Uh ... Does Mega Man Poop Out Of His Arm?
Disclaimer 1: This is a thought experiment purely for scientific purposes -- no need to ask why I spend my time picturing how robot boys go to the bathroom. You read the title and clicked on it. You're in this with me too, bub. The group therapy session meets at 8.
Disclaimer 2: I will not pretend to be the absolute authority on all things Mega Man. I've seen some shows. I've played most games. I've read a comic here or there. I know there are dozens of different iterations of Mega Men with literally thousands of storylines between them, and if one of them has a panel somewhere explaining how Mega Man takes a dump, then great. Let me know about it in the comments. Otherwise, we're logic-ing it out here with versions of Mega Man in which he has some sort of corporeal form from the games and shows that most of us can remember.
So now, the question at hand: Does Mega Man Poop Out Of His Arm? I think the answer is he probably does, but I can already hear your objections. "Robots don't poop" and "what's wrong with you that you would even think of this?" (Dammit, read the disclaimer!) As for the first objection, that's not necessarily true. Everybody poops, even robots. We know this because the publishers at Kane/Miller won't stop reminding us, but we also know it as a fundamental law of physics. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, which means that any excess energy must be expunged in some way. Unless something is perfectly 100% energy efficient, then it is always going to have some sort of byproduct, and nothing is 100% energy efficient.
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So, in a technical sense, Mega Man does poop out of his arm. According to Mega Man's original creator, Mega Man's body is mostly powered by solar energy. He releases the excess of that energy with his Mega Buster in the form of a solar bullet. That's pooping. It might not seem like pooping, but if you go by a very broad definition in which pooping is simply "passing excess waste from the body," then Mega Man basically has a diarrhea cannon that he launches all over his enemies.
But again, this might be the letter of the law, but it's not the spirit of it. What I'm sure you want to know is if there is a version of Mega Man somewhere standing over the john, squeezing out logs of shit from his arm like its toothpaste at the bottom of the tube? This one is tougher, but I think the answer is still yes. Mega Man doesn't eat food, but we know he drinks juice and a lot of it.
So we know if Mega Man drinks, then he certainly pees (We don't care what Sunny D tells you. Good luck trying to convert juice into a solar-powered energy blast), and we know that if he pees then he does so out of his buster arm because he has no other genitals or b-hole or p-hole to speak of.
But that's where our certainties end. The rest is just speculation, but it feels like a real (very intended pun) half-assed job for Dr. Light to give Mega Man the capabilities to pee and not to poop. The entire digestive tract is made to absorb the nutrients of food and liquid alike, which means if he drinks juice, then he's almost entirely set up for pooping anyway. Just add a rectum in his elbow or something, and he's good to go. Also, what if Mega Man encounters Poop Man and needs to steal his power but can't because the proper systems haven't been put into place. It just feels like a lack of foresight, especially coming from a scientist so thorough that he remembered to install pitching machine capabilities, to not add a pooper as well.
But my last argument is what I find most convincing. Mega Man steals power through contact but look at his face as he tricks this hapless sucker into giving him a hi-five.
There's too much elation there for it to be just about a simple power swap. It's unmistakable. That's the face you make when you just got your worst enemy to touch your poop-shooter-dookie-fingers, and they don't even know it. I rest my case.
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Top Image: Capcom/ The Summit Media Group
