As expected, Jesus whoops Mario by quite a large margin in total Wikipedia word count. In a miraculous turn of events, however, Mario's Legacy section is actually longer than Jesus' Legacy. Yes, you heard right - a pixelated plumber is considered to have had a bigger impact on the world than the central figure of Christianity and, to some, the physical embodiment of God. Wow.

Then again... Jesus can walk on water and heal the sick, but Mario can shoot fireballs out of his hands and turn into a raccoon. Jesus has an awesome beard, but Mario's got a super sweet mustache. Jesus ushered in much of modern religion, but Mario ushered in much of modern gaming. Both can come back from the dead, though to be fair, Jesus only did that once.

Dunno, seems like a tie to us.

Also less important than Mario's legacy!

• Albert Einstein's legacy = 153
• John F. Kennedy's legacy = 436
• Susan B. Anthony's legacy = 252
• Princess Diana's legacy = 196
• The Wright brothers' legacy = 175
• Mother Teresa's influence in the world = 117

At last, we reach the ultimate showdown. In this corner, we have God, who Wikipedia describes as:

"... the principal or sole deity in religion..."
"...the creator and overseer of the universe..."
"... omnipotent and eternal..."
"... the source of all moral obligation, and the greatest conceivable being existent..."

His opponent? Knuckles of Sonic the Hedgehog fame, who Wikipedia describes as:

"... a red, teenage, anthropomorphic echidna..."
"... the fourth most popular character in the series..."
"... shy around girls..."

And, uh, yeah. How did this guy beat God by more than 4,000 words again? Well, to reach Knuckles' number, we did have to add two pages together, one for his game character and one for his comic character. To level the playing field, we should probably give God the Bible or something, right? Of course, we'll also have to give Knuckles his comic books and two videogames (Knuckles Chaotix and Sonic & Knuckles) to keep things even...

Damn! Sorry God - you lose again. Looks like we have a new omnipotent overseer in the universe... or at least in the strange, silly, scary and seriously skewed universe that is Wikipedia.

Editor's Note: All Wikipedia word counts were gathered during the week prior to this article's date. Due to the encyclopedia's open source nature, numbers are always subject to change.

 Jun 25, 2008