Newly surfaced storyboards from The Super Mario Bros. Movie reveal Nintendo had ambitious plans for the wedding sequence that never made it to theaters. The 2023 film's climactic ceremony was originally packed with far more character cameos than audiences ultimately saw, including several surprise guests that ended up elsewhere in the franchise instead.
Among the cut appearances were Whomp King, Wart, Mouser, and Birdo. These three characters eventually found their way into this year's The Super Mario Galaxy Movie rather than the first film. But one exclusion stands out as particularly head-scratching: Rawk Hawk, the wrestling champion character from the GameCube classic Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.
For longtime Mario fans, Rawk Hawk's absence marks a missed opportunity. The character appeared as a memorable antagonist in The Thousand-Year Door's wrestling arena chapter, and the storyboards show he was slated to appear in 3D form during the wedding. The inclusion would have made thematic sense given that Nintendo released a remake of The Thousand-Year Door the year after the movie hit theaters, creating a natural tie-in moment.
Interestingly, other cameos from the wedding scene survived the cutting process. King Bob-omb and King Boo remain in the final film, leaving questions about why Rawk Hawk specifically landed on the chopping block.
Beyond the character lineup, the storyboards also reveal a different comedic approach to a key plot point. In the original version, Peach and Toad engage in a fake argument to set up a crucial moment where Toad secretly hands Peach the Ice Flower. The dialogue between them was noticeably snappier in the early draft.
"Maybe if the people I led weren't cowardly little spores, I wouldn't have to marry him," Peach says in the unused exchange, to which Toad fires back: "You're a rotten Peach." After Bowser gets frozen and the ruse is revealed, Toad delivers the punchline: "It looks like she got cold feet."
The storyboards themselves have become something of a digital hot potato. Nintendo appears to be aggressively removing copies from circulation, with images scrubbed from Reddit and the original artist's portfolio now displaying a 404 error page. However, an animated recreation of the storyboards has surfaced via video, documenting what might have been.
Looking ahead, the question of whether Rawk Hawk or other cut characters might resurface in future Mario projects remains open. Nintendo shows no signs of slowing down its animated movie production, with a Donkey Kong spinoff rumored to be in development and a third Super Mario Movie reportedly in the pipeline for 2029, according to Jack Black.
Author Emily Chen: "It's classic Hollywood, really: great ideas get trimmed for pacing or budget, and decades later we're all geeking out over what could have been. Rawk Hawk deserved better."
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