The world needs light hearted stories at the moment. That’s why one of the biggest trends on social this week saw people rally around Super Mario’s nipples.

The revelation came when Nintendo released a bunch of announcements from the upcoming game Super Mario Odyssey, the sixth top-mentioned game at E3 this year, with shots featuring a shirtless Mario frolicking on the beach.

Mario’s nipples have never been seen before, and they caused quite the stir.

The talk of Twitter: Mario’s Nipples

We tracked 27,250 mentions of Mario alongside terms like “shirtless”, “topless” or “nipples” etc. over the 13th and 14th of August when the hype was its strongest.

Mentions peaked at around 4,000 per hour when the news spread around social around 6pm ET on Wednesday.

The conversation was one of surprise – the nipple revelation challenged what people had previously thought about Mario. Many expressed surprise at his lack of chest hair.

#NintendoDirect, a platform on which Nintendo makes announcements and the place where the nipples were first seen, made up a sizeable chunk.

The gender breakdown, perhaps surprisingly, was as follows: