Talk:List of references in theater

Delete this page (for now, anyway)

This talk page section contains an unresolved talk page proposal. Please try to help and resolve the issue by voting or leaving a comment.

Current time: August 17, 2026, 09:13 (UTC)

Based on the vote so far, this proposal may be eligible to close one week early. Please use {{proposal check|early=yes}} on August 21, 2026 at 23:59 (UTC) and close the proposal if applicable.

This page has existed more-or-less uncontested since 2006, and it's not really hard to see why; the overlap of theater-knowers and Mario fans is pretty slim. We reckon most people would thusly see this proposal, and ask, "Hey, why even bother deleting this? Surely this page is just a list of Mario references from Broadway productions, or something of that caliber." And to that, we simply respond:

Just look at it.

Here's the problem. All of these are local theatrical affairs. There's nothing wrong with local theater, of course, but the problem is that the barrier for entry is substantially lower for local theater. We require video games to be published, whether by a company, or self-published on either Steam, itch, or at least some equivalent therein relative to its time. For YouTube, you need at least a Silver Play Button (100k subscribers) before we even entertain listing the reference... And, well. Running down the list of references:

• The first entry here is a deadlink, and the closest thing we can find to any sort of metric for anything is its old Kickstarter that's somehow still up, which says it achieved... 176 backers. We've seen object show Kickstarters with more backers than that.
• The scale! The second entry holds on to a single YouTube upload on a channel with 74.9k subscribers and the video itself has only 11k views. None of those are the 100k quota most YouTube items get.
• The third one holds on to a different YouTube video, on a channel with 387 subscribers. We are willing to cut it some slack as it somehow has 4.4 million views, but that's still not really much considering it mostly got that way by being one of the earliest videos titled "Super Mario Brothers".

So, okay, three entries already isn't much, but all of them have some weird wrinkle or asterisk that makes us question them fitting within our coverage policy. The "best" ones are an early viral video and a Kickstarter, and, most of all, there's really nothing... Backing any of these, beyond the venues themselves. Each of these are, effectively, self-published, with not much else to them. Really, the only thing keeping this page afloat is the general apathy towards its state, considering, again, there's not much overlap between theater fans and Mario fans. So, if basically none of the provided examples fit the scope of our references pages... Why even keep the page at all?

Obviously, with a page like this, we feel the need to leave a pretty obvious caveat; if a reference in a Broadway production or some other more global theatre is found, then the page gets to continue existing, or can be re-made without proposal if this proposal passes. In addition, if one is found mid-proposal, this proposal will instead become about removing the three current entries from the page, since either way, they don't really fit what our reference pages tend to contain.

...We're also fully ready to acknowledge that we're, admittedly, probably not using Broadway correctly here (surprise, we're also not the most aware of theater stuff, though we do know a few things from osmosis), and will emphasize that we're using that term very loosely.

Proposer: Camwoodstock (talk)
Deadline: August 28, 2026, 23:59 (UTC)

Delete page (get off the stage!)

1. Camwoodstock (talk) Per proposal.
2. The(ater) Dab Master (talk) Per proposal.
3. Wandering Dūke (talk) Absolutely. Let us close the curtains on this tragic article and lay its contents to rest. If we had chosen to keep it, I would've had questions regarding its scope and qualification, regardless. Especially so given that all three examples on this page appear to be more akin to fan content, which is generally not something we cover.
4. SuperActor18 (talk) There's very little content and the page is certainly a product of its time, alright? The loss won't be that big, and as per WD, this is very much fan content, as opposed to "actual" references in otherwise unrelated works.
5. LadySophie17 (talk) Per all. Exit stage left.
6. Illuminoid (talk) Per all.
7. SolemnStormcloud (talk) Per all.
8. Dominoes from the Orchestra Pit (talk) Per all.
9. Rykitu (talk) Per all.
10. Arend (talk) What gets me is that the only three entries listed here are small-scale, unofficial Mario-themed musicals not endorsed by Nintendo. Not that you need to be an official Mario product to be listed as a reference, but these are all fanmade Mario stage productions. By that logic, we should be allowed to cover any Mario fangame, under the notion it's covered as a video game reference.
11. Drago (talk) Per all.
12. ThePowerPlayer (talk) Per all.
13. The Yoshi18 Movie (talk) Per proposal.
14. Ian 255: 254's long awaited sequel (talk) Per all. This page, as it is, should die happily ever after.