The latest episode of Fox’s long-running animated comedy, The Simpsons, featured an homage to an iconic video game series: Mario Kart. During the scene, we see Lisa as Mario, Homer as Wario, and other characters dressed up as Nintendo characters in a Mario Kart spoof. For all you sickos out there who have longed to hear Homer Simpson go “WAH!” like Wario, here you go.
On February 25, The Simpsons aired “Lisa Gets An F1,”the 12th episode of the 35th season of the animated sitcom. In the episode, Lisa is dealing with anxiety due to her dad’s dangerous, scary driving. She feels like she doesn’t have control of her life. A therapist suggests she drive go-karts to feel more in control and less afraid of driving. It works, and Lisa ends up becoming a skilled racer. Conveniently (because it’s a modern Simpsons episode) an international go-kart race comes to Springfield and she enters and tries to win. While this is happening, Homer begins worrying endlessly, blaming himself for putting Lisa in danger. And this leads to him having a Mario Kart-themed nightmare.
In the dream, Lisa is riding around as Mario on Rainbow Road. Milhouse as Yoshi drives past Lisa and is then instantly taken out by a Blue Shell. I laughed very hard at this moment. It’s perfect timing and on-brand for Milhouse.
After that, Homer as Wario pulls up next to Lisa, does some evil laughing and then tosses a bomb at his daughter before waking up and yelling “Wah!” one last time.
Perhaps the best joke to come out of this otherwise so-so episode (too much time is spent on a boring B-plot with Bart) is when Lisa calls out Homer being overprotective because of his Mario Kart dream, to which Homer responds “What’s Mario Kart?” I have so many questions.
This segment is the start of the episode and just one more example of the show recently leaning into using video games for joke fodder. Last year, The Simpsons included a Roblox and Assassin’s Creed VR parody, too. What will be next? Will Homer be playing Helldivers 2 next year? Or Palworld? Honestly, there’s a good chance of that happening.
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