【India】

The Indiahistory of videogames is full of unsolved mysteries, such as what happens inside a Poké Ball or what are those bloody "bug in a jar" objects in Skyrim.

But nothing rivals Mario = plumber, as you never actually see the mustachioed, red-wearing Italian doing any plumbing in the whole, 32-year-old history of the uber-popular game franchise.

Unless you consider going down Warp Pipes akin to plumbing. I mean, c'mon guys.

Well, it looks that Nintendo has decided to fix this issue once for all.

In a recent Mario profile, the company's Japanese website clarifies Mario worked as a plumber "a long time ago" (translation by Kotaku).

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...

What's the deal, then? And what about Luigi? Is he also part of this plumbing conspiracy?

As it often happens, Mario's job was given to him by chance, with a look at the environment he was in.

Before Super Mario Bros., Mario made his appearance in 1981's Donkey Kongarcade game, where he's "basically a carpenter" named "Jumpman" because he jumped over the barrels in a building site.

Only with 1983's Mario Bros.,Shigeru Miyamoto decided to bring in Luigi and assign the plumber job to the characters, according to an interview with USA Today:

With Donkey Kong, we have this gorilla who grabs this gal and runs away with her and you have to go chase the gorilla down to save the lady. And the game's stage was a construction site, so we made him into basically a carpenter. …. With (1983's) Mario Bros., we brought in Luigi and a lot of the game was played underground so we made him to fit that setting and, we decided he could be a plumber. The scenario dictates his role.

Makes sense, sorta.