Nintendo Officially Settles the Toad Head Vs. Hat Debate

In a new video published by Nintendo, Super Mario Odyssey producer Yoshiaki Koizumi answers some age-old fan questions about the franchise’s most popular characters. Is Toad’s head really his head, or is it a hat? Why doesn’t Mario have a belly button? Koizumi addresses these debates and other Super Mario Odyssey fan questions in the above video.

The hottest topic touched on in the video is the controversy surrounding the little mushroom man named Toad. The internet has been abuzz recently trying to figure out if Toad’s polka-dotted head is his head or his hat. Many fans have put in exhaustive research, drawing up explanations based on game lore and other media. To settle the argument once and for all, Koizumi has weighed in.

“So that, as it turns out, is actually Toad’s head,” Koizumi says definitively. “I’m going to have to leave it to all of you to figure out exactly how that works out. Maybe there’s something inside…”

There you have it, folks. It’s his head. Yes, that renders The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 — where Toad takes off his head/hat to reveal a bald scalp — officially non-canon. Read it and weep.

Koizumi is not quite so direct when answering other fan questions in the video. The questions “Why does Mario have nipples but no belly button?” and “Can you describe Mario’s relationship with Peach, and now Pauline?” get some less-than-direct responses.

“Well to be perfectly honest, I didn’t really expect that to be a topic among fans,” Koizumi says. “Once I heard that people were talking so much about Mario’s belly button, it made me start to think about whether we should revisit the topic on the design side.”

As for Mario’s love life, he tells fans, “I would appreciate it if we could respect the privacy of those three at this time.” Funny. Maybe a future game will touch on these relationships more, or we’ll forever be left wondering. Celebrities deserve their privacy too, guys.

Check out the full video to see Koizumi discussing these topics, as well as answering more interesting fan questions about Super Mario Odyssey, which is available now on Nintendo Switch.