Mother Brain (Metroid)

Mother Brain
Metroid character
Mother Brain, as depicted in Metroid: Zero Mission.
First game	Metroid (1986)

Mother Brain (Japanese: マザーブレイン^?) is a fictional character created by Nintendo for the Metroid series. She is one of the most prominent antagonists within the series, serving as the main antagonist of Metroid and Super Metroid.

Mother Brain has been killed multiple times by series protagonist Samus Aran. Her Super Metroid design was originally milder than its final version, resembling an "old lady living in an apartment complex" when designed by Toru Osawa. This design was altered by Tomomi Yamane, who gave her an overall more monstrous appearance. She takes the form of a large brain that sits within a jar, from which she controls the Space Pirates on the fictional planet Zebes. Since Super Metroid (1994), she has had a single large eye.

Mother Brain has made several appearances in other media, most notably in the cartoon, Captain N: The Game Master. Since appearing in the Metroid series, she has received positive reception, but her alterations in Captain N were far less well received.

Mother Brain is depicted as a very large brain with cybernetic spikes, usually contained in a glass tube which Samus must break to attack it. However, in the Super NES video game Super Metroid, she is seen in a bipedal form. When designing the bipedal version of Mother Brain for Super Metroid, Toru Osawa described what he wanted her to look like as being an "old lady living in my apartment complex." However, Tomomi Yamane added to the design, giving her dripping saliva, foul breath, and a filthy appearance. Mother Brain is an old Federation control system based on a possibly human brain that went insane.

Mother Brain first appeared in the NES video game, Metroid, and again in the third Metroid title, Super Metroid. She would appear again in the Game Boy Advance video game Metroid: Zero Mission, a remake of the NES Metroid, which explains what happens after Mother Brain's defeat. The Wii video game Metroid Prime 3: Corruption revealed that the Galactic Federation had constructed biomechanical supercomputers called Auroras, and that there were plans for a "Future Aurora Complex", which appears to be the Mother Brain depicted in Super Metroid. In Metroid: Other M, the scene of Mother Brain destroying the baby Metroid is reenacted in an FMV cutscene. Also, the primary antagonist of Other M, MB, is an android partially constructed from Mother Brain's DNA, hence the initialism.