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Occasionally, these cameos are quite baffling and leave the player with a ton of lingering questions about what they just witnessed. The Nintendo cameos listed below are the oddest of the odd, but also raise the possibility of something interesting in the future - like the cameo in entry nine.

10 Portraits In The Castle

Mario and Link do not cross paths- except for that one time at the Rose Town. Excluding games in the Smash Bros. or Mario Cart series, it’s uncommon to see characters from the Mario and The Legend of Zelda franchises in the same game. Nintendo will occasionally give a nod to the fans with one of these cameos.

One of these cameos can be found in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. At one point in the game, the player will have to sneak into the castle courtyard with Link to meet Zelda. She can be found eavesdropping at a window, but if the player searches around they will find another window to peer through that reveals framed portraits of the main characters in the Mario games.

9 Pikmin In The Flowers

In the Pikmin games, the player uses small plant-like creatures to overcome obstacles. Different color Pikmin reflected different abilities - red Pikmin are immune to fire, blue Pikmin cannot drown, etc. They are incredibly fun games, and Nintendo keeps assuring us that Pikmin 4 is in development.

Players of Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour, for the GameCube, who land their ball in a flower bed while playing in the Mushroom Kingdom might notice that the flowers that fly through the air as the ball hits the flowerbed are actually Pikmin. Could this be a hint about the setting of Pikmin 4? How much better would a Pikmin game be if it was open-world and set on a golf course in the Mushroom Kingdom? Yeah.

8 Chain Chomp In Link’s Awakening

This entry is another example of a character from the Mario series appearing in one of The Legend of Zelda series of games. The Chain Chomp is a familiar enemy to players of the Mario games. They are large spherical sets of animated jaws held back by being chained to a post; they are almost indestructible and typically guard valuables.

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In The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, the GameBoy original, and the 2019 remake, there is a hut guarded by a very feisty Chain Chomp. This one is friendlier than the Chain Chomps encountered by Mario in the Mushroom Kingdom, and even assists Link. Why are the Chain Chomps in the Mario games so angry? And why isn’t there a Chain Chomp Pokemon yet?

7 Donkey Kong In The Crowd

The original Punch-Out!! game, not Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, but the 1984 arcade game had some interesting, and somewhat baffling, cameos in the audience. The most noticeable cameos are Donkey Kong and Donkey KongJr. However, Mario is also in the crowd.

Donkey Kong came out in 1981. In that game, Mario was the antagonist. This game is only a few years newer. So, is Mario hunting Donkey Kong, and his son, through the audience of a boxing match? Maybe they’re all just there to watch a boxing match. Baffling.

6 Mario In Marbles

Seeing Sonic the Hedgehog in Nintendo games is nothing new. That wasn’t always the case; back in the 8-bit and 16-bit days, the two would never, ever, appear in each other’s games. Nintendo and Sega were the two big dogs competing for market share. Characters from a Mario game had as much of a chance of appearing in a Sonic game as Master Chief does appearing in the next Zelda game.

Mario, unbeknownst to Nintendo, made a cameo in the 1991 Sonic the Hedgehog game - the first in the series. Well, he sort of made a cameo. The temple in the background of the Marble Zone has some tiles with a familiar face on them. Was it a coincidence, or a shot across the bow?

5 Virtual Cameo

Not many gamers remember the Virtual Boy, and even fewer have fond memories of the thing. Having to stare at a bright red display inches away from your eyes is not part of any recipe for a good time. This is one game console that Nintendo wants us all to forget.

It’s a little baffling that Nintendo chose to remind gamers of the failed console by having Luigi use one in Luigi’s Mansion 3 for the Switch. In this excellent game, it is called the Virtual Boo, and it’s used as the games mapping system. It’s almost as painful to look at as an actual Virtual Boy.

4 Killer Fur Day

Conker’s Bad Fur Day has gone from an obscure game to a must-have N64 game. It is known for being one of the few games on the system that was developed for adult players, rather than kids. It has a lot of mature content and is a game any true gamer should play once.

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This game was made by Rare; who, back in the 16-bit and N64 years, was a leading developer for Nintendo consoles. Another of their popular games was Killer Instinct. This is a fighting game that recently got remastered. One of the idle animations in Conker’s Bad Fur Day shows him playing Killer Instinct on a GameBoy Color. This raises so many questions.

3 Metroid In Dreamland

Talk about a weird cameo. The Kirby games are colorful, cartoon-like games starring a cute flying puffball. Then there are the Metroid games; which are dark and filled with suspenseful, almost frightening, moments. This would be the last two Nintendo franchises one would figure would feature crossover cameos. It exists though.

In Kirby’s Dreamland 3 for the SNES, there are two cameos on the second stage of the Iceberg. First, Kirby encounters the alien life forms known as Metroids. If Kirby defeats them all, the protagonist of the Metroid series, Samus, will appear and give Kirby a Heart Star.

2 Mario In The Ring

This one still baffles gamers. In the two Punch Out!! variants for the NES, the referee for Little Mac’s matches is Mario. Mario cameos were not too uncommon for NES games; they usually were just Mario standing in the background though. In the Punch-Out!! games Mario is actually participating by being the referee.

So now Mario has gone from being a member of the audience to being the referee. Is he there in case Donkey Kong shows ups to another boxing match? Why is Mario not the referee in every Punch-Out!! game? Yeah. He’s there for Donkey Kong.

1 Metroid: Wings Of Liberty

Here’s a cameo that is not only really cool but also very baffling. In StarCraft: Wings of Liberty a Metroid, the alien creature, can be seen in a containment tube. This can be found on the player-vs-player map titled “High Orbit”. It makes one wonder what’s in the other containment tubes.

This cameo spawns a thousand questions. Are Metroids a member of the Zerg? Perhaps they are the larva form of the Zerg leaders known as Cerebrates. Does Samus ever come into contact with the Protoss or Terran forces? Most importantly, will there ever be a true crossover between the Starcraft and Metroid games.

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