MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin - Re: A Question of Character: Mario (Donkey Kong)

> Make up his mind? I don't recall him (or they?) saying anything about him being a
> plumber, regardless of that being the popular opinion.

You obviously haven’t been paying attention. There are lots of references to Mario being a plumber in official Nintendo material.

There are several references to it in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. For example when you find Luigi’s wish on a star, it’s “I wanna be a great plumber like my brother Mario.” Also, when Garro disguises Mario as a statue, he calls it “A Plumber’s Lament” and says it symbolises the struggle of the working class.

He took a break from being a plumber in his official Japanese-language profile starting in late 2017: https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/09/mario-is-officially-no-longer-a-plumber/

However, his profile was updated just six months later to state his occupation is plumber: https://www.kotaku.com.au/2018/03/mario-is-officially-a-plumber-again/

There are more nuggets in this 2010 interview with Miyamoto: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gamehunters/post/2010/11/qa-mario-creator-shigeru-miyamoto/1

“We created the game design first and then we put the characters in to fit that. 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 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.”
“Now with Mario, I think with Mario Bros. we had a setting of course that was underground, so I just decided Mario is a plumber. Let’s put him in New York and he can be Italian. There was really no other deep thought other than that.”