oh man, that one just hits you right in the feels, doesn't it? That look of helplessness on Yoshi's face as he falls into the chasm below, and Mario's indifferent reaction to his friend's demise.
He doesn't even care to glance back at his loyal steed.
The fact is, Mario may pose for photographs with Yoshi, Luigi, and the others, and he may pretend to be best friends with them for the sake of appearances, but he's actually a pretty selfish dude. All Mario cares about is using his allies to get to Princess Peach, and if they all happen to perish in the middle of helping him on his journey, tough luck! Maybe next time don't put your faith in a bloodthirsty plumber who's spent decades rampaging against Bowser's kingdom and destroying absolutely everything in his path.
20 Ken And Ryu Finally Make It Official
Thanks to this meme, you will never be able to play Street Fighter as Ryu and hear him shout out 'HADOUKEN!' without hearing 'I DOOO KEN!' instead. But once you get past the way the image messes with your mind and everything you thought you knew about Ken and Ryu's private life, it's actually kind of sweet.
Besides, who are we to judge? Clearly, they have a lot in common. They like to fight in the same manner. They both like to use the same attacks. Both have no problem with violently beating up women to win a competition. Both have the same taste in clothing style and exercise regimens. The only thing creepy about the scene is that they might be too alike. And will they ever be able to face each other in a fighting contest again after marriage?
19 Team Rocket Is One! Literally!
This one isn't about the Pokémon video game, but rather the spin-off cartoon. It makes a strong case for scrubbing out your eyes to get this image out.
Of course, we always knew the members of Team Rocket were very close.
You have to be close to lean on each other for moral support after getting your behind kicked in literally every single episode and still keep trying.
But it seems Jesse, James, and Meowth, were a lot closer than anyone could have possibly imagined. Also, Meowth looks almost fearful in the scene, as though he instinctively knew that what was going on here was against the laws of nature, but did not dare to object. And would it be mean to say we're not a bit surprised by Jesse's participation here? She always gave off the vibe of being into weird stuff...
18 Link Is Way Too Young For This Conversation
So as a kid, you might have played Legend Of Zelda, and come across this little cutscene. As a kid, you may have decided to use the hole to find your way to the silver gauntlets. As a kid, you may have silently thanked the kind Gerudo guard Nabooru who gave you access to the shortcut and let you pass through safely.
But you're not a kid anymore. And Nabooru's line suddenly doesn't seem so innocent. Keep in mind, the Gerudos are a race of female warriors who only very rarely have any contact with men. Was Nabooru feeling a bit lonely, and started hitting on Link the first chance she got? Also, there's the fact that Link is still underage at the time the conversation takes place. Do minor-protection laws even apply to the Gerudos or Hyrule in general?
17 The Truth About Mario's Mind-Blowing Adventures
As a kid, Mario's adventures in the mushroom kingdom was the stuff of your fantasies. Imagine it! You're just an ordinary plumber. Then you eat a mushroom, and suddenly you're twice as big! Eat another mushroom, and now you can shoot fireballs from your mouth! Another mushroom, and now your life has increased, allowing you to journey further than ever into a land of goombas, sentient bullets, talking dragons, and taken-prone princesses...
Then you grow up and realize something.
All those amazing adventures Mario went on were the fevered dreams of a plumber high on mushrooms. Once the theory takes control of your mind, you start wondering what else in the game's imaginary. Was Peach ever even a real princess in peril, or random women whose houses Mario kept breaking into, insisting that they needed to be rescued from Bowser (their husbands)?
16 Jasmine Chose An Odd Place To Park Her Rear
So here's Jasmine posing for the camera with a cute smile in a demure pose. With her is her loyal Pokémon Magnemite. And then you realize that Magnemite's bolt is situated on top of its face, right at the point where Jasmine seems to be sitting so comfortably...
Suddenly Jasmine's smile takes on a whole new meaning.
And let's not even get into how horrified Magnemite looks. Is he upset at the way his owner is using him (it?) or is he (it?) upset that the whole action was caught on camera?
Whatever the reason, now we can't help but wonder how many other Pokémon are used for this kind of 'personal use.' Does Ash secretly enjoy being electrocuted, which is why Pikachu is his favorite? Does Jesse enjoy getting scratched, hence her affinity for the otherwise useless Meowth?
Throughout his adventures in Hyrule, Link meets a lot of different characters. The great thing about the Zelda franchise is even their background characters get lines and backstories that imbue them with distinct personalities, making the game incredibly immersive.
Link meets a guy in prison who thinks it's funny to make a 'dropped the soap in prison' joke to underage Link. Or was it not a joke at all? Was he actually hitting on Link right in the middle of a quest? And again, keep in mind the fact that Link is a minor who's notoriously baby-faced. We're pretty sure behavior like this is the reason the guy is in prison in the first place. But his enforced confinement does not seem to have had any effect on his bad habits. Man, the people you meet on magical quests...
14 Yoshi Will Make The Ultimate Sacrifice For Mario
Yoshi's Island is a game where Yoshi from the Mario franchise takes center stage. Yoshi's mission is to take baby Mario across 50 levels to reunite him with his brother little Luigi, who has been taken by baby Bowser.
Throughout the game, we get to see Yoshi risk life and limb to deliver baby Mario safely to his destination. The game was released a long time ago, when graphics weren't rendered as closely as they are today, so you miss a lot of details.
Luckily, this fan re-imagining allows us to take a closer look at what was going on in the game, and now we have to stop ourselves from throwing up. Those are the remnants of Yoshi Jr. splattered across the face of an enemy. Now imagine the literal hundreds of eggs Yoshi must have thrown throughout the game.
13 Link Has Had Enough Of Navi's Guff
It finally happened. Link snapped and took out his frustration onhis innocent little fairy friend Navi.
And yet... as a grown-up, can you really blame him? With each new iteration of Zelda, it became more and more clear just how useless Navi is. Think about it, you've fought every manner of magical nightmares that the land of Hyrule and beyond has to offer. And in spite of having a fairy best friend, the only assistance you get from Navi is a bunch of instructions.
And does Navihaveto be so incredibly annoying? Which one among us hasn't at some point played the game mute just to block out the constant stream of 'Hey!'s? Link's got enough crap to deal with, the last thing he needs is a glorified firefly bossily ordering him around and just being a huge distraction.
12 Tetris Tells You The Truth About Life
After looking at this meme, youmight never be able to enjoy Tetris again. Because the meme is painfully accurate and pretty faithfully depicts what real life is like as well.
At first, you play a game of Tetris with a great deal of enthusiasm. It looks so easy! And you even manage to get the highest score among your friends. But then as you play the game over many years, you realize something:
You're never going to win the game.
There is no point at which the game will end and you will be declared the winner. You just keep going, until one day you just... stop. And that's it.
Just like the game, growing up has a lotto do with chasingdifficult dreams, and coming to realize thatperfect happiness and satisfaction arevirtually impossible to achieve.
11 The Only Female Hero Nintendo Ever Made
So, as a female gamer, it was pretty thrilling to find out that the man behind the mask in Metroid wasn't a man at all, but a behind-kicking female called Samus. Women can be heroes! Girl Power! Yadda yadda yadda... Take that, every critic who says the gaming industry is not welcoming towards females!
But when you get older, you realize something. Samus's presence actually just makes it all the more clear that she is the one and the only female protagonist that Nintendo has produced in its near-forty-year-old history. Even Zelda, despite being named after the princess, is all about Link coming to her rescue. The exact same premise that Mario also uses. Since Nintendo is all about making games for the whole family, how about making some for the females in the family to relate to and enjoy as well?
10 Playing Duck Hunt Fills You With Rage
Some memes don't require text. They don't require any additional explanations as to the significance of an image. Sometimes the visual is all you need to remember the rage and bafflement you experienced as a kid whenever that dog appeared onscreen inDuck Hunt.
Every player, and we meaneveryplayer who's ever playedthe game has tried in vain to shoot the dog.Spitting in the face of the video game tradition which encourages players to keep trying to win the level,
The dog was, instead, anoffensive reminder of your incompetency as a shooter.
His purpose was to remind you that you may owna gun, but it is ultimately the creators of the game who control the Duck Huntuniverse. You can shoot all you like, but you won't hurt the dog if the creators disallow it.
9 The Trouble Just Never Stops
And here we have yet another instance of a random background character in Zelda stopping mid-plot to hit on Link. Seriously, we're starting to think the biggest danger Link faces in the series isn't from the re-deads or Ganondorf, but from an apparent army ofcreeps hiding in the background in Hyrule waiting to pounce on the first underage kid they see walking around town without supervision.
And we have to wonder what kind of toll all these innuendoestake on poor Link.
All the kid wants to do is rescue a princess, or rescue his fairy friend, or rescue Hyrule, but then he meets all these creepy people and probably wonders whether it wouldn't be better to just let Ganondorf wipe Hyrule out and start over. Pretty sure the next guy to come on to Link is getting stabbed.
8 MarioRiding Yoshi The Completely Wrong Way Again
The scene is pretty self-explanatory. It's the little touches that deserve a second look. For instance, look how completely unsurprised Luigiis by the very disturbing scene going on in front of him. He looks shocked when he perishes, but this scene doesn't even manage to elicit a raised eyebrow.
Clearly, this is something he has seen before, although it's difficult to tell if he approves, or if he has simply resigned himself to the fact that his elder brother misses Princess Peach so desperately he's even willing to replace her soft, warm touch with Yoshi's scaly, reptilian skin.
And Yoshi doesn't seem to mind what's going on either.
We've already talked about how fanatically devoted he is to Mario. This is simply one more thing that he does for his lord and master (and maybe inYoshi's mind, husband?...)
7 Beware Of Kirby's True Form
In a vast catalog of cutesy Nintendo characters, Kirby is possibly the cutest of them all. He's like a Pokémon whose biggest power is being adorable. Just look at that widdle round body with the widdle feet. And those round blue eyes radiating happiness and childlike wonder!
Then you take a step back and consider what Kirby does in every game. He eats everything, and we meaneverythinginhis path. To have such an incredible eating ability, Kirby's got to have a set of teeth that could put a shark to shame. The pixels used for the game were too few for us to get a good look at Kirby's chewing process.
But with the visual aid of this meme, you can now image Kirby unhinging his enormous jaws, and advancing slowly and menacingly onhis prey as it begs for mercy.
6 The Devastating Truth About The Pokémon World
They say most childhood fantasies are not meant to be examined critically as adults. But the Pokémon world operatesby such a strange set of rules that even children might wonder whether Ash and his friends are really the good guys.
Basically, Pokémon is one long saga of hunting down magical creatures, imprisoning them in the tiniest spaces imaginable, and then making them battle to the end to win some plastic badges. The owner of the Pokémon is never in the slightest bit of danger, preferring to let his or her Pokémon battle on their behalf.
Sure, as a kid taking part in the battle can seem thrilling. But as you grow older and begin to realize many of the Pokémon are almost as smart as humans, you come to thestartling realization that you're participating in horrific animal rights abuse.
5 The Most Annoying Misunderstanding About Zelda
Did you know that there are many people who demand that Zelda from The Legend Of Zelda franchise should be an actual girl, to add some girl power to the franchise?
'Wait... what?' You say.
'But Zeldaisa girl.'
Congratulations, you know the most basic fact about the franchise that seems to have eludedthose who make this complaint. Apparently, the fact that the game is called Legend of Zelda, but with Link striking a heroic pose on the cover, is enough to throw many people off.
Anyway, this little misunderstanding has given rise to countless memes about folks who are clueless about video games but still feel the need to criticize them for whatever reasons. And it has also been speculated that Zelda herself must be pretty bitter about having a game named after her without being its true protagonist.
