Everyone knows about the tons of useful tricks in Super Mario Bros., but what about the useless ones like changing the music for a few seconds, or dying in an unusual way? Here are our top 5 most useless glitches in Super Mario Bros.

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#5 Skip these three specific goombas

This one lands in the #5 spot because it’s not technically useless, but its usefulness is arguable at best. In world 4-2, there’s this tunnel with 3 Goombas walking along. These Goombas aren’t exactly lethal, but given how low the ceiling is, they’re a minor threat. Well, if you’re Super Mario, you can skip them entirely! All you have to do is line up the bricks with the left side of the screen just so. If you've done it properly, Mario will clip into the wall a little bit each time you jump. Then you can safely walk along the ceiling for… a few seconds. It takes some extra time to line it up, and it;s really easy to not get the spacing right on your first try so it’s a considerably longer process than just jumping over ans squishing the little buggers, but it’s neat, and safer!

#4. Interrupting the Fortress Fanfare

This particular piece of music is a wonderful little reward for your efforts in getting to the end of a stage. But it plays after almost every single level, castle stages excluded. So what if you want to mess with it from time to time? Well, all you need is a star and some timing. The easiest place to mess with this musical glitch is in level 1-1. Make this star appear and then let it bounce around for a little bit. Follow the star to about this point, grab it, and then book it to the flagpole. If you’ve done it right, this will happen.

Once the effects of the star wear off, the music will automatically transition back to the overworld theme no matter what else is going on at the time, including the end of level fanfare. Completely useless, but kinda neat. Kinda.

#3. Mario 1 music in Mario 2.

Okay, this is kind of a cheat because this is technically a glitch in Super Mario Bros. 2, but since it’s a reference to Mario 1, I’m letting it slide. This one works on the same principle as the last one. The game knows to revert to whatever stage music is playing once an invincibility star wears off. So what you can do here is trick the game into playing the wrong music. Get yourself to a place where you are holding a potion, and then collect enough cherries to spawn a star. Get the star and place the potion wherever you want. Wait a few seconds though before going in. Once you’re inside, the music normally changes to the Mario 1 theme, but if you exit through the door as the star is wearing off, the game will revert to the subspace music instead of the overworld music, granting you the Mario 1 theme in Mario 2 in all its glory. It isn’t the full song because why would they program the full version of the song in the game since you only actually hear it for a few seconds in subspace, but it’s still pretty neato!

#2. Nobody Saves Toad

This one is so very pointless, and I love it. Normally, when you get to any Bowser in Super Mario Bros., you grab the ax, cut the bridge, and save Toad. But if your timing is just right, you can mess with this in hilarious fashion. Get to any Bowser as small Mario, then make it to the other side of Bowser. Wait until he’s as slice to you as possible, then jump so that you get the ax and get killed by Bowser at the exact same moment. If you’ve done it right, this will happen.

Mario soars off the side of the screen for some reason instead of just going straight up and down, Toad thanks Mario, even though he’s dead, and then just for good measure, the death song plays again. Don’t worry though, you still get to move onto the next stage.

#1. Fireballs When You’re Little

If nobody saving Toad isn’t weird enough, check this madness out. You’re going to do the exact same thing as the Nobody Saves Toad glitch, except this time you’re going to be either Super Mario or Fireball Mario. Get hit by Bowser at the exact same moment as getting the ax and something bizarre will happen.

As you heard, the game made the shrinking sound, but the shrink animation didn’t trigger. Instead, Mario slides on one foot over to Toad, and you move on to the nex stage. But things have gone awry.

Right now, you function as if you’re Super Mario, but the game thinks you’re small Mario. So if you say, get a powerup, it isn’t a Fire Flower, it’s a Super Mushroom. Get it, and you’ll hear the powerup sound, but Mario will get small. Get hit, and he’ll get big again. But it gets way cooler than this.

Make your way to a Fire Flower and you get this loveliness. Since there’s no animation for small Mario throwing a fireball, he just gets big for a single frame to throw it. But when he’s moving, only the top half of him actually changes to throw the fireball. Look! He’s got 4 arms! Fun!