Fridge / Splatoon 3

The series in general
Splatoon | Splatoon 2 | Splatoon 3

As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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Fridge Brilliance

• Given their somewhat more feminine body type, voice, and the fact that their name is generally feminine across both the original Japanese text and multiple European translations, it's likely that Shiver — whose involvement in dialogue and descriptions actively avoids using Gendered language — is an AFAB (Assigned Female At Birth) Non-Binary Octoling (or, with the ink-and-marine-life theme of the franchise, perhaps they're Gender-fluid?). In that case, their Sarashi might be not only to emphasize the traditional Japanese influence they bring to Deep Cut, but it may help them present more androgynously by doubling as a chest binder.
  • As it's later revealed that Shiver is female and uses female pronouns, her traditional Japanese aesthetic and Deep Cut's rather prominent Kabuki Theatre motif suggests that her androgynous appearance may instead be a reference to female roles in Kabuki being traditionally played by androgynous men.
• Mr. Grizz makes it clear he finds the whole Order Versus Chaos Splatfest to be completely pointless, saying he's more about the depths of the seas and saving the world. Come Splatoon 3, and it's revealed he's been exploring the world for centuries by himself, and does want to save the world — of mammals.
• Compared to the first two games, there are barely any Octoling enemies in Story Mode. But think about it: Since so many of the Octolings were exposed to the Calamari Inkantation during the first and second games, most of them have probably left to join Inkopolis!
• Captain 3 getting injured by "pulling a tentacle" prior to the final boss may seem like a bit of a weak excuse to justify them not partaking, but it has been about seven years since the events of the first game. It is possible that they're just starting to feel their age catch up to them to some degree.
  • Captain 3 is one of the only inklings who visibly has scars on their tentacles. If it's not age, then it's not a stretch to say that they may have been permanently injured sometime before Splatoon 3's story mode. It might explain their sudden promotion to 'Captain' between games, and why they're giving Agent 3 advice instead of helping out with the kettles.
  • It's not age. Captain 3 would probably be in their early 20's (since they were a teenager in Splatoon 1). On top of that, Captain Cuttlefish says that he's 130 years old in Splatoon 2, and while he's not fit for combat or other vigorous physical activities anymore, he still has enough life in him to be resuscitated after being drained dry by Mr. Grizz (which by all rights should have killed him). Bear in mind that the current record for human longevity is around 120 years, so it's likely that Inklings have longer lifespans and aren't hindered by aging as much as humans are. In short, there's no freaking way that Captain 3 is "getting too old for this shit".
  • A far simpler explanation is that they just pulled a (tentacular) muscle. All we see Captain 3 doing for "Return of the Mammalians" is sitting around next to Callie and Marie, with some implications of them being relegated to deskwork instead of field assignments. The only time they get up and do something is when they wield the weapon assembled from the treasures and cutting all the Ooze away... without any sign of limbering up and stretching. They go from zero to one hundred and then pull a muscle, because that's what happens when you try to do a physically strenuous activity without warming up your muscles beforehand.
• The redesigned Killer Wail used Fin Funnels.
• Seeing as they are both from around the same time period and he's not particularly bothered by his new state, Cap'n Cuttlefish getting stuck in squid form may be the Inkling equivalent of how DJ Octavio is now always in octopus form despite being an Octoling. What might have been a case of Body Horror at first glance might just be a natural phase for elderly cephalopod people.
• Big Man's Japanese name, Mantaro, is a combination of "manta" and tarou (太郎), a common Japanese first name which carries the meaning of "eldest son" but can be literally translated as "big man", meaning his English name may be a weird case of Recursive Translation.
• It should come as no surprise that Li'l Judd shows signs of being The Social Darwinist in his dialogue for Tableturf Battle; his entire role in Splatoon is to determine the losing side of a match, essentially separating the strong from the weak.
• Your partner Smallfry in Hero Mode is definitely smarter and tougher than the average Salmonid, as it's fully capable of interacting with mechanisms and taking on enemies on its own despite being no tougher than a regular one. Then you see it glow gold, however, and it all clicks: it's a juvenile Goldie, one of the more intelligent Salmonid variants.
• Deep Cut's logo is three squiggly lines in a circle forming a sort of "A" shape. At first, it might just seem like a reference to there being three band members, but considering that the theme of the game is chaos and anarchy, their logo might be based on the anarchy symbol, which is three lines in a circle forming an A.
• Of course this game gives the Salmonids some more spotlight: They were on the winning team in Final Fest!
• Mr. Grizz, the Big Bad of the story, was neutral during the Final Fest, and even though most of the characters who help Agent 3 fight him were or would likely be on Team Chaos (DJ Octavio, Callie, and possibly Deep Cut, Smallfry, and Agent 3 themselves), they're also helped by people who were on Team Order (Cap'n Cuttlefish, Captain 3, and Marie). In fact, considering that DJ Octavio and Callie were the only people assisting Agent 3 that we know for certain were on Team Chaos, Agent 3 got more help (that we know of) from Team Order. The message of Hero Mode seems to be that order and chaos are a balance and they can work together to achieve things.
• Another, more subtle instance of 3 symbolism: Alterna has a lot of 3D printed objects.
• The three cultures represented by Deep Cut's members (Shiver: Japan, Frye: India, Big Man: Brazil) are connected to each other through Japan. Buddhism started in India but is also commonly practiced in Japan, and Brazil has a lot of people of Japanese descent living there, being the highest concentration of Japanese people in the world, second only to Japan of course.
• Harmony is quite the odd character out: She's the first minor band member the player can actually interact with, her store is the only one (not counting the fish scale shop at Grizzco) that sells things that have no impact on battles whatsoever and the only one on the other side of the street, the only vendor with a smaller partner who A. doesn't sell headwear and B. doesn't have a named/talking partner, and, in this game themed around chaos, her name is that of a concept related to order.
• It might seem weird that Big Man, a manta ray, which can't use ink IRL, isn't just palling around with squid and octopi, but using ink himself. It's a Stealth Pun referring to the fact that "devilfish" is an archaic term for both manta rays and cephalopods.
• One of the items you can get for your locker is the case for a game called Octo Kong Country. Oddly, instead of the more standard Switch-like red the game uses on more modern game cases, it's an Xbox-like green. Kinda weird, but then you remember: Rare made the early Donkey Kong Country games and now Microsoft owns them.
• Big Man being the friendliest member of Deep Cut makes sense given that unlike octopi and squid, who are active hunters that don't form any symbiotic relationships, manta rays are filter feeders who form symbiotic relationships with remoras.
• It might take a while to notice, but the shapes the different Tableturf Battle cards produce are simplified representations of the weapons, characters, and items on them. So the Triple Inkstrike's three 2x2 squares represent each of the Inkstrikes' explosions, the Steelhead's special space is positioned where its weak spot would be on a real Steelhead, Callie and Marie are mirrored versions of each other, all the cards based on Special Weapons don't have any special spaces to represent how they use up special points in the actual Turf War mode, and so on.
• When he wins in Tableturf Battle, Sheldon says that he "doesn't get to battle much" and that "this is all he has." Naturally; he's a horseshoe crab, and those don't produce ink (well, unless whatever weird shenanigans let Big Man use ink are going on for him too).
• You would think that with the discovery of Grizz's true intentions, the likes of the New New Squidbeak Splatoon or Deep Cut would try to do something about Grizzco and the Salmon Runs. But one thing throws a wrench to that plan: Big Run is coming. With salmonids now more actively invading the cities of Inkopolis and Splatsville, the cities now more than ever need some form of defense against the oncoming hordes. Enter Grizzco, who has the perfect army of part timers at its disposal willing to do the job for minimal pay and the small chance to win a fancy hat in the capsule machine. With Grizzco providing such a valuable service, there is very little reason for any governments to want to put a stop to operations, as it has become a key defense for all of their cities, and makes taking the company down a complicated process that a bunch of idols/secret agents couldn't hope to achieve on their own.
  • Also, Mr. Grizz is (likely) dead and no longer the one running Grizzco, and even if he isn't, he's A. probably still in space and B. seems to have accepted that trying to bring back mammals is a dumb idea, so now Grizzco isn't producing Fuzzy Ooze anymore and thus there's even less reason for even the NNSS to try to shut it down. After all, if they see nothing wrong with recruiting kids to defend the city from invading Octarians, they'd probably be okay with recruiting kids to defend the city from invading Salmonids.
• During the Salmon Run loadout announcement of the Splatcast, it's possible to have Big Man comment that the salmonids don't generally go after him. While salmon are known to eat squid and octopus, manta rays are indeed not on their menu.
• Why isn't O.R.C.A. as sentient as Commander Tartar? It's made to record and manage information for the humans in Alterna while Commander Tartar was created to pass on knowledge to the dominant species of the planet. Of course, Commander Tartar would need to be able to reason and adapt so it could figure out how to pass on said knowledge while O.R.C.A. doesn't.
• The fact that all sealife is embedded with liquid crystals that change based on thoughts/thought patterns makes a lot of game mechanics and world features suddenly make sense. For example: the Calamari Inkantation. Everyone loves it in-game not only because it's a banger, but because it invokes happy and energetic feelings. Once even one person in a crowd feels that, those emotions are likely to spread to the rest of the crowd.
  • Related to this, the Octarians' reaction to the Calamari Inkantation makes more sense. They aren't just leaving for a life on the surface because they were awed by the music; it was the crystals inside them also subconsciously influencing them to desire to see the surface, just like the humans before them.
• Snatchers appear in every single wave type in Salmon Run but one: Tornado. Since they enter the map on flying machines to collect the eggs, the tornado winds make it impossible for them to perform their duties, as they'd likely get sucked in if they tried.
  • Similarly, Big Shots will never spawn on high tide waves, as the distance between the egg basket and the shoreline puts them out of their effective range. Their cannonballs would likely overshoot the basket entirely. This doesn't apply to Stingers and Flyfish, as their targets are whatever is furthest away from them rather than the basket.
• Splatoon's music is no stranger to adding in vocals to its music. Calamari Inkantation, Color Pulse, Anarchy Rainbow, just to name a few, have what sounds (presumably) like Inklings vocalizing and singing, which us humans can't really replicate. When you fight Mr. Grizz, his theme also has vocalization, but it sounds radically different to all the previous "singing", and with enough practice, anyone could nail down those vocals. It might sound odd initially, but when you remember Mr. Grizz is attempting to restore mammals as the dominant lifeform, his theme reflects that with what sounds like monkeys or possibly even humans backing him up.
• The Brain Strainer looks like the Aura Video Analyzer from Ghostbusters. Given that it's a Grizzco item, perhaps it has something to do with this Sunken Scroll◊, which has a poster with a Ghostbusters-like logo on the left?
  • In fact, a lot of Grizzco gear in this game seems to take after human pop culture: Aside from this, the Bream-Brim Cap and Lo-Vis Visor seem to be based on Back to the Future, the Astro Helm and Astro Wear resemble the helmets and uniforms the X-Wing pilots in Star Wars wear, the Commander Cap and Commander Tunic resemble Imperial clothes from the same series, the Five-Alarm Helmet could be seen as referencing Ned's Five-Alarm Chili from The Simpsons, the See-An-Enemy HUD resembles both the Scouters from Dragon Ball and the similar eyepieces worn by the characters in the Star Fox series, the Retro Future Suit and Helmet are obviously based on TRON, the 3D Glasses resemble the ones worn by the Tenth Doctor, the Trevally Derby Rollers resemble the skates from Rollerball, the Hacker Jacket resembles Data's jacket from The Goonies and to a lesser extent Futaba's clothes from Persona 5, and the 360 All-Scopes and Deep Sinker Helm don't seem to be based on any specific pop-cultural gear in particular, but the former's name comes from a human meme and the Inklings/Octolings, who'd either dissolve in water no matter what or could just use their gills to breathe underwater, would have no practical need for the latter. Perhaps the gear being based on human, i.e. mammalian, pop culture reflects Mr. Grizz's desire to bring back mammalian life.
• It's pretty hard for the leading team to win Tricolor Turf War battles, isn't it? Perhaps that's playing into the game's theme of chaos and anarchy: After all, anarchy comes about when leaders are overwhelmed and can't stay in control.
• It's pretty subtle, but Big Man seems to be the Lightning in Deep Cut's Fire, Ice, Lightning trio:
  • He's a manta ray with a hammerhead shark-like headdress, and cartilaginous fish like rays and sharks have an electromagnetic sense. The hammerhead shark specifically makes sense because it's thought that their head shape evolved to amplify that sense.
  • It's said that he does most of the instrumentals (mostly synths, drum machines, and other electric instruments) for Deep Cut's songs.
  • His boss fight is based on Phantamanta's, and in the original game, it was made of electrically-charged paint.
• It might seem like Gameplay and Story Segregation that Deep Cut waves to the player even during their rivalry in story mode. But keep in mind they didn't recognize Agents 1 and 2 as Callie and Marie until the very end of the campaign despite the duo's Paper Thin Disguises. It's entirely possible that they simply don't recognize Agent 3 outside the Hero Suit until the end.
• When Big Run debuted on Wahoo World, fans were quick to take notice that four nighttime rounds were missing: Goldie Hunt, Giant Tornado, Cohock Assault, and Mudmouths. Looking closely, it's pretty easy to understand why none of them show up.
  • With the Salmonids already spawning out of gushers for the most part, Goldie Hunt would pretty much be redundant.
  • Giant Tornado and Cohock Assault could only take place on the Low Tide sections of the map, which Wahoo World doesn't have.
  • Finally, Mudmouths are stated to be Salmonids that got stuck in pipes and don't move when they appear. If they showed up, they would be blocking the gushers from spawning other Salmonids.
  • Undertow Spillway, alongside lacking the previously mentioned Occurences, is also missing Grillers. The reasoning is due to the layout of the map, as there are several narrow pathways the Salmonids need to take from their spawnpoints that the Grillers can't go through. They likely realized this ahead of time and decided to not bring Grillers for the area.
• Why are most of the Crab-N-Go's dishes crab or fish-based? Crabs and fish are the natural prey of squids.
• It's said that Salmonids become more violent due to gravitational shifts in Earth's orbit. Maybe that's why the stages flood during Big Run – after all, the tides are linked to the gravity of the sun and moon (particularly the latter).
• The entrances to the gear shops are visually appropriate. The Headwear shop is located above the plaza, the Clothing shop is on the same floor as the street, and if you look closely in the doorway of the Footwear shop, you see descending stairs.
• The Big Run on Inkblot Art Academy features an unusual intro. Instead of the Grizzco chopper circling the stage, both in the intro and during the rest of the shift, it arrives from the unflooded side of the map and stays there the entire time. The reason is the location. The other Salmon Run stages (and previous Big Run stage Wahoo World) take place in open areas with plenty of space for the chopper to fly around, letting the workers arrive and exit from any area. Inkblot Art Academy is in the middle of a large complex of buildings, giving little place for the chopper to fly around and funneling them to one entry and exit point.
  • Undertow Spillway features the same style, and for more or less the same reason. In this case, the chopper is coming in through one of the holes in the ceiling, and needs to stay near it in order to exit.
  • Barnacle and Dime features a similar approach to Undertow Spillway. Only, due to the stage being inside of a building, someone had to blow up a massive hole in the roof.
  • Again in Eeltail Alley, with a similar reasoning to Inkblot that the buildings leave little room for the chopper to move around.
• Why do the prizes that you can buy for scales from Grizzco include 3-D printed models of the Salmonids? Becuase Mr.Grizz spends the story in Alterna so he would have access to their 3-D printers.
• During the reveal video for the song "Big Betrayal," the comments of each member of Deep Cut play off the then-most-recent Splatfest; Frye describes Big Man's stunt as thoughtless and careless, no doubt worried about their fame and reputation suffering, Shiver cares mostly about the money she could have earned from it, and Big Man says he did it to help artists from Inkopolis and Splatsville get along, sharing the love with everyone.
• During the battle against Shiver riding on top of Master Mega, one of its weaknesses is to Feed It a Bomb, which becomes more hilarious and fitting when you realise that Master Mega is Shiver's souped-up version of a Reefslider; a ridable shark wearing a muzzle, which Master Mega isn't wearing and which would've removed that weakness from the start if he was.
• As mentioned on Splatoon 2, Marina is a big fan of DJ Octavio's, and shares her preferred instrument, the DJ table, with him. In Side Order, Marina and Acht offhandedly mention that Marina used to work under Octavio's command directly. It's very likely that she would have either done maintenance on his DJ table and sets or seen Octavio work on it from up close, leading to her picking up how to play music and run a show from there.
  • Completing Side Order fully gives letters from Acht to Marina, of which one notes that Marina was hired to be part of an Octavio unit, which further cements this.
• The color chips in Side Order are stated in one of the Dev Diary entries to be amalgamations of the Mem Cakes recovered from the Kamabo Corporation, in an attempt to allow the memories to reintegrate with their original owner. The Spectrum chips obtained in the Overlorder fight, the unambiguously strongest color chips you obtain in a run, are revealed in the collection to be formed from the thoughts of everyone Order pulled into the Memverse... as in, everyone with a sea cucumber phone. In a way, you really are "everywhere at once,"^note Mobility Spectrum and the whole world really does "have your back."^note Support Spectrum
  • Not only that, but it doesn't matter if you're using the Color Wail or choosing to take out the final phase all by yourself - both options uses the full spectrum of chips, and "anything is possible"^note Drone Spectrum with them.
• Each of the palettes has a most common tone and second most common tone, befitting the characters they're based on.
  • Pearl's most common tone is Lucky. Many of her dialogue lines show her to be reckless and gung ho, not caring much for strategy and simply letting things happen. Her second common tone, Support, can be viewed in two ways. One is how she works as Pearl Drone, being a Support Party Member to Eight who helps however she can. In another way, however, it reflects how she's a supportive rock to Marina, having helped her acclimate to Inkopolis in her time of need, and continuing to extend a helping hand like that to others like Eight.
  • Marina's most common tone being chips to power up Pearl should be obvious. However, her second most common tone is Power. As an Octoling who was formerly in the military, power was likely something Marina was taught to value.
  • Callie's most common tones are Power and Lucky. These fit her energetic disposition similar to Pearl's, but with more emphasis on facing things up-close and head-on with a melee-oriented Roller.
  • Marie's most common tones are Support, which fits her being in the back-of-the-bunch Mission Control in every Hero Mode; and Range, which fits her affinity with the long-range Chargers.
  • Shiver's most common tone is Mobility. She spends most of her boss fight moving around with her Master. Range, of course, benefits the long-range Stringer.
  • Frye's most common tone is Lucky, reflecting her relatively cheerful and reckless personality. Her second common tone, Drone, likely represents her eels, who support her in her boss fight like Pearl Drone does with the player.
  • Big Man's most common tone is Support. He seems avoidant of direct conflict even in his boss battle in the main storyline, so of course he would prefer to offer support instead of direct power. His second most common tone is Drone. Big Man uses synths, drum machines, and other electric instruments for Deep Cut's songs, so he would likely have an affinity for a drone anyway. Futhermore, when you get his palette, Pearl mentions knowing about a specific professional alias Big Man uses that doesn't appear to be anything close to common knowledge judging by Marina's reaction, suggesting Pearl may actually be somewhat close to him, at least professionally.
  • Sheldon's most common tone is Mobility, likely representing his Motor Mouth tendencies. Lucky seems odd at first, but outside of the Drone Chips, Lucky chips aren't more or less useful to certain weapons, instead rewarding you for splatting enemies, and therefore being useful to any weapon. As a strategist and weapon lover, Sheldon would value a chip that would benefit every weapon no matter what.
  • Murch's most common tone is Range. The services he provides cover a wide range of skills, from re-rolling or scrubbing sub-slots to obtaining rare gear for you. His second tone, Power, encapsulates what he does for you, the player. He makes you stronger by allowing you to optimize your gear with the abilities you want.
  • Octavio's most common tone is Drone. As an Octarian, of course he would share an affinity for technology. His second tone, Support, reflects his role as the leader of the Octarians. They all rely on him to lead them forward after all, and most of his assaults against Inklings are expressly to acquire Zapfish for his people to prosper like the Inklings do.
  • Agent 4 and Eight both share Mobility as a secondary Common Tone. The single player campaigns have always been primarily platforming adventure, making Agent 4 incredibly athletic and quick on their feet, and Agent Eight spent Octo Expansion moving around various stations (and their deathtrap obstacle courses) in the Deepsea Metro. For their respective main Common Tones, Agent 4 gets Range, representing their ability to master every weapon in their campaign, while Eight gets power, being an ex-soldier like Marina who likely had strength drilled into them as something of value.
• The Range tone's last sub-category and Mobility's latter two don't actually increase the distance that you attack and paint, or make you move around better. You'd wonder why Rush Attack, Squid Attack, and Main Piercing don't have the Power tone. This is because those chips synergize with other ones of the same tone, like how Rush Attack and Moving Ink Speed combined let you mow through enemies with a roller or brush much better, or allows you to paint ground through enemies in Main Piercing's case.
• Despite defeating Order, the only change the Order Sector has is a bright blue sky, otherwise remaining as colorless as it was before. You would think its defeat would recolor the world after that, but reading Marina's Dev Diaries makes it clear that the Memverse is still technically in beta. She, Pearl and Eight were simply taking a trial run with Eight as a test subject. In all likelihood Marina simply hadn't gotten around to putting in color and texture maps for the Order Sector, leaving the whole place untextured and colorless.
• Outside of their lack of combat capabilities, there's another reason why Acht managed to suffer an injury against the Jelletons in the Foyer. Eight receives all of their weapons from Pearl Drone, who materializes them in their hands at the start of every floor. Since Acht didn't have a Pearl of their own, they were forced to go in weaponless and almost all of the Jelletons are melee combatants.
• Visible inside the clear plastic crates that you can see everywhere in the Spire are tons of figurines of what appear to be children's toys, and as you ascend, they go through a process that dips the crates through the Jelleton ink in order to darken them. They're Octarian kids toys to be precise, as seen by the occasional children's book depicting Octotroopers and Rival Octoling action figures. As you read Marina's Dev Diary, it quickly becomes clear that these are childhood memories of the Octarian victims of Kamabo Co being extracted from the mem cakes, and they're being prioritized by Order for the grayscaliing process in order to capitalize on the nostalgia for the old times from the Octarians in order to make Order's plan easier. Because who hasn't felt the desire for childhood to never end.
• Unlike any Salmon Run stage, regular or Big Run version, Eeltail Alley has no water to speak of in the level due to being too far above sea level to be affected by the tides. It makes the tide changes seemingly only exist to place you in different areas of the map for variety's sake... except that each basket area is designed to imitate the feel of the tide level it's a part of:
  • High Tide places you at the back of the alley, closest to where all the buildings are. The gusher spawners are placed in a way where the Salmonid spawns block you from getting to the other side once they start coming out, resulting in the area leaving you with less room to move around like most High Tides.
  • Mid Tide places you in the center, with the gushers more scattered around to have them come at you from multiple angels, while giving you a decently sized battlefield with room to move around to fight them in.
  • Low Tide is at the end of Eeltail Alley, right in view of the ocean. The Salmonids spawn all the way in the back of the area with you having clear view of their approach, while still having the rest of the alley open behind you as an escape option in case things get overwhelming.
• To transition to the final phase of the Overseer fight, the player presses ZR to a rhythm that has color effects that match Off the Hook's. It's also very nearly the correct rhythm to perform CPR. You're resuscitating Agent 8 to a Color Pulse.
• Each of the Color Chips in "Side Order" have patterns to distinguish themselves from each other, which fit their types:
  • Power Chips are red with spiky triangle shapes, to show that they increase weapon power.
  • Support Chips have curves that form gentle loops, and their purple mixing between red and blue fits their defensive aids to your direct attacks.
  • Range Chips are orange with a swirling pattern that resembles a crosshair or an expanding area.
  • Mobility Chips are blue-ish with flowing lines, reminiscent of Speed Stripes and liquid waves (like ink to swim in).
  • Lucky Chips are yellow chips that resemble a gold sheen with four faint circles in a Four-Leaf Clover shape.
  • Drone Chips are green with straight angular lines that look like a circuit board, fitting as they're meant to upgrade the Pearl Drone. The teal also fits said character's bond with Marina.

Fridge Horror

• The Great Zapfish getting stolen for the third time was probably to be expected, but the horror comes in when you remember the considerable distance between Splatsville and Inkopolis based on the official map. While the Great Zapfish is rescued, it isn't brought back to Inkopolis. What are they doing for power?
  • It's possible that there are several Great Zapfish and each major city has their own. Alternatively, you can rarely see the Great Zapfish fly around in Splatoon 2, so it might just be that it wanders around and visits Inkopolis when it's needed when the player isn't looking.
  • Evidence from Splatoon 3's DLC shows that each main hub has its own Great Zapfish, as only the Splatlands one has the hair starting to grow after being rescued.
• Is Mr. Grizz actually aware of what his plan would achieve? He says he wants to restore the mammalians as the dominant species, but look at what happens any time you touch the Fuzzy Ooze — you're immediately engulfed and then spat back out as a barely mobile, fuzzy blob with arms and legs, with only your eyes being visible in the fluff. And the It's a Wonderful Failure scene in the final battle should you run out of time shows numerous residents of Splatsville suffering a similar fate. It's very likely that for all his relatable intentions, he either has no clue what fuzz-ifying the world would achieve, or knows exactly what would happen and still wanted to go through with it anyway. Either way, it's heavily implied that he would have effectively signed the death warrant of all life on earth in a misguided attempt to return a long-dead species to glory.
  • Coming back to that game over cutscene: Just watch how damn fast the Fuzzy Ooze surges over the globe soon after Mr. Grizz makes contact. It looks like half the world is engulfed in the span of seconds. That would have very likely caused even more disasters from the sudden manifestation of massive, hair-coated goop displacing so much land and water. Even if people weren't forcibly turned into fuzzy blobs, it still would have likely ravaged the world just by the Inferred Holocaust that inevitably follows.
• Mr. Grizz decided to go through with his plan because there weren't any more mammals in the world… Thing is, though, there ARE. Even if we don't count Judd and Li'l Judd (and assuming, Li'l Judd doesn't have a biological mom somewhere (you need egg cells to make clones after all)), Marina mentioned in the lead-up to the Unicorn vs. Narwhal Splatfest in 2 that her landlord is a narwhal. A type of whale... i.e. a type of mammal. Either Mr. Grizz didn't look very hard, he didn't know that whales are mammals, or he doesn't count aquatic mammals as mammals for some reason. Whatever the reason, this plan was COMPLETELY AVOIDABLE, though who's to say he wouldn't go through with it anyway, either because he'd dislike mammals being a minority or just For the Evulz?
• Big Run becomes a bit more terrifying when you recall the fact that Grizzco actively invades Salmonid territory in order to gather Golden Eggs. By the time of Splatoon 3, this has been going on for at least five years. And what happens in Big Run again? That's right, the Salmonids invade your territory. It's clear that they've had enough of you invading their turf, killing their kind by the hundreds and stealing their eggs, and they're more than ready to return the favor.
• As is revealed in Return of the Mammalians, Fuzzy Ooze requires Golden Eggs to be made. Golden Eggs are also heavily implied (from the skeletal embryos swimming inside) to contain the Salmonids' children. Mr. Grizz is literally making the ooze out of Salmonid babies!
• There's no way Inklings and Octolings as a whole would survive becoming mammals:
  • Mammalian organs like bones and lungs would horribly weigh them down; they already run slowly enough to begin with.
  • Most warm-blooded creatures gain more of their energy via food than cold-blooded ones; they would have to eat way more frequently to survive.
  • Mammals cannot squeeze through tiny spaces, regrow limbs, or safely super jump.
  • Imagine female Inklings and Octolings going through the pain of giving live birth. They're believed to lay eggs, because they only look and think like humans.
  • Worst of all, germs can survive within warm-blooded animals' constant temperatures, and cephalopods lack the right immune systems to fight them with.
• If you let Mr. Grizz mammalify the world, you and Octavio are the only safe cephalopods (assuming you weren't splatted!). Callie, Marie, Captain 3, Cuttlefish, Frye, and Shiver are still at Earth's surface — their identities blotted out just for the sake of restoring mammals.
  • Although they're still in Alterna, so it's possible they survived Hairmageddon underground... which, assuming the dome holds, means they are trapped down there with the fuzzy Octarians for the rest of their lives.
• It's implied that Li'l Judd, another mammal, is running Grizzco now. Who's to say he doesn't want to continue Mr. Grizz's plans to turn the evolved sea creatures into mammals?
• The new Salmon Run stages show a worrying pattern. The stages of Splatoon 2 largely appear to take place near Inkopolis, in the edges of Salmonid territory. The ones introduced in this game, however, are an advanced Salmonid base (Sockeye Station), a power plant seemingly inhabited by them (Gone Fission Hydroplant), a concert venue they built (Jammin' Salmon Station), and eventually looking to near the thick of their home civilization (Bonerattle Arena). With each stage, Grizzco is going further and further into the Salmonids' homes, meaning the Inklings and Octolings that work for the company are outright invading the Salmonids. No wonder Big Run's have been so intense.
• When you finally think you've beaten Overlorder, the form Order takes during the boss fight on the top floor, they reveal that their plan is all but complete, and they execute the last step of said plan.
  • If not for Agent 8's vibe with Off the Hook allowing them to recover enough to resist the greyscaling, it would had been completed and Order would had gotten the world of order it wanted both in the Memverse and in the real world!
  • What would have specifically happened to the cities' inhabitants if Order achieved what it thought was best? It said it wanted to turn them all into memory, undoing how Marina wanted the Sanitized Octolings to recover. Considering how its Greyscaling seems to make everything stop moving altogether, this interpretation of Order, in conjunction with making cephalopod-kind stop thinking, could have been a de facto Cessation of Existence for them.

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