It's occurred to me that almost all of Nintendo's franchises (excepting the Mother series, Pokémon, Smash Brothers and Fire Emblem) seem to exist in the same universe.
Mario connects directly with most of them. He appears in the background of a few Kirby stages, his enemies appear in Link's Awakening (specifically of note is Wart, who only appears in dream worlds for both games.) Samus AND Link appear in the bed in SMRPG's Inn. He races on Rainbow Road when Captain Falcon isn't using the track. (The Blue Falcon is also a selectable kart in MKW, but that's somewhat weak evidence.) He also is a notable inspiration for art in Hyrule. He's pretty prolific.
Zelda as a series is less so, aside from the aforementioned Mario, there's Richard the Frog Prince and Kirby's Doppelgangers appearing in Link's Awakening. There is also the mushroom enemies from Pikmin, which otherwise would be isolated, since Olimar's cameo in ML
T was removed.
Metroid connects with Kid Icarus through the Metroids, recurring enemies in both games. Samus also appears in Kirby's Dream Land.
F-Zero connects to Starfox, both through James McCloud and the G-Diffuser system.
Donkey Kong brings in Punch-Out, though Mario was already a referee from day one!
Starfox can somewhat loosely connect with Gyromite through the ROB series of robots, but MEH.
Where this gets fun is where you can see a few interesting crossovers pop-up. This isn't part of my main theory, and really it's less likely then anything else to be expanded upon, but it's kinda neat that Mario sort of exist next to:
Sonic - Though only at the Olympics.
Soul Calibur - and thusly Assasin's Creed (Metal Gear?!), Spawn and Tekken. Thanks to Link!
Banjo Kazooie - And Conquer's Bad Fur Day! All thanks to Diddy Kong!
Bomberman! - Because of a half-hearted crossover with Wario.
and a few others.
So outside of that little tangent, what do you guys think? Crazy? Dumb? Makes sense?
