They're actors. In Mario Brothers 3 you can see the background bolted to the set and you go back stage at the end of every level. It's a production. Then they do celebrity sporting events.

Mario is a false narrator. She wasn't kidnapped, she left him because he would spend his meager paychecks on drugs.

Mario did this only once. The game is the memory of his trauma, playing on a loop.

Your playing is his therapy. Unless you lose. In which case, he wakes up from the bad dream in a cold sweat, and has to start all over.

My head canon is that the games where Bowser is the bad guy are just them playing roles and the sports games are their real selves. Rivals, not really enemies. Mario Kart World having all the mooks join in on the karting supports this idea.

They actually are in a polyamorous relationship and Mario has a cuckold fetish and a saviour complex. At the end of the day, all 3 of them fuck Toad.

If I was a police officer, and after surviving an accidental catastrophic zombie outbreak in Raccoon City, my government said "Hey you're really good at that, want to do it 5 more times?" I'd simply pivot to being a construction worker or something.

Isn't Bowser more of a turtle?

Accidents happen in high speed races and no one is prosecuted. It would be a shame for an accident to happen to the lizard during the race.

I like to imagine Mario and Bowser have a sorta Doof and Parry kinda relationship.

Bowser makes no sense. He's larger than Mario, why doesn't he simply eat him?

"Mario. You can't a do this! He's a the one who keeps kidnapping peach!" Said Luigi. "No" Mario responded. "That's a why we do do this". Mario then narrowed his gaze and gripped the steering wheel of his cart, his gloved hands making the sound of a tightening rope. "Today, brother. We humiliate him. Tomorrow, we take a him down for good".

You can't let your personal life affect your career, sometimes you have to work with people you dislike.

Open world Mario Cart?

Meaning, normal Mario but with cart?

You also wouldn’t be in a video game either, but that’s quite besides the point.

well, maybe now you realise why he kept trying to get that interfering girlfriend away from you.