Here’s why the role-playing game series known as Earthbound was renamed to Mother by its creator, Shigesato Itoi.
A Mother fan account on Twitter/X shared an excerpt from a recent interview with series creator Shigesato Itoi, in which he shed light on the origin of its name. He mentioned that everyone thinks they already know why it is called as such. However, as someone who is now at the age of 75, Itoi said that he probably just wanted to say “Mother” out loud to the world. As per him, the reason for naming the series ‘Mother’ was probably something along these lines.
To offer context, Itoi shared some details about his childhood. Ever since he was a child, he felt like he had forbidden himself from thinking or talking about his mother. His parents were divorced before he could even think of anything, so he had to live his life thinking his mother was gone. What he hated the most was having people pity him for his situation. He said that it was painful to see people sympathize with him.’ He thought he was fine with the fact that he didn’t have a mother and didn’t have a relationship with her. Although he has been doing this for decades, he said that his lack of a real sense of motherhood was due to some kind of unreasonable force being forced on his heart.
By giving the series the title of ‘Mother’, Itoi felt that he had found a way to say the forbidden word “mother” out loud. He said that this it was a representation of his feelings. He mentioned John Lennon, and how he had done something similar. As loud as he could, Lennon screamed the word “mother”. Itoi said that he was shaken when he heard that scream.