Back in 2021, Elon Musk hosted the American comedy show Saturday Night Live, where he suited up as Nintendo villain Wario. The parody sketch was panned online—and reportedly did not go over well inside Nintendo, either.
Former Nintendo PR managers Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang recently revisited the sketch on their YouTube show. The segment put Wario on trial for allegedly murdering Mario, and Ellis revealed that the performance was “not well-liked” within the company, with some of its material making people “uncomfortable.”
Ellis noted that Nintendo had no new Wario game or related product to promote at the time, making the show's sudden decision to parody the character especially strange.
The content itself raised even more concerns. The sketch joked about Mario using cocaine, implied that Luigi had sex with Princess Peach, and even featured a shot of Luigi's genitals covered by a censor mosaic—all a far cry from Nintendo's family-friendly image.
The pair brought up the controversy again after Saturday Night Live recently featured Link from The Legend of Zelda debating Jason from Grand Theft Auto VI over which game was better. The sketch mostly took shots at The Legend of Zelda while presenting GTA 6 as the cooler game. It received similarly mixed reactions, although Ellis and Yang believe Nintendo was probably more comfortable with it than with Musk's Wario sketch.
Saturday Night Live has also recruited The Last of Us star Pedro Pascal for a gritty, post-apocalyptic take on Mario Kart. Parody is standard territory for a comedy show, but for a company as protective of its characters as Nintendo, how far those jokes go clearly remains a sensitive issue.