10 Horrifying Video Game Character Truths You Missed

Who exactly is Wario? On the outset, the yellow and purple branded villain seems to exist only to be a parallel to Nintendo’s all-star hero Mario. He’s greedy, smelly and generally unpleasant and that is essentially his entire background. In terms of the games, we’ve never received much reason for why Wario is the way he is and why he seems to oppose the saviour of the Mushroom Kingdom to the lengths that he does.

However, tucked away in issue 44 of Nintendo Power is a comic strip that not only attempts to give Wario his much deserved backstory, but sets the record straight: He’s only after Mario because the plumber treated him like dirt as a child.

The comic recounts several incidents in the characters’ adolescence that clearly had a sustained effect on Wario: picking plants together with Mario choosing to pull turnips, leaving Wario with the piranha plants and playing “sheriff and rustler” together, with Mario forcing Wario to be play-arrested 1,256 times and laughing at his one attempt to play sheriff.

Mario sounds like the most entitled brat who never learned to share or treat others fairly. And considering that when Wario confronts his rival about this 20 years later, the moustached bully just tells Wario to not be “such a wimp”.

Have a heart, Mario!