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Trivia: The movie was initially conceived of as a one-hour TV special/pilot to usher in the "Aladdin" animated series, but co-director Tad Stones convinced Disney that it should be lengthened slightly and released direct-to-video as a feature-film. Disney accepted his offer after being impressed by animation tests, which they felt were very high quality for the low-budget that the project was given.

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Trivia: Disney's first direct-to-video animated sequel. Releasing it direct-to-video was considered something of a gamble at the time, as producers worried it would cheapen the Disney brand. However, the gamble paid off - it sold incredibly well, and went on to become one of the best-selling VHS titles of all time, eventually making back over 50X its budget in profit. After its release, over 50 more direct-to-video animated Disney sequels were produced (if one counts both 2D and CGI movies).

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Trivia: When Mario tries to enter the castle, one of the guards makes a snarky comment that the "princess is in another castle." This is a reference to the original "Super Mario Bros." video game, in which Mario is repeatedly told that the princess is in another castle.

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Trivia: Due to the financial success of the previous two films, Disney originally intended for this to be a theatrical film. However, after their success with the direct-to-video animated sequels "The Return of Jafar" and "Aladdin and the King of Thieves," Disney decided to make this their first foray into a direct-to-video live-action sequel. Given it was gamble, this decision unfortunately resulted in the budget being lowered substantially in comparison to the previous two films.

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Trivia: An "Elektra" movie was almost made in the 90s by Oliver Stone of all people. He wanted to do a film titled "Elektra: Assassin" that would have followed Elektra battling The Hand, and he wanted professional volleyball player Gabrielle Reece to play the titular character. When the rights to Daredevil and Elektra were sold to Fox, Stone left the project due to the complications of working with different studios and producers.

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Trivia: The final film starring Bruce Willis to be released, coming out almost exactly one year after he announced his retirement due to Frontotemporal Dementia (initially diagnosed as Aphasia). Like many of his final films, it was created primarily for the VOD, streaming and home-video market, but was also given a token limited release in certain overseas markets.

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Trivia: The film broke several box office records in its 5-day Easter holiday opening, including becoming the highest-grossing video-game movie of all time domestically, beating Sonic the Hedgehog 2's $190 million within five days. It also had the highest opening weekend worldwide for an animated feature. A few days later, it became the highest-grossing video-game movie of all time worldwide. It subsequently became the first ever video-game movie to gross $1 billion globally after four weeks of release.

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Trivia: John Leguizamo, who starred in the original 1993 live-action film, criticized the film and attempted to get people to boycott it as he was upset at what he felt was a lack of Latin characters and actors in the movie. He also claimed that he was the "only one" who knew how to make the movie work. His comments have caused some confusion, as the film does contain several actors of Latin descent, and the titular brothers are Italian.

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Trivia: The Mario Bros. Plumbing commercial jingle is actually the theme song to the "Super Mario Bros. Super Show" from 1989.

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Trivia: Spike, the brutish jerk who serves as Mario's rival in the human world, is a character from the slightly obscure Mario arcade game "Wrecking Crew," which featured a villainous character called "Foreman Spike" who tried to stop Mario from completing the levels.

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Trivia: The pizza shop is called "Punch-Out Pizza" as a reference to the popular Nintendo game "Punch-Out!" Inside the pizza-shop is an arcade cabinet called "Jump-Man." "Jump-Man" was one of the early names used for Mario before they settled on the name "Mario."

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Trivia: Charles Martinet, who has voiced Mario in the games since the early 90's, has two cameos in the film. First is as an Italian man who talks to the Mario brothers at the pizza shop and whose voice is almost exactly like his Mario voice from the games. (He even lets out a classic "Woo-hoo!" just like Mario.) Second and much more subtly, he also voices Mario and Luigi's father, who appears at the beginning and ending of the film.

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Trivia: When Luigi is wandering through the bad lands before being attacked by the Dry Bones, you briefly hear a creepy piece of music for just a few seconds. It's actually a piece of music from the game "Luigi's Mansion," which focused on Luigi catching ghosts inside of a giant haunted house.

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Trivia: When Mario and Luigi are racing to their first plumbing job at the start of the film, there's two really fun easter eggs. First, the entire scene is shown from a profile perspective to emulate the look of the classic side-scrolling Mario games. And second, the construction equipment and supplies they are running past are arranged to look almost exactly like the layout of World 1-1 from the original "Super Mario Bros." video-game. It's subtle and easy to miss, but once you see it, it's obvious.

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Trivia: Luigi's cellphone ringtone is a slightly modified version of the startup sound for Nintendo's Gamecube console.

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Trivia: Nintendo originally started out in the late 1800's as a company that produced a style of playing cards called "hanafuda." In the scenes taking place in Brooklyn, you can see a billboard for hanafuda playing cards as a reference to Nintendo's more humble beginning.

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Trivia: The studio was unhappy with the first cut of the film, as it was more character-driven and would have got an R-rating, whereas they wanted a dumbed-down PG-13 action movie. The studio forcibly cut about 30 minutes of character and story development scenes out, and dumped it into theaters as quickly as possible. This forced the effects teams to use unfinished renders and animatics in many scenes, which explains why the effects are so bad... the studio didn't give them time to finish them.

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Trivia: Keanu Reeves remained friends with Laurence Fishburne after the original "Matrix" trilogy concluded. One day they meet for dinner and Fishburne talked about how much he loved the first "John Wick." Reeves had a script for the sequel sent to him shortly after. In less than 24 hours, Fishburne responded by saying "I'm in!"

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Trivia: Grossed more in its domestic opening weekend ($56 million) than the first film made in its entire domestic release ($43 million).

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Trivia: In the original ending, Mrs. Tingle didn't go to jail, and eventually made a truce with the students who were holding her captive, with everyone going free. This was changed in reshoots, as audiences felt she was so unlikeable, she needed to be "punished."

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