In our tumultuous economy, career changes aren't too surprising in most cases. But you expect some things to remain static. Bob will always be a Builder, Dora will always be an Explorer, and until this week, we assumed that Mario, of the Super Mario Bros. fame, would always be a plumber.
But no longer. According to the famous Nintendo character's online profile (via Kotaku), Mario "used to be" a plumber, but now he has the ambiguous but highly desirable profession of "doing everything cool."
Kotaku's translation of the short character bio reads, "All around sporty, whether it's tennis or baseball, soccer or car racing, he [Mario] does everything cool. As a matter of fact, he also seems to have worked as a plumber a long time ago..."
There might be people who say, "Wait, Mario was a plumber?" And who could blame you? While large, green pipes are still an iconic part of the Mario video games, it has been a very long time since the Italian hero has done so much as pour Draino into a sink. Heck, in his original, hammer-wielding debut in the 1981 original Donkey Kong (before he even had the name "Mario"), he was more of a carpenter.
Still, Mario and his brother Luigi have been known as plumbers for decades, both in video games and in related media such as the (truly terrible) Super Mario Bros. live-action movie and the (flawed but charming) Super Mario Bros. Super Show on TV. This change in occupation is monumental.
Broadly speaking, though, why would Mario still need to fix pipes in the first place? For one thing, he's dating a princess, so his got a financial safety net if needed. And if running around the Mushroom Kingdom picking up gold coins isn't enough to put his kids through college, surely he makes decent money playing golf, winning go-kart races and doing everything else under the angry desert sun. He's in the Olympics, for crying out loud. Also, the guy once owned a cement factory. He's always got some new business opportunity up his sleeve.
One thing will probably stay consistent, though: Mario will keep jumping on goombas, beating up Bowser and saving the residents of the Mushroom Kingdom, especially when Super Mario Odyssey launches on the Nintendo Switch in October.
