When Padparadscha first appeared a lot of people noticed she had a very similar design to Princess Daisy of Mario fame. Yellow dress, poofy sleeves, long white gloves, spunky hair and even tiny crown-ey things. It didn’t exactly take an eagle eye to notice (though I somehow missed it at first anyway), but if anything Sugar’s early draft of her was even more obvious. Look! She even has a gem on her chest like Daisy does

The similarities are adorable, but believe it or not there may be more going on here than a simple design quirk. However, in order to understand the full body of evidence here we’re going to need to dig into something I never really expected to post about here: Early 2000′s gamer folklore

Ah the year 2001. I remember it like it was yesterday. Shrek had just been unleashed on an unsuspecting populace, Yu-gi-oh was all the rage, and JayJay the Jet Plane had just died in the deadliest drunk driving accident in recorded history [citation needed], but in that year a small japanese business unveiled the greatest invention humanity has witnessed since the lighting of the first fire: Super Smash Bros. Melee

This game had everything: crossovers, ass-kicking, even an evil floating hand with cerebral palsy. it was the game on every kid’s shelves, so it’s no surprise that urban legends evolved around it, and not all of them were bullshit. One legend in particular revolved around the statues the player could collect, specifically it referred to the statue of Princess daisy

Looks pretty normal right? Well, not quite. The SSBM statue gallery allowed players to see that the statue from any angle or distance, even if it meant clipping through the textures. Most would use this for looking up character’s dressed, but rumor spread that Princess Daisy had a bizzarre feature in a place horny young gamers would never have thought to look. According to legend, anyone who dared zoom in on the back of Daisy’s head until they clipped through her hair would be treated to this: An eyeball on the back of her head!

Do you see where I’m going with this now?

This is Padparadscha we’re talking about now: A Sapphire who can only see behind her in time. Given her defect, what do you think the odds are that her mop of bangs is really covering her eye?

Don’t buy it? I don’t blame you if you don’t, but I’m not done talking just yet. Notice how Sugar moved Padparadscha’s gem from her chest to her hand? It’s now in almost the exact same place as Sapphire’s gem, but while Sapphire’s gem is on the front of her hand, Padparadscha’s is on the back.

So what do we have? Design parallels and 90′s nostalgia; hidden easter eggs and a backwards gem. Is Padparadscha’s eye on the back of her head?

Well, we’ll just have to wait and see.