Sergeant Kooperman

“	Kooperman: Okay, scuzzballs! Stand tall! Shoulders back! Stomachs in! I'm Drain Sergeant Kooperman, and you are the crummiest, most slovenly, shortest would-be-plumbers I had ever seen! How do you and this... ponch expect to fit under a sink? Mario: Hey! Leave my brother's ponch out of this! (exhales, causing coffee to splash Kooperman's face) Kooperman: Watch it, klutz! You guys look more like drain-clogs than plumbers! We need men with the right stuff! Mario: We got the right stuff! Kooperman: You got the wrong stuff! You'll flunk out the first day! I'll see to it personally!	„
	~ Kooperman upon meeting the Mario Bros.

“	Luigi: Help! We're drowning! Kooperman: Help? I don't help guys with the wrong stuff! (piles on more pipes) You'll never be plumbers, and that's what they'll put on your tombstones!	„
	~ Sergeant Kooperman attempting to kill the Mario Bros; his most infamous quote.

Drain Sergeant Kooperman is the overarching antagonist of the Super Mario Brothers Super Show, appearing as the main antagonist of the episode "Plumber's Academy". He was a cruel plumbing instructor who was an obstacle in Mario and Luigi's destiny to become professional plumbers.

He was voiced by the late Harvey Atkin, who also voiced the main antagonist of the series, King Koopa.

Description[]

Appearance[]

Kooperman was a large man with a bulbous nose and brown hair shaped like horns. Befitting his rank, he wore a sergeant's uniform with breast pockets colored like the American flag.

Personality[]

Kooperman was a cruel, termpermental, uncompromising and sadistic individual when it came to training his cadets. If he disliked any of them, he would put them in unfair and sometimes even lethal training conditions to ensure that they would fail. He is kind to his customers, however.

Abilities[]

Given his profession and rank, Kooperman may have been an excellent plumber in his own right, but was not immune to making disastrous mistakes.

History[]

"Training" the Mario Bros.[]

Kooperman once served as the "Drain Sergeant" of the Brooklyn Plumber's Academy, where Mario and Luigi enrolled to learn how to become plumbers. Upon meeting the Mario brothers, however, Kooperman took an immediate disliking to them (especially since they accidentally blew coffee into his face), states that they got the "wrong stuff" and that he'll see to it that they flunk out on the first day.

True to his word, Kooperman then sets the duo to the most difficult tasks. The first was carrying bathtubs up a fire escape, and when they failed to bring them up fast enough, he forced them to carry the tubs back down and bring them up again. Though Luigi was losing heart by this cruel treatment, Mario was determined to prove their worth as plumbers. The second task was unclogging sinks in under ten seconds, which caused some gunk to splash onto Kooperman's face. Angered by this, Kooperman assigns the brothers to K.P. (Killer Plumbing), which involves digging a deep hole.

After K.P., Kooperman then sets Mario and Luigi to their final task: fitting several pipes together without wrenches within twenty minutes. Once the twenty minutes was up, he then "tests out" their work by pumping water through it, but this causes the pipes to collapse on the Marios, sealing them inside a prison of pipes with water flooding in. Luigi cries out to Kooperman to save them from drowning, but the sergeant instead makes the situation worse by piling even more pipes onto them while stating that they will take their dream of being plumbers to their graves.

The Marios were able to escape death by pushing on the wall of pipes, and the water carries them all the way to the statue of the academy's founder, Salvadore Drainado, whose motto was "When the plumbing gets tough, the tough get plumbing". Despite these words of inspiration, the Marios finally give up hope of ever becoming plumbers and leave the academy.

Fall from Grace[]

Later on, Kooperman is seen unclogging a woman's drain while some construction workers fix the road with fast-drying concrete. When the month's supply of "Drain-Buster" shows up at the door, Kooperman goes out to use it for the sink, but mistakenly picks up a bag of the nearby worker's fast-drying concrete. After pouring it down the drain twice, the concrete causes the sink to back up, so Kooperman decides to fix the problem at the manhole. After seeing Kooperman pouring down the concrete into the sewer, the worker demands to know what he was doing with their concrete, causing him to realize his foolish mistake.

Soon, this mistake turns into a disaster as the the sewers began to overflow which caused the roads to flood as well, and right when the USA President himself was showing the President of Russia around Brooklyn too. Remembering Drainado's motto, Mario and Luigi rush in to save the day by going into the sewers with scuba gear and destroying the concrete clog with a jackhammer, thus saving the presidents and making them heroes. The president himself rewarded them with the Golden Plumber's Helper to Mario and the Golden Wrench to Luigi.

It is unknown what happened to Kooperman afterwards, but is both likely and implied that everyone found out that the flood was his fault, based on testimonies from the construction workers and the customer he was helping at the time, and was severely punished for causing it, as well as his abusive treatment of the Marios by having his plumbing license revoked, his rank stripped and was cast out of the academy for good, and also faced time in prison.

Trivia[]

Due to his name, voice, and shared hatred for the Mario Bros., Kooperman can be considered the human equivalent to King Koopa.

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