The name game: tracing the etymology of game character names

Drew 'kidicarus222' Mackie posts this overwhelmingly exhaustive article that traces the hidden origins of about a billion different characters from a wide range of Zelda and Mario main and supporting cast members, to Sonic, Street Fighter, Final Fight and Fantasy, Earthbound, Chrono Trigger and on and on and on.

A sample? Based partly on conjecture, the names of boss Bowser's children (as above) traced to Plasmatics singer Wendy O. Williams, Iggy Pop, Roy Orbison, Motörhead's Lemmy, Ludwig von Beethoven, Morton Downey Jr., Larry King, with a followup Super Mario World boss unmistakably recognizable: Reznor. [via, again, Tiff]