The Venice Menace

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 episode
"The Venice Menace"
Production number	125
Airdate	December 1, 1990 (English) November 29, 1991 (French)
Writer(s)	Matt Uitz
Opening curtain	Desert Land
Featured song	"Speedy Gondola"
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"The Venice Menace" is the twenty-fifth episode of The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3. It aired alongside another episode of The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 entitled "Super Koopa".

Plot synopsis

Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool, and Toad are walking through Desert Land, when a gondola comes flying out of a Warp Pipe and lands nearby. When they approach the gondolier, he exclaims that a sea monster is attacking his hometown of Venice. Mario thinks that the gondolier is hallucinating, but the gondolier reassures him that he is being serious.

The gondolier speaking to Mario and Luigi.

Knowing that Venice might be in danger, Mario gets a strange feeling inside him, and explains that Venice is his second favorite city. Princess Toadstool then sends Mario and Luigi off to visit Venice, but not without them each taking a Frog Suit from Toad.

Elsewhere, in an underwater area of the Mushroom World, King Koopa and Kootie Pie Koopa are piloting the Doom Sub. Koopa explains to Kootie Pie that his aquatic minions will guard the Warp Pipe leading to Venice while they are gone to prevent the Mario Bros. from trying to go after them while they scare everyone out of the city. Kootie Pie then gloats about how she and Koopa are going to then warp Venice back to Dark Land so that they can turn it into the "Kootie Pie Koopa Waterpark", and she kisses her father's claw.

Just after the Doom Sub enters the Warp Pipe to Venice, Mario and Luigi show up in Frog Suits, and are immediately chased around by Boss Basses, Jelectros and Bloobers. After swimming away from the enemies for a while, Mario defeats them by throwing ring coral around their bodies. With the enemies no longer a threat, Mario and Luigi go down the pipe.

Later, in the canals of Venice, Mario and Luigi are dressed as gondoliers to disguise themselves from Koopa, and are riding around in their own gondola. Mario then brings up how Venice gives him a strange feeling again, as he and Luigi unknowingly pass by the statues of two plumbers who resemble them.

The Mario Bros. zooming past the Doom Sub.

Without warning, the Doom Sub surfaces and starts chasing Mario and Luigi. Koopa and Kootie Pie are furious about Mario and Luigi making it to Venice, but Koopa manages to close in on the bros.. Mario and Luigi quickly transfer to a motorboat, and flee from the Doom Sub in a chase sequence. During the chase, a clothes line gets caught on the Doom Sub's windshield, blinding Koopa and causing him to crash. The crash causes a leak in the Doom Sub's hull, which Kootie Pie quickly welds back together with a small Fire Brother. While Koopa holds the broken hull in place, Kootie Pie accidentally welds his shell to the hull.

At night, King Koopa and Kootie Pie are walking through Venice, when they spot Mario and Luigi spending the night at a hotel. Although Luigi thinks that they defeated Koopa and can return to the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario insists that they stay and figure out what is pulling them to Venice.

Koopa then dispatches several Chain Chomps to eat through the poles holding up the hotel, causing it to sink underwater. A Boom Boom knocks on the door, which Mario lets in by accident, along with a Hammer Brother who enters by breaking through the window, flooding the room in the process. As if that were not enough, the Chain Chomps, along with several Boss Basses, continue to sink more buildings.

Mario being launched by the Note Block.

Mario and Luigi trick the Boom Boom and the Hammer Brother into entering a closet, where they change into their Frog Suits and trap the enemies. They then sneak onboard the Doom Sub, while Kootie Pie whines about not yet having her water park. Mario then surprises and taunts Koopa and Kootie Pie, and they chase him into the engine room. While they are gone, Luigi pulls the Doom Sub's recall lever, which causes all of the attacking minions to retreat.

In an attempt to get rid of Mario, Kootie Pie turns the engine up to full blast, which sends Mario flying into the cockpit of the Doom Sub, where he meets up with Luigi. Mario then pulls another lever and flees the Doom Sub with Luigi, just before the entire thing warps itself to Desert Land. With their plan foiled, Kootie Pie bursts into tears and throws a temper tantrum.

Back in Venice, the gondolier from earlier is giving Mario and his friends a gondola ride as a thank-you gift. He then stops in front of the statues that Mario and Luigi overlooked earlier, and explains that they were Marco Polo's Plumbers, and that they brought plumbing back from China to make Venice the city it is now. Princess Toadstool concludes that the plumbers were probably ancestors of Mario and Luigi, and with that mystery solved, the heroes rejoice. Mario says he is glad to get a tour of Venice, Italy, his second favorite city, but his favorite city will always be Brooklyn.

Cast

• Walker Boone — Mario
• Tony Rosato — Luigi
• Tracey Moore — Princess Toadstool
• John Stocker — Toad, gondolier
• Harvey Atkin — King Bowser Koopa
• Dan Hennessey — male singer
• Paulina Gillis — Kootie Pie Koopa, female singer

Animation and continuity errors

• In the Shout Factory and nCircle DVD releases of this episode on the complete series, when the gondolier explains that Marco Polo's Plumbers brought plumbing back from China, a glitch occurs.
• At the beginning of the episode, Mario's hair is colored black like Luigi's instead of brown.
• When Mario and his friends run over to the gondolier, Toad's pants are missing.
• When the gondolier tells Mario and his friends that Venice is being attacked, he is layered outside of his gondola.
  • In addition, his statement is false, as the Doom Sub has not arrived in the city yet.
• When a Spiny Cheep Cheep chases Mario, it is colored white instead of red.
• In a couple of scenes, the Spiny Cheep Cheeps' eyes are colored white instead of green.
• When Mario asks if Luigi feels how he feels, Luigi's eyelids are the same color as his eyes.
• In several scenes throughout the chase, Mario and Luigi's gloves are missing.
• When the Doom Sub starts hitting clotheslines, its roof disappears briefly.
• When King Koopa says he is going to find the Mario Bros, his mouth moves before any dialogue comes out.
• When the Chain Chomps start eating some poles, they are frozen for a few frames.
• In some scenes, the Hammer Brother is colored as a Boomerang Brother or a Fire Brother.
• When Mario and Luigi pull the lever in the Doom Sub, their Frog Suits are blue instead of green.
• When Mario says that he must be having a nightmare, his air bubbles freeze for a few frames.
• When King Koopa tells Kootie Pie to be patient, the camera zooms in on him, but the background does not take into account this change.
• When King Koopa says that Mario and Luigi passed through his trap, a dot on Kootie Pie's bow switches between brown and white.
• During the chase, Mario's hat flies off, but in some scenes, it reappears.
• In Venice's initial appearance, Mario and Luigi's gondola moves left as the screen moves right. Once the gondola reaches the end of the screen, it moves right with the screen.
• When King Koopa tells Kootie Pie to turn one the engine, the lever is yellow, but in the next shot, it turns brown.
• When King Koopa tells Mario to give up, the Note Block Mario is on is floating above the ground.
• When Mario says, "Oh yeah?", his mouth does not move.
• When Mario is about to be hit by the engine, his mouth moves, but not sound can be heard.
• When Mario flies past King Koopa and Kootie Pie, Kootie Pie's bracelets are colored gray instead of yellow.
• When Mario meets Luigi in the cockpit, the eyes on Luigi's Frog Suit are colored white instead of yellow.
• After the Dooms Sub is warped to Desert Land, it remains for a short time.
• When the gondolier says, "Leonardo Da Vinci! Valerie Bertinelli! Ha ha ha ha, Mario and Luigi!", at the end of the episode, his mustache is missing.

Names in other languages

Language	Name	Meaning
French	Sauvons Venise	Let's Save Venice
German	Das Monster von Venedig	The Monster of Venice
Italian	La minaccia veneziana	The Venetian Threat
Portuguese	Ameaça em Veneza (Herbert Richers dub) A Ameaça á Veneza (BKS dub)	The Menace in Venice
Spanish (NOA)	La amenaza Venecia	The Venice Menace (Not a grammatically correct sentence in Spanish)
Spanish (NOE)	Venecia amenazada	Venice threatened

Trivia

• One of the famous Italian people that the gondolier mentions is Lou Albano, an Italian American, who played and voiced Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!.
  • He also mentions John DiMaggio, an American actor and voice actor who voiced Uncle Arthur in The Super Mario Bros. Movie 33 years later.
• Even though Big Mouth and Bully are not seen in this episode, they were mentioned by Kootie Pie when she says that she wants to brag about her water park.
• In the Italian dub of the episode, there is a reference to Sorrento, cited by Mario as his second favorite city after Brooklyn. This reference is absent in the English version.