There was a time when videogames were pretty controversial, with every news show saying that playing a game of Pokemon would turn you from an innocent, doe-eyed youth into a violent, doe-eyed killing machine. But somehow the Mario games never seemed to be too controversial, even though they managed to get some pretty messed-up messages subtly communicated to kids across the world. Maybe we should think twice before letting children play with fat, stereotypically-depicted plumbers who spend all day killing turtles…

The Mario franchise really hates Italians. Besides Mario and Luigi being portly stereotypical Italian plumbers (whose last names are Mario), the first enemy you encounter in the game is a "goomba." Very few game feature straight up racial slurs and get away with it. There are two possibilities: either the Japanese are still pissed that Italy totally bailed on them early in World War II, or whoever translated Super Mario Bros. into English had a really bad experience at the Olive Garden.

The internet is the home of the kinds of people that most leper colonies wouldn't take. The worst of these groups are furries. They dress up like animals, pretend to be animals, and if this doesn't sound embarassing enough, look at the Wikipedia entry for "yiffing." Ugh. Well, at least this stuff hasn't really gotten much exposure to kids or anything…

Yep, Mario was a furry before it was even mildly acceptable by an incredibly small basement-dwelling, wildly unhygienic section of the population. And even 20 years later, the middle-aged, overweight dude who coordinates his outfits with his younger brother is still up to his old tricks:

Mario eats nothing but mushrooms that make him think he's about 2 times his normal size, and has somehow convinced himself that he's dating a hot princess in a world populated by people dressed up as psychedelic mushrooms. Also, he spends his days in giant pipes that have plants in them. Odds that every game was just a 'shroomy-hallucination? Pretty good.

Maybe Mario just doesn't like the idea that he might be distantly-related to Donkey Kong, but he certainly doesn't see eye-to-eye with Darwin. He actually is more on the level of "the bad guy from Inherit the Wind." Yes, in the world of Mario, the Earth is a few thousand years old, the sun revolves around the earth (when it's not trying to kill Mario), and gravity is nothing but a lie invented by someone who had never heard of a raccoon tail. He never directly says it, but I think this is all the proof anyone needs to see:

Evolution? Psh. More like EVIL-ution. Or devil-ution. Or evolu-sin. Well, at least if I ever become an 8-bit religious fundamentalist, I'll have some options for my protest signs.