I've been playing Super Mario 64 for nearly 30 years and I somehow never noticed the 1/256 Easter egg when Mario jumps out of the water, which at one point in development created a "bountiful fountain of fish"

A screenshot of Mario in the Super Mario 3D All-Stars release of Super Mario 64 holding a baby penguin next to its mother.

I can't remember exactly when I first played Super Mario 64, but it wasn't long after I first got my Nintendo 64 in the late '90s. In the three decades that followed, I've played the game countless times. I've seen more speedruns than I care to admit. I've watched multi-hour video essays on its inner workings. And yet I never knew that Mario can spontaneously spawn a fish.

"In Super Mario 64, there is a 1/256 chance of a fish spawning when Mario jumps out of water anywhere," as Mario trivia aficionado Supper Mario Broth explains on Bluesky. "However, during development, the fish were instead restricted to a single spot in Whomp's Fortress, which spawned them continuously in the form of a bountiful fountain of fish."