The Venice Menace

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 episode
"The Venice Menace"
Production number	125
Airdate	December 1, 1990 (English) November 29, 1991 (French)[?]
Writer(s)	Matt Uitz
Opening curtain	Desert Land
Featured song	"Speedy Gondola"
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"The Venice Menace" is the twenty-fifth episode of The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3. It aired alongside another episode of The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 entitled "Super Koopa".

Plot synopsis

Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool, and Toad are walking through Desert Land, when a gondola comes flying out of a Warp Pipe and lands nearby. When they approach the gondolier, he exclaims that a sea monster is attacking his hometown of Venice. Mario thinks that the gondolier is hallucinating, but the gondolier reassures him that he is being serious.

Knowing that Venice might be in danger, Mario gets a strange feeling inside him, and explains that Venice is his second favorite city. Princess Toadstool then sends Mario and Luigi off to visit Venice, but not without them each taking a Frog Suit from Toad.

Elsewhere, in an underwater area of the Mushroom World, King Koopa and Kootie Pie Koopa are piloting the Doom Sub. Koopa explains to Kootie Pie that his aquatic minions will guard the Warp Pipe leading to Venice while they are gone to prevent the Mario Bros. from trying to go after them while they scare everyone out of the city. Kootie Pie then gloats about how she and Koopa are going to then warp Venice back to Dark Land so that they can turn it into the "Kootie Pie Koopa Waterpark", and she kisses her father's claw.

Just after the Doom Sub enters the Warp Pipe to Venice, Mario and Luigi show up in Frog Suits, and are chased around by Boss Basses, Jelectros and Bloobers. After swimming away from the enemies for a while, Mario defeats them by throwing ring coral around their bodies. With the enemies no longer a threat, Mario and Luigi go down the pipe.

Later, in the canals of Venice, Mario and Luigi are dressed as gondoliers to disguise themselves from Koopa, and are riding around in their own gondola. Mario then brings up how Venice gives him a strange feeling again, as he and Luigi unknowingly pass by the statues of two plumbers who resemble them.

Without warning, the Doom Sub surfaces and starts chasing Mario and Luigi. Koopa and Kootie Pie are furious about Mario and Luigi making it to Venice, but Koopa manages to close in on the bros.. Mario and Luigi quickly transfer to a motorboat, and flee from the Doom Sub in a chase sequence. During the chase, a clothes line gets caught on the Doom Sub's windshield, blinding Koopa and causing him to crash. The crash causes a leak in the Doom Sub's hull, which Kootie Pie quickly welds back together with a small Fire Brother. While Koopa holds the broken hull in place, Kootie Pie accidentally welds his shell to the hull.

At night, King Koopa and Kootie Pie are walking through Venice, when they spot Mario and Luigi spending the night at a hotel. Although Luigi thinks that they defeated Koopa and can return to the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario insists that they stay and figure out what is pulling them to Venice.

Koopa then dispatches several Chain Chomps to eat through the poles holding up the hotel, causing it to sink underwater. A Boom Boom knocks on the door, which Mario lets in by accident, along with a Hammer Brother who enters by breaking through the window, flooding the room in the process. As if that were not enough, the Chain Chomps, along with several Boss Basses, continue to sink more buildings.

Mario and Luigi trick the Boom Boom and the Hammer Brother into entering a closet, where they change into their Frog Suits and trap the enemies. They then sneak onboard the Doom Sub, while Kootie Pie whines about not yet having her water park. Mario then surprises and taunts Koopa and Kootie Pie, and they chase him into the engine room. While they are gone, Luigi pulls the Doom Sub's recall lever, which causes all of the attacking minions to retreat.

In an attempt to get rid of Mario, Kootie Pie turns the engine up to full blast, which sends Mario flying into the cockpit of the Doom Sub, where he meets up with Luigi. Mario then pulls another lever and flees the Doom Sub with Luigi, just before the entire thing warps itself to Desert Land. With their plan foiled, Kootie Pie bursts into tears and throws a temper tantrum.

Back in Venice, the gondolier from earlier is giving Mario and his friends a gondola ride as a thank-you gift. He then stops in front of the statues that Mario and Luigi overlooked earlier, and explains that they were Marco Polo's Plumbers, and that they brought plumbing back from China to make Venice the city it is now. Princess Toadstool concludes that the plumbers were probably ancestors of Mario and Luigi, and with that mystery solved, the heroes rejoice. Mario says he is glad to get a tour of Venice, Italy, his second favorite city, but his favorite city will always be Brooklyn.

Cast

• Walker Boone — Mario
• Tony Rosato — Luigi
• Tracey Moore — Princess Toadstool
• John Stocker — Toad, gondolier
• Harvey Atkin — King Bowser Koopa
• Dan Hennessey — male singer
• Paulina Gillis — Kootie Pie Koopa, female singer

Animation and continuity errors

• On the DVD releases of this episode, a glitch occurs. This happens near the end when the Venice pizza man explains that Marco Polo's Plumbers brought plumbing back from China. This only happens on the Shout Factory and N Circle DVD releases of the complete series.
• When the gondolier arrives in the desert, he warns that a monster is attacking Venice. However, in the next scene, the Doom Sub has not arrived in Venice yet.
• The Hammer Brother is colored as either a Boomerang Brother or a Fire Brother in certain shots.
• When Mario and Luigi pull the lever in the Doom Sub, their Frog Suits are blue.
• When Koopa is not looking at the front of the sub, the background is the same as the other scene.
• When Kootie Pie says she will throw a tantrum if she does not get a water park, a dot on her bow switches between brown and white.
  • Right before this, a different dot switches between brown and white.
• During the chase scene, Mario's Venice hat disappears and reappears.
• When Venice is first shown, the gondola is moving left, then the screen moves right. Once the gondola reaches the end of the screen, it moves right with the screen.
• When Mario says, "Oh yeah?" before being launched by the Note Block, his mouth is not moving.
• During the fight scene in the Doom Sub, when Mario's in the engine room about to be hit by the engine, his mouth is moving, implying that he is supposed to be shouting something at the Koopas, but no voice is heard.
• At the end, when the gondolier says "Leonardo Da Vinci! Valerie Bertinelli! Ha ha ha ha, Mario and Luigi!", his moustache is missing.

Names in other languages

Language	Name	Meaning	Notes
German	Das Monster von Venedig[?]	The Monster of Venice
Italian	La minaccia veneziana[?]	The Venetian Threat
Portuguese	Ameaça em Veneza (Herbert Richers dub) A Ameaça á Veneza (BKS dub)[?]	The Menace in Venice
Spanish (NOA)	La amenaza Venecia[?]	The Venice Menace (Not a grammatically correct sentence in Spanish)
Spanish (NOE)	Venecia amenazada[?]	Venice threatened

Trivia

• One of the famous Italian people that the gondolier mentions is Lou Albano, an Italian American, who played and voiced Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!
• Even though Big Mouth and Bully were not seen in this episode, they were mentioned by Kootie Pie stating that she wanted to brag to the two about her water park.
• In the Italian dub of the episode, there is a reference to Sorrento, cited by Mario as his second favorite city after Brooklyn. This reference is absent in the English version.