Mario's birth and defects — "Mario had been given the name…"
Mario had been given the name of Dr. James Incandenza’s father’s father, a dour and golf-addicted Green Valley AZ oculist who made a small fortune, just after Jim grew up and fled east, by inventing those quote X-Ray Specs! that don’t work but whose allure for mid-’60s pubescent comic-book readers almost compelled mail-order […]
Context
The optics lineage runs a generation deeper than JOI's lens work: Mario's namesake great-grandfather was an oculist, and the fortune that let James Sr. retire from the Man From Glad came from fake optical instruments — X-Ray Specs that don't work. Filed as texture for the optics-as-family-trade through-line (cf. scene 020's career arc).