#rotm spoilers

[splatsvilles-fashionista]

I Can't Stop Thinking About Mr. Grizz In Space

I'll preface all that I am going to say with the fact that Return of the Mammalians as a story has a lot of problems. Its pacing is kind of wack and basically all of the actual plot happens literally at the end. I think I like it more than most, certainly more than a lot of other high-profile Splatoon blogs here, but there's no denying it has a ton of flaws.

It did, however, leave me with a lot to chew on, and perhaps one of the things it has had me thinking about the most is actually just a little gag in the credits

About three minutes into the credits, Mr. Grizz is shown slowly orbiting around earth, given so little thought that the credits roll right over him, but I genuinely think this is one of the most poignant and evocative images in the whole game.

Now, Mr. Grizz wasn't handled very well in this game, primarily as a consequence of that whole "all of the story happens in the ending sequence" thing, but I think that conceptually he is about as perfect of a villain as they could've made for the supposed "finale" of the story they've been building up to now.

One of Splatoon's primary themes, especially with its villains, has been the dangers of clinging to the past. Octavio is a bitter old warlord stoking the flames of a long-gone conflict mostly to satisfy his bruised ego. Commander Tartar is obsessed with an idealized version of the past and seeks to remake the present when it can't live up to that ideal, even when that ideal never existed. Splatoon 3 even went further, revealing that inklings, octolings, and all the other land-living sea life are in fact humanity's truest successors, and Tartar tried to wipe them all out anyway.

Mr. Grizz continues this trend and takes it maybe as far as possible because he doesn't just want to reshape the present, he sees it as something unnatural and wrong on a base fundamental level, a mistake that can only be resolved by restoring the status quo, giving the planet back to the mammals. Coming as close as possible to literally turning back time. With Splatoon's focus on youth culture and pop media, it's hard not to read this theme as an allegory for the ways that older generations can cause immense harm in rejecting the new and in making futile attempts to grasp a world that once was but never can be again.

But Splatoon isn't trying to tell us that the divides between us are unmendable, far from it. Over the course of the first two games we see how inklings and octolings grow closer and closer until it's a complete afterthought in the third game, and even Octavio, when push comes to shove, is willing to bury the hatchet for the greater good. Calamari Inktantation 3MIX is perhaps the purest expression of this, a mix of old and new, a traditional folk song turned into a pop song, complemented by three artists that each pull from completely different cultures (Frye = India, Shiver = Japan, Big Man = Brazil) all mixed together by a 100+ years old DJ. Calamari Inktantation is old and new, pop and traditional, Inkopolis and Splatsville, octoling and inkling (and manta ray), in a chaotic, messy, beautiful swirl of sheer ecstatic joy. As a song, it is peak Splatoon, clear and simple.

But this isn't about Calamari Inktantation 3MIX, as excited about that song as I am, this is about Mr. Grizz, and after spending so many games exploring the dangers of clinging to the past, Splatoon 3 uses him to show us what happens when you cannot let go.

Mr. Grizz could not accept the present he found himself in. To him it was wrong, it was offensive, and he fought tooth and claw to bring it back with him, into the past, to the glory days, and he fails. Of course he fails, you can't stop time, much less turn it back, and the people of the present will always fight to protect their future. So where does that leave him?

Alone. Gazing down at a planet he was born on but can no longer recognize. From his orbit, he can see thousands, maybe millions, of little lights along the coastlines, each one an entire city, buzzing with life and all of its eccentricities. It's a world that would probably welcome him, if he gave it the chance. But he didn't. He rejected it and sought to return to a time and a place that no longer existed, and in so doing, all he achieved was isolating himself. And now, as he circles the world, all he can do is watch as it moves on without him.

[jackal0p]

i just realized that the sr locker decorations were 3d printed in alterna

[twipsai]

MAJOR SPLATOON SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT!!! <this is mostly a caution for my friend whos going thru splatoon rn lolz hi Bee if ur reading this

screenshotting this post w/out the url and im turning rbs off cuz i dont wanna start beef, but like. i have never seen a more stupid fucking opinion of rotm. are you fucking kidding me.

first of all, the conflict between inklings and octarians was one-sided in modern times. it was simply a suffering civilization trying to take revenge on on whom they believed to be their enemies, not even knowing that the war they had fought is long dead and the inklings that inhabit the surface would welcome them with open arms. because, let me get one thing very clear: all of the weird racism metaphors in octo expansion are literally just a result of poor translation with the original being nowhere NEAR as overt in how they portray octolings as a sort of "stand-in" for the struggles that poc face irl. obviously, theres some tension between the two species, but there was never a story thread about this conflict. ya feel?

(^THIS SECTION IS WORDED WEIRDLY AND ISNT ENTIRELY REFLECTIVE OF MY OPINIONS ABOUT THIS PORTION OF THE GAME CUZ IM SLEEPY!!!!)

second of all, are we forgetting the part where the splatlands WERE effected by the Flood? it literally flooded the entire land!!! but instead of this dividing the people who inhabited it, they came together and drained it. drained it into Alterna. which is WHY we see these different tribes lasting in modern day with Deep Cut, why we see inklings and octolings living side-by-side with zero tension, and yet recognition and celebration of each others differences. is that not beautifully poetic?

we even see the fact that octarians have integrated back on the surface with the technology being used, particularly the use of floating machines! theres even octarian language on the splatana stamper! all of this life that was breathed into the game is all around you and it takes so little effort to just look!

i just wanna make one thing clear: so far, ALL of splatoons hero modes have been caused by humanity, be it directly or indirectly. in splatoon 1 and 2, we see the long-term effects of octarians living underground for 100 years rear its head and lash out, trying to survive. conditions underground are harsh. why are they underground in the first place? they lost the great turf war. a fight for land due to the rising sea levels. which was LITERALLY CAUSED by a nation 12000 years ago dropping a bomb on Antarctica as an intimidation tactic, as well as general global warming reaching a tipping point after wwV.

octo expansion? a broken machine left behind by humanity goes insane in its loneliness and tries to perfect the new intelligent life after sitting and watching for so long. splatoon 3? the last mammal, in its grief, tries to regain what he has lost.

the entire franchise is about letting go of the past, living in the moment, and looking forward to the future. half the songs naming conventions are based around momentum. its now or never.

how can you not see how this game has built its world so beautifully? it just makes me sad to think about

people are entitled to their own opinions, and its fine if you didnt like splatoon 3's story. but why are you, in a game franchise that ends with the line "the times have changed. the world can never be as it was. moving forward... is the future" so stuck in what could have been?

[bapzap]

my toxic trait is that im glad agent 4 didnt show up in side order. love you agent 4 but you have nothing to do with any of these characters and it would of been weird having you thrown in just because you were in the 2nd game too. you should of been in ROTM with agent 8 like the concept art had you.

[astrolotte]

pspspspsps Splatoon devs PLEASE bring Ruins of Ark Polaris back. Cmon man that's literally the best one bc the rails are so fun and I always enjoy playing on it.

Bring it back so I can feel Haunted by the Knowledge splatoon devs cmon you know you want to

[pockethexapod]

This has been bugging me and I haven't seen anyone discussing it, though I could be late to the discussion or just incredibly slow on the uptake, so bear with me.

Unless all the performance evaluating challenges that ORCA throws at us in RotM were constructed on the fly to challenge our abilities as inklings and octolings, those facilities had to have been made specifically to accommodate creatures made of "ink" (which according to the logs is basically a semi-organic telepathic nanite swarm). Shooting ink, swimming through ink, becoming ink, the effects of Specials, they are all crucial in completing those challenges. You're even given weapons that could only ever work with ink, and punished for failure with a contrasting ink bath that splats you. And unless I'm horribly mistaken, I don't think ORCA ever acknowledges that we are anything other than human, in fact I think they refer to us as a citizen of Alterna.

Is the implication here that before they all died for good, Alternan humans managed to fully reconstitute their bodies into ones made of the mind-reactive ink they invented? Perhaps as a survival tool, or as a way to make themselves adaptable enough to live on the surface again? Through experimentation, did they turn themselves into freaky ink-humans, and then set up the testing facilities to see how far they could push their new properties??

It obviously would have worked, since life resumed on the surface thousands of years later with little issue. It would also explain how human sensibilities and culture so easily leaked into the minds of the sea creatures, since their bodies essentially would've just dispersed into the saltwater cave after they died, later uplifting the Alternan cephalopods. They quite literally would have become a part of contemporary life on future Earth.

... Anyway, that was my theory on how Alternan humans infused themselves with organic mind-reading nanites to become super adaptive ink people and how the world of Splatoon is not only an example of a Grey Goo scenario as a GOOD ending but also one that is CONSIDERABLY un-grey.

PS. Considering the above, I'm pretty sure there are only octarians in the test facilities because they happened to wander in there out of the fuzzy ooze, which may have changed the context of ORCAs challenges.

[raredrop]

i think more people need to talk about how smollusk basically becomes nice and good after so many runs

just "omg hiii ur here lets fight :)" "that was so much fun okay see u again!"

[darkstarcore]

Yaaaay I finished Side Order (sorta, still want to 1000% it by getting every single color chip maxed and whatnot)!!! Very fun experience

[Spoilers in tags]

[dandelion-idk]

about to go insane how tf are there side order spoiler warnings already. we know zero about anything yet people can already know about bosses and other stuff based on datamines or smth?? I know that the drought is intense but wow

[4b9]

SPLATOON 3 SPOILERS!!!!

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drew this as soon as I finished rotm and I'm glad to post it now

[rassicas]

d’you think the COVID pandemic impacted development of Splatoon 3, which is why ROTM turned out the way it did? Because I recall Nintendo saying they didn’t start working on it until after the Chaos vs Order Splatfest, and then after that they put out three new Splatfests in 2020 and a 35th Anniversary Mario one in 2021 for Splatoon 2.

yeah im positive covid put a wedge in the development of splatoon 3. i dont know if its entirely to blame for how rotm turned out the way it did, and i don't know the extent of how much it screwed things over for the splatoon team i do have a theory that i think is likely though....

... I think this new years 2020 art was hinting at a splatoon 3 announcement that year, but it got delayed due to covid. considering the first trailer for S3 came in early 2021, it doesn't seem at all surprising that if it weren't for covid, an s3 announcement would've come even earlier. i think splatoon 3 did, and is, having some kind of development hell considering the time from announcement to release... it was announced for a summer 2022 release and ccame in september, which... barely even counts as summer? idk how much of it is due to covid or the splatoon team biting off more than they can chew or some other source of development hell [[spoilers from datamines]] and then currently, side order seems to be experiencing delays. there's splatoon 2 gear that's speculated to be released with the season that side order is coming out, iirc at the start, the gear was set for season 5 (drizzle 2023) but has currently been pushed back to season 7 (fresh 2024) [[end spoilers]]

[splatsvilles-fashionista]

So over the week I've been replaying Return of the Mammalians, because I haven't played it since the week Splatoon 3 launched and I wanted to see how I felt about it without the excitement of playing a brand new game clouding my critical judgement.

(spoilers for RotM below, just in case)

That said I didn't feel like it changed my opinion very much. RotM's biggest problem is that it feels like the developers thought of a couple of really cool ideas (The fakeout in the intro, Deep Cut being bosses, the lore in the Alterna Logs, the final fight against Mr. Grizz) and then put them all in the game without really trying to connect them all in a very tangible way, and as a result Alterna is a very nebulous space that doesn't make any sense from a narrative standpoint (if it was a human settlement why is it full machinery and tests only inklings and octolings can use? What even IS the treasure we assemble except "a tool that just happens to solve the current problem?) but only really exists for gameplay.

The story also suffers as a result of this, too. Narratively nothing really happens until the very end of the game, where we end up just kind of stumbling into Mr. Grizz's plot to fuzzify the world right as he puts it into motion. Octo Expansion got around this by using its lore snippets to give the supporting cast a story of their own that unfolded as you progressed through the game, and ultimately it's Agent 8's actions that push the story of OE forward. In RotM we just happen to be there when things happen.

But despite all of its problems RotM also just plays really well. The combination of OE-style shorter trial levels with Hero Mode-styled hub areas you have to explore for levels and secrets work really well together, and those hubs in particular are an absolute blast to dig around in for secrets and open up a little by little. Deep Cut are incredibly fun as ineffectual Team Rocket-esque villains, and the whole final fight against Mr. Grizz is really good, especially the music. I don't even think Calamari Inkantation is especially good by Splatoon standards, but 3MIX is genuinely just an astounding track.

But I think what ultimately makes me feel more positive than negative about RotM is that I think its' thematic undertones actually really work for me. Mr. Grizz's actual involvement in the story might have been mishandled but as a villain he works. I've already written about him a bunch so keep things brief Splatoon has always been about the dangers of clinging to the past, and Mr. Grizz pushes that idea to its limits, because he is the past. He is a relic of a lost age, and he is so desperate to return to the world he knows that he will burn the future and turn back time (metaphorically) to achieve it.

But there's also the Alterna Logs and the reveal that it was human dreams of seeing the sun that drove sealife onto dry land. I think there is a compelling argument to be made that they didn't need to explain any of that to begin with, but I also think the explanation works with everything the series has been setting up on a thematic level. Humanity is gone, and will never come back, but our dreams lived on in the minds of the inklings and the octolings (and the jellies, and everyone else), and while they didn't know why, they reached for the sun together, and by achieving humanity's dreams they earned the right to take our place.

TL;DR: RotM good actually

[saturnarias]

SIDE ORDER THEORY POST! MAJOR SPOILER WARNING FOR SIDE ORDER IF YOU HAVEN’T BEAT IT YET!!

(Prefacing this by saying I’ve only beaten the tower twice now, once with Brella and once with splattershot/agent 4’s palette)

I think Agent 4 is gonna be a secret boss at the end of side order once you’ve cleared the spire with every palette, for a few reasons

First off, in the Jelleton Field Guide, there’s a single empty space after the bosses, which feels incomplete and like they’re hinting at one more boss in that space.

Secondly, if you go to the palette selection and press ZL twice to see the info, you can view Smollusk’s secret notes on the palettes that you’ve completed. For Agent 4’s, it says that Marina wanted them to be security for the Memverse, and “No reason such strength shouldn’t be used to protect a world of order. An Order Defense Force is MUCH cooler than a New Squidbeak Splatoon anyway! No lawless do-gooder would be beyond our grasp!” So not only does that sorta explain how 4 got sucked in, but it also means that as Smollusk is trying to put together an Order Defense Force. And the agent 4-like boss is called the parallel canon. Case in point, I think Agent 4 is actually inside the Memverse, like Pearl, Marina, Acht, and 8, and they’re being controlled similarly to Marina, as a part of this order defense force. Which is why once you beat Order with all the palettes, they’d either send 4 after you or let go after being beat so many times, and you have to fight them to get rid of Order’s control.

Also, OE and RotM have both had secret bosses, so it would make sense for them to add a secret boss as to not break the pattern. And it would be cool as hell.

Anyways let me know y’all’s thoughts regarding this theory because I miss agent 4 so much and I wanna see other peoples’ takes on this ^_^

[marketableplushieenthusiast]

Team Past Propaganda

Because I started thinking about it again and now I'm all emotional-

I want to convey in words why I chose Team Past and why I don't think it contradicts the themes of the Splatoon story modes, because while the Squid Sisters do a great job of describing my basic reasoning in the Splatfest introduction, I understand why the story modes might feel like Present or Future are the "correct" answers.

(Spoilers ahead for all story modes, including Octo Expansion and Side Order)

Nearly every Splatoon villain is stuck in the past or heavily influenced by it in some way.

Mr Grizz and Tartar are the obvious ones: Grizz wants to see the return of mammals, and Tartar is disgusted with the current ex-sea life running the planet and wants to wipe it out and start over in favor of creatures more like his beloved humans.

In a way, being born of the regrets and desires of some escaped Octolings to return to their more orderly roots, Order/Smollusk can also be described as being motivated by the past. Even DJ Octavio does much of what he does because of the outcome of the Great Turf War and old grudges.

A recurring overall theme of these story modes, started in Octo Expansion and then expanded on (heh) in Rise of the Mammalians and Side Order, is that you can't turn back the clock, and you can't escape change. Even if Tartar and Grizz had "won", nothing would have brought back Tartar's scientist or the old mammals. In fact, their plans would have, ironically, destroyed humanity's last remnants. (And don't get me started on the thematic symbolism of Mr Grizz becoming biologically more fuzzy ink monstrosity than actual bear-)

I don't think it's a stretch to say that Grizz at the end of RotM is speaking with authorial intent in his final moment of clarity: "The times have changed. The world can never be as it was. Moving forward...is the future."

So the point of these story modes is that you can't move backwards. You can't rewind time; what's done is done, what's past is past, and obsessing over it and trying to revive it at the cost of the present and future isn't healthy (and doesn't work anyways).

But that doesn't mean you should never look back.

Rise of the Mammalians, like every other story mode dating all the way back to the Wii U, has optional lore, and it dropped an absolute bombshell for us lore nerds: the current ex-sea life of the Splatoon world didn't just evolve after humanity fell, their evolution was influenced by the desires of the last humans in Alterna. The species grew to leave the water because the Alternans' last wishes were to see the sun again. (And it was somehow transmitted through crystal detritus, which is some interesting sci-fi, but sure, why not?)

And this, in my opinion, is a pretty emotional reveal, and is treated as such.

Suddenly, all the significance given to Calamari Inkantation over the series pulls itself together - the fact it is an old, practically ancient folksong, described as being part of Inklings' very DNA, yet with the power to compel Octolings to seek the surface as well, and even transform Smallfry? If all that isn't enough to spell it out for you, the Inkantation is sampled in the credits' theme Wave Goodbye... Chanted by human vocals. The song that's been an Inkling battle anthem and the inciting moment of so many Octoling character arcs was passed down by humanity. Those scrolls from Splatoon 1 casually dropping that our colorful squid-kid world is a post-apocalyptic one come full circle.

Rise of the Mammalians tells us not to get so obsessed with the past that we try to turn back time... But in the same breath, reveals the past of the Inklings and Octolings and sea creatures we love so much and uses it to tie them together in the present.

Even Marina, a character who can "take or leave" her past and continually, consciously chooses to focus on the present (and to a certain extent, the future), goes out of her way to create the Memverse to help sanitized Octolings regain their memories of the past. She's also happy to reunite with Acht, who she shares a lot of history with. An exclusively present focused view could theoretically tell those Octolings that they don't need their memories to be whoever they want to be now, or could bristle at someone showing up from a problematic past, but Marina clearly doesn't hold to anything like that. She values the present the most, but she doesn't scorn the past.

And I think that's what I like about this Splatfest so much, and why it made me think about my choice for so long. Like Chaos vs. Order, (where they're careful to make clear that Pearl doesn't hate the status quo, and Marina doesn't necessarily want nothing to ever change), I feel they were careful to try and be clear that there isn't a definitive "correct" answer to this one. Callie herself points out at the start of her defense that all three of Past, Present, and Future are important, and I agree.

Splatoon as a series emphasizes living in the Present and not being afraid of a changing Future, but I believe it also values the Past. It loves to show where its characters and world came from to inform a little more about who they are today. (Just look at each member of Deep Cut getting a dedicated Sunken Sea Scroll about their family history!) I believe it takes a similar stance I do, that while your Past doesn't entirely define you (again, see Marina), it is nonetheless important - crucial even - to understanding who you are.

And someday, as you move onward through the present towards a brighter future, you'll look back at today - at the past - to see how far you've come.

So, uh, yeah. This cephalopod game makes me emotional and I love finding excuses to blab about it, so might as well get it in words before the actual Grand Fest starts.

If you read this whole thing, thank you so much, and whatever team you pick, I wish you the best!

[14muffinz]

Asking some writers/artists I follow:

Is there anything in your fic/comic that you as the author know about, but won't end up in the actual story?

oh for sure

i'll start with the TMNT stuff first because of your PFP, but we gonna be here a while.

[lab rats stuff at the bottom]

warning: fic spoilers galore

In WIBE, one of the characters we meet is Yuichi Usagi, who works at the human ROTM. He also works in the original ROTM. He was robbed while on a trip to the Hidden City, and is originally from a different city entirely. Hueso is doing his best to help him out, but it'll likely be a long time before Yuichi gets to go home.

Some other WIBE background characters in WIBE include: MM!Kendra, MM!Robyn O'Neil, MM!Irma, & MM!Casey Jones. I don't have a lot to say abt Kendra and Irma, since it's been a long time since I wrote any of it down, but I can give it my best shot with Robyn and Casey.

Robyn has been diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety disorder for a few years pre-fic. She's in her first year of college which is out-of-state, and does her best to check up on her family via phone call at least every other week. She's also sort of invested in all of April's new drama, but she won't admit it.

Casey's been playing hockey for as long as he can remember, and intends to keep at it for as long as he's physically able. He's also got a knack for engineering, and I'd gamble that sometime not long after the ending of WIBE, he'd start up the Casey Jones vigilante batshittery. His parents are divorced, but he spends most of his time with his Jewish mother, and while he's never been actually taught much about his religion he accepts it as a part of his identity, and if people don't like that then they shouldn't be around him in the first place. He finds the existence of the turtles to be one of the coolest things ever, but after actually getting to know Raph and the others, it doesn't impress him as much as it used to. (If I had time, I'd add in a tiny crush on Raph, but I'm an aro with WAY too many ideas for this tiny fic)

Then there's experienced fighters, where the main thing is me ALWAYS knowing what song is playing in the background. I really love how much music is in MM, and I love being able to say hey! here's the musical vibes of the environment!

sort of on that topic, i've got a hc that any song with even small references to space are songs that rise, 2k12, and MM leo are more likely to enjoy. they don't realize these patterns, but they sure are there.

and to end off the music rant, one of these days i'm gonna make a playlist of songs that I think the rise crew all collectively agree are good enough (this is what space feels like, goodie bag, punk tactics, etc. etc.)

there's also two in one, which is based off an au by @blackfire-fanfiction. I have to be real cautious abt what I put in there, because a lot of people are looking at it instead of the extended context of the real thing, not to mention how many Thoughts that aren't really canon I have about it. For instance: today I had a good 30 minute daydreaming session abt the concept of rise!Donnie reading leonardo's notebook while he's comatose post-rise movie and finding out about the switching

in dimension desync, I poke a bit at my head canons about peni parker's movie universe and her mental health at home, and have expanded on this even further in an abandoned draft. this is going to be LONG, so here we go: Gwen Stacy and Richard Parker were around in Peni's universe before she herself was, each piloting a mech of their own [Ven#m and Sp//DR]. A few months after Peni's mother is pregnant with her, Richard dies in action, and a few months later, Ven#m sort of devours Gwen (go read the comics because it's really fucked up but idk how to describe it) So then the role of SP//DR is forcefully thrust upon Peni at the age of eleven, and her connection with SP//DR isn't exactly... perfect.

in my team blue universe, I'm fleshing the hell out of Sam-13 and Shadowcat (both from earth 65). Sam was created by corrupt parts of SHIELD (that have yet to have been identified as corrupt) but now is just a regular agent. Cap returned to their dimension when he was 14 and has been in charge of training him ever since. Cap is stubborn to a fault and is def being manipulated by the corrupt agents, but none of the kids have gotten close to that bigger picture yet. Meanwhile, Kitty was inducted into the weapon x program (or 65's equivalent of it, I don't remember much of the wolverine origin story) at the age of 8, and despite odds survived. Wolverine took her in, and she's been helping him bounty hunt since about 13, even though he's trying to stop her.

team blue is also starting to extend to universes that the spider-verse movies don't really deal with through plants that have yet to be explained. but miguel's spite at e-199999 has definitely transferred, which means that, if they were ever to interact, not many of the main team would like the mcu-vengers

in my very obscure mech-x4 series, Olivia (who is only referenced by name once in the show) is veracity's little sister, who is 7 years old. This series is more of a set of vaguely connected oneshots, but still.

i could go ON AND ON about Oliver in all of my mighty med/lab rats fics, but in short: arcturion made his hair start growing in blonde, which he hates. Horace is his adopted dad and so it sucks ass when he dies. Oliver also comes with built in hypothermia! This is also definitely a headcanon, but I think that in EF once the rats have the upgraded chips, Chase's laser bō is green instead of blue, and his super senses are togglerable (to a degree) I also like to imagine Kaz's lil bro Kyle is his number one fan and nobody in his family listens to him when he claims that Kaz is one of the bionic guys on the news.

... yeah I think that's enough for now

[astrolotte]

Okay something I haven't seen mentioned before:

Is. Are. Are the og Octarians just... gone???

Because at the start of ROTM, Octavio tells us that his troops have gone missing, and we quickly figure out that the furry Octarians are the 'troops' he's talking about. And even later we find out that they've been turned fuzzy by Mr. Grizz.

I don't believe that they'd all just... work for Mr. Grizz willingly. Clearly they're under something similar to sanitization.

But they don't turn back after you defeat Grizz, or after you've completed all the levels.

Are their minds forever gone?

Did ALL of Octavio's troops go missing??

Because if BOTH of these are true, then that just straight up means that every Octarian who didn't make it onto the surface between Splatoon 1 and 3 is... gone. All essentially dead.

This is MORE than just a bunch of sanitized Octarians; it's implied that they're ALL fuzzified!! Which means that they're ALL gone!!!

And I doubt they can be brought back with Calamari Inkatation, since it plays during the final battle and none of the Octos that spawn seem affected.

I. I just. WHAT

DID THEY KILL OFF THE ENTIRETY OF THE OCTARIAN SOCIETY????