Mario Movie
Image: Nintendo / Illumination

A little over a week ago we heard that another wave of DLC would be coming to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe "soon", thus beginning our speculation about what courses will be heading our way this time. While we were all thinking about additions to the current game, however, some eagle-eyed viewers of The Super Mario Bros. Movie on Reddit have spotted what they believe to be a teaser for a whole new entry in the Mario Kart series.

As noted by AutomaticSir411 on the r/mariokart Reddit forum, the pipes on the top of the Super Mario Bros. Plumbing van have several codes on them, one of which reads "221203MK10500N". To some (AKA, us) this looked like nothing more than a series of numbers and letters, but AutomaticSir411 speculates that the concluding "MK10500N" might, in fact, signify that there is a 'Mario Kart 10' coming 'soon'. Hmm.

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Of course, there are a fair few caveats to take into consideration here, perhaps the most notable being the fact that we do not have a Mario Kart 9 at the time of writing (though if Nintendo wanted to surprise us with an announcement soon, we wouldn't be angry).

The theory has an answer for this, suggesting that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe could perhaps count as 'Mario Kart 9' since it followed on from the standard version on Wii U. Others have even offered their own reasoning, suggesting that perhaps Mario Kart Tour could stand in as the ninth entry, allowing the next game to hit double digits. Does this seem completely likely? No, but we respect the conviction.

As for what the numbers that precede the cryptic 'teaser' could mean, perhaps it could be a date? It's unlikely that Nintendo is planning an announcement for 22nd December 2003 (a little late, wouldn't you say?) and even reversed, it would point towards December 2022 — not quite as late, but very much in the past, all the same.

Truthfully, the theory is a real stretch and there is next-to-no chance that we will see it come true as long as MK8D courses continue to be churned out. That being said, there is a part of us that would love to see a universe in which one of Nintendo's biggest announcements of the past five years was spoiled by a pipe code that appeared on screen for 0.2 seconds.

What do you make of this theory? A bit of a stretch? What would another Mario Kart game even look like? Drift down to the comments to give us your thoughts.

[source reddit.com]