Luigi may be the most anxious of the Super Mario Bros., but his anxiety may be a front for his rough exterior. In other words, he’s canonically a lean, mean, green jerk.
This analysis comes from a formula from Mario Superstar Baseball (shared by @MarioBrothBlog on X, formerly known as Twitter), called chemistry, a statistical marker that shows how well the characters get along with everyone on the team. The formula calculates the average chemistry stat extracted from the code and lists everyone from friendly to unfriendly, respectively color coded from green to red.
The chemistry chart lists Luigi as one of the most unfriendly characters at 56.258. This puts him in the same league as Bowser (51.483), Wario (48.419), and Waluigi (48.065).
In Mario Superstar Baseball, chemistry is a stat that signifies how well characters get along with others on the team. By averaging the chemistry stats extracted from the code, this list sorting all characters from most amicable (green) to most unpleasant (red) can be created. pic.twitter.com/o9cKDDef7B
— Supper Mario Broth (@MarioBrothBlog) September 1, 2023
You might be asking yourself, “Why would Luigi be as mean as the King of Koopas and the evil counterparts of himself and his brother? He’s just as nice as Mario.”
If you’re an avid Super Mario Bros. fan, you may have noticed that Luigi is always Player 2 to Mario. While he’s one of the best characters in the franchise, he’s more timid than his brother and a big scaredy-cat, which explains his tendency to scream at the sight of ghosts in Luigi’s Mansion. Because of this, people pick on him more frequently. That’s enough to drive anyone mad.
So mad, in fact, Luigi started showing his mean side not only in Mario Superstar Baseball but also in Mario Kart 8. When the latter game released on the Wii U in 2014, the replays showed Luigi giving racers the infamous death stare as he passed them by after throwing shells at them. It was a face worth a thousand memes — and videos with “Ridin’ Dirty” playing in the background.
Let’s hope Luigi plays nice in Super Mario Bros. Wonder when it releases October 20.
Cristina Alexander is a freelance writer for IGN. To paraphrase Calvin Harris, she wears her love for Sonic the Hedgehog on her sleeve like a big deal. Follow her on Twitter @SonicPrincess15.