10 MORE Video Games You Didn't Know Were Connected
4. Mario/The Legend Of Zelda
Fans are going to debate the possibility of Mario and Zelda existing within the same universe until the end of time, but what can't be denied is that these franchises, both created by Shigeru Miyamoto, love to reference one another.
Perhaps the all-timer example appears in The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, where in Hyrule Castle you can find paintings of Mario, Luigi, Peach, Yoshi and Bowser visible through a window.
While at first glance these paintings might seem like harmless Easter eggs, when you consider that paintings in the Mario franchise typically act as portals to warp to levels, one can't help but wonder if they might work similarly in Hyrule.
This ties in to a long-standing theory that Hyrule and the Mushroom Kingdom could be neighbouring nations, especially as the two franchises have occasionally borrowed each other's enemies or feature designs bearing a significant similarity (Zelda's Deku Baba compared to Mario's Piranha Plant, for instance).
Seriously debating the possible shared continuity of Mario and Zelda is probably a fools' errand, yet the nods to one another are significant enough to raise eyebrows, if still easily missed by the more casual player.