Nightmare Fuel / Splatoon

aka: Splatoon 3

As a Nightmare Fuel page, all spoilers are unmarked as per wiki policy. You Have Been Warned!

Forget needing a bigger boat. Everything is smaller than bite-sized for this abomination.

"We actually have a phrase in Japan: "dark Nintendo" or "the dark side of Nintendo." It's something the players have said, but I remember Mr. Iwata saying it as well. It's not something that we're spending too much time [on,] trying to make sure our games are edgy and dark, but that we want them to be believable. We want them to feel like they have heft and weight to them."

— Hisashi Nogami

Ah, Splatoon. You'd think that an absolutely adorable third-person shooter created by the family-friendly Nintendo wouldn't have that many terrifying moments... if you haven't been paying any attention whatsoever.

The game may have a colorful exterior, but since Nintendo has a knack for surprisingly creepy moments, this series wouldn't be an exception.

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Splatoon

• The Single Player Trailer revealed an Octoling in the footage, with glowing goggles.
  • Their levels in the story mode are a little unsettling. You're fighting them in the multiplayer arenas, but instead of two teams of four, it's just you versus an entire squad of them, and you can't always see them, you can only see ink they've left behind. All this, set to odd battle music.
• The Octarians themselves are creepy, as the grunt soldiers are living tentacles who use machines to get around. Their intelligence is.. debatable, and they seem to lack a sense of object permanence; when you realize that severed octopus tentacles can still live for some time with some autonomy, you realize that the Octarian grunts are basically severed tentacles sent into battle, as confirmed by the artbook.
  • Moreover, it is said that they are created by amputating tentacles from a 'host'...the question is, what the hell are these hosts? Unless there is some species we did not see thus far, the only possible candidates are the octolings...so your are fighting unnatural abominations created via Body Horror. Quite desperate they are if they literally mutilate their own people to make those things, even if they can (supposedly) regenerate tentacles.
• The Mighty Octostomp is pretty terrifying, a big box with human-like legs and a freakishly simple face with pop-out segments, it feels huge and threatening, and then it jumps up to crush you. You have to be really fast to be able to really attack. And then... it controls electricity so it moves plates outside it, while you still can see the organic legs and tentacles... it's terrifying!
• The Octonozzle looks rather silly, being a cylindrical machine covered in kelp and little holes which suckers emerge from, and it even has little mechanical legs. But those eyes are not so silly. They look like glowing green realistic octopus eyeballs with no irises, just gaping dark ellipses. The pupils contract vertically instead of from all sides for extra creepy. Then once it's defeated, its eyes bulge out and the pupils completely dilate before it explodes. It's quite unsettling.
• The Octowhirl isn't so bad until it roars at you and charges at super-high speeds. Even though it's easy to dodge, if it hits you, it will hurt.
• The Octomaw looks a bit more threatening at first as a giant robotic Zapfish... until it opens its mouth and sprouts enormous teeth taller than an Inkling. Once it fights, it sinks into the arena and charges towards you at high speed with tail fin sticking up and then sinks below the ink. Then suddenly the ground turns to ink and those giant teeth sprout from all around you, followed by Octomaw closing its jaw if you can't escape. The first time around, it is quite frightening to be mired in enemy ink while not knowing how to escape the impending death trap. Once you deal damage, it takes more hits to destroy a tooth, so you have to frantically shoot before the jaw closes...
• The single player trailer has a shot of an octopus coming out of a lake in shadows, Nessie-style.
• In multiplayer, defeating an Inkling causes them to explode in showers of ink, leaving behind only their clothes and weapons. The same can happen to the Octarians in single-player.
  • The Inklings' death cries can sound pretty unsettling, especially in gameplay videos with no music.
• The Inkling's Nightmare Face during loadout. Between the dark-rimmed eyes and beak-like teeth in an open smile, they look adorably terrifying.
• In the alleyway where Spyke sits, if you notice the Super Sea Snails he sits next to, on the left are completely empty shells, and on the right are three live snails, with two shivering in horror. Now what do sea urchins eat again?
  • It's also important to note that, next to Spyke, there is a screwdriver lying on the ground.
  • Confirmed when you get Super Sea Snails and go to him. He'll tell you that to add the slot to your gear, he uses the shell, which he has no use for, since he's only interested "on the gooey stuff inside".
• The stage that introduces sponges has a section where you must get to another platform solely using sponges, with enemy troopers waiting to shrink them and no floor beneath you.
• And then of course, this is all sort of overshadowed by the fact that the bright, vibrant setting is actually our world 12,000 years After the End. Sea levels rose to such an extent that nearly all land-dwelling animals, including humans, were slowly wiped out. Marine life eventually evolved to live on land, inhabiting and rebuilding atop our remaining infrastructure and establishing a new society of their own. Judd might be the only land mammal left in the world. The artbook takes this to another level, with the reveal that it wasn't just climate change that caused the rising sea levels, but a nuclear warhead that was launched during the fifth World War that impacted and melted a large chunk of Antarctica's ice sheet.
  • With all that in mind, the implications of this stage description◊ for the Shellendorf Institute in Splatoon 2 become chilling. It makes one wonder if the melting of Antarctica was enough to make us stop fighting or not.
  Marina: Human bones, huh? Yeah, those things are everywhere.
• The squids may be cute and the kids may be cute, but the mid-transformation◊ inklings, during the loadout at the start of a match, in the E3 2014 build are quite another matter... They look like creepy, bipedal squids with a bug-eyed look. In the final version of the game, their eyes leak their respective color ink as they shapeshift from squid to humanoid.
  • On a similar note is an Inkling's development◊ through life. When they are born, they start as a cute baby squid, but in-between that time and when they fully mature, they go through multiple stages of awkward mid-transformations that looks incredibly uncomfortable. And you thought your puberty was bad.
• Inklings can't swim.◊ They don't drown, they just flop around and dissolve. Thank goodness for respawn machines...
• A very disturbing secret was found that occurs if you stand and wait before or after the boss battles. You'll hear... sounds. Unnerving sounds. Banging metal. Screaming. Screeching. Howling. The sound of a level crossing plays as train whistles blare until a crashing sound is heard. Almost as if there's... something outside of the domes. Something big.... Except this something isn't a monster hiding inside of the walls... Remember that the Octarians stole the Zapfish in order to preserve the power of their domes? Yeah. That's the sound of them falling apart around you.
  • Even better? According to this interview, even one of the directors of the game didn't know about them. (Then again, the interviewer phrased his question in a rather awkward way.)
• Apparently, Octarians live in incredibly crummy living situations and their world is breaking apart more each day. And considering that the Inklings live in a clean, modern, and urban society, it kind of explains why the Octarians would hold a grudge against them.
• Bluefin Depot during the nighttime, which is only seen during one of the Octo Valley missions as well as Splatfests. If you go near the broken bridge, you can hear a small creak coming from it, which gets louder as you get even closer to it. Not to mention the fact that the area around it is filled with abandoned condominiums, warehouses, and debris of the bridge in the water.
• There's more than one nighttime map hiding eerie secrets - Museum D'alfonsino contains multiple Inkling statues, typical of the setting albeit possibly unnerving in their facelessness. But if you were to explore the museum at night and listen closely, you might hear some sounds. Laughing, childlike giggling throughout the empty museum... that's coming right from those statues. Just like the infamous boss arena noises, this is not something ever explained or commented on.
  • It's not just that they're giggling, while it is disturbing in its own. It's pretty standard fare to hear childlike giggling used for creepy, often haunted scenarios in fiction (the giggling samples themselves are actually directly recognizable from Koloktos' death, which you know, might not help either), but this is the Splatoon world. Inklings and Octolings have distinctive voices and laughter that you wouldn't mistake for anything else. The laughter echoing the museum at night is disturbingly human sounding.

Splatoon 2

Splatoon 2 Main Game

• The Salmon Run mode takes place on an island of junk surrounded by a cesspool of what is apparently polluted seawater. The big freakout comes from how your job is to fight off Salmon mooks to collect Power Eggs and Golden Power Eggs. The ravenous Salmonids swarm every now and then and try to raid Inkling cities.
  • Things get really creepy once the fog rolls in. When the Nintendo representatives played Salmon Run at E3 2017, a Stinger showed up in the distance appearing out of the water, which looked like a tentacle-like pillar in the fog, able to shoot Sting Ray beams at the Inklings while being much too far for the Inklings to reach.
    • Since the fog itself is so dense, some first-time viewers even confused that at the time for an Octarian tentacle. And this was before most of the fandom knew that the Salmonids have a trade route with the Octarians...
  • Some of the other special waves (which all come with a special "nighttime" setting and a notably more menacing music theme) are arguably worse. In the Glowflies wave, fast-moving hordes of red-eyed Chums now aggressively swarm at one player a time. And then there's the Grillers, which move fast and relentlessly chase down their chosen target, instantly splatting anyone else they come in contact with along the way. Even better is Mr. Grizz's advice on dealing with being swarmed by Glowflies and being chased down by a Griller - "Good luck staying alive" for the Glowflies, and "RUN" for the Griller.
  • Certain branches of Inkling religion treat major migrations of Salmonids as a harbinger of the apocalypse. This is referenced in multiple places in Splatoon 2. And they're currently on the move enough for a company to be built around exploiting that fact.
  • That part about the Salmonids raiding Inkling cities? According to the lore, that's apparently been going on since at least the Inkling equivalent of the Feudal Age. And back then, the Inklings didn't have the ink-projectile technology they do today. Entire cities were consumed by the tide of fishy death. Modern Inkopolis and its surrounding Counties are areas that managed to survive this period.
  • From the Mothership to the Griller, it isn't uncommon to find teammates panicking on what to do as a griller or mothership is the end of your line and keeps you from properly delivering eggs to Mr. Grizz, who is already an ambiguous figure.
  • The song that plays during special waves, called "Fishing Frenzy", is terror in musical form. On top of the first few notes being a Scare Chord, it always acts as a musical cue that something bad is going to happen, including normal Chum going Ax-Crazy and swarming players, Grillers being the main enemies, or fog rolling in.
  • Ruins of Ark Polaris are the wrecked remains of a giant spacecraft. The fact that all the signs you see are in English, rather than any of the fictional languages found in the rest of the game, as well as the fact that it's called an ark, strongly hints that the humans knew of the rising sea levels (and not just the Professor) and desperately banded together to escape into space as a last resort. But then something really bad happened, and they didn't make it. Even worse, what caused the spaceship to crash is completely unknown. On top of that, the playable area is specifically the bear habitat, which no doubt has some ties to the fact that you work for someone named Mr. Grizz.
    • Unlike all the other Salmon Run stages which switch to night for special waves, Ruins of Ark Polaris is Always Night. So what does it do for special waves? All sources of light in the background, including the nearby city, switch off, leaving you stuck on this tower in the middle of near-total darkness.
    • All hope for human life is not lost, however. Ark Polaris was named after only one star. There are hundreds of stars that are named. Therefore, there may have been more arks. This hints that humanity may have indeed escaped. Commander Tartar made no hint of wireless communication, meaning that the theory of still-alive humans is still not too far-fetched.^note Which is both confirmed and Jossed in Splatoon 3, which reveals that there was indeed one underground colony of humans that managed to survive the rising sea levels, though ended up dying to a self-inflicted cave-in with their rocket experimentation.
  • If you're (un)lucky enough to enter a shift with a team averaging Profreshional 600 or higher, "Hazard Level MAX!!" will appear on the screen accompanied by ominous low-pitched "Psycho" Strings. Cue collective This Is Gonna Suck from players seeing and hearing this for the first time.
  • Unlike the other shopkeepers, Mr. Grizz doesn't appear in the game proper; instead, he communicates to you via a radio embedded in a bear statue. And apparently, his registered headquarters are completely empty. Just who or what is Mr. Grizz? And what does he want with the eggs that you poach for him? What sort of relationship does he have with Salmonids and Inklings that led to the sketchy business he runs? The sheer lack of information on him makes him one of the scariest characters in the game who isn't an outright enemy or villain...
• The later parts of the Squid Sisters Stories prologue for 2. The first bit is just a bit sad as two cousins slowly drift apart... and then Callie goes missing. The missed appointment. The casual assumption is that nothing's wrong at first. The missed train after missed train. The phone calls. The lack of phone calls, or answering, from your loved one. The frantic reaching out on the trip home, trying to find anything, anyone, who might have seen her or can shed some light. The inevitable failure of that. The near-total lack of clues anywhere, including at home. The ever-rising sense of panic. It's all chillingly realistic, and as anyone who's had a loved one go missing can tell you, feels all too close to home. And then, of course, there's finding your loved one, at last, only to discover they've changed drastically since you last saw them...
  • Octavio's escape feels a little bit like finding out that, at the same time your loved one went missing, the convict who once terrorized your family is out of prison. Now, granted, Splatoon isn't that dark and Octavio's worst crimes are grand larceny and terrible music puns (and the attempted murder of Agent 3), but the parallel is still there.
• At the end of the Hero Mode trailer, there is a very unsettling laugh. Making matters worse, the art depicted during said timing of the laugh implies it's coming from Callie. It gets even worse when you listen to the female singing throughout the trailer again and realize that it sounds like Callie as well. The actual game hid Callie's vocals from songs inside the single-player stages by playing them backwards.
• The endgame of Hero Mode reveals Callie's been brainwashed by the Octarians. A line DJ Octavio has really sold how truly horrific it is and the implications of what the Hypno-Shades do.
  Octavio: I remixed Callie's brain!
• Where are Agent 3 and Cap'n Cuttlefish during all this? Marie says in the story mode that they were doing other things, but she didn't see either of them when finding that Octavio has broken out of the snowglobe...and if the Hero Gear we're given really is a hand-me-down from Agent 3...why don't they need it if they're in Octarian territory like it's implied? Thankfully mitigated as the first thing seen in the DLC proper is an alive and well Cap'n Cuttlefish and Agent 3's old gear is hand-me-down because they're in brand new gear, complete with a stylish cape.
• Also, this piece of Mood Whiplash from the Chicken vs. Egg Splatfest:
  Pearl: Wait... Which side am I on?
  Both: HAHAHA!
  Marina: It's funny because we're all living in a simulation and free will is a lie.
  • Made possibly even more chilling by this interview indicating that Splatfest hosts do temporarily gain a certain degree of fourth wall awareness; Marina might have genuinely stared too deep into the void for a bit there.
• The "Fresh Fish" costume, released as part of the Octoling wave of amiibo in November/December 2018. Immediately upon its reveal, this cartoonish fish mascot became infamous for its permanent blank and stiff smile — leading to it becoming something of a horror icon in the Splatoon community.
• For the Final Splatfest, no matter which side you pick, you are siding with at least one of the series' villains. Picking Chaos means you align with the Inkling-hungry Salmonids, who spend their history ravaging major Inkling settlements to the point where early Inkling religion often depicts a mass migration of salmonids as an omen for the apocalypse, and DJ Octavio, who mind you, brainwashed Callie in this game's Octo Canyon campaign. Picking Order means you side with the Octarians, whom with the exception of a generation of rebelling Octolings inspired by Marina (and to a lesser extent, Agent 8) after she heard the Calamari Inkantation, still haven't forgiven the Inklings for the Great Turf War, and, most chillingly, Commander Tartar. You know, that psycho AI who wanted to destroy the entire planet AND force the Inklings and Octarians into extinction?
  • Its Final Fest bio establishes that Tartar, if it took control, wouldn't be interested in keeping free will. And what's more, the seemingly innocuous C.Q. Cumber appears to share these opinions.
• The new Splatoon art posted to celebrate New Years' on the Japanese Splatoon account looks innocuous at first. Then you notice the life buoy covers the last zero so the reflection in the water says "SOS." Then you notice how the water ripples in the water straight-up say SAVE OUR SALMONS. Judging by how Team Chaos' main theming was after the Salmonids, maybe it's time they've had enough of squids stealing their eggs.
  • There's another takeaway from this: it's not a message of rebellion, it's a genuine SOS, a cry for help. If they are sound enough of mind to articulate such a message, this would imply the Salmonids are much more than the race of Always Chaotic Evil monsters that the players have been told they are...or rather, that Grizz Co. has assured us they are. And if we've been off-track this entire time, what has Grizz Co. been having us do? And perhaps most distressingly this raises the question: what is Grizz doing with the Salmonid eggs?

Octo Expansion

Believe us when we say that the Octo Expansion goes far, far, FAR DARKER places than the already established lore in both games, and it isn't afraid to showcase much scarier visuals (and more controversial subject matters) for better... or for worse.

• We finally get to see the conditions the Octarians live in during the Octo Expansion Trailer. Run-down subway tunnels, dingy high-tech installations over huge abysses, and low light make it definitely seem like the Octarians live in the deep sea. It says something that the Octoling player character seems blown away by how bright and safe Inkopolis Square is by comparison. Of course, it turns out that the Deepsea Metro isn't where the Octarians live... but we do learn through Marina's dialogue and the Line B Mem-Cakes that represent Agent 8's time among the Octarians paint a picture of an oppressive and propaganda-filled society.
• The Sanitized Octarians are brainwashed so thoroughly they have no sense of will or even personality.
  Everyone, meet Dedf1sh. Previously a promising, up and coming DJ, her pursuit of breakbeat perfection eventually led her to a subterranean test facility, where she was "sanitized." Though little of her former self remains, she continues crafting DJ delicacies, and the halls of the test facility echo with her bumping tracks to this very day.
  • What we've heard of her songs are pretty unnerving, too. The first two songs (the second starting at about 0:23) give off an eerie feeling.. makes ya think about what the Octo Expansion has in store, doesn't it?
  • It gets even worse. Marina cannot detect any vital signs upon scanning them. They're not just brainwashed, they're dead. Tartar's profile states that "The Sanitized Octarians are its creations, spawned from the biomass it has collected from the remains of its previous test subjects and refined into "the perfect life"." Sanitized Octarians are actual zombies brought back to life with the horrifying sludge of other liquefied test subjects. How long has Tartar been experimenting on and murdering those poor test subjects down there? Do we even want to know?!
• During the tests, the ink tank Agent 8 wears has a funny little bag attached to it, right? What's it there for, extra ink? Well, yeah, it's definitely ink, but it isn't to help you. That bag of cyan ink is a REMOTE CONTROLLED KILL DEVICE that is triggered by C.Q. Cumber whenever you fail a challenge in a way that wouldn't traditionally result in a splat. So yes, you have a ticking time bomb strapped to your back at all times. Even when there are no conditions that would trip it, you can still see the bag on your tank. Sweet dreams, cephalopod.
  • Even worse, the Equipper devices that give you your weapons throughout the expansion don't mess with your inkpack. According to the official Splatoon Twitter account, this ink tank is provided by the Kamabo Corporation and any extra details about it are confidential to the facility; meaning that you are not informed of the bomb's existence until it's too late.
  • If the condition that can trigger the inkpack's detonation is progressive (such as limited ink or a timer), it will change its visual appearance depending on how close you are to failing; the inkpack produces a subtle glow when your limited time or ink is beginning to run out, and starts pulsating wildly while sounding a rapid alarm when you've got so little time/ink left that you're almost bound to fail unless you somehow pass at the last second. Both of these occurrences - the latter in particular - highlight the inkpack's purpose and hint at what's going to happen before it actually happens. In short? Should you see the inkpack inflating, it may or may not be a good time to panic.
• So, one might be wondering, why are you Number 10,008 anyway? It's because you're the ten-thousand-and-eighth creature to go through this entire "promised land" rigmarole. What became of the other 10,007, you wonder? Well, those that failed to collect the four thangs remain in the subway system, memories of their past forever wiped. That's more Tear Jerker territory, admittedly, but still a little horrifying. Meanwhile, those that did manage to collect them after being forcefully put through what basically accounts to Cold-Blooded Torture? The same thing that nearly happened to Agent 8 and Captain Cuttlefish — they were all crushed, blended, mixed and ground up, conscious and alive into a gruesome genetic sludge in an attempt to create a new sort of primordial soup made up of the most tenacious, intelligent specimens on the planet, and it's implied they were all made immortal after the blending process. That distinct green "ink" you run afoul of throughout the campaign that just seems kind of off in its coloration? That's not ink. That stuff used to be living creatures. It's all that's left of every test subject before you. YOU'VE BEEN GETTING COVERED IN A STEW OF LIQUEFIED CORPSES FOR THE ENTIRE EXPANSION!
  • On the topic of the blender, this is the music that plays once the machine is complete. A distorted carnival theme accompanied by what can easily be interpreted as the agonized screams of the previous victims as they suffered their horrendous and messy demises.
    • If you listen closely, you might even feel like you hear what they're saying, and it's much, much worse. It can sound like they're repeatedly screaming "DO NOT GO IN!"^note Although, as it turns out, it's sampled from people shouting "Happy New Year" in English, following by counting up from 1 to 10.
  • When Agent 8 first gets the CQ-80, a few drops of ink fall out with it. First-time players won't notice much, but when looking back, the color will look very familiar...
  • On the note of the screams heard as the blender is activated, you might think back to a certain other time screaming was heard in the Splatoon series. While it's still in the territory of creepy easter eggs that have never been commented on or addressed again, the Octo Expansion and its setting might make you think back to the infamous "boss noises" first heard in the first game. The ringing and sounds of running trains being audible in Octarian domes make a lot of sense now that we know of a Deepsea Metro, a subterranean train system used by Octarians in past and present. Now ask yourself if there's anything we know of within the Deepsea Metro which would lead to howling screams of fear and agony. Events that you know, from the amount of time it'd take to reach 10,008 test subjects by the present day, would've had to be happening in an ongoing period of time including and likely extending very far prior to the events of the first game.
• Overlapping with Tear Jerker: if you die during any phase of the final escape in Octo Expansion, Cap'n Cuttlefish, Pearl, or Marina will desperately shout for Agent 8 (in the same vein as Metal Gear Solid) before you respawn.
• Speaking of the final escape, the first phase (The "Coccyx" Phase) is made of pure, unadulterated nightmare fuel with its paranoia-inducing stealth elements and Heartbeat Soundtrack, and you are absolutely powerless to defend yourself against the mountain of enemies you sneak by. The Scare Chord and the pulse-pounding beat that plays if you're noticed do not help you save yourself in the slightest.
• The Big Bad of the Octo Expansion, Commander Tartar, is quite possibly a high contender for one of the ghastliest villains to ever exist in Nintendo's lineup of franchises to date - and that's saying a lot. It's a violent, racist, hatred-filled, and utterly psychopathic Artificial Intelligence that completely loathes the Inklings and Octarians beyond all reason due to them not being worthy enough successors to the long-extinct human race in its eyes. In the main story mode for both games, DJ Octavio just puts on concerts to destroy his enemies and obtain the Great Zapfish so his people can survive. In Octo Expansion, Tartar is revealed to have been single-handedly responsible for the unimaginably barbaric murders of all those innocent people, and attempts to commit omnicide.
  • There's also its Motive Rant beforehand. It goes from praising its creator and listing its orders to pretty much raving on how... "incompatible" the Inklings and Octarians are, and even before and during the climactic final battle, the pure, raw contempt Tartar has for these species is clear as glass even in its dialogue, peppered with cruel, spiteful, dehumanizing slurs directed at Agent 8 and their counterpart race, all this once hidden behind a well-meaning, if not Totally Radical facade in the first half of the expansion.
    Commander Tartar: TARTAR IN DA HOUSE! [DISABLING CONTEMPORARY SPEECH MODE] I am TARTAR, an AI construct created 12,000 years ago by a brilliant professor. My prime directive is to pass humanity's vast knowledge on to the next worthy lifeform. When your kind became self-aware, I hoped that my long wait was finally over. But as I observed your evolution, I WAS DISGUSTED! You wage war over minor genetic deviations. You obsess over trivial fashion choices. And so I created a new prime directive: destroy this world and start anew! From the best and brightest test subjects, I created a sludge of supreme DNA. A primordial ooze from which the ultimate lifeform will emerge. Today is the day my vision becomes reality, as I destroy Inkopolis and everyone in it!
  • Even worse is how this thing plans on destroying the planet: by using an enormous statue of a human (a species that went extinct way a long time ago) that turns out to be a motherfucking energy cannon poised to completely obliterate Earth and all organic life when it's fully charged.
    • Also, if you pay attention to the exterior of Tartar's Doomsday Device, you might notice something familiar: Completed Thangs full of the same goo you were almost blended into. The implication of the slime still being stirred around seems to be that the other test subjects are still very much alive and have to be constantly blended to keep them in liquid form - making the laser pretty much equivalent to a gargantuan pressure washer loaded with an absolutely disgusting slurry of ground-up flesh, organs and bones. It gets even worse if you look past the Thangs and at the slime in the barrel of the death ray itself during the NILS fight. You can see a Sanitized Octoball floating around in the goop.
    • If you run out of time trying to ink the entire statue, or fall into the surrounding sea thus demonstrating your Super Drowning Skills, you get one final creepy shot of Inkopolis being blanketed with Tartar's genetic sludge as the murderous machine finally finishes what it started. The absolutely depressing, soulless-sounding Dark Reprise of Color Pulse that plays throughout isn't any better because it serves as a bleak reminder that everything our heroes have ever done to this point was all in vain, Earth is now gone, and you weren't able to save it. Shoot the Shaggy Dog does not even prepare to describe it. Luckily, you can try again, but still... GameChamp3000 probably says this the best in her video for the gunless challenge:
      GameChamp3000: On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you like Inkopolis? Because you’re gonna be seeing it die a lot tonight.
    • And some have pointed out that the theme that plays while Inkopolis is being destroyed sounds eerily similar to a civil defense siren, and Inkopolis Square looks to be deserted. The best-case scenario is that whoever governs Inkopolis got word of what was happening and evacuated the city...while the worst-case scenario is that TARTAR's Wave-Motion Gun was so quick-acting that everyone in the square was instantly liquified before they could act.
  • Commander Tartar's leitmotif as it reveals the statue. Remember the Telephone's goofy theme with its equally goofy intro? Here, it's composed of demonic slowed-down noises and the warped version of said intro noise, falling straight into Hell Is That Noise territory.
  • Even though it was unintentional on the creators' part, the very concept of Tartar being an ultra-ancient, intelligent machine that grew to despise the planet's dominant species well beyond death and one that also takes a little too much pleasure in ruthlessly torturing the members of said species does seem to draw a lot of parallels to a certain supercomputer...
  • And that's not all — some very disturbing concept art from the Octo Expansion artbook indicates that the NILS Statue is more than meets the eye. Apparently, the "statue" is implied to actually be an absolutely enormous, heavily mutated Sanitized Octarian and what you see outside is merely a shell. Take a look for yourself here...◊
  • You thought Commander Tartar’s design was goofy, right? Well, take a look at his concept art…

Splatoon 3

Splatoon 3 Main Game

• Fuzzy Ooze turns Inklings/Octolings into furry, immobile creatures, and it is everywhere. So much as touching it is an instant loss of a life, in the form of And I Must Scream.
• While he's ominously mysterious in the previous game, Mr. Grizz shows himself in his full glory in this game — as a giant, monstrous bear-like creature. The Boss Subtitles even describe him as "the Ursine Anomaly". Much like Commander Tartar, he turns out to be an Omnicidal Maniac; his plan is to cover the whole planet in Fuzzy Ooze and bring mammals back, destroying the existing lifeforms in the process. Unlike Tartar, there is a sympathetic aspect to him, as he's doing what he genuinely believes is right out of once being one of humanity's last hopes for Earth's life to go on^note as opposed to Tartar and the Judds, who were placed out of acceptance that nothing would survive and to be able to live among whatever new race would emerge to replace humanity, while being motivated by the genuine tragedy of being stuck in suspended animation for thousands of years while remaining fully conscious the whole time, being driven to his wits' end by lonely isolation. The trouble beyond that is that this has resulted in a colossal, ooze-mutated monster who is possessed of enormous intellect and has gone insane.
  • When faced atop the rocket in his boss fight, his innocuous, almost-cute antics like rolling around and flopping himself down with an endearing face are offset by two sets of razor-sharp claws that he extends into several-foot sickles to carve you apart, and trying to outright crush you with his huge arms when you get too close. And, failing this, when he's had his fuzzy ooze spots wounded? He decides to destroy the rocket, and absorb the fuzzy ooze payload himself. What this translates to is that, despite his Dissonant Serenity and continual calm and professional demeanor, he is so imbalanced that when pushed to the brink, he decides to forego having the rocket be the warhead and launch himself directly into Earth's surface like a living meteor to get the job done. Perhaps the only thing to soften this at the end is how Grizz sadly accepts defeat and surrenders in his goals, albeit not that he has much of a choice at that point.
  • While he has Captain Cuttlefish in captivity, Mr. Grizz dehydrates him to near death. You can even hear Cuttlefish actually screaming over the intercom as it happens. The only real consolation is that he's revived by a single tear from old Agent 3, which rehydrates him... but the bad news is that he's permanently stuck as a flat, realistic squid.
  • So what happens exactly when you die during the final boss battle? The answer is something similar to when Commander Tartar succeeds, but way worse. Instead of just showing buildings getting covered in Fuzzy Ooze, it also shows the Inklings and Octolings turning into the same furry thing you turn into if you touch the ooze (and they make pained noises, implying the mutation is outright killing them), followed by a shot of the once verdant globe turning brown and the Fuzzy Ooze growing as though it were mold, fully coating all land on the planet in it until nothing is left, the magenta Alternan ink begins to seep into the hairy mass, the blue oceans staring to desaturate, and the scene fades to white with the full extent of the growth still yet to be seen. Dialogue seems to imply Earth is no longer even classifiable as a planet, but nothing more than a giant Fuzzball (like the ones Smallfry has been eating, leaving the fate of the former planet even more grim). Making this scene even worse is the discordant tune playing in the background, ending off with Grizz unleashing an Evil Cackle that twists and extends his iconic "End of shift" Salmon Run laugh into something that sounds downright demonic.
    O.R.C.A.: On that day... A massive Fuzzball was born in space.
• Salmon Run returns from Splatoon 2, and along with it a new heaping helping of fresh Nightmare Fuel:
  • One of the new events players can encounter is the Mudmouth eruption, where a special type of the titular Salmonid can emerge somewhere on the map. Its design is downright eldritch compared to most other Salmonid enemies, who at least look vaguely fish-like in appearance. The Mudmouth, in comparison, is made up of some green, drippy substance, and has a gigantic gaping maw that spews out Chums at a rapid pace.
  • The main addition to '"Next Wave'' is the King Salmonids, who will occasionally appear after a successful shift after you've played enough rounds of Salmon Run. When that happens, the victory jingle will without warning be interrupted by a blaring warning siren which can downright jumpscare even returning players who aren't expecting it.
    • The first King Salmonid, Cohozuna, can be incredibly frightening encountering it for the first time. It's far larger than any Boss Salmonid, has crazed, pupil-less glowing eyes, and lets out a loud, absolutely terrifying roar when it shows up. It moves surprisingly fast and attacks by jumping incredibly high for something its size in an attempt to crush you when it plummets back down. Furthermore, your normal weapons will barely put a scratch on it; the only way to do any significant damage is to launch Golden Eggs at it. Mr. Grizz even notes that it must have been terrifying for the crew if they all get splatted during the extra wave.
    • The second King Salmonid, introduced in Fresh Season 2023, is Horrorboros: a gigantic eel-salmonid hybrid that soars through the sky. Not to mention, its roar is a frighteningly human-like scream that make Cohozuna's sound tame. Thankfully, it flies very close to the ground. Less thankfully, it fires giant Booyah Bombs.
    • Before its debut, the Anarchy Splatcast for the season of all things took a turn that already had it living up to its name ahead of the Big Run that it debuted in. The segment starts out with the Grizzco logo on the screen, with Shiver announcing news from it. Then it cuts to a grayscale, garbled and unclear picture of the Horrorboros, but the music suddenly cutting out alongside a garbled transmission of its roar turns it into a Jump Scare. It's such a jarring change of pace from the usual Splatcast segments that it even scares Big Man for a moment.
    • The Chill Season 2023 introduces the third King Salmonid: Megalodontia, a massive Maws-like creature that can easily take up most up most of the stage when rising up to chomp at players. If you get splatted this way, you're flung high in the air, giving you just enough time to look down before getting crushed by its enormous jaws. Its entry roar ups the terror by sounding more like a human screaming in agony. And like Horrorboros, Megalodontia got a terrifying Splatcast intro to match. following the same format as Horrorboros'.
    • Another bit of Fridge Horror for this colossal devourer: normal Maws are said to constantly be on the prowl for prey to consume to sustain their large sizes. One can only imagine how much more the average Megalodontia has to eat to sustain their gigantic size, and then factor into that the fact that they aren't above eating other Salmonids. These hungry terrors must be just as scary to their own kind!
• One of the features advertised during the Direct was Big Run, which looks to be a Salmon Run occurring on regular competitive stages instead of the normal Salmon Run ones. This aligns with the Sunken Scroll in the previous installment detailing Salmonids invading Inkling settlements in devastating raids.
  • With the Chill Season trailer confirming its arrival, we finally get to see what a Big Run looks like, and it is as terrifying as the sunken scroll implies it is. The skies are tinted an unnatural blood red, the seven rings visible in the horizon on Wahoo World. The stage itself is abandoned, and will be swarming with Salmonids as you try to defend it from the invasion. And it's all backed up by ω-3's own version of Clickbait, bastardizing the main theme of Splatoon 3, the anthem of Turf War fun for Inklings and Octolings, into the unstable and discordant dirge of their incoming demise.
  • While Big Run is active, the main hub changes to a jarring degree. Like with Wahoo World, the sky is tinted red, but there is also the addition of a very creepy ambience replacing the usual sounds populating Splatsville; no chatter, no shop music when you stand outside a shop... just slow, non-descript, discordant noise with the occasional helicopter sounds. The music theme for Deep Cut's news segment is also replaced by a less upbeat version. It also replaces the usual Grizzco lobby theme with a slower, creepier version of the bastardized Clickbait theme. And you know what's even worse? As it turns out, they're in the sewers. They're already in the city's system.
    • It's somehow even worse in Inkopolis, where you can actually hear the sounds of Salmonid warfare in the distance, including alarms, Mr. Grizz's voice, and sounds from the Boss Salmonids and even the King Salmonids. Furthermore, there's an eerie ambience that almost sounds like an alarm going off constantly the whole time. The whole cancophony could easily give the post-Boss Battle rackus from 1 a run for its money.
  • The first Big Run took place in Wahoo World, an amusement park by the coast. Scary, but at least you can believe such a place would be abandoned by the time the Salmonids invaded. The second Big Run? Inkblot Art Academy, a stage located further inland, in the middle of the city. And its apparent that this time, not everyone made it out of the city.
  • The fifth Big Run took the Salmonid invasion to Barnacle & Dime, a major shopping mall and tourist location with a lot of people. There are also large, gaping holes in the glass dome roof, though it is likely caused by Grizzco to get its helicopter into the area. It seems whatever defenses Inkopolis and Splatsville have taken to keep the Salmonids away have not only failed, the introduction of Megalodontia, the third type of King Salmonid, indicates it's getting worse in intensity and destructiveness.

Side Order

Much like the Octo Expansion DLC before it, Side Order isn’t afraid to explore some dark territory through the eyes of Agent 8, exploring a colourless world that reminds the player what could’ve been if Order triumphed over Chaos in Splatoon 2’s Final Fest.

• The DLC for Splatoon 3 has been announced, and it's a two part expansion pass. The first part involves the nostalgic return to Inkopolis Plaza, featuring returning faces and new ones as well. The second wave? It's an unnerving glimpse of Inkopolis Square, bleached white and surrounded by dead coral, and a lone Octoling standing at the center of it all. Something has gone wrong with Marina and Pearl.
• The enemies of the DLC, the Jelletons are creepy looking monsters that Order made to guard the Spire of Order from Agent 8. This digital constructs look like the skeletons of various other fish of the real world but covered in a black goo with glowing red eyes.
• There's a lot of unnerving imagery too that flashes through the trailer. One of them is what appears to be a field of spiked towers surrounded by growing veins. And worst of all is what those spikes are supposed to resemble: Hostile nuclear warning architecture.
• The September 2023 Direct gives us more insight into this; Deca Tower is now the Spire of Order; a glitchy and mechanical Eternal Engine that houses eerie facilities straight out of Portal, populated with abominations that look like robotic fish with Glowing Eyes of Doom encased in gelatinous skin that attack you en masse like the Salmonids, except they're more like feral zombies rather than the comedic culture we're familiar with. The end of the trailer has Agent 8 approach a spiraling machine that looks more like a mutated version of GLaDOS than any of the Great Octoweapons.
  
  Turns out this spiraling machine is the Asynchronous Rondo, one of the bosses you can encounter on your run, and it does not play around, regularly spewing out mooks, waves, bombs, Homing Arpeggios, and even the occasional Killer Wail. And the primary way it telegraphs these attacks is by screaming like an animatronic banshee, with it letting out a deranged cackle for the latter three, as if it's actively taking pleasure in watching you scramble for cover.
• The very first boss in Side Order is a giant brainwashed Marina entangled in some kind of organic machine. She barely even moves, but when she does, her movements are freakishly robotic and her arms and fingers twitch erratically. And that's just the tutorial boss.
• One of the three bosses you can encounter on either Floor 10 or Floor 20 are "Parallel Canon" - essentially three waves of creepy drones that mimic Inklings, wearing facemasks with huge red eyes. You thought the sanitized Octarians from Octo Expansion were creepy? These guys take the cake. Oh, and just to top it off? The leader of Parallel Canon is Agent 4, or at least a digital copy of them created by Order after Marina hired them to handle Memverse security.
• The final boss, Overlorder, is a giant gel octopus with an artificial skeleton, and something swirling around in its brain. Even when you beat it the first time, it nearly assimilates everyone in the entire world into the virtual world.
• Order itself. This virtual tyrant was born as a byproduct of Marina’s project, the Memverse, and quickly took over, turning his own creator into its puppet. It wants to cause those within the Memverse and out to undergo greyscaling; basically robbing them of their free will, creating a peaceful, stagnant world where everyone is a mindless drone, affecting their real world bodies in turn. Really think about that. A world with no change, color, excitement, or free will and everyone is exactly the same.
• Once Marina is freed from the machine she's trapped in, there's an extremely brief moment of relief that she's okay. Emphasis on "extremely brief"; this lasts just a few seconds, and then Order introduces itself and its desire to convert everything into memory before blasting the main cast out of the spire and then transforming it into a taller building with a creepy, glitchy black top. The antagonist has just appeared, and it's already pretty horrifying!
• Marina's dev diary — specifically the fourth page — reveals the true nature of Commander Tartar's sanitization process: it removed its victims' thoughts and memories, and then injected dummy information into what was left behind to allow total control of them. Simply put, they were turned into hollow husks of themselves so they could be controlled. The Sanitized Octarians and Octolings weren't just brainwashed, dead or zombies... they were its puppets. And Acht, then known as Dedf1sh, was also among the sanitized, meaning they were Tartar's puppet too. The one relief is that Acht at least got better and regained their will, but that doesn't change the fact that Acht was previously stripped of their soul.
  • It also means that the reason Agent 8 lost their memories is because they too had been partially Sanitized to prepare them for the tests - which means that all of the other test subjects had also been partly Sanatized, and makes the tests from Octo Expansion that much more of a lose-lose situation: those who fail it too badly get fully Sanitized, while those who succeed get blended into Sanitized Ink to allow Tartar to Sanitize even more subjects!

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