Nintendo has sprinkled characters' official ages around in various games before - a trophy in Smash Bros. Melee reveals Mario to be 26, for example - but never Bowser and Bowser Jr. However, both characters' official ages have been ever-so-subtly confirmed for the first time, and the entire Mario canon has been thrown into chaos.
As spotted by MarioBrothBlog, Nintendo recently published a video on its official YouTube channel teaching you how to make a Nintendo account. And of course, because everything - including boring instructional videos - has to be extremely cute and on-brand in Nintendo world, the examples they show are for Bowser and his son, Bowser Jr. As we're walked through the account creation process, you can clearly see both characters' birthdays, which would be a much less significant story if the information didn't conflict with everything we know about the Mario series.
According to Nintendo, Bowser was born on February 5, 1989, making him 34 years old at the time of publication. Meanwhile, Bowser Jr. was apparently born on March 3, 2010, meaning he just turned 13 years old a couple months back.
This makes no sense. I remember being introduced to Bowser Jr. back in 2002 with Super Mario Sunshine, which would suggest he can't possibly be any younger than 21. Likewise, Bowser made his first appearance in 1985's Super Mario Bros. 38 years ago.
Look, I don't like to be reminded how much time has passed since all of these dates either, but we need to get to the truth here. If Bowser is only 34 and Bowser Jr. is just 13, then how could they have existed 38 years ago and 21 years ago, respectively? One possibility is that those games actually take place in the future - after all, it's not like either game ever specified a time setting.
Or maybe time doesn't move at all in the Mario universe. That would explain why none of the characters seem to ever age, despite the decades we've known them. Another theory is that there's a Mario multiverse in which every game is a separate and distinct universe, but then why would Nintendo reveal this new information without the context of any one game?
Of course, the only real answer here is that Nintendo put very little thought into revealing this pair of birthdays and how they fit into established Mario canon, likely because Mario canon is at best a bunch of nonsense. Bowser is 34 and Bowser Jr. is 13, no matter how much conclusive proof to the contrary we as fans can present. As long as Nintendo owns the IP rights, it makes the rules.
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