John Goodman".
The film has a rather large cast of characters, most notably John Goodman as Pops. I paid homage to this character in my film Moria's Race where the father of the racer is referred to as "Paps" ( almost the same as Pops ) and he is kind of fat like John Goodman. But almost every character in Moria's Race is a homage to some real or fake movie person. Can you spot all of them? Pops in Speed Racer is very much like Mario. He is fat, has mustaches and wears a hilarious red top. The original version of this character was in a Japanese TV show from the 60s. So it seems like it could be that Nintendo took the same inspiration as myself for their Mario character.