The character of Lucas Burrows was based off of Alex Lamb's friend Matt Burrows. Matt was originally supposed to play the part, but Jim Cathcart blew the producers away in the auditions and consequently won the part. Matt Burrows does make an appearance however in the opening sequence.
In the script, Lucas had the line, "If you keep trying to mess me up, your brother will die, and I'll lose the score," but Matt Burrows, being the REAL Lucas, insisted that Alex Lamb change it to, "If you keep trying to mess me up, I'll lose the score, AND he'll die," because he knew that Lucas would put his score before a little kid's life.
Lucas states that Cliff Bleszinski got the highest Super Mario Bros. score when he reached 9,999,950 points in 1986. This was a true fact that was listed in the premiere issue of Nintendo Power. However, there were many other names listed as receiving the same score; Alex Lamb just liked his name the best. In real life, Cliff Bleszinski grew up to become a high-profile employee of Epic Games and titled himself CliffyB.