Item from Pikmin by Nintendo / Shigeru Miyamoto
The Pikmin's living mothership — part plant, part nest, part mystery — that converts dead things into new life and lifts off every sunset to keep its children safe.
The Onion is the thing that makes Pikmin possible. It absorbs pellets and defeated enemy corpses through its apex, converts them internally through unknown biological processes, and ejects Pikmin seeds from its base. Color-matching is efficient: a red pellet fed to the Red Onion produces more seeds than the same pellet fed to a different color. It is a factory, a nest, and a barracks. At sunset, the Onion retracts its legs and ignites — bright bluish-white flames burst from its leg joints, propelling it into low orbit where it hovers until dawn. Any Pikmin not recalled to their Onion by nightfall are abandoned on the surface, where nocturnal predators kill them. This daily rhythm — daylight work, sunset recall, nighttime safety — is the heartbeat of Pikmin gameplay. Most remarkably, the Onion has a survival instinct: if all Pikmin of its type are lost, it spontaneously produces a single seed, preventing extinction. Olimar notes its muscle fibers enable limited movement and its body produces bioethanol fuel for flight. He named it after a vegetable from Hocotate. It may be the most important organism on PNF-404, and nobody — not Olimar, not the player — fully understands what it is.
A bulbous, brightly colored life form standing on three stilt-like legs covered in tiny hairs. Each Onion matches its Pikmin type: Red, Yellow, or Blue. A black-and-white band wraps the midsection. A large flower crowns the top, resembling Pikmin bloom flowers, spinning slowly when active. When dormant, the Onion appears darker, partly buried, and flowerless. When activated by Olimar's proximity, it blooms with color, its flower spins rapidly, and its legs spring from the ground.
Also known as: The Onion, Onion, Pikmin Onion