Fridge / Pikmin 4

Unmarked spoilers below.

---

Fridge Brilliance:

• Olimar's name is a reverse of Mario and Louie is a reference to Luigi. So, being a small bipedal animal mount, it's probably no coincidence that Oatchi sounds quite similar to Yoshi!
• Why do the captains' suits come with whistles? Now we know that Rescue Pups like Oatchi are a thing, it makes sense they were built with whistles to command them, and they just seemed perfectly serviceable to command Pikmin as a happy coincidence.
  • In addition, it could be that whistles are a safety requirement on most space suits, kind of like how life vests often come with an emergency whistle and light beacon for signalling and visibility (which would also explain the light-up antennae every character has on their helmet).
• White Pikmin and Purple Pikmin have Onions now, but those are found late-game and deep underground as rewards from Sage Leaf. It's possible these two went Onion-less for the past games due to the Onions being lost in a hidden, far-off cave the captains then never found and only someone like Sage Leaf who's been living on PNF-404 would know where to look.
• The Frosty Dwarf Bulborb is one of the few dwarves to be actual juvenile Bulborbs instead of Breadbug mimics. The reason lies in their ice powers, as the mimics are unable to actually mimic their frost abilities.
• The introduction of the Albino Dwarf Bulborb, the true juveniles the Breadbugs have been mimicking, finally answers why they have been absent since the first game: they're nocturnal and hide underground.
• The creatures' eyes all glow red at night: probably because, like real-life nocturnal animals, their eyes contain a reflective layer that helps them see in the dark.
• The Leaflings and leaf-tailed Oatchi being unable to leave the Distant Planet makes sense when you remember that the various alien races in the Pikmin universe don't get along with oxygen — it's known to be actively poisonous to Hocotatians and at best a suffocating displacement gas in high concentrations for Koppaites. Naturally, their spaceships' onboard air mix and their home atmospheres wouldn't have anywhere near enough oxygen for PNF-404's Oatchi to survive.
• The Cavern For a King is where the final boss is fought, being controlled by Louie, much like the Titan Dweevil in Dream Den back in Pikmin 2. The cave's name may be a direct reference to Louie's "King of Bugs" title from Pikmin 2.
• The Plasm Wraith does not make a return in this game despite 3 leaving off on a cliffhanger about it, as well as what caused the SS Drake to crash in the first place. However, this makes sense, as 4 takes place in an alternate timeline where Olimar failed to escape the planet during the events of the first game. This means the events of Pikmin 2 and Pikmin 3 never occurred in this continuity, thus Olimar never encountered the Plasm Wraith in the first place.
  • This is also why 4 primarily takes inspiration from the second game. With treasures, caves, and Louie, this game is essentially a re-telling of Pikmin 2 in the alternate timeline! Much like Pikmin 2, this game is a direct continuation from the events of the first game, just with a different outcome on Olimar's success in rebuilding his ship. The reason why there are little to no nods to Pikmin 3 is because the events of that game have not occurred yet.
  • As for why the timeline changed drastically because of Olimar failing to escape? Because Olimar's distress signal resulted in the President sending Louie to rescue him, meaning Louie wasn't put in charge of the Golden Pikpik Carrot shipment that he ate and caused the debt in Pikmin 2 and indirectly caused Olimar getting kidnapped by the Plasma Wraith in Pikmin 3.
• Olimar met and befriended a tired and hungry Moss by giving her a Scrummy Bone. Seems a little too convenient why he had dog treats on hand until you remember his family's dog Bulbie, making it likely Olimar purchased the treats for him prior to crashing on PNF-404.
• Why aren't the Glow Pikmin in the box art? It's a daytime scene and they can only appear at night.
• Olimar has logs for all the Pikmin types, except Glow Pikmin, which makes complete sense; even if Olimar likely ventured in caves offscreen to search and found the other types and couldn't find their Onions, the Glow Pikmin were discovered by the Rescue Corps and are nocturnal, which Olimar had no business venturing without the Onion or the Pikmin in such dangerous conditions.
• Why is Louie so much more villainous in this game than the previous two? Because Olimar and the Ship's AI were with him in previous adventures, so he wasn't able to go off and try anything while he was being watched. Since Olimar is out of the picture in this game, that leaves Louie completely free to do anything he wants without consequence. As for why he's so antagonistic to the Rescue Corps? Because there's so many plants and animals for him to eat on PNF-404; they're basically trying to forcibly take him away from an all-you-can-eat buffet.
  • Louie's villainy is actually hinted at in previous games: Back in the third game, Louie makes off with the Koppaites' juice. Granted, he did think he was kidnapped, but stealing their food supply was a low blow since he basically left them to die and didn't care. In the second game, he was the cause for the company's debt and lied to the President about it, then later attempted to kill him and Olimar with the Titan Dweevil. Louie was always a psychopath with a lack of empathy, he just didn't show it because Olimar and the Ship were watching him and giving orders. Since the two are out of the picture in the fourth game, do the math.
  • One can't help but wonder if Louie actually secretly dislikes Olimar, as this is the second time he's attempted to kill him, and he tried to abandon Olimar and save himself back in Pikmin 3 after the latter was captured by the Plasm Wraith. Since he was also so distrustful of the Koppaites and the Rescue Corps, it's possible he simply doesn't like or care about anyone besides himself.
    • Olimar mentioned that Louie advised against visiting the Formidable Oak, but he decided to not heed Louie's warnings. He likely didn't want Olimar to carelessly drag him into danger. Really, this entire section depends on Alternative Character Interpretation.
    • Or alternatively, this game being a rebooted timeline perfectly explains Louie’s antagonistic behavior. This is his first time on the PNF-404, and unlike Pikmin 2 where Olimar pretty much had to reign him in for the sake of repaying the debt alongside seeing the dark side of the planet with the dungeons, he’s on his own and only sees the PNF-404 for its food and fun treasures and none of the danger. It doesn't help that when Louie stays behind in Pikmin 2 he gets captured by a giant bug and used as a power source for it and in Pikmin 3 Louie is forced to go back to PNF-404 just to find more treasure only to lose Olimar, and later has to deal with the Koppaites. If this was Louie from Pikmin 2 and 3 he'd probably be more willing to work with the Rescue Corps just so he can go home.
• Why don't the Onions (apart from Red) activate in this game? It isn't just that they're dormant, but according to Olimar's notes in the Piklopedia, in order to activate an Onion, you need to give them a hard shake. Oatchi dragging the first Onion was likely bumpier than Pikmin carrying them, as the Pikmin have to go to the effort of lifting the Onion off the ground, and after the first one, Oatchi is probably more careful carrying the Onions, since the first one was thought to be just treasure instead of a living being. Oatchi dragging it was the "good shake" that the Onion needed, while the others did not get that shake because Oatchi and the Pikmin are more careful.
• The fact that Pikmin evolution is caused by the Onions copying traits of absorbed creatures explains a few things from the previous games:
  • Pikmin 3 had the Onions show a few traits of their Pikmin, such as the Pink Onion fluttering, or the Yellow Onion giving off sparks. With the reveal of Pikmin evolution, it makes sense that the Onions would show traits of their Pikmin, the Onions copied the abilities, so they likely took some that would be helpful for protection, such as better flying, electric shocks to deter predators, or being able to hide underwater.
  • It also explains why some Onions seem to be more common than the rest:
    • The Red, Yellow, and Blue Onions are more common than the rest, with Yellow and Blue getting two Onions each in Pikmin 4's main story, which makes sense. Animals that can swim and breathe underwater are not rare, so that's a quick evolutionary change to help the Pikmin prosper and to find more food for the Onion. Fire breathing predators or predators that are on fire are not the most common, but they are still pretty frequent in the Pikmin games, and because of how difficult they would be to defeat in real life, that is a quick and arguable necessary evolution for the Pikmin, as they were likely more common before red Pikmin evolved. While electric enemies are not that common, electric gates show up quite a bit, so that evolution makes sense.
    • The Rock and Winged Onions from Pikmin 3 have shown up less than the main trio but aren't quite that rare. Rock bodies would be a difficult evolution (perhaps the Rock Onions took part of the Armored Mawdad's shell or a Skutterchuck's rock), but there are a few enemies that are only feasible to defeat with Rock Pikmin, and Rock Pikmin themselves are difficult to defeat, as they're 1) strong and 2) resistant to impalement and crushing thanks to their rock coatings. It would take a while for the Onion to gather the necessary DNA from their prey, but it would happen eventually. As for Winged Pikmin, aerial predators are difficult for the Pikmin to attack on their own and are fairly rare, so it would take a lot of time before the Pikmin secured enough winged animals for the Onion to copy the gene for wings, as theorized in the Pikmin 4 Piklopedia. Because of these difficulties, it's possible that most Onions took other traits because other types of animals would be easier for the Pikmin to hunt.
    • The three Pikmin 4 exclusive Onions; Ice, White, and Purple being very rare also makes sense. Ice is uncommon in most of the locales the games up to this point take place in, primarily appearing in caves, while enemies with ice attacks are Pikmin 4 exclusives. The Ice Onion we see appears to be an Onion that got stuck in ice from the Heroes Hideaway fridge, so it's possible that the Onion was forced to copy the ice trait or be frozen itself. Such frigid locations may have also been the only way for the Onions to develop Ice Pikmin, since all the other ice elemental creatures seen cannot be taken out by regular Pikmin without being frozen and left vulnerable. For the White Onion, any poison would likely get rejected or filtered out by the Onion, lest it poison the Onion or its Pikmin. Thus a White Onion likely took a lot of time to evolve, possibly from natural selection instead of copying a trait from an absorbed organism. The Purple Pikmin traits are being strong, slow, heavy, and big, which would be difficult to copy as there is no species we've seen so far that shows these traits. Possible donors include the Empress and Emperor Bulblaxes, but those are mostly found underground, where Onions will not go. Even then, they're both highly dangerous creatures that the Pikmin cannot take on themselves. It is possible that due to their locations being underground, the Purple and White Onions were created by the Sage Leaf, or as Olimar suspects, these Onions are fully developed White/Purple Candypop Buds.
  • The Dandori Battle Onions do not send out Pikmin sprouts, instead releasing fully formed Pikmin that climb down the legs when given food. Considering the Red Dandori Onion is the Onion that we see creating Leaflings, the Dandori Onions might have lost the ability to develop Pikmin when they started making Leaflings. Instead, they give the Captains already made Pikmin after absorbing food, saving the energy for new Leaflings.
• Why does the Smoky Progg have a different scientific name than the Mamuta even though it's known to hatch from a Mamuta egg? Because it's so horribly mutated that it can't even be the same species anymore.
• Why is Louie so much of a formidable opponent in Dandori Battles compared to Olimar, despite the former being shown to be a careless and ineffectual leader in past games? Olimar has always been shown to take a scientific and strategic approach on things, and he still carries those values even as a Leafling; i.e. he plays fair and acknowledges the player's skill before admitting defeat. Louie, meanwhile, simply only wants the Rescue Corps and player character to leave him alone, and he's willing to go to any length to do so, so he blatantly cheats and has no problem in actively screwing over the player's strategy if it means getting the upper hand. It just goes to show that Louie can be surprisingly cunning and dangerous if he's pushed hard enough.
• Olimar's Shipwreck Tale contradicts a lot of things in his Voyage Log. He never enters the caves, for one, and only encounters the original three Pikmin colors. However, the game mode is in fact Olimar himself telling you what he went through before he sent out the distress signal to the Rescue Corps. He's likely omitting all the non-essential events for the sake of saving time.
  • There's also the question as to why he would enter the caves if the mode shows that all of his parts were on the surface. At least a few caves need to be entered in order to make it to other parts of the area (such as the Engulfed Castle), so Olimar likely wanted to be thorough in leaving no stone unturned on the off chance a part was underground.
• Glow Pikmin cannot be disbanded like regular Pikmin, as they will simply teleport back to you after a second. It may seem annoying, but the main reason you'd want to disband your squad is because you're dealing with hazards or enemies a specific type of Pikmin is needed for, of which Glow Pikmin are immune to all of them.
• Compared to the other Leaflings, Olimar as the Red Leafling displays high sentience enough that he can communicate with the Rescue Team and even remembers some of his former identity, while other Leaflings speak broken sentences and have no memories of their lives while being obsessed with Dandori. The disparity could be explained given the theory that the Pikmin are driven to make Leaflings in order to find a suitable host for a permanent leader figure.
  • Olimar already established himself as an ideal leader to the Pikmin during his initial stay on the planet with his proven skills at planning and leading thanks to his higher intelligence and critical thinking skills compared to the Pikmin. He got to keep most of his mind after being absorbed by the Onion following his second crash-landing, as it was like the Onion recognised he was the best candidate leader precisely because he was a sentient life form who was smarter and more independent than the Pikmin.
  • In contrast, the other survivors came from all sorts of backgrounds, several of which aren't exactly professions equipped for space exploration and extraterrestrial survival. Coupled with the fact many of them probably weren't on the planet for long or got familiar with the Pikmin, they would have made for poorer leaders to the Pikmin compared to the Red Leafling Olimar. It's likely this caused the transformation to make them into something closer to a standard Pikmin in nature, with simpler cognitive functions, including the obsession with Dandori that compels them to look up to someone who is efficient at directing and planning — i.e. a leader.
    • Also, if Leafling Olimar was already there acting as an effective leader to the Pikmin, it may have been that the Onion failed to convert anyone else in the same way it did him because there already was an established leader figure present. So it ended up treating the other converts more like it was propogating normal Pikmin, hence their more Pikmin-like behavior post-transformation.
• In regards to the theory raised that the Pikmin are compelled to make Leaflings to establish a permanent leader for themselves, it might also further explain why Red Leafling Olimar was compelled to make Leaflings out of other survivors outside of indirectly saving their lives. Leafling Olimar was probably the closest the Pikmin got to a perfect permanent leader, except for one flaw — he could never be their leader for good, because a tiny part of his former identity still retains the desire to go home and see his family. It's almost as if the Red Leafling or the Onions knew this was a risk, so perhaps he was also compelled to make more Leaflings in the chance that one of them would be a suitable permanent replacement.
  • This also adds to the idea that the Red Leafling's priorities were still aligned somewhat with Olimar's own even without his memories intact: The Pikmin want a permanent leader and to propogate their species for survival, Olimar wants to get back to his family, but also save lives — not just of the survivors, but the Pikmin too. The intersection of these needs would be to save the survivors' lives by converting them to Leaflings after their life support fails, which would give them a chance to live longer and survive on the planet until help arrived while also giving the Pikmin a potential leader candidate in the meantime. Perhaps there was even hope that one survivor might become like the Sage Leaf and choose to remain while Olimar can leave, thereby fulfilling both Olimar and the Pikmin's goals in the end.

Fridge Horror:

• Pikmin has always had an After the End vibe with PNF-404 basically being confirmed to be Earth. Yet now, we see the interior of a human house, fresh and clean and functional… yet no humans in sight. It's almost like they all just vanished very recently...
  • This is further confirmed by the Gift of Friendship treasure (an aged dog collar) from the Ancient Sirehound; it confirms that the Sirehound was someone's pet dog, meaning that they were still around with the Sirehound before vanishing and leaving the Sirehound to fend for itself. Both Schnauz and Olimar confirm that whoever gave that treasure to the Sirehound must have loved them, so what happened to them all?
  • The Sirehound notably is about the size of an actual Earth dog, but the blue fur, two legs, and lack of a nose highlights it is also an alien of the same or similar species as Oatchi and Moss.
• The final boss, the Ancient Sirehound, is terrifying at first, until you see the end credits showing it living happily with Moss and the Pikmin, its eyes now a friendly grey instead of a fearsome red. But then that raises a more unsettling thought: was the creature trying to kill you earlier because Louie was riding it? Was Louie actively, and maliciously, controlling it?
• What exactly drove Louie so insane that he'd rather stay on a planet he knows is a Death World than go home?
  • It could be possible he's simply just a psychopath on the more self-centered side, given his self-admitted Lack of Empathy for anything that isn't his grandma.
• The entry on the Bearded Amprat notes how "unique in the ecosystem" it is for how it "breastfeeds its young". Then you realize that the Amprat is a lone rodent among an ecosystem of birds, bugs, amphibians, and other indeterminate animals. If PNF-404 is really Earth in the future, it's a future where mammals are extinct save for one.
• At first glance, it'd be easy to assume that Glow Pikmin are simply another species of Pikmin like the others, and while that can certainly be seen as true when going by their appearance and behavior, the Piklopedia lists them as not belonging to the Pikmin family... or to any known family of creatures. It only further raises suspicion how they behave almost identically to Pikmin, yet produce a sap that removes Pikmin influence from other creatures... Just what are these things?
  • Raising even more questions are Louie's notes in the Piklopedia; while he won't eat any of the nine Pikmin types for a variety of reasons, his notes on the Glow Pikmin stand out above the rest:
  Louie: Doesn't smell alive.
  • And there's also the fact that Glow Pikmin, despite possibly being "ghosts", can still die.
• Since Olimar was turned into a Leafling in this game, that means the events of Pikmin 2 would play out very differently. Hocotate Freight would still be in debt since it occurred sometime during the events of the first game. Without Olimar coming back with the bottle cap he picked up from PNF-404, that means the President and Ship have no idea the planet even exists, meaning they have no way of paying off their debt. And considering the All Devouring Black Hole Loan Sharks threatened to kill the President if he didn't pay up...
  • More disturbingly, this may be why Louie is so unhinged in this game. Without the President, he obviously no longer has a job, meaning he has absolutely nothing to lose. No mention is made of any of this. Meaning the President was likely killed by debt collectors, and Louie doesn't care at all.
  • Imagine Olimar's reaction when he goes back home and suddenly realizes his boss and job are gone, and Louie is being awful quiet and unconcerned about it...
  • While it would play out differently, Hocotate Freight is currently not in debt and the President is fine, as Louie points out in his final log, he is waiting for an opportunity to have a delivery job regarding Golden Pikpik Carrots to devour them, meaning he has yet to do the failed delivery that caused the debt due to being derailed by being sent to PNF-404 to search for Olimar instead because of his distress call. Without even knowing it, Olimar potentially averted the financial disaster from even happening at the time it was supposed to. And due to Louie causing so much trouble with the Rescue Corps and outright going against what he was sent over to do, there is still a possibility that it can be prevented entirely.
• With Louie being sent by the President to rescue Olimar, and subsequently abandoning that duty, does that mean he left the Hocotate Ship behind somewhere on the planet?
• Seeing as how Yonny is the only scientist capable of synthesizing Glow Sap into a cure for Leaflings, the entire rescue expedition would likely have been doomed if he was also turned into one.
• The Smoky Progg is a being that is Made of Evil, instinctively kills/destroys anything it touches as it roams around the area, and perpetuates a substance known as Gloom. The Progg itself is only "born" because its egg was damaged, meaning it doesn't have a proper body anymore, and its under threat of deteriorating for good in the short moments it spends alive. In other words, this thing is essentially the Pikmin franchise's equivalent of Calamity Ganon. Good thing it's a helluva lot easier to kill...