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I starting asking myself this when I remembered a part of a DIC cartoon where Goombas are treated as savage animals and appear in cages. I could forgive this, because these cartoons are not canon, and even if they are, there are moments were the Goombas take photos and other things.

Then I remembered a citation of Super Mario Odyssey who referred to some Goombas as "wild Goombas".

So I started thinking how they are not seen to talk, and sometimes not seen to have a society, indicating they are just like savage animals. They could be just like trained animals of the Koopa troop, just like Chomp Chomps. But this is contradicted in spin-offs, like Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi, but these might not be canon.

Is there any canon evidence to suggest that Goombas possess human-level intelligence, or wild animal level intelligence? Is it possible that Yoshi eats them even though they have human sapience? He eats Koopa Troopas, who are clearly sapient.

F1Krazy
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DAVI BORGES
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    @DAVI BORGES - You've referred to certain things not being canon in this question. Are you sure this franchise actually has an officially recognised canon? According to the Super Mario Wiki, it doesn't: "Unlike many other franchises, the Mario franchise and its many spin-off series do not have an officially recognized canon." – LogicDictates Sep 25 '21 at 22:43
  • the super mario wiki is not official – DAVI BORGES Sep 26 '21 at 00:02
  • Yes, think about the brick citizens. – Oni Sep 26 '21 at 00:22
  • the bricks are not citizens the own toads destroy them and the only citizens of mushroom kingdom who live there im high quantities like the bricks.And nintendo not would make mario commit a genocide with characters made to be his friends – DAVI BORGES Sep 26 '21 at 01:17
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    @DAVI BORGES - True, but that doesn't mean that what the wiki said is wrong. Is there any evidence that the Super Mario franchise has an officially recognised canon? – LogicDictates Sep 26 '21 at 21:34

3 Answers3

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In the 1993 live-action Super Mario Bros. film, Goombas are presented as an ancestral form of the citizens of Dinohattan - sentient, but less intelligent than "modern" people. As part of the plot, we find that the current Goomba soldiers are in fact created by de-evolving modern-day political prisoners of Koopa-ruled Dinohattan into their ancestral forms.

In the film, we do see at least one Goomba recognizing other people, holding loyalties, and playing music.

Later in the film, a human from our universe is de-evolved into an ape, so the implication seems to be that Goombas are at the intellectual level of modern-day non-human primates. Whether primates such as apes and monkeys are "intelligent" enough for X criterion is a Big Question in modern zoology.

Robert Columbia
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    That movie is hardly part of any Nintendo canon, either. Nintendo didn't provide any creative input into its development, they gave Hollywood free-reign to do whatever it wanted. Maybe the upcoming Nintendo-produced animated movie will do better... – Remy Lebeau Sep 26 '21 at 03:30
  • @RemyLebeau then, what is Nintendo canon for Mario? I'm not convinced there is one. – Robert Columbia Sep 26 '21 at 11:47
  • look, the games dont have an exact timeline, but theres still some defined things that can be considered as a canon like the fact that the toads are inabithants of mushromkingdom or that yoshi is a dinossaur if something is defined and never change without explanation, so the series as a canon – DAVI BORGES Sep 26 '21 at 18:25
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Absolutely! In Paper Mario there's Goomba Village with an entire family of friendly, civilized and definitely sapient Goombas. To quote Goombario:

Did you know...there are good Goombas and bad Goombas? A bad Goomba will try to pick a fight with us the second it spots us.

See also here starting around 5:18:

Valorum
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Zommuter
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Simiarly to Zonmuter's answer, in the SNES game Super Mario RPG (1996), there's a point in the game where you can encounter a Goomba who decided to leave the Koopa army to open a shop and have little Goombas:

In case the video disappears, here's a screenshot from the moment the three little Goombas address Bowser as "Uncle Bowser":

Mario and Bowser entered a store which was opened by a Goomba after he left the Koopa army. He even had 3 little Goombas, who can be seen addressing Bowser as "Uncle Bowser".

Clockwork
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    For anyone who may have never played the game and is wondering why Mario and Bowser are standing side by side: there's a bigger fish to fry. – Clockwork Sep 15 '23 at 17:46
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    Interestingly enough, this game is considered to be what inspired other games such as Paper Mario later on. – Clockwork Sep 15 '23 at 17:48
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    Great answer, I forgot about those Goombas. Great game, also – Zommuter Sep 19 '23 at 13:15