I fell down a bit of a Wikipedia Wormhole after watching the recent fan-edit of the 1993 Super Mario Bros movie (which is even more inexplicable than I remembered). And that's how I learned that former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev made a surprising cameo on the Super Mario Bros. Super Show!
Gorbachev first visits the Mario Brothers in one of the show's live-action framing sequences. Mario and Luigi teach the Russian Premier how to make pizza, which in turn inspires Gorby to make a strange career change. In a later animated sequence, Gorbachev is touring Brooklyn with the President of the United States, when the streets are suddenly flooded with water. The Mario Brothers use their rarely-seen plumbing skills to rescue the politicians; the brothers are rewarded for their heroic efforts with a special Golden Wrench, bestowed upon them by POTUS.
The early 90s were a strange time.
