Koopa shells are a recurring weapon in the franchise, particularly popularized in the Mario Kart series, in which they can be fired as projectiles against other racers.

Despite making up the bulk of Bowser's army, Koopa Troopas are often shown to be peaceful, sometimes even teaming up with protagonist Mario.

When thinking about what types of enemies it would make sense to stun like this, they came up with the idea of a turtle getting stuck after getting knocked upside down on its shell.

[1] So the gameplay was set up so that the player would now hit the turtle from below, knocking it on its back, and then jump directly on it to defeat it before it was able to correct itself.

[2] While initially wondered if this was a form of "lying to children", in the end, he decided that the ability to entirely remove the body from the shell would be a key difference between a turtle and a Koopa Troopa.

[4] Similarly, when developer Takashi Tezuka wished to create a new enemy character that could fly, he found himself unable to due to size and memory restrictions of the Nintendo Entertainment System hardware.

[5] Instead, to save on memory he decided to build off of the established Koopa Troopa design by adding wings to the top of his shell.

[5] While Miyamoto expressed hesitation at first, he was convinced when he saw the final design, and thus, the Koopa Paratroopa was born and implemented into the game.

They commonly retain their original traits of wandering aimlessly through levels, and requiring to be knocked out of their shell prior to their defeat.

[8] After defeat, their shells often remain, and can be grabbed, thrown, or bumped as a projectile to attack other enemies or alter the game environment.

"[23] In October 2022, The Daily Dot reported that a Koopa Troopa video clip from a New Super Mario Bros. game went viral on TikTok.

In the video, two Koopa Troopas running in unison slowly make progress in crossing a spinning circular platform.

In the clip, they stop and dance, and it cancels all of their progress on traversing the spinning platform, keeping them stuck in a loop.

[31] In it, players in real life attempt to hit POW Blocks to knock over Koopa Troopas, similar to early Mario games.