The hype for the new Mario game Super Mario Odyssey is spreading like wildfire, and with it come a slew of new memes that take a somewhat dark spin on the game’s core mechanic—the capture feature.
We're laughing at Mario possessing people with his hat in the Odyssey trailer, but it's the hat that does it.
Mario is already dead.
— David Michael Kinne (@Mewd462) June 14, 2017
People have speculated about the morality of Mario imposing his will onto sentient beings, by forcing his consciousness into their minds and controlling their bodies for his own ends. I mean, when you say it like, that it sounds an awful lot like demonic possession.
https://twitter.com/max_read/status/874666480255848449
if 👏mario 👏puts 👏the 👏hat 👏on 👏a 👏pregnant 👏woman 👏does 👏he 👏control 👏both 👏bodies 👏
— DrewFitz (exeunt) (@DrewFitz) June 14, 2017
Not only are people questioning the potentially unethical practice of hijacking someone’s body and mind, but also the lasting effects that jumping from body to body might have on Mario’s psyche. For instance, when Mario overtakes non-hominin game entities like frogs or bullets, how does he handle suddenly becoming metal tube of flying death?
Loving the sequence where Mario's magic hat causes him unfathomable mental trauma by forcing his consciousness into the body of a frog pic.twitter.com/mKVM4mY1d9
— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) June 13, 2017
There is also the question of the physical changes forced on the bodies of those Mario possesses. Though they retain their basic physiological form, any being that Mario resides in sprouts an impressive Mario-style mustache that would likely feel foreign on any face. When Mario leaves the bodies of his pawns behind, disoriented and probably lost, do they retain the mustache that was forcefully sprouted from their lip? Will we see a gradually worsening epidemic in the game of mustachioed frogs, dinos, and rockets wandering through their respective environments?
https://twitter.com/Pizza_Suplex/status/874664486476537857
I guess we will have to wait until October to have many of these tongue-in-cheek questions answered, but in the meantime we can enjoy the internet’s deep psychological speculation, and of course the memes.
Mario is just a psychic template, a self-replicating mental virus that superimposes itself over sapient and nonsapient matter alike
— Witnesstheabsurd (@Personfaces) June 13, 2017
H/T Nerdist