Summary
Mario is a family-friendly franchise, andMario Kart Worldis no exception. It’s specifically designed to cater to every age range, letting you zip around tracks with your favorite Mario characters (though maybe not if you’re a Diddy Kong fan), even though it will probably destroy a friendship or two along the way. That doesn’t mean the game doesn’t have a dark side.
Thanks to Mario Kart World’s new 24-person races, the roster for the game had to be expanded quite a bit to make sure there’s a nice diverse set of characters to play as. That’s how we now haveanimals like penguins and cows dominating every online lobby, but it turns out letting people play as animals has thrown up moral problems.
Mario Kart World Lets You Engage In Cannibalism
In various tracks in Mario Kart World, you can grab bags of food from Yoshi’s restaurant, which you can consume to unlock costumes or get a little speed boost. The Dash Food in these bags is themed around the track or part of the world you’re in, and in the highway area, you’ll be able to grab a cheeseburger.
That’s pretty standard stuff if you’re playing as one of Mario Kart World’s many human characters,but as Bluesky user The Emotion Engine points out, it’s “incredibly f***ed up” if you happen to be playing the cow character. You can even see in their clip that the cow eats the burger with no hesitation, suggesting this isn’t the cow’s first offense.
Now, it’s possible that this could be some kind of Impossible Burger, and that Yoshi has set up a chain of vegan fast-food restaurants, but given that the guy is a dinosaur, I think it’s highly unlikely. I also think it’s still messed up that you would eat something that is designed to taste like your own species, so the vegan excuse ain’t cutting it. We have a cannibal cow on our hands.
Then again, this isn’t exactly the first time a Mario character has committed cannibalism for the sake of some increased power. Toad and Toadette were devouring mushroom power-ups years before Mario Kart World came along, but maybe they can invite the cow to their Friday night dinners now.
