Franchise / Splatoon

"Go ahead, make a mess!"

For the first game in the series, please go here.

Splatoon is Nintendo's premier competitive multiplayer Third-Person Shooter franchise. It takes place in a bright, colorful world where mankind is dead and marine animals rule the land — the most prolific of which are terrestrial squid called Inklings, whose favourite pastime next to fashion and music is fighting and spraying each other with their own bodily fluids.

What sets Splatoon apart from other shooters is the core mechanic of inking and swimming. All your weaponry coats the ground and walls in ink, with Inklings (and Octolings) having the ability to switch between their cephalopod and humanoid forms at will and swim through ink of their own colour; meanwhile, attempting to walk or swim through enemy ink greatly restricts movement and causes damage. As such, any ink you lay down greatly increases the mobility of your team and greatly hinders that of the opposition, meaning the key to winning matches comes in literal territory control as much as it does "splatting" your enemies. The main online mode of the games, known as Turf War, emphasizes this all the more by having the goal be to take control of the map by coating it in your team's color.

In addition to Turf War, there are several other online gameplay categories. This includes ranked modes where the focus is on completing more specific objectives (such as riding a tower all the way to the enemy base), and Salmon Run (where you take a part-time job at a cannery wherein you and your team defeat waves of mutated Salmonids and collect their eggs). Periodically, there are community-wide weekend events called "Splatfests", where players choose one side of a "Cavemen vs. Astronauts" Debate and duke it out to see which side is right.

Each game has a single-player campaign called "Hero Mode", wherein your player character is recruited as the newest member of the New Squidbeak Splatoon, an underground agency working to defend the surface from outside threats to Inkling society.

The official website can be found here. Splatoon Base, the official Japanese website detailing the series' mythology and characters, can be found here. Updates on the games and new information about the series' mythology are delivered via social media under the guise of the "Squid Research Lab", a hidden group of humans who have dedicated themselves to cataloguing the activities and history of these stylish cephalopods.

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List of games in the series

• Splatoon (Wii U; 2015)
• Splatoon 2 (Nintendo Switch; 2017)
  • Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion (Switch; 2018)
• Splatoon 3 (Switch; 2022)
  • Splatoon 3: Side Order (Switch; 2024)

Manga

• Splatoon (2015-2021; serialized in CoroCoro Comic)
  • Splatoon 3: Splatlands (2022-present)
• Mellow Squid 4-Panel Comic (2016-present; serialized in Weekly Famitsu)
• Splatoon: Squid Kids Comedy Show (2017-present; serialized in CoroCoro Comic)

Other Media

• Squid Sisters Stories (2017): A web serial short story detailing the events between the first two games.

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Tropes general to the Splatoon series:

• Scavenged Punk
• Metagame

A-F

• Absurdly High Level Cap:
  • The first game's Version 2.0.0 update raised the level cap to 50, even though all weapons and gear is unlocked by original cap of level 20. There are additional pieces of gear rewarded every five levels past 20, but said clothing has no unique traits that can't be found from others in the store. And assuming you gain experience in the most efficient way possible (winning every ranked match you play without ever going into overtime) it'll take you over 90 hours of play time (not counting time spent between matches) to go from level 20 to level 50.
  • Splatoon 2 goes even further by having the original level cap be 99, despite being able to unlock everything by Level 30. Then the Version 2.0.0 update allowed any players who reached that level cap to essentially prestige ala Call of Duty to reach a new level cap of 99★. Expect to spend several hundred hours to reach that cap. And another several hundred hours if you chose to prestige again after that to reach 99★★, which only the mobile app will even acknowledge. However, instead of clothing every five levels, every new level from 30 onward grants the player a Super Sea Snail, a useful item which can be used to add sub ability slots to gear items.
• Acme Products:
  • Downplayed in that multiple brands appear, but hats, clothing, and shoes are all made by fictional in-universe brands (Firefin, Krak-On, Forge, Inkline, etc.). SquidForce in particular, is the official sponsor for ink battles, as evidenced by its logo appearing on the sides of the tower in Tower Control and the button for Ranked Battles. The brand usually has a slight effect on which sub-ability you are more likely to get, such as Krak-On shoes being more likely to get Swim Speed Up as a sub-ability, although not all brands have such a Luck Manipulation Mechanic.
  • Also downplayed with weapons, which are also made by multiple fictional in-universe brands. Weapons made by a particular brand tend to follow a certain theme, such as "Custom" weapons being based on industrial tools, and names of main weapon variants (that have alternate sub and special weapons) by the same brand tend to have the same differentiator (e.g., Custom Blaster, Custom E-Liter, Custom Hydra Splatling).
• Advertising-Only Continuity: Most of the franchise's promotional material on social media, as well as general game updates, comes from the "Squid Research Lab": a collection of humans who secretly analyze the culture and behavior of the various races within the games' world and present their findings in a lighthearted, conversational tone. Outside of a clothing item in Splatoon 2 (their signature lab coats, Cool Shades not included), they have no trace of existing in-game. This is particularly notable because Splatoon is set long after humanity went extinct, so you have to wonder where they're hiding (and Splatoon 3 debunked them hiding out somewhere in space.)
• After the End: The game is set on Earth long after humanity died off, with the official art book for the first game and later entries further detailing this to be a combination of natural disasters caused by climate change and continuously escalating nuclear warfare; the latter quickening the former via a stray warhead melting the entire continent of Antarctica during World War V. Cue mass extinction of almost every mammal on Earth, paving the way for various sea-life to evolve and become the new dominant species on the planet.
• Alien Hair: Most of the characters are Apparently Human Merfolk that retain their beastly bits as hair resembling the fish they take after. Inklings and Octolings in particular have some of their tentacles act as hair when in humanoid form.
• Aliens Steal Cable: Downplayed. Splatfest themes are received as a result of humans' arguments about mundane topics being among the various radio waves transmitted into space thousands of years ago, and getting reflected back to the planet. In effect, it's Earth stealing cable from itself, and explains why the Splatfest themes can cover aspects of present-day pop culture.
• All There in the Manual: A lot of information about the setting and the characters are only alluded to within the game itself, with bonus material such as artbooks, soundtrack inserts, developer interviews, and the official websites elaborating or revealing more details.
• Alternate Species Counterpart: The Octolings are octopi counterparts to the squid-based Inklings. Just like Inklings, Octolings are capable of shifting between a humanoid form and their namesake form. While initially enemies in the story mode of the first game, subsequent games give the player an option to play as them.
• Americasia: Modern culture in this world is largely a mix of Japanese and American elements, from architecture to music to clothing.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Clothing is frequently given as rewards for accomplishing challenges. Each piece of clothing has a main ability to aid in battle, plus up to three sub-slots for additional buffs, with one sub-slot ability being about a third as powerful as a main ability.
• Animal Is the New Man: The backstory of the series' numerous societies is that after humanity destroyed itself through several world wars and climate change, sea life evolved into the new dominant species of the planet. The fact that these new species developed similar virtues and vices as humankind becomes a plot point in Octo Expansion.
• Animal Jingoism: Played with. There was a fervent animosity between the squid-based Inklings and the octopus-like Octarians, birthed from a past war that resulted in the latter species being forced to live Beneath the Earth for the past century prior to the first game. However, while the Octarian leadership very much wants to avenge their loss, most Inklings have all but forgotten about the war and at worst view Octarians as nothing more than a barely-remembered subject from history class. As such, when the Octolings themselves start defecting en-masse to the surface in the second game, most Inklings see them as nothing more than fellow squids with funky tentacles, with one interview implying that they would be just as welcoming to the newcomers even if they did know their species. By the time of the third game, the two species are once again living in harmony on the surface.
• Animal Theme Naming: Almost all stages are named for a marine-life specimen, such as Flounder Heights, Sturgeon Shipyard, and Arowana Mall.
• Animation Bump: Promotional "live" idol group concerts have entirely new high-definition 3D models for the performers that also come with new dance moves in addition to the ones seen in Splatfests.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • In the first Splatoon, if you lose a ranked match in which one of your teammates was disconnected, you'll only lose one ranking point instead of the usual ten, though this was only if they disconnected at the start. Later installments are more forgiving, not altering your rank whatsoever regardless of when that player disconnected, and even immediately ending the match in a no contest if the disconnect happens at the very beginning.
  • Competitive gamemodes based on Scoring Points, such as Splat Zones and Clam Blitz, feature a "point penalty" system: if the underdogs fill certain criteria (taking back the Splat Zone and defending their basket long enough for it to close), the team in the lead gets a penalty to their points that they need to clear before they can increase their score. This mechanic makes it so that the underdogs have a Comeback Mechanic, but only if the match isn't a Curb-Stomp Battle; if it is a curbstomp and the underdogs can't fight back their opponents, the penalty doesn't apply, as the winning team is very obviously superior and the match doesn't need to be dragged out by point penalty.
• Anti-Rage Quitting: The game makes it hard to "rage quit", as the game doesn't let you exit during a Turf War or Ranked Battle match. You have to close the game entirely; this results in a penalty in Ranked in the first game, and a short suspension from playing online at all in following entries.
• Anti-Villain: The Octarians. Despite being painted as a gratuitous Evil Counterpart Race of the Inklings in the Hero Modes of the first two games, it's made clear through Sunken Scrolls, the Octo Expansion campaign, and other in-game sources that their heavy militarization was the result of being forced underground due to losing a war years prior. While they certainly want revenge, they also have the issue of their underground homes now facing an energy crisis that they're desperate to resolve.
• Apocalypse How:
  • Before the invention of modern ink weaponry, Salmon Runs were recorded to have caused many a Class 0, leveling cities in their ferocious onslaughts.
  • Many Class 4 events crop up:
    • The setting takes place millenia after a cocktail of rising sea levels and nuclear warfare wiped out humanity, along with all other mammalian life-forms.
    • Octo Expansion features the NILS Statue, which would have sprayed the whole planet down in sanitized sludge if not stopped by Agent 8, killing off all organic life except for Commander Tartar and its sanitized lifeforms. However, whether this is a Class 4 or higher isn't completely clear, as Marina states that the statue was "charging up enough energy to destroy the entire world".
    • In Splatoon 3, Mr. Grizz's ultimate plan to reintroduce mammalian life to Earth calls for bathing the planet in his Fuzzy Ooze, turning all marine life into mammals. While the specifics are fuzzy, the bad ending cutscene makes it clear that Earth's current biosphere is irreparably destroyed.
• Armor Is Useless:
  • Bulkier equipment doesn't really have any effect on the player's survivability, unless it happens to have a defense ability attached; and even then, the effect is still fairly minor and can be replicated by anything less bulky.
  • Averted in single player, where your character can equip pieces of armor that serve as extra lives of sorts.
• Art Attacker: All the ink weaponry makes for some bizarrely artistic fights; even things like paint rollers and paintbrushes are weaponized.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • Evolution — The game's setting takes place 12,000 years after the demise of humanity, which is nowhere near enough time for the extreme physiological changes an Inkling or Octoling body plan would require to develop (let alone the other extremely humanoid body plans possessed by invertebrate characters). Furthermore, while some cephlapods have a bit of a head start due to their intelligence and limited ability to survive out of water, they would still need to develop several innovations such as active air respiration (which could evolve from their gill chambers), an extreme case of Centaurism, and internal support structures to carry their weight. All of these would be required to create the Inkling/Octoling body plan, yet they are specifically stated to not have skeletons and can even shapeshift, while still able to remain about the size of a human.
    • Jellyfish are also shown to have no internal support whatsoever, yet are shown to be able to grow to large sizes and support their weight with no difficulty.
    • Partially subverted by Aunt Flow, who, being related to snails, could have limited skeletal support via an internalized shell.
    • Horseshoe crabs have remained unchanged for 240 million years, making it unlikely that Sheldon's species would ever evolve to begin with.
    • Even with the increased area of intertidal zones caused by the flooding, that alone (even if paired with the impact of thermonuclear weapons) wouldn't be enough to cause an extinction event capable of wiping out all terrestrial clades of animals (and one that did would have similar impacts on the ocean). More than likely all of the surviving clades, who can cope with the reduced land and resources, would repopulate the vacant niches long before the sea creatures could move into them. We already see that several species of birds survived into the present day in-universe, and would rapidly diversify as a result. Bears like Mr. Grizz would also do well, their omnivory making them able to exploit any food source they come across.
    • The amount of sapient species coexisting on the same planet. Not only is human-level intelligence unfathomably rare (especially when the resources it requires ends up pushing natural selection against it), but these species would be competing for limited resources and niches, and thus many would die out from overcompetition. The Inklings/Octolings surviving into the present day is semi-realistic, given that at one point humans coexisted with Neanderthals and Homo Erectus, but by the time civilized societies had formed, it'd be more likely that one would've been subjugated by the other or interbred out of existance.
  • Arthropod characters like Crusty Sean and Bisk reaching the sizes they do isn't possible. Arthropods rely on passive respiration, and even with Carboniferous levels of oxygen in the air, there wouldn't be enough to support their large body sizes.
• Art Shift: Many of the Sea Scrolls are drawn in a realistic art style, the most detailed of which are wartime photos of the Great Turf War.
• Audience Participation: The results of each installment's Grand Finale Splatfest is used to inform the plot and setting of the following game:
  • The first game's "Callie vs. Marie" Splatfest had the latter win, resulting in the two cousins slowly drifting apart between the first and second games, with the sequel itself having its main plot partially concern Callie having been kidnapped and later revealed to have become a Brainwashed and Crazy general for the Octarian Army.
  • Splatoon 2's "Chaos vs. Order" Splatfest, won by Team Chaos, led to the third game having a "chaos" theme, with the setting shifting from Inkopolis, the metropolis where the first two games take place, to the desert environment of the Splatlands and the city of Splatsville.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Using Rollers for direct combat. They deal superbly high damage (a direct hit is usually a One-Hit Kill), but they’re slow, short ranged, and flinging ink is heavily telegraphed and has a long wind up. A one-on-one with an enemy with a projectile weapon will almost certainly get you killed since your opponent can easily get out of range and shoot you. They fare much better for ambushes or sneak attacks, though.
  • Hiding on inked walls can sometimes be a good way to ambush opponents, as most people focus on inking the ground because that's where most people hide, and inking walls is purely for traversal and doesn't count toward the point total anyway. The problem is that you constantly slide down walls if you aren't actively climbing them, meaning that you'll most likely be so preoccupied with trying not to fall off that you won't be able to do any ambushing before someone does notice you. It doesn't help that climbing up walls always produces ink ripples, making you easier to notice.
  • The Rainmaker fires the equivalent of a Limit Break projectile, (the same ink-tornadoes as the Inkzooka in 1, and an arcing, Ink Vac-like exploding shot in 2 and 3), and can be continuously shot for way longer than any Special Weapon's duration. Unfortunately, it's only effective when it's fully charged, which takes a second and mandates standing up in your slower humanoid form. Furthermore, the Rainmaker locks the user out of using their usual sub and special weapons, leaving them with no defensive options. Slow and steady strategies won't work either, because the Rainmaker will explode on its own after a set period of time. Combine that with the fact that you're a giant target on the map — if you're standing, the game highlights your position through walls, and if you're swimming, the weapon provides a very noticeable shine — and it is unlikely you'll get far without your teammates distracting the enemy or protecting you directly.
• Background Music Override: During a Splatfest, the signature song of that game's Idol Singers overrides most of the hub world's musical tracks.
• Badass Adorable: The Inklings and Octolings are colorful cephalopods who shape-shift into humanoid teenagers. They are also very skilled with ink-based weaponry and are surprisingly powerful fighters.
• BFS: The Inkbrush and Octobrush are longer than your character is tall and about as wide, too.
• Blood Sport: The series is centered around a sport known as Turf Wars, in which two teams of four squid/octopus-humanoids fight one another using various ink-based weapons and attempt to cover as much of the arena in their color. It's been practiced since ancient times and remains popular in the modern day, with how Death Is Cheap in-universe.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Despite all the cool toys that are eventually unlocked, it's still common to see hardened veterans wielding the games' starter weapon, the Splattershot Jr. The gun doesn't have anything fancy going for it: it just sprays a good amount of ink for a long amount of time with decent range and damage, and has a defensive special that protects both the player and their teammates for a reasonably low cost. It's no Game-Breaker by any stretch, but it has the versatility to act as a consistent, solid choice for any situation and team.
  • The Splat Bomb is the first and most basic form of subweapon players have access to. It is also commonly considered one of the most powerful, as it is a One-Hit Kill on a direct hit like most Bomb-type subs but makes up for its lack of specialization by being incredibly versatile. Knowing how to lead foes into your Splat Bomb and rolling bombs to shorten their detonation timers makes them surprisingly dangerous tools.
• Buffy Speak: The Squid Research Lab, for all of their interest in 100% methodical and serious research of technicolor squids, is a victim of unscientific speaking when revealing new details about the games, er, Inkling and Octarian societies. For instance, "These suckers use one tentacle to work their little steering joystick thingy".
• Button Mashing: Want to use Brush and Splatanas weapons effectively? Then you better get working on that trigger finger. Unlike other weapon classes, they attack as quickly as the player can press the trigger button. Since one gets the most out of it in coverage ability and attack power by swinging it as fast as possible, improving your button mashing skills is a must.
• Camera Abuse: When bosses explode, they shower everything in ink, including the camera.
• Capture the Flag: Rainmaker is an odd variant where the eponymous Rainmaker sits in the center of the stage and functions as a single "flag" that has to be carried to the enemy base. The Rainmaker gives its holder a slow but powerful Charged Attack; however, it greatly slows the carrier's walking speed, constantly marks their location to opponents, and self-destructs if they hold on to it for too long, doing it faster if they try to retreat.
• "Cavemen vs. Astronauts" Debate: Splatfests are periodically-held weekend-long community events where players choose sides in simple debates like "dogs vs. cats" or "rock vs. paper vs. scissors," with the winner decided in Turf Wars matches. In-universe, these are framed as large-scale festivals complete with all-night parties.
  Pearl: Yo, Marina! Tell the people the good news before we introduce the stages!
  Marina: Huh? Like, right now?! Um... What was the good news again?
  Pearl: You know... The single most important celebration of our culture?
• Central Theme: Moving on from the past.
  • The villains of the series are characters who refuse to let go of what happened to them and bring about terrible suffering. DJ Octavio continuing the war long after it ending and dragging his people down along with them; Commander Tartar going against its creator's original intention because of its longing for humanity and hating what replaced them; and Mr. Grizz being driven mad upon realizing he's the last of his kind.
  • On the opposite side, the youthful protagonists start to shed the hatred of the past. Agent 3 and the Squid Sisters unintentionally show many of the Octolings that the Inklings aren't as bad as DJ Octavio told them they were, leading characters like Marina Ida and Agent 8 to defect in 2. Smallfry in 3 is an abandoned Salmonid, part of the species that has historically ended multiple societies, but the love the new Agent 3 shows them helps them become something greater.
  • Being unable to get over the past is something especially prominent with the previous dominant species of the world, humankind. Alterna, the last bastion of the human race, is dotted with Moyai statues, with Alternans having a certain fondness for ancient art, and Alternans wanting to return to the world outside of their safe haven spelled doom for the final surviving humans.
• Character Customization: The appearance of your Inkling and Octoling can be customized, which then is combined with customization of their offensive and cosmetic equipment. Furthermore, each piece of cosmetic equipment comes with a main ability that affects gameplay, and up to three other sub-abilities.
• Character Level: The multiplayer features a leveling system, with the amount of experience gained being based on performance during a Turf War or ranked match (area inked, plus any time or winning team bonuses). Your level determines access to various facets of the game: certain weapons and entire weapon classes are unavailable until you reach certain levels, gear and miscellaneous decorative items can't be purchased until Level 4, online play for the Player Versus Environment mode Salmon Run isn't accessible until Level 4 as well, and Level 10 is the requirement to play the ranked modes.
• Charged Attack:
  • Charger class weapons work like sniper rifles, and cover a long area in front of the player which increases the longer the attack is charged, with them being instant splats at max charge, with the exception of the Bamboozler and its variants.
  • Splatling class weapons have a charge time used to pressurize ink and wind up the weapon before firing, with longer charges giving longer bursts of fire. The reward for this charge time is superb range and fire rate.
  • Splatana class weapons have a close-ranged charged attack that does instant knock-out damage while sliding the user forward.
  • In Rainmaker mode, the eponymous Rainmaker can be charged up to fire a large blast of ink. Trying to attack without charging simply fires a tiny little twister (Splatoon 1) or orb of ink (2 onwards) that barely travels forward.
• Cherry Tapping:
  • As far as main weapons go, the Inkbrush's "rolling" attack does a measly 20 damage when hitting an opponent, while Inklings have 100 health. Combine this with the Inkbrush user being pushed back after running into someone, and the chances of actually finishing off an opponent with that attack are close to none.
  • Chargers and Splatlings can be rapidly fired by mashing the trigger, but they'll do relatively little damage with extremely little range and coverage.
  • The Sprinkler does minuscule damage-per-hit, but a careless opponent can still get splatted by it.
  • When you shoot a platform propeller, the ink can rebound off onto enemies and splat them if they're low enough on health. And yes, the game has a specific message for dying this way.
• Civil Warcraft: Nothing serious, but during Splatfest a team can ocassionally find themselves facing off against members of their own team (such as Dog vs. Dog) if the matchmaking system can't find enough members of an opposing one. While these matches grant the usual Splatfest points for players, they do not affect the overall standings.
• Close-Range Combatant:
  • The Brushes are very much melee weapons, with users tending to rely on ambush tactics even more than other players do.
  • Some Blaster weapons, particularly the Luna Blaster, have explosions with a wide blast radius and great power, but the shots travel only a short distance before detonating.
  • The Dapple Dualies and its variants trade the range that its fellow Dualie class weapons have in favor of high damage and dodge speed.
  • The Sploosh-o-Matic has poor accuracy and absolutely minuscule range, but excellent damage and fire rate. Like the Luna Blaster, it's geared explicitly and exclusively towards close-quarters combat.
• Colorblind Mode: Enabling "Color-lock" in the options locks teams colors to a particular set of bright, high-contrast ones depending on the game mode. For example, Splatoon 2 online battles will always be yellow vs. blue.
• Color-Coded Armies: Each team of Inklings can have a variety of colors. There are many team color combinations for Turf War and ranked battles that are guaranteed to have significant Color Contrast to help gameplay. Sometimes Splatfests add extra colors to the fray, depending on the teams.
• Comeback Mechanic:
  • Since special weapons are charged by covering the ground in your team's color, a losing team can charge up their special weapons more easily since there's more ground for them to cover. This is especially true for Turf War, since the objective is to cover everything in ink.
  • Some gear abilities exist to give benefits to players or teams in bad situations. "Tenacity" fills the special bar faster if the enemy team has more active players, while the aptly named "Comeback" gives a temporary boost in stats to its user after respawning, and "Last-Ditch Effort" gives its user a similar boost in stats if they are about to lose the game via objective and/or the game is about to end.
  • In ranked modes, if time runs out when the losing team is in control of the objective, the match goes into overtime. Overtime finishes once the losing team either loses control of the objective, manages to pull ahead and overtake the opposing team's score, or the hidden overtime timer runs out. This encourages losing players to keep trying until the very end.
    • Splat Zones in particular has a mechanic that punishes the team that lost control of the zone(s) with a penalty timer, with bigger penalties being given the closer they were to running out the main timer. While this penalty doesn't affect the final score after the match ends, it does make it so the losing team has a bigger chance to turn a match around, even if the enemy was a few seconds away from victory; and it forces the enemy to fully commit to taking the zone(s) back and keeping control.
  • Tricolor Turf War is this for Splatoon 3's Splatfests, being a mode that unlocks after the halftime report reveals which team is currently in the lead. The mode forces said leading team to occasionally partake in 2v4v2 battles as the team of four, regardless of if they specifically choose that gameplay mode or not, where they have to defend themselves from the two opposing teams at the same time. This, in turn, gives the losing teams a better chance at turning the tables in the second half of the event, since they both benefit as long as the leading team loses the mêlée à trois.
• Company Cross References:
  • In the first game, 8-bit renderings of Bloopers, the squid enemies from the Super Mario Bros. games, can be found in several out-of-the-way locations. The game also features renderings of Octoroks, the octopus enemies from The Legend of Zelda.
  • Splatoon 2 adds 8-bit renderings of Gunion, the octopus enemies from Super Mario Land, and the octopus from the titular Game & Watch game. There are also 8-bit renderings of an Unira, the urchin enemies from Clu Clu Land, which appear in Starfish Mainstage.
• Competitive Balance: Weapons have a general balance of fire rate, accuracy, range, and power. For example, a weapon with high fire rate might have poor damage, range, and accuracy but can coat more area faster. Meanwhile, weapons with high range, like chargers and Squelchers, have excellent accuracy and power but are less efficient at coating areas. Furthermore, most weapons have branded or reskinned variants that have the exact same stats as the regular version but require a different play style due to having a different sub and special weapon.
• Competitive Multiplayer: While every installment has a single-player campaign and a few side modes, the series is primarily a 4-vs-4 online multiplayer shooter.
• Conlang: The series features a number of languages, though the only ones we ever hear are Inkling and Octarian.
• Covered in Gunge: The whole point of the game is to cover everything in ink, both scenery and enemies.
• Cover Version:
  • In-universe, "Now Or Never" was a rock song originally performed by Squid Squad, but has since been covered by various other in-universe bands throughout every installment.
  • "Calamari Inkantation" is also this in-universe, being a modernized pop version of "Chorus of Calamari County", a popular traditional folk tune and dance in Inkling culture.
• Crippling Overspecialization: The E-Liter series of weapons have the longest ranges of any Main Weapon in the series, and can One-Hit Splat enemies from that absurdly long distance, but they also have the longest charge times of any Charger, and coupled with their low movement speed, getting snuck up on by an opponent with a close-range, high-fire-rate weapon is a death spell. It's not a useless weapon by any means, but packs a higher skill floor than most other weapons.
• Cross Counter: It's possible to pull this off with any encounter, but the most direct example is when two Roller users charge each other head on, immediately splatting each other.
• Crosshair Aware:
  • A spinning crosshair of sorts marks the area where an Inkstrike missile is about to fall. For the sake of your well being, keep your distance.
  • Being targeted by the Tenta Missiles causes a reticle to appear underneath you, and the ensuing rockets will be marked by small circles on the ground. The large reticle also has a small bit that points towards the general direction of the player firing the Tenta Missiles.
  • In Salmon Run, a small fishing lure floats in green ink and emits a pulse when it gets close to players just before Maws erupts from the ink to feast on Inklings. You need to get away before then; even the Inkjet will not save you as they surface quite high.
• Crutch Character: Or weapon. In any case, the Aerospray family of weapons tends to get labeled this by the competitive scene. In Turf Wars, its very high rate of fire and spread makes it great for inking turf, but people who take it into ranked play are usually in for a rude wake-up call, where its short range and random spread shots make most people who play it glorified target practice if they try to use it outside of a support role.
• Cultural Translation: Certain Splatfest themes only happen regionally, because the ideas they reference aren't as prominent in other regions. For example, the Japanese-only "Hana vs Dango" is based on the Japanese idiom "to prefer dumplings over flowers" (ie. the practical vs aesthetic) — the west instead got the similarly ideological "Chicken vs Egg". Similarly, three American/European Splatfest themes were dedicated to a four-way tournament between the four protagonists of Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; instead of that, Japan did three Splatfests for a four-way tournament dedicated to Sanrio characters.
• Cute Little Fangs: A variation of the trope. Inklings have little fangs where the canines would be like most versions of the trope, but they also have an additional fang on the front bottom tooth made to look like the beak of a squid. Meanwhile, Octolings have mismatched fangs on their bottom and top rows of teeth, to emulate the beak of an octopus.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Downplayed in regards to the Player Characters. Most promotional material and even in-game items (such as the Sunken Scrolls or Tableturf Cards) has the canonical versions of them be female, with the developers also referring to them as such in interviews. As an extension of this, they all have definitive appearances: the original Agent 3/Captain is an Inkling with long, green tentacles; Agent 4 is an Inkling with short, yellow tentacles; Eight is an Octoling with short tentacles framing her face, etc. However, all have customizable in-game appearances, including gender and (for playable characters introduced starting in 3) race, even when they aren't playable.
• Cycle of Hurting:
  • While spawn-camping is certainly possible in the first two games, players have the benefit of their team's spawn point having an unbreakable shield that enemies can't attack through, but you and your teammates can. Splatoon 2 would make it impossible to even reach the enemy spawn point on several maps, while Splatoon 3 would eliminate the issue entirely by giving each player their own airborne "spawner drones" that shoot the player onto the stage and grants them temporary invincibility upon landing.
  • Zig-Zagged with Super Jumping. Players can jump to any other active teammate, spawn, or Squid Beakon via a Super Jump, enabling quick escapes when they realize they've been cornered or are in any other tough scenario, but poor timing will mean that you just jumped to someone who just died in the middle of a fire-fight, causing you to get splatted anyway by an enemy awaiting your arrival. And if several teammates do this at once to get back into the action quickly...
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: The "Brush" weapons have some of the lowest damage-per-hit values with its "fling" attack; however, they can attack as quickly as the player can press the button, meaning that despite needing multiple hits to splat an opponent, it can still be pulled off very quickly.
• Defeat Equals Explosion:
  • You explode when splatted, leaving your clothes and an opposite-team-colored ink stain behind.
  • The same also goes for splatted enemies in single-player. Bosses in particular explode into massive gushes of ink that would look quite different in red.
• Deployable Cover:
  • The Splash Wall sub weapon is this, stopping enemy attacks dead in their tracks, heavily damaging anyone foolish enough to walk or swim into them, and instantly splatting any poor unlucky fella that happens to be under it when activated. They stay on the field for a limited amount of time, but do dissipate faster with damage.
  • Brella weapons, with the exception of the Undercover Brella, will deploy their shield if the fire trigger is held for a prolonged period of time. The shield will slowly travel forward, protecting anyone who is behind it, and like the Splash Wall, stays on the field for a limited amount of time but dissipates faster with damage. Meanwhile, the weapon will regenerate a new shield after a few seconds.
• Desperation Attack: The Last-Ditch Effort equipment ability gives you several buffs when less than 30 seconds remain on the clock, or if you're in a ranked mode and the enemy team is close to victory.
• Diegetic Interface:
  • When you aren't swimming, your level of ink/ammo is indicated by the physical tank on your character's back. If the ink level falls below the red line/indicator, the player cannot use their sub weapon.
  • A handful of specials have a visual indicator for how many times you can use it. For example, the deployment case of the Triple Inkstrike in Splatoon 3 shows how many beacons you have left to throw (and, by extension, how many missiles have yet to be deployed).
  • In Salmon Run, you're limited to using two specials during a shift, which are represented by packages attached to your character's hat that will disappear upon use.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • The default gyroscopic controls can take a bit of getting used to for people who come from other games. The typical standard in console shooters is that right analog stick exclusively is used to aim, with the game providing a built-in aim assist function helping make up for the lack of precision that stick controls have, yet Splatoon lacks any form of aim assist, offering gyro + analog sticks instead. That said, gyro and sticks allows for a ton of control over aiming to the point where someone who gets good at it won't need any form of assistance; being able to make very minute aim adjustments using small motions from the wrists as well as fast, wide movements using the arms and shoulders offers far more control than using only the analog stick on a level of precision comparable to aiming with a mouse, as this short video essay points out.
  • Charger-type weapons don't cover ground as efficiently as other type and require steady aim to be used effectively, but while novice chargers will probably find themselves splatted constantly, experts are an invaluable support unit for their team, managing to shut down enemy advancement from a distance with powerful one-hit splats while also creating long and clean trails of ink to allow them and their team a quick route to move in. The shorter-ranged chargers and the two-hit Bamboozlers are more difficult to master, but are ideal for ambushes and maps with lots of closed areas and very few vantage points.
  • The L-3 Nozzlenose and its variants have a unique feature among Shooters in that holding the trigger down does not produce a constant stream of fire; each press only produces a three shot burst, meaning you have to press the trigger repeatedly to keep firing. However, the Nozzlenose is incredibly ink-efficient and fairly accurate, allowing you to do a lot between refills.
  • The Carbon Roller is a faster variant of the basic Splat Roller. It swings more rapidly, the swing itself is almost instant, and its rolling speed goes faster, but in exchange it loses some lethality: flinging ink has less range, it deals less damage (but can still One-Hit Kill if used well), and perhaps most notably, rolling into opponents no longer instantly splats them. Using it requires high aggression, higher emphasis on flanking to get into its lethal range, and more awareness of enemies since its rolling mode won't earn any accidental kills against enemies hiding in ink.
  • While the Inkbrush and Octobrush weapons work similarly to a Roller, using it like one is useless, as their "rolling" produces a thin line nearly useless for covering turf, it relies on Death of a Thousand Cuts as opposed to the One Hit KOs that Rollers are used to, and have almost melee-like range. However, their high movement speed and "fling" attack, which is as quick as the player can tap the button, means that a skilled user can thoroughly cover mass amounts of turf quickly, and its "rolling" attack moves nearly as fast as Squid/Octo form, allowing Inkbrush users to excel at moving through turf not covered in their own team's ink quickly. Skilled Inkbrush users can use to this trait to compensate for the lack of range as well, both to escape bad situations and to rapidly close in on both ranged attackers and unaware opponents.
  • Splatlings don't have the run and gun factor of the shooters, or the sheer kill power of the chargers. That said, they have the range of a charger and the coverage of a shooter, which can handily compensate for the lack of immediate firepower.
• Diminishing Returns for Balance: Having multiple copies of the same ability isn't very efficient, because the benefits get smaller with each successive duplicate. Exactly how less efficient depends on the stacked ability in question. Take Damage Up from the first game and Main Power Up's "damage per hit increased" effect on select weapons in 2 for example: the damage-per-hit will never increase to a point where the number of hits needed to splat a full-health opponent will decrease, however Splash Damage will continue to be increased.
• Domino Mask: The Inklings have black outlines around their eyes, giving them the appearance of wearing masks.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: You're unable to use your weapons while in your faster swim form; you need to morph back to your slower humanoid form to shoot, and shooting usually makes you even slower than that form's default running speed.
• Downloadable Content: New content is periodically added to the games over their first few years via free updates that include new multiplayer stages, weapons, gear, and even Battle Modes. There is also occasionally paid content in the form of new single-player campaigns.
• Early Game Hell: Downplayed. The clothing and equipment you can get is directly related to your level, but the devs did a good job of making early weapons such as the Splattershot Jr. balanced enough to remain viable and effective even in higher-level play, and though you're limited to buying only one- or two-star gear in stores until Level 10, you can order three-star gear or upgrade any current gear to three-star through your Friend in the Black Market or (in 3) buying an extra set to increase its "Star Power."
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Blasters, despite functioning significantly differently from Shooters (the former launches high-damage explosives; the latter rapid-fires normal ink shots), were classified as a type of Shooter until 3.
• Elaborate Underground Base: The various single-player campaigns largely take place in large underground domes and other locations. The elaborate nature of the tech is part of the reason why the Octarians kept stealing Zapfish in the first two games; they're undergoing a bit of an energy crisis trying to maintain it all and the Inklings are seen as having energy to spare.
• Elite Mook:
  • The Twintacle Octotroopers, Octarian enemies that have two tentacles instead of one, are much stronger than their one-tentacled counterparts. Why is that? For one, they can use their free tentacle to Button Mash their fire button.
  • Octolings are already elite troops for the Octarian army, but among them there are those with kelp in their hair, who are tougher than the regular Octolings.
• Elite Tweak:
  • Getting the right perks on your gear can be time-consuming and tedious due to the extra perks being chosen at random, but it's still entirely possible to get a killer set of abilities that goes great with your weapon of choice through rerolling and using ability chunks.
• Escort Mission: The Tower Control ranked mode can be described as this combined with King of the Hill. The objective is to "escort" the eponymous Tower to the other end of the map. The tower moves along a predetermined path and the speed depends on how many team members are on it, making it a cross of the "barges headlong into danger" and "moves at the speed of a glacier" type missions.
• Excited Title! Two-Part Episode Name!: The levels in the first two games' single-player campaigns are titled this way.
• Exploding Barrels: Some levels across the single-player campaigns feature pufferfish balloons that burst and spread ink everywhere if you shoot them.
• Family-Friendly Firearms: Ink guns, ink bazookas, ink grenades, oversized paint rollers... you might see a pattern here. The weapons are also either colorful and toy-like, or cobbled together from random household objects.
• Fictional Age of Majority: While not adulthood per se, most Inklings and Octolings gain a humanoid form and the ability to shapeshift by the age of 14, and thus can begin partaking in Turf Wars.
• Fictional Holiday:
  • Splatfests are special holidays in Inkling culture. They occur every now and then, and during those times normal online gameplay is put on hold in favor of Splatfest Battles, which are Turf Wars that pit teams of thematically opposed sides against each other. Additionally, they take place at night with special concerts by a given game's musical hosts.
  • Squidmas is brought up a few times, as is Squidoween. Their Easter equivalent is simply referred to as Spring Fest.
• Field Power Effect: The ink you spray in general has effects on everyone on the stage. Ink of the same color allows players to quickly swim in it and quickly refill their ink supply. Enemy ink, on the other hand, slows you to a crawl, while also leaving you damaged for easy splatting.
• Fighting for a Homeland: The Octarians, as the underground domes they've called home after the war are rapidly falling apart, and running out of energy.
• Final-Exam Boss: Expect to have the final boss both demonstrate and require you to use a lot of the skills learned and gadgets used throughout the campaign.
• Fish People: Most of the NPCs are anthropomorphic (or at least talking) aquatic life, while the rest are Apparently Human Merfolk. Meanwhile, Judd is initially the only mammal in the series, with Lil' Judd being his clone.
• Floating Continent: The levels in the single-player campaigns tend to take place on platforms floating in the air within the Octarian domes, subway stations, etc.
• Friendly Fireproof: An unusually Justified example. The ink you fire is the same ink that your teammates' bodies are made of and that they can merge completely into when in swim form, so it makes sense that only opposing ink could harm them. The flipside of this is that your teammates will absorb and block your shots, which is especially bad for Chargers since they attack with single shots that use a lot of ink, and a frequent issue for Splatling users since they hold their weapons far lower to the ground than other weapon types.
• Funny Foreigner: Most Jellyfish can't speak the Inkling language, and while the Jellyfish shopkeepers are able to, they tend to butcher the language slightly in the process.
• Funny Octopus:
  • The Inklings and Octolings, being cartoony cephalopods that can change into humanoids that maintain some of their aquatic features.
  • Non-Octoling Octarians are shown as a more disturbing version, with the lower ranking soldiers taking the form of single tentacles with eyes, mouth and legs.

G-M

• Gatling Good: Splatling guns are large ink miniguns that have to be wound up before raining colorful destruction on the splattlefield.
• Gendered Outfit: In the first two games, female Inklings wear shorter shorts than males. Other than that, almost all of the equipable clothing averts this, being identical between genders save for some minor form tweaking done for T-shirts and long shirts. Only a few outfits show remarkable differences between male and female variations. Splatoon 3 alleviates this by not gender locking any cosmetic, including hairstyle and bottoms. The Amiibos now give you both the male and female versions of the School clothes (Splatoon 1 and 2 Girl Inkling), the Squidja mask (Splatoon 2 Boy Inkling), witch outfits (Splatoon 2 Girl Octoling), and both sizes of Pearl's Crown (Pearl Amiibo).
• Geo Effects: The series has 5 basic forms of terrain, all of which tie into the "cover stuff in ink" core gameplay loop.
  • Allied ink enables players to swim around in it, moving faster, refilling their ammo, and regenerating their health when they do so.
  • Enemy ink slowly applies damage to those caught in it and reduces their agility.
  • Neutral, unpainted surfaces have no effect on anyone standing on them. Uninkable surfaces, usually represented by black tarp or glass, are similar, but can't be painted on.
  • Finally, grate and fences, which work similarly to uninkable surfaces, but players in swim form and most projectiles will pass right through them.
• The Goomba: Octotroopers, the basic one-tentacled Octarian troops. They move slow, fire slow, and are generally very easy to take care of.
• Graffiti Town: The setting of many arenas is largely urban or industrial, while nonetheless still being colorful even before the Inklings wreak havoc all over. The games also make use of an in-game postbox (or Miiverse, in the case of the first game), having any message or artwork created serve as randomized graffiti that can show up in the overworld and multiplayer stages.
• Grand Finale: Each game has one in the form of a final Splatfest. As opposed to the usual regional ones, the final Splatfest is a worldwide event with unified results, and the outcome tends to affect some major aspects of the next installment, from the plot to the setting.
• Great Offscreen War: The Great Turf War between Inklings and Octarians that took place 100 years before the first game's events.
• Grenade Spam: Normally averted due to even a single bomb taking a huge chunk out of your Ink Gauge, however the "Bomb Rush" specials in the first two games grant ample usage of a given bomb type for a limited time.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: The animosity between Octarians and Inklings originated over a territorial dispute, with the Octarian Army still making moves in the modern day because the underground domes they have lived in since the Great Turf War are decaying. Neither side is as much "good" or "evil" as they are simply opposing sides in a war.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Gear abilities don't specify how potent of an effect they have; you just kind of have to get a feel for it. This is especially the case with Main Power Up, which has multiple effects for each kind of weapon (from increasing ink coverage, accuracy, damage, and range, to bullet velocity, explosion radius, and Brella shield HP).
  • There's a hidden mechanic in the Ranked Battle modes that makes all members of a team gain passive special charge if they fill certain critera. The special charge generally kicks in either to help a losing team get back in, or to aid a team that is disadvantaged due to dedicating a player to dealing with an objective item.
• Hartman Hips: Female Inklings and Octolings have relatively wide hips in the first two games, with their idle animations placing some emphasis on this.
• The Hedonist: The Inklings as a race care mostly about fun, parties, and looking fresh. It got to the point that they were losing the first battles of the Great Turf War because they couldn't wake up early enough in the morning to defend themselves.
• He Knows About Timed Hits: Various shopkeepers tell the player that they can hit the "+" button to view more information on pieces of gear.
• Heroic Mime: Lampshaded. The other members of the Squidbeak Splatoon are aware that your character isn't all that talkative and tend to interpret your silence however they want. Downplayed with Agent 8 from the second game's Octo Expansion, as their campaign's collectables have each one accompanied by a short poem written by them.
• Hidden Badass: The musical acts that headline each game are usually shown at some point to be quite talented on the battlefield.
• Hold the Line: In ranked modes, if the round goes into its last minute, an effective strategy for the winning team is to make less of an effort to push the objective and switch to preventing the enemy from overtaking their score until time runs out. Inversely, a team that is losing and has no chance to win can switch to putting all their might into preventing the enemy from at least scoring a knockout before time runs out.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: Going with the World of Pun these games are, sea life counterparts of phrases show up every now and then.
  "Hold on to your tentacles!"
  "You gotta be squiddin' me!"
• Hub Level: Each game has a shopping district in a major city serve as the "menu" where all areas and modes can be accessed. Likewise, the single-player campaigns have some location outside of said city contain the various areas that the player traverses and uses to find and access the stages.
• Humanity's Wake: The game is set millennia after the disappearance of humanity, with all signs pointing to the Inklings and other races of the world developing their civilizations on top of what humanity left behind. Despite this, they seem to be largely ignorant of what humanity was beyond their status as the previous dominant species.
• Human Popsicle: Or feline, rather. Judd was put in cryogenic stasis for 10,000 years by his scientist owner before the extinction of humanity, waking up about 2,000 years before the first game's events.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: It's never explained how Inklings and Octolings are able to store their weapons, some of which are larger than they are, when they change into cephalopod forms. Then there's the sub and special weapons they can throw out of nowhere.
• Improbable Accessory Effect: Gear can give various effects of questionable origin. For example, your character can wear a ballcap that makes them swim faster, a shirt that allows them to see enemies' location after dying, and shoes that make their weapons stronger against destroyable structures.
• Improbable Weapon User: Ignoring individual weapons, a fourth of the main weapon classes as a whole qualify. Brushes consist of oversized paintbrushes and paint rollers, Sloshers mostly consist of buckets, and Brellas are umbrellas.
• Invincible Minor Minion:
  • Squee-Gs are little fish-shaped drones that clean up ink, cannot be hurt and can't be stunned. The standard ones are completely unable to harm you, but the industrial-sized ones can run you over due to deeming your entire body as ink to be cleaned.
  • Flooders are giant rolling machines that spray a constant wall of ink below them, will actively attempt to harm you, and will move faster if they notice you. And like the Squee-Gs, they also can't be harmed or stunned at all.
• Jack of All Stats: The first weapons that a player can unlock by leveling up (the Splattershot, the Splat Roller, Splat Charger, etc.) are all generally middle of the road in stats as far as the weapon type they represent go, allowing players to decide the playstyle they prefer as the later weapons they unlock become more specialized.
• Kent Brockman News: The news hosts, while helpful in introducing the playable levels and updates whenever you boot up the game, usually default to making quips, going on tangents, and generally engaging in casual conversation rather than give any practical advice.
• Kill Enemies to Open: In many single-player levels in the series, there are parts where it's necessary to dispatch all enemies present in order to enable the launchpads that take the player's Inkling to the then-following areas.
• Kryptonite-Proof Suit: The "Ink Resistance" ability lowers the damage Inklings receive while standing in enemy ink, while also decreasing the movement penalty while moving through enemy ink.
• Laser Sight:
  • A Charger weapon's line of fire is marked with a laser as it's being charged. You don't want to be on the wrong end of those.
  • If a Flooder or Griller notices you, it will focus a laser on you to let you know that you're being pursued.
• Last Chance Hit Point: In the single-player campaigns, taking a hit that would splat you will instead cause your armor to break, marked by a shattering sound and a brief moment of invulnerability. While your armor is broken, you can still function like normal, but you have a movement speed penalty and anything stronger than Scratch Damage will immediately splat you. Armor will recover over time (with doubled heal speed while submerged) and restore you to full HP upon doing so, encouraging players to get out of the way and find room to breathe before going back in.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The revelation that the series is After the End was originally hidden in the first game's Sunken Scrolls. Callie outright mentions this factoid during the announcement of that game's 10th North American Splatfest, and the setting's post-apocalyptic status goes on to become a major plot point in following entries.
• Layered Metropolis: The surface world◊ is a bustling metropolis dominated by Inklings, while the subterranean Octarian domes◊ are comparatively dystopian militarized societies, with the Octarians having giant monitors in their domes that simulate the sky.
• Limit Break: As you ink territory in multiplayer matches, a meter fills up that, when filled completely, gives a you access to a special weapon. The points needed to activate a special differs based on the weapon you're using.
• Long-Range Fighter:
  • Charger weapon users. The long charging time most of them have prevents many weapons in this category from going up close, but its range and high damage at a full charge makes up for that. Taken even further with specific chargers like the E-Liter series — which sacrifices mobility, charge time, and ink efficiency for even greater range — and the chargers equipped with scopes, allowing for easier aiming and a slight increase in range at the expense of being automatically forced into tunnel vision after reaching a certain level of charge.
  • The Dynamo Roller's forte. Despite rollers normally being close range, the Dynamo Roller attacks very slowly, to the point that one getting caught in melee rarely comes out on top. However, their ink flinging attack has an impressively long range and wide spread, allowing it to excel at keeping opponents at arms length.
  • Among Shooter and Dualie weapons, the Squelcher lines have comparable range to Chargers (other than the E-Liter series). While they have less damage, slower fire rate and worse turf coverage compared to most lower range shooters, they have the advantage in combat as long as the user stays out of reach of any rivals.
  • Splatlings sacrifice the ability to fire immediately by having superb range combined with quick fire rate. However, this means that a Splatling user caught by surprise at close range is at a severe disadvantage.
• Lost in Translation: As noted in Cargo Cult, Inklings society seems to worship a fax machine. Why? Because due to Alternate Character Reading, the Japanese word for "god" can also mean "paper". This is also why Inkopolis Square boasts a giant paper crane on one of its buildings.
• Magic Pants: Only an Inkling or Octoling's humanoid form wears clothes and holds a gun; they disappear from sight when they transform. What's more vexing is that they leave behind these clothes after being splatted, yet respawn with a fresh set.
• Mana Meter: Your ink supply, which is expended when firing main and sub weapons and recharges when not in use. It recharges even quicker when one is submerged.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Most weapon classes have at least one weapon that functions different from the norm.
  • The Squeezer is a shooter that has different firing modes depending on whether you tap or hold the fire button. Tapping it results in a single powerful shot that travels far, while holding the button results in an auto-fire with short range, wide spread and large coverage.
  • The Flingza Roller is a Roller with different flicking modes. Grounded flicks are weak, fast, and cover very little turf, while vertical flicks are slow, powerful, and spread large amounts of ink.
  • The Ballpoint Splatling has the ability to recharge its spin while firing. All other Splatlings must expend or waste their current charge to charge again.
  • Unlike other Sloshers, which fire either ink or ink bullets, the Bloblobber fires ink bubbles that rebound off the floor and walls, giving it superior range and the ability to strike around corners at the expense of coverage.
  • The Undercover Brella is a Brella that trades the ability to launch its Brella shield for the ability to hold it in front of them while auto-firing, offering a combined offense and defense.
  • The Douser Dualies FF are the only dualies to have less range after performing a dodge roll, of which they have only one, instead of the typical two.
• Metamorphosis: As shown in this image◊, Inklings start their life as baby squids, and slowly become more humanoid as they age. By the time they reach 14 years of age, most have taken on their familiar humanoid forms, and gain full control of their Voluntary Shapeshifting abilities. Octolings function in the same manner.
• Mission Control: Your character gets one of these in the single-player campaigns.
• Mission-Pack Sequel: For what it's worth, the core gameplay of the franchise has not changed since 2015, and each subsequent game can be described as "the previous game, but better". Splatoon 2 and 3 added new weapon classes, stages, single-player campaigns, Clam Blitz, and Salmon Run, but multiplayer and the central gameplay loop is still essentially the same as it was in the first game with some tweaks and streamlining. Ironically, each sequel tends to remove a large chunk of the playable weapons from the previous game, only to add them back in via updates.
• Morphic Resonance: Inklings and Octolings retain their large eyes, as well as their tentacle/hair color, in their swim forms. Furthermore, they both have the number of limbs represented in their humanoid forms◊: 2 legs, 2 arms, and the remainder being hair. The afro hairstyle is a slight exception to this, as the character designers fully admit it's just Rule of Cool.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Many of the various Splatfests have art depicting the idols duking it out over the Splatfest subject. This includes the more drab subjects. Consider this art for example,◊ featuring the idols staring each other down and preparing for a brawl... over whether they prefer the chocolate mushroom-shaped cookies versus the bamboo shoot-shaped ones.
• Mutual Kill: Thanks to the games' Rocket-Tag Gameplay and fast-paced battles, it is very common for two opposing players to undergoing this trope, which is referred to as a "trade" within the community. This is especially common when one party is using a weapon that has a bit of a "firing" delay, such as a Roller or a Slosher.

N-S

• No "Arc" in "Archery": A variation with the ink rounds of a lot of weapons.
  • Longer-range Shooters tend to shoot blobs of ink almost completely straight until their max range (which is why a Splattershot Pro, .96 Gal or Squelcher will hit as long as the enemy is in range and the crosshair is right on them) before the projectile rapidly falls off.
  • Subverted with bomb-type Sub Weapons. Once thrown, they tend to follow a realistic trajectory... for a while. Then they rapidly lose horizontal momentum similar to Shooter ink shots.
  • Chargers fire a stream of ink straight out of the gun. Said stream inexplicably stops and falls downwards once it reaches maximum distance.
  • Averted with Roller and Brush flicking attacks, and the ink hurl of the Sloshers, which do have plausible arcs.
• Non-Indicative Name: The teams, or "splatoons" if you will, only have four inklings. They're really more of a splire team.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: What being splatted amounts to. Inklings and Octolings can easily restore themselves after Giving Up the Ghost as long as they're synced to a respawning device.
• Non-Lethal Warfare: Justified. The term "respawn" is widely used by characters in-universe to describe the process of returning from being splatted, and terms like "spawn point" and "spawning drone" are likewise given to various machines that are used for regenerating the body after it is splatted. That said, Inklings and Octolings can only function like this when they've been synced to such spawning devices; they'll die like normal if they aren't, which Word of God revealed is the case during the escape sequence in the second game's Octo Expansion.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Pretty much everyone's a sea creature, and yet some of the female characters like Marina and Frye have huge boobs.
• Obvious Rule Patch: Salmonids and Jelletons normally do not have vertical attacking capabilities, so finding a wall or Inkrail to hide can be a relatively easy way to find temporary respite in case you are being overwhelmed and need to heal. However, if you try to stay out of their reach for too long, they will start to jump extraordinarily high to hit you, forcing you to move or otherwise get yourself splatted.
• One-Hit KO:
  • A fully charged and direct hit with all Chargers (except the Bamboozler series) will splat the target immediately.
  • Most Roller weapons, due to their weight, are capable of running over opponents and killing them instantly. The sole exceptions are the Carbon Roller and its variants, which explicitly lack the weight to do this.
  • The strongest Blaster weapons (Blaster, Luna Blaster, and Range Blaster) can finish off opponents in a single, direct hit.
  • Most offensive specials will immediately finish off opponents pretty much the instant they hit.
  • Most damage-dealing subweapons will instantly splat a full-health opponent if they are in the middle of the blast radius. The exceptions are the Burst Bomb, as a tradeoff for exploding instantly rather than waiting a few seconds to detonate, the Angle Shooter, which is designed more around marking enemies' locations, and the Sprinkler, which is made for turf-inking and area denial rather than splatting enemies.
• One-Hit Polykill:
  • Specials that have wide areas of effect make it entirely possible to eliminate an entire enemy team with a careful (or lucky) shot.
  • Using a charger weapon, it's possible to splat two opponents in one shot if one is hit directly and the other happens to be very close behind. Of course, this is easier said than done.
• One-Man Army: Your player character in any given game, armed only with a "hero suit", regularly takes on enemy forces and become The Dreaded in the process.
• 1-Up: Checkpoints serve as this in the single-player campaigns. In the event that you got splatted, reaching a new checkpoint grants an extra respawn.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: Returning to the Final Boss level after finishing the first two games' main campaigns will have Mission Control exasperated about whatever mundane or random event resulted in this bizarre rematch:
  • Splatoon 1 has Cap'n Cuttlefish getting distracted by his Trademark Favorite Food when he was supposed to be watching the imprisoned DJ Ocativo.
  • Splatoon 2 has Callie deciding to wear the Mind Control glasses again, because she likes how cool they make her look.
• Painfully Slow Projectile:
  • The ink shots that most low-ranked Octarian soldiers fire are slow enough to outrun, or at least dodge.
  • While not too slow, shots from the Rainmaker are still slow enough that they can be escaped at a distance fairly easily, provided you see it coming.
  • The shot from the Ink Vac takes the cake, as players can swim faster than it.
• Painting the Medium: A Running Gag in the first two games is someone communicating with a radio while being or holding it upside down, and this causing their dialogue box be upside down as well, rendering them unintelligible.
• Palette Swap: The Hero Shot Replica obtainable in every game for beating the single-player campaign is a functionally identical reskin of the basic Splattershot. It is technically a distinct weapon, however, meaning you can earn associated achievements and badges with it independent of the Splattershot.
• Platform-Activated Ability: Both Inklings and Octolings are known to perform Super Jumps that launch them onto distant parts as a means of transportation. In multiplayer matches, it's possible to do this at any moment to transport to one of the marked landing spots on the battlefield. In the single-player modes, however, the Super Jump can only be performed when standing on an active launchpad, whose ink will eject the user onto a predefined destination; this limitation is obviously implemented to preserve a linear progression in the levels. There are exceptions, such as when an Inkling retreats right after inflicting damage to a boss or, in the Octo Expansion of Splatoon 2, when Agent 8 launches onto the path leading to the surface right after being saved by Agent 3 from being gibbed by Tartar's blender.
• Play Every Day: The clothing and items shops change their stock daily, and you can only special order only one item per day.
• Pointy Ears: Humanoid Inklings feature them, not only making them look more alien, but also giving another level of Morphic Resonance by looking like the fins real squids have in their heads. Octolings have more rounded ones of equal length.
• Popularity Power: Popularity is one of the factors judged in Splatfests, though the win rate/clout of each team is weighed more heavily for the final score.
• Power Glows: An Inkling or Octoling's Tentacle Hair glows with their own color when they can use their special weapon.
• Product Delivery Ordeal: Present in all games, the Rainmaker ranked mode is effectively a multiplayer version of this: the goal is to pick up the eponymous Rainmaker weapon and carry it to the enemy base. Said weapon shoots powerful ink blasts, but also has a lot of drawbacks ^note It takes a long time to charge up, slows your movement to a crawl, shows enemies your position, prevents you from super jumping or using your specials, and will explode if you hold onto it for too long, meaning that the rest of the team has to cover the player who's carrying the Rainmaker if they want to have any chance at making progress. Exactly what category of escort mission this falls into largely depends on the competence of the player carrying the weapon.
• Product Displacement: The Punk Cherries shoes (as well as their Palette Swaps in the Punk Nights, Punk Yellows, Punk Whites, etc.) are copies of the real-world Doc Martens shoe brand. Any Doc Martens brand logos are missing, but the shoes can still be discerned as a pair of Docs by their general shape, yellow stitching around the sole, and layered sole construction.
• Product Placement:
  • Several Splatfests (mostly those in Japan) have been sponsored by various food, drink, clothing, and toy brands, as well as other video games. These have ranged from instant noodles brand Maruchan to Hello Kitty to Dragon Quest. Nintendo has also used Splatfests to celebrate the anniversaries and upcoming releases of their own games, such as Pokémon and Super Mario Bros..
  • Some of the clothing lines and weapons, such as the SQUID GIRL outfit in the first game.
• Projectile Pocketing: In the single player mode, power eggs can be collected by shooting at them. This comes in handy for the eggs that are stuck on walls, ceilings, or thin rails and poles.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: Played for Laughs. In multiplayer, the "good guys" are always whichever team the player is on, and the "bad guys" are always the other team.
• Pun-Based Title: A play on the terms "splat" and "platoon".
• Punny Name: All over the place. From the locations around the hub world, to stage names, to various NPCs. Some character pairs even get Theme Naming, such as Callie and Marie ("calamari").
  Marie: (when rematching the Final Boss in the second game) Ohhhhh! I just realized that mine and Callie's names... Actually, now's not the time.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: Male and female Inklings/Octolings play exactly alike, making the choice up to personal preference.
• Rainbow Pimp Gear: Downplayed. Clothing and gameplay-affecting perks are linked together, which can lead to players using some bizarre combinations of clothing to suit their needs. However, this is mitigated by being able to alter whatever abilities your clothing has. With enough time and effort, you can get an outfit that's fashionable and suits your gameplay style.
• Randomly Generated Loot: Clothing has randomly generated sub-abilities. Each piece of clothing can get up to four sub-abilities, which can be earned by getting experience points in battle.
• Recurring Riff:
  • "Calamari Inkantation", a folk song that the first game remarks "may as well be carved into the very DNA of all Inklings" that the the in-universe pop duo the Squid Sisters made a cover of and turned into their signature song. The song and its core melody shows up a number of times throughout the games, most notably as the theme for the last phase of the Final Boss in all 3 games.
  • The Octarian Army has a 5-note jingle that appears throughout the Hero Mode campaigns, serving as the level clear fanfare, in addition to being remixed as part of some of the tracks.
• Regenerating Health: Staying a couple of seconds away from fire will "clean-up" the player and regenerate their health. Swimming in their own ink significantly speeds this process up.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Inklings and Octolings in both cephalopod and human form are pretty adorable.
• Right Out of My Clothes: Getting splatted will cause your character's soul to fly off while leaving their weapons and various accessories like headphones behind.
• Rocket-Tag Gameplay: Because of the high weapon damage, it only takes a few hits to splat opposing team members. In fact, because of how the ammunition of some weapons works, Taking You with Me or Mutual Splat scenarios are commonplace in regular firefights, with someone getting knocked-out themselves by a spray of ink that the opponent managed to shoot or throw at the last second.
• Rubber-Hose Limbs:
  • Inverted. Despite most of the existing races being boneless, Inklings and Octolings included, they have clearly defined and formed extremities.
  • Played straight with jellyfish, who are regularly seen moving and stretching their arms out wildly.
• Rule of Three:
  • Players carry three weapons at once: a main weapon, sub weapon, and special weapon. They can equip three pieces of gear: a hat, shirt, and shoes. Each one can have up to four stat-boosting abilities on them: one main and three secondary.
  • Almost all bosses follow the classic Nintendo pattern of three similar phases that become progressively harder before defeat.
• Scatting: Since the spoken aspect of the languages in the series are not really well-defined Conlang the way something like Quenya is, the "lyrics" of all the songs heard in the game probably qualify as this, at least when looked at from an out-of-universe perspective. In-universe, Marina does this in the song "Ebb & Flow" from the second game, according to the official lyrics.
• Series Mascot: The light-skinned orange female Inkling with the "Hippie" hairstyle and wearing a White Tee and Pink Trainers (Studio Headphones optional) takes front and center in most artwork and several trailers for the first game, and is the series' representative in other Nintendo franchises like Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros..
• Serious Business:
  • Ink battles are a big part of Inkling society, with records showing they have existed since the dawn of their civilization thousands of years ago. Inklings come from all over to take part in these events, and it is even mentioned in passing that there are entire classes in school solely dedicated to them.
  • On a meta level, Splatfest is this for many players. There is a good reason why people call it "Saltfest". Players will often dismiss their own personal preferences in favor of picking the side deemed more likely to win, sore losers will complain about the results for days or even weeks afterwards, and sore winners will engage in Unsportsmanlike Gloating for just as long. Some have gone as far as to request serious consequences for the losing side(s), such as temporary or permanent online bans.
• Shows Damage: Damaged characters, including enemies in the single-player campaigns, will be covered in opposing ink until they are splatted or Regenerating Health kicks in.
• Signature Style: An In-Universe variant, as the weapon manufacturers all have signature styles that can distinguish who made which weapon quite easily.
  • The Deco brand focuses on a household aesthetic and modern materials, like plastic (the water cooler-based Gal line and foam dart gun Rapid Blaster), carbon fiber (the bicycle-like Carbon Roller) and porcelain (the bathtub-like Bloblobber). Also, fittingly enough for their company name, weapons with the Deco suffix are decorated with stickers and sequins.
  • Neo puts to use various electronics as the basis of their weapons. Their weapons include the Clash Blaster (a pencil sharpener), the Sloshing Machine (a washing machine), and the Luna Blaster (a clear craze-style household computer).
  • Nouveau styles their weapons after art supplies. The Inkbrush and Octobrush are paintbrushes, the Ultra Stamp is a giant stamp with a paint jug attached, the Dapple Dualies are named for their toothbrush attachments (which can be used to create splatter marks on paintings), and the Angle Shooter is a highlight pen. They tend to specialize in close-range rapid-attack weapons.
  • Custom has an industrial machinery aesthetic, shown in their weapons such as the Jet Squelcher (a power drill), the Sting Ray (a pressure washer), the Killer Wail (a megaphone), and the Explosher (a gasoline jerrycan). As a contrast to Nouveau, many of their weapons also tend to be long-range Mighty Glaciers.
  • The Foil brand focuses on multi-purpose weapons, and produce weapons like the Squeezer (which can choose between slow, high-damage shots, and fast rapid-painting shots), the Flingza Roller (which swings really fast on the ground, and has impressive range on the air), and the Bubble Blower (its bubbles can block shots from enemies, or be detonated like bombs).
• Simple, yet Awesome: The humble Burst Bomb, a thrown bomb that detonates instantly on contact. Is your weapon close-range? Burst Bomb can give you some damage outside of your weapon's effective range. Is your weapon long-range? Burst Bomb's instant detonations can deal with enemies that are in your face. Does your weapon need a little extra oomph before it can kill? Burst Bombs have low ink use and a decent explosion radius, so you can use them to finish enemies off. Is your weapon slow? The Burst Bomb's instant explosions can paint your feet if you need floor ink badly to swim away from an enemy. Practically every weapon can use Burst Bombs to decent effect.
• Sliding Scale of Cooperation vs. Competition: It primarily depends on which of the modes you're playing:
  • In the online lobby matches, it is of the Fixed team variant where 4 players are assigned to a team against 4 players. Taken to the extreme during a Splatfest, where an entire region of the world chooses between teams and then work to win matches so their team takes victory.
  • The Salmon Run mode is Enforced Cooperation. Players may compete for who gets the most salmon eggs or golden eggs, but the most important factor is that players only ever win or lose as a team. Striking out on your own is a good way to get overwhelmed by Salmonids, and if you go down, you're not there to help your team. You need to revive your allies when they get splatted, because once everyone is down or you fail to collect the designated number of golden eggs, you all lose. Unless you don't care about a paycut, you'd best win.
• Skill Gate Characters: The Aerospray is often considered one of these. Its biggest claim to fame is its fantastic turf-inking ability due to its short range and large shot spread variance, leading it to being a great weapon in Turf Wars and having easy access to Specials thanks to being able to generate points so quickly. In Ranked or Anarchy Battles, however, it is considered by many to be a low tier weapon, as while inking turf is important, it's not as important as the ability to push the objective, and a shooter with poor range and damage that only really excels in close combat against bad players finds it difficult to carve a niche as anything other than a support or a Special spammer. Despite this, there are players who side with the Aerosprays as off-meta picks, as depending on the kit they can be fully functional as dedicated supports with the right team and can catch the opposition off-guard due to sheer surprise factor.
• Smoldering Shoes: A splatted Inkling will explode, leaving behind only their clothes (and weapon).
• Songs in the Key of Panic: When one minute remains on the timer in a Turf War match, the song changes from whatever song is currently playing to the track "Now Or Never", a faster-paced song that lasts about a minute, finishing right when time's up. It can be interpreted also as a Near Victory (or Defeat) Fanfare.
• Sound Test: The Squid Beatz minigame in the first two entries is an odd example, wherein you can toggle between the actual rhythm game and a regular sound test with a single button.
• Source Music: Every single song in the franchise exists in-universe, with the developers confirming that all the music the player hears is also simultaneously being heard by their in-game character. To give a few examples; most of the single-players tracks are songs that your character has picked up on their radio, the music during Splatfests is being performed live by the hosts, and most of the Salmon Run songs are being performed live by an offscreen Salmonid band. This trope especially comes into play during the final boss fights across the series, as your Mission Control always includes some musicians or singers who actively start playing one of their songs to invoke a Theme Song Power Up.
• Speaking Simlish: The language heard in the game is a bunch of gibberish, though some of the things characters say sound like garbled English and Japanese vocalizations. This extends to any song that has lyrics.
• Sprint Shoes: Among the abilities your clothing can have are perks that increase walking or swimming speed, though even if you max out walking speed as much as possible, it's still not as fast as your base swim movement.
• Standard FPS Guns:
  • Shooters are variations on automatic weapons, and can vary from automatic pistol-types to assault-rifle types.
  • Chargers are sniper rifles capable of painting long straight lines with one shot.
  • Rollers play this trope less straight, but could be seen as shotguns or flamethrowers: Powerful, but with very limited range. The Brush variations of this type operate more like swords or other melee weapons.
  • Blasters fill a rocket launcher-type niche. High direct damage (a one-hit splat in most cases) and capable of hitting behind cover with their explosions, but their slower firing speeds make them punishing to miss with.
  • Sloshers avert this and don't quite fit into any single standard gun. Their unifying trait is that they're capable of dealing damage over walls, but that's it; the class includes weapons such as the simple Slosher and the Shotgun-like Tri-Slosher to the explosive Explosher and the bouncy, gimmicky Bloblobber.
  • Splatlings are gatling guns that function like a mix between Chargers and Shooters. They have a windup time like the former, but at max charge can shoot rapidly like a Shooter, with range that can rival that of some Chargers.
  • Dualies are dual-welded pistols that grant greater mobility by way of allowing the user to dodge two-to-four times while shooting, with increased aim accuracy for a short time after a dodge.
  • Brellas are shotguns with the added bonus of having a built-in shield that can also function as Deployable Cover.
  • Stringers and Splatanas avert this, being standard bows (rather than crossbows) and swords, respectively.
  • For the sub-weapon options, most of them actually avert this, having unconventional effects. There are exceptions to this in the form of the various bombs. For example, the Splat Bomb is basically just the ink version of a standard hand grenade, the Suction Bomb is a Sticky Bomb, and the Ink Mine is a proximity mine.
• Starter Gear Staying Power:
  • The Splattershot Jr. that new players start with is one of the most effective and easy-to-use weapons in the game. The main weapon uses very little ink per shot allowing it to be fired for a long time before needing to refill (on top of Splatoon 2 onwards giving it an extra-large capacity ink tank), and has a fast rate of fire with a fairly wide spread so it covers turf easily. Meanwhile, its loadout always includes the Splat Bomb as a sub weapon (giving it a bit of a ranged option) and a defensive option as its special. Though the high ink capacity and defensive support ability function like training wheels for newbies who are still acclimating to the game's multiplayer, its good painting ability makes it a common sight in Turf War matches, and even in the more confrontational Ranked gamemodes where its lower damage is a harsher downside, it still sees use for its supportive capabilities.
  • Your starter equipment can also serve as this, so long as you're okay with forever looking like a scrub. The game gives you headgear, clothing, and shoes that grant Quick Respawn, Ink Recovery Up, and Special Saver as their main abilities: while not the optimal combination for every weapon kit out there, especially if you're an experienced player who doesn't necessarily need the safety net that these abilities provide, they are still solid perks that are worth having. And if you like the rookie look but want different main abilities, then Splatoon 3 allows you to swap them out for different ones that do fit your preferred play style if you have enough ability chunks to do so.
• Stealthy Cephalopod: Both Inklings and Octolings have the ability to hide in their ink to keep hidden from enemies. The "Ninja Squid" ability reduces base swim speed in exchange for minimizing the usual splashes seen when swimming through ink.
• Story Breadcrumbs: In the main campaigns, there are hidden scrolls to collect that provide background information on the story and world of the game.
• Strange-Syntax Speaker: Jellyfish NPCs have their own native language, with the few that have speaking roles (i.e., Jelonzo, Jelfonzo, and Jel La Fleur) falling into this when trying to speak Inkling.
  "You! You are not the cool! You are needing more cool for wearing of my clothes!"
• Super Drowning Skills: Inklings and Octolings are splatted the second they touch water. While it may not look like it makes much sense since they're squids, the games have justified it in various ways over the years; from the idea of them being made of ink and thus dissociating in water, to osmosis causing them to instantly bleed out, to their bodies simply not being able to handle the sudden change from air-to-water pressure very well.

T-Z

• Tactical Withdrawal: The games allow you to Super Jump into the fight, but also, Super Jump back to your home base. Doing so when you're trapped should always be a consideration since getting splatted will put you in the same situation as having retreated back to spawn, but will also take you out of the fight for longer and drain your Special charge.
• Take That, Audience!: The news commentators in each game will regularly poke fun at common player reactions and behaviors.
  Callie: My team is always terrible on this stage!
  Marie: Yeah, "your team" is terrible.
  
  Pearl: Marina, you need to get better about staying on the tower in Tower Control.
  Marina: Me?! You always Super Jump back to spawn at the first sign of trouble!
• Theme Naming: In the Japanese version, the Brush weapons are each named after famous artists. The Inkbrush is named the Pablo, the Octobrush is the Hokusai, and the Painbrush is Vincent.
• Title Drop: "Splatoon" is the term for the most basic form of Inkling military units, and was used to refer to the combat teams who took part in the Great Turf War over a century prior. The group your player character ends up being recruited by at the start of each game is known as the New Squidbeak Splatoon, named after the most decorated military units from that conflict and founded by the captain of that original team. By extension, the teams in the Turf War sport are also referred to as "splatoons".
• Too Awesome to Use: Super Sea Snails. They are primarily obtained from Splatfests.^note Past the end of Splatfests, they are obtained by winning 30 battles (Splatoon) or leveling up (Splatoon 2). They're also a convenient way to add sub ability slots into gear items (and the only way period in Splatoon 2).
• Truck Driver's Gear Change: The music in single-player levels (not counting boss fights) jumps up a pitch when entering the final checkpoint.
• Twinkle in the Eye: Appears when your special weapon gauge fills up. Chargers also have their own small twinkle at the end of a barrel when their charge is full.
• Vague Hit Points: When you take damage (but are not splatted yet) the borders of your screen get splashed with ink. While there are definitely Hit Points being tracked, your exact hit points are not shown to you. Likewise, in most non-practice modes, your only indication as to how much damage the enemy has taken is how much ink is covering it.
• Variable Mix:
  • During gameplay, the background music gets muffled while the player is hiding in ink, going back to normal once they jump back out.
  • When you play the game for the first time, a downbeat remix of the game's main theme plays in the tutorial zone. As the player progresses further and reaches the end of the area, more instruments are gradually added to the song, becoming its complete version once you reach the end.
  • The shopping theme changes instrumentation depending on which of the stores the player is currently in.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • While ridiculously minor, you can harass any birds on a stage by trying to shoot at them.
  • There are players who barely throw out any ink, if any, and instead just "feed" the opponents by walking into enemy fire, dropping into water, or jumping out of bounds, effectively making them dead weight in a match — this is as debilitating as it sounds, since every match has four inklings per team at most.
• Virtual Celebrity: All the music in the games is stated to be performed by different bands in-universe, but this trope kicks in with the real-life Japanese concerts featuring mocapped holographic projections of each game's Idol Singers, who perform both their own songs and some covers of the game's other bands. Funnily enough, despite all these characters having assigned voice actresses, since the games utilize Speaking Simlish, they need to have all their dialogue between songs subtitled anyway.
• Virtual Paper Doll: Your player character has a large variety of clothes, shoes and hats they can be equipped with. Each of them also come with perks that improve different abilities.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Inklings and Octoling are capable of changing between "swim" and humanoid forms at will. They gain full control of this ability when their Metamorphosis ends once they hit their teenage years.
• Wall Crawl: Spreading ink up along a wall allows you to swim up it to cover more ground more quickly.
• Wingdinglish: The script used for most of all the text in the games is English with hyper-stylized lettering (and sometimes Japanese), so sometimes you can just barely make out what certain writing is supposed to say. This supermarket sign◊ for instance, is supposed to say "stay fresh".
• Warp Whistle: Of a sort, as you can super jump to any of your teammates, your spawn point, or a Squid Beakon at any time. Performing a super jump also creates an icon visible to all players, unless you have the Stealth Jump ability. This can mean warping to the back of the enemy's base for easy inking... or jumping into the wrong end of a firefight.
• World of Funny Animals: The cast is made up of a variety of aquatic animals such as jellyfish, anemones, cephalopods, etc; with the most prominent characters being the shapeshifting Inklings and Octolings. Given that is this Earth in tens of thousands of years, the severe lack of mammals is actually a major plot point.
• World of Mammals: Inverted; almost everyone is a marine invertebrate or a fish, some of whom can transform into human-like forms. The only mammal is Judd (and his clone), a cat who's the Last of His Kind. Splatoon 3 reveals that There Is Another one; Mr. Grizz is a grizzly bear, and his plan is to turn Earth into a World of Mammals once more.
• World of Pun: Puns are absolutely everywhere in this world. Sea life puns, squid puns, octo puns; if it can be made a pun, chances are high it'll be made one.
• Yet Another Stupid Death:
  • An irritatingly common and preventable way to die is to go into swim form on top of a grating, forgetting that gratings can't be inked and you'll pass straight through, causing you to most likely fall into water or a Bottomless Pit.
  • It isn't uncommon for a Dualies user to occasionally get a bit overzealous while dodge-rolling and not pay attention to their environment, getting themselves splatted by rolling right off the stage.

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