Mario And Yoshi Have A Dark Backstory Behind Their Relationship

People who've reached 100% completion on Super Mario 64 and think that the game only bringing up Yoshi to deliver a message from the development team at the end of the game is the worst Nintendo's ever done to the character, we have some terrible news. Okay, we must first address the elephant in the room: Mario completionists must sometimes put the collectibles above the life of Yoshi. He's your best friend, but he's an even better jumping platform.

That's as much necessary evil as the target audience of five-year-olds should have had to put up with, but the devs wanted it to be much worse. People who've played Super Mario World, have certainly seen the animation represented by this picture where we see Mario pointing forward to signal Yoshi that it's time for him to feast on some poor animal.

That's an interaction anyone would have with their friends, but that wasn't the original plan. Just a few years ago, one of Super Mario World's devs revealed that Mario was originally meant to be punching poor Yoshi in the head in order to get him to shoot his tongue out.

That's already very messed-up as is, and it gets even worse when we find out that no one was pressuring the guy to say that. Fans were pretty satisfied with the much nicer version that ended up in the game. Why out yourself as an absolute monster? Is there a secret list of dark achievements one must pull off in order to achieve 100% completion at the Nintendo offices?

Or is there something just inherently dark about Mario that everyone at Nintendo wants to suppress to no avail? Maybe that toad witness we got from Paper Mario will help us figure it all out. Oh, no.. he's been mysteriously murdered in the Japanese version of the game ...

… and straight-up erased from existence in the American one.

Maybe we should just leave it be as advised by the probably unbiased Mushroom Kingdom's plumber union.

Top Image: Nintendo