Headscratchers / Pikmin

• The creatures. Since it's pretty much confirmed Pikmin and Pikmin 2 take place on Earth, it makes me wonder about the creatures. What the hell happened?! There's snakes with bird heads, caterpillars that spit rocks, strange Bulborb creatures classified as Grub-Dogs, creatures that resemble loaves of bread, freaky spiders, a strange fish like creature with a gun, the goddamn Waterwraith, and above all, Pikmin! How did these creatures come to be...? I know evolution would seemingly be a logical answer, but it doesn't seem to be the thing for most of these creatures...
  • Nuclear apocalypse, maybe?
  • I'm of the camp that Olimar is human-sized, but a nuclear incident enlarged humans to about 100 feet. Their new civilization crumbled and humans went extinct on their own while the local irradiated insects thrived.
  • So somehow radiation made all the animals, grasses, flowers, trees, and even artificial items regarded as treasures like shoes and bottle caps 100 times larger as well? That's well beyond Nuclear Mutant...
    • Additionally, the game manual for Pikmin 1 contains a chart that indicates that Olimar is only one inch tall.
  • Personally I like the idea that humans didn't simply die out, but developed scientifically until they were able to make these creatures before leaving the planet for some reason. Maybe even eventually becoming the two species the main characters are descended from. It would certainly explain why the Pikmin have complete loyalty to the vaguely human-shaped main characters on sight.
  • Because the Earth is polluted and trash is laying about all around in the forests, this Earth seems to take place in a semi-Crapsack World where people either don't recycle or for one reason or another, have yet to create a proper solution. Due to the increasing amount of pollution, animals such as the ladybugs evolved into Bulborb's and other new creatures. As for the humans, it's not a stretch to think that because of the polluted planet, they moved underground.
• Is there a Bulborb hive with Empress Bulblax as its Hive Queen? Olimar mentions a "bee or ant like social structure" and she obviously is based on a termite queen, but it's strange that no other Bulborbs are seen on the same sublevels as her, perhaps feeding her or caring for her young. Instead, she's all alone in her cave, she doesn't eat Pikmin, and births lots of larvae that she mostly crushes to death accidentally. Doesn't she have any worker Bulborbs to serve her?
• What exactly is the difference between "Bulborb", "Bulbear", and "Bulblax"? They're all members of the same family, but the Empress Bulblax gives birth to Bulborb Larvae, and the Fiery Bublblax is just as big as a Bulborb and not really Emperor Bulblax's size. As for the Bulbear, its only distinction is that its smaller variant is really its babies and not just a Breadbug mimic, but otherwise is like the other Bulborbs?
  • The Bulbear is distinct for branching off from the standard evolution chain and developing a different mouth, which allows it to eat more prey at once. Additionally, it's more diurnal than Bulborbs. Meanwhile Bulblaxes appear to be very closely related to Bulborbs, but the main difference I see is that Bulblax is an elite branch of the Bulborb line, home to one that's literally on fire as well as the monarchs.
• Why is the Mamuta a Gentle Giant, but its younger form, the Smokey Progg, is a downright Eldritch Abomination? I mean, you would think that creatures would get more agressive, not less.
  • The Smokey Progg is believed to be Malformed, and if you look at it, it's practically decaying as you fight it, so it could be more aggressiveness towards what it perceives as a threat for prematurely hatching it.
  • The Mamuta is not gentle, lacks the ability to kill Pikmin. It still buries them against their wishes and attacks the captains for no other reason than noticing them. Plus larval forms tend to have different diets than the adults. Why would an adult bury Pikmin and the Larva uproot them?
  • Fridge Brilliance: The parent Mamuta plants the Pikmin and grows them into leaves because it has grown to prepare food for it's newborn baby when it hatches, which is why the Smokey Progg can uproot them: to eat!
    • Then why the goddamn supertoxin that's deadlier than any other toxin in all of the three games? Where does that come from? And why does the Progg look almost immaterial and definitely nothing like the Mamuta?
    • "Thought to be a malformed larval Mamuta"-Captain Olimar, Enemy Reel, emphasis added later. We can assume the toxin (which is not necessarily deadlier than any other toxin, since we don't have White Pikmin) and possibly some of the Eldritch Abomination traits can be traced back to that word.
  • Considering that the Smokey Progg is only fought when you break it out of its egg, it's also entirely possible that Olimar's actions caused it to hatch prematurely, and that a Mamuta larva that is allowed to develop and hatch naturally would not show the same traits as the Progg.
• While it is a part of the gameplay that the creatures instinctively go after and eat your Pikmin, it doesn't make a lot of sense that something as big as a snagret would go after your tiny Pikmin when there are other enemies that would make a better meal. Why have a single tiny Pikmin when there's a fat juicy Dwarf Bulborb?
  • Bulborbs can bite back, and Pikmin until Olimar's arrival were largely helpless. Additionally, you might be approaching the Snagret with a large group of Pikmin that collectively equals more food than a Bulborb.
  • Alternatively, the same reason whales eat krill, which are like a thousand times smaller than them.
• What about the Pokos? The Hocotatian public obviously purchases them, but how do the items get to Hocotate? I'm assuming the Pokos aren't actually with Olimar and Louie, just sent as numeric data to the ship while the real money goes to Hocotate Freight, but does the ship have some sort of transporting mechanism to send the items and enemies over? It can fit very large enemies in it...
  • The money hasn't actually been collected yet. The ship is calculating theoretical amounts of money it can make from each treasure, and in the case of beast corpses, the lowest theoretical value.
• I just thought of yet another thing. How do Olimar, Louie, Alph, Brittany, and Charlie use whistles through space helmets?
  • If you look closely at Alph, Brittany, and Charlie's ingame models, you'll notice they actually have whistles indented into their space helmets. How that works while still filtering out water/oxygen, it's probably best to not think about it too hard.
    • Yep, a lot of headscratchers come from overthinking! But I never noticed the whistle-helmets. How the Hocotatians do it is still a mystery. The Koppai crew always seemed more advanced anyway.
    • Well, in Pikmin 3 we get a good look at Louie's spaceship at the swamp and it does have the same built-in whistle there. Still no idea how they did that before.
    • Well, in the new Smash Bros. and when he appears in Pikmin 3, Olimar also has a whistle indented into his helmet as well. Whether this has always been the case and the GC just couldn't render it properly, or it was recently added to quell this Fridge Logic, we'll have to wait and see if Word of God says anything about that.
• Would White Pikmin be immune to Puffstool spores? Their primary ability is the fact that they're immune to toxins, and some spores could be considered toxic so...
  • Probably. In fact, that would be a great opportunity to have a boss/miniboss that would be better fended off with the whites. Unfortunately the Puffstool never came back(and it might be for the best, considering White Pikmin are a rather limited resource).
• Why are some parts like the analog computer, the pilot's seat, the interstellar radio, the gieger counter, etc. required? The analog computer falls out of the ones and zeros range, making it vauge, the pilots seat is... just a seat, the interstellar radio emits a S.O.S. signal and broadcast voices to keep olimar from getting lonely, and the gieger counter measures radiation. And those are necessary to get the ship off the planet how?
  • The analog computer handles manual data entry for charting flight paths if the autopilot is out, the seat has the harness he'd need to wear for hyperspace travel or the hocotation equivalent, the interstellar radio lets him request permission to land at home without getting shot down, and the gieger counter tells him if his ships radiation shielding is compromised which could kill him very fast and painfully.
    • Good reasons to hang on to them, but that doesn't explain why not getting them sends you hurling back to the planet's surface if you don't pick them up. I mean, what's stopping Olimar from getting replacements back on Hocotate?^note Don't mention the debt. Olimar didn't know about that, and he lost his ship entirely anyway I mean, at that point, getting back home is more important than anything, and it could be that he could do something makeshift to manage to get home in one piece. ...Or it could also be that game limitations stopped the game showing alternate bad endings where Olimar got past PNF-404's orbit.
  • My guesses:
    • The Analog Computer is stated to make the computer's AI more intelligent. Given that Olimar has no idea how several parts work, it's possible he can't safely operate the Dolphin without the ship's computer assisting him.
    • Without the Pilot Seat's safety harnesses, Olimar could've been injured by the extremely-rough liftoff, causing him to take his hands off the controls and crash.
    • The Interstellar Radio keeps Olimar from getting bored, which would cause his mind to wander. It's possible that on a long voyage, his mind could wander (or worse yet, he could fall asleep entirely), causing him to crash. Likely wouldn't happen as fast as as it does in the bad ending, but still a possibility.
    • The Geiger Counter is likely read by the ship's computer. It's possible that some of the parts (in particular, the Gluon Drive or the Eternal Fuel Dynamo) emit some kind of radiation, and the ship needs to alternate between using them to generate power and stopping to vent the radiation into space. With no way to measure the radiation levels, the ship wouldn't know when to alternate, causing the ship to break down and explode.
• What is the practical application of a suit that knocks you out when you are in danger?
  • More accurately, it puts you to sleep if you experience a big surprise. Maybe it's a prank, or maybe it's for people with heart conditions?
  • Olimar is a space trucker. Truck drivers are notorious for sleep deprivation and are required to take breaks to prevent them from ruining a lot product. The autopilot feature and forced sleep mechanism are most likely there to stop greedy captains who go against protocol.
• How is it the Pikmin just seem to have a natural sense of what should be taken back to the Onion, and what shouldn't? I mean, what was keeping them from taking a ship part back to the Onion to make more Pikmin and completely screwing Olimar over? Or any of the treasures 2, especially the edible ones like fruit. (In fact, in early beta videos for Pikmin 1, Strawberries replaced twenty pellets when it came to making Pikmin...)
  • They probably have a taste equivalent for that kind of thing.
  • The ship parts probably resemble the ship to the pikmin. As for the edible material, the Pikmin don't use the spiderwort berries either, so maybe they've just been conditioned to take anything they don't find useful back to the ship.
  • The ship parts are man-made mechanical objects. Everything the Pikmin bring back to their onion to create more Pikmin is usually organic.
• The way the Rock Pikmin's Onion is located / trapped. The others at least make some sort of sense. The Red Onion getting caught in a branch, the Yellow Onion getting trapped in a cave (possibly by a landslide or something) and can't work without light, the Winged Pikmin's Onion being caught in a Arachnode web, and even the Blue Onion being dormant under ground like in the first game. However, the Rock Pikmin Onion somehow got trapped in solid crystal. How does that even work?
  • Theory: the Rock Pikmin underwent an extinction a long time ago, and the crystal grew around the onion when it went inactive. It's possible that the crystals are some sort of salt crystals, and so grow quickly.
• There's an Easter egg where you can nap and the Pikmin will try to give you to the Onion, but you just end up knocking into it and falling harmlessly back down. In the bad ending of the first game, Olimar dies and is taken to the onion, where he is turned into a Pikmin. So what's stopping him from being converted during the Easter egg? It can't be because he's still alive, because the Pikmin can convert Spotty Bulbears, Ravenous Whiskerpillars, and Gatling Groinks, all of which are still alive when they are converted.
  • The onion rejecting them? It does revive/awaken at their touch, so for some reason its stimuli based reactions are tied to the captains and what state they are in.
• If the Pikmin 2 ship becomes golden after the debt is repaid, why is it normal in Pikmin 3? Also, it had a personality. Is it dead? Does no one care?
  • The ship is completely totalled, so whatever makes it...do things isn't working. Why it's not gold anymore is anyone's guess though...
    • Well, the company is in debt again. Presumably they stripped off the gold plating to help pay part of it off.
• Does Olimar not own the Dolphin? It gets sold off twice seemingly without his consent, implying that it's a company asset. But we know he personally modifies it, and when he talks about getting it back it sounds as though it's him who has to pay for it, not Hocotate Freight, implying that it's his. Which is it?
  • My guess its his as long as he's a Hocotate Freight employee. Like a police officer's squad car or a delivery guy's truck. Olimar having to buy it back, well since he works for Hocotate Freight where do you think he gets his money?
• Why can't you take the Bulbmin with you? Sure there may be some concern about keeping them in the ship or that they may give into their appetite if you keep them for too long, but surely that shouldn't prevent you from at least taking them above ground, right?
  • Maybe they can't enter the Onion.
• How was Louie able to blow blow a whole in the block? If he had explosives on him then why didn't he use them to defend himself from the Scornets? Or otherwise, if he stole some sort of explosives from the Koppaites then why weren't they using it to help with their exploration?
  • If he had explosives on him, it might not have helped against a swarm of Scornets. While. he would be able to kill a bunch of them, it wouldn't kill all of them. I doubt he would steal explosives from the Koppaites, since he never mentions it in his data file log, only stealing their food and treasure (Charlie's rubber ducky). If the Koppaites did have explosives, they may have been reluctant so as not to damage the alien planet any more than what's necessary. But then they discovered bomb rocks and decided to use those so as not to waste their own resources.
• Louie's cooking notes imply Hocotate has all the normal foodstuffs that we have, so why doesn't Koppai go to them for their food and fruit seed needs?
  • It's mentioned that Koppaites can only gain nutrition from something called "Piktamin U," which is found largely in fruit. Hocotatians, meanwhile, are stated to eat a lot of vegetables, which don't contain much Piktamin U. Presumably the two species have sufficiently different dietary needs that while the Hocotatians may have some foods that Koppaites can eat, they just don't have it in sufficient quantities to actually feed an entire planet.
• How do you have a food shortage on a planet where everybody is an inch tall?
  • Foods which are proportional to the people. When you find your first fruit, Alph mentions that it's significantly larger than anything that grows naturally on Koppai.
• Why would Louie think he was captured especially after sending a distress call for help?
  • He was probably tryign to call Olimar for help. Three complete strangers would have likely spooked him.
• Once you've collected all 66 fruits in the main mode, a talk segment has Alph saying exactly that, so where do the fruits in Olimar's Comeback come from? This is afterwards since Olimar mentions the Koppaites gave him safe passage back to Hocotate.
  • It's fruit. Depending on how long Olimar was gone, they probably just newly grown.
  • PNF-404 is prone to extremely wild changes in layout and environment (the vast changes between Pikmin 1 and 2, and 3 and the Deluxe side stories, despite the brief time in-between them). It's not unreasonable to suspect that the plant life just grows super fast there.
• Why hasn't the food gone bad over the millions of years between present day and whenever Pikmin takes place? We have fruits from modern species, candies, processed meats, etc. but Pikmin 3's world map being Pangaea Proxima confirms that it takes place long after present day and not in an earth where real things and fictional animals coexist.
  • The fruits are fresh having only recently grown and the meat is all canned keeping it preserved. That and the distinct possibility humans are actually still around just on a scale and in a location that precludes them running into the characters.
• How exactly do Volatile Dweevils persist as a species? A creature who's only defense mechanism is "find the nearest explosive and self detonate when hostiles approach" would go extinct real fast. It'd make sense if the Volatile Dweevil threw the bomb rock like a grenade or drop it and ran away, but nope. The moment they see a captain, they light the fuse and charge directly at them.
  • Maybe Dweeviles are a hive species like ants and the Volatile ones are a specialized kamikaze variant.
• Cliché line aside, how would Louie know the Mamuta tastes like chicken if he says it's inedible?
  • Presumably the same way a boulder is inedible but can still be tasted. He licked it.
• How did Yellow Pikmin manage to evolve their high flying trait? Pikmin 3 says they're less dense than other types of Pikmin, but regardless of the explanation, it doesn't make sense for them to develop it. Pikmin can't throw themselves, so why would any kind of adaptations that increase "throwability" be selected for?
• How can the Rescue Corps monitor and talk to the new recruit if there's such a dramatic time differential between the surface and underground?
• How are the fruits on PNF-404 still recognizable? It's been long enough that animals and insects have evolved into bizarre forms, and even the plants are not immune to this (the Pikmin themselves). Meanwhile, there are things like apples and watermelons that are no different than what we could get today. How?
• If Dwarf Bulborbs are actually just Breadbug mimics, then why do the larger bulborbs protect and defend them? Are they like cuckoos, which eat the Bulborbs's actual young and take their place? How come they aren't eaten themselves by the big bulborbs?
• Why in the name of God do Olimar and Louie's spacesuits have an "auto-sleep" function? What the hell kind of purpose is that supposed to serve? If it weren't for that, they wouldn't have needed rescuing so much!
  • My guess? Poorly implemented stasis. It saves energy so they can get through dangerous situations, like a monster's digestive system, without starving to death, etc. In practice... it doesn't turn out so well, as is the habit of Hocotatian technology.
  • They are an interstellar counterpart to truck drivers. Truck drivers are notorious for ignoring their mandatory break periods and driving while severely sleep-deprived.
  • The auto-sleep function could have a few practical uses, like making sure they get the proper amount of rest (as suggested above) or as a way of conserving energy and resources on particularly long trips through space when you have an auto-pilot or someone else to drive while you sleep. A better example of Fridge Logic with the auto-sleep isn't the fact that it exists at all, but the fact that it can be activated by another person/creature or, as Charlie mentions, extreme stress, both situations where suddenly passing out is a very bad thing. That's a feature that only the person wearing the suit should be able to activate, or if it absolutely must have an automatic trigger, it should be something like the wearer starting to show signs of severe sleep deprivation.
• Koppaites breathe oxygen. Hocotatians breathe something else and are killed by oxygen. When Louie is in the Drake, his helmet is off. Why is he not dead?
  • May creep into Fridge Horror, especially after the implications of the final boss of the second game: just how Hocotatian is he anymore...?
  • Koppaites can tolerate oxygen, but is it ever stated they need it?
  • Oxygen is harmful to Koppaites too. A talking segment before you start the day has Alph warning Charlie not to take off his helmet while on PNF-404 because its oxygen levels are higher than that of Koppai.
• Why can't Winged Pikmin just fly away during the night? I mean, if you leave them behind, they stay LOW ON GROUND LEVEL instead of flying just above the creatures. Yeah, it's to make them not to so cheap as to be invincible during the night, but still...
  • Because there are still flying enemies, presumably airborne predators that we don’t see, or they get tired (given how it’s night and they’re plants) and hence still take cover in the onion.

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