Super Mario Odyssey’s Freaky Living Hat Doesn’t Possess Things Insists Nintendo

Super Mario Odyssey is packed with a surplus of Nintendo’s trademark whimsy and charm, but, if you think about it, it’s kind of a dark game. The Mario Odyssey debut trailer revealed your new strange hat (named “Cappy”) can be tossed onto pretty much anything — enemies, people, inanimate objects — in order to possess them and their powers.

Ah, but Nintendo would prefer if you didn’t imply Mario was blithely running around possessing the mortal souls of every Goomba, Bullet Bill, and weird realistically-rendered person he runs across. This meme from webcomic artist Sam Logan recently made the rounds:

Usually Nintendo would ignore such online frivolity, but this time they came out of the woodwork to “um, actually” the use of the word “possess.”

Got it? Mario is just doing a bit of capturing, okay? No possession! Except, his new buddy Cappy is represented as a ghostly top hat when you first meet him, and the animation you get when you use your hat on something very clearly shows Mario flying up and entering their body. If that isn’t possession, I don’t know what is.

I mean, I get why Nintendo wants to distance themselves from the word “possession.” Mario charging about possessing innocent bystanders, particularly the humans from New Donk City, with a haunted artifact is a bit creepy. But is him “capturing” things any better? Possession vs. mind control, pick your poison. Of course, this is a Mario game, so it doesn’t really matter – dude’s been chomping magic mushrooms and curb-stomping turtles since 1985 and nobody’s really taken notice. Mario does what he wants, and we’re fine with that.

Super Mario Odyssey possesses the Nintendo Switch on October 27.

[via Polygon]