Curator

Curators are non-playable characters that appear at Information Booths in Mario is Missing! They appear in every city of the game. Curators provide Luigi with information on why a landmark is closed. In the SNES release, they also give him a pamphlet with information about their landmark, while in the DOS release, Luigi has to manually pick up the pamphlet from the Information Booth. Luigi can return the stolen artifacts to Curators after answering some questions about their landmarks to prove the artifacts' authenticity. If Luigi correctly answers the questions, he is awarded a certain amount of money and, only in the SNES and DOS releases, he can enter the Information Booth to take a picture of the landmark. If he does not answer correctly or gives to the Curators the wrong artifact, they angrily tell Luigi to leave. In the DOS release, the Information Booths are fully closed and Luigi has to use his videophone instead to call the Curators' numbers indicated on the booths.

In the original releases, the Curators' appearance is the same for every landmark. in the SNES release, they are female and their appearance is almost identical to Princess Toadstool's sprite in Super Mario World, the only difference being the change of hair and dress colors to brown and blue respectively. Notable is the fact the recolor mimics that of Princess Daisy's sprite from NES Open Tournament Golf. In the NES release, they instead have black bob haircuts and a white shirt. In the DOS release, the Curators' appearance on the videophone is different for every city, but the sprite depicting them in their Information Booth uses the same appearance for every booth, like in the other releases.

In the CD-ROM Deluxe release, the human Curators were replaced with five characters from the Super Mario franchise: a Dino Rhino, Toad, Donkey Kong, Princess Peach, and a Monty Mole. However, the human Curator still appears inside of the Information Booths when they reopen.