Splatoon | Splatoon 2 | Splatoon 3
- Defunct Online Video Games: With the termination of the Wii U's online services on April 8, 2024, it is no longer possible to play the original Splatoon's online modes.
- Demand Overload: The game proved so popular in Japan that physical copies completely sold out within the first two days of release, prompting Nintendo to issue an apology
for both the shortage of game discs and Splatoon amiibo. - Development Gag:
- Urchin Underpass has a poster of a Blooper in a far off corner. Early in development, it was suggested to make the game a Spin-Off of the Mario series if the team was unable to come up with unique characters of their own.
- The squid featured on the "Squid Beatz" cover resembles early concepts for the Inklings.
- According to a developer interview, Judd is the only holdover from Splatoon's early land-animal-themed development phases, where the game would have starred rabbits instead of squid.
- Dueling Dubs: The American English translation for a lot of the Squid Sisters' dialogue can differ enough between the European/Japanese versions that they occasionally contradict each other:
- In the British version, Marie still has her old worker's outfit from Walleye Warehouse. In the American version, she burned said outfit.
- The French version has Callie prefer sausages and Marie prefer marshmallows, the exact opposite of their opinions in the third American Splatfest.
- Marie's hot dog shtick is completely absent overall in the British version, as she seems fine chowing down marshmallows. In fact, both her and Callie are seemingly obsessed with potato chips (or french fries in American English), which are mentioned exactly once in the American script, instead. Marie originally loved marshmallows in the American English version, however due to the Hot Dog vs. Marshmallow Splatfest that has since been retconned.
- Dueling Works: With Sunset Overdrive, the other wacky, colorful, Real Is Brown-averting third-person shooter that released around the same time, which was also a console exclusive (Xbox One) — albeit one with a single player focus rather than Splatoon's mutliplayer one. Both games received solid review scores, but Splatoon eventually sold four times as many copies as Sunset Overdrive despite being on a console with a much smaller install base, and started a franchise that is now a Killer App for Nintendo systems. In contrast, Sunset Overdrive saw little discussion in the years since its release and remains a standalone game despite the Sequel Hook in the game's ending.
- Easter Egg: The two statues in the Museum d'Alfonsino can be heard faintly laughing at night. This is now only accessible by hacking into the game, as Splatfests ended after July 2016.
- Flip-Flop of God:
- Despite originally stating that major content updates would end on January 2016, the producer of the game went on record at an official Splatoon tournament that more new content was a possibility in the future due to its success. Indeed, a March 2016 Nintendo Direct revealed that further updates would be coming in the form of Sheldon's Picks: alternate kits for several of the game's weapons. They released in two volumes, consisting of eight and nine weapon loadouts (respectively), in April and June of that year.
- Yusuke Amano, a director on the first two games, originally said that Splatoon would never feature voice chat because his experience with online shooters featured people constantly hurling verbal abuse and obscenities at each other. While this would be the case for the first game, Splatoon 2 would soften this stance via a smartphone app.
- Despite originally stating that major content updates would end on January 2016, the producer of the game
- Meme Acknowledgment: Nintendo recognized the amount of Memetic Mutation the game generated on its Miiverse community, and actually put an album of various Miiverse posts on their Facebook page.
- Official Fan-Submitted Content: A contest was ran in Famitsu that asked for outfit designs to be added into Splatoon. The winning submission◊ was added to the game as the Traditional Headband, Apron and Sandals.
- Pre-Order Bonus:
- In North America, Gamestop purchases included Inkling-themed Mii Fighter costumes for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, and Target preorders came with a toy water gun based on the Splattershot. Preorders at EB Games in Canada included a special double-sided poster.
- Europeans who preordered from GAME got a beanie resembling a orange female Inkling's hair, and preorders at Gamestop granted a T-shirt.
- Preordering from Amazon Japan netted you a sticker sheet.
- Preordering on the Nintendo eShop provided an extra costume for use in the pre-release "Testfire".
- Promoted Fanboy: After uploading several pieces of fanart during the game's development to his Twitter account, while also showing interest in a crossover of some kind, creator of the manga Squid Girl Masahiro Anbe became the illustrator of an official crossover◊ between both works, promoted with crossover artwork from both sides; and complete with a Ika Musume-themed outfit for August 2015's update.
- Sleeper Hit: The game was advertised a bit during E3 2014, but didn't garner a lot of interest and faith until the several Testfires and commercials massively boosted its presence. Before the end of its first month, it managed to sell 1 million copies worldwide; this was a greater shock in Japan, where shooter games don't prosper anywhere near as well as they do in Western markets. Also keep in mind the game was both exclusive to a struggling console and had yet to receive any content updates at that point. After a year, it had sold well over 4 million copies, with 1.36 million sold in Japan alone: enough to make it the most successful new console IP in that region since Wii Sports.
- Urban Legend of Zelda: Playable Octolings getting added in a later update were a common source of rumors. The most popular being that they were coming out in October 2015 — either by themselves or as part of an Octoling-focused DLC campaign — due to the pun potential and the fact that Japan was running a literal "squid vs. octopus sushi" Splatfest at that time (even the Japanese SplatNet had an "Octo" theme during that Splatfest), but nothing came of it. And by October 2016, fans had become aware that development was now being done on either a port or a sequel, later revealed to be Splatoon 2, killing the dream of playable Octolings in the first game entirely. A lot of this stemmed from the fact that a playable model for Octolings does exist in the game's code, with dataminers finding that they even got patch updates throughout the game's year-long update cycle to add things such as mouth animations. The only aspect of the game that this Octoling model wasn't rigged to work with was headgear; everything else was present and seemingly ready to go, including an unused octopus version of the Kraken special. Players can still use third-party modification tools to play as them, but Nintendo, to this day, is extremely aggressive about nuking your account if you are detected with such a mod online.
- What Could Have Been:
- Splatoon went through several different main characters during development before creating the Inklings. After the initial prototype used black and white cubes that the dev team jokingly referred to as tofu, they considered human characters as the protagonists. However, the team didn't like the idea of generic people and soon settled upon anthropomorphic rabbits that burrowed into ink, with their ears serving as position indicators. While the Splatoon team liked the rabbits, this got a muted response from others around the company. After Shigeru Miyamoto went as far as suggesting they could turn it into a Super Mario Bros.-spinoff as a last resort if they couldn't think of anything else, the team took a fresh look at all the game mechanics they wanted to implement and eventually realized humanoid squids would be the best option. Even then, they were more like Funny Animal squids before they settled on characters that had distinct squid and human forms, mere months before the series' E3 2014 reveal trailer.
- The game's E3 2014 reveal trailer and game demonstrations have this in shades, being created using early builds of the game that the producers would state in several interviews was only "10% done." The most notable changes include:
- The trailer showcased early versions of Urchin Underpass, Walleye Warehouse, Arowana Mall, and Saltspray Rig (with the demo taking place on an early version of Urchin Underpass). The latter three stages saw the heaviest alterations in the final product: Walleye had a series of three moving platforms in the center instead of a single tower of crate; Arowana Mall was much less vertical, with several small ramps; and Saltspray only shares the general layout, with the central zone at the top of the stage being the only thing to go mostly unchanged. The trailer ended by showcasing a different version of the Inkstrike special, boasting a larger and spherical blast effect instead of the relatively focused vortex of ink it became by the release.
- Players were given a weapon kit consisting of the Splattershot as a main weapon, Splat Bombs as a sub weapon, and the Inkzooka as a special weapon. At this stage of development, the Splattershot was known as the "Ink Shot" and Splat Bombs were "Splatter Bombs". The Inkzooka was just called a "Super Weapon", with the UI lacking any icon for the weapon; instead only showing the right control stick when it could be activate, as well as not showing which button to use to fire the special. The Splattershot and Inkzooka each have slightly different appearances to that of the final game, where the Splattershot would have Burst Bombs as a sub-weapon instead.
- There were originally two rounds per match instead of one. In addition, the final results screen did not divide players by team into two separate leaderboards, instead showing all participants on a single leaderboard.
- The version of "Splattack" in particular used different vocals and began with the chorus, with this version of the song later released as a bonus track on the OST. The one-minute left music was entirely different to the song "Now or Never" that is featured in the final version.
- The + Control Pad only had one signal (simply called "signal") rather than the two that are present in the final game.
- The game displays points telling the player how much turf was covered by the explosion of an opponent that was defeated. This would be removed in the final game, likely to prevent the appearance that you received them for splatting opponents in and of itself.
- The intro animation to the match was slower, more clearly showing the player's transformation from squid to kid.
- The November 2014 Nintendo Direct shows early versions of other stages, plus single-player elements. Blackbelly Skatepark had a multitude of stairs instead of ramps and ledges, while Camp Triggerfish lacks most of the walls seen in the final game. Players would have had five lives instead of three in Octo Valley missions, Octolings wore different heavily armored legwear, and there's an entire enemy type that doesn't appear in the final release.
- An interview with Famitsu on July 2015 revealed that the Squid Sisters were at first going to be called "Shrine Maidens", and their role was to transmit divine messages from heaven to the populace, with said messages coming from a fax machine. This last element is still present in all of the games, with Splatfest themes coming from a fax machine decorated like a shrine. The fax machine was also meant to have a greater role in the news during that stage of development.
- The same article reveals that the heavy emphasis on the Inkling Girl in promotional materials, which would continue for all future games in the series, was partly the result of the devs wanting to add another female lead character to Nintendo's roster, to the point where they seriously considered making Inklings an all-female race.
- The article also reveals that DJ Octavio was going to be a wasabi chef, rather than, well, a disc jockey. Elements of this remain in the final games, as he scratches his records using the plants.
- The game files reveal plenty of Dummied Out gear that are either slightly different from their final forms, or go unused entirely. Of note is the "Warrior Headdress", a Native American war bonnet that was likely cut due to Values Dissonance but is still visible in the background of "Cooler Heads", as well as a layered shirt resembling the White Tee with a ink-colored squid sticker that appeared in the Global Testfire demo, but not in the final release. Super Mario Maker has over dozens of rendered menu icons for the game's clothing as well as, in addition to early versions of weapons, subweapons, and special weapons.
- A retraux 2D platformer Mini-Game was shown off in the Hero Mode trailer, but it is unclear if this was meant to be an actual arcade minigame that was cut from the final game or a special animation made specifically for the trailer is unclear.
- Dataminers were able to uncover alternate Squid Sisters dialogue that would have been used if the other team had won from almost every North American Splatfest from "Art vs. Science" onwards.
- Krakens were originally named "King Squids", Seekers were "Bomb Chasers", and Echolators were "All Markings".
- "The Art of Splatoon" shows off many early designs for the game's cast. Some of these are fairly minor changes (like Spyke wearing a leather jacket instead of his signature poncho, or the Hero Suit looking more like sportswear), while some are more drastic (like these early iterations of Cap'n Cuttlefish◊ that depict him as being noticeably more haggard and lanky).
- Splatoon went through several different main characters during development
