MUSHROOM CITY — Longtime Mario Kart Racing referee Lakitu has been implicated in the falling death of a Mushroom City motorcyclist during last night’s race.
“‘Look at me, showing off on my annoyingly loud motorcycle.’ Like this job isn’t hard enough on my tiny ears,” Lakitu was heard saying of the driver and his vehicle in unedited footage of the race obtained from Mario Kart TV. Investigators confirmed from the wreckage that the motorcycle’s exhaust system had been illegally modified to reach decibel levels consistent with Lakitu’s description.
“A wheelie. Cool. Yeah, wave to the camera,” Lakitu went on to say toward the end of the third lap. “Better watch for the gap, though… Whoops. I sure hope someone has a fishing rod.”
In statements released through his attorney, Lakitu does not accept responsibility for the crash, and instead holds that Mario Kart Racing’s understaffing is to blame. Over the years, Lakitu’s job duties have expanded to include guiding competitors around the tracks, waving flags, rescuing falling vehicles, and, most recently, capturing most or all video for MKTV. Mario Kart Racing, however, has suggested that Mushroom City is more liable.
“We take our a-partnerships with a-municipalities like Mushroom City very seriously,” explained Mario Mario, head and namesake of the Mario Kart Racing organization. “But we a-rely on a-local governments to help us prevent this a-kind of a-tragedy by making their own decisions about whether to allow a-civilians on the road during our dangerous races, and taking precautions like a-designing their elevated a-highways with a-guardrails.”
In addition to rejecting claims of sluggishness toward infrastructure improvements, some members of Mushroom City Council have called for greater scrutiny of Lakitu’s ties to the Koopa Troop, an armed militia with a decades-long history of violence against the Mushroom Kingdom and its citizenry.
“I won’t deny that watching people fall to their deaths is a big part of mainstream Koopa culture,” said King Bowser Koopa, a regular Mario Kart competitor and infamous leader of the Koopa Troop, of which he confirmed Lakitu is a reserve member. “But Mario Kart is supposed to be a safe space. I mean, have you ever once seen me kidnap Peach during a race? Even when the course was literally inside my house? No. So you can rest assured that Lakitu will be court-martialed and punished to the fullest extent of the law.”
As for how this controversy will affect the future of the sport, Mario Kart Racing reassured its sponsors on a call today that the spectator experience will go unchanged, with Mario himself announcing that Lakitu has already been fired and replaced as referee, flagman, first responder, and camera operator by four other identical Lakitus, each also named Lakitu.
