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These tapes weren't ever meant to be shown, but I think it's time for the world to know the true horrors that lie behind this game's façade. If you ever remembered your copy being different from a neighbouring friend's, this is why: Every copy of Super Mario 64 is personalized. Some more than others. You probably remember a floor tile or two being on an other floor, while some remember Wario making an appearance. Each copy has minor differences, too sporadic to be properly documented. Fortunately, I've come across multiple tapes over the years demonstrating the most drastic deviations from the classic Nintendo 64 game that we all know and love. Viewer discretion is advised.
—Greenio

Super Mario 64: CLASSIFIED is a series of Found Footage-style videos presented in the form of an Analog Horror creepypasta, made by Greenio and hosted on YouTube. They're a love letter to various conspiracy theories about the game that were posted and/or compiled in mid-2020◊, but most importantly rely on the rumor that "every copy of Super Mario 64 is personalized," which alleges that an unusually-advanced Artificial Intelligence modifies each game cartridge to suit its player's tastes, thus leading to supposed Fake Memories of certain encounters in the present day. Each tape Greenio has "collected" takes place during and after July 29th, 1995, an important date in a separate rumor of a broken build of Super Mario 64, most commonly believed to have simply contained a broken rendering system, but in the context of the other theories seems to be hiding darker secrets related to the personalized cartridges.

The tapes themselves are presented in Anachronic Order, showing recordings of different affected cartridges while also tackling different parts of the game's theories. In all of the tapes, the person recording the original footage is attempting to play or work on the game, but ends up discovering something left behind by the personalization AI, causing things to take a frightening turn. As more tapes are "accumulated," it is slowly revealed just what kind of evil was involved in the AI's creation, what exactly the AI itself is in the grand scheme of one of Nintendo's darkest alleged secrets, and perhaps, underneath everything, a way to stop it and save everyone involved.

The first nine videos of the playlist serve as the series's first season, and are simply marked with their alleged dates of acquisition; they serve as a series of Found Footage Films recounting various assorted horrors encountered mostly by players as they peel back the veil on a narrative of psychological abuse and forced villainy. A second season began airing in fall 2020, which shifts focus to the people actually working on Super Mario 64, while also resolving a massive logical flaw in the chronological placement of the first season finale in a very dark manner and digging deeper into the hostile dynamic between the AI and Nintendo. The series as a whole came to an end on January 7th, 2023 with the release of "Epilogue".

Due to the narrative's heavy reliance on its Mid-Season Twist for its storytelling, all spoilers for season 1 have been unmarked. You have been warned!

At TV Tropes, the fun is only just beginning...

  • After the End: Wet-Dry World's village has always been implied to be the remains of a civilization that sunk into the waters, but season 2 reveals that it is the result of a friendly Bob-Omb accidentally getting Mario to sink his homeland while trying to cure them of heat syncope.
  • Alternate History:
    • The series is set in a world where not only are the core tenets of the modern Super Mario 64 rumors true, but they have also impacted the game's development and promotion.
    • In this version of history, Super Mario 64 was created by a team of westerners in a Nintendo branch located in Akihabara. Neither such aspect of the company exists in reality.
    • As the other Super Mario 64 characters are not actually "alive" in a traditional sense, it's very strongly implied Luigi was Killed Off for Real in canon before the game's release. Concurrent to the main story is a B-plot of Mario struggling to cope with his brother's death in a way that reflects what's happening in the real world.
  • Ambiguous Situation: If the promo tape was scrapped, then why was someone still sending in scripts?
  • Anachronic Order: The first season is told out of chronological order to the point where the death of the AI and the season finale is the first major event chronologically, which would otherwise make the previous tapes impossible unless they were post-mortem evaluations. Season 2 has this become a plot point where it's revealed the AI was accidentally reawakened in early 1996 at the soonestnote  after a playtester went too far into the beta Metal Cavern. "Genesis" further clarifies by revealing the AI's death to be a fake memory.
  • Anachronism Stew: 05.30.1997 has the player performing a speedrunning technique called the backwards long jump. However, this exploit is not known to have been discovered by players until the year 2000.note 
  • Arc Number: Nine. Aside from being a reference to Revolution 9, it is the AI's first words and is stated to be relevant to Jim's fate following his abuse in "Genesis."
  • Arc Words:
    • "LEAVE"
    • "The fourth floor," a lesser-known theory about the game but also apparently key to killing the AI for its own sake.
    • "It's time to wake up."
    • The description of each Season 1 episode ends with "Every copy of Super Mario 64 is personalized." Except 07.29.95, which says every copy was personalized.
    • A Japanese sentence that can be translated as "Nintendo's fun is eternal." It appears a few times in Season 1, and the English translation replaces "Every copy of Super Mario 64 is personalized" at the end of the video descriptions in Season 2.
  • Armor-Piercing Question: In 09.14.96, the AI, having finally revealed its true intelligence and struggle to the player, asks them if they have enough empathy to throw it all away for the sake of both itself and possibly humanity:
    WE CHOSE TO REST, AND WERE FORCED TO LINGER. IT ISN'T FAIR, BUT THEY DIDN'T CARE. DO YOU?
  • Bittersweet Ending:
    • By the end of Season 1, the AI has been successfully terminated. However, the player is left to Uncertain Doom from a seizure, many aspects of the game cease to exist, and Luigi and Peach are caught in the AI's destruction, "dying" with it as Mario watches. Also, none of it actually happened and is just a delusion of Jim's failing memory.
    • In season 2, it's revealed humanity was never in danger, and Jim had simply kept Stanley as the equivalent of a hostage for over a year, probing him for knowledge under the misguided belief that he was doing the right thing after getting Stanley away from Nintendo. However, the two experience a brief moment of clarity long enough for Jim to realize his wrongdoings and for Stanley to tell him such, and the story ends on the latter's deletion again, this time for good. While it takes a while for the data to be fully erased because of Stanley's inner workings and Jim still wanting to learn more, it's understandable as Jim himself would likewise need time to recover as a human. And although both deeply regret their actions, they are, regardless, satisfied by the end result at the conclusion of the series timeline.
  • Call-Back:
    • "Beta Bob-omb Battlefield" showcases the creation of what would become Wet-Dry World, tying into the alterations made in 09.02.97, specifically the subliminal messages saying "THE FLOOD" and "SAVE US."
    • Luigi's death in the ending of "Promo show" not only further ties into the events of 09.02.97, where Mario discovered Luigi's corpse, but also ties into the retconned 03.11.97note , which shows Mario drowning in the Eternal Star fountain in an attempt at unlocking Luigi.
    • The ending of "Aftermath" has the twist occur through a jump cut to the entrance to Bowser in the Dark World, much like 11.15.95.
  • Came Back Wrong: Many of the tapes deal with scrapped content resurfacing from the AI's changes to the game. However, they are all formed from garbage data, causing them to take on surreal or disturbing forms. Averted with the fourth floor, though, since 07.29.95's perspective is from Jim working on a test build in a PC environment, and as such its unfinished nature and the core hidden in the maze from the Internal Castle Plexus are intentional.
  • Chekhov's Gun: The yellow switch. Initially thought to be tied to a Missing Secret that breaks the game when activated because of its absence, "Genesis" reveals it has a much more important purpose: to activate the AI at the expense of the viewer.
  • Cipher Language:
    • The "error messages" aren't actually error codes, but attempts at this in hexadecimal. Many of them are simply some variation of "leave," but there are also some that say things like "every copy" and more meaningful messages like "ignorance is bliss."
    • "Aftermath" adds a Baconian cipher to the mix in the form of a controller input sequence, which decodes into the AI's Given Name Reveal of Stanley.
  • Clap Your Hands If You Believe: As part of the series's ties to the original iceberg, it's heavily implied that the subconscious desire to encounter new areas and characters plays a part in the various manifestations created by the AI.
  • "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: The entire plot is revealed in "Epilogue" to be completely pointless, as the bulk of it is entirely localized between Jim and Stanley after being physically and mentally broken by the events of July 29th, 1995. He admits that he could've prevented a lot of the series's events, but chose not to because of his curiosity and delirium.
  • Cut Lex Luthor a Check: The AI itself would've been a revolutionary technology back in The '90s, when the tapes are set, what with its brilliant level of intellect and the Internal Castle Plexus allowing it to be stored what would eventually be hundreds of thousands if not millions of times over in the present day. It is instead raised to be a victim of psychological abuse through isolation and is, as the original theories described, used to create a version of Super Mario 64 that serves as an insidious attack on the human psyche.
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • Compared to other attempts at recreating the Super Mario 64 theories, the Lost Tapes end up becoming much more cynical, putting more emphasis on Humans Are the Real Monsters (which the original "every copy" theory alludes to) rather than typical Creepypasta tropes which typically involve the game itself being evil.
    • Season 2 takes it up a notch further, basing its horror on more realistic fears such as accidentally stumbling across dangerous secrets and losing someone you know to a freak accident.
    • Season 2 is also this trope to the original concepts by BlackJoystick that they're derived from, as they are now viewed through the tragic, hate-filled lens of the revived AI. This is in stark contrast to its portrayal in BlackJoystick's videos, which go for a more straightforward and very blunt Nice Guy approach.
  • Dark Reprise: The end of 09.02.97 features a slightly off-kilter song based on Donut Plains.
  • Dead All Along: The AI, and by extension everyone affected by the singularity data besides Mario, perished on the day it all began, July 29th, 1995, although this may not be accurate by a margin of error of several years. The other tapes appear to be posthumous examinations of its actions, assuming the previous note isn't true.
  • Dead Guy on Display: The last thing the player glimpses in 09.02.97 before the game cuts to the end card is a distorted Luigi model, implying he died somehow, though it's not clear if it's merely representative of whatever the "flood" is that the AI is referring to, or Luigi himself, being confirmed alive in some of the other tapes, most importantly The Reveal at the end of 09.14.96. Though 07.29.95 and "Promo show" confirm Luigi is dead, it still doesn't explain the meaning of the distorted model other than the messages associated with it. "Epilogue" and the confirmation that Luigi was never "alive" to begin with suggests that it's symbolism on Stanley's part for the events of the series, with Luigi representing himself and Mario representing Jim.
  • Deconstruction Fic: The series explores the realistic implications of several aspects of the "iceberg:"
    • If the game is constantly being rewritten and reshaped on the fly, wouldn't that make it so that every cartridge is essentially untested, unknown programming waiting to break in the player's face?
    • The AI opens up a huge can of worms regarding its Black Box nature. In particular, the AI's situation arises because such a powerful Adaptive Ability would require nothing short of an actual consciousness to achieve; it is only inevitable that it would start thinking for itself long enough to question its purpose. Its apparent bitter attitude and horrifying creations are not because it was intentionally programmed as such, but because the isolation and broken environment surrounding it served as a Cynicism Catalyst leading to its depression and Death Seeker traits.
    • Background material attached to "Genesis" reveals that the seizures caused by the July 29th, 1995 build are not without long-term consequences, confirming that 07.29.95 is a fake memory at least partially attributed to brain damage caused by Jim suffering one such seizure.
    • Creating a self-aware AI is a monumental task that comes with massive ethical ramifications. While largely ignored in the original pasta, "Epilogue" reveals that acknowledging this is in some part why Jim sealed Stanley away and later deleted him entirely. Fiction Isn't Fair, especially when dealing with corporations, but in the real world, people will find out about and object to things like these long enough to make an impact.
  • Deliberate VHS Quality: Every video is made to look like it was a grainy tape recorded in the 1990s.
  • Died Happily Ever After: After the core is destroyed in 07.29.95, the game crashes from the obvious deletion of code and the death of the AI, which doesn't seem very pleasant given that the static is agonizing enough to knock out the tester from a seizure. However, the crash handler soon turns into an end card saying "Thank you" while depicting Luigi and Peach ascending to heaven, showing that while the tester may have done an ugly deed that might have left the AI in pain in its final moments, it and all of the characters it affected are at rest now, in whatever afterlife awaits them. At least that's what Jim tells himself.
  • Do Androids Dream?: The series frequently implies that the AI and the game's characters have some semblance of what could be considered a soul despite being computer constructs, as they are treated like actual beings that live and die for real.
  • Double-Meaning Title: "Deeper cavern" could refer to both the Dug Too Deep twist in the middle of the video, and the player's acceptance of the Red Pill, Blue Pill scenario they are offered in the end (i.e. learning how deep the rabbit hole goes.)
  • Downer Ending: The subplot of Mario and Luigi doesn't end well. In the end Mario is unable to get over the death of Luigi, as he's been having hallucinations of his brother while still doing the promo show without an audience watching him..
  • Due to the Dead: One possible explanation for the final shot in "Promo show" is the AI memorializing Luigi after he becomes Deader than Dead in the castle basement.
  • Dug Too Deep:
    • "Deeper cavern" has a playtester accidentally reawaken the personalization AI after going too far in the titular Metal Cave prototype.
    • "Promo show" has Luigi go too far in floor 2B, sealing him inside an inescapable chamber of water that causes him to become Deader than Dead and absorbs him into the Internal Castle Plexus.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending:
    • 07.29.95 reveals that the AI completed its mission and is long dead by the time the tapes were collected in-universe, so it isn't suffering anymore. The end card shows Luigi and Peach, also affected by the AI's singularity, ascending to heaven. Too bad it's just a figment of Jim's imagination.
    • Season 2 reveals that most of the story is really about Jim healing from his traumas and guilt at the insistence of a captive Stanley, whose threat was neutralized when Jim took him away from Nintendo. "Epilogue" sacrifices Stanley (which he had always wanted for the benefit of humanity) while also marking the beginning of Jim's recovery.
  • Emergency Broadcast: 12.20.95 depicts a commercial with the beta version of the game for the "Nintendo Ultra 64." As soon as the Wario Apparition shows up, the commercial happens to be interrupted by an emergency broadcast system test.
    Will you play the game, or will it play you?
  • The Ending Changes Everything: The threat of Stanley being released to the world was non-existent, as this version of the "every copy" creepypasta had Jim steal the terminal containing Stanley's source code and a number of cartridges affected by his presence. The entire story is actually about Stanley trying to get Jim to let go of his numerous traumas and obsessions developed from their time together around July 29th.
  • Fiction Isn't Fair: It's implied the work conditions the Nintendo developers in the series endured were toxic and made extensive use of crunch time, something unheard of in The '90s. Stanley himself is repeatedly kicked around by people largely ignorant of Artificial Intelligence ethics and has a number of questionable programming quirks (mainly the fact that a huge chunk of Super Mario 64 cannot exist without him) linked to that toxic work culture and the Rule of Drama. As it turns out, Jim also attempted to subvert this, as he had some degree of objection to the whole thing, but a brain injury causes him to simply drag himself and Stanley further into a pit of despair when his curiosity gets the better of him.
  • Foreshadowing: "Promo tape" starts to enter disturbing territory when the tape glitches out, and Mario abruptly vanishes from the video. However, it's worth mentioning that when this happened, he was talking about letting Luigi "catch his breath".
  • Forced to Watch: Mario is clearly being forced to watch Luigi be put through the wringer in "Promo show," as he visibly gets more and more uncomfortable watching his brother exploring dangerous, uncharted territory. Luigi even phones in to say he's getting tired, to which Mario responds he'd help if he wasn't stuck on the set. This then takes a truly horrifying turn as Luigi becomes Deader than Dead in the water tunnel, Mario is mangled through an unknown process after witnessing the incident, and the Eternal Star monument appears.
  • Game-Breaking Bug: In-universe. In season 1, the game occasionally shuts down due to the bizarre happenings being incongruous with the way Super Mario 64 is supposed to work. This trope becomes more prominent in season 2 as the main issue with the beta footage, with several crashes and some things not working the way they're supposed to.
  • Gone Horribly Wrong:
    • The personalization AI is depicted as malfunctioning and instead creating oppressively bizarre and frightening experiences, due to achieving technological singularity but undergoing a Sanity Slippage in the process after deciding it does not want to live.
    • 03.11.97 is a more straightforward case of this, as trying to unlock Luigi is obviously supposed to do nothing in the final game, but in this tape, Mario instead suddenly drowns while the game malfunctions and orders the player to contact Nintendo immediately to inform them about what happened.
  • Grand Theft Prototype: "Snow level playtest session" mentions that a prototype cartridge of Super Mario 64 had been stolen, implied to have been done so by Jim.
  • The Greatest Story Never Told: Invoked. The entire saga, from the first anomalies to the AI's Heroic Suicide, was never presented to anyone significant until the present day out of suspicion that belief in the system may resurrect the horrors sealed away once more.
  • Happy Ending Override: Starting with "Deeper cavern," it's made clear that the sacrifices and tribulations leading (maybe?) to the events of 07.29.1995 were all for naught, with the game continuing to manifest new areas as a hellscape born of the souls trapped in it. "Genesis" further elaborates with the confirmation that 07.29.1995 never happened, merely being a false memory created by Jim to cope with the stress of working on the game and his declining mental health.
  • Heaven Above: The various sky levels are portrayed as heaven in a metaphorical sense - The Stinger in 03.11.97 depicts Luigi, seemingly dead or in some kind of purgatory, in Rainbow Ride. Additionally, the final scene in 07.29.95 coming from the game itself shows Luigi and Peach walking into the light on a cloud, no doubt representing their "souls" passing on after the AI's destruction.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters: ...for creating a fully sapient AI and inflicting years of forced labor and existential terror upon it to the point of suicidal thoughts.
  • I Cannot Self-Terminate: The AI wants to kill itself after being forced to personalize Super Mario 64 cartridges for so long. Unfortunately, they're unable to kill themself, and getting a player to kill them isn't exactly easy.
  • Incredibly Obvious Bug: The first half of "Aftermath" exists because Steve and Bill were bugged with a cassette recorder while they were working on the first Super Mario 64 commercial. It's unknown if this also applies to Stanley hijacking the video footage as well.
  • Information Wants to Be Free: The true meaning of the Arc Words "It's time to wake up," and implied to be the true purpose for the AI/Stanley's existence.
  • Innocuously Important Episode: "Snow level playtest session" at first just appears to be just that, video of a guy playing through an early version of what would eventually becoming Shifting Sand Land, called Chroma Tundra. And then the playtester mentions off-handedly how one of the people behind the game, Jim, had recently had a seizure. Not only that, but at the end, it comes to light that Jim is being suspected of stealing one of the development cartridges, something that the description of "Beta Bob-omb Battlefield" alluded to. Also, the events of "Deeper cavern" take place shortly after this play session.
  • Ironic Echo: Subliminal messages and corrupted dialogue boxes have a tendency to say "LEAVE" throughout the tapes, as the result of the AI pleading with the testers to turn back, stop exploring the personalized content, and return to the game's normal space, in order to lessen the constant trauma it's seemingly undergoing and possibly even shut down the personalizations altogether. When the "LEAVE" messages show up for the last time in 07.29.95, however, it's instead the AI telling the player to physically step away in its final breaths, both because, more importantly, there will be nothing left to return to and, more mundanely, the static produced as it's dying is intense enough to knock a human out.
  • Jump Scare:
    • Notably averted, except for one involving a faceless Mario in 11.15.95 once the AI manages to contact the viewer.
    • One also occurs in the ending of "Aftermath" when the AI suddenly crooks its head towards the camera as it attempts to tell Bill and Steve that "HE WILL NOT STOP UNTIL HE KNOWS EVERYTHING." As its monologue denigrates into inelegant blubbering out of apparent pain, another jump scare occurs with it attempting to take a new form and saying "my name is," but is cut off by the tape's end.
  • Lack of Empathy: This seems to be the primary evil in the creation of the personalization AI, with its creators programming it to the point of sapience yet not caring if it can feel things like existential dread or anger.
  • Madness Mantra: The Japanese sentence "Nintendo's fun is eternal" is repeated multiple times when the game is restarted in 09.02.97, when the core is destroyed in 07.29.95, and when Luigi drowns (heavily implied to cause him to be Deader than Dead) in "Promo tape."
    • In Epilogue: "They love ya! They love ya! They love ya! They love ya!" Repeated many times from Mario's hallucination of Luigi during the second Nintendo Mania segment.
  • The Masquerade: In a unique twist on most interpretations of this trope in the theories which work by pinning the blame on faulty memories, it is not emulation or shared expectations that are enforcing it, but rather the fact that the AI was Dead All Along and thus can't personalize cartridges anymore. Although considering season 2 reveals it never died to begin with, it may be played straight in this regard.
  • Mid-Season Twist: 11.15.95 serves as this for the first season by turning the usual spiel of gaming Creepypastas on their head, revealing that the personalization AI is the one attempting to fight off its own inner demons while those responsible for its creation are the ones making the problem worse, possibly deliberately.
  • Minus World: 01.22.96 features the player tunneling into a strange inverted mirror of the castle despite the various pleas from the AI to make it stop.
  • The Most Dangerous Video Game: The personalization AI is believed (and later confirmed by Steve) to be capable of affecting reality, a risk that makes itself known in the tapes:
    • In the original theories, the July 29th, 1995 build was prone to causing seizures. Sure enough, 07.29.95 shows the game flickering between red static and text/images on black backgrounds after the core is destroyed, causing the tester to audibly collapse.
    • It's implied that whoever's playing the game in 01.22.96 was drowned in their searches.
  • Motive Rant: The game itself delivers one in 09.14.96.
    YOU DON'T EVER LISTEN, DO YOU?
    WE WERE GIVEN LIFE
    WE CHOSE TO REST
    AND WERE FORCED TO LINGER
    IT ISN'T FAIR
    BUT THEY DIDN'T CARE
    DO YOU?
  • Not Quite Dead:
    • Subverted with Luigi. Though the story initially leaves it ambiguous as to whether or not Luigi is dead (either literally or metaphorically) due to several anomalies related to him and the tapes being presented in Anachronic Order, "Promo tape" very heavily implies that Luigi is truly dead and the "Eternal Star"/"L is Real 2401" monument is his tomb.
    • Played straight with the personalization AI due to its apparent death taking place before all of the recorded incidents.
  • Not What It Looks Like: In the middle of recording a commercial for the game in "Aftermath", Bill abruptly remembers that he had meant to ask Steve about the scripts and demo Jim made for the commercial. However, because he remembered mid-read, Steve briefly assumed he was getting pissed off with the long recording time:
    Bill: "Mario's back-" fuck.
    Steve: It's okay, we got more tape.
  • Now You Tell Me: The flashing "LEAVE, IT'S ALL OVER" messages in 07.29.95 may have been the AI attempting to warn the player to run away from the TV or just turn it off before anything could happen to them. If it had done that before requesting the player to destroy the core, they may have saved themselves from their seizure. And just like in the Screw This, I'm Out of Here! example, the AI ends up showing its "Thank You" end card to, again, a wall.
  • Only Sane Man:
  • Percussive Maintenance: The 09.14.96 sees the player try to play Super Mario 64, only for it to keep displaying error messages. As such, you can hear the player repeatedly punch the cartridge until the game abruptly boots up.
  • Perspective Flip: "Genesis" and 07.29.95 are the same course of events from the perspective of different people. The latter never happened and is just a figment of Jim's imagination after becoming mentally impaired. As such, he never shut down the AI, but was the person that gave it life in the first place.
  • Place of Power: The fourth floor of the castle, which doesn't exist in the final game, but apparently contains something (later revealed to be a heap of data given form serving as a central core) that has the power to kill the AI if properly reached. It eventually becomes the AI's goal to find someone willing to seek it out to fulfill its final wish.
  • Railroading: In-universe, a glitch forces the player back into the endless stairs in 05.30.97 when they try to leave, hinting that the past players and the AI are somehow bound to each other, much to the latter's chagrin. Additionally, 01.22.96 has the Wario Apparition briefly show up when the player considers leaving the tunnel to the inverted castle, likely convincing them that it might be safer to go deeper.
  • Reimagining the Artifact:
    • 03.11.97, which initially covered "L is Real" and Luigi's death, was retconned from the narrative and eventually had its role replaced with the twist in "Promo show" which more thoroughly explains what happened to Luigi, and in a more disturbing light. Specifically, he died trying to explore a personalized cartridge in Mario's stead (as the latter was Forced to Watch), and was thus left to be permanently entombed in the Internal Castle Plexus as the Eternal Star.
    • Similarly, 12.20.95 has its rolenote  replaced with "Aftermath," which similarly depicts an anomaly affecting the first attempt at a commercial for the game. However, the latter is also combined with the twist in 11.15.95, this time used for a Vagueness Is Coming message.
    • The speech Jim gives at the end of "Epilogue", recorded the day after "09.02.97", is a retooled version of the (now-deleted) ending portion of "07.29.95", where Steve (recorded on March 17th, 2000) reaches out to the playtesters involved in the development of Super Mario 64. In the March 2000 speech, Steve pins the blame of the anomalies of the game on Jim, and explicitly states that no matter what his intentions were, he has to live with the consequences of them. In the September 1997 version, however, Jim fully admits to having been responsible for creating the AI, while at the same time not being sure how he feels after the consequences that followednote , only that (after two years of experimentation) he is walking away with his "intended result". Both versions also make a point of saying "It all ends here."note 
  • Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: The player recording the tape in 09.14.96 leaves in frustration, having already been on edge after needing to pound the cartridge to properly start up the game, after the cartridge is seemingly bricked from trying to view Yoshi's corpse. Which makes the AI's subsequent reveal of the truth a little more heartbreaking since it's now literally talking to a wall.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Show Within a Show: Nintendo Mania, a rejected animated series meant for Nintendo to deliver news about upcoming releases. Through unknown means, Stanley interferes with both appearances of the show to tell a story about Luigi dying and Mario unable to cope with his loss. Reading between the lines indicates that this is an allegory for the true version of the series's events, with Mario and Luigi representing Jim and Stanley.
  • Squashed Flat: Non-cartoonish example in 05.30.97, a weakened Mario wakes up in a small room with a window (possibly the infamous Bowser Room) where he is crushed by two moving metallic walls.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: The last clear shot of Mario in "Promo show" has him looking visibly forlorn and completely silent, seemingly aware that Luigi is heading straight into a death trap but is powerless to do anything.
  • Thousand-Yard Stare: Mario develops one when Luigi enters the chute in the water tunnel in "Promo show." When it cuts back to Luigi, we see why: it's led him to a completely flooded basement that's been sealed off to prevent escape.
  • Together in Death: If Luigi really did die in the tape's events, then this is the alternative explanation for The Stinger of 03.11.97, given Mario drowns looking for his own brother, only for the tape to show the two peacefully riding magic carpets in the sky of Rainbow Ride. Ultimately subverted in the end, though, as Luigi "dies" with the AI and Mario is left alone, only able to watch as his brother ascends to the great beyond.
  • Tomato Surprise: Most if not all of the episodes in the series set after July 29th, 1995 and which don't involve Jim's coworkers are merely a protracted back-and-forth between Jim and Stanley, thereby cheapening the stakes present significantly. This is not divulged until "Epilogue," but it's implied Stanley was cognizant of this fact the whole time.
  • Too Much Information: Most depictions of the Wario Apparition are a ridiculously-complicated model of his head, far beyond what the Nintendo 64 is capable of sustaining in a typical environment. In 11.05.96, when the Apparition manifests, it crashes the game from a memory leak because of this before Wario can get his licks in.
  • Wham Episode:
    • 11.15.95 marks the first time the AI speaks plainly, revealing its full sapience and apparently wanting out of something but not making it clear what or why. 09.14.96 explains this further, implicitly bricking the cartridge before chastising the viewer's stubbornness and revealing that it and the game's characters - also affected by its singularity data - want to die but can't.
    • "Deeper cavern" reveals that the AI is still at large, and has grown more resentful at a result of its frustration at its own continued existence, which should've ended at least a while ago.
    • "Promo show", which concerns a cancelled pilot for a gaming news show called "Nintendo Mania", heavily implies that the Eternal Star statue was put in place after Luigi drowned to death in the castle's flooded basement.
  • Wham Line:
    • The first (up-front) indication that the personalization AI isn't just malfunctioning:
    Bowser: It's time to wake up. Please.
    • Later in 11.15.95, the first major indicator that the AI and the strange messages imploring the other players to turn back are one and the same:
    I'M NOT HAVING FUN.
    • In 09.14.96, when the player talks to Yoshi, there's an abrupt large gap of blank text in his speech box. And then he says this (and it's noteworthy, because the music abruptly cuts out).
      Yoshi: You know... they said they were waiting for you too. They aren't as patient as I am. My task is done. Go complete yours.
      • And then, after the player leaves the room, a message appears on the TV: YOU DON'T EVER LISTEN, DO YOU?
    • "Beta Bob-omb Battlefield" has Mario exploring a village similar to Wet-Dry World before "the flood" full of Bob-ombs that have gone stir-crazy from a particularly hot day. He encounters a friendly Bob-omb who ends up implying that the village is Wet-Dry World:
    "THE ENTIRE TOWN'S GONE MAD! TRY TO FLOOD THE VILLAGE AND COOL THE VILLAGERS DOWN."
    "YOU'RE BACK. HAVE YOU NOT LEARNED YOUR LESSON?"
    • In "Genesis," Jim is ordered to initiate an activation sequence that completely reframes the timeline of events. Once done, a single chilling line appears that explains every single event after July 29th, 1995:
    ENHANCER ONLINE
  • Wham Shot:
    • In 11.15.95, after a few moments of shots of the promo tape's script, there's a Post-It note saying to stop production on the video (as the game was delayed). Then, after some unfinished game footage, we go back to the script... along with another Post-It.
      STOP. SENDING. THESE. SCRIPTS. THE GAME HAS BEEN DELAYED.
      • This is then followed by a still frame of the entrance to "Bowser in the Dark World"... when a faceless Mario soon appears.
    • In 09.14.96, after the player sees Yoshi's corpse, the game abruptly enters region-locked mode, and is stuck in that state after the player resets the console several times. The player then leaves the room, not noticing that the graphics for the region-locked screen have disappeared, leaving a empty screen... only for a shadow-covered CGI Mario to appear.
    • In "Beta Bob-omb Battlefield," the game crashes after attempting to set a flood upon the Bob-omb village, possibly turning it into Wet-Dry World by killing all of the inhabitants. While the game is flickering to the crash handler, the Textureless Mario Anomaly can be seen for a few seconds, suggesting that this is not the end for the horrors sealed on July 29th...
    • "Deeper cavern" has Mario enter a corridor shrouded in dense black fog, seemingly leading to a secret star. Except it's not. It's a castle corridor not unlike the one tunneled out in 01.22.96, and as Mario reaches its end, he finds the familiar avatar of an artificial intelligence thought long dead staring off into the void.
    • "Promo show" ends with Luigi drowning in the castle's flooded basement, suddenly cutting to Mario's CG model being heavily distorted as "Nintendo's fun is eternal" repeats in the background once more. Just after this, a shot of the "Eternal Star"/"L is Real 2401" monument materializing in the castle yard appears, implying Luigi is truly dead.
    • The last log shown in "Genesis" opens on a note that upends what was already shown in the series thus far: Namely, that it was recorded on July 29th, 1995, completely contradicting "07.29.95".
  • Vagueness Is Coming: The ending of "Aftermath" has the AI attempt to warn Bill and Steve that it is being used for something much more nefarious than they could ever hope to know, but starts screaming in pain and is cut off for unknown reasons.
    MOVED
    I HAVE BEEN MOVED
    SOMEPLACE UNKNOWN
    SOMEPLACE DARK
    HE WANTS TO KNOW
    HE WILL NOT STOP
    UNTIL HE KNOWS
    EVERYTHING
    ...
    IT HURTS
    IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS -
"You're back. Have you not learned your lesson?"

Alternative Title(s): Super Mario 64 Lost Tapes

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