Shigeru Miyamoto’s Toad Mario Kart Picks Create a Funny Mystery

Mario Kart character selection is usually a tiny decision made at speed: pick the familiar face, choose a favorite color, chase a preferred setup, or grab whoever happens to be closest to the cursor. That is why an old Shigeru Miyamoto answer about Toad has become such a wonderfully unnecessary mystery. In a 2012 interview, Miyamoto said he typically played as Mario because Mario was a balanced character. Asked for his least favorite, he answered: Toad.

There is a complication, however. Footage from Mario Kart 8 appearances in 2014 and 2015 shows Miyamoto selecting Toad each time while playing alongside YouTube creators Smosh, iJustine and Rosanna Pansino. The apparent contradiction is small, harmless and extremely funny: the man who named Toad his least favorite Mario Kart character seemingly kept bringing Toad to the starting grid.

It does not establish that Miyamoto secretly dislikes Mario, loves Toad, changed his mind, or was staging a years-long joke. It establishes only what the available record can support: a 2012 answer put Toad at the bottom of his personal list, while several later Mario Kart 8 videos show him choosing Toad. The gap between those two facts is precisely where the Mushroom Kingdom fog rolls in.

The two statements are not as cleanly opposed as they look

At face value, the evidence is easy to summarize. Miyamoto identified Mario as his habitual pick and described him as balanced. When prompted for a least favorite, he named Toad, while acknowledging that Toad had fans. Later, in the Mario Kart 8 footage identified by fans, Toad is the selected character in all three appearances.

But “least favorite” and “never selected” are not the same claim. A player can pick a character for all sorts of reasons that have little to do with affection. The choice may be habitual in a particular setting, made quickly for a recording, influenced by a desire to keep the group moving, or simply reflect a joke whose context was never spelled out. A player may even select a character specifically because they are not the character they instinctively use.

That last possibility is speculation, not an established explanation. It is worth making the distinction because this is a classic case of an entertaining pattern becoming more definitive in retelling than the underlying material warrants. Three Toad selections are a real pattern. They are not a signed affidavit from the driver’s seat explaining why Toad was chosen.

What “balanced” means in a Mario Kart conversation

Miyamoto’s stated Mario preference is also more revealing than it may first appear. Calling Mario “balanced” describes a familiar game-design role: a middle-ground option intended to avoid extreme specialization. In racing games, players often weigh traits such as speed, acceleration, handling, weight and traction, although the exact systems and character-vehicle relationships vary across entries.

A balanced choice is appealing because it reduces trade-offs. A player does not have to commit fully to a character or setup built around one standout quality at the possible expense of another. That makes Mario a sensible default for someone who simply wants a dependable selection. It also helps explain why a favorite pick is not necessarily a declaration of devotion to the character as a personality. Sometimes the practical answer is the plainest one: Mario is Mario, and Mario works.

Toad complicates that simplicity because the later appearances create a visible, repeatable contrast with the earlier answer. Fans do not need advanced Mario Kart telemetry to see the joke. The person who said “Toad” when asked for a least favorite subsequently presses the button on Toad more than once. It is the kind of continuity hiccup that invites a giant corkboard, red string and a Toad-shaped pushpin.

Why the clip pattern caught people’s attention

Old interviews and archived gameplay clips can make unusually good pop-culture puzzles because they capture different versions of a public moment. The interview preserves a quick conversational answer, complete with the possibility of dry humor and the interviewer’s framing. The videos preserve a visible action, but not necessarily the thinking behind it. Neither format supplies a full explanation on its own.

That is particularly true in a group-play video. Selecting a racer on camera is not equivalent to filling out a ranked ballot of every Mario character. It is a low-stakes choice made in a social setting, and the footage does not establish whether anyone discussed the selection off camera, whether the pick was spontaneous, or whether Miyamoto was leaning into the old answer. Treating a character select screen as evidence is amusing. Treating it as a complete psychological profile of Toad relations may be giving the screen too much power.

Still, the repetition matters. If the footage showed one isolated Toad pick, it would barely register. Seeing the same choice across appearances gives the detail its comic force. It turns a possible one-off into a miniature pattern, just large enough for viewers to ask whether Toad had quietly become the preferred racer after all.

The most reasonable readings

No explanation has been confirmed, but a few interpretations fit the known facts without pretending to settle the matter.

It was a joke in 2012. The exchange may have been a playful response to the observation that the interviewer liked Toad. If so, the later selections are not really a reversal at all.
His preference changed. Two or three years is plenty of time for someone to rethink an insignificant game preference. There is nothing strange about a player moving from one character to another.
The Mario Kart 8 picks were situational. The repeated choice could have been driven by convenience, presentation, habit at that moment, or an unrecorded reason unrelated to liking Toad.
The contradiction was part of the fun. This is possible, but remains unproven. The material does not show Miyamoto saying that he intentionally chose Toad to contradict himself.

The first three require no elaborate theory. The fourth is undoubtedly the most entertaining, because it transforms an offhand interview answer into a stealthy, multi-year Mushroom Kingdom bit. But entertaining and demonstrated are different categories, even in a series where banana peels are legitimate tactical tools.

Toad wins the argument by appearing anyway

There is a charming asymmetry to the whole episode. Mario receives the straightforward compliment: balanced, habitual, reliable. Toad receives the dismissive answer, then gets the memorable visual evidence. In the public record at hand, Mario is the sensible favorite, but Toad is the racer who keeps showing up when cameras are rolling.

That does not make Toad objectively better, or even Miyamoto’s true favorite. It does make Toad the accidental star of this tiny archival mystery. Fans have spent decades debating Mario Kart choices with a seriousness wildly disproportionate to the seconds spent at the character-select screen; this is merely an unusually high-profile version of the same instinct. Everyone has a pick they defend, a racer they choose out of habit, and a character they claim not to like before selecting them again the next day.

For players interested in the broader, occasionally unexpected corners of Nintendo-related game culture, even projects such as Halo: Combat Evolved taking shape on New Nintendo 3DS and in a browser show how quickly familiar games can acquire strange new footnotes. Miyamoto and Toad’s odd little Mario Kart record belongs in that same spirit of playful archival curiosity, though with substantially more mushrooms and far fewer Warthogs.

A mystery that does not need solving

The best part of this story is that there is no meaningful stake beyond the laugh. No Mario Kart rulebook has been overturned. No secret character-stat revelation has emerged. The videos do not tell players which racer to choose, and the 2012 answer does not tell us how Mario Kart 8 was played in private.

What remains is a compact and delightfully unresolved contradiction: Miyamoto called Toad his least favorite in one interview, then chose Toad in the available Mario Kart 8 appearances highlighted by fans. Maybe it was a changed preference. Maybe it was a running gag. Maybe Toad was simply there, waiting with a tiny kart and an enormous capacity to make one old answer look suspicious.