WMG / Pikmin

For WMG specific to individual games, see the following:

• Pikmin 3
• Pikmin 4

Main Characters

Louie is a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass who is smarter than he seems.

When you first take control of him in Pikmin 2, he seems to be able to easily control and order Pikmin despite never seeing them before; also, when Olimar leaves Louie behind, he is able to survive until help arrives. While we never see everything that he does, the local animals never seem to bother him and he was apparently hunting them all down just to see what they taste like. Also, when he's discovered, he's at the bottom of the longest hole in the game, sleeping on top of the final boss. Obviously, he's secretly a Beast Master.

Louie is from Earth.

After being stranded on Earth when Olimar happens to forget him, he seems to be able to cope very well on his own. Louie's Notes (recipes for cooking every enemy in Pikmin 2) include ingredients which are from Earth — some of which are treasures which the captains find and Olimar has no idea what they are and therefore would not be on Hocotate. Also notable is that Louie cooperates and supposedly controls the creatures native to 'Earth' very well.

Louie was insane with hunger for most of the third game.

It's certainly known that Louie likes to eat a lot. After being stuck with Olimar for too long and running low on food, he started to prioritize food more and more until he was simply too hungry to think about anything else. In fact his only lines in the game is just him yelling FOOD! over and over.

Louie is at least part Koppai-ian.

Granted, I'm not sure how, and I have no proof other than his Big Eater qualities, but it would certainly explain why and how he could consume so much, and why he is so different in demeanor than his Hocotate-ian compatriots.

• This would explain how he's able to breathe the oxygen in the S.S. Drake...

Louie's last name starts with G.

Because then he'd be Louie G. Like Luigi.

If Nintendo ever partners up with a studio to create a movie adaptation of the game, this is who Miyamoto would personally cast as the characters.

• Jim Parsons as Olimar
• John Mulaney as Louie
• John Goodman as President

The Pikmin

Pikmin Onions eventually leave the Pikmin planet to colonize other planets.

Considering even Pikmin 1 showed the "classic" Onions can reach low orbit in the good ending, after enough Onions fuse and build up a decent Pikmin horde, they eventually leave the Pikmin planet in search of other worlds capable of sustaining life. That's why there's Pikmin on the new planet in Hey! Pikmin.

If left unchecked in an environment with no natural predators, Pikmin could easily deplete an area of its natural resources before the day is done.

Even if we factor in the one hundred Pikmin limit, what with the shorts hinting that it may be a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation, that still leaves one hundred beings that naturally work well together and seem to have natural instincts when it comes to collecting resources, in addition to their varying speeds and strengths. It's not impossible to say that if left unchecked in an environment with none of their predators, even without a captain to guide them, they could easily clean the place out before sundown.

In fact, the above is the exact reason why everything seems so focused on killing the Pikmin specifically on the planet.

The Pikmin are so good at collecting resources that the predators of the planet had to start specifically targeting them in order to survive, eventually giving rise to the ecosystem we see in the games, and why the Pikmin seemed to be extinct in the first one. With the captains interrupting this natural evolution by teaching the Pikmin to better organize themselves, only time will tell where the next step eventually heads.

Any Pikmin can be stored in any Onion, but until the Onion color of the Pikmin merges with it, it'll only make Pikmin of the Onions it's currently merged with.

Eh, just something I thought of to explain a way Purple and White Pikmin can be wrote back into the main story should DLC happen, considering their original home inside the Hocotate ship is kind of no longer an option...

• Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case. In Pikmin 3, you can use a glitch to skip rescuing the Yellow Onion, but still have Yellow Pikmin by using candypop flowers once you discover the Yellow Onion. However, at sunset, any yellow Pikmin in the field are left behind, even if they're under a captain's command or a safe zone, because they have no Onion to go to!

The Onions are sentient, and can tell whether or not a being is hostile towards Pikmin by default.

That's the real reason why the Pikmin follow the captains, and not because their suits make them kind of look like Pikmin. It could be totally possible that a being can look completely different from a Pikmin yet the Onions would still allow the Pikmin to follow them if they're not hostile and can help them survive. As for the Puffstool and the Antennae Beetle, it could be that their spores and call disrupt the Pikmin's communication from the Onions, allowing them to take temporary control of them.

The Pikmin you command are all the males.

The onions are the females.

• Maybe the Candypop Buds are the females. Oh! So that's why there's no King Candypop Buds!
  • Oh God, is that why the Pikmin are so "eager to get inside" of them?!

The Pikmin follow the Captains for religious purposes.

In the first game's logs, Olimar finds it strange that Pikmin are born from the ground because life on his planet is born from the stars. He then wonders if they will eventually return to the ground when he dies since the stars are where he will eventually return to. Yes, Olimar is a star person, and that is why the Pikmin cannot help but stare at him. This is why the Pikmin are also too dumb to live. They are not especially smart but they will not actually run into instant death situations willingly if left to their own devices. But the drive to please the star person causes them to follow him into water, knowing they cannot swim, to neither fight nor run away when being devoured by predators without the star person's command.

Pikmin are Time Lords.

It makes about as much sense as some of the other parts of the game.

• That is probably the most strained Time Lord WMG I've seen.
• And the Onions are their TARDIS
• When a Pikmin dies, they are actually just reincarnated.
  • The flower ones actually are.

The Pikmin lifecycle is Pikmin > Candypop Bud > Onion.

Pikmin come from seeds produced by a Pikmin Onion. A "queen" Pikmin is born, or a Pikmin must reach a certain age to become a Candypop Bud. When the time is right, the Pikmin reburrows itself into the ground and metamorphoses into a flower known as a Candypop Bud. The Candypop Bud must then be pollinated by ambulatory Pikmin entering it and changing color. Once pollinated, the flower withers and a Pikmin Onion starts to grow amongst its roots. The Onion matures and burrows itself out of the ground by sprouting propellers, and the Onion starts to produce Pikmin seeds of its own.

• Alternatively, they mature into tree-like "entmin" that grow Onions like fruit.

A form of pikmin normally takes the role that Olimar holds.

How do pikmin know what to do when Olimar commands them? Why do pikmin hold Olimar in some special regard? How do pikmin survive on their own when it seems they're nearly helpless without Olimar? (They can't even pluck each other from the ground!) Finally, how come the onions lie dormant until Olimar comes around? Obviously, there exists a leader pikmin of some kind that directs other pikmin and adds to its army by going around to different onions. The "commander" pikmin probably would look similar to Olimar and use commands similar to them. Olimar wasn't just confused with any old pikmin, but a pikmin leader.

• And this Leader Pikmin will be finally shown in Pikmin 3. Maybe even as a Final Boss. Imagine the epicness of fighting an enemy that also uses Pikmin the same way you do!
• Given that in the Nonstandard Game Over in Pikmin 1, Olimar is in fact directly transformed into a pikmin, this is very, very likely. (It isn't revealed whether he ever makes it out of the ground, though.) Most likely, this special "leader" pikmin is born when the corpse of an intelligent creature (in this case, Olimar) is fed to the onion.
• Adding to this, perhaps the "Commander Pikmin" are much smarter than the average members of their race who the other Pikmin takes orders from. Thus, it follows that the reason that the Pikmin are nearly extinct, down to just one per Onion in the first game is because all the Commander Pikmin have died off, leaving the rest of the Pikmin helpless and easily devoured. The Commander Pikmin are still extinct however, so it's only so long without Olimar or another sentient like them before they end up right back where they were in the subsequent games.

The Toadmin are actually their own, individual species, and Puffstools act as a sort of "Candypop Bud" to them.

A later game will show that Toadmin are not just made by puffstool spores. Look, why else would spores have a very, very specific effect to one species? This can be shaken off, but after a day, it becomes permanent, seeing as Pikmin hit by them vanish. After that, the original Toadmin drag them off into their equivalent of Onions.

Pikmin are actually a kind of miniature Pokémon.

They have similar names and they are just as obedient as Pokémon, their bigger relatives.

• This reminds me of a Pikmin-inspired Pokémon I saw on deviantART. And I also wonder what this means for the other beings Olimar runs into? Are they Pokémon as well?
  • At least the elementally-aligned ones (the dweevils, blowhogs, slooches, etc.) certainly wouldn't look out of place in the world of Pokémon, that has to be said.

Related to the above WMG, Pikmin are a species of Grass-type Pokémon in a distant future where all other Pokémon are extinct.

The different colors are its forms, which have different secondary types (red is Fire, yellow Electric, blue Water, white Poison, and purple Dragon). They're called Pikmin because the proper word "Pokémon" was lost and changed for some reason over time.

• The Rock Pikmin are Rock-types while the Winged Pikmin are Flying-types.
• Fighting would probably fit purples better. Their whole schtick is being more physically powerful, rather than anything supernatural.

Pikmin aren't slaves to Olimar. Olimar is a slave to the Pikmin...

...because he has a Bulbmin parasite in his brain. The bad end was the parasite speeding its growth to save Olimar because he's far too useful for the pikmin to let him die.

Pikmin are not slaves to Olimar, it's a trade-off.

This may just be a personal Alternate Character Interpretation, but at the good end of Pikmin 1, it shows the Pikmin using the skills Olimar has taught them to survive. Despite the way some people interpret Ai no Uta, the Pikmin follow Olimar because each time he teaches them better survival skills (Cooperation, Strength in Numbers), the line in the song about "You don't have to love us" is them absolving Olimar of any casualties along them way because he has helped them get stronger. Now, whether or not one day Olimar will... outlive his usefulness remains to be seen.

The 100 Pikmin only thing is not just a gameplay limitation, it's a Pikmin survival tactic.

Same troper as above. When Everything Is Trying to Kill You, it is wise not to travel in easily eaten groups of thousands. Maybe after Pikmin 2, they have learned enough to get more accomplished with more Pikmin. In theory, they can wipe out almost any other species of creature on their world. Imagine a world where Pikmin have consumed the rest of the food chain... be afraid, be very afraid.

The Pikmin operate on a Hive Mind with the Onions as their central "brain".

The reason the Pikmin are willing to fight and die for Olimar despite having done virtually nothing for them is because the Onions are using him as the Pikmin's leader; the Pikmin pick this up as they are shot out as seeds. The 100-Pikmin headcount limit is so the Onions aren't overwhelmed with having to control too many of them at once. The Pikmin's...head-extension-thing with a plant on the end acts as a sort of antennae for receiving commands from the Onion; "higher ranked" plants let the Pikmin receive commands more quickly and therefore be able to act on them faster (which is why flower Pikmin are able to run so much faster than leaf or bud Pikmin).

The Onions don't allow more than 100 Pikmin onto the field due to survival reasons.

Say the Onion housed 300 Pikmin. And say, outside, there was a natural disaster taking place, or the place was getting overrun by predators. If the Onion allowed all the Pikmin to come out, this could easily lead to an extinction. Purple Pikmin and White Pikmin don't have Onions, but maybe they can sense how many other Pikmin are on the field at the moment.

Pikmin are blind.

Consider this: Pikmin will mindlessly follow Olimar into danger, immediately rush towards any enemy or treasure nearby when idle, and when directed by Olimar into, say, an electrified gate, will try to break it down without question, even if this would be suicidal for their color. Why do they do this? Because they can't see what they're doing! They follow Olimar because he can see in the light that Pikmin eyes are not accustomed to. A flaming Pikmin won't try to douse itself in the water because IT CAN'T SEE THE WATER. They don't avoid hazards on their own because they rely on Olimar to guide them away from danger because they have no idea where the danger is!

• Then, how do they know what direction to go to get the shippart/treasure/fruit back to the ship?
  • Taking an answer from their ant inspiration, perhaps pheromones?

The Pikmin are a hive mind and the Onion is the "queen".

The Onions are the only individuals, the only things that are sentient, and the Pikmin are just limbs they control. The Onions all royally screw up and almost die, but they sense Olimar's leadership skills and let him use their Pikmin for his own needs while learning from his actions on how to effectively use the Pikmin to survive and thrive. It still hurts the Onion when one of its Pikmin dies, but Olimar never actually caused any deaths and the Onions are better off for it anyway.

There are multiple Onions.

During Olimar's Secret Logs, Louie is seen with some Pikmin, so they must have an Onion. Or three. And the Koppai Crew have an Onion for themselves.

• Confirmed in the ending for Pikmin 1. Besides the Pikmin color types not yet seen, there are multiple Blue Onions among the ones accompanying Olimar into space.

Grey Pikmin (Rockmin) and Pink Pikmin (Flymin) are not only mutant Pikmin, but above-ground mutations of Purples and Whites.

Think about it — both of the new Pikmin introduced in the third game are very unlike the original five encountered in the first two games in term of shape. Sure, they're still mostly humanoid, but the Pink Pikmin have much less realistic proportions and Grey Pikmin.... well, they're rocks. However, they have undeniable similarities to the new Pikmin introduced in the second game - like Purples, the Greys have high durability and do much more damage upon impact. Like Whites, the Pinks have compound eyes, weak attack strength, and the smallest bodies. The magenta coloured flowers on Purples and Whites is a result of their subterranean lifestyle, while the indigo/lavender coloured flowers on Greys and Pinks is a result of the mutation. (Note: This troper is away that Grey Pikmin and Pink Pikmin are officially known as Rock Pikmin and Flying Pikmin, but they prefer to stick to the set trend of naming them by their colours.)

• If nothing else, the poison from the second game is a dark shade of purple, and the Dweevils that emit it are pink. So White Pikmin are also occasionally associated with the color pink. There might be some connection in that too.

Pikmin are artificial organisms.

Like the above. Pikmin are created by the Onions, which are possibly machines. If so, then somebody (presumably, humans) had to have built them. So if not the wildlife, at least the pikmin are probably artificial organisms.
This would also explain why they have difficulty surviving without a leader — they were only intended to be servants, and they can't operate too far outside their programming.

• Expanding on this, the Pikmin might have been created for some specific purpose, such as terraforming, as weapons, pest control, etc. which they need directions from some sort of leader to perform, and whoever created and used them long since abandoned them to their own devices or died off.

Pikmin have an ant-like social structure.

Pikmin, onions, and candypop buds are all the same species. Onions are queens. Pikmin are the workers/princes. And candypop buds are the princesses. Pikmin gather food to feed their queen so it can make more workers. Pikmin, while clearly possessing intelligence to a certain extent, even showing displays of personality, more so have the minds of ants. The onions are straight up sapient, and can evaluate other beings to determine if they would be a good commander, which the captains passed with flying colors. Candypop buds are fertilized using pikmin, and the pikmin die from it, being replaced by one the same color as the candypop bud. Once fertilization is adequate, (multiple pikmin being required for this process) the flower wilts, and an onion starts to develop. Once mature, the onion emerges from the ground, producing it's first worker, which will eventually unbury itself if not plucked by something else first. The onions only allow 100 pikmin per area, as having too many at once would lead the risk of them getting killed and the onion losing all or most of its pikmin. Onions always keep a backup pikmin on hand, though, just in case. If a commander candidate is sensed nearby while the onion has matured, the onion only emerges partially until the commander is near it.

The Pikmin Olimar worked with in the first game are still doing well long after.

Most of the fanbase claims that the Pikmin go from being seemingly independant in the best ending of the first game to being nearly or completely wiped out in the sequels. However, this interpretation hinges on the idea that the Onions you find in all games are the same. There is no reason to think that there is only a single one of each type of Onion. There are actually multiple red, yellow, and blue Onions throughout the world, and the ones found in different games are each different. The original Pikmin colonies are still independant, and the captains simply run into different colonies that follow them for the same reasons the Pikmin did in the first game. This could also explain the differences in appearance and behavior of the Onions in 3 compared to the proceeding games; intraspecies variation.

The Pikmin are the ones causing spaceships to crash onto PNF-404.

Perhaps in their desperate attempt to find a leader, the Pikmin or their Onions are emitting something that causes nearby spaceships to go haywire and crash onto the planet, in the hope that the castaway will become their leader.

Pikmin Onions have defense mechanisms in case other organisms attempt to eat them.

• Applicable to all Onions: They simply fly away, use its retractable leaf stems as Combat Tentacles, or (in the case of humans) forcefully turn them into leaflings. Another possibility is that they might simply send out their respective Pikmin and have them attack.
  • White Onions don't do anything when a creature attempts to eat them, because the predator will just die from poison, just like White Pikmin.
  • Rock Onions have two possible self-defense measures: either they deploy the Hermikmin and have them use the predator as a host, or they use the rocks stored inside it (which are used to create Rock Pikmin) to stone the predator to death.
  • Ice Onions, similar to Ice Pikmin, will freeze predators that are eating it, after which it can fly away or outright kill the attacking predator.

The Pikmin species is what the Patapon tribe evolved from.

As already pointed out on Patapon's own WMG page, the Pikmin and Patapon share a remarkable amount of traits that make the latter look like they could've once been the former:

• Appearance: They are very small compared to the world around them and the creatures in it, and have little to no features on what could be described as their body. The few extra features they do have are dependant on the color variant that they're born as, which itself also signifies an elemental strength/weakness or situational skill.
  • One of the Patapon color variants in particular even gives them a leafy sprout on their head.
• Biology: The population is increased via a large plant that births them immediately after it is supplied other plants or dead creatures, heavily implying that the species are some sort of Plant People. The aforementioned color variants are directly determined by how these nutrients are given to the large plant.
• Behavior: The two main things they require to prosper are power through numbers and strategic ways to use it. The latter is provided to them by a large strong leader that they admire, who is able to communicate using musical instruments. (Whistles, trumpets, and horns for Pikmin. Drums for Patapon.^note  Other musical instruments begin playing while you are drumming orders. But unlike the drumming, it is unclear if this music is actually being created by you in-universe.) Without this, they do next to nothing in the face of danger and will very likely perish. With it, they can potentially topple creatures that utterly dwarf them without losing a single unit. They also seem to just be fond of music in general, as they sing in unison while going places just for the heck of it.

Hocotatians and Koppaites

There is massive corruption and/or oppression somewhere on Olimar's planet.

As a corollary to the above, internal wars can be whipped up due to perceived injustices, and the new people in Pikmin 3 could have left Olimar's planet to escape some form of persecution or oppression. They could be using the Pikmin to build a new nation for themselves on a new planet, without seeing the irony. The final boss would be Olimar attempting to stop them from doing to the Pikmin what was once done to them.

Olimar's people are the descendants of humanity.

In the last days of civilization, humanity sent a colony ship off. The planet it found had very high gravity and a toxic atmosphere. Through genetic modification, they were able to get a society up and running. Eventually, because of a clerical error in the filing of the archives, the knowledge of where they came from is slowly lost. When they finally discover their home planet, they don't realise it. This is further evidenced by the fact that Olimar looks basically similar to a human, and would also explain why he can run around so fast, and why he can throw the pikmin so far and so quickly with such little effort.

• High gravity and small size can make a strain of humanity shorter, yes, but Olimar is the size of a quarter. An inch or two. Waaaay smaller than those could account for.
  • How so? It was never specified just how much higher the gravity was, and these people would have been genetically engineered to be small, not evolved naturally.
    • Because, apart from anything else, if the gravity was strong enough for people to need to be the size of a quarter, it'd be instantly fatal to anything that lives. Also, the human body wouldn't work if reduced to that size, there simply isn't enough space for most of the important systems. You need an entirely separate biology to work on that scale, down to a completely different eye structure.
    • Got me there. I completely forgot the size lower limit.
    • Couldn't they become shorter and then make that the norm, planet hop again, become even shorter, etc.? Why wouldn't the adaptation work several times consecutively?
    • It's not so much a matter of doing by steps instead of all at once as much as of the vertebrate body plan being essentially useless below the size of a shrew or so. As said, the eye needs a complete overhaul, so does the respiratory system, bones are irreparably weakened and can't function properly as attachment points for muscles... the reason insects and other arthropods can function at their size is because their bodies don't work anything like ours. In practice, if you shrunk a human to the size of a pillbug, they'd be incredibly weak and nearly blind. Even if you manage to shrink down to that size, the drop in body volume would mean that our frontal lobes would be too small to support sapient thought.
      Put it another way: humans could, through successive adaptations and/or genetic engineering, eventually evolve to become the size of Hocotatians and Koppaites, especially since the map of Pikmin 3 would place the games more than two-hundred million years from now. The problem is that by that point we wouldn't look anything like human anymore.

Hocotatians are just heads.

Look at this image◊. Can you see any of their bodies? Nope. Perhaps Hocotatians are just heads, and those 'clothes' are robots of some sort? This theory is supported by the President in Pikmin 2, when he goes to the Distant Planet. Does he wear a full spacesuit, as Olimar and Louie do? No. He puts a helmet on. That wouldn't normally work... unless the head is his entire body.

• Sure, you can see the President's hands. But maybe those are part of the robot. Maybe they're just tendrils of some sort.

Hocotatians and Koppaites share an ancient ancestor.

Both of them may be colonial descendants of a space-faring race. Their biology is faintly similar, including a susceptibility to Oxygen (Hocotatians are Obligate Anaerobes, with oxygen being completely lethal; Koppaites are Aerobic, but require very low amounts of it, though it is still toxic at levels PNF-404 has, possibly making them Facultative). Hocotatians colonized a planet with an anaerobic biosphere. Meanwhile, Koppaites settled a planet with a presence of oxygen. With their similarities in size, ratio, mass, and technology, it would not be a far cry to assume they are distantly related.

• Possibly supported in Pikmin 4, the ID badges of the various characters seen in the demo reveal the existence of at least 5 other inhabited planets: Karut, Giya, Ohri, Ooji, and Sigurqy. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but at least seven, likely more, different instance of nickel-sized humanoid species who're all varying levels of being lethally allergic to oxygen just doesn't happen without some sort of common ancestry.

All Hocotatians are not treasure hunting obsessed vegetarians.

They just got that stereotype labeled on them by Koppaites / other species after the events of Pikmin 2. The only vegetable they're mentioned to eat regularly are Pikpik Carrots and onions, and in Pikmin 2 Olimar and Louie keep sneaking bites of all the edible treasures they collect, most of which are meats, while Louie attempts to cook and eat all slain creatures and enjoys many of them. It may be that Pikpik Carrots, or at least the golden variety, can only grow on Hocotate, which is what got them the vegetarian stereotype. Obviously, the treasure hunting stereotype comes from their attempt to pay off their debt, and then when they went back to rescue Louie. (With the President of Hocotate Freight insisting they collect any and all treasure afterwards.)

There was a conflict or war between Hocotate and Koppai in the past.

This one may seem strange, but hear me out. After catching Louie again in Pikmin 3, Brittany makes a few nasty remarks about Hocotatians, calling them something along the lines of dirty treasure hunters. Notably, Louie never showed any interests in treasure. He was only after food. This caused me to think that there was some kind of a conflict in the past that left the two planets with a bit of bad feelings/negative stereotypes towards one another.

Creatures

The Goolix, the Waterwraith, and 3's final boss are all the same creature at different ages in their life.

Besides the fact that they're all Blob Monsters, the first two are water-based, while the form the Plasma Wraith takes at the start of the battle looks suspeciously like the Goolix. It's possible that, though Olimar could have possibly killed the Goolix in Pikmin 1 and killed the Water Wraith in Pikmin 2, maybe they can only be temporarily put out of commission. After all, at the end of the battle against the Plasm Wraith, what's left of it sulks off and is seen completely reformed in the ending to Pikmin 3. As for why the Plasm Wraith is gold and not water-based, it's possible that it absorbed the gold plating from the ship, which somehow powered it up and allowed it to use all those elemental hazards.

• The Mamuta and the Smoky Progg may also be included. The Smoky Progg rips Pikmin from the ground, and the Mamuta plants them; it's possible that it is planting them so they're helpless for its young to harvest. It's possible that its natural lifecycle is the stages of matter (gas (Smoky Progg) -> liquid (Goolix) -> solid (Mamuta)), with the Smoky Progg we encounter in-game being stated to possibly be malformed or mutated. Perhaps it went from a gas (Smoky Progg) to a liquid (Waterwraith), and then, due to its mutation, went to plasma instead (Plasm Wraith). It's also possible that the Smoky Progg is the Plasm Wraith, which would explain why it's so desperate to get Olimar back — because it knows Olimar was the one who killed it, and is planning to make him go through hell.

Related to the above:

The Plasm Wraith may have actually been the meteor of the first game.

Given the whole Umibozu theme, it's very likely the Plasm Wraith may have been after Olimar since the day he first got too close to the pikmin planet; it turned off his systems so he was unable to recognize the threat until he struck it, and has been stalking him since, getting ever more powerful in its intent to capture him.

• Combining this with the above theory, the fact that the Goolix is located in the same level Olimar crash-landed a few days after the first really supports this.

Wollywogs eat Pikmin

What we see as just the beast jumping and crushing pikmin is in reality the Wollywog turning the pikmin into a fine paste to eat via osmosis. A fact that supports this idea is that we don't see its mouth. Wollywogs only have eyes. So how else can they eat? I also say that they must love eating White Pikmin the most because it'll in theory give them the posion power as well. Hell, the Yellow Wollywogs remind me of posion frogs when I look at them.

Much of the wildlife in Pikmin are invasive species or imported pets.

Specifically, from other planets. Between the present and the events of Pikmin, humanity established trade with other planets. However, occasionally little bugs can find their way into the cargo holds of ships, and there is always the occasional person who says "I want a pet that can shoot fire!" or "That beady long legs thing looks so cool! I'm gonna buy one and keep it in a terrarium!" Remember, most of the creatures would be the size of a rat or chihuahua at most, so what would be a devastating monster to Olimar wouldn't be all that dangerous to us. They would, however, be dangerous to the local wildlife. Plus, there are zoos, so even if a beetle that shoots boulders or a tiny elephant that shoots fire would be too dangerous to keep as a pet, it would be quite a curiosity for a zoo to keep. Evidence? Quite a few of the creatures Olimar encounters have things like silicon-based biology, or don't exactly neatly fit into our traditional classification. Creatures like those would take a very long time to evolve naturally, but the fact that so much on future Earth remains unchanged (many of our relics are still in pretty good condition, don't you think?) points to a much smaller timescale. Pikmin are almost certainly among one of the non-native species, hence their unique biology and why they're having such a hard time surviving.

• This is a good one because there is already one space faring civilization visiting Earth, why not another? It also makes Olimar's upheaval of the natural order less jarring, the natural order has already been overturned! Finally, it opens up the possibility of putting Pikmin in the same setting as another Nintendo game. The Wonderful 101 seems to be able to fit into the same time scale and would explain why people are not particularly concerned with all these tiny invaders; they're too busy dealing with larger ones and explains why Glutton's Kitchen is buried.
• They're probably just a result of millions of years of evolution now that PNF-404 has been officially revealed as Earth millions of years in the future.
  • That's probably the case for the bulk of the wildlife, but even with the millions of years between now and the time of the games, there's no real way to explain how fundamentally alien creatures like the Mamutas, the Careening Dirigibugs, the Honeywisps or a living, three-legged clump of swampy soil like the Quaggled Mireclops, let along elemental entities like the Goolix and Waterwraith, could have evolved from current Earthly life. There are limits to how far organisms can mutate from their forms over a given amount of time, and even allowing for the hundreds of millions of years it would take for Pangaea Ultima to form, it's very difficult to see how such creatures could evolve from anything alive today. That being said, the biomechanical Man-at-Legs and Gatling Groink might still very well descend from artificial lifeforms humans created from regular Earth life that went feral after we died out and adapted to live in the wild.

The Smoky Progg is not a mutated infant Mamuta.

It is a perfectly normal infant Waterwraith.

• Mind blown.
• No, it is a perfectly normal infant Mamuta! It buries Pikmin so its young will have an easier time catching them when it hatches.

The Smoky Progg isn't an infant anything.

It was in the middle of metamorphosis. That egg it came out of? It's actually a cocoon. A lot of creatures that undergo metamorphosis do so with the aid of an enzyme that essentially digests the unneeded tissues, a little bit at a time. In the cases of the ones that form a cocoon, the tissues in question are basically its entire body, which is the case with the Progg. Disturbing the cocoon sent it out partway through this process, which is why it has such a broken-up, blobby kind of shape. If allowed to fully metamorphose (which it will do on night 15), it'll emerge in its final, adult form and migrate out of the area, which is why the "egg" is gone after that point. Also, this is why the trail it leaves is so deadly to Pikmin, even moreso than poisons in later games: it's not poisoning them, it's digesting them alive.

Most of the creatures we encounter in the games are genetically engineered.

The pikmin were an experiment attempting to combine plant and animals Gone Horribly Right. They escaped from the lab, and became a plague on the planet. All of the creatures that try to kill them are humanity's futile attempts at survival, which would explain why they are all so focused on killing pikmin. Humans went extinct because the pikmin ate all the food.

The Creeping Chrysanthemum is a relative of the Quaggled Mireclops.

They both have red bulb-like heads, greenish/brownish bodies, and are mimics! The Creeping Chrysanthemum species might've even evolved into the Quaggled Mireclops or at the very least share a common ancestor.

The Man-At-Legs are pest control robots.

And they were left running on automatic.

Humans

Humans aren't extinct; they simply moved to the planet in Hey! Pikmin.

Co-inciting with the above, this is why there appears to be evidence of more active human activity on the planet than in Pikmin 3. As for what caused them to leave Earth/PNF-404 in the first place... Only time will tell.

• The house that the player explores in Pikmin 4 seems surprisingly clean and organized showing further signs.

Humans aren't extinct, they just uploaded their collective consciousness into a computer.

To put it simply, interstellar exploration just wasn't enough for them, and they decided to download their minds into a digital landscape to achieve essentially immortality.

Humanity is still around, though perhaps in not as great a number.

Notice how fresh some of the food-based treasures are. Olimar and Co. just hasn't covered enough ground to see any humans yet. It seems a little weird that Olimar and Co. would miss an entire civilization, but considering how ill-equipped they were the second time around...

• Also consider the sizes involved. The entire thing could take place in an isolated corner of a large park, and they wouldn't know. Maybe Olimar simply isn't looking out the window during takeoff and landing?
• Notable is the freshly cooked fried egg in the Glutton's Kitchen cavern in Pikmin 2, as well as the child's bootie still smelling terrible, as remarked by everyone in the game.
• Given that the games are set approximately 250 million years into the future, perhaps the answer might be found in how humanity has evolved by then?

Humans are still around plenty; Olimar just happens to land in some very fortuitous locations.

At least, in Pikmin 2. The Valley of Repose? It's the parking lot of a college that's gone on vacation for winter. There are still a few snowmen made by bored college kids lying around, and they've been pretty careless with their trash (see the Utter Scrap). But for the most part, nobody's around much, so they don't see Olimar. The Awakening Wood? It's the backyard of an unsold house. It's fallen into disrepair a little, but the original owner left their pots and attempts at fencing up. The Perplexing Pool? That's another nearby house, only that one's a summer home for a rich family. They've let their fountains crumble a little, but they still occasionally visit (they just never look outside). Haven't come up with a good one for the Wistful Wild yet, though.

• Wistful Wild could be out in the wilderness near a family's cabin. It's just that the family has not visited in a long time. Their children left behind some of their toys, after all.

The series will eventually have a primitive human or human-like creature as a final boss.

It will need to be defeated via Colossus Climb. It's gargantuan size compared to the pikmin and captains means that his movements and attacks will be very slow and sluggish from the player's point of view.

Humans faced a catastrophic event that left them near-extinct and forced the survivors to live underground, with very few willing or able to visit/live on the surface.

The backgrounds of caves of Pikmin 4 are... quite grand. Some are just regular homes, some are the inner workings of factories, and sometimes it's an entire museum. None of these make sense to be found underground and in pristine condition unless humans are regularly coming by and upkeeping them when the player isn't present. And of course, it only makes sense for them to do that if they lived and worked down there. Perhaps the outside air is as toxic to them as it is to the captains?

This explains why no captains have ever seen humans when arriving or leaving the planet, despite finding freshly cooked food and working electronics: They simply don't emerge from their underground homes often enough to be noticed, or don't come out at all. The few that attempt it don't survive very long.

Setting

The planet in Hey! Pikmin is Mars, or at least, what it would have eventually become if it had managed to keep its atmosphere.

Thanks to the similar conditions to Earth/PNF-404, creatures on it managed to evolve in a similar way. This is why the planets share so many creatures yet at the same time have their own unique "quirks" for them.

Alternatively, the new planet in Hey! Pikmin is Mars after it was terraformed by humans.

Humans brought a lot of the creatures with them from Earth to help create a balanced ecosystem. This is why there are so many creatures from PNF-404 on it.

Hocotatians and Koppaites are actually the normal size of beings in the universe, and PNF-404 (and by extention, possibly humanity) are actually a land of giants.

Not just counting the fact that there's two species in the galaxy that are the exact same size in relation to the PNF-404, there's also the fact that Olimar works for a space shipping company, as well as heading for a vacation spot at the start of Pikmin 1. This implies there are a lot more beings out there around the average size of a Hocotatian.

• Pikmin takes place in the Mushroom Kingdom.

Pikmin must take place somewhere on Earth, due to the obvious Earth products in the second game. Since neither Pikmin nor any of their enemies obviously exist in real life, one possible interpretation is that Pikmin happens After the End, and whatever caused the end of the world also caused the mutations that lead to Pikmin and their ilk. But because everything you find seems to be in good condition (paper hasn't decayed at all, the food is still fresh, etc.), it can't have been long enough for mutations to happen. However, there are tons of Nintendo products (obviously), and Nintendo is still a real company in the Mario universe. We can also make some assumptions that other real-world products exist there — in Paper Mario, junk mail is refered to as "spam," but the term "spam" for junk mail wouldn't exist without the food product Spam (and probably the Monty Python skit). Plus, there are several "Mario-Brand" products, like the Mario Paints — since Mario is a huge celebrity in the Mushroom Kingdom, he might have licensed his name/image out to various products. Also, look at the Bulborbs! They've got mushroom spots! EVERYTHING looks like 'shrooms in the Mario universe.

• One problem with this theory — eyes. Everything in the Mushroom Kingdom has eyes, and I mean everything. Where are the hills' eyes, the rocks' eyes, the trees' eyes...?
  • They're too high up for Olimar to notice.
    • Olimar is about the same size as Mario.
    • Wrong! Maybe so in SSB, but Mario is about two feet tall when he's at his smallest; however, Olimar is about the same size as (or even smaller than) a Double A battery.
• Notably, Pikmin can be found in Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour at the expected size.
• Jossed; the game takes place on Earth after the extinction of humans.

Pikmin takes place in future Earth.

Main supporting fact: the presence of oxygen and earthly junk (cardboard boxes, etc.). Pikmin and all the other strange creatures are the result of another millions of years of evolution. Olimar is, of course, a few milimeters tall, that's why all the junk seems to be so big to him. The whole game takes place at the garden of a human being (or whatever substituted humanity in the future), but everything occurs in a scale so small nobody even notices.

• The second game makes this just about canon.
• The third game not only redesigns the planet to resemble an actual theoretical future version of Earth (based on projected plate tectonics), it also called a cellphone an "ancient communication device", thus heavily implying that this is true.

Pikmin takes place in Shigeru Miyamoto's garden.

Why not?

• Considering where Mr. Miyamoto got the inspiration, I think you may be on to something. They must have some pretty funky carrots in Japan, though.
  • They have square watermelons, don't they?

In addition, the bird's-eye-view perspective of the game is Miyamoto's child-self looking through a magnifying glass.

At the end of Pikmin 3, the pikmin and Olimar will acknowledge this and start waving at him.

• This right here is a set up for a Heartwarming Moment. FUND IT.
  • At least in the Pikmin 3 fourth wall breaking regard, this is Jossed.
• Jossed: It takes place in what's heavily implied to be planet Earth millions of years into the future.

Not only is the Pikmin planet Earth; it's Earth after a nuclear war.

Notice how Olimar's Geiger-counter is TICKING when the Pikmin bring it back to the ship. It's reacting to the nuclear-infested environment. The Pikmin and all the other strange creatures are mutant lifeforms that took over the planet after all other animals perished in the nuclear war.

• To be fair, just because the Geiger-counter is ticking so much doesn't mean there is nuclear fallout all around Olimar on the Pikmin-planet. For all we know, Olimar's Geiger-counter is just on its most sensitive setting. It's noteworthy that Olimar doesn't care about how much noise it makes.
• The Geiger-counter may be reacting to the oxygen. I mean, oxygen IS poisonous to the Hocotatian species.

The Pikmin planet is actually the same planet that the Avatarverse takes place.

Just look at the various lifeforms that are found there: A lot of them are Mix and Match Critters and plenty of them are capable of wielding the elements (The Blowhog family itself can wield fire, water, and air).

The planet is Earth, but reimagined

The Pikmin games are based on Olimar's memoir, chronicling how he crashed on an uncharted planet, cultivated strange life forms and fought others even stranger, repaired his ship, escaped, and later returned to collect treasures. The treasures look exactly like they do to us, since most are probably in a museum or owned by private collectors, but the Pikmin and the enemies had to be pieced together from what little Olimar wrote about them. That is why they are so dissimilar to earth wildlife. What Earth creatures the beasts represent is up for grabs, however.

PNF-404 is the same earth as Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts.

With the strange looking wildlife, taking place After the End and the absence of humans it could be possible that Pikmin themselves are some type of plant mute.

• Related to the above talk about the lack of decay on food and paper and underground caves like Glutton's Kitchen showing signs of human civilization. Maybe Olimar and Co. stumbled upon the Burrow in some of these caverns.

Future Games

In each game, the flower color of the newest types is hinting at a color of a Pikmin in the next game.

The primary Pikmin introduced in the first game had white flowers, and 2 introduced White Pikmin. Said type and Purple Pikmin had pink flowers, and 3 brings in pink Winged Pikmin. Going to the logical conclusion, the fourth game would include an indigo-colored Pikmin.

A future instalment of the franchise will have its main threat be some menace to the pikmin this time.

Instead of the pikmin saving the aliens, this time the aliens will return to PNF-404 determined to pay back their debt to the pikmin.

Future pikmin types masterpost

Each main-series game has introduced new types of pikmin to the series, so it's safe to assume that future games would do the same. In the interest of compactness, all non-game specific guesses as to what these types may be like may be placed here:

• First, in general, all future games will probably follow 2 and 3's pattern — i.e., they will retain the red-blue-yellow core trio, will introduce two new types of pikmin alongside them, and will not retain any of the previous games' types outside of special game modes.

As for new types:

• Generally, pikmin matched to new elements (like whites and poison in 2) or obstacles (like rocks and glass/crystals in 3).
• Spiny or sticky pikmin, capable of clinging to foes without being shaken off.
• Pikmin immune to intense cold or to being frozen, in a game where ice and cold become active hazards, and/or able to work at peak efficiency in cold areas where other pikmin would take penalties to speed or attack power.

A future game will include one or more monsters that will attack other creatures in addition to Pikmin.

In the current games, the world's predators always ignore one another and instead exclusively attack Pikmin and captains, despite the former being very rare and seemingly on the brink of extinction and the latter only being visitors to the planet. It seems odd that the hordes of ferocious meat-eaters of PNF-404 never seem to eat anything else.

It's possible that future games will address this by having meat-eaters occasionally go after other animals. This might need careful tuning to keep it from making things too easy for the player, so perhaps Pikmin will always be prioritized if in the monster's aggro range — rare or not, maybe they just smell really good — requiring careful planning to goad other enemies into the bigger monster's jaws without being detected yourself.

A future game will have the Onions fuse with the ship.

In Pikmin 3, as the Master Onion grows larger and larger through absorbing newly-discovered ones, Captain Charlie worries about whether it might end up absorbing the S.S. Drake as well once it becomes big enough. It might be very interesting if a future game sees this happening in truth. Mechanically, it would continue the third game's streamlining of Pikmin storage and retrieval. Narratively, it might involve a specific story event — perhaps the game's ship is badly damaged and the Onion fuses with it to ensure the crew's survival? — and produce interesting visuals by merging the ship's mechanical workings and the Onion's organic nature.

Who knows, it might even be a chance to revisit the first game's idea of a Captain/Pikmin fusion...

—25/12/2022

Other

Pikmin was specifically designed to train people for workplace management.

When you think of Olimar as "Manager" and the pikmin as his employees, it makes a scary amount of sense, and the game continually hints at this analogy (such as Olimar calling it "unacceptable" that the Pikmin do nothing when blocked by a barrier). There's a hard time limit for each day (directly relating to a work schedule) and a limit on the number of days you have to complete the ship (read: "deadline for the completion of the project"). Pikmin will do constructive tasks on their own if anything happens to be nearby, but require guidance and, dare I say it, management, to get any real work done. In combat, a few pikmin die, but a good player can minimize the losses and take down enemies more quickly (there's always employees that quit or need to be fired, but a good manager loses fewer employees and his employees work harder). And as always, if you're willing to invest the resources, you can get more pikmin (hiring for employees). But that's time (company resources!) NOT spent achieving the goal. Even the nectar is an aesop about employees needing proper nutrition to work their best.

• With Pikmin 2, they followed a design plan guided less by the original training concept and more by the original game's reception. As a result, the training message is a lot less coherent.
• Pikmin 3 could be a way of teaching teamwork or the importance of dividing tasks into groups, with individual department heads, to increase production.

Louie being stranded on PNF-404 (and in turn, the journey in the Wistful Wild) in Pikmin 2 is NOT Canon.

The Hocotate Freight Ship lacks its gold plating from repaying the President's debt from the All-Devouring Black Hole Loan Sharks when it crashes in Pikmin 3. In addition to this, Olimar states in his "At the Oak" video log that this is his THIRD visit to PNF-404. If traveling the Wistful Wild and rescuing Louie were indeed canon, then this would have been Olimar's FOUTRTH visit to PNF-404.

• Maybe Olimar counted going back to the planet to get Louie as part of his second visit, but even so, that does not explain the lack of gold-plating on the ship.
  • As of Pikmin 3, Hocotate Freight has apparently gone right back into debt again.

The delay between Pikmin 2 and 3 is due to Hocotate Freight Company attempting to keep the Pikmin planet a secret.

After all, if word got out that there was a world filled with countless, valuable treasures and native wildlife that appear to easily imprint upon and accept strangers as their leader, allowing them to freely exploit them in their goodie-gathering... The results probably wouldn't be too good for anyone involved. For starters — and this is most important to Olimar's boss — they wouldn't be the only ones getting money from it anymore. Thus, to try and deflect any suspicion about a company that was previously floundering becoming too rich too quickly, they've attempted to pace themselves and cut back on further trips... until the time is right to revisit their secret treasure trove.

The Pikmin planet is the prehistoric past of the Pokémon series and many of the creatures evolved (darwinian evolution) into the Pokémon

This theory works better if you subscribe to the theory that Mew is NOT the ancestor of all Pokémon. But I guess it could work eaither way.

The obvious thing people are going to bring up is the fact the Pikmin planet is Earth after humans died out, yet pokemon is dominated by humans. However, in the Pokémon series, it's revealed that humans are an off-shoot of Pokémon, and the humans in the Pokémon world are clearly different to us meaning they could be a different species that look similar and who still call themselves "humans".

Many of the creatures do haev similarites to Pokemon and could be ancestors, some examples.

• Pikmin — Ancestors of various plant like-Pokémon such as Oddish, Lilligant, Hoppip, Nuzleaf etc. and their evolution families. They may have also been the ancestors of Celebi depending on how plant-like Celebi is.
• Bulbmin — Ancestors of Bulbasaur and possibly of dinosaur Pokémon with plants on them.
• Bulborbs in general — All monster egg-group Pokémon like Squirtle, Charizard, Rhyhorn, Nidoran etc.
• Beared Amprat — Pikachu and other electric rodents.
  • Given that it's of one the few surviving mammals, it's possible most quadrupedal, mammalian pokemon may owe their existence to the bearded amprat.
• Gatling Groink — Magikarp (it's rumoured to have been super strong in the past).
• Wollywog — Poliwag (even the names sound similar).

Of course the question is, what creature did the new humans evolve from, or have we not met them yet?

• Given that it seems to be the only other mammalian animal besides the amprat, seem very intelligent, and is already bipedal, possibly the mamuta, along with any humanoid pokemon.

Oatchi will show up in a future Nintendogs in some way.

Adopting and caring for your own Oatchi would be cool, but seems unlikely. Perhaps he'd just be a rare encounter while out walking your own dog?

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