Stupid Mario Bros Shill + Watch Order

stupid mario bros watch order thoughts..... this is a silly comedy youtube series that Accidentally A Plot (what else do you expect from theatre kids tbh) and because it's comedy i don't often seriously recommend it to anyone. BUT! here's my short version of why you might want to consider watching it and also about the watch order because the official playlist made some decisions i don't agree with

What Is Stupid Mario Brothers?

StMB is a youtube series created by Rich Alvarez and his friends; they have home-made costumes for characters in the Mario series as well as... several others if they ever appeared in Smash. The premise is that Mario's tired of saving Peach all the time so he goes to take a vacation in the Real World (Luigi comes with him) and just relax and have fun. But Bowser hires Wario (and Waluigi) to bring the Mario Brothers back to the Mushroom Kingdom, or else.

Shenanigans ensue, but as the series progresses things start getting... a little Serious. Wario has a full blown character arc that very closely matches Riku KingdomHearts' character arc. There's an evil wizard named Nox Decious that gets introduced. Nox Decious creates a dark clone of Mario who spends all of his screentime struggling with his identity; wanting to be a separate person from both his creator and from the idiot hero he shares a face with. And that's just the TIP of the iceberg.

Of course, this is also a comedy series, so while the genuine plot beats are very heartfelt and touching, you also gotta accept that it's flavored with teenage boy humor. Thankfully none of the humor is bigoted, but you know.

Anyway: It's just a bunch of friends who genuinely care about what they're making, so if that's a thing you like watching... (Huge Star Wars, Final Fantasy, and Kingdom Hearts influence. And if you liked Super Paper Mario, do I have great news for you!)

I think the most apt comparison is with Roosterteeth's Red vs Blue series. They have the same "this was meant to be a comedy show but we cared too much and now it has lore and plot that will fuck you up" ...but also its STILL a comedy show. haha.

So..... Watch order?

The official playlist is genuinely quite good with some caveats

• general warning about Episode 1: the first half is "haha mushrooms are drugs" jokes but that lasts about two minutes before they go inside the house and then afaik the jokes are literally never like that again in the series. the first episode is just a bad showing of what you'll be in for.

• Episode 13, meanwhile, I consider to be the quinessential essence of StMB condensed into an episode, so if you wanna hit one episode up to see if this might be your jam, hit up Episode 13 here

• Alternatively go watch the movie to start with, like I did. I was fucking hooked after the movie and immediately went back to watch the series from the start haha.

• The Complete Playlist doesn't make it super clear where one season ends and where another begins, but each season is 15 episodes, so 1-15 is Season 1, 16-30 is Season 2, etc. The thumbnails also have a differnet bg picture per season.

• the Movie occurs after Season 3 - and the complete playlist has a 2 hr Final Cut of the movie. i do not recommend this. the Final Cut adds a 5 minute lore infodump that is not relevant to StMB as a series (it's important to the sequel series, World,) and also moves some scenes around, which makes the pacing muddier, imo. Also there's the charm of watching 2009 youtube content as intended: in 10 minute chunks split across several videos, you know?

• Act 1 is almost purely dicking around, while Act 2 is where the actual plot lays, lol.

• content warning: the movie Act 1 Part 4 features a harry potter crossover for a single gag. it's obviously making fun of harry potter, but unfortunately the joke is "harry is mentally ill, isn't that funny!?!?!" - it's signalled by a title screen saying "harry potter and the awkward movie crossover" at 4:16 and ends at 6:25 (where ash and brock start talking, if you're hovering over the progress bar to skip.) In the Final Cut of the movie its at 55:51-57:58.

• "hey you said the humor wasn't bigoted" this one was so unexpectedly bigoted that it made me uncomfortable for years, and i presume if there were any others i would have also remembered them. i'll edit this post if i stumble on any others, though. and it might be a Product Of Its Time in some ways (such as if you're watching Red vs Blue)

• Operation Blind Storm is mandatory if you want to watch past the movie, but any other video that isn't prefaced with Stupid Mario Brothers you can skip. No clue what the Ash&Brock stuff is. Season 4 SAYS the interactive adventure is relevant but I don't think it is.

• content warning: Operation Blind Storm has flashing lights from 11:51-12:01 - Snake shoots the beacon - gunshot sound - screen goes fully white before it cuts to the flashing scene. When Snake says "What happened?" and Luigi responds, then it's safe to look. (This is shown again in a flashback in Episode 60 4:03-4:12. Ness puts the hat on his head, Darkness says "into his head", the scene cuts to flashing for ten seconds. It's safe to look when the Darkness says "Making me the most powerful" etc.)

• Also: most episodes would have bloopers at the end of the episode, but starting at Season 4 they get put in separate videos which are... not in the playlist. If bloopers are vital to your experience, check out the Season 4 and Season 5 playlists. Unfortuantely these playlists have missing videos (damn copyright getting stricter) so. Win some lose some. Reuploads are in the complete playlist.

• If you've seen a previous version of this post, you might recall me saying that Season 4 (46-60) had a sudden increase in diarrhea jokes. great news! I was misremembering the severity. It does have a lot of fart jokes but only two diarrhea jokes. Episode 46 from 8:00 to 10:06 (safe when u see Wii Sports), and Episode 57 from 4:30-4:53 (safe when u see Wario walking towards Mona).

• Stopping Places: you can stop after the Movie (not a wholly bad idea! it was clearly written to be 3 seasons and a movie), or you can stop when StMB ends at Episode 75 (if you like KH plots and the Darkness - that's the name of the dark clone of Mario - then consider going thru to 75). When I recommend StMB I usually am just recommending episodes 1-75 and the movie. HOWEVER. here's thoughts about other stuff in the playlist for you.

• Plumber Knight Returns (PKR) - this is like Mario but it's Batman but Batman is edgey and grimdark. Alternate timeline where Mario is older and stayed in the real world because Peach and Luigi and possibly also Bowser are dead. Definitely an M rating instead of a PG13 rating. Season 2 (starting at Episode 11) is marginally better because it has a more coherent plot, and if you're a serious fan of the Darkness you might want to watch, or you can watch episode 20 and ONLY episode 20 for some of Chris' best acting in the whole series. You don't have to watch PKR to understand anything else.

• Stupid Mario World (World) - a reboot series ft a smaller/different cast of characters oustide of Mario and Luigi - the costume budget has gone up significantly. Season 2 (starting at Episode 16) has fun plot about the multiverse and there's three Marios (one of them is from PKR) and it's all good fun. I don't recommend it as strongly as the StMB main series, but World is alright. Squall from FF8 is there and has homoerotic tension with half the cast. They did Linkle better than Nintendo did (Linkle is an actual reincarnation of Link). Stuff like that. OH! AND IT HAS PAULINE, WHO DIED IN STMB BUT WAS RESURRECTED IN WORLD, AND SHE'S THE MARIO BROS' BITCHY NEIGHBOR. GIRLBOSS OF THE YEAR. I LOVE PAULINE SO MUCH IN WORLD.

• Stupid Mario Bros: Legacy (Legacy) - series ending movie. Hugely redeemed the Darkness for me after both episode 75 and PKR sort of fumbled his portrayal. It was a movie made specifically for me. It's got bodysharing. It's got trust. The Darkness and Mario become friends. I genuinely don't remember what else happens in this movie because I was so taken by being fed Everything I Ever Wanted re the relationship between Darkness and Mario. Huge recommend if you're a Darkness fan.

friends of rar specific rec: if you watch Stupid Mario Bros then you will understand why FtPverse is like that. Darkness was a huge huge HUGE inspiration for Shad - even tho all the niche things they have in common occurred in StMB after I'd written them into FtPverse.

but nonetheless. It's good shit.

Also this portrayal of Ness is my favorite portrayal of Ness. It's a shame the Solid Snake portrayal comes from people who either didn't understand Metal Gear or never played Metal Gear. Oh Well!