Cheese

Cheese is a source of nourishment found in both the Real World and on the Mushroom Planet. Cheese has, amongst other, smaller appearances, been seen in Donkey Kong 64 and Luigi's Mansion.

Cheese first appeared in Donkey Kong 64, where Tiny Kong can find an old, moldy piece of cheese in a trash receptacle in Creepy Castle. By shrinking in size with her Mini Monkey ability, she can actually go inside and venture atop this block of cheese.

In Luigi's Mansion, cheese is, much like in the Rare, Ltd. game Perfect Dark, placed in rooms rather spontaneously. However, unlike in Perfect Dark, the Luigi's Mansion cheese has a point: If Luigi selects it with the Game Boy Horror, a Gold Mouse will be triggered. This mouse will then appear whenever Luigi crosses a randomly selected mousehole, which will be announced by a distinct chime; Luigi can suck this mouse up for lots of money. This cheese appears only in the dark.

Thanks to its fame as a well-known, household object, cheese has been found in other games, mostly in other forms. Examples of this include Cheese Bridge (a Super Mario World stage named after cheese despite its lack of it) and Cheese Land (a Mario Kart: Super Circuit stage completely made out of cheese). Cheese also appears as one of the many generic Food items in Super Smash Bros. Melee (where it restores 3% of the player's health), and also makes minor appearances as a part of other items (such as the hamburger, where it can be seen as a sort of a condiment). Cheese was mentioned in one of Goombella's Tattles for the Moon in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, where she theorized that Moon Clefts might "live on green cheese". She later told Mario that she was only kidding in saying that, but then whispered to herself that she was "bummed that there were only rocks" on the Moon, implying that she once believed in the clichéd joke that the Moon was made of cheese. In Super Paper Mario, cheese is briefly mentioned when Mimi states that her favorite smell is Old Cheese. A cheesy, seemingly Cheese-It-like snack known as Nibble-Ums can also be optionally referenced in Super Paper Mario by talking to Francis (who states that he'll need some extra food and energy to create Tiptron Mk. II and orders his MeowMaids to fetch him some of these Nibble-Ums) after buying Tiptron from him.

Mario-related, cheese-based products, such as Super Mario Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, have also struck up appearances in the Real World.

Comics
Although it made no regular appearances, cheese had a relatively large role in the Valiant Nintendo Comics System comic "A Mouser in the Houser". This comic introduced a large log of cheese known as the Sacred Cylinder of Cheese, which King Toadstool was rather fond of for unconfirmed reasons (although most other people found it to unimportant and even stupid). "A Mouser in the Houser" also revealed that the Mousers (who, after their leader's betrayal of their race, had eaten little more than stolen vegetables) loathed cheese and even had a limited fear of it; the fact that peoples' assumptions that they liked it, as well as the fact that most Mousers' peers awarded them with large amounts of cheese on special occasions, made things only worse for them. In the end, when cornered by an angry Mouser and with no other options, Princess Toadstool (who was once one of the few people who could respect the Sacred Cylinder of Cheese) ended up sacrificing the Sacred Cylinder to the Mouser, who was then stunned by memories of past cheeses long enough for Mario and Toadstool to escape. Cheese's only other appearance in the comics was a quick reference in "Betrayal Most Proper", where one of the many phrases displayed on King Toadstool's newest crown was "The Big Cheese", in reference to the king's power.

Trivia

 * In the Real World, it is traditional for one to say "cheese" when getting his or her picture taken. This tradition of having a photographer declare "Say cheese" was actually referenced in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (where a Koopa Troopa photographer gave Mario the similar command of "Say Cheep-Cheep" in a certain scene) and even directly used in the Japanese version of that game.