Bowser And Peach Are The Milhouse And Lisa Of Video Games

Every good story needs a good baddie. This week at Cracked, we're examining supervillains of all sorts and kinds and finding out what makes them tick.

Milhouse Van Houten is the all-time loser of the Springfield character trait lottery: the appearance of a nerd with none of the brains to match. Milhouse is only useful as a go-to example when doing the very honorable service of teaching kids the concept of a total loser. He's such a poster boy for failure that there's a meme about how Milhouse is not a meme. Millhouse has been, throughout the seasons (or at least throughout the ones I've watched), in love with Lisa Simpson, a love that has unsurprisingly gone unrequited the entire time. Milhouse isn't a bad dude, though, which might in part be because he's been forever trapped in time and therefore incapable of growing into a fully-grown incel, but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Once.

An equally unrequited love story that also began more or less when the Simpsons started to air like 60 years ago is that of Bowser, the greatest nightmare of every single Italian plumber we know. Just like Milhouse, Bowser is prevented from going full monster, this time because of kid-friendly video game rules. The worst thing he ever does is kidnap the princess whenever Nintendo's fiscal year is coming to a close. That's it; regardless of how hard the game tries to paint him as a villain, Bowser is at worst a minor annoyance to a hugely privileged member of royalty and to some guy. The mushroom Kingdom has always looked like a damn good place to live, die, and respawn in.

Okay, look, Bowser's thing for Peach is strange. The guy once confessed his love to a poster of Peach, thinking it was actually her, but what if he's actually just hurting because he misses his girlfriend? Yeah, Bowser's plans fall through every time, but how's that not definite proof that Mario is much stronger and more dangerous? What if Mario's actually the one true monster kidnapping Peach the entire time, and Peach is like, “… oh, yeah ... you, uh, "saved" me once again, what a hero, thanks, lol xD" but really does love Bowser? She could very well just be too scared to admit to it in front of Mario. 

We found irrefutable evidence to this game theory in everyone's favorite and most canonically important of Mario games: Super Mario Sunshine. In the clip below, Bowser Jr. calls Peach “Mama Peach” while trying to save her from Mario.

 And not even once is she puzzled by him addressing her like that. In fact, the only thing she finds surprising is him being Bowser's son, somehow.

Play

And that's where the weirdness ends. They then just leave to a place called “Corona” mountain, where she reunites with Papa Bowser and probably remained happy until Mario just had to ruin everything again. The lesson, like in all Lifetime movies: never trust the creepy, mustachioed handyman. 

Hopefully, this will all get resolved in the long-delayed Super Mario Homewrecker. 

Top Image: Nintendo