Super Mario 64 Conspiracy Iceburg

The Super Mario 64 Conspiracy Iceberg is a diagram originating on 4chan that categorizes many different rumors and theories from Super Mario 64. The top of the "iceberg" covers well-known theories such as, L Is Real 2401 and a hidden 1-Up in Whomp's Fortress. The iceberg then goes down to more unknown rumors, with some of them at the bottom layer possibly being made up for the sake of being creepy or mysterious. The very bottom theory states "Every Copy of Mario 64 is Personalized".

## Layers

The entire Iceberg has five layers, each one becoming more mysterious and surreal as the diagram descends.

### Tip of the Iceberg:

* L is Real 2401: The most popular rumor here. This talks about a statue in the castle courtyard with a plaque on its front, present in both Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time. The plaque texture is only 32x32 pixels, so it's impossible to decipher what exactly its saying. There are two likely possibilities, "Eternal Star" or "L is real 2401", the latter of which hinting at Luigi's existence in the game. This is proven false by digging through the game's code, and there even exists a letter from an employee at Nintendo, claiming it was all a joke, with the purpose of making people try to find out what was actually on the plaque.
* SpaceWorld '95 beta: A showcasing of an early Mario 64 build, shown at Spaceworld 1995. (Shoshinkai 1995 at the time.) No dumped ROM is known to exist, although faithful recreation hacks are available online.
* Whomp's Fortress tower 1-up: A secret 1-Up exists inside one of the walls of the Whomp's Fortress tower.
* Bob-Omb Battlefield bridge hanging: You can hang off the bottom of the bridge in Bob-Omb battlefield. There are other bridges in the game that have this parameter, like the bridge in front of Peach's Castle
* Impossible Coin/Goomba: Some coins inside Tiny Huge Island spawn under of the level's collision map, making them impossible to collect. In Bowser in the Sky, a triangle of Goombas spawns as an object on a small platform; one Goomba spawns floating above the platform, meaning it falls off the level.
* Half A press: A term coined by Mario 64 connoisseur pannenkoek2012, where the player presses and holds down the A button to give Mario additional forward momentum, this term is used when looking at a level individualy from a least amount of A presses run.
* Parallel universes: Another term by pannenkoek2012 If Mario goes far enough out-of-bounds, the level's collision data reloads. (And crashes the game.)

### The Iceberg:

* Big Boo unused text: In both Mario 64 and the DS remake, there are some unused lines of dialog in Big Boo's Haunt, more than likely being spoken by Big Boo himself
* "Don't become his lunch": Part of a sign explaining Dorrie in Hazy Maze Cave says "Don't become his lunch". This is likely a joke about how Dorrie might be scary to a small child.
* Dancing flowers: Unused flower decoration textures exist in the Lethal Laval Land assets.
* Mirror Room: Mario's reflection in the 3rd floor mirror has a few anomalies.
* Yoshi's saddle: Yoshi has a saddle despite not being ridable. The rim of his saddle is also discolored.
* Volcano blocks: A few scattered blocks are present at the star platform in Lethal Lava Land's volcano, meant as decoration.
* Blargg: An unused enemy meant to appear in Lethal Lava Land, Bowser in the Fire Sea, and for some weird reason, Wing Mario Over the Rainbow.
* ET in pyramid: In the Shifting Sand Land pyramid, "ET" can be seen on the hieroglyph texture, likely a nod to the theory that aliens built the Egyptian pyramids.
* Secret Aquarium: A secret level in one of the wall indents in the Jolly Roger Bay room.
* Jolly Roger Bay vanishing fog: In the first star in Jolly Roger Bay, a layer of fog is in the level, and the level's skybox has a greenish hue. After collecting the star, the fog effect permanently disappears from the entire save file.
* The big dud: After King Bob-Bomb is defeated, the Pink Bob-Omb at the beginning of the level says he's now nothing but a "big dud". Also, in the rolling ball pit, there are three balls present instead of the previous two.
* Bugged fire texture: the smoke texture that shows when Mario is burned is displayed in an incorrect format.
* "Please walk quietly in the hallway": A sign in the 3rd floor of the castle says: "Please walk quietly in the hallway.". It is unknown why you would need to walk "quietly" in said hallway, but it's probably not that important. Just thought you'd like to know.
* Hazy Maze Cave Alcoves: Several large indents in the walls are present in Hazy Maze Cave, meant as a rest area for the player.
* Unagi's tunnel: In Jolly Roger Bay, Unagi the Eel rests in a tunnel blocked by vines. The tunnel doesn't go very far before coming to a dead end.
* MIPS Throwing: A cut feature was being able to throw MIPS the Rabbit by the ears.
* Yellow Cap Switch: An unused Yellow Switch exists in the game's code. Though it's probably just a way to get star blocks in the game and nothing else.
* Broken Paintings: This can refer to multiple things. Every painting has three parameters to it, but this only applies to Wet Dry World. There are painting duplicates on the 3rd floor of the castle that cannot be entered.
* Jolly Roger Bay Box: A strange box on the Jolly Roger Bay ship. It has some strange collision where it can do a lot of crush damage if you move into it.
* Ghoul Medal: A play on words seen in Big Boo's Haunt. It was somewhat obvious, but many players still thought it was an actual collectible nonetheless.
* Whomp King Turns into Tower: After you defeat King Whomp, it is implied that his stone body was used to build the new tower.

### Bottom of the Iceberg

* Wet Dry World Skybox: The level's skybox is an edited photo of a city in Spain.

* Mario Enters Wet Dry World Early in the GotMilk Commercial: This is blatantly false. Mario has 37 stars in the commercials, enough to enter Wet Dry World, though, one thing the commercial does get wrong is the skybox, when mario jumps out of the T.V. you can see that the level in the ad uses a cloudy skybox (Whomp's Fortress skybox) instead of the one in the game, which doesn't have any clouds at all.
* How Bowser got into the castle with his sub: Bowser used Dire, Dire Docks as a gateway into the castle and attacked it by surprise, he seized the power stars to hinder Peach's evacuation, using this, he successfully trapped and kidnapped the Princess. By the time Mario arrives at the castle, absolute nothingness is in the castle other than a few surviving toads. Interestingly enough, there's a gate inside Dire Dire Docks that leads outside the castle.
* True locations of painting worlds: In Super Mario Galaxy 2, a galaxy called Throwback Galaxy is present, Whomp's Fortress probably takes place here.
* Big Boo's Haunt Forest: The skybox of the Big Boo's Haunt level seems to have a dark forest, though in the game Mario only shrinks to the size of the cage the level is in.
* Zelda 64 prototype assets in Wet Dry World: These assets were used as placeholders for the doors in Dire Dire Docks, but it ended up being used as the final texture instead.
* Removed or cut courses: Pretty self explanatory.
* Skyboxes are photographs: This is actually true, for example, the skybox in Wet Dry World is actually an edited photo of a city in Spain. And in Shifting Sand Land also had somewhere in Egypt or Spain? I forget...
* SM64 is freemason initiation: I mean, the coins have freemason symbols on them, right?
* Whomp's Fortress interior: There is an inaccessible interior located in, well, Whomp's Fortress, trying to enter it crashes the game, though it should be noted as an anomaly nonetheless... It's unknown if the A.I. could fix it, though considering what it's been capable of doing, it's most likely a pository.
* Big Boo's secret laugh: Yes, the Big Boo himself has a secret laugh in Big Boo's Haunt, it plays in two possible locations: In the foyer of the mansion, or on top of said mansion. One streamer, I forget his name, called this out in a confused manner. I think other people were confused too. The most likely culprit of this happening is, you guessed it, the Personalization A.I.
* Yoshi commits suicide: Okay, let's all admit, this sounds very **VERY** dark and nonsensical when you first hear it, but when you think about it, it actually makes sense. Once Yoshi gives Mario 100 lives as a reward for getting all 120 stars, he jumps off the castle... When you were a kid, you probably thought, "Oh, he's gone back to Dinosaur Land, he'll be fine." But no, he jumped off and killed himself because of the abuse of Mario Mario from the Super Mario series of videogames.
* The number "120" has spiritual significance: The number One hundred and twenty (120 (You knew this by the way.)) is actually an angelic number where if you see it in your life, the angels will tell you that it's time to do something massive. What that is, I can't say, though considering the backstory, it becomes somewhat obvious.
* The tower of the Wing Cap's true location: This is somewhat related to the true locations point, the main tower along with the 4 towers seem to be conected to a larger tower of sorts, but the rest of the structure is not modeled.
* Island in the distance: In the Bob Omb Battlefield skybox, there are islands in the distance, but it's pretty blurry, so hey, what do I know?
* Lethal Lava Land painting fireball: The painting seems to use one of the fireballs from the Super Mario World boss fight, though the enemy is not seen ingame, it may or may not be posible that the fireball enemy would be in Lethal Lava Land but went unused like Blaarg.
* Debug menu names: One of these debug menu names is "Free movement mode", I just thought you'd like to know that. There's also a beta level select featuring these too.
* Bob-Omb Village: An unused sub course found in Bob-Omb Battlefield, it is the only removed course that has all seven stars collectible (Including the 100 coin star.)
* Rainbow Ride's village: Remember the floating house in Rainbow Ride? Well, there's an entire unused course based around that house. Only two stars are collectible though, both the 8 red coin and 100 coin stars are impossible to collect due to the lack of coins in the area. It appeared in Super Smash Bros. Melee, as well.
* Original resolution textures: The original resolutions for the textures are surprisingly larger, though scaled down to fit the N64's hardware limitations. (Obviously.)
* Cold, Cold, Crevasse: A sign near the beginning of Cool, Cool, Mountain states "Danger, Cold, Cold, Crevasse below!" Or something like that. Most likely an unused area because below that sign doesn't look anything like a crevasse.
* Secret Slide dimensional rift: The secret slide in Tall, Tall Mountain was used as the slide in Cool, Cool Mountain (Known as Snowy Slide at the time.) at the Shoshinkai 1995 demo. It's also used by the A.I. to transport new assets into the game itself. Which is why so many anomalies have been found in said slide. AGAIN WHOOPSIE \*DAISY\* THE END screen: So, there are some unsettling things in this screen, like why is the picture so dark, what's in the picture ahead? NO one really knows.

### Deep Darkness

* The course in the Bowser painting: In the Bowser In The Dark World and Bowser In The Sky entrances there are multiple paintings of Bowser that don't actually lead anywhere.
* Wet Dry World negative emotional aura: Remember as a kid, where you felt uncomfortable going into Wet Dry World? Well, it turns out, this course is actually a highly accurate simulation of the human brain. Hence, the amount of anomalies discovered in such a short time span.
* Metal Mario texture: The Metal Mario texture is actually filtered from a photo of a garden of flowers. Sounds kinda strange, huh?
* Peach is behind the stained glass window: When you beat the game, Peach appears in front of said window and floats down peacefully. It is most likely, with a twisted sense of humor, Bowser trapped her inside the same window.
* Brain diagram: This is referring to the fact that the map of Wet Dry World is, you guessed it, a human brain diagram.
* The Wario Apparition: The infamous Wario Apparition was shown off at E3 1996, promoting the N64 and the Virtual Boy (Despite its' failure.) However, the Wario Apparition was reused in internet rumors and was made to look a lot more scary and ominous than the E3 promotion could ever be, despite having the same image. Some people like to say Wario was most likely intended to be a boss that Mario had to fight, but because of the hit box having been removed, (And the fact that he's supposedly sentient.) it's impossible to defeat him.
* "Ally with info": In Super Mario 64 DS, one toad is referring to Wario (Who is playable in this version).
* The Bowser room: A fake image created by OneyNG to start a rumor within his school, it is popularized in a let's play on the OneyPlays channel.
* Bowser broke the door: It is belived that the back door of the castle was broken by Bowser in an atempt to enter the castle and was quickly fixed with bricks and a lower quality door.
* The Forbidden Door: The door behind the mirror room, it is not actually possible to enter it because it doesn't have a room behind, though in the DS remake this door is used for a secret star.
* Hazy Maze Cave entrance room is a sewer: This is true, technically speaking. The "painting" itself isn't actually a painting, just a gigantic pile of sewer water Mario had to swim through, actually, that would make anybody else rethink entering the level again.
* Ship my pants? Ship my pants, right here?
* The decompilation is censored: This is because Nintendo wants to cover up as much as the A.I. as possible. So, you won't read much about the A.I.
* Full Oman Archives: There was a former Nintendo worker who went by the name "Oman", he released the archive but was quickly caught by the higher ups, and he was arrested. Nintendo censored a lot of it, and it is illegal to read the full Oman Archives.
* Toad Projection: The developers seem to try and hide the N64's render distance by making the toads fade in and out whenever you aproach them.
* Silicon Graphics' curse: Okay, I admit, I've got a bit of explaining to do with this one, but basically, the early Shoshinkai assets had transformed into the final graphics all on their own! How? Well, the personalizing A.I. of course!
* Wiggler's body parts are used in Bowser fights: It's true! One part of Wiggler was reused and is below the spikey bombs in all of the Bowser fights.
* Toads literally trapped inside the walls: In multiple instances the line of "trapped inside the walls" is used by characters and signs to signify that the toads can't exit the castle, though various players assumed that there are actual Toads in the walls.
* 1995/7/29 Build (DO NOT RESEARCH): Exactly like it sounds, an early build of Super Mario 64. It predates the N64 being patented, making it the oldest game on the N64 hardware. Only one catch, this build is very dangerous to play... It could cause death, even if the player in question doesn't have a clear history of epilepsy at all. It is also very dangerous to research, (Hence, the title of this bullet point.) as the dangerous nature of the build even leaks onto the internet. It's unknown if there are any differences other than the double digit HUD between this build and the Shoshinkai demo, we don't know, and we probably never will.
* Hazy Maze Cave is in the castle's septic system: The Hazy Maze Cave entrance seems to have sewage pipes along the walls and there appears to be a giant deposit in the middle, in the actual level, players have said that the rolling rocks are poop and that the toxic mist is farts. Hey, I had to read about it, you have to read about it.

### True Darkness

* Enchanted SC88 samples used in OST: Did you know that the OST sounded much better than the actual game audio? Well, it can be added into the game using the Personalization A.I.
* The internal plexus of the castle: The entirety of Princess Peach's Castle Interior would realisticaly not fit in the actual castle.
* Sequel was cancelled due to temporal leakage: That's right, a sequel was planned to be made for the N64DD add on, but it was shorly canceled.
* Miyamoto stole SM64 from Argonaut: So, in case you don't know, Argonaut piched the idea of a Yoshi platform game for the N64, Nintendo didn't accept the game idea as because at the time they did not enjoy the idea of giving their IP's to other companies, the idea of a 3D platormer game was later used for SM64 and the Yoshi 3D game got reused for Croc.
* Shared nightmares: Some players would have nightmares about the same thing, the penguins in Cool, Cool Mountain. More specifically, their early designs. They would also have nightmares about stuff like the Wario Apparition and the Haunted Piano... You get the idea.
* Not for Resale cartridge differences: Any cartridge of Super Mario 64 that has the "Not for Resale" text on it has been heavily personalized.
* Delicious Cake: There's, for some reason, an unused line in Super Mario 64 reading "Delicious Cake".
* Lavender Town and Polybius were cover ups for SM64: Fan theory about SM64 being an evil game lead to people saying that Polybius and Lavander Town had been used to hide the truth of Mario 64.
* Every copy of Super Mario 64 is personalized: Rumor goes there is a Personalization A.I. deep within the game that changes the game slightly to the player's liking and they don't notice. Have you ever played somebody else' copy of Super Mario 64 and felt that something was just a little bit off and you couldn't quite put your finger on it? That's why, that's how... Take my word for it, every copy of Super Mario 64 ever released, bootleg or not, is personalized.
* I just shipped the bed!