Photo of Phil Harnage at Power Con.
“I was totally unaware of Mama Luigi's cult status. It's like winning the lottery but no one told you.”
Phil Harnage[1]

Phillip L. Harnage is an American television writer and screenwriter who was employed by DIC Entertainment from the late 1980s up until the company's acquisition by Cookie Jar in 2008. Harnage wrote several episodes of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, and Super Mario World, and served as story editor for the latter.

Beside his work on the DIC Super Mario cartoons, Phil Harnage has been involved in production and writing on many of DIC's animated series, such as Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, Street Sharks, and the "Sonic Sez" segments of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.

BackgroundEdit

In a 2025 interview with Tales From the Collection, Harnage revealed that he was not a gamer and instead developed Super Mario episodes by watching producer John Grusd play. Nintendo gave DIC significant creative freedom, focusing primarily on character designs rather than narrative details.

Episodes were written to stand alone due to syndication requirements, often parodying movies, fairy tales, or historical periods—such as "Count Koopula," where Bowser is portrayed as a vampire who eats spaghetti. Harnage created the caveboy character Oogtar for Super Mario World, and wrote the line "That's Mama Luigi to you, Mario!" in the episode "Mama Luigi," which later became an Internet meme. He expressed surprise about its cult popularity, likening it to "winning the lottery but no one told you."

Production creditsEdit

Writing creditsEdit

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!Edit

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3Edit

Super Mario WorldEdit

ReferencesEdit

  1. ^ The Pope (May 25, 2011). Phil Harnage Interview. YouChew Archive. Archived October 21, 2019, 01:11:04 UTC from the original via Wayback Machine. Retrieved July 1, 2025.

External linksEdit