What do you think of this fact?
The world’s most famous plumber wasn’t called Mario at first. And the name he ended up with belonged to a real man in Washington state who reportedly showed up about the rent.
Meet Jumpman
When Mario made his debut in Donkey Kong in 1981, he was a carpenter called Jumpman, according to FOX 5 New York. Nintendo’s US branch wanted a better name for the American market but hadn’t found one yet.
At the time, Nintendo of America was renting a 60,000-square-foot warehouse, about 5,600 square meters, in Tukwila, a suburb of Seattle. The landlord was a local real estate developer named Mario A. Segale.
The rent was late
According to David Sheff’s book Game Over, as cited by The New York Times, Nintendo was behind on the rent. Segale came by and confronted Minoru Arakawa, then president of Nintendo of America, in front of the whole team. After he left, the team had its name: Super Mario.
So the face of Nintendo is named after a man who came to collect overdue rent. In a 2015 Nintendo video, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed that Segale inspired the name, according to The New York Times.
Segale himself kept it light. In a 1993 interview, he joked: “You might say I’m still waiting for my royalty checks.”
Bonus fact: March 10 is known as Mario Day, because the date, abbreviated in English as “MAR10,” looks like Mario’s name.
A rent dispute in a warehouse gave gaming its biggest name.