Does Time Travel in Mario Games make sense?

[@jepompom455]

Underrated

[@titansans2956]

Lets remember that at the end of Mario Galaxy Rosalina recreates the entire universe so when Egadd sent Gooigi back in time he may have sent him to the old universe's past somehow. When Rosalina recreated the universe she may have altered to past to recon certain things like Mario being from New Donk City rather than Brooklyn.

[@lonedivider]

I don't agree with the "universe recreation" idea, more importantly, though, any argument using the excuse of "it was changed due to the universe reset" would be baseless and unprovable.

[@jedhaydney4176]

I'm so glad your channel exist, I've played most of the games listed here and put two-and-two together. Really well researched video mate. Mario lore is underated

[@KairanFarr]

I would say for Mario, Luigi and Peach not remembering what had happened when they were babies, was because they were babies. I'm pretty sure nobody can exactly remember a full 24 hours when they were 1-2. Toadworth is old who probably has dementia so he would've forgotten. And Bowser, is Bowser.

[@Eris1987]

Yeah it runs under the dynamic timeline but where the past is altered when one meddles in the past. I actually made blog post on this very topic. They probably brought him inside cause while Bowser is a menace they all do somewhat care about him. We do know it's accessed only by the Bowser secret society which has Bowser and Bowser Junior as part of it. Bowser while having gained new memories of the past alongside probably hearing about what happened via a Lakitu Bros. Broadcast(He was there reporting on the time machine at the being of the game), the in universe newspaper, and even for spies he has ; could have easily put 2 and 2 together. From there he found one of the existing time portals and took some troops back in time to recovery the Shroobs. The the Shroob Princesses could still be around because of people constantly meddling in the past altered it enough for them to have survived. Alternatively they could have had extra lives, that is something that is canon in universe. Wario is returned home because the stork is there with him, plus Baby Bowser is also on this raft trying to take back his treasure from the Baby Wario. Plus, he has to become Mario's childhood friend somehow. Probably a time portal, if I am correct the time portals are stated to still exist throughout the world, and since this originates from the Cobalt Star some form of magic could have been made from it. I actually have a hypothesis on what E. Gadd's meddling in the past actually did. So.... Kamek in Partner's In Time says he remembers kidnapping the Baby Bros. once, when he has at least 2 times. It's because this is the first time anyone has time traveled and altered the past. Meanwhile games like Yoshi's Island DS and Yoshi's New Island involve time traveling and active meddling in the past thus altering the past, making it where the events of Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island is not the only time Kamek has kidnapped the Baby Bros. Yoshi's Island DS in particular only recalls the events of the first game thus the Yoshi's New Island time travel hadn't happened yet.

[@DrakeInferno]

Yeah, pretty sure this holds! A one-timeline model with dynamic time where changes made in the past carry forward and cause the old timeline to "blend" into the new while leaving little ripples of the old like the knowledge that a memory had not always been a certain way explains the time travel we see very well. There are also some interesting elements that weren't touched on here that I'd like to talk about. For example, changes to the past seem to "wait" until they are "resolved" to take effect in the present. Take how E. Gadd witnessing something is irreversible so it carries forward, but the Shroob invasion as a whole *didn't* ripple into the present, meaning this is sort of a magic, vaguely "intelligent" model of time that can by some means separate out which changes are and are not final. Personally, I suspect that the time travel system observed in Mario is actually *incapable* of causing paradoxes, and that attempting to create a change that would interfere with itself/make itself impossible in the new future would either simply refuse to carry forward and have any impact on the present at all since they cannot ever resolve, or simply become "orphaned" as a causeless event from the perspective of the resultant version of the timeline even though it still had a cause in meta-time from the old version, and just got buried. Now, did they think through the exact mechanics of paradox and meta-time? I'm not sure, but as you've shown, they do demonstrate a consistent one-dynamic-timeline model, and they do show that alterations to the present caused by changes to the past occur over real time, which can only happen if there is some other dimensionality of time over which the effects of time travel itself happen. See also the Mario Kart 8 trophy in the Bros.' house in the Superstar Saga remake, a game which necessarily must occur before Mario Kart 8, meaning the trophy must have been won by the *baby* Bros. and then sent back to the past with them. Basically, I think Nintendo may not have considered *every* implication, but I think they certainly considered enough for it to be a consistent and coherent picture. Which is more than can be said for most time travel media, let's be honest. Re: the cameo, the Shroob Princesses being there is a little goofy, but if we figure that the soul was composed of spores and Bowser still had some in him, and the past Bowser and Kamek scooped up some Shroob leftovers including the KO'd younger princess and froze them, then in theory they could just be resilient enough to eventually heal and reconstitute for freezing.