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Fridge Brilliance
- How exactly do the Pikmin drink the nectar if none of them have mouths (and the Blue Pikmin's mouth-like organ is really a set of gills)? Remember that the Pikmin have a stem on their head that is the only part of them exposed when buried: their entire body is a root system, which plants use to absorb water and nutrients, so they simply absorb it with their bodies!
- Since plants use their leaves for respiration it makes sense that Pikmin hit by water or poison attacks have droplets/clouds covering their leaf, it's how they're suffocating!
- Fridge Logic issue though with bud and flower Pikmin, as they no longer have leaves, do they breathe with their petals instead?
- Or maybe the buds/petals are modified leaves, similar to poinsettias.
- One dungeon level has multiple small Emperor Bulblaxes on the sublevel before the Empress Bulblax. It's possible that in the Bulborb hive they act as the queen's drones (similar to king termites, who live with the queen and constantly breed with her as opposed to mating once and dying, like ant and bee drones do.)
- Olimar mentions in his notes that evolution on this planet takes place at a surprisingly fast rate. This would probably explain the more bio-mechanical appearance of the onions in the third game, as well as their ability to fuse together: in the span of time between the second and third games the onions have evolved to become more efficient at producing and storing Pikmin, as well as escaping predators by becoming a sleeker and more flight-worthy design.
- Why was the Whiptongue Bulborb not seen in the previous games? It's possible that it's a new population that only recently arose, specifically adapted to eating Pikmin (the Pikmin are very similar to ants in a number of ways, so it makes sense that one of their main predators would evolve to be more like an anteater.)
- Red Pikmin dealing more damage to enemies makes sense when you note that the Pikmin attack enemies by repeatedly whacking them with their heads. Reds are distinguished by their pointed, thorn-like noses, which may in fact injure enemies more than just whipping with a leaf alone.
- The fact that the captains are Speaking Simlish makes more sense since they're aliens, in a nice little aversion of Aliens Speaking English, though subtitled for the audiences' convenience.
- If the Pikmin are really capable of all the things that they do, don't you think that they would have taken over the entire planet by now? Why aren't they the dominant species? Who got them to do what they do in the first place? If you try to judge Olimar, it would look like he was abusing and sending Pikmin to die for his own survival. But then think about what they became. When you first find Pikmin, they were underground. This is because they are the prey of EVERYTHING, and without the ability to fight back, they had almost gone extinct (which is why there is only ONE Pikmin in every Onion). But then Olimar came along and changed everything. He showed them that through numbers and hard work, they could accomplish anything. That is why in the ending, they are seen fighting off the Bulborb. They finally learned HOW to beat them.
- Fridge Horror: As of that ending: Olimar has helped the Pikmin to reach the top of the food chain? Hooray! The natural order has been completely screwed up! Imagine the devastation to the environment if prey suddenly became predators in real life.
- They did: they are called humans. Although Pikmin were near extinction when Olimar found them, it was implied that they were intelligent. Although it's not sure what would happen with them becoming the "superior race" of the planet, it is completely possible it could be something similar to what happened with humans.
- Except the Pikmin aren't really at the top of the food chain, at least not while on their own. Most of the tactics that Olimar uses involve throwing the Pikmin. Without him around, they would have to use inferior tactics, like swarming. Swarming is effective on some enemies, especially in large enough numbers, but is nearly suicidal against other enemies. This could explain why in Pikmin 2, the Onions are found with five Pikmin. It's more than the one that each of them were found with in the first game, but it's not the potentially hundred or more that you left them with.
- The Pikmin are capable of jumping outside of normal gameplay (as shown by the first game's good ending, the positions of the yellow Pikmin in 2, and the lily pads in 3), and thus could use most of the same tactics that the player uses, but probably just aren't smart enough to fight nearly effectively as they do with a leader.
- Fridge Horror: As of that ending: Olimar has helped the Pikmin to reach the top of the food chain? Hooray! The natural order has been completely screwed up! Imagine the devastation to the environment if prey suddenly became predators in real life.
- It also makes you wonder why the enemies will attack the captains, but only actually eat the Pikmin. Then you remember the concept of the guys. The captains are humanoid and the Pikmin are plants. All the predators are herbivores.
- Certain types of enemies directly target the captains though, and seem to ignore the Pikmin. These are presumably the few carnivores among them (alternatively, they may also be Pikmin-eating herbivores that mistake the captains for a Pikmin.)
- When Olimar crash-landed on the surface of the Impact Site, the Dolphin made said landing due to being struck by a stray meteor. Later in the Forest of Hope, it's revealed one of Olimar's ship parts is the Nova Blaster, and Olimar's description of it explained that it's powerful enough to blast through stars. note Why, then, didn't Olimar use such a powerful weapon against the meteor before it could strike the Dolphin and lead to him being stranded in the first place? What's more, the Nova Blaster is not a vital part of the Dolphin, hinting that if he can't get every piece back, it's not important enough to fly off without searching for it, putting him at risk of repeating the same incident that made him stranded the first time around.note Why? Because it can't. Olimar was hinted in his description given of other parts that he is actually very gullible when buying parts for the Dolphin, which led him to buy parts such as a large bolt that is supposed to be extraordinary without any real clue what makes it so extraordinary from every other (possibly cheaper) bolts,note parts he either never did any research on how they work that he has because he's told they were necessary,note parts he doesn't understand even with research,note parts he doesn't understand in general,note or had been cheated on otherwise trying to install the parts in the first place.note Either the Nova Blaster doesn't actually work, or if it did, it doesn't work with as much power as its advertisement had led it to believe. Olimar knew this, which was why he didn't think to use it against the meteor, and why he's not above abandoning the part if he's unable to recover all 30 of them in time despite how likely it is for a repeat incident.
- Or, it is possible that the Nova Blaster is too powerful to use against an asteroid without getting himself or the entire planet caught in the blast. He may not be able to set the Blaster to a lower setting, which may why he doesn't consider it important enough to warrant going out of his way to get it. After all, a blaster that can smash through stars is just a bit overkill for a tiny little asteroid, right?
- Actually, in the back story provided in the original manual for the first game, Olimar had his ship set to auto-pilot and was getting some tea while that was happening. It was also implied that Olimar had traveled that path many times before, so it could be presumed that Olimar was so used to traveling that path that he didn't expect a random meteorite to hit him, and thus when it was about to happen, it caught him by surprise and he didn't have enough time to activate the Nova Blaster.
- There's a cool little theory. In Pikmin 1, Olimar crashes to PNF-404 when a meteor crashes into him, and his Guard Satellite didn't detect it. At the Impact Site, a few days later, he discovers the Goolix, a gelatinous creature. When it dies, it doesn't leave behind a corpse. It just kind of disappears. The final boss of Pikmin, the Emperor Bulblax, disappears when it dies too, more on this later. In Pikmin 2, the Water Wraith is another gelatinous creature, whom disappears when defeated. No corpse, or ghost. By the end of Pikmin 2, we find that Louie had been abducted by the Titan Dweevil, and guess who disappears into a blue mist as they are defeated too? Yes, the Titan Dweevil leaves behind no ghost, nor a corpse. Just Louie and some assimilated weapons. That leaves Pikmin 3, where Olimar has been abducted by the Plasm Wraith, another gelatinous creature, who had a strange fondness for Olimar. We see it survives its encounter with our beloved captains, as well. Ever heard of the Umibōzu? It's an old Japanese folk lore creature, that capsizes ships, and kills the captains. There are even some stories about the captains loving treasure, and the Umibōzu stealing that away. They can shapeshift as well. It is also said that if a captain survives the encounter, the Umibozu will hunt him down and kill him another day. The theory is essentially that the Amibouzu, which is what the Waterwraith AND Plasm Wraith are named in Japanese, crashed Olimar's ship, and captures him, because Olimar got away the first two times. I believe there's more to it as well, but that would require a little more study…
- One problem with this theory that made it a bit hard to believe: as stated, the Umibozu will track down the captains and kill them if they get away in the first encounter. If this is the case, then why is it that the Plasma Wraith is shown caring for Olimar instead of killing him when it had the chance? However, though that is one major contradiction to this theory, I did come up with my own explaination for why it does this instead of killing Olimar.
- At the start of the game, it's mentioned that something went wrong that caused the Drake's crash. Even in the ending cutscene, it's still left up to the imagination as to why it happened or what caused it. Maybe the Umibōzu caused it to crash like it did Olimar's ship, and tried to take the Cosmic Key Drive because it was the most precious 'treasure' the Koppai crew had, as it allowed them to return to their home planet. However, Olimar ended up getting to it first, and because of that, the Plasm Wraith captures him.
- However, it's unable to get it off his person. It may have actually attempted to kill Olimar shortly after, but before it could, it starts to sense the Koppai crew feveriously searching for Olimar, holding him in such high importance because he has the drive key that the Umibōzu starts to consider him as a 'treasure' in regards to the Koppaites, and thus starts to treat him as such. After all, Olimar was apparently still searching around the planet while the Koppai crew was, since he planted some upgrades there shortly after Charlie landed, so we don't know the exact time Olimar got captured, which might have given the Plasm Wraith enough time to reconsider killing him.
- When you find the Hocotate ship in Pikmin 3, the gold plating is gone. As you may know, Hocotate Frieght is in debt once again. So why is the gold plating gone? Because the president sold the gold plating to pay off part of the debt!
- Or that's how the Water Wraith became the Plasma Wraith…
- At first, fear of night seems silly since the predators at the end of the day are the same ones you have been dragging to the onions already. More Bulborbs are awake, but Pikmin 2 shows the stronger Buborb types do not sleep during the day anyway and likely would be going to sleep right now. But then, Pikmin 3 introduces the Vehemoth Phosbat, which is practically invincible in the dark and shown to have a large brood. Now all of a sudden nighttime seems more dangerous.
- Winged Pikmin normally dish out a pitiful amount of damage (doing less than the average-hitting Blues, Yellows, and Whites) to enemies that are land-housed. However, against airborne enemies, they dish out more damage than Red Pikmin. Why's that? Because only winged animals know how to cripple other winged animals faster.
- Technically this isn't completely true, as Winged Pikmin do not deal additional damage against airborne enemies (though this is a pretty common myth out there on player's guides and many of the data files seem to imply this).
- Though while they don't necessarily inflict more damage to flying enemies, the Winged Pikmin do have the advantage of flight and thus are more mobile and capable of chasing and ganging up on airborne foes, or grounding them into reach of stronger, non-flying Pikmin.
- In Pikmin 2, some players felt bad sending Pikmin to their death over something that wasn't a life-or-death matter like last game, where Olimar had to get off Earth before his Life-Support gave out. But, later in the game you get e-mails from your boss about how he's on the run from the All Devouring Black Hole Loan Sharks. If repaying the debt wasn't a matter of life and death before, it certainly is at that point!
- Not to mention you have to get Louie back after you repaid the debt.
- Why do the Pikmin follow the captains? If one looks closely at the Pikmin closer to them, they're looking at the light from the antenna. The Pikmin are like cats that want to follow a laser pointer!
- I always figured that they saw the glowing antenna as a sign that Olimar was some sort of 'Master Pikmin', and after the first game, they certainly trust glowing antennae.
- Why do the Koppaites wear space suits in Pikmin 3 despite their ability to breathe oxygen? Well, according to Brittany, the planet of the Pikmin has 3 times as much oxygen as planet Koppai, implying that breathing too much oxygen at a time is actually dangerous for a Koppaite. Thus, they still have to wear space suits while on Koppai in order to not get poisoned from too much oxygen. This can also theoretically explain why Louie can breathe without his space suit in the S.S. Drake despite the apparent atmosphere difference — the oxygen in the ship's too little to have lasting effects on him.
- Also, it's never clearly specified that oxygen is the gas Koppaites need to breathe. For all we know, it could be like the 78% of nitrogen in our own atmosphere — harmless, but also useless. An excess of oxygen isn't dangerous to the crew on its own, but it displaces whatever element their lungs actually need, making it hard to breathe.
- Oxygen being toxic to Hocotatians sounds like a silly little Hand Wave for Olimar needing his space suit and only having 30 days to get off the planet in the first game. But oxygen really is toxic to many organisms right here on Earth. Aerobic respiration
originally evolved just as a way for organisms to neutralize oxygen in their environments — using oxygen to increase the efficiency of metabolism came later. Aerobic respiration must never have evolved on Hocotate, due to the lack of oxygen on that planet. In contrast, it has evolved on Koppai, but not to the extent that it has on Earth.
- Alph, Brittany, and Charlie had whistles on their space suits despite seemingly having no reason to do so due to them only finding out about the Pikmin when they crash-landed onto the planet. However, the fact that they react to each other's whistles in the game imply that the whistles were originally intended to give instructions amongst themselves rather than to the Pikmin.
- In the animated Pikmin short "Treasure in a Bottle", a red Pikmin gets trapped in a glass bottle while trying to get blue marble-like thing. This wouldn't be too notable in itself, but the glass would likely create a greenhouse effect from the sunlight reflecting through it. This would bring up some Fridge Horror of what would happen to the Pikmin if it couldn't escape... But red Pikmin, who are outright immune to fire, wouldn't be in any danger due to being able to handle extreme temperatures, thus negating that bit of Fridge Horror.
- Wouldn't the opposite be more likely? Greenhouses suit plants just fine, that's kinda the point.
- There is also the horror of that Pikmin being lost to the night, widely accepted as the worst fate a Pikmin can befall. Until you realise that this particular Pikmin is unlikely to get gnawed inside that bottle, considering it didn't even crack at the hands of a bomb-rock. Honestly, I have doubts even the Whiptongue Bulborb could reach him.
- The planet PNF-404 is specifically noted to contain lighter gravity than planet Koppai. This explains why the Koppaite protagonists of the third game are able to survive crash-landing onto the planet itself — to them, falling within the planet is like us falling within the Moon's gravity due to it being lighter. In other words, PNF-404's gravity is too light to do serious harm to them if they were to fall from great heights.
- Indeed, at the size the Pikmin and the various Captains are, they would probably never hit a deadly terminal velocity and could theoretically survive a fall from any height.
- So why are the Captains so small? Well, more gravity means things get smaller. They probably live on a very high-gravity planet where they weigh as much as a human (probably how in Pikmin 3 the captains can actually throw each other).
- In Ai no Uta, the Pikmin say that they love Olimar. Since we think of love as something between two people who have known each other for a long time, we might call this puppy love. But from a biological perspective, the feeling of love exists to facilitate reproduction (family, friends, and homosexuality notwithstanding). Now, think about how the Pikmin reproduce: not by pairing off with the opposite gender (they seem to be genderless), but by foraging for food to bring back to the Onion. Therefore it makes sense that they would feel love not for a mate, but for a leader who can optimize their foraging strategies. Suddenly it makes sense why the Pikmin are willing to die for Olimar: he doesn't need to earn their trust if they just instinctually love whoever plucks them from the ground.
- Love doesn't necessarily have to facilitate reproduction. It can also facilitate altruistic behavior, either for assisting genetically related individuals (family) or simple reciprocal altruism (friends). This still works for the declaration of love in Ai no Uta, since Olimar and the Pikmin are helping each other to survive.
- The Fridge Logic with this Fridge Brilliance is, how would such an instinct evolve without hundreds of space captains crashing all the time? Perhaps, as some have suggested, there exists a type of leader Pikmin that we haven't seen yet (Fridge Horror: maybe they're extinct), or maybe we can pin it on Olimar's observation that changes (i.e. evolution) on PNF-404 happen extremely rapidly.
- When blasting off from the Formidable Oak after rescuing Olimar, the player is shown that the Plasm Wraith has fully recovered. But that's possibly only to be expected if you take a look at your map while fighting it and see that there's apparently something else hanging around outside the boundaries of the level, probably the rest of its biomass. Or at least part of it...
- Considering the level of competence he displays in Pikmin 3, is it more likely that Louie made it to the bottom of the Dream Den before or after he was hijacked by the Titan Dweevil?
- At the start of Pikmin 2, when the ship analyzes the bottle cap Olimar brought back home, it declares it to be worth 100 Pokos, which is "more than a year's salary". Assuming this isn't meant as a joke about Hocotate Freight paying its employees poorly and 100 Pokos is a genuinely enormous amount, why would the creatures you kill in caves be worth a couple Pokos individually (which would be roughly equivalent to a couple hundred dollars)? Simple — worthless as they seem, they're still alien specimens from likely dangerous species. Certainly their remains can be sold back on Hocotate to someone for research purposes, even if they can't be marketed like the actual treasures.
- Alternatively, given Louie's fondness for making tasty dishes out of slain monsters, he may in fact be selling them back home as cooking ingredients!
- The family of the Bulborbs are referred to as "grub-dogs", which may sound weird until a small references shows Olimar's family pet as a two-legged, stalk-eyed creature. So if to a Hocotatian that is the creature that they know as a "dog", then an alien creature matching that description could be referred to by them as "dog-like".
- In Pikmin 2, Olimar and Louie are sent to PNF-404 to collect treasure, and they collect a wide variety of objects they consider treasure to that end. In the backstory missions in Pikmin 3 Deluxe, they primarily collect fruit, and (other than gold nuggets) not much else. Why is this? On one hand, there's the obvious fact that fruit is the main collectible in the main story, so the assets were already there, but the postgame missions have the two collecting ship parts, whose assets were not in the main story. What if the fruit collection is actually story-based? Dialogue throughout the game makes it clear that Hocotate and Koppai are in contact with one another, so perhaps Hocotate knows of Koppai's food shortage, and Hocotate Freight has been selling juice to the Koppaites in order to pay off their debt. (Sure, it's kind of a jerk move to not tell Koppai where the juice is coming from and not sell them the seeds, but Hocotate Freight is kind of a shady company in the first place...)
- In Bloom, Decor Pikmin wear things from their place of origin. Pikmin from bus stations and train stations cobble together model vehicles respectively from random materials, yet ones from airports have sleeker toy aeroplanes instead. Instead of making the models themselves from whatever they could find, they just pinched the toy aeroplanes from the gift shops.
- The King of Bugs (Louie) is "worth" 10 pokos. Assuming that's how much him and Olimar make, that means the ship may have actually been completely sincere about 100 pokos being worth more than a year's salary!
- On that note, if 100 pokos is indeed a genuinely large amount, that would explain why Olimar constantly expresses dislike at his boss and his job. He only makes a tenth of that amount!
- Olimar's notes imply he only makes a meager salary at best, so if he does only make 10 pokos a year, that means the president is intentionally severely underpaying him. No wonder why Olimar doesn't like the guy.
- How all the treasure fits in a ship's hold was answered by Collin in Pikmin 4; the beam is a special light ray that minimizes objects during collection.
- On the Titan Dweevil, Olimar mentions that it takes a fixation to shiny objects in particular. Looking at everything the Titan Dweevil carries, this tracks; the Shock Therapist has glass, the Flare Cannon and Monster Pump are made of a shiny metal, and the Comedy Bomb's shell is reflective. However, there's also the matter of Louie… Who has a glass helmet, a reflective spacesuit, and a glowing beacon antenna on his helmet. It's no wonder Louie got kidnapped by the Titan Dweevil in that case; he was the shiniest, most reflective thing in the room!
Fridge Horror
- If there had been much more oxygen on this planet, we had been healthier, and... the insects bigger. Now imagine that, even though the Koppaites can breathe some of it, too much makes them grow rapidly probably too...
- ...If they were to try and inhabit the planet, as oxygen doesn't cause growth in real time, and only in generations.
- Oxygen is poisonous to Olimar, presumably because of his Bizarre Alien Biology. Pikmin are part plant, and therefore probably photosynthesize. Photosynthesis converts carbon dioxide into oxygen. The Pikmin were unwittingly killing him, bit by bit.
- However, this goes straight back to fridge horror when Olimar returns back to his planet after paying off the debt, Purple and White Pikmin in toll aboard the ship's hull. If we're to assume that it's actually carbon dioxide Hocotatians breathe...
- As mentioned in the Fridge Brilliance section, oxygen is actually inherently toxic due to its high reactivity causing it to dismantle cellular structures. Aerobic respiration redirects that reactivity in a way that's harmless to the cell, and in many multicellular organisms (including humans), the reactivity of oxygen is flat-out harnessed to improve the efficiency of metabolism, enough so that most multicellular organisms (again, including humans) can't get enough energy to survive without the metabolism efficiency boost that oxygen provides (which is why we suffocate to death when drowned, strangled, or otherwise deprived of oxygen). (This goes back into the small size of the Hocotatians and Koppaites mentioned prior; while they have somehow managed to evolve in a way that they can somehow generate enough energy to power their bodies without the use of oxygen, their metabolism is still likely less efficient than the aerobic respiration of modern Earth animals, fungi, and plants. Since larger organisms need more energy to live, this means that Hocotatians can't grow much larger than small insects and still generate enough energy to live. Now, why nothing on PNF-404 has managed to reach the size of things like humans, rhinos, and horses is more of an open question…)
- Pikmin is already unnerving on its own, but then let it sink in that the Pikmin planet is strongly implied to be, and most likely is, Earth in the future. Now take into account that when you don't collect the necessary ship parts in the first game, Olimar dies, but is turned into a Pikmin by the other Pikmin. Considering that, and the fact that there are some very recognizable items that can be found on the planet, it makes you wonder if the first Pikmin in existence might really have been some form of reincarnated human beings…
- Humans are mostly carbon and water. When humans die, this material gets recycled into other things. So yes, some Pikmin probably are "reincarnated" humans. Since they have something resembling a bone structure, some of the calcium in the human body might end up in theirs too. But this isn't anything to fear, all material on Earth eventually becomes something else.
- In the first game, the fact that if all your Pikmin die, then they become extinct strongly suggests that the single Red, Yellow, and Blue Pikmin you find are the last, in not a few of the last of their kind.
- Made worse if it happens in-game, since the extinction of a Pikmin color in-game will cause the onion to sprout a new seed the next day. The Pikmin actually were extinct until Olimar reactivated the onions.
- How does a Pikmin that gets dragged back to a Breadbug's nest die?
- Maybe they just can't climb back out, and the game marks them as dead because there's no way for them to return to play?
- Seeing as most Dwarf Bulborbs are actually camouflaged Breadbugs and they'll still eat your Pikmin, it's possible all breadbugs are carnivores, or maybe even omnivores.
- In the first game, Dwarf Bulbears only appear on day 16 and afterwards. At first, it apparently means it would be a good idea to kill as many Spotty Bulbears as possible before then… but then the very likely possibility that they are pregnant hits home.
- Not matter what you do, at the start of every sequel, you find that the Pikmin are back down to the bottom of the food chain; most onions only have one seed, and in the case of Pikmin 3 you have to save several onions after they've been stuck. It's possible that they've become over reliant on space-travelers telling them what to do to survive.
- Given the state of the Pikmin prior to the first game, that is to say, all but extinct, it's safe to say that they're no worse off for the intervention of the captains, and were no more self-reliant before than they are now.
- One of the treasures in Pikmin 2 is the directional pad of a NES or Game Boy. What unholy force is present on the planet that can actually destroy Nintendo hardware?
- PNF-404 is Earth millions of years later. The only remnants of civilization left are items from early 2000 or so, like batteries, globes, and pieces from Nintendo controllers. Which means that whatever caused the humans to go extinct happened very recently today. This Fridge Horror is "fixed" in Pikmin 3 as the planet's redesigned so that it resembles a possible future version of Earth, as well as making a lot of the remaining human technology look like they are either heavily deteriorated or heavily rusted.
- Then Pikmin 4 brings this Fridge Horror back in full force by having PNF-404 look like it's only recently been abandoned, with fully-functioning "ancient" technology like Game Boys, digital clocks, and even an entire house that look like they've been out of use for only a few weeks rather than presumably thousands of years. If we assume that the catastrophe happened later on (since Pikmin 4 takes place in an Alternate Continuity), it raises the question… what the hell happened to humanity? Did they simply vanish into thin air?
- So you just spent a long time collecting all 66 pieces of fruit in Pikmin 3 and got your cosmic drive key back. Great! Now we can go back to Koppai, plant those seeds, and save a starving planet… except that we know that Koppai's environment (particularly its atmosphere) is very different from PNF-404's, which means that the likelihood of the fruit actually cultivating is slim. Your entire journey was likely *cough* fruitless.
- They could probably grow the fruit in an airtight greenhouse of sorts, with an atmosphere similar to PNF-404's inside. They would simply wear their spacesuits to enter.
- And more broadly, Brittany is part of the expedition team entirely because she's a botanist. Presumably she can tell if the fruit could be grown in Koppai's atmosphere, and wouldn't be getting so excited about their finds if it couldn't.
- Some of Louie's notes state that the flora and fauna of PNF-404 are inedible. Ignoring the 'how does he know that' horror, some of the more Rule of Funny symptoms include enthusiastic dishwashing, strokes of brilliance, impromptu break-dancing, and actually being delicious. Don't some of those sound suspiciously like epilepsy, delusions, and/or drugs? Louie might just be misinterpreting some more horrible toxins in those foods (especially since one of them is an LED) as more comical symptoms… again, this is Played for Laughs.
- The Man-At-Legs in the second game. It's a robotic four-legged spider with a freaking MACHINE GUN! And the fleshy bits can still be seen through parts of its metal armour. And you find in a rusted labyrinth way, way, way under the ground.
- Wouldn't that mean that some messed up human scientists were combining insects with robots? And with the intent of mass producing them for mini armies? The fact that the Man-At-Legs is found deep underground may imply it is the living proof of humans realizing their mistakes. Only, you and the Pikmin come along, and reawaken its senses...
- Pikmin 4 has several Man-At-Legs and during the retelling of Olimar's journey, a Man-At-Legs is found inside an abandoned human house on a counter top island. This gives a more firm comparison of how large the Man-At-Legs actually is, and it's shown to be larger than a dinner plate, which is larger than even a goliath bird eating tarantula. It's also fast for its size. This leaves the implication of what damage it could do to a human much higher than previously thought, especially if more than one happened to be active in any specific area.
- In the third game, one of the dropped reports has Olimar mention that he's been trying to contact the President, but there has been no reply, assuming the President is taking a long, relaxing vacation. However, the secret files reveal that after Pikmin 2, the President took out a whole slew of new loans for a new business venture (presumably Treasure Hunting) and that it went south very fast, putting the freight company in even greater debt than before. Judging from what happened last time in the second game with the loan sharks hunting the President down with increasing urgency, the fact that in the third game the President is not responding at all could mean he's in a position where's he's unable to reply… maybe even dead.
- Given Olimar has a better S.S. Dolphin in "Hey Pikmin!", that doesn't seem plausible. Besides, it's unlikely the president would make the same mistake of asking the loan sharks for money again. Given how chill he was when he thought the loan came from "Happy Hocotate Savings and Loans", he probably has time to pay off the debt. And it's doubtful that his wife would let him make a huge screw up like that or would have a solution handy.
- 3 Deluxe de-confirms this; the literal first thing the President does when Olimar and Louie get back from the main story is send them right back to repair the company ship. His failure to respond was either the Plasm Wraith jamming the signal or the President being the President.
- Deluxe also has a data file in the Tropical Wilds (don't know if it's in the Wii U version) from the President concerning Olimar's lack of reports sent lately.
- The Geiger counter in the first game, as Olimar notes even though he doesn't know the significance, is that the needle spends the entire time going haywire. Geiger counters are meant to monitor radiation levels, which means that whatever happened to the planet, it was Nuclear. With the outright confirmation in later games that this is a post-humanity Earth, it's very likely their end was to a nuclear apocalypse.
- It could also be that we have failed to protect those who came after us, The Writing on the Wall-style. Our nuclear waste could very well outlive us for a very long time...
- Purple and White Pikmin are noticeably absent from the ending of the second game. Now keep in mind that the two are stored in the ship since they don't have onions. This means Olimar and the President may have actually brought them to Hocotate with them. And since the Pikmin are part-plant and Hocotate completely lacks oxygen...”.
- Worse, even if the Purple and White Pikmin survived the trip, the ship is later knocked offline and broken by the Quaggled Mireclops. Meaning either A. They were all killed by that, or B. They were stuck inside the ship with no way to get out, and the Koppaites have no idea the two types even exist. Now consider that Purple and White Pikmin are completely absent from story mode in the third game…
- Louie's motivation in 4 is that he wishes to stay on PNF-404 for good, having become attached to the planet as a sort of playground where he can run free without anyone to tell him what to do. Keep in mind that, since he and Olimar work for the same company, they likely have the same type of spacesuit, which can only last 15 days before its life support runs out. No amount of cooking and eating nearly every creature he can get his hands on would've saved Louie from a Cruel and Unusual Death by oxygen poisoning had he been allowed to stay behind… and since he's been regularly drinking glow sap, not even the Onion would be able to save him when the inevitable happens.
