If there’s one thing the Super Mario Bros. movie was good for, it was settling a long-standing dispute among video game geeks: Does Mario have a last name, and if so, is it also Mario? After all, the game is called Mario Bros., which implies the iconic plumber’s name is Mario Mario. In the movie, there’s a scene where Bob Hoskins’ Mario and John Leguizamo’s Luigi are being booked at a police station and profess that, yes, Mario is their last name. Years later, Mario’s creator, the legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, would tell Game Informer that this was just a joke written for the movie, and not a piece of official Nintendo-sanctioned Mario canon. But in a move that was surely designed just to screw with us nerds who obsess over this kind of meaningless minutiae, he’d later reportedly reverse course on that denial, making him Mario Mario yet again.
Now, ever the troll of Nintendo fans everywhere, Miyamoto has gone and dragged Link from The Legend Of Zelda into this same predicament. In a new, lighthearted interview with Game Informer about the upcoming Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, Miyamoto is asked if Link has a last name, to which he replies: “It’s the same as Mario. Link Link.” Naturally, the comment sends Eiji Aonuma, the long-time head of Zelda development, into a bit of an adorable giggle fit.
The rest of the interview is just as charming, with Miyamoto admitting he constantly screws up when trying to cook food in Breath Of The Wild and mentioning that Zelda’s developers love Tingle, the eccentric 35-year-old man who’s obsessed with fairies and first appeared in Majora’s Mask. And at one point, Miyamoto even delivers a sick burn on his colleague. When asked if players can skip Breath Of The Wild’s Water Temple, a nod to a notoriously frustrating dungeon in Zelda: Ocarina Of Time, Miyamoto points to Aonuma, Ocarina’s head level designer, and says, “He didn’t make the dungeons, so we’re fine.” Ouch.