After a stunt last week involving the fake firing of prominent Nintendo of America figure Bill Trinen, I almost didn’t believe this story. Nevertheless, it’s true: NoA has hired Bowser as a Vice President of Sales.

This is Doug Bowser. Yes, it’s a fabulous coincidence that he shares a name with one of Nintendo’s oldest and most iconic characters, King Bowser Koopa. Bowser has been hired to “oversee a variety of sales-related functions, including Sales, In-store Merchandising, Retail Strategy and Retail Marketing.” Hiring a new VP is a big move, and hopefully they’re doing it in part to respond to the overly negative reviews Nintendo has received as of late due to limited supplies of particular special-edition consoles, accessories, and Amiibo toys.

Going back to why I thought this was a joke – last week when Nintendo announced their E3 plans, they did so using a fun video, as is Nintendo’s new norm.

The video ends with NoA president Reggie Fils-Aime seeing Bill Trinen in the hallway and firing him. Bill Trinen has become NoA’s second-most recognizable face as of late, after Reggie himself. What made this part of the video so interesting, though, was that Trinen tweeted about it early.

I guess nothing can last for ever.

— Bill Trinen (@trintran) May 13, 2015

This, along with his description being changed to “Used to work for Nintendo.” Got a bunch of people riled up. He followed this up with a tweet about how he had screwed up the timezones, and then once Nintendo’s E3 Video came out everything made more sense. Still, the jokes have brought Trinen even more popularity, especially through his Twitter page.

Which is why, when I first read the headline about Bowser, I thought it was a joke that they had hired Bowser to replace Trinen. But eventually I saw the same headline on every major gaming site, and the story became more clear.

Now, I probably wouldn’t have picked up this story myself (even though the other major sites seem to think that the wordplay is so funny) except for one important fact: Doug Bowser is, in fact, an alumni of the University of Utah. He majored in Communications, a major that many people here at Student Media are pursuing. From there he worked in Sales at Proctor and Gamble, and then at EA Games. He joins many other prominent UofU Alumni who now work in major positions in the Software and Entertainment Industry.

Picture and information from BusinessWire.