Even though The Super Mario Galaxy Movie didn’t hit the same for critics and general moviegoers, it’s impossible for anyone to deny that Universal and Illumination cooked up another box office bonanza, even if it will probably fall short of the first film’s billion-dollar earnings. Amidst all the financial talk, though, the REAL $64,000 question was asked: how many eyes does Yoshi actually have? (Also, is The $64,000 Question relevant to anyone who watched this movie?)
The stars of the 2026 movie release — Chris Pratt, Charlie Day and Donald Glover — were guests on my personal favorite video game podcast, Get Played, where co-host Heather Anne Campbell (of Rick and Morty fame) engaged in the hard ocular-based journalism by asking the trio about Yoshi’s eye count. And it’s a pure delight to see the three actors and three pod hosts (also including Doughboys' Nick "Tiger" Wiger and Strip Law voice actor Matt Apodaca) giggling over the inanity of what constitutes a demarcation between eye-whites.
Check out the video clip shared on Get Played’s TikTok below, and form your own conclusions in the meantime:
For those unable to watch the video, no need to fret about never knowing which body part Donald Glover thinks Yoshi's eye glob looks like. Here's what he had to say when asked the almighty question:
[Laughs.] Because of the crease? . . . This is one of the great character design questions of all time. Are these eyeballs touching? I think they're touching. I think it's like a butt, you know?
Donald Glover
He's not wrong, though I don't really want to dwell on what Yoshi's eyeballs might resemble if one views his eye sockets as a butt. Glover also addressed the weirdness of Yoshi's eyeballs being able to cross that middle barrier; the crack, if you'd like. (One can assume he's put a ton of thought into this, considering how he campaigned for the role.) As he put it:
Yeah, the movement of the eyes that kinda goes like...it is kinda gross. But I think it just works that way, I dunno.
Donald Glover
Mario voice actor Chris Pratt, who has quite a bit of onscreen experience with other kinds of CGI dinosaurs, had a different eye-pinion from Yoshi's voice actor. According to the Jurassic World franchise star:
It has to be two eyes. It has to be. I think just evolutionarily, anything with just one eye would be eaten by the two eyes. You have to have two eyes.
Chris Pratt
It's certainly a more logical take on the question, and it's probably the answer that I'd agree with most if I were betting money on it. Creatures with one eye would very likely get snuffed out of the food chain by those with pairs of peepers. But that's a situation where the single eyeball would probably be smaller in size, and not the double-sized sockets that Yoshi has.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Heather Anne Campbell addressed the turtle shell on Yoshi's back, asking if the cast thinks of it as a "saddle," or if they believe it's "part of his body." It's a brilliant question for a character design that's been around so long his weird look is just natural at this point.
In any case, it sparks a two-sentence combo that is absolutely hilarious when removed from the context of this conversation.
Yeah, cause he's a dinosaur. They don't have turtle shells typically.
Donald Glover
Charlie Day argues that we technically have no idea if dinosaurs had shells or not, pointing to the discovery that many dinosaurs were feathered, even if the majority of pop culture projects featuring dinosaurs hasn't reflected that reality in the slightest.
Will any other upcoming video game adaptations spark similar debates between fans and stars? Definitely not the Sonic movies, since Paramount's films made sure to split up the titular hedgehog's semi-connected eyes for the jump to CGI.