Real Plumber Judges Mario's Plumbing Skills
Real Plumber Judges Mario's Plumbing Skills
Real Plumber Judges Mario's Plumbing Skills
At the very beginning of the game, it shows
Mario and Luigi actually plumbing – I don't know how realistic-
[laughter] That's just them pulling a pipe out of the
ground! And have you in your in your plumbing experience,
have you ever come across a glass drainage pipe? No, because the stuff that goes outta there
or in it, you do not want to see! Hi there, welcome to Thomas Game Docs! So, I think we tend to forget that Mario is
supposed to be a plumber. Like, yeah, he does this whole saving the
kingdom thing on the side, but his main hustle is fixing pipes and valves under Bowser’s
sink.
Real Plumber Judges Mario's Plumbing Skills
Real Plumber Judges Mario's Plumbing Skills
But, how good of a plumber is Mario? Does any of his plumbing make sense? Or is he about to leave the mushroom kingdom
in a bit of a pickle? Well, to find out I decided to call a real
life plumber, by the name of Jace from Tennessee. He's never seen any of my videos, but was
kind enough to grace me half an hour of his time. So thank you Jace! And, I figured the best place to start was
Mario’s debut, with the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong. Ok cool! So in his first – I mean this isn't really
plumbing related – in his first game he was a carpenter – so not very plumbing related,
but- Well, it actually is. You need to have some carpenter skills as
a plumber. Like when you get underneath that house, you
don't wanna be under there…
Real Plumber Judges Mario's Plumbing Skills
Real Plumber Judges Mario's Plumbing Skills
So you gotta understand how the house is built,
and where the joints are. You can't just drill a hole down and expect
it to work. Sometimes you'll hit a part where you have
to go underneath there, you gotta cut out a hole, you gotta put in a two by four, you
gotta refit something, it can be a nightmare! So you would say it's not unrealistic that
Mario went from being a carpenter to a plumber, there's quite a lot of crossover- Oh no no! It's perfectly understandable! It's 100%! Oh wow, that's- it makes a lot of sense when
you explain it, but I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have guessed that.
Real Plumber Judges Mario's Plumbing Skills
So this is – the designer of the game called
Shigeru Miyamoto, he wanted them to be in this big underground area – this is all underground
– with pipes in it, and that's when he decided that he was going to make them plumbers. And I would say – how realistic is this a
setting, this big open underground… Oh, hahaha! You don't wanna hear about that. Crawl spaces underneath houses can be stupid
small, you have to be on your back at every moment, through water, gunk, being poked by
shards, there's just barely any room underneath a lot of houses. So definitely nothing this spacious? Unless it's- the public sewer system. How that's all set up. That's the only large thing I can think of,
and… that thing can be pretty big, it's just unless it's a large city it can't be
anywhere near THAT big. Yeah, and you wouldn't find turtles crawling
around it? Well, you'd be surprised what you can find. Snakes love to just go wherever they please. You really only find that problem if you go
to a very rural area.
So it's not commonplace? Nowhere near commonplace. But it is possible! People do flush baby… animals, crocodiles… Oh, wait, they do it on purpose??? Well you hear stories about alligators in
the sewers. It's not true as in they survive, but people
do do that. Alright so, that was the first game, but not
long after Mario became more successful, there was a TV show, a live action TV show, featuring
Super Mario Bros. Yes, uh, that's actually pretty much what
plumbing kinda looks like. It's a very very old sink. Stupid old sink. One of those box sinks. And what about their uniforms? Is there a specific clothing you wear as a
plumber, or? No actually, we can just use whatever we want,
it just really depends on where you're working.
But you really wear overalls and stuff like
that for your OWN protection. Getting water and gunk all over you, not a
fun experience. You don't wanna wear tight-fitting jeans when
you have to crawl underneath a house or underneath sinks. You don't wanna wear tight fitting clothes,
cuz you CANNOT move under there. You need as much movement as you can. So are the overalls they're wearing something
you could maybe find on a plumber, or not really? Oh you could – people wear overalls, I've
seen it, but it's pretty much just style nowadays.
I've rarely seen anyone wear them. So the Mario Bros are a little bit out of
fashion, you would say, in the plumbing world? Well, you gotta take into account this is
what? 80s? 90s? Well, plumbing was much different then. Like the sink. That mainly would be a temporary sink nowadays. I don't know where they're at… I believe that sink is in their OWN home. Yeah that- a lot of these old sinks are just
real blocky. Yeah, yeah. Modern sinks are like real nice and fancy. Alright so there's a new, more modern Mario
game called Super Mario 3d World, and at the very beginning of the game for like the first
time I think in the series' history, it shows Mario and Luigi actually quote on quote plumbing.
I don't know how- That's, that's – that's just them pulling
a pipe out of the ground! You gotta do it – in plumbing you gotta remove
a lotta PVC piping. So, does that look like a PVC pipe to you? Uh, PVP? No. It's a drainage pipe. It's where water comes out. I don't know what that'd even be used for
just out in the open there… There's really no point unless it's for the
castle. And have you, in your plumbing experience
have you ever come across a glass drainage pipe, like a transparent drainage pipe? No because the stuff that goes outta there
or in it you do not want to see! And glass would be horrible.
There's nothing worse than having one of your
pipes break – that'd be a horrible, horrid idea. Another thing that struck me about this sequence
from the opening of the game is that from start to finish of the plumbing job, it takes
I think roughly 7 seconds. I was wondering, how realistic that would
be as a timeframe for plumbing? It depends. If you're just going to cut something out
it can take just about 15 / 20 seconds.
But if there's a pipe that's, looks like it
was busted, that's why it's leaning to the side, so there's probably a problem underneath
the ground. And so, they'll probably – if they've just
pulled it back up, they jump right down, hit dirt. I don't know, I can't think of any way that
could even happen, unless the ground slid or something. That seems like a problematic piece of plumbing
right there… Alright, and that’s all the questions I
had for Jace. A huge huge thank you to him for being a part
of this video. Essentially for making this video possible. This conversation proved to be genuinely fascinating,
I think in part due to Jace being a really interesting person to talk to, and also because
there’s so much to plumbing that I had no idea about. When I first started planning this video I
wasn’t sure if there would be anything relevant to Mario that I could cover.
It turns out there most definitely was. Um, if you liked this format, “expert fact
checks game”, let me know below, and leave me suggestion for which expert you’d like
to fact check which games. Plus, you can follow me on Twitter, @thomasgdocs,
and subscribe to the channel for more videos like this. And I’ll see you next week, it’ll be a
hoot. Bye!.