Last year, Nintendo gave us filthy fans what we wanted: an official render of his tongue. In a video unboxing the new blue model of the Nintendo Switch Lite, we got a look at Waluigi that we'd never seen before, and it was pretty risque. Now, it turns out that the video team were worried that including the image was a "terrible mistake".
Former Nintendo Minute hosts Kit and Krysta have shared some insight about the episode that revealed the raunchy artwork. As it happens, the render was just waiting to be used, which is pretty strange for Nintendo. Kit and Krysta had no idea if it was embargoed or not, and the decision on whether or not to include the image turned out to be a big one.
"One of the people who is editing the video was like 'oh, our design team says they have this new artwork of Waluigi that they've been just waiting to get out there, so we should use it'", recounts Kit, talking on the Kit & Krysta podcast (thanks, Nintendo Life). "As we were watching the cuts, I was like 'this is really unusual that they just had this new art sitting around'... like they always have a plan, it's going out here, this is the date, and I'm like this doesn't sound right.
"I started to get really worried that we were making a terrible mistake...and that we were like gonna be like leaking or like you know breaking some embargo for this artwork".
Thankfully, Krysta was willing to brave it in the name of getting Waluigi's tongue out there. Well... actually she just didn't think it would be a big deal. She figured that their bosses wouldn't make a fuss over a render of a minor character, so naughty Waluigi stayed.
Nintendo, it turns out, was totally chill about the inclusion. Similarly, as we reported back in March, the company also didn't mind having the popular villain get a bit cheeky in Mario Strikers. Speaking about his iconic "crotch thrust" animation, a former developer said, "[We] just didn't expect it to get through, but nobody batted an eye so we didn't bring it up because we wanted it to be in [the game]." Thankfully, the risk paid off: "Sure enough, it landed the way we expected it to."