Where did the Goombas come from?
In the Super Mario series, there are little creatures called Goombas. If you haven't played Mario, this is a Goomba.
My question is this: Where did they come from? What inspired the Goomba? It's been in Mario since its start, so what exactly is it, and where did it come from?
Best Answer
They came from the Mushroom Kingdom, being residents that joined Bowser.
A mushroom who betrayed the Mushroom Kingdom.
– Super Mario Bros. manual
They are inspired by mushrooms. Specifically shiitake mushrooms:
We decided that that we should make an enemy that you could easily squash with a single blow. That's why we made it so that the first enemy the player would encounter would be a Goomba. But we created it right at the very end. [...] It's a shiitake mushroom!
– Iwata Asks: New Super Mario Bros. Wii
As an aside, in Japanese they are called Kurib?, which means something like "chestnut person". While presumably this refers to the colour, the design in Super Mario World was of a literal chestnut rather than a mushroom.
click images to enlarge
Pictures about "Where did the Goombas come from?"
What race is a Goomba?
Goombah is a pejorative slang term for people of Italian descent, mainly in the United States, with several related connotations to the Mafia (either the Italian-American Mafia, the original Sicilian Mafia, or other Italian organized crime groups) or gangs of Italian or Italian-American origin.Why did the Goombas betray the mushroom Kingdom?
All the Goombas wanted was to be able to express their natural miserablism in peace, and so they chose battle and death over betraying the very essence of their being.Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: Skylar Kang, Guryan, Andrew Neel, Pavel Danilyuk