Spanish language satire website Ciencia Seminal has posted a number of reports claiming that Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros are actually a gay couple and the story has been picked up by other media who are reporting it as serious news.

Despite being posted alongside stories with headlines like ‘Internet Police assure that false information on the web is near zero,’ Spanish language news agencies picked up the story with it spreading virally from there.

On 16 July Ciencia Seminal reported that an investigation had found that children under 10 assumed that Luigi and Mario were a gay couple rather than brothers, and then followed it up with a 19 July article in which the Japanese creator of the game supposedly confirmed the rumor.

‘That was the original intention of the game,’ Ciencia Seminal quoted Super Mari Bros creator Shigeru Miyamoto as saying.

‘It was a game charged with the signs of gay culture, and Luigi and Mario were a gay couple trying to brave a society that rejects them.’

Ciencia Seminal went on to report that the flag poles at the end of each level in Super Mario Bros were deliberate phallic symbols while the goomba enemies in the game were supposed to represent testicles.

The story has been reported as serious news from Mexico and Colombia, all the way down to Argentina.