Cracked Investigates: Is Mario Circumcised?
When you look at Mario what do you see? A character in a video game? A cultural icon? An embodiment of raw, masculine, sexual energy? I too see all of these things, but what I also see is a giant question mark. Specifically, I see that question mark about two and a quarter inches down his right thigh. I'm talking, of course, about whether Mario is circumcised. And, after compiling the research and consulting with my pastor and God, I have determined that Mario's circumcision is dun dun dun ... dependent on whether you think he's Italian, Italian American, or from the Mushroom Kingdom.
I know, it's not a concrete answer, but it's the best we've got right now, as there is no 1000% ironclad proof that Mario is or isn't circumcised. We have seen Mario's penis, but the visual (NSFW) doesn't provide that much detail. (Although, we're leaning uncircumcised and it's leaning slightly to the right.)
The best we can do is to determine Mario's country of origin and then use their circumcision statistics to make a probabilistic ruling. So let's start with the theory that Mario is Italian-American. Mario's name is a reference to Mario Segale, an Italian-American who was the landlord for Nintendo of America. There's also the infamous Super Mario Bros. film which shows Mario and his brother Luigi as plumbers from Brooklyn. So there's a decent case there. The WHO estimates that the male circumcision rates within the United States are somewhere between 76 - 92%, so it stands to reason that if you take the film's depiction of Mario to be canon then you can probably assume he's circumcised.
But the case that Mario was born in Italy is just as strong. For one, the film sucked ass, and to take the movie as canon is to also accept that Dennis Hopper can somehow be a suitable stand-in for Bowser. Also, have you heard Mario's accent? I have a hard time believing Mario went through public schooling in America, shouting "It's-a me, Mario!" without getting his head ground-pounded into a toilet. More likely, he was born in Italy and learned English as a second language from an extremely coked-out tutor. (No, Mario, "wahooo," is not a typical greeting here.) If Mario were born in Italy and considering Italy's circumcision rate is under 20%, then he most likely is not circumcised.
Of course, that leaves us with the theory that Mario is from the Mushroom Kingdom. It doesn't appear that many humans live within the Mushroom Kingdom, and those who do could easily be thought to have immigrated over. However, Super Mario Land 2: Yoshi's Island shows us a baby Mario and a baby Luigi being delivered to a mushroom-shaped house where "mom and dad live." We don't know definitively if storks, which seem to be the primary means of reproduction in the Mushroom Kingdom, deliver to other locations such as America or Italy. Still, considering most Italian or American homes don't carry a fungus aesthetic, we can safely assume that this house is within the Mushroom Kingdom. But how are we supposed to figure out the rate of circumcision within the Mushhroom Kingdom? Hmmm. Hmmmmm! HMMMMMMM!!!!!! Oh ... Mushroom Kingdom.
Yeah, Mario is definitely circumcised.
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Top Image: Nintendo
