Fans have long wondered whether Mario's last name is indeed Mario, but they've never had reason to doubt his occupation. As sure as the sky is blue, grass is green and Princess Peach is in another castle, Mario is a plumber. End of discussion.

RELATED: Mario & Luigi Leap Into Real Life in Super Mario Bros. Parkour 2

Except it's not, because, as many were dismayed to learn this week, Mario is no longer a plumber. Worse, he apparently hasn't been for quite a while. Nintendo's official character profile states, "As a matter of fact, he also seems to have worked as a plumber a long time ago," as if it were the fractured memory of a fever dream populated by walking mushrooms, carnivorous plants and living bombs, or something half-remembered, like a grammar rule learned in elementary school. The reaction on social media was predictably swift, with initial disbelief giving way to jokes, presumably because we so often mask our grief with humor.

However, once we push past the cracks about the gig economy and using magic mushrooms on the job, we see two generations of gamers (both casual and serious) whose world abruptly tilted on its axis. Up is down, down is up, and ... Mario is no longer a plumber. It's reminiscent of the revelation last year that DuckTales and Darkwing Duck are set in different universes, despite sharing some characters: Suddenly that fictional world, and a little part of our real one, doesn't make as much sense anymore. But why do such discoveries rattle us so much?

mario

We can argue about whether Mario is the most famous video game character of all time, but he'd seem to have the edge on the likes of Pac-Man, Lara Croft and Link. There's no debate, however, that his franchise is the most successful by far, selling nearly 530 million units since the release of Mario Bros. in 1983. Advances in technology aside, Mario has remained relatively unchanged in the 36 years since his debut in Donkey Kong, if we overlook that he was originally named Jumpman... and had a different vocation entirely.

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='Wait%20-%20Mario%20Wasn%27t%20A%20Plumber%20From%20the%20Start%3F']



Wait - Mario Wasn't A Plumber From the Start?

"If you look at the technology we have now we obviously have a bigger screen and there is a lot more space and you can do a lot more detailed artwork," his creator, legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, recalled in 2010. "But if you go back to Donkey Kong, it was a 16-by-16 [inch] screen area. The character I came up with to fit that best was this small little guy with a big nose and a mustache, the characteristics that would stand out in that medium. 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 [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."

Miyamoto's insistence that the specific game's setting dictates Mario's true occupation likely holds the secret to his enduring appeal. In a gaming industry in which characters become more nuanced and storylines grow so complex that they rival those of films and television, Mario is timeless. He's a single-minded Everyman, whose sole purpose is to run and jump and drive through level after level, avoiding obstacles and outpacing opponents. The appeal of the more than 200 Mario games isn't in the title character himself but rather the whimsical environments in which he's dropped and put through his paces.

RELATED: Could Danny DeVito Have Saved the Super Mario Bros. Movie?

Yet we know Mario, having spent hundreds of hours traveling with him through the Mushroom Kingdom in the never-ending search for Princess Peach, and racing on Rainbow Road in hopes of winning the Special Cup. But although Mario is certainly amiable enough, so much so that he was enlisted in 1996 to help sell milk, he's utterly devoid of personality, adapting and reacting to the world around him, offering a friendly introduction ("It's-a-me, Mario!"), words of encouragement ("Hey Luigi! Stick with me, Bro, and we'll win this one together!") and the occasional taunt ("So long-a-Bowser!"). He's a cipher.

That's left players to define Mario, either consciously or unconsciously, by his appearance (the mustache, the blue overalls and red cap with the big "M"), his relationships (to brother Luigi, to Bowser, to Princess Peach) and, ultimately, his profession (plumber, at least until it's not). When one of those already-sparse elements suddenly, unexpectedly changes, so does our view -- heck, even our understanding -- of the iconic character.

In retrospect, perhaps news of Mario's change of professions shouldn't have caught us off-guard. After all, over the years he's been a physician (Dr. Mario), an archaeologist (Mario's Picross), an athlete (Mario's Tennis, Super Mario Strikers, et al), a go-kart racer (Mario Kart) and a "superstar," whatever that entails. But for some reason, those seemed little more than cosplay, like donning a Tanooki Suit, albeit with the ability to prescribe brightly colored medication to fend off viruses. A plumber is what Mario is, defining him every bit as much as his pronounced nose and bushy mustache. It's part of him.

When, much like Pauline was replaced by Princess Peach, Mario exchanges his plumber's license for another profession, he becomes less familiar, as if he'd shaved his signature facial hair or retired his red cap. The foundations of the Mushroom Kingdom become unstable, and we're left to ponder nagging questions like, what kind of parent names their child Mario Mario (for the record, Miyamoto confirmed in 2015 that it is his last name), how the once-forgotten Pauline ended up as mayor of New Donk City, and whether Mario is gainfully employed or now jumps from one temporary job to the next.

That last question is potentially the most troubling, of course, as it lifts Mario out of a candy-colored fantasy world and into something resembling our own, where there's little demand for plumber-adventurers with a spring in their step and an M on their hat. And that's a world no one wants to live in.