As well know Wario has changed quite a bit over the years with the only real consistent thing being his greed, strength, and crudeness. That being said it hasn't been a linear evolution. Even in Japanese stuff it hasn't always been consistent. There's the straight up just plain evil villain in the first few games he was in, the hammy bad guy in early American promo materials, dopey bad guy in early Japanese promo materials, poop obsessed Japanese Ware Wario, Smash Bros Fart Wario, etc. Some of these also overlap.How many distinct variations of Wario would you say there are?
I'm sticking with the Wario Land series adventuer Wario and Warioware business Wario for my favorite interpretations of the character. There seems to be quite a lot of versions of Wario this could be due to how he started off as a main villain and slowly creeping up to be his own character similar to Bowser and the Mario RPGS.
In my opinion they would be 5:
The era in which he was a villain
The wario land Wario. (Tough, treasure hunter, etc)
Wario ware Wario. (Silly, goofy, businessman)
Sakurai Wario. (Do I need to explain?)
And Spinoff Wario. (The one in the the mario spinoff like sports, party, kart. Mean, Competitive, jerkish)