The most iconic character of the American version of Super Mario 2, Shy Guy, has survived three decades as a member of the cast of Super Mario Bros characters. In fact, these days, Shy Guy is generally depicted as one of Bowser's minions, despite that Super Mario 2 featured a completely different antagonist from Bowser, and the entire game turned out to be Mario having a dream in the end.
As a kid, I always wondered why Mario 2 was so different from any other Mario game; a completely different cast of bad guys, enemies that you can hop on and ride, or pick up and throw, rather than enemies that die when you hop on them, pulling vegetables from the ground instead of hitting blocks in the air, a life meter, digging levels instead of swimming levels, selectable characters with different abilities, no fire flowers, no two-player mode, and a very distinct Middle Eastern vibe.
Eventually, I found out that this is because, America's Mario 2 wasn't the actual Mario 2. Nintendo of America felt that Japan's Super Mario Brothers 2, which was identical in appearance to, but much more difficult from the original Super Mario Brothers, would be too difficult for Westerners. So, they took a completely different game, an Arabian themed game called "Doki Doki Panic", reskinned the playable characters into Mario characters, and released it in the U.S. as "Super Mario Brothers 2".
So, Shy Guy, despite being a character designed for a completely different game, has survived for three decades as a Mario character, and been adopted as one of Bowser's minions.
Also, when I first saw Shy Guy as a kid, I thought he was a walking loaf of bread with a face.
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