Character · Pokemon
Onix
A rock snake the length of a bus, and the reason a whole generation learned what a type chart was for.
In Otakana the clue reads: Giant serpent made of boulders
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- 4 · Normal
Onix is what waits at the end of the first gym, and for anyone who picked Charmander it is a wall. Rock and Ground against a Fire starter is the game teaching a lesson early and hard, and the intended answer, a Water or Grass type caught in the woods on the way, is the first real piece of strategy most players ever worked out.
The design is a chain of grey boulders with a horn on the front, listed at nearly nine metres long, which the anime takes literally and animates as a building falling over sideways. It burrows at speed, and the noise it makes underground is one of the few sound effects the first games could manage convincingly.
Later generations gave it Steelix, a heavier evolution reached by trading the thing while it holds a Metal Coat, which turned the tutorial monster into something that survives into the endgame. The Japanese name is Iwark, built from iwa, meaning rock, and it is one of the many first-generation names that the English localisation rebuilt from scratch rather than transliterated.
Spelling ONIX
ONIX is four letters and every one matters, because the word it comes from is spelled differently. The gemstone is onyx with a Y. The creature is ONIX with an I, one letter off, which is exactly the sort of change that keeps a trademark clean. Japanese calls it Iwark, from iwa, meaning rock. Four tiles, no doubles, and the trap is a single vowel.