A newly unsurfaced and translated interview reveals more information about how the Mario franchise’s iconic pipes came to be, and there is a pretty simple explanation for it.
Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto told Game Maestro in 2000, and translated more recently by Shmuplations, that although the first Mario Bros. game established Mario as a plumber, the idea for pipes didn’t come until later. Miyamoto said he was walking down the street in Kyoto one day and “saw a plastic pipe sticking out of a wall.” This helped Miyamoto solve a design challenge, and thus the iconic warp pipe was born.
“Due to the way the screens worked, enemies that went to the bottom had to re-appear at the top of the screen. So that got us thinking, OK, we need a path or some way for them to get back up there. 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 (via GamesRadar).