The Problem with Luigi's Mouth

luigi the plumber one of the greatest and most attractive characters ever thought up he can jump high take out enemies in a flash and best of all he's green colored and knows how to handle his dental hygiene or so we thought it's june 2019 and i'm in a great mood it's e3 season and nintendo has just kicked off this year's event by giving us our first real look at gameplay from luigi's mansion 3 and the game looks fantastic like a true return to form for these beloved quasi-horror adventure games starring our favorite green man it would have taken something tremendous to derail this day unfortunately that's exactly what happened see right after that nintendo direct ended nintendo as they often do released a bunch of promotional artwork for luigi's mansion 3 and hidden among the dozen or so high resolution renders that they released was one deeply troubling image brace yourself [Music] [Applause] now at a distance this image almost seems perfectly fine normal even but as you look closer there's one major problem here and perhaps you've spotted it already no not the hair the hair is fine not the photorealistic clothes although i'm not thrilled with those either no the problem is luigi's mouth [Music] something about this mouth is just viscerally upsetting this solitary image flies in the face of years of nintendo's own rules about how to depict luigi's biggest hole compare this luigi to virtually any image of luigi from the past 20 years and the difference is clear prior to 2019 luigi had a cartoon mouth but starting with luigi's mansion 3 the man had been cursed with whatever this is now let's drill a little deeper into what makes mouth luigi as i've come to call him so disturbing first and foremost there's the unholy marriage of realism and non-realism that's on display here unlike your standard luigi whose rows of teeth are depicted usually as one single white block this luigi has multiple distinct teeth multiple and yet only 16 teeth total just half of the 32 teeth a normal adult should have do you remember those wind-up chattering teeth toys from childhood maybe you do and and maybe you're wondering why this luigi reminds you so much of them well that leads us to problem number two all of luigi's teeth are the exact same size in dentistry the front teeth are referred to as anterior teeth the ones designed for biting through flesh and to break food into chewable pieces and while you can find plenty of creatures in god's kingdom with identical sized and shaped teeth humans are not one of them this mouthful of anterior teeth makes luigi look more like a reptile than a human being like some sort of anterior crocodile alligator and what's worse this entire monstrosity is housed in this a smooth cavernous and entirely lipless mouth now what we've discussed so far the tooth size the tooth quantity the lips don't get me wrong they're bad but compared to what i'm about to show you these are mere distractions so without further ado let's sink our teeth into what i believe to be the chief offender in this image and that is luigi's gums [Music] now in researching this video i have scoured the entire internet for every single image of luigi's mouth and i cannot find a single official example where luigi was ever depicted with a gum line at all i challenge you open up the luigi folder on your desktop right now pull up your favorite picture of luigi and check for yourself because i'm willing to bet hard cash there will be nary a gum in sight in fact in all my tireless research into the history of luigi's gums i was only able to find one single exception on the cover of the august 2001 issue of the uk exclusive gaming rag next gen magazine you can find this obscure and definitely unofficial render terrifying and side note immediately after next gen magazine chose to publish and distribute this horrifying image the magazine was suddenly shut down for good by its publisher coincidence that's for you to decide at any rate the fact remains that even at luigi's most frightened no gums have ever appeared before now sure we'd see luigi's teeth maybe a little bit of tongue but never ever gums more than anything else this aspect of mouth luigi the gums is where nintendo crossed into unforgivable territory this flippant decision to violate decades of precedent around luigi's mouth was far beyond the pale and i knew it required a deeper investigation [Music] but there's a major problem see as much as these gums disgust me on a visceral physical level i'm not medically qualified to diagnose them as actually unhealthy and the last thing i want to do is slander luigi's oral health without doing my full due diligence so i paid a visit to dr bilal saeeb an experienced and accredited dentist to get an expert's opinion dr saeed works in the field known as cosmetic dentistry so he was the perfect person to weigh in on luigi's mouth are you are you familiar with this man is it is that from uh is it yeah i mean is it mario have you seen satoshi kone's psychological thriller paprika how about the deeply underrated studio ghibli film the secret world of arietti or how about john wick 3 parabellum which features a kyary pamyu pamyu song in it for some reason if you're wondering what any of these movies have in common besides the fact that they're all things i think are extremely good it's this every single movie i just mentioned is only available on netflix outside the usa so if the answer to any of those questions is no and you have a netflix account you should really consider checking out expressvpn the thing that i personally use expressvpn for is unlocking region locked content on services like netflix by installing expressvpn and clicking the name of the country whose library you want to access you can simply log in with your normal account on netflix or amazon prime video and immediately get access to all the shows available exclusively in that region if you want to try expressvpn for yourself and get three months free head to expressvpn.com nick robinson or just click the link in the description [Music] uh dr sabe thank you for taking the time to talk with us today sure i think the obvious components i think that come to mind when we talk about cosmetic dentistry would be like teeth shape and whiteness for example like bright teeth gum health i assume is that also a factor in there sure yeah because the tooth shape is dictated partly by the shape of the gums too you want the gums to look nice and pink and nice like that otherwise they look terrible everything's you get this you know the movie the mask we had all the teeth are all the same square and coming all the way across it looks terrible like that you can actually make somebody look like that if you're not careful you can make them look like jim jim carrey in the match with whatever dental prosthetic he had on it for the for the movie with that out of the way it was time to start asking dr saeeb about luigi's mouth but first we had to establish a control so i provided him with some counter examples um i have some images to show you okay and i would love your i guess just like knee-jerk reaction in terms of how you'd evaluate the teeth from a cosmetic level and uh to some degree from a health level i guess if you're comfortable with that okay great so i think a good place to start is is this character oh are you are you familiar with this man is is that from uh is it uh yeah i mean is it mario um this man's name is wario wario that's right he's the enemy of mario that's right he's got a w instead of an m that's right the character design has been uh altered and and to some degree kind of bastardized over the years and he used to look a lot more like mario than he does today okay but the the oral hygiene aspect of this is kind of what i wanted your your feedback on well there's no issue of hygiene at all but the cosmetics are all wrong interesting so they're clean but they're not aesthetically appealing necessarily all the teeth are the same teeth and they're all shaped the same they're all about size the same maybe the upper anterior's upper front teeth are maybe maybe they're okay but he only has six teeth which means he's here to here and that's he doesn't have any back teeth he's he's earned the nickname among nintendo fans as 12 tooth tony yeah because he's got a dozen he only goes from k9 to k9 basically is what we say and so but they're clean that doesn't look like he's got any disease on it excellent number number two here is a little a little bit tougher but have you seen this man before not at all interesting his name is waluigi waluigi you know how the mario brothers mario and then yeah why are you yeah well uh mario and then and then his brother's luigi and then this is waluigi that's correct well he's got six teeth like like his friend and they don't look dirty they look nice and clean actually but if you were to put human teeth on the onyx face like that that would look horrible it does not work that's absolutely true it kind of fits his face i i agree like if he were to walk into my room and say i want you to give me some teeth i would i would probably make him just kind of like that maybe slightly smaller maybe add another tooth just because i would want at least more than add one more tooth on each corner so i would go like eight over eight instead of six over six possibly so this one this one came out a little bit bigger than the others but it's also the one that i'm the most uh most interested in but i might have to yeah so you got to roll it down a little bit oh yeah because the mouth is really the most important part this i honestly i wish they hadn't printed it so big because it's like the luigi one is the one i'm most focused on but does anything uh stand out to you about so basically they humanize them a little bit more than the other two guys by adding more teeth and making them slightly smaller instead of these big wide things i mean these are still pretty wide that's right but the gum line kind of doing that arches i think to be totally candid here a major focus of this for me is the um sorry is the the gums because well the gums are red they do look a little red they almost look a little inflamed like gum disease or like gingivitis or something but the color is a little too red but then again that you know as a dentist when i look at this i'm not drawn to his teeth you know even as a even as a guy the way luigi's traditionally been depicted throughout history is with little to no visible gum um if i had to help design this picture i would have said make the gums a little pinker instead of the dark red because dark red implies gum disease or inflammatory process i see this dark dark red to us is just big alarm bells saying somebody's got some inflammatory process going on i had not actually honed in on the color that's that's an aspect of it that i that had not you would ask me what was alarming to me about this picture i would have said the the raised-ness because they do if you look on the side teeth here there's like you can see it's thick it's thick and it sticks out from the teeth it juts out in a way that to me feels raised and feels like potentially uh like early stages of gingivitis it could be yeah it could be but that's a that's a good assessment maybe it's a little puffier than ideal mm-hmm you know luigi's supposed to be a good guy he's not supposed to have puffy gum that's what i'm saying yeah gum disease and that's when you brush your teeth and it bleeds a little bit and would you i when he brushes his teeth it probably bleeds a little bit that's horrifying news so if luigi's doing a full two minute brush with 30 second quadrants he's probably raising some amount of blood in the mouth when he spits there's red in there with the white but and he needs to floss that's not see to me my issue with that is that that doesn't ring heroic for me this is a role model for children on some level yes and i don't i think that that's maybe where what i take issue with is that if if kids are growing up thinking that this is what a healthy gum line looks like uh that's not doing anybody any favors yeah i've never commented on video game characters before the mental conditions this was damning i mean here we had a legitimate doctor of dentistry an expert in his field willing to testify on camera to the war zone that luigi's mouth had become and at first this felt like a victory but slowly gradually it began to dawn on me that this conversation while productive wasn't enough it was all still firmly in the realm of the theoretical and i wanted proof hard evidence after all everything we've covered so far my initial revulsion to the image dr saeeb's diagnosis it was all based on just one single image one photograph of luigi it dawned on me that if i truly wanted to get to the bottom of this i would need to go deeper into luigi's mouth much deeper and that meant one thing i would have to track luigi down in person out of options and desperate for some sort of resolution i knew what i had to do so i booked a ticket and headed to the electronic entertainment expo in los angeles california in search of answers i knew that this year luigi's mansion 3 was among the games nintendo was planning to show off at the convention and my hope was that by going there in person i could track down some additional clues and maybe even find luigi himself i arrived at the los angeles convention center and began making a beeline towards the west hall and towards my target the nintendo booth and as i approached my destination weaving past the tick tock booth and the mario and sonic of the olympic games tokyo 2020 official climbing wall a sense of true dread began to grow in the pit of my stomach i realized that i had no actual idea how big a presence luigi's mansion 3 would or would not have at nintendo's booth this year heading into the show nobody knew for sure what the theme would be this time around and most people online were speculating that it might be animal crossing themed but as i got closer and closer to nintendo's booth animal crossing was nowhere in sight and what i saw instead filled me with disbelief for this year's convention nintendo had opted to transform their entire booth into a haunted mansion specifically luigi's mansion and as if that weren't enough on one side of the nintendo booth covering a full wall in an act of pure unmitigated defiance of good taste nintendo had erected an enormous 25-foot wall a monument to this exact render of luigi's mouth my jaw dropped almost as low as luigi's jaw in this image i gawked at the wall luigi's mouth looming over me like the entrance to a cave full of eldritch horrors and i began to feel truly insane i mean here was this enormous deeply unnerving monolith depicting nintendo's second most iconic character with a horrifying oral health situation yet all around me people were just walking past this thing like it was normal like everything was fine i even began to wonder was the problem with me increasingly desperate and more than a little curious about the extent of nintendo's brainwashing i flagged down the nearest nintendo representative at the booth and i asked her can i can i ask you something for a video i'm working on um so i've been looking at this luigi over the past three days and i'm worried about his gum situation what do you what do you make of his his oral health basically his gingivitis yeah that's what i'm saying what i'm saying yeah it looks like there's something the matter with luigi's mouth those five words looks like he has gingivitis they reinvigorated me this proved that the reality distortion field around luigi's mouth while extremely powerful wasn't invulnerable and not even nintendo's own staffers were completely blind to the tooth the truth feeling confident and with a renewed sense of purpose there was only one thing left to do and that was to enter luigi's mansion myself soon i find myself standing just on the precipice of luigi's mansion with no real idea what awaits me on the other side outside the entrance are costumed bellhops paid actors no doubt and before long these very same men beckoned me inside all right [Music] i walk with the men down a pitch-black hallway that opens up into an enormous dimly lit foyer purple black lights and billowing smoke fill the air and spiritual apparitions dance across the walls before i can get a good look at my surroundings i'm quickly escorted to a booth to play a demo of luigi's mansion 3. immediately i do my best to move the camera as close as possible to luigi's mouth but cleverly nintendo has locked the camera as far away as possible hindering my investigation after clearing the demo and finishing the boss battle it ended and briefly the camera cuts to a close-up of luigi's mouth i lean in to get a closer look but right as i start to really peer in there the game cuts to black with the demo over i finally get a chance to take in my surroundings i look at all the different decorations gargoyles psychics it was clear nintendo had tampered in dark sided stuff i glance up at the ceiling and notice huge science hanging overhead depicting all four members of the core 3d world roster with large x's painted over their faces knowing what nintendo has already done to mario's hair and luigi's mouth i immediately began to worry is this a blatant display of power is this hit list nintendo bragging about what they've done to mario and luigi and are toad and peach their next targets before i have time to really contemplate that question i hear a voice a familiar voice seemingly right next to me [Music] from the sound of his voice i know he's close by but where hello it's me [Music] i keep following the sound and then after turning a corner i finally lay eyes on the target luigi i realize that i have to think quickly how can i get close enough to this luigi to perform a full dental exam without arousing any suspicion as i hang back to plan my attack it becomes clear to me that luigi is actually posing for photos with his fans and that's when i put it together this photo op would be my alibi [Music] i patiently wait my turn scheming and then finally i see my chance i put on my best nintendo fan voice and i say yeah i just want a picture can you pose open up that open up the mouth oh yeah while pretending to take photos i surreptitiously begin zooming in on luigi's mouth hole wow great oh he's scared i move closer and closer to that precious mouth but luigi begins ducking away and actually hiding from me almost as though he's intentionally trying to keep me away from that mouth poor guy look at him i can feel the opportunity slipping away from me so i make a snap decision and actually drop to my knees beneath luigi to get an even closer look at it and this is what i saw let's see what's going on nothing [Music] i've reviewed this footage hundreds of times and each time i look it's exactly the same while we can see luigi's top row of teeth and his tongue the area where his teeth and gums are supposed to be was filled instead with the inside of his cheek and lip area luigi's entire bottom row of teeth was absent nowhere to be found i had failed i leave luigi's mansion feeling utterly defeated i'd come all this way to meet luigi and investigate his gums in person how could this have happened perhaps luigi saw me coming perhaps me tweeting about his gums had tipped him off and he'd hidden his lower row of teeth from me behind his bottom lip rendering them truly invisible to the naked eye were it not for the promotional luigi's mansion 3 flashlight they handed me as i exited the booth i'd be leaving completely empty-handed and no closer to getting to the bottom of this mystery and it's right then at my lowest point slowly shuffling my way towards the exit of the e3 convention center that i spot something a life-sized statue of luigi right outside of the nintendo booth and as i draw closer to the statue i realize with excitement that this is no normal luigi statue this statue against all odds was a hyper detailed depiction of luigi's entire body inside and out right down to and including the mouth and the centerpiece the star of the show as far as i'm concerned is this a small gap an opening in his mouth begging for me to take a closer look in other words a gold mine i gulp and take a look around trying not to raise any suspicion from the booth attendance and then armed with nothing but my camera in the luigi's mansion 3 flashlight nintendo had foolishly given me it was time to dive in i couldn't believe my eyes that image i'd been so troubled by was no mere illustration it was a map a treasure map to a real place that i had just wandered into of course there is the teeth eerie and their perfection in symmetry and thick enough to grind human bone to dust and crucially there were the gums now visible to us for the first time since that haunting render but the closer i drew the more i began to notice new things those seemingly perfect white teeth were actually flecked with dark imperfections that would be impossible to perceive on a low resolution jpeg the gums now raised in 3d for the first time were visibly inflamed uncomfortably shiny and exhibiting an even darker shade of red than ever before but i needed proof i needed something conclusive something that would show definitively that luigi's oral health was suffering from extreme neglect as i moved in towards luigi's mouth i was overwhelmed by a feeling that i still to this day struggle to put into words some mixture of fear and awe consumed me as i marveled at the abomination that now filled my full range of vision experiencing this much of luigi's mouth this close completely unprotected was almost too much to bear and i could feel it beginning to rend my very psyche apart but remembering my mission to get a diagnosis once and for all on what was wrong with luigi's mouth i fought through it and pressed onward all at once i'm shocked out of my trance when i hear the voice of a nintendo booth employee clearly nervous at the goings-on speak right behind me there's some good yeah no this could not be happening this was exactly what i was worried about raising suspicion nintendo was onto me and they knew i was getting close to the truth about luigi's dental hygiene i realized that i just have a few seconds left to find what i need i move in closer still scouring every square inch of luigi's mouth for something anything that would serve as proof risking everything i make one last gambit and i stick my camera right in between luigi's teeth and that's when i see it on the back of luigi's gleaming white teeth there it was plain as day red stains dr saeeb's words echoed through my head when he brushes his teeth it probably bleeds a little bit blood crimson red mario brother blood this was it this was it proof undeniable proof that luigi was suffering from gingivitis in other words luigi has gum disease we had our diagnosis i quickly withdrew myself from luigi's mouth his frightened expression previously explained by a fear of ghosts took on a whole new meaning in this troubling dental context satisfied by a job well done i quickly departed the e3 show floor feeling like a very different man than the one who had entered now look there's no denying that i left that day feeling victorious like i had won like i had gotten to the bottom of this after all i had just found irrefutable evidence that luigi's mouth was demonstrably unhealthy but what i didn't immediately realize was the impact this whole adventure had on me psychologically i couldn't get the experience out of my head i was haunted by what i saw that day i tried to sleep it off but luigi's mouth continued to torment me night after night showing up in my dreams the yawning cavernous expanse swallowing me up every single night so yes while i'd found the info i was seeking i had paid a steep psychological price one that i still worry i may never recover from i tried to tell myself that it was all worth it that it was a necessary sacrifice to get to the bottom of this mystery about mount luigi but gradually i realized a far scarier truth even knowing what i knew even with my evidence that luigi's mouth was bad i was powerless to do anything about it i tried reaching out to nintendo warning them to torpedo this image before it was too late but i never heard back and to make matters worse instead of heeding my advice nintendo actually doubled down rather than bury this image like i hoped they would nintendo made the most dangerous and upsetting possible choice they chose to make this image of luigi the very one we've been talking about the cover art for the game [Music] now it goes without saying that this was the doomsday scenario across the world nintendo's entire production pipeline had spun up overnight and all at once factories across the world began pumping out millions and millions of copies of this game with mouth luigi plastered across the front of each and every one retailers across the globe were sent multi-foot tall posters of mouth luigi to hang in their stores in just a few short months nintendo had activated an enormous propaganda system designed i believe to expose the world to mouth luigi on a massive scale but the most heart-rending realization of all was that i had become a part of this terrible system i looked back at what i had done talking about luigi's mouth to friends family members uber drivers posting about it on the internet at every opportunity printing that enormous poster to show dr saeeb even creating the video you're watching right now slowly i realized the truth i had become complicit even proactive in the creation of mouth luigi propaganda without realizing it i myself had turned into a walking talking mouth luigi agit prop factory all this energy everything i had said and done to try to stop mouth luigi from coming to prominence had backfired serving instead to only magnify his power i felt dizzy mentally i transported myself back to a pivotal moment in time the moment when on the e3 show floor i first laid eyes on the enormous monolithic 25 foot tall luigi mouth towering over me contorted into that powerful awesome grimace i gazed up at the enormous face two years it had taken me to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache oh cruel needless misunderstanding oh stubborn self-willed exile from luigi's loving breast two gin scented tears trickled down the sides of my nose but it was alright everything was all right the struggle was finished i had won the victory over myself i loved mouth luigi you make me all blound yo [Music] walk ahead

Channel: Nick Robinson

Views: 1,065,315

Rating: 4.8365483 out of 5

Keywords: nintendo, luigi, luigi's mansion 3, teeth, mouth, gums, oral health, hygiene, game theory, gingivitis, dentist, interview, dentistry, nick robinson, the problem with mario's hair, super mario odyssey, uncanny valley, hair, suppermariobroth, art, nintendo switch, skin, robot, robotics, design, character design, mustache, color, hat, fabric, texture, realism, realistic, comedy, mario odyssey, super mario 3d land, super mario 3d world, parody, documentary, movie, e3 2019, statue, gooigi, charles martinet

Id: LRz9PBkDkNw

Length: 29min 21sec (1761 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 21 2020