Characters / Splatoon – Inkopolis and Splatsville

Splatoon Character Index
Playable Characters | Idol Groups | Inkopolis and Splatsville | Octarians | Salmonids | Deepsea Metro | Order Sector | Bands | Manga Characters

The everyday folks who can be spotted around the Hub City. They provide a number of services for the players, from judging Turf Wars to selling new, fresh equipment (or getting young cephalopods to work for it in the case of one particular vendor...).

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Introduced in Splatoon

Judd the Cat

A cat who oversees Turf Wars and announces the winners. He can be found taking naps in odd places.

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• The Ageless: He was apparently thawed out from a 10,000-year cryogenic suspension 2,000 years before the game starts — and has been judging ink fights ever since. According to Splatoon 2's artbook, he was injected with an immortality drug by his owner.
• Almighty Janitor: Most Inklings assume that he's just an old stray who judges Turf Wars, but according to the Splatoon 2 artbook, he actually has close connections with multiple world leaders. Most damning of all though, he's been judging Turf Wars since the original Great Turf War and was the one to declare the Inklings the successful inheritors of the land over the Octarians.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: His fur pattern just happens to make him look like he's wearing a black bowtie, white shirt and black suspenders—attire not uncommon for a referee. Li'l Judd also shares this trait which makes sense considering he's a clone of Judd.
• Big Fun: He's a plump cat who serves as the ref in Turf Wars and gives out both advice and Super Sea Snails. Although, according to one comment by Callie, much of his mass is just his fur.
• Cats Are Lazy: He's usually sleeping when you see him.
• Delicious Distraction: Apparently sees all the aquatic life walking around as food, given that the relationship chart has his feelings towards Agent 4, Agent 8, and Crusty Sean are only "Yum..."
• Fish out of Temporal Water: It turns out that Judd was placed under cryogenic suspension by his owner for 10,000 years following rising sea levels.
• Heavy Sleeper: When encountered in Inkopolis Plaza or Inkopolis Square and a Splatfest is not going on, he's always asleep and does not wake up. Quite fitting for a cat.
• Human Popsicle: Revealed to have been put in cryogenic sleep.
• Intelligible Unintelligible: He exclusively communicates by saying "Meow!" - and not even like a normal cat would, actually, literally saying the word just like it's spelled - but everybody seemingly has no problem understanding what he's saying.
• Last of Their Kind: He's the last living remnant of human civilization, and quite possibly the last living mammal. Later subverted in Splatoon 2, where a smaller cat companion named Li'l Judd joins Judd in judging matches, although bizarrely double subverted in that Li'l Judd is a clone. Subverted even further in Splatoon 3, where the Hero Mode has the player go up against mammalian threats, chief among them a literal bear in the form of Mr. Grizz.
• Meaningful Name: His name is Judd, and he is the judge of the turf wars.
• Mega Neko: He's significantly larger than a cat has any right to be, being around the same size as your player Inklings and Octolings, who have been confirmed to be around the same size scale as humans. The sunken scroll depicting him with his former human owner shows him to be more average sized, implying he's plumped up significantly in his 2,000 years awake in the Splatoon world.
• Nonstandard Character Design: Judd stands out as the only character in the first game who isn't aquatic or otherwise amphibious.
• One-Word Vocabulary: Judd doesn't so much meow as he literally says "Meow" as it's spelled out, and that's also the only thing he says.
• Pungeon Master: He tends to pepper his dialogue with cat puns (most likely got the habit from his owner 12,000 years ago).
• Really 700 Years Old: Not including whatever original age he was, he's currently 12,000 years old, although he's only been awake for 2,000.
• Sleepyhead: Spends most of the time sleeping, except when Splatfests are in town.
• Telepathy: How he communicates, apparently. The text you see in the tutorials are beamed from Judd into the Inkling's mind.
• Unknown Rival: As seen on the official relationship chart for Splatoon 2, Li'l Judd has an inferiority complex for his cloning template and may or may not be biding his time to kill Judd out of it. In contrast, the arrow going from Judd to Li'l Judd is a simple "?".
• Visual Pun: His distinct markings make him a literal tuxedo cat.
• Walking Spoiler: His backstory is entirely tied to the spoiler-filled history of the game's universe. Without that, he's just an inexplicable cat in a world filled with terrestrial marine life.

Jelonzo

A Jellyfish with a limited understanding of the Inkling language. He manages the clothing shop, Jelly Fresh.

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• The Bus Came Back: After being absent from 2, he returns in 3 as part of the Inkopolis Plaza DLC.
• Funny Foreigner: Jellyfish have a different language than the Inklings, so Jelonzo tends to mangle his words. It doesn't help that he used a slang dictionary to learn Inkling.
• Intentional Engrish for Funny: He talks like an old, poorly translated video game. He's much more fluent in 3, although he still has some quirks, such as calling clothes "body cloths."
• Punny Name: The name of his store is a pun on "Jellyfish" and "Fresh".
• Put on a Bus: Unlike the other shopkeepers from the first game, Jelonzo makes no appearance in Splatoon 2, with his involvement in the birth of Jelfonzo being his only highlight.
• Rogue Drone: According to the developers, most jellyfish are linked to a Hive Mind, but Jelonzo is one that has managed to develop his own consciousness separate from the collective.
• Rubber Man: His tentacles can stretch quite far.
• Truly Single Parent: Jelfonzo was birthed asexually from him.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: He wears a different shirt every day.

Crusty Sean

A tiger prawn dressed like a Japanese-style fried prawn^note Ebi-fry, as tempura shrimp or ebiten is prepared differently. and wears shoes on all his legs. He manages the shoe shop Shrimp Kicks in the first game, but has moved on to operating the Crust Bucket food truck in Splatoon 2.

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• The Bus Came Back: Averted: all the other 1 vendors except Sean return in the game for 3's Inkopolis Plaza DLC, since he's still on his Wandercrust bike tour. Fred Crumbs runs Shrimp Kicks during his absence.
• Color Contrast: Sean himself has a red body covered with an orangish-brown jacket, while the rest of his outfit consists of blues and purples.
• Dub Name Change: The Japanese version simply calls him "Rob".
• Experience Booster: In Splatoon 2, he sells deep fried hot dogs that increase the amount of player experience earned and various drinks that increase the amount of equipment experience earned in battle for 20 matches per food item. Only one boost can be applied at a time and they cannot be combined with the money multipling waffles.
• Gentle Giant: Tends to scare people due to his height, but is a very kind guy.
• Has a Type: According to the first artbook, he wants a "small and very cute girlfriend".
• Hidden Depths: Despite being a rather shallow extrovert, he values his alone time and is something of a filmophile.
• Let's Meet the Meat:
  • Wears a designer jacket that makes him look like a fried prawn in a rather morbid sense of fashion. It even crumbles like fried batter. Further emphasized by one Sunken Scroll depicting an actual fried prawn meal coupled with a blurb expressing horror that there were once creatures that ate Sean's ancestors.
  • In Splatoon 2, he starts serving various food items that are similar to shrimp tempura. Maybe he got inspired? Marie will clarify that his Crusty Seanwich item is actually a deep-fried hot dog.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic: His drinks in Splatoon 2 increase the chance of getting a specific gear ability when your gear levels up.
• Money Multiplier: In Splatoon 2, he sells waffles that increase the amount of cash gained from battles for 20 matches. This boost cannot be combined with the other experience boosting food items.
• Non-Indicative Name: Ignoring the pun, Sean is far from crusty as far as his personality goes. He does however, wear a coat that resembles a crusty coating of fried batter.
• Nutritional Nightmare: Goodness gracious, his Crust Bucket food looks heart-stoppingly unhealthy (and possibly delicious, depending on your outlook). The "double-fried super shwaffle" is an apparently twice-fried pair of waffles drizzled with chocolate sauce, served sandwiching ice cream, then topped with whipped cream and something that looks like a deep fried prawn; the triple-fried galactic shwaffle is ditto, but even bigger. The Super Seanwich is a hot dog with the bun replaced with more fried prawns; the Galactic Seanwich is two hot dogs sandwiched between three fried prawns.
• Punny Name: Say his name fast and you'll get "Crustacean".
• Status Buff: In addition to his experience and money-boosting food, he sells various drinks that act like equipment bonuses, but are only temporary.
• Supreme Chef: Marie, Pearl, and Marina all mention that his food is very delicious, and your character reacts positively after eating or drinking anything from him. His food is so hearty that it gives you EXP and money boosts for a few battles.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: Much like Jelonzo, he changed his shoes daily during his job at Shrimp Kicks.
• Verbal Tic: In his Wandercrust blog, Crusty Sean's picked up a massive affinity for wording related to frying. Nearly every Wandercrust post includes a reference to frying, crunchy food, oil, tempura batter, etc. Even his job posting for Shrimp Kicks called for someone with "extra crispy fashion sense", which Fred Crumbs took too literally.
• Visual Pun: Sunken Scroll #18 in 3 shows his bicycle setup. The bike basket just so happens to resemble a domestic kitchen deep fryer, the same kind one might make tempura prawns with.
• Walking the Earth: In Splatoon 3 he's started a travel blog called "Crusty Sean's Wandercrust", accessed in the Nintendo Switch Online mobile app, where he visits locations in and around Inkopolis and the Splatlands. Players can chip in and help him by spending points accrued by inking turf in Turf Wars and Anarchy Battles in exchange for wallpapers, Splashtag titles, and even an exclusive piece of gear when fully completed.
• Work Hard, Play Hard: Is described as being someone who works and parties in equal amounts.

Annie and Moe

Annie is a timid sea anemone while Moe is a loudmouthed clownfish who lives in her "hair". In the first game, they're the managers of the head gear shop Cooler Heads, while in Splatoon 2, the two have moved on to decorating weapons at Ammo Knights and selling customized gear through SplatNet.

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• Anime Hair: Her hair resembles the tentacles of a sea anemone, complete with a resident clownfish.
• Bespectacled Cutie: Annie's glasses do well to emphasize her endearingly cute Shrinking Violet persona.
• Demoted to Extra: She has a sort-of presence in the second and third games, despite not actually appearing in either until 3's DLC: she runs the SplatNet shops, and Murch may mention her when taking orders.
• Flying Seafood Special: Moe somehow manages to float in the air.
• Freaky Fashion, Mild Mind: Annie adopt dark, punkish gear in 3, but remains just as nervous and soft-spoken as she was in the first game.
• Jerkass: Moe has a habit of calling Inklings losers or geeks. A Sunken Scroll that may or may not reference the two mentions that, either Annie is giving Moe a place to rest, or Moe is manipulating her to do his bidding.
• No Cartoon Fish: Moe is depicted as a realistic-looking clownfish.
• No Indoor Voice: Moe always shouts, and very rudely mind you. Every letter in his dialogue is capitalized to emphasize that fact.
• Punny Name: Annie and Moe combine to form the word anemone.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The loud, brash, and rude Moe is the Red Oni, while the shy and polite Annie is the Blue Oni.
• Renaissance Woman: This SRL post describes multiple skills Annie has. In addition to managing two entirely different stores (a physical headgear store, and an online gear shop) she also works as SplatNet's system operator and decorates weapons.
• Shrinking Violet: Annie is a little bit shy, and fidgets around as you shop.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Moe always brags about being better and fresher than the Inklings he meets despite being a small clownfish hiding in the hair of Annie. Reaching Level 20 would have him saying "I'M STILL FRESHER!"

Sheldon

The manager of the weapons shop Ammo Knights. He's a horseshoe crab with a love of all things military. His grandfather was an engineer and an associate of Cap'n Cuttlefish.

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• Ascended Extra: Goes from just being the weapon store owner in the first game to being a part of Mission Control in the second. He pulls off this trope again later on when he shows up on the battlefield himself as the driver of Marie's flying truck.
• Character Filibuster: If you haven't played for a while, he can potentially trap you in lengthy weapon updates that cannot be skipped, as he dedicates a couple of explanatory sentences to each and every weapon of the 10 or more he's started stocking since last time.
• Demoted to Extra: In Splatoon 3 he goes back to being just a weapon store owner as Callie takes his role as the other half of Mission Control alongside Marie while O.R.C.A. takes his place of managing weapons. The closest he gets to participating in RotM is that his Shel-Drone appears in the postgame, which he isn't visibly piloting himself.
• Identical Grandson: He looks just like his grandfather.
• Mission Control: Provides occasional weapon packages (and associated requests) in 2.
• Motor Mouth: 2 adds a way to get past his dialogue faster. It's not a skip button, though. It's labeled "Hurry it up!", and makes Sheldon start speaking incredibly fast, automatically progressing through the text and barraging the screen with multiple speech bubbles, complete with a squeaky, sped-up voiceover.
• Nerd Glasses: Parodied. He's become so nearsighted from his all-nighters looking at small weapon parts that he has to wear a pair of literal binoculars at all times.
• No Sense of Personal Space: Marie doesn't know when he may pop up during stage conversations in Splatoon 2 and gets flustered when he does. He hears everything, apparently.
• No Social Skills: He's such a weapons geek that he'll ramble on and on to people without noticing that they're not necessarily interested in what he has to say, and as mentioned above, he will barge in on conversations whenever he wants.
• Older Than They Look: He may look like a little boy in a boy scout uniform, but he makes an offhand mention about his car in Splatoon 2, implying he is at least old enough to have a driver's license. The final battle of that game also has him driving a truck to get Marie into the fight.
• Punny Name: The name of his shop, Ammo Knights, sounds like "Ammonites" which were prehistoric shelled cephalopods. His own name is obviously a pun on shell.
• Super Prototype: In Splatoon 2, he designs the various Hero weapons for you to take into battle. When Sheldon sent the blueprints to the factory, they couldn't build it themselves and the mass-produced Hero Replicas are just their normal weapon versions with different appearances. The Hero weapons that he made himself to test in Octo Canyon are marked improvements over the replicas, as their performance is stronger when upgraded and they can select from four bomb types to throw.
• The Strategist: He doesn't seem to have the means to produce ink himself, but he is an intelligent strategist. Splatoon 2 has him being in mission control, guiding Agent 4 through Octo Canyon as well as driving Marie to free Callie from DJ Octavio, while Splatoon 3 has him being an avid player of Tableturf Battles.
• Voluntary Shapeshifter: Blink and you'll probably miss it, but every time you go into Ammo Knights, he'll quickly transform from crab mode to his humanoid form.
• War for Fun and Profit: Downplayed as it's nowhere near world changing (at least, not until the events of the third game) but he remains neutral between the Chaos and Order sides of Splatoon 2's final splatfest, giving his wares to both sides as he always has.
• Weapon-Based Characterization: According to Side Order, his favorite weapon is the Octo Brush. He treats designing weapons as art.

Spyke

A sea urchin who runs an illegal business in the first game, where he upgrades the abilities of gear in exchange for Super Sea Snails and finds you a replica of a piece of clothing that you see in the plaza. In Splatoon 2, the income he has received from this job has allowed him to retire, and the younger urchin Murch now works for him in filling his previous role.

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• A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted: In the first game he lives in a seedy back alley and makes a living modifying clothes. In the second he appears in a sunken scroll claiming he made one million G's in a single year just by sitting around. Considering how expensive his services are in the first game if you don't have a super sea snail, this isn't surprising. He's back in his back alley in Splatoon 3; explained in the Japanese SRL post, he ended up investing in a lot of business ventures and lavish hobbies until he used up most of his wealth.
• Creepy Good: Spyke has the most creepy aura of everyone else in the plaza, bearing a much more menacing and mature design compared to... well, everyone else. Despite this (and his shady ways of getting gear) Spyke never harms anyone aside from the Super Sea Snails, and is very useful for styling your Inkling.
• Creepy Long Fingers: His hands are very human-like but elongated enough to give this vibe.
• Demoted to Extra: In Splatoon 2, Spyke no longer interacts with the player, as his role has been taken over by Murch. Instead, he can be spotted inside a café. Murch does mention Spyke helping when you get your orders that are not exact to how you ordered them.
• Dub Name Change: Known as "Daunii" or "Downey" in the Japanese version.
• Friend in the Black Market: Best not to ask where he finds the clothes you ask him to get. His services also don't come cheap, with prices up to three times the store prices of any of the three shops plus what and how many perks they have. The narration of the game itself doesn't want to have you use his services; it tries to convince you to avoid speaking to him.
• Funetik Aksent: He speaks in a Cockney accent in the North American translation.
• Get-Rich-Quick Scheme: His back-alley business makes him so much money between the first and second games that he no longer has to work for life, to the point he even publishes a book on it. A Sunken Scroll comments on the book, dismissing it as a scam.
• Hiding Behind Your Bangs: His "hair" resembles an urchin's shell with one part missing revealing part of his face. This fits into his suspicious, under-the-table dealings and makes him seem additionally menacing.
• Not So Above It All: He maintains a serene, detached, and creepy if polite demeanor most of the time, but during Splatfests, he can be seen tapping along to the Squid Sisters'/Off the Hook's tune.
• Signature Sound Effect: In the glamour shot for Inkopolis in both 1 and 3, some emphasis is placed on Spyke fiddling with his bracelets, with the clack from them touching each other ringing out in his small alley. It is the only sound Spyke makes before he starts talking.
• Street Urchin: He hangs out in an alley sitting on a rug. It actually doesn't get any more literal than this.
• Technicolor Eyes: As seen in the picture, green irises with purple sclerae.
• Time-Passage Beard: In the time between 2 and 3, he grew out a goatee.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Considering that he's surrounded by quivering snails, empty shells and a screwdriver, it's kinda easy to put two and two together. Made even more obvious the first time you talk to him with a Super Sea Snail in your possession, where he says he doesn't need the shell lids that he uses to add/reroll Ability slots, and that "it's just the juicy, gooey stuff on the inside" that he likes.
• Visual Pun: He's a sea urchin that's also an alley youth, i.e. a Street Urchin.

Cap'n Craig Cuttlefish

^{Click here to see him after Splatoon 3's ending (SPOILERS!)}

Voiced by: Mahito Yokota

An elderly Inkling who leads the New Squidbeak Splatoon, a militia dedicated to fighting off the Octarian Army. Also Callie and Marie's grandfather. By the time of Splatoon 3, he's retired from leading the New Squidbeak Splatoon and has passed the mantle to Agent 3.

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• Action Fashionista: Sunken Scroll 19 in 3 is a legal document making Agent 3's promotion to the new Captain official. At the top is the brand associated with Hero equipment in all three games, Cuttlegear — a squid shape with two crossed Bamboozlers — implying that Cuttlefish designs, manufactures, or is otherwise directly linked to the various Hero Gear available in the games.
• Alliterative Name:
  • Craig Cuttlefish, as revealed in Octo Expansion. His retired rank of Captain gets in on the fun, too.
  • Most other European language versions go for this as well. For example:
    • Dutch: Karel Kraak
    • French: Anastase MacAlamar
    • German: Karl Kuttelfisch
    • Spanish: Jerónimo Jibión
    • Russian: Каракатий Кальмостар (Karakatiy Kal'mostar)
• Art-Style Clash: After being mummified and revived, he is now a realistic if desiccated squid with cartoony eyes and facial hair.
• Big Good: Serves as this in the first game's Hero Mode since he's effectively Agent 3's mentor.
• Body Horror: By the end of Splatoon 3's story mode, he is dehydrated by Mr. Grizz, leaving him wrinkled and flat. A sunken scroll outright states that he's been mummified. He doesn't seem that bothered by his situation, though.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: He's generally inclined to see Octarians as enemies by default, but this is overridden by his firm belief that anyone who likes the song "Calamari Inkantation" can't possibly be bad. This allows him to quickly overcome any objections he might otherwise have to working with Agent 8 or Marina in the Octo Expansion.
• Boastful Rap: One of the things he likes to do when rapping in Octo Expansion. It's... dubiously successful.
• The Bus Came Back: Is absent throughout Octo Canyon, but returns in the Octo Expansion to assist Agent 8.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • He says "No fan of Calamari Inkantation is a foe of mine" frequently in Octo Expansion, sometimes followed with "I don't see species". Temporarily mutates into "No fan of hip-hop is a foe of mine. I don't see genre" when discussing music with Off The Hook.
  • Similarly, "that's a rule of the battlefield", after giving level-related advice.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Mostly averted - he was viewed as this by everyone in Inkopolis until the Octarians returned. He's still not all there, but he's smarter and wiser than he looks, and his mind is still holding up better than his body is. Side Order reveals that he even has insight into the very nature of souls, much to Marina's surprise.
• Disney Death: He appears to have been dehydrated to death in Splatoon 3, but is quickly awoken.
• Distressed Dude:
  • He's captured by DJ Octavio about halfway through Splatoon 1's Hero Mode.
  • He's also captured and tied upside down under a UFO by a Brainwashed and Crazy Agent 3 in Octo Expansion.
  • And then again in Splatoon 3, after the first boss at that. This time, however, it does not end well for him.
• A Dog Named "Cat": He's a squid named after the cuttlefish, a different order of cephalopods.
• Dub Name Change: "Commander Atarime" in Japan, with his full name being "Yoshio Atarime" in Octo Expansion.
• Elegant Weapon for a More Civilized Age: He's always shown carrying around a Bamboozler; once a widely-used weapon during the Great Turf War, now merely one of very many. It paints him as a bit old-fashioned and out-of-date, and the best he can use it for is as a cane, anyway.
• Enemy Mine: He initially treats the future Agent 8 as just another Octarian foe but realizes that it is better for both of them to call a temporary truce and find a way out of the Deepsea Metro first. Gradually, after learning about Marina's Heel–Face Turn and how "Calamari Inkantation" had positively affected the Octolings, he starts to see Agent 8 as a friend and even hopes that they would be the key to bring Inklings and Octarians together in peace.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite his hatred towards the Octarians, he won't bother attacking them if they're unarmed, as is the case when he first meets Agent 8.
• Fantastic Racism: He has a tendency to call Octarians with various octo-slurs and is quick to blame them for the missing Zapfish, likely due to having bitter memories of the Great Turf War. This makes his conversations with Agent 8 and Marina a bit awkward (as they're both Octolings who defected from the Octarian Army) and downright tone-deaf if new Agent 3 is an Octoling as well.
• Friendly Sniper: He's far from his glory days, but he still wields a Bamboozler and is a very genial (though not all there) old fellow.
• Innocent Bigot: How he comes across when trying to be nice to Octolings. When he meets Marina, he makes a clumsy show of goodwill that includes claiming to "not see species", complimenting her as being "so articulate", and that she's "okay for an octo" when she's offline. Though this is somewhat more played up in the English translation, as in the original Japanese he's significantly less insensitive.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With Pearl, who is younger than him by at least a hundred years. When they first meet (both over the radio and in person), they're quick to launch into friendly Battle Rapping, and Pearl has come to respect Cuttlefish's role in the Great Turf War in the chatlogs.
• I Was Quite the Looker: Sunken Scroll 15 shows the Captain in his younger days as the leader of the original Squidbeak Splatoon, and he was quite handsome.
• Long-Lived: He's quite old, if you couldn't tell from his appearance. According to him, he is 130 years old at the time of Octo Expansion.
• Leet Speak: He sometimes uses leetspeak lingo in Marina's chatroom. Which is, apparently, by sheer accident on Cuttlefish's part.
• Major Injury Underreaction: In Splatoon 3, he doesn't seem that bothered by being dehydrated and mummified.
• Mission Control: In Splatoon's Hero Mode, he communicates with Agent 3 via radio, giving them information about the current Octarian hideout and tips on how to progress. He serves a similar role to Agent 8 in Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion, alongside Pearl and Marina.
• Passing the Torch: He passes his leadership role on to the original Agent 3 in 3.
• Put on a Bus: Is on a research trip with Agent 3 during the events of Splatoon 2's base game. He returns for Octo Expansion.
• Racist Grandpa: He shows some bigotry towards the Octarians, no doubt influenced by his resentment from the Great Turf War. These tendencies aside, however, Cuttlefish is firmly on the side of Agent 8, mainly because their life was changed by the Calamari Inkantation.
• Retired Badass: He was once as much a fighter as any of the young Inklings, and fought against the Octarians in the past. During the Octo Expansion chat logs, Pearl digs up old war photos of him, and the much younger Inkling is most impressed. He retires again in Splatoon 3, passing the mantle of Captain to one of the former Agents and taking up the role of a senior advisor.
• Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Implied in 3, where he is turned into his squid form after Mr. Grizz mummifies him, and while he gets better, he remains in that form, even after the credits roll. One post-ending dialogue line from Callie suggests that she and Marie are looking into figuring out how to fix this.
• Sword Cane: Variation. He uses his old Bamboozler from the war as a cane.
• Technologically Blind Elders: He is more than a century old, and the most advanced tech he has is a flip phone that he could text in Marina's chatroom. He uses his real name as a username, has no idea how to turn off Caps Lock when typing until Pearl and Marina tell him where the key is, and manages to text Leet Speak by accident. He's also not up to date with the changes in weapons, being surprised to learn that chargers can hold a charged shot even submerged under ink, a trait his Bamboozler (and, on that note, all Bamboozlers) lacks.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Crabby cakes (biscuits in Europe and Oceania). He likes them so much that he wouldn't stop talking about having some to eat, whether it be in Octo Valley or Deepsea Metro. It proves to be his Fatal Flaw in boss rematches with DJ Octavio in Splatoon 1, where the Octarian leader managed to escape when Cuttlefish was busy eating his crabby cakes.
• V-Sign: Seen striking a victory pose with two fingers up in his promotional character art (and in some concept art as well!)
• We Used to Be Friends: He and DJ Octavio clearly know each other from times past, and the Sunken Scrolls reveals they were good friends before the first Great Turf War.

The Zapfish

Catfish-like creatures that power Inkopolis and Splatsville's energy grids, who are stolen away by the Octarians in each game. They come in multiple sizes: normal Zapfish are about the size of an Inkling's head, mini Zapfish that provide one eighth their power, and Great Zapfish that are the size of buildings.

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• Idiot Hair: The Splatsville Zapfish gains a single, standing-straight hair upon its head when it comes back after Return of the Mammalians.
• Gentle Giant: The Great Zapfish absolutely dwarfs every other sea creature in the series, but it is also very docile and is perfectly fine with sharing its electricity to power Inkopolis and Splatsville.
• Kaiju: The Great Zapfish are absolutely massive. One of them can quite handily wrap itself around the massive battle lobby buildings throughout the games.
• Living Battery: The Zapfish are sought after for their ability to provide energy.
• Living MacGuffin: The other factions want to steal the Zapfish because of the power they can generate, and so they regularly trade hands before and after the plot of every main campaign.
• Plot Coupon: In 1 and 2, you're intended to collect all of the Zapfish before you progress to the next area.

Jellyfish

The third most prominent species in the Splatoon series, these jellys play the role of background NPCs, appearing pretty much everywhere in the world that isn't Octarian or Salmonid exclusive.

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• Artificial Atmospheric Actions: Some of the things they're doing are very obviously repetitive with no deviation. MakoMart for instance, has one jellyfish parent eternally comparing two boxes of cereal and never coming to a conclusion on what to buy, and a store clerk jellyfish has a queue being perpetually held up by the person at the front of the line.
• Bioluminescence Is Cool: Jellyfish can glow in the dark, as seen during Splatfests were they emit a faint glow.
• Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Based on how Jelonzo gave birth to Jelfonzo, jellyfish reproduce asexually by simply budding off of their parent.
• Extendable Arms: They can extend their arms quite far◊. They sometimes do this in Inkopolis Square to sop up puddles of water.
• Food Porn: A bunch of jellies in the alley of Splatsville that connects the shop street to the park will open up shop and start preparing food during Splatfests. One appears to be frying Cháo Quẩy bread, another has some stuffed cucumbers steaming, and a third restaurant looks to be serving large kabobs. Don't get your mouth too wet.
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Most jellyfish you see only wear shirts.
• Hive Mind: The Art of Splatoon 2 states that jellyfish are part of a shared hive mind, usually forming together in colonies that share a collective consciousness. Anything you see a jellyfish do isn't really done because they have personal desires or goals to achieve, but because they imitate behaviors they see as some kind of performance art. They do have their own individual thoughts, though, and some have even separated outright with no ill effects: you can see the latter with the shop owners Jelonzo, Jelfonzo and Jel la Fleur, who aren't merely acting out the role of shopkeeping, and the NPC jellies will even pick teams during Splatfests.
• Not Drawn to Scale: Jellyfish NPCs in the various maps will usually appear larger when far from the action, to compensate for the distance making them seem smaller. This normally looks fine, but if you're able to position your character near them — such as with jellyfish near Manta Maria's mid, who you can reach with the Zipcaster — they suddenly appear massive.
• The Speechless: Most jellyfish don't speak at all, at most making quiet bubbling sounds when you bump into them in the city, in part due to the fact none of them speak the local language. Some exceptions exist, primarily the shirt vendors, who all have incredibly weird Verbal Tics due to learning the Inkling language second-hand.
• Vague Age: Some jellyfish-related sights include seeing small jellies in playgrounds and hanging around bigger jellies, and you even face off against a jellyfish called Baby Jelly in Tableturf Battle. One would consider them juvenile jellyfish, except when one takes into consideration Jelfonzo. Being born from Jelonzo himself before Splatoon 2 would make him, at the absolute maximum, two years old, which puts into question whether these baby jellies are actual children, or just role-playing as them.
• Workaholic: They're seen doing pretty much all of the work in Inkopolis and Splatsville as construction workers, clerks, janitors, and so on, and almost never take days off work. Perhaps because of this, they seem to be one of the more well-off species in the world, as they own things like cars and expensive apartments, along with being implied to be the main sponsors of Turf Wars; this is in opposition to Inklings, who are generally more content to slack off and play ink-based sports all day.

Introduced in Splatoon 2

Li'l Judd

A young cat resembling a juvenile Judd who judges matches alongside him in Splatoon 2 and 3.

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• Achievements in Ignorance: He was created entirely by accident, as the mechanism by which Judd's capsule activates its cloning sequence is simply to turn it off and on again, which happened when a janitor cleaning the room the capsule was stored in accidentally tripped over the power cord.
• Ambiguously Evil: The artbook for Splatoon 2 and one of the third game's Sunken Scrolls imply that Li'l Judd might be planning to outright assassinate Judd. That, and the suspicious headset he's wearing after the end of the story mode of Splatoon 3 suggests he might be running Grizzco now, and it runs exactly the same as it did before under his ownership...
• Animal Jingoism: He's a cat, and his deck in Tableturf Battle is entirely made up of Salmonids, the closest thing in the world of Splatoon to modern day species of fish. The true meaning of this runs a bit deeper, though, as he's heavily implied to be running Grizzco.
• Bad Boss: His implied ownership of Grizzco after the end of Splatoon 3's campaign shows that he has made no changes to how the company is managed, still throwing Inklings and Octolings into life threatening Salmon Runs for the sake of obtaining Golden Egg hauls.
• Black Bead Eyes: One of the more distinct features he bears that set him apart from Judd.
• Characterization Marches On: In his debut, his dialogue doesn't sound that different from Judd's, but as of Splatoon 3, he speaks far more eloquently, and has it prefixed with (Mew) instead of (Meow).
• Clone Angst: He's a clone of Judd, and the game's official relationship chart reveals his... feelings on the matter. Splatoon 3 takes it further by having him plot to kill Judd.
  Li'l Judd: I've known from the moment of my birth that I'm just a replica of you. How could you ever understand my feelings?!
• Divergent Character Evolution: He debuted in 2 simply as a small version of Judd the Cat, to the point where he's a direct clone from a function in the original Judd's capsule. After supplementary materials came out following Octo Expansion and some bits of 3's lore, Li'l Judd has been shaping into an aggressive Unknown Rival with potential murderous ire for his predecessor. His physical design has also slightly changed, with more jagged fur and slight discoloration.
• Enfant Terrible: While intelligent enough to form eloquent words, he still looks rather young and is at least younger relative to Judd. He also detests being a clone of Judd and has more than one hint at trying to kill him out of an inferiority complex. What's more, after 3's campaign, it's implied he's the one that takes over the shady business of Grizzco for reasons currently not known.
• Evil Counterpart: In a meta sense. On the results screen, he judges the "Bad Guys" team and raises the flag if the player's team is defeated, causing Judd to trip over. There's also everything rather concerning about his feelings on being a clone and his implied ownership of Grizzco.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: As adorable as he may seem being a miniature Judd, he has moments where he aggressively expresses himself, as seen in the official relationship chart from 2. Sunken Scroll 23 of 3 shows him trying to scan Judd for physical weaknesses, calling him "prey".
• Fat Bastard: He's got the same chubby build as Judd and he's Ambiguously Evil.
• Foreshadowing:
  • He always represents the "Bad Guys" in the results screen. While it may seem like just another job, as it is for Judd, his internal embittered nature can be found in supplementary materials.
  • If you face him in a Table Turf Battle, his deck is shown to use only Salmon Run-themed cards. This can serve as either a Call-Back or a Call-Forward, depending on when you've beaten Return of the Mammalians.
• Green-Eyed Monster: He is stated to be attempting to overtake Judd as the primary judge for matches. This is possibly because Li'l Judd envies Judd's status as being the template he was cloned from.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: His main reasoning for trying to kill Judd and take his place as the sole cat in the world of Splatoon boils down to loathing the fact he's just a clone of the former. The official relationship outright says he has an in-"fur"-iority complex.
• Intelligible Unintelligible: Similar to Judd, he only says the word "Mew" as it's spelled and not like a normal cat would, yet the Inklings understand him just fine.
• Mini-Me: He's a smaller copy of Judd.
• Not So Above It All: Though he has sometimes shown a rather cunning and sadistic side to him, he's just as distracted as Judd by the "Yummmy!" Crusty Sean (and/or his cooking).
• Older Than They Look: He looks almost exactly the same in 3 as he did in 2 despite the five year Time Skip.
• One-Word Vocabulary: He only ever says "Mew." Yes, that word, exactly as is, just like it's spelled.
• Purple Prose: His dialogue in 3 after Tableturf is exceedingly eloquent, after it passes through Translation: "Yes".
  Li'l Judd: [After winning] Mew. (Ahhh. Victory is sweet, as always, but self-satisfaction is a fool's trap. I will not wallow. Mew! (On the other hand, there is so much to learn from defeat! So much to reflect upon, so many skills to improve... I envy you. Truly.)
  Li'l Judd: [After losing] Mew... (Oh. Defeat has a bitter taste... but resentment serves as shackles for the weak.) Mew. (Those who win are not ensured eternal victory. Better keep your own carelessness in check...or perhaps you enjoy a bitter taste?)
  Li'l Judd: [After draw] Mew... (Tableturf Battle creates curious encounters. Sometimes they end in neither victory nor defeat...) Mew! (As long as we both understand that this conflict was fruitless and held no honor... then I guess it's okay to call it a draw!)
• Serious Business: He's revealed to be an opponent in Tableturf Battle. And he takes the game very seriously.
  Li'l Judd: Mew! (Tableturf Battle is no game. On this table, victory is everything. The weak have no place here!)
• Seriously Scruffy: His Splatoon 3 design shows his fur to be spiky and brownish compared to his smoother, paler colours of his introduction. According to the artbook, he hasn't been grooming himself due to his constant failures at murdering Judd driving him to depression.
• The Social Darwinist: Somewhat fittingly considering his role as a match judge, he appears to believe the strong should rule over the weak, if his lines when challenged as an opponent in Tableturf Battle hold any weight.
• There Is Another: After years of Judd being the only known feline — and possibly even mammal — to be alive, out comes Li'l Judd to debunk the claim. The Sunken Scrolls and official relationship chart reveal that he's actually a direct clone of Judd.
• Translation: "Yes": He can pack some extremely complex and eloquent sentiments into his single "mew"s.
• Under New Management: After you've beaten Splatoon 3's story mode, Li'l Judd gets a headset with a microphone in his appearances. With Mr. Grizz trapped floating in space, combined with the Squid Research Lab implying that the radio is using pre-recorded lines, this implies Li'l Judd has taken over Grizzco's operations.
• Unknown Rival: For all of his heavy resentment regarding being a clone of Judd, to the point where he's trying to find any physical weaknesses of his according to one of the Sunken Scrolls, Judd himself has no strong feelings about Li'l Judd, with his thoughts on him on the official relation chart being a single question mark.

Murch

^{Click here to see Murch in Splatoon 3.}

A young urchin boy who works for Spyke and serves his previous role, only in addition he offers a service called "gear scrubbing" which resets a piece of gear's abilities back to its original state while turning removed abilities into collectibles called "ability chunks", which the player can use to fill an empty gear slot with a new ability should they collect enough. He also fulfills Spyke's role of modifying clothes from the first game with Super Sea Snails, either giving them a new slot or randomizing that Gear's sub abilities. He returns in 3 serving the same role in Splatsville, though he seems to have experienced a growth spurt in the past five years.

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• Cyclops: Murch only has one eye.
• Dub Name Change: Known as "Spiky" in the Japanese version.
• He Is All Grown Up: Murch was a young boy in 2, just barely taller than a jellyfish and shorter than Inklings even when counting his hair spikes. In 3, he is a teenager, and is taller than Inklings and Octolings even while sitting down - he would tower over them if he bothered to stand up! He even appears to be taller than Spyke, who was a lanky so-and-so to begin with.
• Phoneaholic Teenager: He's on his phone at every point except when he's talking to the player. This only slightly lessens when he gets older in 3, as he will ditch it during Splatfests to kick his foot appreciatively to the music.
• Punny Name: His name is a pun on "merch", referring to the merchandise that he deals in, and "urchin", his species.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: While Spyke wasn't a full-on Con Artist per se, his business is treated like somewhat of a shady back-alley deal that milks exorbitant amounts of money from players sinking it into random rolls on their gear. Murch, on the other hand, offers services much more to the player's advantage by allowing for more finely tailored ability customization and is willing to let go of possible profits in some cases when it would benefit the player:
  • If you scrub gear or reroll it, he'll give you the chunks from it for free.
  • If it's a Splatfest Tee you're giving to him to scrub, he will do it for 10% of the price because he likes the festive vibes that come with the event.
  • He doesn't accept money to reroll slots or boost star power; he takes Super Sea Snails instead, which are nutritional to him rather than monetary.
  • Adding abilities to gear is done entirely pro bono, so long as you have the ability chunks necessary to add it in the first place. Also, starting in 3 he's learned a special trick he can do with Splatfest Tees to add abilities with much fewer chunks, which he tells to you outright instead of scamming you into giving him more chunks than needed.
  • In general, instead of following Spyke's Get-Rich-Quick Scheme to the letter, Murch seems more intent on running it like a legitimate business, which is also represented by Spyke being on Team Chaos during the Chaos vs. Order Splatfest while Murch allied with Order.
  • By the time of 3, he's increased his business repertoire even further by allowing for main ability chunks to be replaced as per the player's liking, but he doesn't seem to have gotten as fabulously wealthy as Spyke has; if you look closely, his phone screen is cracked, implying he may not be in a position to easily get it fixed or replaced.
• Share Phrase: By 3, he's switched from greeting the player with "Hey, chum" to "Oi, chum". It seems Spyke's speech habits rubbed off on him.
• Surpassed the Teacher: Unlike Spyke, who could only modify gear abilities by rerolling all slots at random, Murch can use ability chunks to tailor gear exactly to the player's liking, and in 3 he can even do this for main abilities. His official introduction outright points out that this probably makes him more talented than his own idol. It doesn't take long for Spyke to catch up, as by the time he's reintroduced in 3 he offers the exact same services Murch does.
• Technicolor Eyes: Purple iris with green sclerae.
• Took a Level in Kindness: He mellows out a lot between 2 and 3, as he no longer insults the player in the latter and his dialogue will compliment them more frequently.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Like Spyke, he has a thing for Super Sea Snails.
• Weapon Specialization: Side Order reveals that he likes the Luna Blaster.

Flow and Craymond

Flow is a sea slug woman that runs the Headspace hat shop in Inkopolis Square, with Craymond being an emperor shrimp living on her head. Local Inklings think of her as their crazy aunt.

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• Cloud Cuckoolander: Craymond's interjections can sometimes cross the line into borderline nonsensical, such as when he suggests you "SMELL YOUR MODEM" when your system isn't connected to the internet.
• Dub Name Change: Originally named Miura (from umiushi, Japanese for "sea slug") and Ebii (from the term for "shrimp").
• Exotic Eye Designs: Her irises are surrounded by dotted lines.
• Lady Drunk: While we never see so in-game (for obvious reasons), Flow is noted to enjoy drinking alcohol.
• In-Series Nickname: Flow refers to her customers as Inkfish. After Octo Expansion was released, this trivial nickname becomes an essential term to refer Inklings and Octolings as one group.
• I Regret Nothing: Inverted; if you're below Level 4, not only will you be turned down, but Craymond will yell out "I REGRET EVERYTHING." on your way out.
• New-Age Retro Hippie: Her outfit resembles typical hippie fashion with the bead necklace and flowers, while her constant swaying and expression makes her look stoned.
• No Indoor Voice: Craymond doesn't speak a lot, but when he does, it's quite loud.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: To Annie, the series' other headwear shop owner, with an emperor shrimp sidekick in place of Moe.

Jelfonzo

A jellyfish that runs the shirt store Ye Olde Cloth Shoppe in Inkopolis Square. He can speak the Inkling language, which he may have learned by reading ancient Inkling literature. He is the offspring of Jelonzo, having been birthed from him asexually.

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• Bizarre Alien Reproduction: According to the Squid Research Lab report on him, he came to exist by splitting off from Jelonzo from Inkopolis Plaza. Said report then speculates that that would make Jelonzo his father.
• Did Not Do the Bloody Research: Jelfonzo has a rotating selection of t-shirts that he wears on each day. The Tuesday shirt seems innocuous at a glance, as it's passed through the series' Wingdinglish, but if you translate it back to the English alphabet, you'll notice it just reads "FUCK YOU". Given how friendly he is, the Tuesday shirt probably shouldn't be taken as offensively as it should be.
• Like Father, Like Son: Like his "father", he runs a clothing store and has unconventional speech patterns. Their names are also very similar, with Jelfonzo's name being the same as Jelonzo's only with an 'f' added to it.
• Limited Wardrobe: Most NPCs in the series only wear one outfit, but Jelfonzo averts this. His shirts will regularly rotate in and out, with a different one for each day.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: He speaks in old-fashioned English, saying words like thou, thee, and thy, like a character from Shakespeare.
• Younger Than They Look: Jelfonzo is about the same size as your average jellyfish, and is the manager of his own store and won a card tournament on his first try. Impressive achievements, but especially so when, considering he budded off Jelonzo at some point between Splatoon 1 and Splatoon 2, he's likely about a year old.

Bisk

A spider crab that runs the footwear store Shella Fresh.

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• Career Versus Man: A rare, gender-inverted example; as he left his lover in order to move to Inkopolis to pursue his band career.
• A Pig Named "Porkchop": His name is obviously a corruption of "bisque". While that soup type is not known for having spider crabs as an ingredient, you tend to see it with other crustaceans such as lobster.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: To Crusty Sean. Both are crustaceans that serve as the shopkeepers of each game's respective shoe stores and wear multiple pairs of shoes on their limbs.
• Waiting for a Break: His dream is to become a rock star, but in the meantime, he works at Shella Fresh to help pay the bills.

Mr. Grizz (MAJOR UNMARKED SPOILERS for Splatoon 3)

^{Click here to see his actual appearance (Major Splatoon 3 spoilers)}

A mysterious and somewhat questionable business mogul and the owner of Grizzco Industries, currently hiring part-timers for his Salmon Runs.

It is revealed that he is a survivor from prior to the end of the world. He intends to destroy all marine life and reinstate mammals as the dominant creatures of the planet.

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• Affably Evil: He maintains a calm, professional and polite demeanor during his run as the Big Bad of Splatoon 3, even using phrasing that sounds more like he's talking to an employee, implying he sees his current goals as nothing more than another day on the job.
• Ambiguously Evil: Splatoon 2 gives him a vaguely untrustworthy vibe, though any actual indication of how evil Mr. Grizz is is left up to the imagination until Splatoon 3 featured him as the real villain of its base singleplayer campaign.
  • The very first thing you hear about his business is the game itself calling it shady and advising you not to go near it.
  • He seems largely uninterested in the safety of his hired help, sends teenagers to fend off hordes of berserk mutant fish, and the goal of the Salmon Runs themselves essentially amounts to a paid internship in being a militia against Salmonid Raids.
  • The theme song for Grizzco Industries has an Evil Laugh peppered throughout... which may or may not be him.
  • In the final Splatfest involving Order Versus Chaos, he is one of three characters alongside Judd and Sheldon who stayed neutral in it, making it ambiguous how much he cares about "saving the world" over just caring about keeping his business running.
• And I Must Scream: In the closing credits of the single player mode, he can briefly be seen floating helplessly through space, implying he survived the final battle. Unfortunately, since he's stuck in outer space, there's not much he can do.
• Animalistic Abomination: He appears to be a giant blob of the Mutagenic Goo found throughout the story mode in the shape of a bear. During the last fight, he liquefies himself to move around the rocket before re-emerging and is able to fire a variety of attacks from his body. The final Alterna Log reveals that Mr. Grizz used to be an ordinary, if not smarter-than-average bear, and experimenting with Fuzzy Ooze caused him to mutate into what he is now.
• Animal Jingoism: He has an Animal Motif of a grizzly bear and sends the Inklings and Octolings against hordes of mutant salmons, a well-known prey of grizzly bears. Splatoon 3 confirms he is in fact a real grizzly bear (or at least used to be one, anyway) and in the final boss fight against him, he ends up fighting the Smallfry buddy, who is turned into a gigantic Hugefry.
• Animal Motifs: Bears, more specifically grizzly bears. It was initially unknown whether the man himself is a bear, though certain details on the "Ruins of Ark Polaris" map indicate that the idea wasn't as farfetched as it would originally seem... and then Splatoon 3 came around confirming this. He is, in fact, a bear-shaped mass of Fuzzy Ooze.
• Animal Testing: As Bear #03 on the Ark Polaris, he was experimented on by humans to retain his consciousness while asleep, which led to him achieving sapience.
• Anti-Villain: Unlike Commander Tartar, Mr. Grizz is actually somewhat friendly and holds no ill will towards marine life - he is simply trying to complete the Ark Polaris' mission of preserving (mammalian) life on his own, even if that means wiping out the current reigning species in the process. His sendoff, where he accepts that his kind's time has already passed, is played quite somberly.
• Apocalypse How: He seeks to inflict a Class 4 on all marine life by bathing Earth in his Fuzzy Ooze, turning them all into mammals. Additionally, the bad ending cutscene implies that the entire global ecosystem was completely destroyed.
• Arc Number: Matching the main number in the third entry:
  • His code name was Bear #03.
  • Counting Judd and Li'l Judd with him, it'd make three living mammals in the whole world.
• Ascended Extra: Goes from the mysterious but shady head of Salmon Run's Grizzco to being the Big Bad of Splatoon 3.
• Attack Its Weak Point: As the Final Boss of Splatoon 3, the player needs to shoot the cracks on his body and throw their buddy at the Fuzzy Ooze nodes, and in the final phase, need to vacuum up his remaining nodes with DJ Octavio's Ink Vac.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: He towers over the new Agent 3, and that's before using the Fuzzy Ooze to grow even bigger.
• Bad Boss: Mr. Grizz appears to be a downplayed version of this. He averts this in regards to failures, as failing only has him lament the lack of productivity and then give you good natured advice based on what enemies were there when you lost, such as warning you that steel eels always focus on one person at a time if you got splatted by one. However, when doing well, he's not above yelling at his employees to get him more money, isn't afraid to cut corners when it comes to employee training, clearly isn't above shady business practices, even if it's towards a demonstrably worse target, and gets way more irritable when a Mothership appears. Also, he's planning on rewriting the genetics of all life on Earth, which is probably not a thing good bosses do.
• Bad Job, Worse Uniform: On top of looking very drab compared to the fresh fashions available in shops, Grizz's uniforms also don't allow for any ability perks and only come with a limited amount of special attack usages.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: Appears to have no trouble in the vacuum of space during the boss fight against him.
• Bears Are Bad News: The game tells players that his business seems shady when they enter for the first time. Splatoon 3 reveals him to be a giant, vaguely bear-shaped jelly creature, and he's the Big Bad of story mode.
• Benevolent Boss: He often switches between this and Bad Boss depending on the player's performance. But he never yells at his employees if they didn't finish a Salmon Run (unless they have collected no Golden Eggs) and always give them advice on to do better. If his employees do exceptionally well, then Grizz would give them high praises and compliments, even considering doing an early raise for them. However, these acts of benevolence are simply manipulative tactics to keep his little workers happy and active, as he needs every single Golden Egg he can get his paws on to fuel Fuzzy Ooze production.
• Big Bad: Serves as the main villain of Splatoon 3's story mode.
• Boss Subtitles: The Ursine Anomaly - #03.
• Busman's Vocabulary: Speaks in business and professional jargon even when he's trying to splat Agent #3.
• Cold Ham: He's perpetually professional and calm, and peppers his dialogue with a good number of business jokes. He is also an amorphous organism resembling a bear the size of a house and is 100% serious despite being a walking Hurricane of Puns; if anything it makes him more threatening.
• Cold Sleep, Cold Future: He was one of the animals carried aboard the Ark Polaris by one of the last surviving group of humans. When the starship crashed back on Earth, he was horrified to discover he was the only survivor and now apparently the very last mammal on the planet, a planet that was now dominated by evolved sea life. He then made it his goal to return the Earth to the age of mammals.
• Computer Voice: Mr. Grizz's voice sounds far less organic than most characters, and it's heavily implied that it's a text-to-speech program. Confirmed in Splatoon 3 as his speech still comes out despite his mouth not moving at all, as well as the same voice continuing to play in Salmon Run even after defeating and seemingly killing him.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Commander Tartar from Octo Expansion. While both of their goals end with the extinction of Inklings and Octarians, as well as having ties to humanity, both their personalities and goals contrast each other in every other way.
  • While Tartar was first introduced in the DLC it was the Big Bad in, Mr. Grizz was introduced an entire game before his role.
  • Tartar was made in an attempt to Fling a Light into the Future and help guide whatever comes after humanity, while Mr. Grizz is the Sole Survivor of humanity's attempt to preserve itself in the face of extinction.
  • Tartar had a massive idealistic view of humanity, though it was flawed by its refusal to accept that they were not, by any means, perfect. By comparison, Mr. Grizz doesn't seem to view humanity as anything special, preferring mammals in general over them.
  • Tartar wants to wipe out Inklings and Octarians to make way for a new species, and Mr. Grizz wants to revert the status quo back to where it was 12,000 years before by forcibly converting all life on the planet to mammalians, even if it kills them in the process.
  • Tartar was a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing using a Totally Radical facade to hide its genocidal intentions. Mr. Grizz's cordial personality seems to be completely genuine and even in 2 the game itself minces no words about how shady he is, with the only thing he was hiding from his employees being what he was actually going to use the Golden Eggs for.
  • When its motives are introduced, Tartar is actively screaming its head off about its goals and how enraged it is about how Inklings and Octarians have failed as humanity's successor. Mr. Grizz, by contrast, calmly states his goal like it's just an average day on the job, and seemingly holds no ill will towards New Agent 3, in comparison to Tartar with Agent 8.
  • In its final moments, Tartar is dismayed at its loss, and the only consolation it gets is that it will soon reunite with its creator in the afterlife, taking its hatred for the Inklings and Octarians with it. Mr. Grizz, meanwhile, realizes that mammals will never rule Earth again and calmly accepts his impending defeat.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: He has some shades of this, as he often shows more concern for Golden Eggs than his employees, even telling them that they better not form a union. It's revealed in Splatoon 3 that Grizzco Industries is a front to collect Golden Eggs for Fuzzy Ooze production, which he plans to forcibly transform all marine life on land into mammals. And he doesn't even give you severance pay once you defeat him...
• Despair Event Horizon: His final words in the original Japanese version imply that his actions came out of despair from the idea of moving onto a future very different from the world he knew.
• Dissonant Serenity: His facial expression and tone of voice are eerily neutral even when Agent 3 fights him, as if it's just another day on the job. For the latter, there's the justification that he's using a text-to-speech program instead of his own voice, resulting in the artificial and detached tone.
• Dub Personality Change: Downplayed. In the original Japanese version, Mr. Grizz is (at least verbally) courteous and helpful regarding his workers' welfare, expressing more sympathy if you don't bring in a full haul. This is because the image of a Bad Boss still being polite on the surface is more familiar to Japanese players; in fact, an abnormally polite boss in suspicious working conditions is considered a common employment red flag. For English-speaking players, this kind of courteousness would be taken as a more straightforward Benevolent Boss or at least a Punch-Clock Villain, so his English dialogue has more obvious tones of caring more about the egg haul than his workers' safety. Either way, he still gives you a pay cut when you fail and subjects you to life-threatening work, so both versions make it obvious that any kindness he shows his workers is Pragmatic Villainy to make sure they can haul in as many eggs as possible.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To the Judds. The ones The Professor left behind were done so in the interest of carrying memory of the old Earth into the future, to let them live out their lives and to a lesser extent help the new race that would supplant humanity prosper. Grizz, meanwhile, was part of the Ark Polaris mission to preserve the life of the old Earth and make sure it stayed. Thus, whereas the Judds live peacefully with seakind and have been given a highly-elevated position in Inkling society, Grizz's mission objective is to remove the new races of peoples to return the old.
  • In a greater extent, to the playable cephalopod races as a whole, who were evolved from the liquid crystals of Alterna containing mankind's will and memory. Grizz would use the same substance in experimentation on himself, mutating into what could be closest called the mammalian counterpart for the ink-based entities seakind became, even able to sink into his own ooze in the same way and perform facsimiles of Inkling and Octolings' Specials.
• Evil Is Petty: In the English version, he uses his last words to refuse to give New Agent 3 severance pay.
• Evil Poacher: Salmonids are said to inhabit restricted waters, making interaction with them forbidden by law. That brings this Salmon Run business up from sketchy to highly illegal.
• Evil Versus Oblivion: Plays the role of Oblivion while Octavio plays Evil and helps Agent 3 fight him.
  • When it comes to Salmon Run business, especially during Big Runs, he's the Evil to the destructive Salmonids Oblivion, helping defend Inkopolis, if solely for the sake of his profits.
• Fat Bastard: He's pretty tubby even by bear standards and he's a bad guy.
• Fiction 500: Presumably how he manages to have the resources to run Grizzco even post-mortem despite being a front to collect eggs for non-financial reasons. How he got said vast wealth in the first place is another question.
• Final Boss: The last boss of Splatoon 3.
• Foreshadowing: When talking to him at Grizzco for the first time in Splatoon 3, he goes on a tangent about the importance of change and how everyone must go through it, hinting at the more literal change he has in mind for everyone in the singleplayer mode.
• Genius Bruiser: He's a huge gelatinous bear-like creature, and he's more than smart enough to run an entire business.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: After reawakening on Earth and learning that he is among the only mammals left in existence, he falls into complete despair, which provides his motive in "Return of the Mammalians": to transform all life on Earth into mammals using his Fuzzy Ooze.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: In his true form, his eyes are constantly glowing white.
• Graceful Loser:
  • Upon his defeat at the end of "Return of the Mammalians," he somberly forces himself to accept that his dream of reestablishing a mammal population on Earth will never come to pass. He does refuse New Agent 3 severance pay with his final words however.
    It seems all of my work... has been for nothing.
    The times have changed. The world can never be the same as it was. Moving forward... is the future.
    I suppose this is it, then.
    You will not receive severance paaaaaay...
  • This is even more pronounced in the original Japanese version, where his final words have a stronger nuance of admitting his own actions were from crossing the Despair Event Horizon and acknowledging Agent 3's efforts.
    I've lost to you...in every possible way.
    Looking forward towards the present and future as confidently as you look back on the past...
    It's really...It's really hard.
    I suppose my job here is done as well.
    Well then, good work for today.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: In contrast to the other shopkeepers tending to customers in person, he only communicates through a radio installed in a wood carved statue of a bear catching a salmon (a famous standard souvenir from Hokkaido). Come Splatoon 3 and he's finally shown to be a huge grizzly bear.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Nobody knows why Grizzco Industries needs Golden Eggs other than a vague description of being a new energy source. Given the shady nature of the company and the fact that Inkopolis and Splatsville still need the Great Zapfish for the power grid, it may not be for solving energy crisis at all. It's revealed in Splatoon 3 that the Golden Eggs are essential for the production of Fuzzy Ooze, which Mr. Grizz plans to use turn Inklings and Octolings into mammals.
• Hurricane of Puns: He's constantly making puns about business and employment. Just before Agent 3 fights him, for example, he plays taking a break from work with physically breaking Agent 3.
• Ignored Epiphany: Zigzagged. After he's defeated, he comes to the conclusion that ultimately, adapting and fitting into the new world of marine life would have been the better plan over trying to return things to the status quo. Thing is, he actually had this revelation earlier: talking to him over radio for the first time in the Grizzco office at the Splatlands has him remark that everyone must change at some point, then dismiss it as a rambling tangent about how no Salmonid attack is the same.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In his boss fight, sucking all of the Fuzzy Ooze out of his body wasn't enough to defeat him, so DJ Octavio opted to launch all of the Fuzzy Ooze right back at him, which does defeat him and destroys his rocket.
• The Juggernaut: As a boss and befitting of his immensity and girth, he displays little in the ways of finesse in favor of being an immovable lumbering powerhouse. Just by rolling, he's able to spin the entire rocket he's on, and when he decides to forego it, he smashes the entire thing open to take the Fuzzy Ooze payload within, offhandedly and with no difficulty whatsoever.
• Kaiju: During the final fight, he is remarkably huge, and becomes even more massive after absorbing all of the fuzzy ooze. He ends up doing battle with Hugefry this way. His paw alone is almost the full size of the entirety of DJ Octavio's modified Octobot King.
• Karmic Death: His ultimate defeat at the end of Splatoon 3 comes at the hands of a Salmonid that was the friend of an Inkling/Octoling. The very same species he hired to do his dirty work and the species they were tasked to hunt. And then there is the fact that it's an evolved salmon beating up a (modified) grizzly bear.
• Killer Rabbit: In the flesh, Mr. Grizz actually resembles a massive, overstuffed teddy bear and looks absolutely adorable... if you look past the fact he's busy trying to turn all marine life on Earth into mammals.
• Last of His Kind: A twofer:
  • He's literally the last remaining living ship member of the Ark Polaris.
  • He's also the last living bear in the planet.
• Last-Second Word Swap: His introductory dialogue during a Big Run has an instance of this as he explains the reward mechanics that paints a dark picture as to what working a Salmon Run shift is really like:
  "That's why we're increasing our payout for all surviv— Um... for all top producers."
• Leitmotif: Splatoon 2's theme for Grizzco, "Happy Little Workers", is used to represent Mr. Grizz. It returns as a remix for Grizzco in 3, and is the basis for the songs that play for his first appearance as well as his boss fight.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: Salmonids are invading Inkling society and are carving a path of destruction through the multiplayer maps? Mr. Grizz is ecstatic because that means better Golden Egg profits for him. His dialogue regarding Big Runs puts up a wafer-thin veneer of him caring about saving the city, with emphasis usually being placed on securing Golden Eggs out of the ordeal.
• A Lizard Named "Liz": He's a grizzly bear named Mr. Grizz (although he was originally just called "Bear #03").
• Make My Monster Grow: Because his body is made of Fuzzy Ooze, he can pack extra onto his body to increase his size, an ability he takes advantage of for the second phase of his fight.
• Manipulative Bastard: He knows how to keep his part-time employees happy and content to not ask questions of Grizzco's shadier side, providing them exclusive rewards that cannot be found anywhere else and always giving them praises and raises whenever they do a good job. As result, his business has five years of success with none of his employees being the wiser to his true plan.
• Meaningful Name: As "Ursine Anomaly #03". In-universe, the explanation for this is apparently that he is the third-numbered bear who was aboard the Polaris. Metatextually, he's the third living mammalian organism to resurface from ancient Earth, after Judd and Li'l Judd.
• Mission Control: His role in Salmon Run. He directly communicates with your workers at the beginning and end of each wave to shout orders, tells you what kind of Known Occurence you're dealing with during night waves, and tallies up your Golden Egg haul at the end of a shift. During certain night waves, he'll even pop in to provide valuable intel in the middle of the wave, such as announcing when the Mothership will move in to attack the egg basket.
• Mysterious Employer: The developers have stated that Grizzco's registered headquarters is completely empty, and have hinted that even Mr. Grizz's dialogue is 100% prerecorded with text-to-speech software that automatically plays certain messages depending on the situation. Given that he's put out of commission at the end of Splatoon 3's story mode yet you still hear him talk before, during and after jobs, it's almost impossible that he's directly talking to you through that radio. After Mr. Grizz's death/disappearance, it's hinted that Li'l Judd of all people has taken over his position as the head of Grizzco for as of yet unknown reasons.
• No One Sees the Boss: He's the head of Grizzco Industries, and he's never seen on screen. Splatoon 3 reveals his physical appearance as a slimy bear-like creature.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The fact that Mr. Grizz lets you use his precious Golden Eggs as ammunition against a King Salmonid rather than to meet a quota speaks volumes to the threat it poses.
• Pet the Dog: If you achieve the highest ranking in Salmon Run, "Profreshional", and clear a round, he'll sometimes tell you that you might be "the best employee he's ever had". One of his rules in 3 is a warning that getting too greedy might get the employee hurt and to be careful.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Mr. Grizz runs everything like a business and thus he doesn't engage in any petty behavior that would hinder his agenda.
  • His Benevolent Boss persona is meant to entice Inklings and Octolings to continue working for him despite the shady and unsafe conditions of Grizzco Industries, and to encourage better productivity. It's more explicit in the Japanese version, where a friendly boss in a shady business is considered to be a red flag for employees.
  • After getting everything he needs, Grizz immediately launches his Fuzzy Ooze rocket with him on it rather than fighting the New Squidbeak Splatoon and giving them a chance to stop him. He didn't anticipate Deep Cut giving new Agent 3 a means to catch up to the rocket.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: When New Agent 3 gets onto the rocket:
  "Well, well. Such dedication to your work. I think you've earned yourself a break. Now come here... SO I CAN BREAK YOU."
• Professor Guinea Pig: After finding Alterna, he did an experiment with his own fur, the Alternan memory crystals, and Golden Eggs that created Fuzzy Ooze. Given that he's able to turn himself into Fuzzy Ooze, there's an implication that one of his experiments mutated him beyond just being a normal bear.
• Psycho Pink: The Fuzzy Ooze he is made out of and spreads is mostly magenta, and intends on exterminating all marine life.
• Random Drops: Outside of a specific piece of equipment (that changes monthly), he quite literally pays his employees in gachapon capsules with random contents.
• Read the Freaking Manual: Mr. Grizz will not-so-subtly tell you this if you fail to secure even one Golden Egg during a Salmon Run. Also, one Salmon Run conversation implies he yelled this at Pearl at least once.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: When he turns One-Winged Angel at the end of Splatoon 3, his glowing white eyes turn fierce red.
• Shout-Out: His overall design appears very similar to Tiny Headed Kingdom plush toys, specifically their giant teddy bear design.
• Sole Survivor: Of the Ark Polaris, humanity's last-ditch effort to save themselves and all known species at the twilight of humanity.
• Stealth Pun:
  • His bear-like appearance makes another reference tying in with his businessman theming: a bear market is one in which the stock market experiences a general decline.
  • Splatoon 3 introduces another pun that unfortunately doesn't translate well from Japanese. In Japanese, Mr. Grizz's name is just Mr. Bear, or Kuma-san. This is pronounced the same way as his actual name, Bear #03—or "Kuma San" in Japanese.
• Super-Scream: During his final boss fight, he can disperse a Killer Wail-like attack.
• Sword Beam: Well, a claw beam rather, but Mr. Grizz's claw swipes send out waves of ink, emulating the vertical slashes of the Splatanas.
• There Is Another: If the name is any indication, it's possible that he may be yet another mammal who survived the pre-game apocalypse. The "Ruins of Ark Polaris" map implies that he might even be a survivor of humanity's attempts to save land-dwelling species from the rising sea levels. Splatoon 3 reveals that he is - in fact, Mr. Grizz (real name Bear #03) is the Sole Survivor of the Ark Polaris after its failed attempt to colonize a new world.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Surprisingly, failing in Salmon Run won't end up with him chewing you out. He compliments the work you were able to get done, and gives you advice for the next time.
• Time Abyss: The secret log describes him as being 12,000 years old, most of it spent in Cryosleep.
• Tiny-Headed Behemoth: He has a comically small head compared to his hulking body. The log showing his backstory shows him as a normal bear with standard proportions, implying this is the result of infusing Fuzzy Ooze into himself.
• Took a Level in Kindness: His dialogue in Salmon Run: Next Wave is a lot more casual and personable compared to the first Salmon Run, occasionally sharing odd comments and musings with his employees. He becomes even nicer (and a bit more manic) during Big Runs. Just compare his dialogue for timing out during a shift:
  [In Salmon Run]: "TIME'S UP! Let's see how many Golden Eggs ya got. Just (Insert Golden Egg count)? That's a shame."
  [In Next Wave]: "TIME'S UP! At least you tried. Let's count those Golden Eggs... Just (Insert Golden Egg count)? Eh, better than nothing."
  [During a Big Run]: "Time to clock out! Is it just me, or is the workday too short? Anyway, nice job on the Golden Eggs. You got (Insert Golden Egg count)!"
• Uncertain Doom: Downplayed example. It's not entirely clear if he's actually dead, considering you can see him orbiting Earth in the credits and Batman Can Breathe in Space is in effect, but he's cut off from any resource he could use to return, meaning he's probably stranded there for at least a very long time. Plus, he's already quietly accepted mammals' time as the dominant species is over.
• Unseen No More: After going unseen from his debut in Splatoon 2, he is finally revealed in Splatoon 3 and is shown to be a massive grizzly bear who's the size of a house.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: In the bad ending of the third game, his rocket succeeds in converting everyone into mammals, but it also destroys Earth's ecosphere by turning over half of its surface into a giant living sea of Fuzzy Ooze where oceans and landmasses once were.
  • He's essentially made his employees into this by hiding his true motivations and intent behind collecting Golden Eggs, making them constantly poke the hornets nest that is the Salmonids to the point they start invading Inkopolis and Splatsville in retaliation.
• Uplifted Animal: A grizzly bear that somehow gained enough intelligence to run a company and devise a plan to repopulate mammals on Earth through the use of Fuzzy Ooze and a rocket, and at some point transformed into a gooey Animalistic Abomination due to the assorted experiments he conducted in Alterna to create Fuzzy Ooze. The secret log states it was because during his 12,000-year cryo-sleep he was just conscious enough to dream and develop intelligence over time.
• Walking Spoiler: Much about him becomes incredibly important in discussing the "Return of the Mammalians" campaign of Splatoon 3.
• Was Once a Man: He used to be a regular bear until he began conducting his experiments with Fuzzy Ooze, which mutated him into something else altogether.
• We Can Rule Together: He frames his plan for Cuttlefish as the two of them working together to make a better world. Cuttlefish has no idea what Mr. Grizz is talking about and wants to be freed to teach Grizz a lesson.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Though his reasons are ultimately rooted in a personal trauma of being the apparent last mammal, Mr. Grizz does believe it is best for the world to be ruled by mammals and makes it clear he's only going to turn existing life into fellow mammals like himself. In fact, he treats his ultimate plan as just another business routine rather than personal vendetta unlike other Splatoon villains.
• With This Herring: If he supplied you with Grizzco weapons on every Salmon Run shift instead of doing random ones and always enabled the Ink Cannons at low tide, his Salmon Run egg hauls would be a lot more profitable (and, admittedly, less fun). Perhaps them being illegally modified has something to do with it.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Given his rather traumatic backstory and implied crossing of the Despair Event Horizon, it's hard not to feel a bit sorry for him.
• Would Be Rude to Say "Genocide": He says that HR doesn't appreciate the term "Hairmaggedon" for his plan to turn all life on Earth into mammalians, and asks that the Squidbeak Splatoon not call it that.
• Would Harm a Senior: Prior to Agent 3 arriving at his rocket, he dehydrates Cuttlefish and nearly left him dead.
• Would Hurt a Child: The playable Inklings and Octolings are teenagers, and Mr. Grizz not only doesn't show any compulsion in killing New Agent 3 for getting in the way of his plans, but the modus operandi of Grizzco Industries essentially amounts to luring them into working life threatening Salmon Runs with little regard for their survival and well-being beyond some friendly sounding warnings and paying them in gachapon capsules.
• You Are Number 6: His designation aboard the Ark Polaris was Bear #03.

Introduced in Splatoon 3

Gnarly Eddy and Nails

Gnarly Eddy is a laidback nautilus, and Nails is an energetic sea snail. The two of them run the headgear store Naut Couture.

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• Armless Biped: What look like Eddy's arms are actually just a pair of cirri that dangle from next to his head and serve the function of arms. In fact, calling him a biped is a stretch, since his torso and legs are just more cirri that are bundled together to mimic a humanoid body.
• Breaking Old Trends: While they are another laid back shopkeeper and loud excitable assistant duo, Nails is noticably far more friendly than either Moe or Craymond. Also, he is explicitly helping and beneficial towards Gnarly Eddy, while Craymond was just kind of hanging out around Flow and there were implications that Moe was manipulative towards Annie.
• Camera Fiend: One of the sunken scrolls consists of selfies of Nails and Eddy, with the implication that Nails took the pictures.
• Carnivore Confusion: Nails is the first snail in the series who can talk, but the game still has Super Sea Snails that are presumably eaten by sea urchins like Murch.
• Cephalothorax: Like Ink Theory's own nautilus Karen, Gnarly Eddy's body plan is comprised of his entire nautilus body acting as a head, with some of his cirri bundled together inside a shirt, shorts and sandals to mimic a body.
• Cool Shades: Nails has a pair of black sunglasses.
• Exotic Eye Designs: Eddy has pin-shaped pupils, much like real nautiluses.
• #HashtagForLaughs: Their Sunken Scroll (#14, specifically) involves a comedically long parade of hashtags.
• Mister Big: Eddy refers to Nails, a tiny sea snail, as his boss.
• Recurring Element: He's a low-key headgear shopkeep and Nails is his smaller, more energetic companion, just like Annie/Moe and Flow/Craymond.
• Shrinking Violet: Gnarly Eddy is pretty shy and non-confrontational; seeming nervous and hesitant if you challenge him to a Tableturf Battle and apologizing for "harshing your vibe" if he wins. His sunken scroll outright states in one the many hashtags that Nails is helping him come out of his shell.
• Significant Anagram: "Nails" is one of "Snail".

Jel La Fleur

A snooty jellyfish who runs the clothing store Man-o'-Wardrobe.

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• Ascetic Aesthetic: Man-o'-Wardrobe is colored with sterile whites and stark blacks, and the sole sources of color in it are Jel La Fleur, the player, and a couple of the shirts on display.
• Berserk Button: Unlike the other shop keeps who are dismissive at worst when somebody enters their store with a freshness level below 4, Jel La Fleur flies into a rage and asks if people below level 4 can even tell what their level is. He's also happy to slap a lifetime ban on anyone who gets his wares dirty (accidentally or otherwise).
• Breaking Old Trends: Jelfonzo's name was a rather clear offshoot of Jelonzo's, but the only similarity between these names and Jel La Fleur is the "Jel" part. Also, he has no known biological relation to the previous shopkeeps.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: His shop apparently has a "don't touch until you buy" policy. Players can try on his shirts before they buy (or try them on without buying) just like any other shop.
• Jerkass: Downplayed. He's more rude, snobby, and dismissive to the player than any other shopkeeper throughout the franchise.
• Neat Freak: Slaps lifetime bans to anyone who gets his wares dirty, will ask if you've washed your hands before playing against him in Tableturf so as to not sully his pristine cards, and Sunken Scroll 15 warns customers to not touch wares until they buy them.
• Recurring Element: He's a jellyfish who sells shirts, has an odd speech pattern, and whose name starts with "Jel", just like Jelonzo and Jelfonzo.
• Suddenly Shouting: He has a tendency to say some of his briefer sentences in all caps. JUST LIKE THIS!
• Wake-Up Call Boss: In Tableturf, his deck is designed to work well with the smaller playing field you challenge him in. This allows him to easily outflank players who don't likewise adjust to having less room to work with. The once dependable strategy to dominate the middle of the terrain early is also not as viable against him as he has the means to immediately do that to the player or severely contest them for the privilege with the low block counts of his deck's components, and he has cards that can let him breach diagonal gaps that are usually found in long and wide blockades.
• Weird Beard: He has a few extra stringy tentacles meant to resemble hair, including what looks like a long Fu Manchu mustache.

Mr. Coco

A large coconut crab who runs the shoe store Crush Station.

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• Animal Facial Hair: He has a mustache that resembles lobster antennae.
• Carpet of Virility: Possibly to emphasize his Lovable Jock status, he has what appears to be chest hair growing out of the top of his tank top.
• Gentle Giant: He's absolutely massive, but he's a friendly and polite guy. According to the Sunken Scrolls, the frequency with which a coconut crab changes shell is directly tied to its sunlight intake, so living in a desert turned him gargantuan even by the standards of the world's largest arthropod species.
• Insult of Endearment: Calls you a "sneakerhead" if you try buying a shoe that you already bought that day. Which sounds like an insult, but given that his profession pretty much has a love of shoes as a requirement and that he'll call you that after buying enough of his wares, he likely uses it as a term of endearment for anyone who's as obsessed with shoes as he is.
• Nice Guy: Unlike the other vendors, who are pretty dismissive to anyone who isn't fresh enough, he's more encouraging to a low-level player. He's also all compliments when you defeat him in Tableturf Battle.
  Mr. Coco: Listen, we're gonna get through this. Here's how. Go to the lobby. Get in some Turf War battles. CRUSH 'EM! Get that level up!
• Recurring Element: He's a multiple-legged crustacean who sells shoes, just like Crusty Sean and Bisk.
• Top-Heavy Guy: His body and claws are massive, and while some of his legs are proportionate to his size, the ones he actually stands on are tiny.
• Vocal Dissonance: Mr. Coco is by far the biggest shopkeeper in the game, but his voice is high and soft. However, if you try to buy something while not having any money, his voice turns extremely deep.

Harmony

A sea anemone and the vocalist of Chirpy Chips. In Splatoon 3, she runs Hotlantis, a store she used to frequent. She doesn't actually own the store, however, and is merely filling in for its manager, who's often absent for reasons unknown.

Like Annie before her, a clownfish lives in Harmony's hair. But unlike Annie before her, Harmony's neglectful to her fish, to the point where it not only has no name, but it's on the verge of dying.

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• All There in the Manual: Information such as Harmony's neglect of her clownfish is found in the official artbook HaikaraWalker, which was only released in Japan.
• Ascended Extra: Harmony first appeared as part of the band Chirpy Chips, and was only seen on the cover for their songs and related illustrations. Splatoon 3 now has her as the shopkeeper for Hotlantis.
• Auto-Tune: Harmony's vocals are altered in her band's songs to have a more electronic tone. She lip synchs during live performances as a result. Her actual speaking voice has some mild electronic effects, alluding to this.
• Brutal Honesty: She admits to this if you lose to her in Tableturf.
  Harmony: "Good luck getting better at this. Sorry- I don't know how to say that without sounding mean."
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Harmony is certainly an odd anemone, what with her perpetually vacant expression and unemotive personality, so it's pretty easy to forget that she's the lead singer of a well-respected chiptune band.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Her blank stare, general demeanor, and fascination with a spring toy suggests she's not all there, although there are some indicators this might be less "not entirely there" and more "so bored outta her mind she honestly doesn't care". Her little speech when handing over catalog items is perhaps the most confused she gets and even then she's most likely wondering, as a non-ink producing species, if Turf Wars are actual work.
• Comical Nap Drool: An awake version, she has a perpetual string of pink drool hanging from the side of her mouth, highlighting her odd personality.
• Company Cross References: The spring toy she plays with in Hotlantis looks to be an Ultra Hand, a toy made by Nintendo in 1966.
• Deadpan Snarker: When giving players the 100k Hotlantis Club Badge for spending money at her shop, rather than thank them like the other shopkeepers, she skips the speech and sarcastically thanks them for being a consumer.
  Harmony: I'm just gonna give this to you. Way to consume, consumer.
• Dub Name Change: Her name in Japanese is Paruko (パル子).
• Dull Surprise: She doesn't put effort in expressing strong emotions. Her reaction to losing a Tableturf game is simply stating she lost and now she's bored.
• Informed Attribute: Harmony's clownfish is stated to be dying due to neglect. However, it has been seven years since the two debuted in Chirpy Chips, and it's still around, floating on Harmony's head.
• The Nameless: The clownfish in her hair. She cares so little for it that she can't even be bothered to name it.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Harmony's in-game model◊ was faithfully based on her original design◊, when she was just a member of a minor band, who get incredibly stylized cover arts for their albums. This stylization left her with Rubber-Hose Limbs and exotic eyes, even compared to Annie◊, another sea anemone.
• Painting the Medium: Seeing as accessing Hotlantis while out in both Inkopolis hubs is via terminal due to there being no space to put up a shop, the screen has a granular effect, as if it was on a CRT TV, as well as hiding you, seeing as you're not in Splatsville.
• Phoneaholic Teenager: By necessity. As there is no Hotlantis shop in either of the two Inkopolis Hubs, Harmony has to be on her phone to be able to see you and send the store's product to you. Unlike Inklings and Octolings using touch-based phones, Harmony uses a sea slug phone.

Barry C.

The actual person behind Hotlantis, who is on a trip out of town to pick up stock.

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• All There in the Manual: He's never seen in the game, but a sketch of his actual appearance is in the artbook for Splatoon 3.
• Collector of the Strange: It's suggested that he's weirdly into Fresh Fish, the mascot of Wahoo World; a Fresh Fish illustration appears on Hotlantis' Sunken Scroll and the shop itself has at least two Fresh Fish mascot heads on its shelves.
• Emoticon: Sunken Scroll 17 appears to be an online blog about Hotlantis written by him, and his typing style is peppered full of kaomoji.
• The Ghost: Never seen in-game.
• A Lizard Named "Liz": "Barry C." is a pun on barracuda, the species of fish he resembles.
• Punny Name: Say his full name out loud three times fast. Barry C, Barry C, Barely See.
• Shout-Out: Hotlantis' insanely cluttered shop floor is reminiscent of the Japanese store chain Don Quijote.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: The weird, loony wise guy to Harmony's bored, blunt straight man.
• We Sell Everything: Hotlantis' schtick is selling basically anything you can fit into a locker. They've got stickers, buckets, posters, candy, detergent, soda, lobby training dummies, stepladders, video games, canned snacks, squid cushions, books, propane tanks, Jenny Hanivers...
• The Wonka: Hotlantis is popular and reputed enough to bear signatures from many of the in-universe bands and get Harmony (of the ever-popular Chirpy Chips) to basically be its cashier while he's absent. Despite this, Barry himself is really eccentric, as Harmony herself describes:
  [When the player reaches level 15] "Uhhh, I guess Barry had something he wanted to say to you? He's the owner of this shop, obviously. Anyway, he said you were really fresh or something. Then he did, like, a weird dance that's supposed to mean something? I don't know. I think he's looking for more stuff to sell you."
  [Ditto at level 30] "Oh yeah, Barry the owner had another message for you. I am NOT going to make a heart symbol with my hands like he told me to, but...he said something to the effect of, 'You're a great customer,' and, 'Please keep coming back.' Then he said, 'Yo,' like, 30 times in a row, and I think he was doing a different dance. Not sure if I was supposed to tell you that part."
  [When the player spends 100,000 cash at Hotlantis] "Oh. Hey. You've bought a lot of stuff from this place... Barry had a special message for that. He wanted me to thank you for being such a loyal customer. Then he had this whole bit where I'm supposed to give a 'funny' speech and present you with a badge..."
  [Ditto at 1,000,000 cash] "Oh. Hey. You've bought a LOOOT of stuff from this place... Barry had another message for this. He wanted me to get super sappy if a regular customer became a super-big spender here. Like you. So congrats on...buying a lot of stuff. You did it. Then he wanted me to do another badge ceremony with a handshake, publicity photos, singing a parody song that he wrote himself..."

Staff

The Staff running the Crab-N-Go. (Not pictured: the one in charge of Recon, and the other in charge of Tableturf)

Three goldfish (or maybe just one?) in charge of the more miscellaneous functions of Splatsville, specifically the Crab-N-Go stand, the recon guide, and the Tableturf Battle Dojo. At least one of them is named Marigold.

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• Alien Hair: Their "hair" buns are actually the bumpy head growths possessed by numerous breeds of goldfish like the lionhead and ranchu.
• Ambiguously Evil: Sunken Scroll #24 implies that the staff are purposefully hiding their identities for unknown reasons. They're all incredibly polite most of the time, with the occasional Freudian Slip that hints at being a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing. And that's without mentioning that there might be another one of them working at Grizzco, as the attendant behind the counter has the same voice as them.
• Identical Stranger: They can only be told apart by their uniforms, as they otherwise look identical. The Squid Research Lab tweet that introduces them outright wonders if they're the same person.
• A Lizard Named "Liz": Marigold is an obvious pun for a goldfish, but the alliases provided by Sunken Scroll #24 are also references to the species as well:
  • Poisson Rouge is the french name for goldfish.
  • Ran Chi-Yu sounds like Ranchu, the type of goldfish the staff seem to be based on.
  • Nichiyo Oranda has Oranda, which is the Japanese name for goldfish.
• Noodle Incident: A sunken scroll shows that Marigold has several different IDs with different aliases, with much of their contents blacked out, and explains absolutely nothing as to why.
• Non-Standard Character Design: In a first for the series, the Staff are based on a freshwater aquatic species (goldfish) as opposed to the marine life that almost every other character is.
• Nutritional Nightmare:
  • The highest-tier money-boosting food they cook at the Crab N' Go, Mega Mountain a la Marigold, is a giant pile of food of which it's hard to distinguish. It appears to consist of eggs, some kind of sauce or gravy, fried pawns, salmon, french fries, bonito flakes, and topped with mashed potatoes.
  • Inverted with the Mega Mountain's EXP-boosting counterpart, the Marigold'en Garden Greens, which is four sandwiches made from prawns, cucumbers, and lettuce, a couple of pieces of uramaki sushi, served on a bed of lettuce with carrot sticks and what appears to be a small salad and a bowl of fruit. Maybe a lot for one person to eat, but especially compared to the other food in the series, it looks insanely healthy.
• Parental Substitute: Acts weirdly motherly around the player; calling them "sweetie", "dearie", "honey", etc., showing extreme patience at them scarfing down tons of food like a messy child, and praising their Tableturf Battle skills if they lose.
• Power-Up Food: Serving a similar function to Crusty Sean's Crust Bucket in 2, the Crab n' Go kiosk they run offers money and EXP-multiplying snacks, as well as gear-EXP boosting drinks that influence rolled gear abilities.
• Refuge in Audacity: When the player buys food and open-mouth eats it, spilling crumbs everywhere, it merely gets a polite smile out of them.
• Sore Loser: If they lose in Tableturf:
  "I lost? But that's unbelievabl...y sad. Yes, that it. So sad! Boohoo..."
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: They run the Crab-N-Go food stall at the battle lobby, which is this to Splatoon 2's Crust Bucket. Just like the Crust Bucket, you can exchange tickets for drinks that will influence the chances of getting certain gear abilities, as well as three tiers of food which increase money and EXP rewards (albeit the Crab-N-Go's third tier only applies the resource doubling to the whole team, rather than giving a 2.5 times multiplier for only the consumer).
• Tailfin Walking: They walk on their tail, but their tail fin is divided in two to resemble a pair of feet.
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating: Gloats if they win in Tableturf, then realizes they're getting carried away and reels it back, but not without making a patronizing remark about the player still doing good in the game.

Fred Crumbs

A horse mackerel who is the new shopkeeper of Shrimp Kicks in the Splatoon 3: Expansion Pass.

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• A Lizard Named "Liz": His Japanese name is アジオ ("ajio"). This is a twist on アジ ("aji", the fish known as horse mackerel in English), which is used to make the dish he resembles.
• Autocannibalism: His idle animation alternates between scratching at his tempura coating and eating it off his hands.
• Bizarre Alien Biology:
  • If he is indeed a horse mackerel like his appearance and Japanese name implies, then his overall anatomy is very weird. For example, his tail is on the top, his face is on the fish's spine, and he has a pair of feet in place of the missing head. It makes him stand out, compared to the other anthropomorphic fish that look more normal.
  • If his Squid Research Lab post is to be believed, he wasn't naturally like this before, but ended up this way after mistakenly filleting and deep frying himself alive. This only raises more questions about his pre-cooked form, like how his face used to appear on his body or the implication that his fillet form split a singular foot into two feet on either side of his body.
• Breaking Old Trends: He's the first non-crustacean to run a shoe shop, specifically being a (butterfly-cut and fried) horse mackerel. By extension, he's also the first shoe vendor to not have multiple pairs of legs to wear multiple pairs of shoes.
• Let's Meet the Meat: In the same vein as Crusty Sean's crispy coat making him look like a tempura prawn, Fred's wide physique and crumbly coating makes him look like the Japanese dish aji furai, which is breaded and fried horse mackerel. He's even holding onto a lemon slice under his arm. And unlike Crusty Sean, who's just wearing a designer jacket that makes him look deep fried, Fred actually filleted and deep fried himself for the job. He seems fine with it, at least.
• Limited Wardrobe: Like Jelfonzo, Fred Crumbs is one of the few aversions of this. He wears different pairs of shoes on any given day.
• Literal-Minded: Fred filleted, breaded, and deep-fried himself for the Shrimp Kicks position. Crusty Sean was being metaphorical when asking for someone with "extra crispy" fashion sense.
• Punny Name: His English name references "bread crumbs", since he's a creature covered entirely in breading.

Shelly and Donny

A pair of young tadpole shrimp and the new shopkeepers of Greater Inkopolis' Ammo Knights branches in the Splatoon 3: Expansion Pass.

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• The Apprentice: This Squid Research Lab post refers to them as protégés of Sheldon.
• Baby Talk: Downplayed. Shelly tends to get tripped up over some harder words and says them syllable by syllable, but otherwise has the same lines Sheldon has when discussing weapons players are able to purchase.
• Breaking Old Trends: This is the first and second time that Sheldon hasn't been the one running an Ammo Knights location, and the first time that an establishment other than a headwear shop has had more than one vendor.
• Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: How Donny talks. It's more apparent after he takes over Inkopolis Square's Ammo Knights branch.
• Expy: Their role as small twins who help maintain a store is similar to Timmy and Tommy from the Animal Crossing series, with Donny serving as the Tommy between the two.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: For work related purposes. Post-7.0.0 (regardless of Side Order completion), Donny splits up with Shelly to run the Ammo Knights' Square branch, with Shelly staying in the Plaza branch.
• Mini-Me: They look like miniature versions of Sheldon, down to wearing similar Boy Scout-like uniforms. Do note, however, they're a pair of tadpole/shield shrimp, not horseshoe crabs.
• Theme Twin Naming: Put the first two syllables of their names together, and you get "Sheldon".

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