5 Unlikely Pop Culture Influences On Nintendo Games

4. Hard Rock/Heavy Metal

Shigeru Miyamoto is a proclaimed fan of rock music. He was once quoted as saying, "video games are bad for you? That's what they said about rock and roll." Though he probably didn't name them himself, five of the Koopalings, Larry, Wendy O., Iggy, Roy, and Lemmy, borrow names from hard rock and heavy metal music. Specifically, Iggy Pop of The Stooges, Lemmy of Motörhead, Larry Mullen Jr. of U2, Roy Orbison, and Wendy O. Williams of the cult punk band The Plasmatics. Many of their namesakes' personalities contrast with the child-friendly demeanour of Mario games; that is, Lemmy being a notorious womaniser and drug user, Iggy Pop being a sex-and-violence fuelled onstage maniac who would cut himself and Wendy O. being known for destroying equipment and being arrested for public indecency. Similarly, the Reznor dinosaur mini-bosses found in Super Mario World are in fact named after Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame. Interestingly, the game was released in 1990, a few years before 1994's The Downward Spiral catapulted Reznor to being a household name. The band's first album, Pretty Hate Machine, had come out a year before Super Mario World, though it would take a few years for the album to really gain traction, in part due to The Downward Spiral's success. Since evidently, the development team behind Super Mario World knew about Nine Inch Nails before anyone else, does that make them proto-hipsters?