I remember watching some silly Hong Kong movie on TV one night when I was living in a hostel in Taiwan in the late 1990's. The people staying at the hostel wer

I remember watching some silly Hong Kong movie on TV one night when I was living in a hostel in Taiwan in the late 1990's. The people staying at the hostel were all fairly young and included Americans, Brazilians, French, Germans, Japanese, South Asians and whatnot. Most of us were chatting in whichever languages we happened to have in common, or halfway paying attention to the TV. I forget what the movie was about, but at one point there was a dream sequence or something and suddenly the actors are wearing overalls and hats with big fake mustaches and they start running around big green pipes and jumping on turtle shells. And suddenly the whole room started laughing because everyone understood the reference. Mario was a cultural touchstone we all had in common.