YMMV / Inkopolis Chaos

• Accidental Aesop:
  • Scarlet Spiker enjoys making others suffer no matter who, yet she's racist to Octolings despite having no backstory that would reliably cause such. Aside from her being Crystallic's take on people who were never disciplined as kids, she can easily show that discrimination towards those who are different is a dark aspect of human^note or sapient cephalopod? nature, instead of something modern society created from thin air.
  • The impact of torture on two major characters, and the villains' vindictive reasoning for such, can be interpreted as showcasing that the only reliable impact of torture is that it hurts people.
• Complete Monster:
  • Inkopolis Chaos 1 & Inkopolis Chaos 3: Scarlet Spiker starts as a typical bully before becoming far worse. Scarlet first attempts to beat Samuel in a forest, but when this fails, she gets Samuel, Natalie, Luke, and Sylvia framed for beating an innocent Inkling into a coma, so she can win the tournament without having to try due to no opponents. When Scarlet is exposed, she kidnaps Natalie and brutally tortures her purely out of spite, leaving her with PTSD. Upon being confronted, Scarlet attempts to kill the protagonists and have them respawn in a cage so she can kill them multiple times, even threatening to cut Samuel and Natalie's hearts out. A year later, Obsidian bails Scarlet out and forces her to work for her. Later, Scarlet shoots Sylvia with a tranquilizer and gets her taken to a concentration camp, where she ended up traumatized. Scarlet goes on a killing spree in Inkopolis, killing 11 innocent people in cold blood just for fun, including a child. Scarlet later reveals she plans to kill Obsidian after she succeeds, and destroy the peace between Inklings and Octolings by creating a race war for years.
  • Inkopolis Chaos 2 & "A Burden To Bear" one-shot: Magentark Clover is the older brother of Cyalux, who causes many of the events in the story despite being long dead. Portrayed as a violent xenophobe, Magentark gaslit his younger brother and fed him lies about Octolings to get him to hate them as well. Magentark stole a new weapon, framing the innocent teenage Octoling Natalie—causing her to be on the run and homeless—and attempted to murder as many Octolings as possible, unwilling to have them live on the surface. Despite being killed by Ruby in self-defense, his gaslighting turned Cyalux into a monster and formed the Terrorist group Octobusters, hell-bent on separating Inklings and Octolings permanently.
  • Inkopolis Chaos 3: Lieutenant Rebecca Obsidian is the cruel, ruthless leader of the Octarians. When she got to Inkopolis, she was not accepted by the Inklings, which made her kill two Inklings and bring one back to Octo Valley, torturing it in front of everyone. When everyone is disgusted by this act, Obsidian goes on a killing spree, murdering countless people, most of whom were innocents. Eventually, Octavio made her an elite and later a lieutenant. Obsidian then helps Tartar bring Octolings who were trying to desert to be either sanitized or blended. Obsidian becomes the new leader of the Octarians and enforces concentration camps for Inklings and Octolings that she captured, and has the ones who refuse to work or don’t work hard enough either tortured or killed via slowly dissolving them in water. When a camp is liberated, Obsidian executes thousands of Octolings to try and teach the rest a lesson. Upon confronting the Squidbeak Splatoon, she grabs Jade and throws her into a flooded ravine, which causes Ruby to sacrifice herself to save her. In the climax, Obsidian tries to destroy all life on the surface and recreate it in her image by launching 15 missiles to blow it up.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Cyalux Clover often gets justified a little too much by fans. While it is definitely understandable why he hates octolings, and that he is one of the most likable villains in the trilogy and is a saint compared to the main villains of the other 2 installments of the trilogy, it is usually forgotten that his brother was far from a saint too and one of the more evil villains in the trilogy whose death was also far from undeserved. Not only that but considering he led a racist organization should point out that he’s not in the right here. He also isn't 100% a victim, as he betrays his two childhood friends in cold blood and intended to exile the entire octoling race underground all due to his undying hatred for octolings. All of this should really say that he’s gone too far. He may be sympathetic and funny, but he is definitely evil.
• Evil Is Cool: Cyalux Clover for being a conniving and manipulative bastard all while being a Laughably Evil Large Ham. There are reasons why he is arguably the best-loved villain in the trilogy.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Summer is pretty smug and arrogant, and was the one who threatened Natalie in the past, but dear god, to say her childhood was utter hell is sugarcoating it. She grew up with quite possibly the worst parents in Splatsville, who brutally beat her daily, even breaking her teeth, making her cough up ink, and knocking her out sometimes, it's clear her parents saw her as nothing more than a punching bag. She was also starved regularly, which caused her to be short due to malnutrition. She was also gaslighted into hating Octolings until she realized that they were good. Hell, the reason she acts so smug and goes with the crowd is that she's just trying to fit in with everyone.
  • It's not hard to feel bad for Cyalux. Sure, he was a delusional leader of a hate group, but the reason he's the way he is is thanks to his asshole brother, who gaslighted him intensely into thinking the way he did. When Ruby killed him, he snapped, feeling depressed and vengeful from his brother's death, wishing to avenge him, not realizing how bad he really was. He ended up betraying his childhood friends, albeit he still didn't want to kill them, as shown by his desperately trying to get them to join him. He may have been a dangerous criminal, but he was simply the result of having a misguided home life and being manipulated as a child, which cost him everything. His friends, his morality, and even his own life. It's easy to see why the heroes pity him.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Lieutenant Obsidian finalizes herself as an irredeemable monster when she rounded up thousands of deserting octolings, alongside those who were associated/related to deserters, and had them executed by dissolving them in water.
  • Scarlet Spiker starts out as your typical bully but becomes far, far worse than that, and what cements this was when she sadistically tortures Natalie, almost killing her. Even a year later, Natalie still has a massive scar on her back, and says that she still has nightmares from the experience.
  • Sub-Lieutenant Blakeson crossed it when he traumatized Sylvia by torturing her. While we don't see how he tortured her, it was still severe enough to traumatize someone full of energy into becoming a shell of her former self for days.
  • The leader of the Octobusters crosses the line when he, Cyalux Clover, betrays his two childhood friends, Samuel and Luke, simply for siding with octolings. He kidnaps them, alongside Natalie, Katelin, and dozens of innocent octolings, and has them locked up on a train, which he rigged to crash and kill everyone onboard. Even though they all survived, you simply can't get back from something like that.
• Stoic Woobie: Jade Grady is suffering a lot on the inside, and has a guilt complex. Regardless, her cold and serious attitude keeps her from opening up often. As Agent 3, she used to hate octolings due to being raised to think they were all evil, and losing her mother to one, and acted lethal towards them, but once she realized they were brainwashed, she felt immense guilt, believing herself to be a murderer and a monster. Then, she lives with the guilt of Ruby having died so she can live, which shocked her and briefly made her feel that she should have died instead.
• The Woobie:
  • Natalie is the personification of this trope. She never knew her parents, so she was raised by her older sister, who went missing in the metro after the Inkantation. She then deserted Octo Valley, but the moment she entered Inkopolis, she was discriminated against nonstop. Then, Magentark Clover framed her for theft, which led to Natalie being on the run in both Inkopolis and Octo Valley, all while homeless at the same time. While her life did get better when she met Samuel, she also ended up getting brutally tortured by Scarlet, leaving her scarred and traumatized. She then got betrayed by Cyalux a year later, then ended up indirectly killing him, which she felt intense remorse for due to his status as Samuel's old friend. Then, there's the third story, where she realizes the truth of her sister's disappearance the hard way, as Obsidian forced her to see footage of her being blended by Tartar, then her friend Ruby dying moments later. She even nearly dies at the end of the final battle but is saved by Jade. Even after the trilogy is over, she still suffers in the one-shots, being shown to be sensitive to bright lights as she's autistic.
  • Sylvia, of all people, ends up as this, especially in the final story. She lost her parents when she was only three, and then she ended up in one of Obsidian's concentration camps, where she was brutally tortured by Blakeson, which left her traumatized and stunned for days. She was left with PTSD from tasers after the incident.
  • Melody was a victim of bullying throughout her life, especially from Scarlet, to the point where she had no friends until she met Samuel and the others.
  • Ruby may seem like a Jerkass Woobie at first, but eventually ends up ad a full-on Woobie. She lost her parents to Inklings, leading her to resent them, so she fought against them, thinking it was protecting Octolings, until her redemption, where she realized that inklings can be good and get on with octolings. She ended up feeling intense remorse for trying to tear Samuel and Natalie apart, to the point of asking to be killed for it. She finally realized how bad Octo Valley truly was, and it emotionally destroyed her knowing what she was serving all this time. And if that wasn't bad enough, there's Inkopolis Chaos 2, where she realizes she killed Cyalux's brother, which drove him further into villainy, which she felt even more remorse for. She hid it pretty well, but on the inside, she felt intense guilt and self-loathing for it, as shown in one of the one-shots, where she revealed to Melissa that she had suicidal thoughts and wanted to die. She ended up getting her wish, sacrificing herself to save Jade. It's a relief that she died smiling, thinking she was good for something after all. All she ever wanted was to protect people but ended up misguided, and it made her life hell.
  • Katelin is a very kindhearted individual, but deep down she's suffering a lot. She was brainwashed by DJ Octavio into becoming a soldier, and when she was free, she took two years to plan her escape, and when she finally did, she had an encounter with Jade who thought she was hostile, and the two ended up falling into the metro together, where Katelin lost her memories from the fall. She was then traumatized by her experiences in the Deep Sea Metro, including almost being blended alive, which gave her PTSD from blenders. When she finally got into Inkopolis, she was discriminated against and threatened a lot, and it took a while for it to settle down. Katelin also ended up captured by Cyalux, who she completely trusted, and felt betrayed by his secret agenda. Finally, in Inkopolis Chaos 3, she ends up in a concentration camp, where she's in fear for her life due to being in a same-sex relationship with an inkling, who just so happens to be Agent 3, and she knows how prejudiced Obsidian is. She also ends up getting her PTSD taken advantage of by Obsidian, who uses a blender to silence her into having a breakdown.

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