— By Andru Shively — 

A mainstay of any Super Mario game are the warp pipes, typically green in colour, that transport the moustached plumber and others across great distances, levels, or worlds instantaneously. But these pixelated pipes owe their inspiration to series creator Shigeru Miyamoto’s chance encounter with one of their real-life plastic peers.

As revealed in a 2000 developer interview translated earlier this year by Shmuplations, Miyamoto explained how early on, the game designers were brainstorming some kind of pathway for enemies that had reached the bottom of the screen to reappear back at the top. “Then one day I happened to be walking through the streets of Kyoto, and I saw a plastic pipe sticking out of a wall,” he said.

Sometimes, the Super Stars simply align. “Without that, Mario might never have had pipes, you know?” Miyamoto added later in the interview. But it’s not just the hundreds of worlds spawned by the video game series – where would our own be, without plastic pipes?