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Pop Culture

The Fascinating Inspirations Behind the Names of 8 Famous Video Game Characters

By Jennifer Lewis on

Did you know that Princess Zelda was named after Zelda Fitzgerald, or that Luigi’s name was inspired by pizza? If not, you’ve come to the right place! We’ve always been curious as to where our favorite video game characters got their names, so we did a bit of digging and found some interesting results. After the jump, you’ll find the name inspiration for everyone from Kirby to Guybrush Threepwood to Solid Snake. Check it out, then hit the comments to share your fun character facts. … Read More

Web

What’s On at Flavorpill: The Links That Made the Rounds In Our Office

By Alison Nastasi on

Today at Flavorpill, we celebrated Taylor Swift’s twenty-third birthday like it was her fifteenth. We caught up with the history of that rare Metropolis poster that was auctioned off today. We talked about The Office with a real-life Scranton reporter. We found out who the famous artists are whose works will be entering the public domain in 2013. We explored a list of top-selling movies, music, TV, books, and apps on iTunes in 2012. We looked forward to watching Judd Apatow’s 60 Minutes profile this Sunday. … Read More

Design

The Smiths Songs as 8-Bit Video Games

By Judy Berman on

Mediocre pop-culture mashups are everywhere on the Internet, but when you mess with The Smiths, you’ve got to bring some inspiration. Thankfully, Brazil-based designer and illustrator Butcher Billy has done just that with a series of unexpectedly appropriate images combining Smiths song titles with 8-bit video game characters. We can’t imagine how Moz would feel about this project, which we discovered via It8Bit — but we’ll certainly have “Bigmouth Strikes Again” running through our head the next time we play a Mario game. … Read More

Web

What’s On at Flavorpill: The Links That Made the Rounds in Our Office

By Alison Nastasi on

Today at Flavorpill, we took a look at the best and worst sports team relocations in history. We wondered if blowing into Nintendo cartridges all those years actually helped the games load. We got hooked on this Lucille Bluth/Mitt Romney mashup for a hot minute. We chatted about … Read More

Pop Culture

The Most Disgusting Cartoon-Themed Snacks from Your Childhood

By Matthew Bower on

The marriage of high fructose corn syrup, dayglo food coloring, and absurdly indirect connections to popular children’s cartoons and video games was perhaps the greatest marketing triumph of the ’80s and ’90s. After-school snacks have never quite been the same. Reading X-Entertainment’s hilarious memoir of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fanatic, related through some strange Turtle-inspired foods, got us thinking about some other childhood snacks that, in retrospect, look totally disgusting. The marketing overlords of that decade surely must have conspired to trick kids into thinking slime was cool — and, moreover, delicious. From Ecto Cooler to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles “Ooze” gelatin, kids back then apparently just loved eating slime. We’ve put together some of the most coveted quasi-foods of the lunch table, branded with our favorite cartoon, movie, and video game characters. Can you remember other similarly themed snacks that simultaneously hit you with a wave of nostalgia and trigger your gag reflex? … Read More

Art

Portraits of Pop-Culture Soul Mates from Different Worlds

By Judy Berman on

Do you ever daydream of what would happen if your favorite pop-culture characters from entirely separate universes could meet? We have, predicting which television characters might be best friends in real life and doing some speculative matchmaking for gay and straight TV teens. So naturally we’re thrilled by Chris Gerringer’s I Know That Feel, Bro series, which pairs geek icons that share a common trait — Batman and Harry Potter, for instance, are “orphaned heroes,” while The Incredible Hulk and Kermit the Frog both know it isn’t easy being green. Click through for some of our favorite duos and visit Gerringer’s DeviantArt page to see a whole lot more. … Read More

Pop Culture

'Super Mario Bros.' World Map Illustrates the 'Plumber's Empire'

By Alison Nastasi on

We thought it was a good time to indulge in a little Nintendo-inspired fandom with this Super Mario Bros. world map, since it was just confirmed that videogame legend Shigeru Miyamoto will not be retiring. Miyamoto designed the popular game, and we think he’d approve of Ian Gibson’s Plumber’s Empire. The design was made… Read More

Pop Culture

The ‘Super Mario Bros.’ Theme Song on Accordion (in Bulgaria)

By Alison Nastasi on

On our list of things we wished existed and the Internet made come true is this video of a group of Bulgarian accordion players performing the Super Mario Bros. theme song. Vintage Nintendo meets Slavic charm in this boy band’s rousing rendition of the instantly recognizable tune. Our only hope is that they wear these outfits while playing their NES. Click past the break if you want to dance. … Read More

News

This Is What Nintendo's Wii U Looks Like

By Caroline Stanley on

Kokatu, who is live blogging Nintendo’s 2011 E3 press conference, just posted what they’re calling the first picture of the company’s new gaming console, the Wii U. They’ve also got an image of the controller that goes with it (which we find more impressive to look at than the console itself).… Read More

Art

WTF of the Day: Video Game Characters as Cuts of Meat

By Judy Berman on

Do you ever spend a long afternoon playing vintage video games and suddenly find yourself feeling… famished? As in, so hungry you could eat poor, adorable Yoshi? Yeah, us either. Regardless, graphic artist Jude Buffum — who confesses to a “long-time obsession with meat diagrams” — has rendered a handful of classic 8-bit characters as cuts of meat. The results are kind of upsetting, in a there-goes-my-childhood way. If you want, you can buy prints of these curiosities for $40-135. … Read More