Video Game / Splatoon 2

Spoilers from Splatoon are left unmarked.

Inking back, and with a vengeance!

"Y'all know what time it is!"

Splatoon 2 is the direct sequel to the Third-Person Shooter Splatoon. After being teased at the end of the Nintendo Switch reveal trailer, the game was officially revealed months later during the January 2017 Nintendo Switch Presentation. A Global Testfire demo was held the weekend of March 24-26, 2017, while an early Splatfest was held July 15, 2017. The game was released worldwide on July 21, 2017.

Two years ago, the Great Zapfish was recovered from the Octarians. Their army's attempt to attack Inkopolis under the leadership of DJ Octavio was stopped by a single Inkling, before the public was even aware of anything being amiss...

Oh, and Team Marie won the final Splatfest.

Since then, the major hub of activity in Inkopolis has moved across town to Inkopolis Square. Bands have broken up or have entered irrelevance as new acts have emerged. Fashion continues to march forward and new faces have shown up in the city. But if there's one thing that hasn't changed, it's that all these cool squid-kids still love spraying each other with their multi-colored ink.

In the single-player campaign, DJ Octavio has escaped captivity and the Octarians have once again stolen the Great Zapfish in a second bid to invade Inkopolis. Under the guidance of former Squid Sister Marie, and with some help from weapons expert Sheldon, it's up to the player to stop the Octarian army and find Marie's cousin Callie, who has mysteriously disappeared. The campaign has been expanded to now have the player use the wide variety of weapon types throughout its stages, rather than just the basic Splattershot weapons.

Alongside returning multiplayer modes (Turf War, Splat Zones, Tower Control, and Rainmaker^*— the latter three being part of Ranked Battle) are two new modes: Salmon Run and League Battle. The former is a horde mode in which a team of four must work together in order to defeat waves of mutated salmon and collect their eggs for prizes at the end of the day, while the latter is a variant of Ranked Battle in which player group into squads of two or four and play the usual Ranked modes, trying to earn as many ranking points as possible and outrank other squads by winning matches over a two-hour period. In December 2017, another Ranked Battle mode called Clam Blitz was added, wherein teams must collect clams and throw them into a balloon net on the opposing team's base after breaching the protective covering by breaking it after collecting enough clams.

In March 2018, it was announced that game would receive a second single-player campaign through its first piece of paid Downloadable Content, entitled the Octo Expansion. In this Expansion Pack, the player takes the role of Agent 8, an Octoling who awakens with no memory in an old subway system that is now being used as a underground testing facility. As Agent 8, you must now make your way to the surface while trying to recover your memories and discover the purpose of the facility. The campaign launched on June 13, 2018.

In June 2019, the final Splatfest of the Splatoon 2 era was announced, titled "Final Fest: Splatocalypse". Players were asked to choose between a world of chaos or one of order, and to defend their choice on the battlefield. Pearl sided with Team Chaos while Marina led Team Order, and every other character in the game^note Only Judd, Sheldon, and Mr. Grizz remained neutral pledged their alignment in the days leading up to the event. The Splatfest took place between July 18-21, ending on the game's second anniversary in a victory for Team Chaos.

The final major content update, version 5.0.0, was released on July 31, 2019, though minor balance and bugfix patches would continue. Much to players' surprise, however, Nintendo introduced a series of bonus Splatfests in 2020. The first of these was a rematch of "Mayo vs. Ketchup" in May 2020, which was presented as a "bonus, one-off" event alongside a new Testfire demo; however, it was later announced that three more of these bonus Splatfests would be held before March 2021. These ended up being rematches of "Chicken vs. Egg" (August 2020) and "Trick vs. Treat" (October 2020), as well as a brand new "Super Mushroom vs. Super Star" to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Super Mario Bros. franchise, which ended up as the true final Splatfest (January 2021).

The official website can be found here. Also featured is an official Tumblr called the "Squid Research Lab", where you can find in-character news and information about the game. You can watch the reveal trailer here, the Salmon Run trailer here, the single-player trailer here, and the Octo Expansion trailer here.

During the February 17, 2021 Nintendo Direct, Splatoon 3 was announced to be in development, and was released on September 9, 2022.

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Tropes associated with Splatoon 2:

• Scavenged Punk has its own page, shared with the rest of the franchise.

Main Game and Hero Mode

• 11th-Hour Superpower: Before the last phase of the final boss, Sheldon gives Agent 4 a modified version of the Rainmaker, the Purposely Overpowered weapon from the Ranked Battle mode of the same name. It doesn't have the time limit that it has in Ranked and League Battles, and it is capable of firing much farther and quicker.
• 15 Minutes of Fame: Subverted with the Squid Sisters. The duo was very popular in the timeframe of the first game, and while they no longer host Inkopolis News come the second, that's because their careers had exploded in the years since. Callie in particular became quite the film and TV star, while Marie made a name for herself on radio. That said, younger Inklings aren't quite as familiar with them, and Agent 4 in particular has no idea who they are (with the character's official biography explaining that they just never watch TV).
• 100% Completion: The game silently tracks your completion of the single-player "Hero Mode" campaign. Beating every level, which you have to do anyway, nets you 100% completion. Meanwhile, beating every level with every weapon nets you 1000% completion, with the player getting rewarded with the Replicia Hero Weapons (reskinned versions of the base weapons) for undergoing that (frustrating) extra mile. You can only see your completion percentage with the SplatNet2 companion phone app, though.
• Abnormal Ammo: An oddity even among Splatoon's ink and paint loaded Supersoakers, the Clash Blaster appears to be loaded with crayons. The end result is a rather unusual weapon, being a weak rapid-fire gun in a class known for slow but powerful shots.
• Absurdly High Level Cap: The game goes even further than the first by having the original level cap be 99, despite being able to unlock everything by Level 30. Then the 2.0.0 update allowed any players that reached to get to that level cap to essentially prestige ala Call of Duty to reach a new level cap of 99★. Expect to spend several hundred hours to reach that cap. And another several hundred hours if you chose to prestige again after that to reach 99★★, which only the mobile app will even acknowledge. However, instead of clothing every five levels, every new level from 30 onward grants the player a Super Sea Snail, a useful item which can be used in lieu of cash to help augment and re-roll gear abilities.
• Achievements in Ignorance: Callie calls back to the first game by trying to speak into her microphone upside-down, rendering the textbox upside-down and making herself unintelligible.
• Action Bomb: The Baller special puts the user in a plastic bubble, reducing damage and letting them roll quickly, before filling up with ink and detonating in a large explosion. It must be used quickly as sustained fire can and will eventually break it.
• Actionized Sequel: Compared to the first game, this game features crazier weapons for players to use, including dual pistols that let you dodge roll, an ink commando launcher that fires multiple shots, an ink jet pack, an ink rain cloud that you can toss into the sky, a giant hammer you can stamp the ground with, and even a spirit bomb-type weapon powered by the cheers of your team! The maps also seemed to have been designed to be a bit smaller this time around, which means opposing players are more likely to run into each other, and in turn encouraged to engage one another in combat.
• After the End: The series takes place approximately 12,000 years after humans and the vast majority of mammals were driven to extinction due to rising sea levels caused by global warming. This time it's made more explicit, with the maps in the Salmon Run mode being the polluted ruins of man-made structures inhabited by Salmonids and characters making references to our extinct species.
• A.I. Breaker: Octolings have no way to deal with Autobombs. You can simply chuck an Autobomb at an Octoling, then watch from a safe distance as she futilely either ducks back into her ink or attempts to shoot at it while standing still until it explodes in her face. Even Octotroopers have the common sense to retreat when they see an Autobomb coming.
• A.K.A.-47: The Splatoon 2 iteration of the Hero Shot appears to be a neon yellow P90 submachine gun.
• All or Nothing: In Splatfest Pro Battles, winning gets you clout points equal to the enemy team's Splatfest Power level, while losing gets you zero.
• All Part of the Show: It is revealed that the first game's Final Boss was interpreted by the Octarian public as the underground concert experience of a lifetime. Taking advantage of this, this game's final battle is set in a massive concert stadium, with DJ Octavio and (a mind-controlled) Callie headlining and thousands of Octarians in attendance.
• All There in the Manual:
  • Squid Sisters Stories explains how characters and the world changed during the Time Skip, with most of the focus being on how Callie and Marie's friendship changed following the final Splatfest, culminating in Callie's sudden disappearance.
  • A relationship chart posted on the series' official Twitter account confirms that Li'l Judd is Judd's clone. Li'l Judd is aware of this fact. Judd is not.
• Amusement Park: Wahoo World is introduced in this game, and is set in an amusement park of the same name and centered around a rocket-themed merry-go-round.
• Ancestral Weapon: The frying pans favored by Salmonid troops are often passed down from generation to generation. They are stated to take great care in keeping these weapons in good shape, despite otherwise being an Always Chaotic Evil species of Fish People.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Like in the first game, completing the single player campaign rewards the player with clothing based on the model of the Hero Suit used during the campaign.
• Animal Gender-Bender: The violinist of Bottom Feeders◊, center, looks pretty female, but is supposed to based on a Betta fish — and only the males of the species look so flamboyant. Because so little beyond appearance and musical style (Celtic punk) is known about them, some parts of the fandom have rolled with it outright being Dude Looks Like a Lady. Others argue that the musician's muted color scheme isn't quite flamboyant enough for a male.
• Anime Opening Parody: The trailer for the 4.0 update is a pastiche of anime openings, from the J-rock-inspired track used to the shots of characters staring off into the distance before the action kicks in for the chorus to the fake "credits" in the Inkling language. The Stinger is even a fake "sponsored by" screen with in-game brands.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • If someone on your team gets disconnected early into a Ranked match and you lose, your rank will not be affected. The game will even notify you as such when it happens.
  • The final single-player hub area primarily has small platforms to walk on, making falling off easier than in previous areas. To reduce the backtracking needed if this happens, checkpoints are present in some spots, in contrast to how previous areas only had checkpoints in the actual levels.
  • An update added the ability to change your weapon and gear between matches without having to return to the lobby.
  • Wahoo World's main gimmick is that the bridges leading to the circular midpoint area it temporarily retract periodically, granting no access to it, outside of one permanent route, for certain durations of gameplay. Except on Splat Zones, because the zone is placed right at the midpoint island and retracting the bridges while one team is controlling the zone would give them an unfair advantage. Also, on game mode layouts where you have to push into the enemy base to score (Rainmaker and Clam Blitz) the lower walls at mid get holes punched into them as an alternate way to move through it.
• Anti-Rage Quitting: The game is still at it with punishing ragequitters with 5-minute wait times, but now issues a direct warning to knock it off. Mercifully, that same message also asks players who are having connectivity issues to check their internet for optimal performance. Also holds the quote for that page.
• Anti-Structure: The Object Shredder ability introduced in this game functions this way. Equippable only to shoes as a primary ability, it increases damage to non-player objects and player armor by various amounts, from an extra 10% to the Rainmaker shield, to a 3x multiplier against Ink Armor, and a whopping 10x multiplier to Squid Beakons and Sprinklers.
• Archive Binge: In the Japanese version, after winning the "Action vs. Comedy" Splatfest, Marina tells Pearl that they're gonna binge a seven season drama later. Pearl is less than excited. invoked
• Armor-Piercing Attack: The Ink Armor was nerfed in Version 1.3.0. so that sufficiently powered attacks can deal direct damage through the Special while simultaneously breaking it and inflicting significant Knockback. Namely, anything that hits for more than 100 damage will apply up to 80 points of direct damage in addition to breaking Ink Armor.
• Artifact Name: The Rapid Blaster is called such because when it was introduced in the first game, it had the fastest firing rate out of all Blaster weapons. However, this game introduces the Clash Blaster, which shoots even faster, making the Rapid Blaster's firing rate feel like an eternity in comparison.
• Artistic License – Biology: Played for Laughs. Within the game's lore, whatever wins a Splatfest competition is legally the "correct" choice. Most are simple things like "Which is better: ketchup or mayonnaise?", however one was "Which came first: the chicken or the egg?". Pearl believes it was the chicken and Marina believes it was the egg. Chicken ended up winning. After losing, Marina notes that most scientists believe that the egg came first, but Pearl won't listen and says that the law is the law ^note though an evolutionary biologist would say that there was never a point when a clearly not-chicken bird laid an egg that hatched into something clearly identifiable as a chicken, as speciation takes as an accumulation of many generations of changes.
• Ascended Meme:
  • In a meta reference to the infamous 'I wish Squids were real' Miiverse post, a conversation Pearl and Marina can have when talking about Shellendorf Institute has Marina wishing humans were real.
  • Hisashi Nogami's memetic pose that he made during the game's unveiling at the Nintendo Switch Showcase in January 2017 shows up in the end credits.
  • One of the Memcakes has the inkling girl making the same face as a this meme◊.
• Athletic Arena Level: This level introduces three new sports-themed levels: Goby Arena (a basketball court mixed with a Turf War arena), Humpback Pump Track (an indoor bike track), and Musselforge Fitness (the rock climbing area within a sports club).
• Audience Participation: The first game's "Callie vs. Marie" Splatfest had the latter win, resulting in the two cousins slowly drifting apart (to Marie's complete dismay) between the first game and this one, with the sequel itself having its main campaign partially concern Callie having disappeared and later revealed to have become a Brainwashed and Crazy general for the Octarian Army. In turn, the final (storyline) Splatfest of this game, "Order Versus Chaos", led to the third game having a "chaos" theme, with the setting shifting from Inkopolis (the metropolis where the first two games take place), to the desert environment of the Splatlands and the more multicultural city of Splatsville.
• Background Music Override: Normally, the last minute of a Turf War match is always accompanied by some variation of the song "Now or Never!". The final day of this game's Final Fest: Splatocalypse event marked the first time in the series' history that this wasn't the case, as "Fly Octo Fly ~ Ebb and Flow (Octo)" played instead for the entire match.
• Bag of Sharing: The game has the Inkling and Octoling avatars (once you unlock the former by beating the Octo Expansion DLC campaign) share a multiplayer inventory, rank progress, and Grizzco pay grade. Interestingly, the game's smartphone companion app does keep track of how much turf you've inked with each species separately.
• Balance Buff:
  • In the first game, a charge of a charger class weapon would be immediately cancelled upon entering squid form. Splatoon 2 changes it so that charger weapons save their charge for a limited amount of time, allowing players to fully charge a shot, quickly change position, then reemerge with a fully charged shot. Scope models and the returning Bamboozler do not have this functionality, however, while the new Goo Tuber extends the duration you can hold the charge, allowing for ambushing.
  • The rollers now have a vertical fling when jumping. This creates a line of ink that are longer than the roller's typical range, but not as wide. This can be used to both ink walls with a climbable trail faster and gives the roller just enough range to match the range of most conventional shooters, preventing situations where shooters will have an advantage even when the roller noticed them ahead of time. The Flingza Roller specializes in vertical jump flings, being able to chain horizontal flings into verticals, while the Dynamo Roller's vertical fling has a huge range to compensate for its long start up time.
  • The Point Sensor now lasts several seconds before disappearing, compared to the previous game where it was active for less than a second.
  • The Stingray finally got one in the form of a wider area of damage if you hold down fire long enough. This went a long way in making it a super on par with the others, as before its very small area of damage and slow turn speed made it difficult to do anything productive with it if a target wasn't intent on staying in one area.
• Balance, Power, Skill, Gimmick: The Roller weapons are balanced this way. The Splat Roller is balanced with no major strengths or weaknesses compared to the others; the Dynamo Roller has a ton of power and range but is slow to swing and slow to swim with; the Carbon Roller is lightweight and swings rapidly but has short range and low power; the Flingza Roller has fast grounded swings and long-range jumping swings.
• Barely-Changed Dub Name: Marina — Iida in Japanese — is an unusual example in that she appeared at first to have a straight Dub Name Change, before her full name was revealed during the Octo Expansion. In the English version, this scene revealed her surname, making her full name Marina Ida. In Japanese, however, the same scene instead revealed that Iida was her surname — she was previously only known on a Last-Name Basis, and her given name was actually Marine. In other words, her Japanese name, Marine Iida, was changed in English to Marina Ida.
• Bifurcated Weapon: The Dualie Squelcher introduced in this game is the Dual Squelcher from the last game in two halves. When the crosshairs temporarily merge after a dodge roll it'll even take on the appearance of the latter.
• Big Applesauce: Contrasting the respective Hub Levels of the first and third game, which both have Tokyo influences, the second game's hub, Inkopolis Square, takes heavy inspiration from Times Square. The Square's main landmark, Deca Tower, even resembles the One Times Square building. Fittingly, the game's Octo Expansion campaign takes place in an expansive underground subway system. These parallels are taken to their logical conclusion with the Final Boss of the Octo Expansion featuring a giant weaponized human statue off the coast of the city.
• Big Bad: In Hero Mode, DJ Octavio is back to his old tricks. But this time, he also brainwashes Callie in order to use her talents to power his Octobot King mech.
• Bioluminescence Is Cool: Jellyfish can now change their colors to show support to whatever team they are supporting in Splatfest. The official explanation to why they can suddenly do that now is that one jellyfish discovered that they are bioluminescent by mistake, which then spread into the collective jellyfish Mind Hive and now all jellyfish can change their colors.
• Black Comedy Burst: The conversations Pearl and Marina have are usually pretty lighthearted, but the latter will occasionally take things to a dark place, explaining that it's common to see human bones when digging or remarking that they all live in a simulation and free will is a lie.
• Blah, Blah, Blah: Pearl in one discussion jokingly imitates Marina by saying this. Marina appears to agree that she sounds like this without a hint of irony.
• Blatant Lies: When Marie asks Callie if she ate all the crabby cakes, Callie accuses DJ Octavio of eating them while Marie wasn't looking...but Callie's dialogue box includes chewing noises.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • While the bomb launcher super is active, the game still lets you use your weapon normally. This can be useful if somebody slips through your wall of explosions or you get stuck on some enemy ink.
  • While the Autobomb can be used to damage enemies, they can also be used simply for detecting hiding enemies or herding them, as Sheldon explains.
  • The Fizzy Bomb can be charged up by physically shaking the controller, which is a fun integration of the weapon literally being a soda can, but in practice it's more straightforward and practical to just wiggle the analog stick back and forth while mashing B to charge, since the controller is tied to the camera (by default) and will thus mess up your aim if you shake it.
• Boss Banter: Occurs both with the final boss of Octo Valley, DJ Octavio and Callie, and the final boss of Octo Expansion, Commander Tartar, with the latter forgoing the bravado in favor of typical world-resetting AI chatter.
• Boss Remix: The first phase of the final boss battle uses a tense Dark Reprise of "Bomb Rush Blush" with the Octarian army's leitmotif mixed in, while the second phase has a more hopeful medley of "Tide Goes Out" and "Bomb Rush Blush".
• Boss Subtitles: All of the main campaign bosses are introduced with their names and descriptions.
• Bragging Rights Reward:
  • The Replicas of the Hero weapons are now this. They can be unlocked by clearing every single level in Hero Mode with that Hero weapon, but the Replicas are identical in function to an existing weapon. Their only practical use is getting more fresh bonuses after winning enough matches in a row, since each weapon can only get each fresh bonus once.
  • The Bronze, Silver, and Gold weapon badges added in Version 4.6.0 that can be obtained for turfing ink with every weapon, with the last one needing 999,999p (in other words, maxing out the turf inked meter for the weapon used) to be unlocked also count.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Originally, there were two primary defensive abilities: Bomb Defense Up and Cold-Blooded. The former improves overall defense against Bomb weaponry, while the latter decreases the amount of time you are affected by tracking status effects. After 4.3.0, both abilities were taken out and replaced by a new ability called Bomb Defense Up DX, which has the effects of the aforementioned abilities combined.
• Broken Armor Boss Battle: The Neo Octostomp, wears an ink-proof coat that prevents this maneuver, but the coat's buckle on the boss's face can be shot off to remove the coat and ink up his sides once again.
• Bubble Gun:
  • A slosher-type weapon called the Bloblobber shoots a row of four small bubbles at a time that bounce along the ground and off of walls. Combined with the fact that the weapon itself is shaped like a bathtub, one would be forgiven for mistaking it for a Joke Item. It's actually considered one of the better weapons in the game, as its bubbles deal enough damage to splat an enemy at full health with a single shot if all four bubbles connect.
  • The "Bubble Blower" special weapon is a giant bubble wand that is used to blow enormous ink bubbles. Said bubbles absorb ink; they dissipate from enemy ink but if enough team ink is loaded into the bubble, it causes a massive lethal explosion. A ridiculously common strategy is to fire a bomb sub, activate the special and blow a bubble, fire another bomb directly into the bubble, blow your remaining 2 bubbles, and pop the first bubble to detonate all 3 at once.
• Call-Back:
  • Some of Marie's dialogue in Octo Canyon references Splatfests from the first game, like the American Marshmallows vs. Hot Dogs Splatfest, or the European Pro-Pineapple vs. Anti-Pineapple (on Pizza) Splatfest.
  • Like in the first game, Callie speaks into her walkie-talkie upside-down at one point which makes her unintelligible, once again by showing the text box upside down.
  • Some of DJ Octavio's new lines in the Final Boss rematch are taken directly from the Final Boss fight from the first game, including the infamous "D-D-D-D-DROP THE SEA BASS!" line. Lampshaded immediately by Marie following the aforementioned line in a Take That!.
    Marie: Look, I know you DJs recycle old content for a living, but at least get some new dialogue.
• Canon Identifier: The player character in the base game's Hero Mode is recruited and given the title of Agent 4.
• Censored for Comedy: In the Octo Expansion DLC, the aptly-named song "#$@%* Dudes Be #$@%* Sleepin" features a long censor-bleep in the middle of it, heavily implying that Pearl started singing whatever the Inkling version of swearing is.
• Character Customization:
  • The game vastly expands the ability to customize the look of your character over the first game. Not only is there a greater variety of clothing items, but you can also choose from a selection of hairstyles and legwear.
  • Clearing the Octo Expansion adds the ability to play as an Octoling, with each gender of Octoling having its own two choices of hairstyle. Either species is playable in multiplayer, but only Inklings are playable in Octo Canyon and only Octolings are playable in the Deepsea Metro. (The game saves whichever appearance you'd last used for each species and automatically switches to it when you start their respective modes.)
  • It's also possible to customize the appearance of Agent 3 in the Octo Expansion, giving you the opportunity to make them look like your character from the first game.
• Cherry Tapping:
  • You can add splatting someone with an Ink Storm, which exists mainly to hamper enemy movement and will only splat someone who's about to die anyway or somehow fails to realize what direction they should go to avoid the cloud.
  • Discussed in an Off The Hook stage announcement conversation, where "Splatted by Sprinkler!" is stated to be the three most embarrassing lines in the Inkling language.
• Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs: The MakoMart level contains various sugary cereals with cartoon mascots on them in the background.
• Chicken-and-Egg Paradox: One of the Splatfests is Chicken vs. Egg, where the debate was not which was better for once, but rather which one the player believes came first.
• Clothes for Christmas Cringe: The Sweater vs. Socks Splatfest had players duke it out over which article of clothing they'd be least upset with getting as a Squidmas/Octivus gift; neither option is considered "good" by the characters, only the less bad of the two. The icons for the event represented each side with an Inkling scowling in disappointment while wearing their team's chosen clothes.
• Colorblind Mode: Enabling Color Lock in the options locks teams colors to golden yellow versus dark purple, in an effort to always have sufficient contrast for colorblind players.
• Comeback Mechanic: If the enemy team breaks your barrier in Clam Blitz, once your barrier reforms, your team will get a free Power Clam that spawns right under your team's clam basket to fight back.
• Company Cross References:
  • The 8-bit Bloopers and Octorocks from the first game reappears in this game.
  • 8-bit renderings of Gunion, the octopus enemies from Super Mario Land, and the octopus from the titular Game & Watch game are also found in various locations, after which the Octolings' octopus forms are designed.
  • There are 8-bit renderings of a Unira, the urchin enemies from Clu Clu Land, which appear in Starfish Mainstage as there are urchin characters in this game.
  • The Bomb Launcher special is modelled after Nintendo's own Ultra Machine, a toy ball pitching machine.
• Confusion Fu: The main draw of the Dualies weapon type is using the dodge-roll function to evade and disorient opponents, going in to splat them while they try to get a bead on you. The Tetra Dualies in particular allow you to dodge four times in a row instead of the usual two, making it great for practically dancing around enemies.
• Console Cameo: Several Nintendo consoles, among them an original model Game Boy, a GameCube, and a Switch (naturally), can be spotted as artifacts in the background of Shellendorf Institute.
• Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: You actually have to prompt it by repeatedly talking to Marie if you see her in a map. If you talk to her long enough, she'll realize that you're just trying to stall for time. Continue talking to her at this point, and she'll stop responding and start thinking to herself. This includes musing about walking away from to get some pizza, whether or not she should replace you if you're going to be this needy for attention, and just wishing you'd "Shut your face and get to work already!"
• Continuity Nod:
  • Crusty Sean's mix of the Booyah Base theme can be heard when you meet him at the Crust Bucket food truck.
  • Among the many tunes that can be heard around Inkopolis Square is a stripped-down instrumental remix of "City of Color", the Splatfest plaza theme from the first game. The same song also appears in "Spicy Calamari Inkantation".
  • In the single-player, Marie quotes Cap'n Cuttlefish's "Way to be, Agent 3!" line from the original game's campaign, just replacing "Agent 3" with "Agent 4".
• Cosmetic Award: Unlocking a replica weapon requires beating every stage and boss with said weapon rather than just beating the mode and a few challenges, with there being nine weapons in total. You can purchase all the "vanilla" equivalents of those weapons by Level 10.
• Crate Expectations: The game features wooden crates littered throughout its single-player campaigns. They can be destroyed and may contain Power Eggs or other collectables, but there's not much more to say about their usage in the series.
• Creative Closing Credits: Like in the first game, the credits (as well as the many doodles that are drawn along them) are revealed by firing ink or tossing Burst Bombs in the opposite color at the screen as they scroll by.
• Critical Existence Failure: Downplayed in both of this game's single-player campaigns: your base suit also functions as a layer of armor, which breaks if you take enough damage that otherwise would splat you. It self-repairs after a while, but you're severely slowed down during that.
• Crosshair Aware: If Tenta Missiles launch in your direction or a Torpedo locks onto you, a ring appears around your character's feet with a symbol of the respective projectile to indicate which direction it comes from. This is useful for the victim (who needs to know they're being targeted, and which way to move to escape) as well as the user (who can use the crosshair to reveal enemies hidden in ink).
• Damned by Faint Praise: At one point, Pearl asks Marina to tell the viewers about Inkblot Art Academy, but all Marina can come up with is "It's a place that exists." They later admit that they can't badmouth the Academy on-air because it's one of their sponsors.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • The original Splatoon put the jump button at X, but Splatoon 2 sets it to B, with the X button now opening the map. The changes were made because of a fundamental design difference between the Wii U and Nintendo Switch: the Wii U's Gamepad meant that the map could be on the controller's screen at all times during play. Not only is it impossible to use the Nintendo Switch's screen while it is outputting to the television, but they would have needed a workaround for handheld play regardless. And on the Wii U Gamepad, the right analog stick is above the buttons, making the X button the closest to the stick and thus the easiest to reach from it. On the Switch, however, the right analog stick is below the buttons, which makes the B button closest to it. As such, veterans of the original playing the sequel for the first time will often find themselves accidentally opening the map in the middle of a firefight for a little while.
  • Many of the weapons from the first game return, but in many cases have different sub weapons and specials, meaning it's not uncommon to accidentally throw the wrong kind of bomb or activate your special at a sub-optimal time because you forgot that it's changed.
  • The Ballpoint Splatling is unique in that it plays nothing like a normal Splatling. The Ballpoint Splatling's gimmick is that the first quarter circle of charge will have inaccurate but faster than average shots that have weak range, but everything after the first quarter circle has immense range and perfect accuracy but fires slower than your normal Splatling. The trick is that you can re-spin your Splatling in the middle of firing, which will allow you to recharge while maintaining whatever firing stage you were at. A typical Splatling user holds ZR before the end of their charge to commence re-spinning immediately when their charge runs out, so the ability to re-spin while firing can be disorienting at first glance. However, mastery of the Ballpoint's technique makes it one of the strongest weapons in the game.
• Darker and Edgier: Not that much darker, but still a factor.
  • The color palette for the game is a bit more muted overall - while the ink is still plenty bright and inky, the areas themselves tend to be a bit darker lit, indoors and made of things like metal.
  • The developers joked about Marie's appearance solo in the first trailer not meaning much. Then "Squid Sister Stories" revealed that Marie and Callie's friendship began to die following the events of the first game... and that the latter mysteriously disappeared while Marie was out of town visiting her parents.
  • Now, the modern Splatoon setting doesn't get that much darker, yes, with the squids remaining cute, the kids remaining cute, and even the Salmonids seeming a bit more ridiculous than anything... but the backstory of the setting takes a much darker turn in this game, and takes a turn much more in line with the game's ostensible genre. Not only do some Inkling religions treat the advent of major Salmonid migrations and attacks as a harbinger of the apocalypse (and the Salmonids being on the move are why Grizzco can operate), but during the Inkling equivalent of the medieval period, the Salmonids explicitly destroyed entire cities, also explicitly slaughtering and devouring the Inklings within. The modern, relatively peaceful and idyllic Splatoon setting seems built upon centuries of prior conflict and tragedy.
  • The final Splatfest of the first game was simply "Which Squid Sister is better?" Splatoon 2's final (storyline) Splatfest, on the other hand, is far more grandiose: It's called the Splatocolypse, the two factions are Chaos and Order, and the various characters of the game are grouped into one of those two factions. Though it's unclear whether this will actually be a canon occurrence or just a stylistic promotional thing, the post-Splatfest banter from Off The Hook suggests it was simply talking about the direction of the band, though the post-Splatfest banter at the end of Callie vs. Marie ended on a high note as well, and that didn't turn out particularly well...
• Dark Reprise: A remixed and far more serious version of Callie's "Bomb Rush Blush" serves as the theme for the first phase of the final boss fight. "Tide Goes Out" joins in once the second phase kicks in.
• Death from Above:
  • A special called Splashdown causes the Inkling to leap in the air and slam the ground, creating an explosion of ink. What makes it qualify for this trope is that unlike other specials, this one can be used with a Super Jump to possibly deal with potential Super Jump campers.
  • The Inkjet used to be able to do this via its jetpack, whose ink propulsion system would inflict a One-Hit Kill on any player that you fly over. The jetpack received a Nerf in 1.3.0 that chopped its damage by 75%, making it so that not only does it no longer kill on contact, it does damage at a much slower rate than your actual cannon. That being said, it can still be used to pick off already-injured players, though.
  • More mundanely, any roller will still deal damage when rolling off a ledge; this can be used to drop on somebody hiding right below you.
• Decomposite Character: Well, weapons actually, but the new Subs and Specials lead to a few situations where some new weapons take on one of the traits of a previous one.
  • For sub-weapons, there's the Curling Bomb and the Autobomb. Each one took a perk of the Seeker and expanded upon it:
    • The Curling Bomb takes the Seeker's mobility potential in the form of its solid line of ink to swim through. This is expanded on by the Curling Bomb's ability to bounce off walls that would detonate the Seeker, which enables the user to swim for longer distances around corners.
    • The Autobomb takes the homing elements and puts them in a throwable grenade, discarding the painting capabilities of the Seeker. Once it lands, it will track its target relentlessly. It also boasts better turn speed to allow it to hassle people out of their hiding spots behind walls that would confound a Seeker. However, though it has better tracking AI than the Seekers, it still tends to fall off ledges.
  • The Inkstrike Special was a rocket that could create a large whirlwind of ink anywhere you tapped on the map. This has been split into the Tenta Missiles, Splashdown, and Booyah Bomb:
    • Tenta Missiles are the same remote deal, only instead of choosing anywhere on the map you lock on to enemies inside a cone of vision to fire small rockets at; this takes the remote attack capacity of the Inkstrike and applies it to a lock-on dependent version. It lowers the coverage of said attack as well if you don't get all four enemies locked onto (and that can be difficult depending on the enemy).
    • Splashdown keeps the "huge-area ink coverage" but now localizes it to your character, forcing them to be at wherever they want the coverage to be. It requires high ground to be at its most effective—presumably to help stave off the games that were decided by a last-minute Special its user saved all match long. However, it can also be used with a Super Jump; this makes it more defensive and gives it more uses than just "cover a large area with ink and maybe hit a person if they stand still".
    • The Booyah Bomb creates an expanding whirlwind of ink similar to the Inkstrike, but has a more limited range (it can hit at a greater distance than most weapons, but still must be within line-of-sight) and is way slower and more telegraphed, for it needs to be charged and the projectile isn't too fast.
  • The Killer Wail is a giant speaker that deals lethal, terrain-piercing damage over a wide area, through all surfaces, and at any range once placed, opening the player up to move while it's running and take advantage of it. It's been split into the Sting Ray and Ink Storm specials:
    • The Sting Ray retains the Killer Wail's terrain-piercing damage and infinite range, but now needs to be constantly operated by its user, dropping its autonomous capability. Its coverage is also way smaller, and can only really be used to harass or splat one enemy at a time unless they refuse to split off from one another.
    • The Ink Storm keeps the Killer Wail's wide coverage and fire-and-forget capabilities, but drops its lethality (dealing damage four times as slowly) and range (the cloud travels a decent distance, but very much not an infinite amount).
• Deliberately Monochrome: One of the new clothing brands, Toni Kensa, uses this as their trademark. Kensa equipment is distinguishable by its stark monochrome black-and-white appearance with maybe the only splotch of color being Kensa's red logo.
• Denser and Wackier: The Hero Mode bosses in the first Splatoon were odd, but still fit the ocean and water-related theme of the rest of the game. In this game, you go up against, among other things, a giant oven full of evil loaves of bread, and a unicycle-riding Octarian samurai wielding a motorized Roller that doubles as a respawn point.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • If you try scanning the Callie and Marie amiibo before completing story mode, they instead show letters from the two about how they're in the middle of something.
  • Certain stages will have modified layouts if you play them with weapons other than the intended weapon. For example, if you play Stage 6 with a weapon other than the Hero Charger, a good number of platforms will have extra blocks that you can scale added to them so you can hit Grapplinks with Bombs.
  • Similar to the first game, if you rematch the Final Boss after beating the game, instead of replaying the same cutscene from the first time you fought it, you instead get an entire set of... rather amusing alternate dialogue.
  • Nintendo caught on that dataminers uncover post-Splatfest dialogue before their respective Splatfests are completed. So for the Final Fest, placeholder dialogue that was not meant to be shown to the player was put in, just enough text to say which faction won and to inform players that their prizes can be picked up in the Square. The actual dialogue, which is much more fleshed out, wasn't implemented into the game's data until near the end of the Splatfest.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • The Flingza Roller. Its horizontal flings are quick and powerful but have shorter range than other Rollers, while its vertical flings are longer range, but are weak and have a start up time that's only shorter than the Dynamo Roller. Not helped by the fact the game doesn't even tell you what the form changes do to the flings.
  • While all of the heavyweight weapons are on the trickier to side to play as a whole, the Explosher is perhaps the biggest example of the bunch due to its sheer clunkiness. Unlike other Sloshers it fires large projectiles that passes through enemies and deal 55 damage, leaving a thin trail in its path before exploding upon contact with the ground into a large circular patch of ink that deals 35 damage to anyone caught in the explosion (giving it potentially up to 90 damage if an enemy is hit by a direct projectile and its explosion. What makes it so cumbersome to use however is the very slow windup and endlag of the sloshes, forcing the user to commit a lot of time to every shot and leaving them very vulnerable to getting rushed down by short-range weapons. To make matters worse, unlike a lot of weapons that want to keep enemies at an arm's distance, both variants of the Explosher have support-focused Sub Weapons, leaving it with no means to fight someone that gets into its zone. When mastered, however, the Explosher becomes like a mortar, locking down areas on its own with its long range high turf coverage and threatening enemies with near-1-hit-splats.
  • The Respawn Punisher ability gives you the ability to induce respawn time and special gauge loss penalty to whoever you splat, and to yourself (by a greater degree) if you get splatted, so it's a great ability if you can survive for a long time while you focus on splatting opponents.
  • This is the best way to summarize the Inkjet special. Using it gives you a Jet Pack and an ink rocket launcher. The jetpack's hover provides the ability to move past ledges that are otherwise hard or impossible to cross, and gives you a perfect vantage point to blast at enemies below you. The rocket launcher has a large range, deals high enough damage to One-Hit Kill on a direct hit, and can handily wipe an entire team if it connects all four shots. At the same time, however, both these assets are their own weaknesses: the launcher is a Mighty Glacier with a slow firerate and slow projectiles that won't kill on impact with surfaces, while the jetpack's hover means it's not easy for its user to drop into ink to heal, impossible for them to use ground-based cover, and will force them to return to the point they initiated the special when it ends — which can be camped like a Super Jump, only it's visible for the entire special's duration and can't be hidden with Stealth Jump. How much mileage you'll get out the Inkjet depends entirely on your ability to aim its slow projectiles and being able to know how to use it to attack from unexpected angles.
• Diminishing Returns for Balance: The more of a specific sub-ability you stack onto a piece of gear, the more Ability Chunks you'll need for each new copy of the ability; the first time you put on a specific sub-ability, it will cost 10 chunks, the second time costs 20 chunks, and the third time costs 30 chunks (in other words, to have three of the same sub-ability on one weapon, you need 60 chunks). The more chunks of any particular ability you put on your gear, the less benefit you get from each new chunk.
• Divergent Character Evolution: A number of weapons gain new traits in this game to help distinguish them from their peers:
  • The Dual Squelcher, a long-range shooter similar to the existing Jet Squelcher, returns in this game in the form of the Dualie Squelchers, which are a dualie class weapon rather than a shooter weapon and thus are capable of dodge rolling.
  • The Splash-o-Matic is a close-to-mid-range shooter that's best used for dealing damage, but can flexibly paint terrain if it needs to, which makes it similar to the Splattershot. Version 3.2.0 gives it a buff to make it so that it's just as accurate while in the air as it is on the ground.
  • The Splattershot Jr. is a close-range shooter that provides good paint, which makes it too similar to the Aerospray. Version 3.2.0 gives the weapon the unique trait of a 10% larger ink tank, making it able to throw bombs more often than any other weapon.
  • The Squiffer is a mid-range charger that is best used to aggressively hold a position, which puts it in similar territory to the Bamboozler. Once again, version 3.2.0 gives it a unique trait, enabling it to charge at the same speed in the air as it does on the ground.
• Double Unlock: Just like in the first game, you must advance through levels to make weapons available to purchase from Ammo Knights, and from there you must then purchase the weapon to unlock it for use.
• Down L.A. Drain: Snapper Canal is a playable stage set in a large urban canal running under a train bridge, which bears several similarities to the L.A. River. According to Pearl, the canal may also be used for filming high-speed chase scenes in action movies.
• Draco in Leather Pants: An In-Universe example by Marina in the Villains versus Heroes splatfest. Her reasons for siding with the Villains are interesting to say the least, especially because the Villains side include Ganondorf, Ridley, and King K. Rool, characters that one would have to stretch really hard to see them as "misunderstood" even if they are popular in their own right. The Heroes won the popularity vote 2 to 1, but since the Villains won the Splatfest overall, Marina talks about how this is the first step for her evil plan.
• Dreadlock Rasta: Flow is an anthropomorphic sea slug and New-Age Retro Hippie whose tentacles are styled to resemble dreadlocks.
• Ear Worm:
  • "Calamari Inkanation" from the first game is, canonically, this, as it is said by Cap'n Cuttlefish to have engraved its sound into the very souls of anyone present at the "concert" at the end of the first Splatoon. In fact, it's such an Ear Worm that it manages to survive Agent 8's amnesia, and according to a chat log in Octo Expansion, its effect was strong enough that induced Marina's Heel–Face Turn.
  • One piece of banter for the New Albacore Hotel stage has Pearl singing what is presumably the hotel's advertising jingle, to Marina's anguish, as she bemoans that now she'll have it stuck in her head all week.
• Easter Egg:
  • Just like the Squid Sisters in the last game, standing next to the window where Off the Hook is for a few seconds will make them react. If you look as an Inkling, Marina smiles and waves at you while Pearl looks at you in annoyance but then poses for you with a smile. If you look as an Octoling, both Pearl and Marina recognize you as Agent 8, react warmly, then smile and pose.
  • Pressing buttons on the lobby screen lets you mess around with the music. Moving the left control stick changes the pitch and tempo, and the right control stick adds a band-stop filter.
  • Just like last time, the back of the amiibo box is completely textured, and is even written in the Inkling language. This time, it's possible to see it without glitches, due to the gratings.
  • If you throw the Curling Bomb while standing still, the player character will stay in a throwing stance if you don't move after throwing. If the Curling Bomb detonates while in this stance, the player character will perform a celebratory fist pump with nod.
  • Similarly to the last game, destroying all of the moving targets in the weapon test area simultaneously (only possible with a Baller explosion or Splashdown) will cause your Inkling to vocalize happily.
• Energetic and Soft-Spoken Duo: Pearl and Marina are an Odd Friendship example. Loud and short Inkling Pearl is best friends and music partners with a shy, lanky Octarian woman named Marina. This is most seen in their Japanese dialogue as the English translation made Marina a more assertive character, however it still shines through in the English versions too.
• Energy Weapon: The Stingray is an ink cannon special weapon that behaves like a constant-stream-firing beam cannon. It has the ability to shoot through terrain and (as of version 1.3.0) can generate shockwaves when fired long enough without stopping.
• Epic Fail: The game introduces a new weapon class called the Dualies, which has the player shoot ink out the "magazine" in order to dodge roll; the ink mechanics in the game make it so there is no such thing as friendly fire. Despite all of this, Pearl still manages to splat herself in this exact fashion.
• Eskimos Aren't Real: In the Unicorns vs. Narwhals Splatfest, Pearl expresses her disbelief in the latter by way of the page quote. Marina, of course, shoots back that her landlord is a narwhal.
• Evil Overlooker: A piece of artwork accompanying the single-player trailer reveals Agent 4 and Marie being overlooked by a lot of Octarian enemies and Callie.
• Existential Horror:
  • the game plays this for laughs during a commentary for Inkblot Art Academy.
    Pearl: Let's turn this campus into a canvas!
    Marina: Does life imitate art? Or does art imitate life? AM I EVEN REAL?!
  • Marina does this again before the "Chicken vs. Egg" Splatfest. It's still played for laughs, albeit uncomfortable laughs:
    Marina: Yeah, I bet that mom chicken has wanted kids ever since she was an egg.
    Pearl: Ha! Yeah, but, whose... grandma laid the egg... uh... that had the mom inside it?
    Pearl: Wait... Which side am I on?
    [both laugh]
    Marina: It's funny because we're all living in a simulation and free will is a lie.
    [both aside glance]
• Explosive Punch: The Splashdown special has the Inkling jump into the air and slam down with a punch that causes an explosion of ink that'll kill anyone in it's radius while also inking the surrounding turf very well.
• Extra-Strength Masquerade:
  • One Sunken Scroll reveals that the climactic confrontation at the end of the first game's Hero Mode was interpreted as the underground concert experience of a lifetime. Taking advantage of this, the new final battle is set in a massive stadium, with DJ Octavio and Callie headlining.
  • The playable Octolings are apparently considered 'Inklings with fad/weird hairstyles' by most of the population of Inkopolis. Even during the Squid vs. Octopus Splatfest, no one seems to make the connection, despite the fact that Inklings and Octolings are only playable on their respective teams during that Splatfest. The only one who lampshades how 'dangerous' the theme could be is Marina, an Octoling herself. Of course, whether or not Pearl's dialogue can be interpreted as naive or actively trying to enforce this trope depends on if the player has completed the Octo Expansion DLC.
• Failed a Spot Check: Despite her tentacles, facial markings, and occasional Verbal Backspaces, Inklings don't notice that Marina is an Octoling, assuming these differences to be fashion statements or odd misspeaks. Somewhat justified, as Octarians live underground and haven't had regular contact with the Inkling race in over a century.
• Fairy Companion: There's one in a Fictional Video Game. During the Knight vs. Wizard Splatfest, Pearl and Marina make reference to a new Role-Playing Game, which apparently features the in-universe mascot Fresh Fish as a fairy that guides the player.
• Fake Longevity:
  • Unlocking the hero weapons requires playing through every single story mode stage using only that weapon, for a total of nine replays.
  • Another example happens with the many prizes that you obtain for reaching the various turfing milestones that the game offers:
    • In-game; starting with Version 4.6.0; Bronze, Silver, and Gold weapon badges can be obtained for every weapon, with the last one needing 999,999p (in other words, maxing out the turf inked meter) to be unlocked.
    • Outside of the game itself, the SplatNet2 companion App tracks the amount of all lifetime turf inked while playing either overall or as Octoling and gives out rewards for reaching certain milestones too. The final Inkling milestone needs a reasonable 4,652,000p but the last Octoling milestone needs a whooping 26,438,000p. Keep in mind, turf inked as an Octoling counts toward the Inkling milestones, but not in reverse. So if you started playing as an Inkling first, none of that ink counts towards the Octoling milestone. This last one requires several thousand hours of constant playtime to obtain all while turfing a significant amount of Ink on every match you play so an extremely low number of people have reached it. Also, the reward you get for all your efforts is just a wallpaper. Expectedly, it was completely toned down for its Splatoon 3 successor, the Wandercrust, with all of its milestones combined requiring less than the already reasonable Inkling milestone total.
• Family-Friendly Firearms: The single player trailer featured the player character using what looked like an FN P90 as their main weapon. Of course, the final version of the weapon was heavily modified to look more toylike, in line with the other weapons in the game.
• Fantastic Measurement System: One of Callie's factoids from her "Agent 4 Factopedia" measures how much turf you've inked with a particular weapon in terms of Maries laid down end to end.
• Fictional Sport: While Turf War and other ink-based competitive team-based sports already filled this niche in the past, Splatoon 2 has an even more obvious sports analogue in Clam Blitz. Two teams of four face each other in an arena, like normal Turf Wars or other Ranked Mode gamemodes. Golden clam shells appear in groups all over the arena; anyone can pick up or throw clam shells, but holding 10 shells at once stuffs them into a football aligned to the team that assembled it. This football is necessary to open the goal: a net in the enemy team's base. Opening the goal gives the attacking team points, seals their own goal, and enables team members to throw more clams into the goal to score more and keep it open for longer.
• Feed It a Bomb: The game introduces the Maws, a Boss Salmonid that tries to eat Inklings for a One-Hit Kill by erupting from the ground. Drop a Splat Bomb where she's going to emerge, and she will eat the bomb and explode instead.
• Fighting Your Friend: Callie becomes brainwashed and teams up with DJ Octavio in the final battle.
• Foreshadowing: The new music for the Octo Canyon stages have female vocals in the background. Listen closely... don't they sound familiar? That's Callie.
• Free-Handed Performer: Part of its soundtrack is performed by the popstar duo Off The Hook. Outside of their Real Life hologram performances where they only sing, the songs they perform in the game feature Marina on keyboards and vocals while Pearl sings and dances.
• Fun with Homophones: In the announcement for the game's "Vampire vs. Werewolf" Splatfest, Pearl confuses Marina's talking about how vampires can be killed with stakes (i.e., a wooden spike) with steaks (i.e., meat), prompting her to admonish her partner for the "mistake", before spending the rest of the announcement rambling about the eating habits of both supernatural creatures.
  Pearl: Steaks? Get real, Marina.
  Marina: OK, Pearl...
• Fur Against Fang: The fourth Splatfest for North America and Oceania pits vampires against werewolves. Pearl takes some time in the intro to dabble in the Slobs Versus Snobs aspect of the trope:
  Pearl: Vamps don't even eat steak! They drink the juice inside of it like civilized beings. Werewolves, on the other hand, eat steak straight from the source! They're mindless, slobbery dogs with ZERO sophistication or impulse control.
• Furry Reminder: One of Marina's lines at a concert is "I think my hearts might explode!". Marina is an Octoling. Octopi have more than one heart.
• Game Within a Game: The game only features one minigame in the form of "Squid Beatz 2", a Taiko no Tatsujin-style rhythm game that doubles as a sound test. Songs from the first game can also be unlocked via amiibo.
• Genre Mashup: Unlike the last game, which uses straight pop-rock for Turf Wars and Splatfests and straight techno for Octo Valley, this game's soundtrack is all over the place. There's the expected soft rock, but also electric fiddle-heavy Celtic punk, a sort of tropical techno heard in certain stages in Story Mode, whatever the Salmon Run themes are supposed to be, frenetic jazz rock mixing trumpets with kazoos and slide whistles... and the final boss even mixes in-universe pop music and techno sounds with dramatic orchestral fanfares.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: Jelfonzo, the shopkeeper of the clothing shop, wears a different shirt every day of the week. On Tuesdays, he wears a shirt with text written in the game's Cipher Language. Someone extracted the shirt's texture in order to translate the text, only to discover that it says "FUCK YOU".
• Giant Novelty Check: Teams who win 100x battles for their side in Splatfests are displayed on the Splatfest Terminal screen holding one of these.
• Gimmick Level: Every Shifty Station map uses some sort of gimmick, such as moving floors, spinning walls, self-painting turf, invisible terrain, cannons, and domes that close in and lock players from entering/leaving.
• Glass-Shattering Sound: The first Sunken Scroll depicts a young Pearl singing, which was purportedly loud enough to destroy speakers. This actually comes into play during the final battle of the Octo Expansion as Pearl's singing voice is loud enough to counter and overpower a world ending super-weapon when filtered through a Killer Wail.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Any player under the effect of Ink Armor has their eyes glow bright while being wreathed in a Battle Aura of their color.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: When Pearl announces that Callie has been rescued, she exclaims, "HOLY CARP!"
• G-Rated Stoner: One of the shop owners, Flo, acts this way. She's a New-Age Retro Hippie whose facial expression, dialogue, and constant swaying gives off this impression.
• Gratuitous English: In the Japanese version Marina and Pearl's dialogue features the occasional bit of English, however Pearl's Running Gag is that she usually botches the pronunciation.
• Grenade Launcher:
  • Using any of the Bomb Launcher specials causes one of these to appear on your back, and it enables you to rapid-fire a Sub-Weapon not unlike the first game's Bomb Rush. Unlike the Bomb Rush specials, the Bomb Launchers are independent of that weapon's sub weapon slot.
  • The Rainmaker in this game has been overhauled so that it falls more in line with this. It now fires a large, arcing bomb of ink that detonates shortly on impact, instantly splatting any enemy in its blast radius. The bomb also leaves a trail of ink as it flies, allowing you to cover ground faster.
• Grind Boots: The Inkrails (used on Hero Mode, the 'Ruins of Ark Polaris' Salmon Run map, and the "Railway Chillin'" Shifty Station) also allow you to grind on them in kid form, in addition to being able to swim through them as a squid. This also allows you to fire your weapon while riding the Inkrail, which is used as a mechanic in various levels.
• Grocery Store Episode: The MakoMart stage takes place inside of a giant supermarket.
• Ground Punch: One of the Specials, called Splashdown, involves the player leaping up into the air and slamming their ink-coated fist into the ground, creating a large radius of instant death and ink coverage.
• Guns Akimbo: The Splat Dualies let you effectively dual wield SMG inkblasters that allow for some John Woo-style dodge jumping.
• Halloween Episode: In October 2018, the game held a special Splatfest event called "Splatoween". Not only is the theme about trick-or-treating, but the entirety of Inkopolis is also dressed up in appropriately-themed decorations, with several NPCs wearing costumes. Special in-game gear was also given out during the event for players to join in on the festivities.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: The Tenta Missiles use an extra-wide targeting reticule; upon pressing the fire button, missiles will be launched at all enemies in the reticule. If all of your enemies are crowded together, or at least all in front of you, you can easily disrupt the entirety of the enemy team's plans or even nail a full-team splat.
• Here We Go Again!:
  • The final Squid Sisters Stories chapter reveals that DJ Octavio's snow globe was found shattered with no other clues, and the Great Zapfish has once again disappeared.
  • After clearing the Story Mode, Callie and DJ Octavio will once again be back at their boss level should you attempt it again...with the excuse that Callie put the brainwashing glasses back on because they look good on her.
• Heroic Mime: Lampshaded. Just like in the last game, when asking the player if they want to help save the Great Zapfish, Marie says that she'll take the awkward silence as a "yes".
• Hero of Another Story: The story mode revolves around Agent 4 and their adventure through Octo Canyon to help Marie find Callie. Cap'n Cuttlefish and Agent 3 (the Mission Control and player character of Splatoon, respectively) don't show up in this campaign, with Marie explaining their absence as being on a mission of their own. Whatever mission this was leads into the game's Octo Expansion DLC campaign.
• He Was Right There All Along:
  • Compared to the first game, this one goes a step further, as the Zapfish is now suspended over an unassuming puddle of Octarian ink, from which the tentacle and the boss will emerge. Averted when the bosses are fought again in Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion, as the bosses now emerge from the ink as soon as Agent 8 enters the arena.
  • The Final Boss also appears this way. At the center of the arena is a concert stage surrounded by Octarian ink, with none other than Callie atop the stage. Once you approach, a brief cutscene plays, and the stage itself raises up out of the ink, revealing the rest of the Octobot King II underneath.
• High-Altitude Battle: The last phase of the Final Boss takes place high above the arena in the air, with the player riding on ink rails.
• History Repeats: While the Splatocalypse was intended to be the final Splatfest, the COVID-19 Pandemic cooped up players enough that four Splatfests were added during the lockdown. While the first — Mayo vs. Ketchup — averted this trope, the other two — Chicken vs. Egg and Trick vs. Treat — play it straight. And the last one, a brand new Super Mushroom vs. Super Star Splatfest, ended up as the actual true final Splatfest.
• Hypocritical Humor: The 21-year-old Pearl mocks the 18-year-old Marina for still going Trick-or-Treating in one Splatfest conservation, when just before she mentioned wanting to TP Sheldon's house.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs:
  • Used in an European concert:
    Pearl: Don't tell me you're getting cold ^tentaclesfeet, Marina.
  • Also used in the same concert:
    Pearl: Gotta get the ^inkblood pumpin!
• Holiday Mode: While the game has monthly online Splatfest events, there have been some special holiday events that come with free exclusive gear and a holiday-themed makeover for Inkopolis Square and all the multiplayer stages. These special holiday Splatfests include Splatoween (October 2018), Frosty Fest (January 2019), and Spring Fest (April 2019). The final (storyline) Splatfest of the game, titled Final Fest: Splatocalypse, took place in July 2019, both to commemorate the second anniversary of the game as well as to serve as the Grand Finale to the game's Splatfest events.
• Homemade Sweater from Hell: One NA Splatfest was a competition between ugly holiday sweaters and ugly holiday socks.
• Hostile Weather: The new Ink Storm special is a moving Area of Effect cloud that rains ink down, damaging enemies caught by it over time. At about 4 seconds to finish off a full-health enemy, it won't splat anyone by itself unless they're either critically oblivious or already at very low health, but it delays enemy regeneration with its damage and makes their paint harder to move through with tiny puddles of your own ink, so it retains decent usefulness.
• Hotter and Sexier: It's still family-friendly, but things definitely skew racier this time around. The lewdest thing in the first game is some slight hints of cleavage on the Squid Sisters, but Splatoon 2 sees a noticeable upswing in sexual humor and significantly more fanservicey designs for characters, most notably Marina and Callie while Brainwashed and Crazy. And the Body Armor as Hit Points no longer stops at fully clothed in a jacket, leading to your Inkling in a midriff-baring tank top (if female) or shirtless (if male).
• Humongous-Headed Hammer: The Ultra Stamp special allows you to summon an enormous stamp mallet to make your mark on the battlefield.
• Hurricane of Puns: The Octo Oven boss battle, whose dialogue from Marie consists almost entirely of her making food and baking-related puns.
• Hypno Trinket: The shades that cause Callie to become Brainwashed and Crazy.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Throughout most of the final battle, Marie tries calling out to Callie in an attempt to bring her back to her senses. It doesn't quite start taking effect until she snipes the hypnoshades and starts singing "Tide Goes Out".
• Improperly Placed Firearms: The Splatoon series features all manner of silly, almost toylike weapons in its arsenal, based on things from paint rollers and garden hoses to miniature bathtubs and repurposed cleaning supplies. For this reason, it really sticks out when Agent 4's weapon is a neon yellow P90 with nothing else attached. It shares its name with the original game's Hero Shot, which was a neon yellow paintball gun.
• Informed Attribute: That Inklings don't have bones is reaffirmed through a conversation in the game's Hero mode, and it can be assumed that Octarians, also being evolved cephalopods, don't either. For boneless creatures, though, they sure are... well, bony. Characters still move like humans instead of flopping and squishing around, and several Inkling and Octarian characters, including both members of Off the Hook, the Squid Sisters (again), and even playable Inklings in certain outfits show off their collarbones and/or shoulder blades to some degree. Some shading on Marina's and Callie's bellies under certain lighting conditions even hints at a rib cage.
• Insistent Terminology: In a bit of dialogue between Pearl and Marina when introducing Blackbelly Skate Park:
  Pearl: I can't get enough of this map.
  Marina: Pearl! It's "stage," not "map!" Are you trying to get us fired?!
• Insult Backfire: During the intro to the Salsa vs. Guacamole Splatfest, Pearl accidentally compliments Marina when she tries to diss her:
  Marina: Guac is more expensive because it's good. It's the Gold Dynamo Roller of dips.
  Pearl: Your face is the Gold Dynamo Roller of dips.
  Marina: (facepalm) Okay.
• Intentional Engrish for Funny: The Octoling amiibos speak like this when scanned, as they are also foreigners who aren't familiar with the Inkling language. If Agent 8's poems are any indication, they are most definitely Eloquent In Their Native Tongue.
• Interface Screw: During Splatfest events, all the maps, with the exception of the Gimmick Level Shifty Station, take place at nighttime, causing enemy players to blend in with their ink (which is made more neon-bright compared to their appearance in daytime) more easily.
• Interspecies Friendship: The "Off the Hook" duet consists of the Inkling Pearl and the Octoling Marina. Their banter and occasional references to off-stage shenanigans indicates that it's not just for show, and the Octo Expansion affirms beyond any doubt that the pair are True Companions both on and off the air. It's also revealed in said expansion that Pearl didn't know that Marina was an Octoling, but as soon as Cuttlefish implied Marina was still working against the Inklings, Pearl immediately jumped to her defense.
• Irony: The Final Fest involved a lot of buildup on the team's social medias, with its Tumblr listing off every major character and faction's side. The Octarians were on Team Order, as Octarian society is already very orderly, but DJ Octavio (alongside Lil' Judd) was on Team Chaos, yearning for personal revenge. Octavio was on the opposite team of his own minions!
• It's a Wonderful Failure: In Octo Expansion, if you fail to detonate all the hyperbombs in time or fall into the water during the final boss, you're treated to a still image of Inkopolis getting decimated by Tartar's primordial sludge while Cap'n Cuttlefish, Pearl, or Marina lament the destruction of all life on the planet.
• Jack of All Stats:
  • Shooter-type weapons, and especially the Splattershot and it's variants. While not having any outstanding strengths over other weapon types, their combination of decent range, mobility, fire rate, damage and ink coverage make them extremely versatile in most situations.
  • Multiple post-launch sub and special weapons are able to fill multiple applications for different weapons:
    • Fizzy Bombs leave a trail of ink as they fly through the air, allowing its user to rapidly paint a path forward like with a Curling Bomb. It also can be charged to explode multiple times, making it great for painting (with equal if not better coverage than a Sprinkler), and the multiple explosions covering a large area will discourage enemies from entering its space for longer (like with a Suction Bomb). Its weakness is that after throwing one, players won't be able to recover ink for a noticeably longer duration than with other bombs.
    • Torpedos can be thrown into the air near an enemy, which causes it to lock onto them and fly in their direction. This can be used to pressure enemies in a fight (especially Mighty Glacier weapons that can't readily target the torpedo), locate enemies in an area before moving into it, and paint a ton of space if the Torpedo lands successfully. It also has a rolled mode that explodes on a shorter fuse and can't be shot down, which allows players to get quick burst damage in to finish off, like a Burst Bomb. The tradeoff is that only one Torpedo can be active at a time, reducing how often it can be spammed.
    • The Booyah Bomb is usable for practically every kind of weapon. Weapons of any range will appreciate the temporary armor it grants to grant a reprieve out of a bad situation; long-range weapons will especially like it thanks to its long-range capability, and it's useful for weapons that paint a lot and indirectly support their team because it can be used to help teammates farm their own specials. The bomb itself can be thrown to clear out an objective or shred objects with its high damage, but the opaque and long-lasting explosion can also smokescreen enemies trying to shoot through a chokepoint.
• Jet Pack: The new Inkjet Special causes the player to don a large jet pack that constantly fires continuous streams of ink out of it as a means of propulsion while arming the player with a rocket launcher that fires explosive globs of ink. The means of propulsion also means that flying over enemies causes them to take damage^note It used to be a One-Hit Kill until Version 1.3.0.
• Lampshade Hanging:
  • During one Moray Towers conversation, Pearl complains and asks why she's always the first to speak, with Marina mentioning that's so she can follow up and poke fun of Pearl that way.
  • Pearl and Marina sympathize with any player that falls to a Sprinkler.
  • During the final boss rematch, one of Callie's lines is 'Turn them into Calamari', causing Marie to actually mention she'd never actually noticed their Punny Name.
  • For the "Super Mushroom vs. Super Star" Splatfest, Marina pauses the duo's usual banter to question why they're having a completely new Splatfest after what was meant to be the Grand Finale. Pearl happily states that Mario is the exception.
• Last Chance Hit Point: One of the changes in single-player mode was addition of this mechanic. After taking damage that would normally splat your Inkling, you'll instead receive few seconds of Mercy Invincibility to find yourself some cover. Then, you'll need to stay safe for some time (hiding in own ink will speed it up) or reach a checkpoint to regain normal health - however, any hit taken in this state will do you in.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • A bit of official artwork for New Year's 2018 manages to spoil two things right off the bat and imply two others. Not only does it prominently feature Callie (spoiling that she's in the game at all), it shows her next to a pair of Octarians (implying that she sides with them) covered in Agent 4's ink, smiling and posing with Marie (both implying that this doesn't take, with the latter spoiling that the Squid Sisters get back together). About the only thing about Hero Mode it doesn't spoil is the purpose of those shades on Callie's forehead.
  • The final Shifty Station layout, "M.C. Princess Diaries", assumes you've already played and beaten Octo Expansion, as it features the wreckage of the NILS Statue in the background, Marina's Hyperbombs, and Pearl using the Killer Wail.
• Lens Flare: Players on a winning streak in Ranked Mode will find their weapons gleaming at the spawn in the beginning of the match.
• Letting the Air out of the Band: Once Octavio is beaten after Marie snipes Callie's hypnoshades off, "Tidal Rush" comes to a halt to make way for the Triumphant Reprise of (a remixed) "Calamari Inkantation".
• Loading Screen: Due to the Nintendo Switch's lack of a second screen, it was no longer possible to include minigames on the loading screen. However, this game does allow players to play with the background music, using different buttons to apply effects like changing the pitch or adding sound effects.
• Loot Boxes: The exceedingly rare non-paid example in the form of the bonuses awarded in Salmon Run, which are obtained for every 100 points you earn during a shift. They're also color-coded based on what type of reward they contain: yellow capsules give coins, green gives ability chunks, blue and orange give tickets for Crusty Sean's food, and pink gives a random piece of Grizzco-brand clothing gear. Twice per shift, you can also unlock a "superbonus" capsule that is guaranteed to have the highest-tier reward of its specific color.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: The new Brella-type weapons can open up when ZR is held down after firing; this blocks enemy fire directed towards your front. Held longer, the Brella will then fire itself forward, deflecting attacks while leaving a trail of ink and splatting enemies that happen to be in its flight path. However, once the Brella is fired, you can't use the Brella shield for some time.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic: On top of a gear's brand, you can buy a drink from Crusty Sean, which increases the probability of its corresponding sub-ability filling a gear slot.^note To be more specific, the probability for it is 30% (regardless of gear brand, which is 29.3% without a drink); if it lands on the remaining 70%, it ensures you won't get the favored sub-ability.
• Macross Missile Massacre: One of the Specials is the Tenta Missiles — a twin-pack of dual-wielded multi-missile launchers that lock on the targeted enemies and launch four Ink Missiles per target.
• The Man Is Sticking It to the Man: The Annaki brand provides a downplayed example; they're not explicitly anarchist, but they style themselves off anarchist trends and their brand name is phonetically similar to "anarchy", yet their popularity is antithetical to anarchist beliefs.
• Medium Awareness: Like their predecessors Callie and Marie, Off the Hook display some level of awareness that they are characters in a video game, most commonly through referring to updates and patches by name, although many more of their dialogues lean on or overtly break the fourth wall. In one of the dialogues for Snapper Canal, for example, Pearl tries to tell Marina something important, but can't because her text box runs out of room, which Marina points out.
• Mercy Invincibility: The single-player modes give the player a brief respite from damage whenever they lose a whole layer of armor, whether it's an excess stocked up during the stage or being brought down to their Last Chance Hit Point; only the ink bag strapped to Agent 8 can bypass it.
• Mighty Glacier: Many if not most of the longer-ranged weapons in the game. They hit hard if you land your shots and tend to have high accuracy, but usually suffer from low fire-rates and movement-speed penalties to compensate for this (The Dynamo Roller, H-3 Nozzlenose, .96 Gal, and entire Charger-category of weapons are good examples).
• Mini-Game Credits: Once again, you shoot ink to reveal them.
• Missile Lock-On: Activating the Tenta Missiles will bring up a targeting reticle that shows the location of all enemies on the stage, and it allows you to lock on to up to five targets.^note While teams in Splatoon only consist of four players each, the Rainmaker's shield can also be targeted in that mode. After you've locked on to your targets, a barrage of missiles will be unleashed upon each of them.
• Missing Secret: Subverted. Originally, the subway hidden in the back alley behind the studio did nothing, making a lot of players scratch their heads. It was later revealed to be the entrance to the Octo Expansion DLC once you purchase it.
• Mission-Pack Sequel: There's a new story, new maps, new characters, several new gameplay modes, new gear, and new weapons, but the base gameplay is the same as before.
• Money for Nothing: This especially became the case now that the game reworked how your Friend in the Black Market operates. In the first game, in addition to cash, they accept Super Sea Snails as payment. While these could only be gotten via Splatfests in the first game (making them a limited commodity), from the second game onward, you are now given one as a reward every time you level up past Level 30, allowing you to stockpile mountains of cash. As a trade-off, adding and rerolling slots can now only be paid for with snails, but the game also gives you multiple ways to get food tickets: new items that can be exchanged for food which not only allows you to increase your rate of experience gain (so you can get snails much quicker), but also increase your monetary payout after winning a game.
• Money Is Experience Points: While you will eventually run out of upgrades to spend Power Eggs on in Octo Canyon, you can purchase a random meal ticket for 1500 eggs a pop once you do.
• Mood Whiplash: The Chicken vs. Egg Splatfest quickly gained infamy for a rather... jarring line that Marina says in response to Pearl.
  Pearl: Wait... Which side am I on?
  Both: HAHAHA!
  Marina: It's funny because we're all living in a simulation and free will is a lie.
• Ms. Exposition: Callie, who will read you various facts about Agent 4 from the "Agent 4 Factopedia" that she acquired from Marie. Said facts include strange tidbits such as how much turf you inked measured in Maries, percentage of Roller swings split between horizontal and vertical swings, and Brush swing speed measured in swings per minute.
• Multilingual Song: It's implied that Off the Hook provides a fictional language example. Their songs are in Conlang Simlish, but the Japanese concerts provide some lyrics. The text implies that Pearl raps in the typical Inkling language while Marina sing her parts in Octarian (shown by her singing in katakana instead of hiragana).
• My God, What Have I Done?: Marie's facial expression suggests she's feeling this way when she destroys Callie's Hypnoshades and gets ink in her eyes, even though she knows in her heart that it's necessary to free her from DJ Octavio's brainwashing powers.
• My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours:
  • Played for Laughs after the conclusion of the first Splatfest.
    Marina: Well, that settles it. Ice cream is officially better than cake.
    Pearl: Well, I don't know if it's "officially" better...
    Marina: Actually, according to chapter 3, paragraph 5 of the Splatfest rules, it is. Ice cream is now legally better than cake. It's the law, Pearl.
  • Pearl turns this against Marina at the end of the NA/EU "The Chicken vs. The Egg" Splatfest.
    Pearl: You know the Splatfest rules, Marina...the chicken officially came before the egg. BOOYAH!
    Marina: Actually, I think most scientists would disagree wi-
    Pearl: The chicken came first, Marina. The Splatfest proved it.
    Marina: I'm just saying that genetic mutations over the course of many generations-
    Pearl: YOU'RE IN DIRECT VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 3 SECTION 2 OF SPLATFEST LAW!
  • Semi-Inverted with the global "Squid vs. Octopus" Splatfest. Marina mentioned in the pre-banter how due to Splatfest law, that such a Splatfest could be dangerous, but neither the Eastern nor Western post-fest banter (after Squid won) mentioned any in-universe legal ramifications.
  • The intro to "Chaos vs. Order" has Pearl do this, the implications of which aren't entirely clear yet:
    Pearl: I hereby invoke Article 4 of the Splatfest Law! That means that the losing side has to accept the world the winning side wants.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In Japan, there was a limited edition gear inspired by Emperor from the manga. It was accessible through buying a specific CoroCoro magazine.
  • The Japanese "Champion vs. Challenger" Splatfest used Emperor and Goggles as representatives, tying in to the manga's Square King Cup arc. The official picture even had Team Emperor facing off against Blue Team.
• Nerf:
  • The old tactic of camping an enemy's Super Jump point has been somewhat nerfed in this game, since the Splashdown special can be activated during a Super Jump to actively punish these players for it. In addition, wearing gear with the Drop Roll ability allows players to dodge-roll on contact with the ground, which acts as a fairly decent countermeasure against jump camping.
  • Stealth Jump no longer hides the player's Super Jump landing spot from nearby enemies. The only compensation is it no longer slows down the player's Super Jump.
  • The Quick Respawn ability was nerfed so that you have to get splatted at least twice without downing a single opponent, making it less practical for competent combatants. Combined with the nerf to Stealth Jump the infamous chain jumping strategy that used to dominate Tower Control in the first game has essentially been destroyed.
  • The Tenta Missiles' lock-on system severely punishes opponents who stick closely together, making it a suitable counter to spawn-camping teams.
  • The Rainmaker's shot type was changed from an Inkzooka Shot to a mortar shot that explodes after a second at the aimed zone, and each shot causes kickback. This makes it harder for the carrier to ink areas and defend themselves without help.
  • The use of Sprinklers to cover turf has been nerfed by giving the devices a limited ink tank, diminishing area of effect the more time passes, and through a gear ability that increases damage to devices, vastly shortening their lifespans.
  • Twitch campers are double-nerfed thanks to the Tenta Missiles and Sting Ray's ability to pierce terrain and target them directly, and by the Brella's ability to block their shots if they are spotted.
  • Damage Up has been split into two separate abilities: Sub Power Up and Main Power Up, the latter of which was not introduced into the game until over a year after release.
  • Defense Up has been replaced by Bomb Defense Up. Currently there is no Main Defense Up.
  • Many of the new Special Weapons are essentially weaker versions of the specials from the previous game:
    • The Sting Ray is similar to the Killer Wail in that it can hit enemies through terrain. However, the Stingray needs to hit an enemy for a lengthy duration to splat them while the Killer Wail atomized its victims quickly, and the Sting Ray has a much narrower radius than the Killer Wail, making it harder to hit people with it, and it turns slowly. Thankfully patch 1.3.0 made it start giving out shock waves after firing for a bit, which also increases it's radius, making it far more effective. Version 3.0.0 nerfed it back, on the other hand, by pushing its user off the spawning pool while it's in use to prevent it from being fired in absolute safety.
    • Ink Armor is similar to the Bubbler in that it protects the user and their allies. However, Ink Armor can only take a certain amount of hits before disappearing instead of granting temporary invincibility, and it takes a second for Ink Armor to actually take effect, while the Bubbler worked immediately. On the flip side, Ink Armor will affect all allies regardless of distance, and the user isn't pushed back by enemy attacks like the Bubbler. It also has a bit of a non-obvious nerf in that you become visible even when swimming in your own ink while its in effect, preventing the ability to sneak in right under somebody's nose even with Ninja Squid.
    • The Baller is similar to the Kraken in that it provides protection and increased speed with a lethal attack, and has a similar role of breaking though enemy lines via huge explosion. However the Baller can only take so many hits before it's canceled, needs time to charge up its explosion, has a smaller inking area while moving and increases the push back from attacks just like with the Bubbler. It's also solid, which is a bit of a sidegrade; you can't go through grating to attack foes, but you also can't fall into the water by using it, either.
    • Sub-Launchers are a nerf to Bomb Rush in a minor way. With Bomb Rush all subs were used as normal, you just had a limitless supply of them during the super. Now it's changed to where they get less range (Or less time before it explodes in the case of Curling Bombs) than a normal throw if you just spam it, but you can charge it to make the sub go even further than normal at the cost of waiting for the charge. This seems to make it so spamming is more defensive than offensive, while getting good distance and coverage gives you less "throws" per super.
• Never Say "Die": Considering the rest of the game plays this straight by substituting words like "splat", "defeat", "cook", "toast", and so on, it really stands out when Callie embarrassedly mentions trying to kill you the first time you speak with her.
• New Weapon Target Range: Octo Canyon, Sheldon will often ask you to complete a stage using a particular weapon, which he will airlift to you when you begin the stage. For instance, Octozeppelin Invasion is the first stage where Sheldon asks you to use the Hero Charger, which has a very long range but can only fire one shot every few moments. The aforementioned Octozeppelins float slowly through the air, difficult to reach for most weapons, but are enormous and go down with just one Charger shot. The bosses follow this pattern too: Octo Samurai is optimized for the Hero Roller, Octostomp is designed with the Hero Dualies in mind, and Octoshower is meant for the Hero Charger.
• No Hero Discount: Zigzagged. Sheldon will not give you a discount just because you're saving and/or have saved the city; however, he does let you borrow all of the weapons you need and even gives you non-tournament-legal versions that are more powerful than the ones in the multiplayer.
• Noodle Incident: In one of the dialogues of announced stages, Pearl suggests doing a concert at Manta Maria until Marina reminds her the last time they did resulted in a boat ending up at the bottom of the sea.
• No One Else Is That Dumb: Marie goes from wondering who the mysterious person hijacking her calls to Agent 4 is to immediately figuring it out after one transmission comes in upside-down.
• No OSHA Compliance: Sturgeon Shipyard, which takes place on a ship that is being built. As if that wasn't dangerous enough, moving platforms can drop players off the map.
• Nostalgia Level: Several maps from the first game return in this one with makeovers ranging from mild to significant, including the addition of elements not found in the original game to provide additional movement options. Specifically, they are:
  • Moray Towers (with added Inkrails)
  • Port Mackerel (with added Sponges)
  • Kelp Dome (with a few new platforms)
  • Blackbelly Skatepark (mostly the same, although are the spawn points are now slightly off-center and the layout is slightly more open)
  • Walleye Warehouse (no changes besides the updated graphics)
  • Arowana Mall (solid walkways alongside the grated walkway to the charger platform)
  • Piranha Pit (spawning pool is pulled further back, central conveyor belts are spaced out)
  • Camp Triggerfish (Inkrails to open additional routes throughout the area)
• Not the Intended Use: Activating your Special Weapon has the added effect of immediately topping off your Ink tank. If you have a Bomb Launcher Special, one option for getting splats in a pinch is to throw your Special, then keep firing your main gun to off the opposition. To a much lesser degree, the same can be used with the Sting Ray, except you can use a subweapon to briefly ward the enemy as you fire.
• Obvious Rule Patch: Splatfest Tees have the added benefit of costing only 10% of what it normally costs to Scrub slots. Originally, Splatfest Tees followed roughly the same EXP curve as every other Top equip, so the recommended method to grind Ability Chunks near a Splatfest was to grind until you unlocked only the first Sub Ability, then take it to Murch and Scrub it and repeat. The Version 1.3.0 patch "fixed" this by re-balancing the EXP needed to unlock Sub Abilities on Splatfest Tees so that each level costs the same amount, so that players are no longer encouraged to only grind the first Sub. This was changed further in Version 4.0.0, where during the Splatfest itself, a Tee with all three Sub Abilities unlocked will keep grinding EXP, and any unlocks after the third will automatically flake off as Ability Chunks until scrubbed.
• Older Than They Look: Pearl might look like a moe teenager, but she's actually 21.
• One-Hit Polykill: As of the 2.2.0 update, the Bamboozlers can now do this, though it's easier said than done not only because of how opponents can see your aiming laser, but because the Bamboozlers have rather short range for sniping weapons and cannot perform a one-hit kill. That means to do so with a Bamboozler requires your opponents to be lined up in a specific way and already damaged enough that the next shot will finish them. It does make opponents think twice about using someone else as cover though, and this trait is pretty effective against enemies in Salmon Run mode, who shamble like zombies in huge numbers and don't care if they're in the line of fire.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted in the Spanish-language versions: Marina retains her English name, but Callie is also still called "Mar."
• Orchestral Bombing: In a break from the mostly pop and rock influenced soundtrack, this is used in most of the pieces played during the Final Boss.
• Order Versus Chaos: July 2019's Splatfest was themed around this. Dubbed the Final Fest: Splatocalypse, it had Marina representing Team Order and Pearl representing Team Chaos. Pearl was supported by Callie, Agent 4, DJ Octavio, Annie & Moe, Spyke, Flow & Craymond, Iso Padre, and the Salmonids, while Marina was supported by Marie, Agent 3, Agent 8, Jelfonzo, Murch, Bisk, Crusty Sean, Cap'n Cuttlefish, C.Q. Cumber, Commander Tartar, and the Octarians. Come the results, and Team Chaos emerged victorious in every single category.
• Orgasmic Combat: Some of the pained sighs and moans made by male Octolings upon getting splatted or submerging while injured can most definitely be taken out of context. Furthermore, male Octolings have slightly more effeminate appearances and mannerisms when compared to their Inkling counterparts. This has led to many bara jokes among fans.
• Out of Focus: Unlike the Squid Sisters in the first Splatoon, Off the Hook has no role in the main story. However, they are involved in Octo Expansion.
• Over 100% Completion: The single-player campaign can reach 1000% completion if you beat every stage and boss battle with all nine hero weapons. Though you'd only know that the game considers this to be 1000% if you use the SplatNet2 companion app, which tracks a bevy of player statistics.
• Painting the Medium: Callie once again in a callback to the previous game, by showing an upside-down textbox when she speaks into her microphone upside-down.
• Parasol of Pain: The Splat Brella, though it's used for firing short-range shots and as a moving shield rather than swinging it around like a club.
• Pinball Projectile: The Curling Bomb sub-weapon spawns a bomb similar to a curling stone which quickly slides forward along the ground and can bounce off walls before detonating when in range of an opponent.
• Pocket Dial: Marina points out that pocket dialing is a particular hazard during a commentary for Camp Triggerfish.
  Pearl: My phone always malfunctions here and makes random calls. Magnetic fields?
  Marina: Pretty sure you're just butt-dialing people when you dodge roll.
• Post-End Game Content: Beating the story mode unlocks the ability to view the credits again and changing the dialogue during the Final Boss fight. While there are no amiibo challenges in this game, completing the story mode allows you to use the Callie and Marie amiibo to unlock special clothing rewards, including the gear worn by Agent 4 and Agent 3. Finally, beating the game will cause Callie, whose mysterious disappearance was central to the plot of the game's story mode, to appear alongside Marie at Tentakeel Outpost.
• The Power of Friendship: The Booyah Bomb charges faster if you continuously use the "Booyah!" command, but it will charge even faster if your teammates also mash the "Booyah!" command. Teammates who shout "Booyah!" while the Booyah Bomb is being charged also gain a slight increase to their own Special Gauge.
• Power Perversion Potential: During the Flight vs. Invisibility Splatfest, Pearl and Marina both discuss the potential applications of these two powers. Marina, representing Team Invisibility, points out some of its perks:
  "With invisibility, you could spy on people while they're...inking their Splat Zone."
• Power-Up Food: Crusty Sean started his own food truck, which sells food and drinks that give you various bonuses after playing online matches, like Experience Booster, Money Multiplier, and tilting the RNG to give you higher odds of rolling the Abilities you want when your gear unlocks subs.
• Product Placement:
  • Some of Japan's exclusive Splatfests were sponsored by third parties:
    • Their third Splatfest was sponsored by McDonald's and pitted Fries against Chicken McNuggets (the latter of which are also considered a side dish in Japan).
    • Their sixth Splatfest was sponsored by the Japanese clothing company Uniqlo, with Heattech (warm inner wear) against Ultra Light Down (warm outer wear).
    • Their seventh Splatfest was another collaboration with CoroCoro magazine based on the official manga. The sides were Champions (e.g. Emperor) vs. Challengers (Goggles).
    • Their ninth was sponsored by Nike and put New-model Shoes against Popular-model Shoes.
    • Their tenth was a collaboration with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), and the sides were Undiscovered Creatures vs. Advanced Technology.
    • Their sixteenth was a rematch between Mushroom Mountain vs. Bamboo Shoot Village from the first game, sponsored by Meiji Dairies.
    • Their nineteenth was between classic Pocky Chocolate vs. the then-newest flavor Pocky Ultra Slim (which is basically just chocolate dipped onto thinner cracker sticks), sponsored by Glico.
    • Their twenty-second was another collaboration with CoroCoro magazine based on the official manga, as a rematch of the first game's Boke vs. Tsukkomi Splatfest, with the manga's Team Blue split between the Splatfest teams — Goggles and Bobble-hat on Team Boke, and Specs and Headphones on Team Tsukkomi.
  • Meanwhile, a "tournament-style" trio of back-to-back Splatfests for North America, Oceania and Europe were announced for the month of May promoting Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the subject being who the many Inklings believed to be the best Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. First was Raphael vs. Leonardo, second was Michelangelo vs. Donatello, third was between the two winners, Raphael vs. Donatello.
  • A Japanese "tournament-style" Splatfest between Sanrio characters was likewise held in late May/early June 2018. First was Hello Kitty vs. Cinnamoroll, second was My Melody vs. Pompompurin, third was between winners Hello Kitty and My Melody.
  • Nintendo themselves sponsored the twentieth Splatfest — a global Splatfest asking whether players preferred the Heroes or Villains of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
• Promoted to Playable: You play as an Octoling in Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion. Completing the expansion pack allows you to take your Octoling into online matches.
• Put on a Bus: A late-game conversation with Marie reveals that Captain Cuttlefish and Agent 3 are out on an unidentified research mission. They both reappear in the Octo Expansion DLC.
• Rainbow Pimp Gear: In a game where clothing affects both appearance and abilities, this is once again quite possible. However, some new features were added for the benefit of those willing to go out of their way to avoid the problem. Annie's new SplatNet Gear Shop sells gear identical to what's available from the Galleria but with different main abilities. The catch is that you will need the Nintendo Switch Online app, the gear is only available in certain timeframes, and orders are sent to Murch who will charge you cash on delivery.
• Rank Inflation:
  • While version 2.0 of Splatoon did this by adding S and S+ ranks above A+, this game inflated the ranks even further by giving S+ 50 numbered ranks of its own. The version 3.0 update shortened S+ to only 10 ranks, but added X rank above that (which features its own internal "X Power" ranking system that works altogether differently from the lower ranks).
  • Salmon Run ranks seem to top out at Profreshional 99 (as indicated by the usual x/99 numerical indicator), but once you exceed 99 and fill the rank gauge up the numercal counter can keep going up, all the way to 999.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: If Team Callie had won, it would be Callie searching for a missing Marie instead. It wasn't until around Nintendo started posting the "Squid Sisters Stories" in the weeks leading up to launch that players realized that the outcome of the final Splatfest from the first game directly impacted the story of this one.
• Recoil Boost: The dodge roll ability of the dualies weapon type is justified in-game as boosters on the back of each gun blasting ink. Consequentially the maneuver uses a bit of ink.
• Red/Green Contrast: The main color scheme of the game is neon pink and green. And the Octo Expansion levels typically have Agent 8 using pink ink against the Sanitized Octarians' aqua green ink.
• Retcon: Some of Marina's translation-only snappier comments were retconned in updates. One example is her saying that the music reverb makes it "easier to ignore how off-key [Pearl] is" being changed to "easier to ignore how off-key we are". This was done to make Marina less mean-seeming and closer to her Japanese personality.
• Reverse Grip: Brellas are held like this until fired.
• Rocket-Tag Gameplay: Like in the first game, it's quick to splat (or be splatted by) an opposing team member, especially since there's only Bomb Defense Up and no Main Defense Up (as opposed to Defense Up in the first game).
• Running Gag: "I'll take your (adjective) silence as a yes!", which lampshades the Heroic Mime property of the Player Character, is said by both Marie to Agent 4 (as a Call-Back to the first Splatoon) in the main story and Cap'n Cuttlefish to Agent 8 in Octo Expansion.
• Rhythm Game: This game features a refined version of Squid Beatz, known as Squid Beatz 2. Unlike the original, it's unlocked by default instead of being an amiibo reward, and actually tells you that there's a mini-game this time. Like the original, however, it serves no practical purpose.
• Sad Battle Music: "Tidal Rush" might be a lot more joyous in tone than other examples of this trope, yes, but it's still a lot heavier and more emotional-sounding than something you'd expect from a game about cute cartoon squid people. There's a good reason for it, too—it's Marie desperately trying to snap Callie out of her brainwashing by reminding her of the happy times they used to share. Marie sounds like she's about to cry, and even Callie sounds a little emotional in places.
• Same Character, But Different:
  • The Ink Mine returns from the first game, and still activates when an enemy player gets close to it. However, the damage it now does has been greatly reduced, and it now has the additional properties of a Point Sensor, showing the location of any enemy that was in its activation range, allowing for a number of unique strategies depending on the weapon it's paired with.
  • The Dual Squelcher, a long-range automatic shooter in the first game that was held in one hand, is now reclassified as a two-handed Dualies weapon renamed the Dualie Squelcher. Like other Dualies, it allows the user to roll if you press the jump button while firing, with the Dualie Squelcher resembling its old self during so.
• Sand Worm: The Maws, a mutant salmon which travels through ink in the same physics-defying way as the inklings, only to emerge and devour an unsuspecting player, sand worm style. If the player is quick, they can get out of the way and leave behind a grenade instead.
• Schrödinger's Gun: The first Splatoon effectively had a Grand Finale in the form of the global Callie vs. Marie Splatfest, which Marie won. Supplementary material revealed that this result is canon within the series and was the catalyst for some of the events in Splatoon 2.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: As with the previous game, leveling up Gear and unlocking their Ability Slots requires you to pull this off, jumping into battles with gear that has them locked and potentially putting your Inkling at a slight or massive disadvantage depending on the loadout of your allies and the enemy team.
• Sequel Hook:
  • The Sunken Scrolls in this game state that Cap'n Cuttlefish and Agent 3 have been on an unidentified "research mission" throughout the events of the game. While it is never explained what this research mission was, it sets up their appearance in Octo Expansion.
  • Once the Great Zapfish is returned both Pearl and Marina agree that the Great Zapfish looks like it's starting to shrink.
  • The "Final Fest: Splatocalypse", Chaos vs. Order, came with the stipulation that whoever took home victory would also be influencing the future of Inkopolis. Splatoon 3 appears to have borne that out (as Team Chaos was the winning team).
• Sequential Boss: The final boss has four stages. All four has him getting new attacks, but the last also grants the player character an 11th-Hour Superpower.
• Series Fauxnale: The Chaos vs. Order Splatfest was intended to be the capstone Splatfest of Splatoon 2 and was named such ("The Final Fest: Splatocalypse"). However afterwards there were four more Splatfests throughout 2020 and early 2021. The first three were revisits of earlier Splatfests ("Mayo vs. Ketchup", "Chicken vs. Egg", and "Trick vs. Treat") but the true final Splatfest was a completely new theme ("Super Mushroom vs. Super Star", hosted in honor of Mario's 35th anniversary).
• Series Mascot: While the mascot is still a teenage Inkling girl, Splatoon 2 has a short-haired pink one using Splat Dualies as opposed to the orange, Splattershot-wielding one from the original game.
• Ship Level: Manta Maria, a decommissioned ship being used as a multiplayer map. When talking about the stage, Pearl mentions she got a similar ship for her sixth birthday.
• Short-Range Shotgun:
  • Rollers and Brushes create a sizable death zone up close but drop down to tickles very quickly.
  • Subverted with Brellas- their shots have surprisingly realistic shotgun mechanics, complete with comparable effective range to the game's SMG equivalents.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of the new Turquoise October songs is "The Girl from Inkopolis", referencing Antônio Carlos Jobim's song "The Girl from Ipanema".
  • Mitsuhiro Kida's name in the end credits is stylized similarly to the Metallica logo.
  • In one of the introductions for Goby Arena:
    Pearl: Yo, this stage is straight up SLOPPY!
    Marina: Are you STILL trying to make "sloppy" happen? It's not gonna happen.
  • The seahorse on the back of this jacket◊ looks remarkably like Betty Boop, bearing a similar facial expression, Sexy Backless Dress, and heart-symbol thigh band. A cardboard cutout of the same character can be spotted at Wahoo World's gift shop.
  • When Sheldon introduces the Bloblobber, he got the description from his Bloblobber blob law blog.
  • A new special introduced is the Booyah Bomb, which is quite literally just the Spirit Bomb from Dragon Ball, down to it being a Combined Energy Attack fueled by your team's cheering. In Japanese, the special is called the Niceu dama,^note Translates to "Nice Ball", with "Nice!" being the Japanese equivalent to "Booyah!" referencing the Spirit Bomb's Japanese name, Genki dama.
  • The Time Travel vs. Teleportation Splatfest features art of characters wearing the Star Fleet uniforms to represent Team Teleportation.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: The Splat Brella doubly functions as a shotgun, spraying a short-ranged burst of ink before folding out into an umbrella and shielding the user.
• Simultaneous Arcs: During the main campaign, Marie tells the player that Captain Cuttlefish and Agent 3 are out on an unidentified research mission. The Octo Expansion campaign takes place at the same time, following Agent 8 and Cap'n Cuttlefish after the failure of that research mission, in their attempt to find Agent 3 and return to the surface.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: Of the two Squid Sisters, Callie was absent from the reveal trailer. It was later revealed that Callie's absence is part of the game's story.
• Skill Gate Characters:
  • The Autobomb has solid attributes at face value: it's a Bomb that automatically homes in on opponents, with average blast radius, great damage, and cheap ink cost for its damage. At low-level play, many players fear the Autobomb because of its persistent homing properties allowing it to chase players for abnormally long distances. At higher-level play, however, the Autobomb is considered average at best due to its mostly limited applications as an offensive tool and being very easy to evade once you learn how, reducing its usability to surprise attacks and forcing enemies out of cover.
  • In low level Clam Blitz, one strategy becomes incredibly dominant: using the Inkbrush to rapidly move around the map, picking up Clams and building a Power Clam to dunk into the enemy's basket, then sliding away. Newer players may not be able to reliably hit enemies who can move as fast as an Inkbrush permits them through non-aligned ink, and they won't have the same gamesense skills to spread out and defend multiple entry points, so this strategy is very reliable against new players. Against those with some time playing, though, the strategy falls off since veterans are able to counter this strategy for having the skills that newbies won't. The Brushes are still useful at higher level Clam Blits for collecting Clams, but they're not the same overwhelming agility that they are among newer players.
• Solemn Ending Theme: "Fresh Start" by the Squid Sisters for the base game's Hero Mode campaign, and "Into the Light" by Off the Hook for the Octo Expansion DLC campaign.
• Sound Test: The game features the minigame Squid Beatz 2. It's included in the base game this time rather than being tied to an amiibo, but Splatoon series amiibo can be used to unlock music tracks from the first game that can't otherwise be heard in the sequel.
• Souvenir Land: Wahoo World is a stage set in the middle of a large amusement park, complete with an enormous roller coaster dominating the skyline.
• Splash Damage:
  • The game alters the Rainmaker, the Purposely Overpowered weapon featured in the eponymous Rainmaker mode, into one of these. Where it's Charged Attack would previously unleash a large vertical column of ink, here it fires a single arcing shot that sticks to surfaces and explodes after a short delay. Anyone hit by the projectile or caught within the ensuing explosion will be splatted instantly.
  • Splatoon 2 also introduced the Explosher, an unorthodox addition to the Slosher weapon class that shoots arcing, explosive projectiles that explode immediately on contact with a solid surface. Unlike Blaster shots, these projectiles will pass through enemies until they hit a surface, meaning it's possible to hit someone directly and deal additional splash damage.
• Stance System:
  • All rollers can now perform a longer, narrower vertical swing by pressing ZR while jumping, whereas in the previous game, they could only perform horizontal swings. This is especially noticeable with the Flingza Roller, with quick, close-ranged horizontal swings and much longer, slower vertical swings.
  • A minor case with the Squeezer weapon where, depending on whether you hold down fire or mash the button, can respectively have low range and high spread or high range and low spread.
• Stop Hitting Yourself: Just like the first game, the Final Boss involves inking the giant gold fists on DJ Octavio's mech until they fly back at him, causing him to hit himself. Marie also says this directly during the rematch.
• Subliminal Seduction: The game manages to use an odd variation of this as Foreshadowing. All of the music tracks in the single-player campaign (which were composed by the Octarian military themselves in-universe) have faint female singing at one point or another. You'd think this is just the Octoling soldiers, but when played backwards, these turn out to be Callie's vocals from different songs in the first game.
• Suicidal "Gotcha!": It is possible to jump out of bounds while using the Inkjet special and then fly back to the nearest edge rather than dissipate.^note This is because the Inkjet normally places a beacon where you activated it. That beacon also marks where you land after it explodes and sends you flying. Naturally, some players have exploited this mechanic to catch opponents off guard.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Splatoon 1 featured the Disruptor, a thrown sub weapon taking the form of a flask; it explodes, afflicting enemies with debuffs to their movement speed and ink consumption. Splatoon 2 ditches this, featuring instead the Toxic Mist, which is... a sub weapon flask that explodes on contact and affects enemies with a debuff to their movement speed and ink consumption. The main difference is that Disruptor applied its debuff for a set duration, while Toxic Mist lasts for as long as the enemy stays in its resultant cloud.
• Take That!: One of Pearl's reasons for supporting Team Action during the Action vs. Comedy Splatfest is that she doesn't want to "see Sheldon tell nerdy crab jokes in front of a laugh track".
• Take That, Audience!: In the Chaos vs. Order splatfest announcement, when Pearl is trying to prove Marina has more things in her life than just being part of Off the Hook, a vital key point Pearl mentions is that the fans like Marina more than they do her and ends it off with, "I've seen the internet". This is an obvious, fourth-wall breaking jab to the fact that within the Splatoon community and the internet as a whole, Marina is by far the more popular Off the Hook member.
• Tele-Frag: You can combine the Splashdown special with a Super Jump to gib opponents who try to camp your landing spot.
• Temporary Online Content: Splatfests are time-limited events that, among other things, each feature a unique Shifty Station layout that is used only for that Splatfest and is permanently gone after the Splatfest ends. However, the 5.0 update releasing after the Final Fest adds a Splatfest Turf War mode for Private Battles in which any of the Shifty Stations, as well as the nighttime versions of the regular maps, can be selected.
• Theme Music Power-Up: As the fight against Callie and DJ Octavio progresses, Marie begins singing "Tide Goes Out" in an attempt to snap Callie out of her brainwashing. After she's broken out of her brainwashing, Callie joins Marie in singing a remixed version of "Calamari Inkantation" from the first game to signal that it's time to put Octavio in his place.
• Theme Naming: The various Shifty Station stages are named after Japanese literature titles in the Japanese version. The English version keeps the naming convention but for English works, with examples such as "Wayslide Cool", "Goosponge", "The Splat in our Zones", and "MC.Princess Diaries".
• Tennis Boss: DJ Octavio, like in the first game, only this time he slows up with the other weapons; his fist can only be launched back when it's flying straight; he occasionally spins it rapidly, which repels any ink you fire at it and thus it must be dodged.
• There Is Another: Judd, originally thought to be the Last of His Kind in the first game, now has a smaller cat companion judging alongside him.
• Time Skip: The game takes place two years after the events of the original Splatoon's single-player campaign. As a result, a number of characters have disappeared and the previously Shibuya-inspired Inkopolis Plaza has been left behind in favor of the Times Square-inspired Inkopolis Square. This also has parallels with the real-world, as Splatoon 2 released a little over two years after the first game.
• Too Old to Trick-or-Treat: This is brought up during the introduction to the game's "Splatoween" event, in which Pearl and Marina argue over the best way to celebrate Halloween. Pearl is shocked that Marina still goes trick or treating, but she soon turns out to be Not So Above It All herself:
  Pearl: Seriously?! YOU ARE A GROWN WOMAN.
  Marina: The house down the street gives out KING-SIZE CANDY BARS!
  Pearl: Aight, fair enough.
• Tracking Device: Basically what the Ink Mine has been changed to. Rather than dealing any significant damage, the Ink Mine is more useful for planting in an area to let you know when somebody passes by it and where they are going by letting you see their position anywhere on the map if they're in its area when it goes off. Unlike the first game it actually has an indicator of when when it's been destroyed, so even if it doesn't catch the person it still lets you know when somebody has been close enough to destroy it. In comparison, the Point Sensor does no damage, but cannot be stopped once deployed and persists for a period of time; any opponent who passes through its zone of perception will be revealed to the Point Sensor's user and their teammates.
• Tron Lines: Found on certain pieces of terrain, such as the weighted platforms in the third part of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Splatfest. In these cases, the glowing lines always shine right through the ink.
• Truck Driver's Gear Change:
  • Just like last time, the background music for the single-player stages goes up a semitone at the final checkpoint.
  • "Tidal Rush" starts in C, but quickly transposes up a full tone to D.
• Unnecessary Combat Roll:
  • The Splat Dualies allow the user to roll sideways to dodge fire and then concentrate their own. There's a hard cap of two rolls (four for the Tetra Dualies) in a row before the user is forced to stop. Furthermore, while the Dualies' aiming reticles are separate, they merge into a one single one after a roll, meaning a skilled player can initiate a roll to quickly focus fire on one target.
  • The new Footwear-exclusive Drop Roller Skill allows the player to roll immediately after Super Jumping by tilting the analog stick in the middle of a Super Jump, which can be used to get out of the way of any campers trying to splat you on arrival. Originally, the actual directions you could roll in were somewhat restrictive, and usually had to involve some forward movement, but the Version 1.4.0 update buffed Drop Roller so that you can now roll in any direction desired.
• Unwanted Gift Plot: The December 2017 Splatfest is this in a nutshell, with the participants deciding whether sweaters or socks is the more tolerable Christmas gift. Pearl celebrated the victory with a rap on the topic.
  Marina: ...OK, I deserve a raise.
• Verbal Backspace: During the Christmas Splatfest, Marina mentions "Octivus" the Octoling version of Christmas, before correcting herself to "Squidmas".
• Violation of Common Sense: In Turf War stages, there's a delay in respawning if the other team splats you, but none if you fall off the stage/into water. Not only that, but you won't explode in a burst of the other team's ink. Thus, it can make perfect sense to jump off the stage rather than be splatted if an opponent has you cornered, reducing the amount of area they can cover as well as getting you back in the action more quickly.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Octo Samurai, the second boss. His attacks are fast and random, and he requires a LOT of direct attacks before his respawn device, his real weakness, is exposed. He's also the first boss in the game to break the pattern established by the original Splatoon and not attack in a pattern of blatantly telegraphed moves, and the ones that are are fast.
• Wallbonking: Autobombs don't have any fancy pathing AI; once they locate their target, they beeline towards them until they're close enough or their fuse timer runs out, and won't bother trying to walk around ledges or drops. This simple AI is something players can exploit: an Autobomb bonking against the ledge beneath high ground an opponent is using can become a nasty surprise if they drop down from there and fall right into the Autobomb's explosion radius.
• Warm-Up Boss: Octo Oven, the first boss. It has a simple fixed pattern of attacks and telegraphs itself quite clearly. Once you figure out how to reach the tentacle at the top, it's as good as dead. As mentioned above, bosses after this do not follow these traits.
• Wave-Motion Gun:
  • As of Version 1.3.0., the Sting Ray, when fired for at least 1.5 seconds, begins to emit an enormous shockwave that increases both damage and hit radius. Incidentally, it now looks a lot like the Killer Wail when its shockwaves activate.
  • When playing on Shifty Station from Final Fest, the message "The voice to end all voices!" appears during the last minute and Pearl descends from Off the Hook's chopper in the center of the stage. Whoever gets to her first is granted the Princess Cannon, Pearl's custom Killer Wail from the finale of the Octo Expansion, which causes Pearl to fire a massive Killer Wail beam that inks a massive amount of turf and obliterates anything in its path, including players and Hyperbombs.
• "X" Makes Anything Cool: The Rank above Rank S+10 introduced in Ver. 3.0 is called Rank X.
• You Mean "Xmas": "Squidmas" and "Octivus" are the Inkling and Octoling versions of Christmas, complete with giving bad gifts like ugly sweaters and socks.

Salmon Run

Welcome to Grizzco Industries.

• A.I. Breaker: During the "Rush" event, Chum and Goldies will dash, single-file, to whichever player has Glowflies (which are a bunch of fireflies) around them. If said player has a Roller (not including brushes), they can lower the Roller down in front of the Salmonids, who will all crash into the Roller and splat themselves.
• The All-Seeing A.I.: Justified. Salmonids can see where you are and attack accordingly even if you're in squid/octopus form and remaining still and hidden in your own ink; Mr. Grizz explains that their strong sense of smell lets them easily locate hidden enemies. They will also jump up to get you even if you hide in the tallest of walls (like those at Lost Outpost).
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Once the buzzer sounds the wave is automatically counted as complete, meaning that even if you get splatted by a bomb or missile as the round ends, it won't count as a team wipe even if everyone is out of commission.
  • If a team member disconnects, the amount of Golden Eggs you need to get are decreased.
• Anti-Grinding: After you get the second special bonus in the rotation, the only things you can earn in Salmon Run are more of the clothing item they're currently offering for the month as a guaranteed drop and a random clothing drop from the previous months. This is to encourage playing the other modes for both the money and exp for your main levels.^note However, once you get to that point, the clothing item will have a chance to have all three ability slots filled, which you can swap for ability chunks out of it. It's enough for people to consider this mode more efficient for grinding ability chunks over the main way of getting ability chunks, especially if you're at professional rank.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: The Grizzco Slosher has the unique attribute of being able to go through anything. This includes armored bosses and even the Flyfish, the latter of which is otherwise impossible to kill unless you use the Sting Ray or Feed It a Bomb.
• Arrange Mode: Salmon Run sometimes has a variation of this. Usually, each Salmon Run rotation has four weapons that are made available to use, with who gets what being randomized for each of the run's three waves. However, sometimes there are rotations where one or more of the four weapon slots is replaced with a question mark, in which you get a completely random weapon, and the weapon you get could be a rare Grizzco weapon that's heavily optimized for damage. Far more rarely, you will get a rotation where all the weapon slots are golden question marks, which guarantees that all four players will receive a Grizzco weapon for each wave; as of June 2019 there have been only two such rotations since the game's July 2017 release.
• Artistic License – Economics: All rewards you get are called "bonuses" based on hitting certain tiers of points. However, you never receive any other form of payment aside from these "bonuses", so technically you would be working on commission instead of getting bonuses. This is somewhat justified by the fact that Grizzco is characterized as a rather sketchy business, so it's not terribly surprising that there would be something off about their payment system (in fact, the system is a reference to a Loophole Abuse system used by pachinko parlors to skirt around Japanese regulations on gambling for cash).
• Attack Its Weak Point: Every single Boss Salmonid, save for the Goldie, has a weak point that's the key to defeating them:
  • Drizzlers normally hide under their impermeable umbrella-like armor, but when they pop out to shoot an Ink Storm-like missile, they're completely vulnerable for several seconds.
  • The Flyfish must have a Splat Bomb tossed into both of its missile pods to defeat them.
  • Grillers have a fish tail poking out of their back. If it's shot enough, three more appear. When enough damage is dealt to these weak points, the machine is destroyed.
  • While Maws can be taken down with normal firepower, it's much faster to toss a Splat Bomb at their warning marker before they lunge up to the surface, so they swallow the bomb and not a player.
  • If a Scrapper soaks up enough damage with its frontal shields, it will be immobilized for several seconds, at which point players can head to the back of the machine and kill its exposed driver.
  • The only vulnerable point on a Steel Eel is its driver, and if they are killed, the rest of the contraption will be demolished.
  • Steelheads attack by forming a bomb on their head and throwing it at a player. If enough damage is dealt to the bomb while it's still swelling up, the Steelhead will explode.
  • Stingers sit atop a tower of 7 pots, all of which must be destroyed to defeat them.
• Bandit Mook: A couple of them are introduced thanks to the also-debuting Salmon Run mode:
  • The Snatchers are a type of common Salmonid which spawn after a Boss Salmonid is defeated. They can't attack players, but they will attempt to take the Golden Eggs left on the ground back into the sea. Splatting them will make them drop any eggs they're carrying, but more Snatchers will continue to spawn until you pick the eggs up yourself and take them to the egg basket. While the ones in this game are bound to the ground and can only hold up to three eggs at once, the ones in Splatoon 3 can carry multiple Golden Eggs at once, and pilot tiny aircraft to grab out-of-the-way eggs, such as those left on a Fish Stick.
  • During certain Salmon Run waves, you will be faced with the Mothership, which can steal Golden Eggs right out of your egg basket. Shooting at it enough while it's attempting to siphon from your basket will push it back temporarily, but it will attempt to steal your eggs twice before the wave is over.
• Bears Are Bad News: Mr. Grizz, the owner of Grizzco Industries. He's only seen speaking through a bear statue, and his business is also the Hold the Line mode against mutant salmon, even the game describes his business as incredibly shady.
• Boss Bonanza:
  • Salmon Run manages to do this as a tutorial level, of all things. Granted, its purpose is to familiarize one with the various bosses in the game mode and offer strategies for taking them down, but it can still feel far more hostile.
  • On higher levels in Salmon Run, several bosses spawn in a single wave, meaning players can easily become overwhelmed if they're slow in taking bosses down.
• Boring, but Practical: The automatic Shooters are relatively basic in function compared to more specialized weapon classes that can deal with certain types of Boss Salmonids better, but their ability to shoot fast lets them serve a Jack of All Trades function, with good painting capabilities to cover turf quickly and high splatting power against Lesser Salmonids and certain bosses to thin crowds.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Mr. Grizz, CEO of the Ambiguously Evil Grizzco that sends teenagers to fend off hordes of berserk mutant fish. His Benevolent Boss persona is a front meant to entice Inklings and Octolings to continue working for him despite the shady and unsafe conditions of Grizzco Industries, and to encourage better productivity. It's more explicit in the Japanese version, where a friendly boss in a shady business is considered to be a red flag for employees.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Grizzco weapons share the common trait of having the world's worst ink efficiency despite their Purposefully Overpowered attributes. It's essentially the equivalent of burning a large hole in the bottom of your ink tank, and you will need to dive in constantly to keep up with their very high ink consumption. The Grizzco Slosher in particular is fantastic at destroying bosses, and can even eliminate ones that normally can't be defeated by simply firing at them (such as Flyfish and Steelheads), but has a really hard time against almost anything else due to its slow rate of fire, slow shots, and an ink consumption of 25% per shot.
• Crosshair Aware:
  • Green circles appear on the ground where Flyfishes' missiles are going to hit, akin to Tenta Missiles.
  • A small fishing lure floats in green ink and emits a pulse when it gets close to players just before Maws erupts from the ink to feast on Inklings. You NEED to get away before then; the Inkjet will NOT save you as they surface quite high.
• Darker and Edgier: The Salmon Run game mode darkens the lore a little bit - not only are there thrash punk-inspired mutant salmon running around out there in the Splatoon world, there are also relative wasteland areas outside of places like Inkopolis - which is to say, there are parts of the planet that still haven't recovered from the human-made ecological disaster, even after ten millennia.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: While all of the Boss Salmonids explode into ink upon death like Inklings and Octolings, the Steelhead stands out from the rest in that its death-blast can take out other Salmonids.
• Derelict Graveyard: Salmon Run mode takes place in a restricted ocean zone, full of polluted water and rusting debris. Among the wreckage that can be found here are the remnants of a hydroelectric dam, a derelict ship marooned on a sandbar, and curiously, the ruins of a space shuttle that seems to have crashed into the sea millenia ago. This area, of course, appears to be completely uninhabited — barring the territorial mutant Salmonids that make these waters their home.
• Developer's Foresight: The ending section of the first Salmon Run tutorial is a Timed Mission where you collect just one Golden Egg and bring it to the basket. It's almost impossible to lose by accident, but in case you fail somehow (i.e. deliberately stalling out the timer without bothering to collect an egg), you'll get unique dialogue from Mr. Grizz and pass the tutorial anyway.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • The Dynamo Roller is the epitome of a Mighty Glacier. The weapon has horrible wind-up on its flings and extremely high ink consumption, causing it to function poorly on its own; being caught in a corner with no backup is almost guaranteed to be a death sentence. This is offset by the weapon's incredible range and damage output, having great painting capabilities and being the only Roller that can crush Cohocks instantly. On waves such as Glowflies where Salmonids make a beeline towards specific players, having a Dynamo sit in front of the other players and just roll forward slowly to crush enemies while the other players pick up the Golden Eggs is a viable strategy.
  • Unlike the other Grizzco weapons, which are easy to use and ink and kill reliably well, the Grizzco Slosher is much harder to use due to its Painfully Slow Projectile and 25% ink consumption per shot meaning that you have horrendous ground coverage with your shots. However, what it lacks in coverage it more than makes up for in kill power, as it sports an Armor-Piercing Attack that can One-Hit Kill damn near every Salmonid in the game. If you can get the full support of your team to back you up, a Grizzco Slosher wielder can turn practically every boss enemy (including Steelhead and the infamous Flyfish) in Salmon Run into sashimi at the drop of a hat.
• Drugs Are Bad: A subtle variation. Similarly to how most weapons are made of household appliances from the days of humanity, the four Grizzco weapons, which are illegal in Inkopolis due to how overpowered they are, are made with bottles of prescription drugs.
• Feed It a Bomb: One of the game's recommended strategies for dealing with Maws is to toss a bomb where it's about to emerge, which will cause it to consume the bomb and die instantly.
• Fiendish Fish: The co-op Salmon Run mode is all about fighting through wave after wave of dangerous Salmonids to protect Inkopolis/Splatsville and collect golden Power Eggs.
• Frying Pan of Doom: Lesser Salmonids use spoons and pans as melee weapons.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: The "Goldie Seeking" wave in Salmon Run, in which the titular Goldie hides within the Gushers scattered around the stage. When the Gusher it's currently hiding in is opened, it doesn't try to fight — it instead runs to another Gusher while players are tasked with firing on the creature to make it drop Golden Eggs.
• Guide Dang It!: The game explains a lot of things pretty well, but there are a few things it doesn't:
  • At the beginning of each round in Salmon Run, there's a translucent indicator at the bottom of the screen that tells you what the tide is going to be (Low, Medium, and High) so you know whether to head out to the shore or clear out from the lower half.
  • During the "Goldie Seeking" event in Salmon Run, the game will hint at where the Goldie is at by the height of the gusher's output. This can be hard to notice since you often won't be doing it by yourself so it becomes easy to miss this fact when multiple valves start up at once. Even worse is Mr. Grizz's hint for the event only mentions the brightness of the gushers being an indicator, which doesn't really seem to mean anything.
  • Probably the worst piece of advice in the entire training manual says that since you can only carry one egg at a time, when you kill a boss and get your three-egg reward you should call your teammates over and wait there until they show up so the Snatchers don't steal any eggs back. This strategy actually turns out to be a terrible waste of time, a good way to get surrounded with no close support, and a constant source of frustration to your more seasoned teammates who have learned not to do it. Almost no one makes it to "Profreshional" before learning to abandon this practice.
• Harder Than Hard: The ranks and associated difficulty for Salmon Run are: Intern, Apprentice, Part-Timer, Go-Getter, and Profreshional. It seems like difficulty tops out at Profreshional, but a team averaging 600 points or more in Profreshional rank will encounter what is known as Hazard Level MAX!!, in which Golden Egg quotas and boss spawn rates are at their maximum.
• Hold the Line: The Salmon Run mode involves hordes of salmon rushing towards the central crate the Inklings use to store Power Eggs. As such, the Inklings must fend them off while collecting Power Eggs and, most importantly, Golden Eggs, with good performance netting you money and other bonuses. Cohock Charge is this especially. Shooting down most bosses with the supplied Ink Cannons is a piece of Octo pie. Actually getting the eggs and transporting them to the basket is a whole different kettle of Salmonids. Oh, and you have to watch out for Maws too, as they are the only boss you can't shoot down and they can take you out while you're in the cannon.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The Grizzco brand of weapons, available exclusively during random weapon sessions in Salmon Run. They are ludicrously powerful compared to conventional weaponry and have unique attributes such as enhanced rate of fire and ink spread or an Armor-Piercing Attack at the cost of putting a huge amount of stress on your ink tank.
• Instakill Mook: In Salmon Run, Maws, like the Octomaw, can try to eat your Inkling whole, but sometimes, if physics favors you, you can get out of being swallowed.
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • Salmon Run can occasionally feel like this in several ways. First, you have no control of what weapons you'll be given for each shift, meaning you can be in trouble if you get stuck with something you aren't good at using. Second, the various boss Salmonids spawn more or less at random, and certain combinations are much more difficult to defeat than others. Third, there are different types of rounds (low tide, high tide, glowfly stages, etc.) which sometimes utilize different mechanics. Certain combinations of these three factors can make some rounds almost unwinnable.^note For example, multiple Steel Eels spawning during a high tide level or getting stuck with a charger during a Glowfly run. In addition, the stages themselves present different problems. Spawning Grounds is smaller, and while it's easier to get around, some of the bosses will cause more trouble due to the enclosed space. The ship causes more trouble with Stingers and Flyfish, due to their ability to attack inklings no matter how far away they are while the inklings might have to go across the entire map just to deal with them.
  • All Random Loadout Salmon Run cranks this way up. In All Random Loadout, the weapon you get every round is completely randomized from any of the possible weapons on the entire setlist, so you can get anything between getting stuck with a Charger for two or three waves to three or four players getting some Grizzco-brand weapons.
• Mini-Boss: The game ditches the Octostriker in single-player mode, but all of the Boss Salmonids in Salmon Run count as such, and each have a special gimmick that's the key to defeating them.
  • Drizzlers normally hide under their impermeable umbrella-like armor, but when they pop out to shoot an Ink Storm-like missile, they're completely vulnerable for several seconds.
  • The Flyfish must have a Splat Bomb tossed into both of its missile pods to defeat them.
  • Grillers have a fish tail poking out of their back. If it's shot enough, three more appear. When enough damage is dealt to these weak points, the machine is destroyed.
  • While Maws can be taken down with normal firepower, it's much faster to toss a Splat Bomb at their warning marker before they lunge up to the surface, so they swallow the bomb and not a player.
  • If a Scrapper soaks up enough damage with its frontal shields, it will be immobilized for several seconds, at which point players can head to the back of the machine and kill its exposed driver.
  • The only vulnerable point on a Steel Eel is its driver, and if they are killed, the rest of the contraption will be demolished.
  • Steelheads attack by forming a bomb on their head and throwing it at a player. If enough damage is dealt to the bomb while it's still swelling up, the Steelhead will explode.
  • Stingers sit atop a tower of 7 pots, all of which must be destroyed to defeat them.
• Mini Mook: The Smallfry can be easily splatted in one hit, or at most, two, from even light-hitting weapons, but they're fast, have a very small hitbox, attack in groups, and can even mess up a player's movement. Slower weapons like chargers will struggle to clear them away before lining up a clean shot on one of their brethren.
• Mook-Themed Level: Certain Salmon Run waves will feature Lesser Salmonids almost exclusively. Rush waves have Chum bumrush the players (with the occasional Goldie to drop objective items), while Giant Tornado waves will drop nothing but Lesser Salmonids as your only enemies.
• Multi-Mook Melee: Salmon Run as a whole is a game mode that uses the constant stream variety. In it, a team of four is deposited on an island where they have to survive three timed waves of Salmonids mobbing them, all while trying to collect the golden power eggs dropped by the Boss Salmonids. Players having to reach a collection quota before time runs out on each wave, and the difficulty (i.e., the amount of boss enemies and the egg quota) ranges from Intern, Apprentice, Part-Timer, Go-Getter, Profreshional, and Hazard Level Max depending on the collective ranking of the team members.
• Multiplayer-Only Item: The Grizzco weapons which are available exclusively in certain Salmon Run shifts. This set of weapons includes the Grizzco Blaster, the Grizzco Brella, the Grizzco Charger, and the Grizzco Slosher. Any (or very rarely, all) of which may be added to the mix during a wild card rotation; the Grizzco Blaster and Grizzco Brella both have insanely high rates of fire for their weapon classes, the Grizzco Charger lets you fire its full Charged Attack in an instant, and the Grizzco Slosher fires single, slow-moving projectiles that deal massive damage, even to armored enemies. They're outright stated to be illegally modified weapons though, so don't tell anyone.
• Necessary Drawback: The Salmon Run-exclusive Grizzco weapons are generally enormously powered-up versions of the normal weapon types. To keep them from being too powerful to be fun, they each have at least one glaring weakness to balance things out. In particular, almost all of them have insane ink consumption, the Grizzco Brella lacks any shield, and the Grizzco Slosher has a Painfully Slow Projectile (albeit one that that can damage normally-invincible enemies).
• No OSHA Compliance: Not only are you fighting hordes of enemies on islands of varying tide levels, one of your key mobility options (the Super Jump) is disabled, you can't pick your weapon, and instead of respawning you are stuck in a slow-moving life ring until another player revives you. Then again, your employer is all but stated to be corrupt, so this is justified.
• Painfully Slow Projectile: The Grizzco Slosher, which hurls a single glob of ink that travels well under your walking/swimming speed. Of course, this is a Necessary Drawback, since said projectile is capable of damaging otherwise invincible enemies.
• Parental Bonus: The way you pick up your bonuses is this for Japanese players. The player receives their "bonuses" by swapping them out at an external store, a reference to the infamous "three-store system" used by pachinko parlors to skirt around Japanese gambling laws that prohibit gambling for cash, allowing pachinko parlors to claim to be "game centers" that just so happen to be next to unrelated pawn shops that you can sell the parlor's "prizes" to for cash. A developer interview put Lampshade Hanging on it by explaining that Grizzco had its bonus exchange area outside the store because workers were upset about not being able to claim their bonuses when the Grizzco office was closed, that it just so happened that there was a good place to pick it up outside, and it also just so happened to resemble "something else" in real life.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: Despite its Random Number God nature, All Random Loadout Salmon Run is typically seen as a great way to grind for Ability Chunks, due to the randomized nature potentially giving players a huge advantage based on the weapons dispensed, especially if at least one Grizzco-brand weapon is deployed.
• Power Up Letdown: The Grizzco Brella is generally considered the worst of the Grizzco weapons due to it largely being a ganked Grizzco Blaster that more or less does the same thing as the Grizzco Blaster, just not as well, and at the cost of the Brella shield that makes the weapon type unique. This weapon's only saving grace is its longer range.
• Purposely Overpowered: All Grizzco-brand weapons, which are exclusive to this mode, are this, being illegally-modified versions of regular weapons:
  • The Grizzco Blaster can only be acquired during All Random Loadout Salmon Runs, and for good reason, as it has the range and power of a Blaster, but a fire rate that's even faster than the Clash Blaster. It goes through your ink tank quickly as a result, but utterly destroying everything in front of you is a power high like none other in the mode.
  • October 14th, 2017 All Random Loadout introduced the Grizzco Brella. It can't open up to shield you, but in its place is an auto-fire mechanism when ZR is held down that enables it to crank out shots as fast as the Grizzco Blaster. On top of that, it even boasts greater range and wider spread on each individual shot than the Tenta Brella, making it the ultimate mass Salmonid splatting weapon.
  • The April 28th-30th, 2018 All Random Loadout introduced the Grizzco Charger. It has an instant charge time and has the range of an E-Liter 4K, and its only drawback is its ridiculously high ink consumption.
  • The June 16th-17th, 2018 All Random Loadout introduced the Grizzco Slosher, a souped-up Sloshing Machine that travels slowly but pierces everything except terrain; Flyfish and Scrappers can be destroyed with one well-placed shot. Only its ridiculous ink consumption (25% per shot) keeps it balanced.
• Read the Freaking Manual: An in-universe example. In Salmon Run, if you and your team fail to collect even one Golden Egg, Mr. Grizz will talk about how he's thinking about making the employee handbook mandatory. Not like Pearl isn't pushing him that way already...
  Pearl: I cook Salmonids all day, but Mr. Grizz keeps crying about eggs or whatever.
  Marina: Pearl, did you even read the Grizzco training manual?
• Shout-Out:
  • The Maws reference Jaws in themselves, right down to the easiest way to defeat it.
  • The Office Attire's name in Japanese is the "Office Person Armor", written as "Jimu Pāson Āmā" — or "Jim Parsons Armor".
• Shown Their Work: The Salmonids being part of a Horde Mode is not a coincidence. It's similar to a real phenomenon where Salmon become "zombies" after spawning, because their bodies break down from lack of food and not handling freshwater. Splatoon 2 seems to take place in a universe where Salmon were able to do it a little too well.
• Stealth Pun: In Salmon Run, Stingers station themselves on stacks of metal cookware, generally being out of reach. This allows them to take potshots at you. They are also able to fire Stingray blasts by heating the ink in the pots to get enough pressure. They're using pressure cookers.
• Suspicious Videogame Generosity: Mr. Grizz always prefaces Cohock waves in Salmon Run mode by unlocking cannons to shoot them with. This is not an act of generosity, as special weapon charges are limited and the only non-special weapons capable of one-shotting a Cohock happen to be the Dynamo Roller and a fully-charged E-Liter. If even one player disconnects at this time, you will need the turrets to meet your quota.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Exploshers in Salmon Run are garbage at dealing with most things...except for Flyfish, being one of the very few main weapons that can destroy its missile pods.
• Too Awesome to Use: In this mode, you have 2 charges of special weapon across 3 waves, with no way to refill. You don't lose them upon death, so you'll want to save them until wave 3.
• Uncommon Time: None of this mode's battle themes use 4/4 as their time signatures.
• Violation of Common Sense: Because the game doesn't consider you dead until the death animation finishes, and because the drowning animation is a few seconds longer than the normal splatting animation, it can be beneficial to deliberately jump in the water at the end of a round if the counter is almost out and your team is in danger of being wiped. Doing so gives you a few extra seconds to run out the timer that you won't have if you get splatted by an enemy.
• Weapon of X-Slaying: Downplayed; the Explosher specifically has the unique trait of its main weapon's shots being treated as an explosive effect as if it were a bomb. This lets it splat Flyfish by shooting at its containers, which otherwise cannot be harmed by anything other than a Splat Bomb, specials, or the armor-piercing Grizzco Slosher.
• Zerg Rush: Four brave inklings have to harvest power and golden eggs and face off against wave after wave of Salmonids with the weak "Chum" being the main backbone of the army. During a Rush, black Chum will charge in huge numbers while being stronger and faster than regular Chum.

Octo Expansion DLC

Are you prepared to reach the Promised Land?

• 100% Completion: Clearing all 80 stages with all colored Mem Cakes (meaning no skips) unlocks a final chat log that includes Marie and the Superboss. Completing all challenges in each stage and the Inner Agent 3 boss battle rewards a Kamabo Co.-themed flair on Agent 8's CQ-80, with the text "COMPLETE" in Inkling.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Commander Tartar is a fully sentient, highly advanced artificial intelligence developed by a human scientist 12,000 years in the past, with the sole purpose of finding a sentient species to pass on human knowledge to. However, after spending untold millennia watching the Inklings and Octarians evolve and realizing how petty they are, it's overwhelmed by absolutely enormous disgust and buckling under its own pure, ever-growing hatred for these species, decides to simply start over by destroying the planet.
• All Just a Dream: It's not clear how much of the Inner Agent 3 fight is imagined and how much is literal memories; all we know is that it takes place in Agent 8's head as a result of them being reminded of "that day" two years ago.
• Ambiguous Situation: The game features an Superboss fight against Agent 8's "Inner Agent 3". The fight takes place in Agent 8's head as a result of them being reminded of "that day" two years ago, but it's not clear how much of this fight is imagined and how much is their literal memories.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Octo Expansion has you play as an Octoling named Agent 8, who has woken up in an abandoned subway station without their memories. Beating the campaign lets you switch between Agent 4 (i.e., your original Inkling) and Agent 8 as your player avatar at any time for use in multiplayer.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes:
  • Iso Padre will award a piece of gear for every set of Mem Cakes you collect.
  • Completing every single test in the Deepsea Metro will unlock the Superboss, Inner Agent 3, who will reward the player with the Golden Toothpick headgear upon being defeated.
• Animal Jingoism: Subverted with the release of the Octo Expansion, which not only has Octolings migrating to the surface en masse out of a desire to integrate with Inkling society thanks to having their minds opened by the events of the Hero Mode campaigns, but reveals that most Inklings nowadays regard the Great Turf War as ancient history and have no issues with sharing their land (even if some of that is because most of them don't even know what Octarians actually look like). Indeed, relations have improved to the point where one of Inkopolis's most popular idols is actually an Octoling. A lot of the remaining tensions between the two species can be chalked up to the actions of just one individual (DJ Octavio, the Octarian overlord, is a noted user of Mind-Control Music and therefore it is possible the Octarians have literally no choice but to follow his call to war).
• Another Dimension: Chatlogs indicate the Deep Underground is an alternate dimension from Inkopolis thanks to magnetic fields.
• Antagonist Abilities: As a boss, Agent 3 is capable of using multiple different specials on very little charge, most evident when they use three splashdowns in quick succession. Marina mentiones that they must have "removed the limiter." In addition, they can dodge roll despite wielding the Hero Shot instead of Dualies.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • In addition to unlimited lives during the Rainmaker and Tower Control simulations, if you get splatted during the latter, there's a jump point that will drop you right back onto the tower.
  • Just like in a multiplayer Turf War, the Turf War against Tartar will silently extend the timer to allow last second turf coverage from active bombs and specials... like an exploding Hyperbomb.
  • If you run out of CQ Points, Pearl will loan you 3000 Points, but you'll owe her later. You can still complete the game while being in debt, but you won't be able to buy anything from the vending machine that unlocks after beating the DLC while you still have debt on you. You also can't unlock the Inner Agent 3 battle when in debt.
• Apocalypse How: The expansion ends with the player character and their allies having to prevent a case of Species Extinction. Commander Tartar, a human-made AI created during humanity's last days with the intention to pass humanity's knowledge to the next dominant species, decides that none of the various species that have emerged are deserving of it; this is due to his view that Inklings and Octarians fighting against each other replicates the same kind of conflict that doomed humanity. As such, they aim to turn every creature on the continent into primordial ooze in hopes that the next round of sapient life meets their standards.
• Arc Number: 8. The single-player campaign features an Octoling going by the codename Agent 8 and has 80 levels, with the hub areas stylized after the 1980s, compared to the 90s aesthetic of Inkopolis. The poems for Mem cakes follow a three line, 8 syllable structure. Some of the levels task you with guiding a giant 8-ball. The 5 new music tracks from the Octo Expansion are numbered 80, 81, 82, 83 and 84 in Squid Beatz 2. After beating the final boss, the Turf War bar shows 888.8% turf covered, and the light that triggers the Inner Agent 3 Bonus Boss fight is in locker #8.
• Ascended Meme: If you are splatted by Agent 3, he/she will begin squidbagging repeatedly (rapidly transforming in and out of Squid form), which is a popular taunt gesture used commonly in online play.
• Aside Glance: During the credits, when the "Thank you for playing" message appears near the end, Agent 8 will turn their head to look at the camera.
• Bait-and-Switch: Despite playing as an Octoling, even one who formerly fought against Agent 3 during the events of Splatoon, the Deepsea Metro is a set of testing chambers separate from the main Octoling habitats, which aren't explored during the game, and very little about the Octarians is revealed beyond some backstory for Marina.
• Bathos: Even at its most serious, the final escape has several silly moments thrown in, like the blender scene having Pearl say "They're gonna get smoothied!" and a world-destroying superweapon being stopped by Pearl's loud voice.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: In the Octo Expansion, Agent 8 fights Agent 3 in their head as an Optional Boss after getting every Mem Cake. After the fight, Agent 8 feels "like the freshest Octoling ever" and gets the Golden Toothpick headgear.
• Beam-O-War: After stopping Tartar's Wave-Motion Gun from destroying the world, Pearl whips out a customized Killer Wail and screams into it, deflecting Tartar's laser beam and destroying it, and Tartar, for good. The actual beam-to-beam combat is represented by the Good Guys/Bad Guys progress bar that appears at the end of a Turf War, which takes on a new meaning, in this case.
• Beef Gate: The only ways to Line J are through very difficult obstacle courses or bosses, all of which carry a steep fee.
• Big Bad: Commander Tartar, an AI and CEO of Kamabo Co. who wants to destroy all Inklings and Octarians so to make way for a new dominant species.
• Big Damn Heroes: When the Telephone attempts to murder Agent 8 and Cuttlefish with a massive blender, Agent 3 suddenly appears via Dynamic Entry and knocks over the blender, breaking it and freeing both Agent 8 and Cuttlefish. However, he/she is knocked out from the impact.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: As revealed in this expansion, Cap'n Cuttlefish is normally inclined to see Octarians as enemies by default, but this is overridden by his belief that anyone who likes the song "Calamari Inkantation" is trustworthy.
• Book Ends: The first thing you hear upon beginning the Octo Expansion is Calamari Inkantation as a mysterious poem appears onscreen. The Inkantation also plays over the Superboss against Inner Agent 3.
• Boss Arena Urgency: Two stations in Octo Expansion — namely, Breakdance Station and Footloose Station - take place on platforms made entirely out of destructible crates.^note In the shape of an iconic Splatoon squid and a Blooper, respectively. Rather than a traditional, singular boss, each of the tests pit you against three waves of increasingly dangerous enemies. Interestingly, this is a rare example where the player's attacks can also destroy the floor. While this does mean you'll need to be more cautious, it also means you can effectively turn this trope on the enemies, and shoot the floor out from beneath them.
• Boss Remix:
  • Agent 3's battle theme is a more frantic and distorted version of the first game's "Splattack!", fitting perfectly with the one-on-one duel between them and Agent 8.
  • The Final Boss theme is a remix of Ebb & Flow, the music during Splatfests,in the last minute of the fight. The first two minutes use an original song, but it incorporates the tune that played when you completed Deepsea Metro missions.
• Boss Subtitles: All of the main campaign bosses return with new subtitles.
• Bragging Rights Reward: Your reward for defeating Inner Agent 3 in Octo Expansion is the Golden Toothpick, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin: a golden toothpick with a gold piece of takoyaki impaled on it that player can wear as headgear. It's a 3-star item of clothing that grants Special Charge Up (which increases the speed your special weapon charges up) as its main ability, but there are plenty of other clothes in the game that do exactly that, and any that aren't 3-star can be upgraded until they're functionally as powerful. The same applies to all the clothing rewards you receive in the process of 100% Completion of the DLC campaign.
• Brown Note: The Killer Wail Special. It's used by Pearl at the end of the game to defeat the Big Bad and break its superweapon.
• Brutal Bonus Level: Beating all levels with no skips grants the player access to a fight against Inner Agent 3; all Agent 8 has is an Octoshot and Splat Bomb, while the opponent has unlimited ink, constant specials, a faster and more powerful weapon, knowledge of where you are at any time, an aggressive AI, and the ability to dodge-roll at any time. Oh, and there's no checkpoints, so losing at any one of five phases^note That is, Agent 8 has to defeat Inner Agent 3 five times, while Inner Agent 3 only has to defeat Agent 8 once sends you all the way back to the beginning. Once you do manage to win, Your Reward Is Clothes! All you get is a virtual Golden Toothpick.
• The Cake Is a Lie: The Telephone promises Agent 8 and Captain Cuttlefish to take them to the Promised Land (aka Inkopolis) if they collect four "thangs" scattered across the Deepsea Metro system. When they finally get all four "thangs" to the central hub, the Telephone assembles the pieces into a blender-looking device that is "the door" to the Promised Land. Turns out, it really is a blender and it would have turned Agent 8 and Cuttlefish into calamari smoothie had Agent 3 not arrived to save the day at the last moment.
• Call-Back: The Inner Agent 3 fight, which is a memory that took place during the final boss fight in the first game, features the Blue and Orange Contrast ink iconic of that entry.
• The Cameo: Marie appears during the chat log once all 80 stages are completed.
• Canon Identifier: Octo Expansion has you play as an amnesiac Octarian military defector who gets christened as Applicant No. 10,008 by Kamabo Co. Deeming this too long, Cap'n Cuttlefish decides to call you Agent 8, with other characters calling you "Eight" as a nickname.
• Central Theme: Unlike the previous two single-player campaigns, which were largely just fun romps with some background lore attached to flesh out the world and give flavor, Octo Expansion has a very consistent theme and message - "a person or group's past and history does not need to absolutely define who they will be in the future" most broadly, and more specifically, "the young should not feel or be shackled to the prejudices and history of their elders". Marina, Cuttlefish, and Agent 8 all grapple with these ideas at various points, either in the Chat Logs, the Mem Cakes, or in the main story itself, and Pearl gets to make a nice Kirk Summation during Chat Log 6. The theme even applies to Tartar, in a real way - it is, in many ways, the "child" of the Professor who made it. In fact, its creator (and by extension, its "father") programmed it to pass on humanity's knowledge in hopes that the next intelligent species would not repeat the same mistakes humanity made. However, it became so obsessed with its purpose and with its idealized image of humanity that it cannot see that the flaws it observes in cephalopod life are also very human failings, and it is driven to villainy as a result of its inability to reconcile its image of the past with the reality of the present, and must be defeated as a result.
• Character Select Forcing: Girl Power Station in Octo Expansion lets you pick any one of the nine basic weapons to use for the test, in addition to one of three Bombs. However, unless your aim is godly, picking anything except the Roller or the Brush is more or less suicide.
• Chekhov's Gag: There's a Sunken Scroll in the Hero Mode campaign that states Pearl once destroyed a set of speakers with her voice alone. Funny, right? The final battle has her utilize that once-mentioned skill against Commander Tartar to turn the tables on him and win the day.
• Cluster F-Bomb: One of the chat logs has Pearl explaining that she once wrote a song called "#$@%* Dudes Be #$@%* Sleepin'", which could not be played on the radio for, as Marina says, "obvious reasons". A demo of it exists in-game, featuring Sound Effect Bleeps.
• Colossus Climb: Agent 8 must defeat the NILS Statue, a humongous Greek-style statue equipped with a Wave-Motion Gun with world-destroying power, by completely covering it in ink to interrupt its solar-powered charge. Agent 8 also has to do it within the NILS Statue's 3-minute charge time, though to make the task possible, Marina attaches Hyperbombs to it, each of which ink a large portion of the statue all by itself. Agent 8 still has to do a lot of climbing around the thing though.
• Comical Nap Drool: Pearl has a picture of Marina doing this, which she gladly uses to embarrass her.
• Company Town: According to a Japanese-only artbook, the Deepsea Metro essentially serves as a connective area for Kamabo Co. employees and their families living on its property.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • Agent 3 as a boss is capable of evading without using Dualies and can spam Specials repeatedly. Marina partially justifies this by explaining that Agent 3 probably removed their limiter.
  • Inner Agent 3 runs rampant with this, as, in addition to the perks from the original fight, he/she has seemingly no limit to ink capacity and can evade while using the Bubble Blower.
• Console Cameo: Most stages feature Nintendo consoles, cartridges and controllers floating in the background. Ink & Watch Station has Game & Watch systems. McFly Station has floating NES consoles. Brute Rollup Station and Iceman Station have Game Boy Color systems. Shrinky Ink Station has SNES consoles. Da Bomb Station has Nintendo 64 consoles. Ink From Above Station has GameCube consoles. One-Shot Station has various Nintendo controllers, while Cratebuster Station has N64 cartridges. There is also an advertisement for the SNES in Central Station.
• Continuity Nod: Pre-purchasing the Octo Expansion DLC lets you have the Octo-themed headphones and an octopus-themed layered long-sleeve shirt as a bonuses, similar to the first game in the Global Testfire's only available gear (which are Studio Headphones and a squid-themed layered long-sleeve shirt).
• Contrived Coincidence: Inkopolis should consider itself lucky that the Big Bad's planet-destroying superweapon just so happened to be solar powered; otherwise, ink-based weapons wouldn't have been much good in dealing with it...
• Corrupted Contingency: During the climax of the Octo Expansion, it's revealed that Commander Tartar (a.k.a. the guy who has spoken to Agent 8 via the Telephone) was entrusted by a noble human scientist the job of securing all the knowledge and discoveries made by humans before their extinction to the next generation of dominant sapient species, in the hopes that they would build a better, more thriving world than the one humans were living in before their demise. Unfortunately for the scientist, and despite Tartar being merely an AI entity given an order from a human creator, he developed an unwanted bias on his own, and has a very specific vision as to what the next dominant sapient species should aim for. He has watched the Inklings and Octolings fight against each other due to "silly matters" for a long time, and feels disappointed over the impression that their conflicts and battles are no different from those of humans. He declares his intention to eradicate all current life on Earth, and replace it with a nascent species derived from the primordial ooze he has concocted with the DNA of 10007 sacrificed test subjects (Agent 8 was intended to be subject #10008), which prompts the good guys to thwart his plan before it's too late.
• Crate Expectations: Octo Expansion came along with all kinds of creative applications for this gaming staple. One level might task you with carefully destroying only the correct crates to match a three-dimensional shape, while another asks you to set off a chain reaction that destroys a tower of crates using only a single well-placed shot, and still others use crates as the floor, forcing you to mind where you're shooting lest you run out of footing. The Octo Expansion also introduces a new variation of special "target" crates, which usually appear in tests where the ultimate objective is to destroy a certain number of them.
• Creative Closing Credits: The credits and doodles are displayed as a neon-heavy projection from the player character's personal device that the main cast is watching alongside you.
• Cue the Sun: Once Agent 8 reaches the surface, the sun rises over Inkopolis.
• Cyberpunk: While a fair bit of it applies to Agent 8 themselves (as discussed on the character page), the expansion as a whole does have a very cyberpunk atmosphere without diving completely into the genre. The whole thing is set in a gritty, 90s-inspired subway system, the soundtrack is electronica, a lot of the stations and whatnot are lit in neon, retro computing equipment is a common background element, the CQ-80 devices have some incredibly advanced technology compared to much of the setting (like their projected displays), Marina hacking into the facility mainframe is both a gameplay mechanic and a plot beat in a few cases, and the facility is run by a rampant AI that wants to destroy all life with a bioweapon death ray.
• Cyberpunk for Flavor: While the world of Splatoon generally has little to do with the genre, Octo Expansion introduces us to a far more cyberpunk-influenced world lying beneath the surface. The expansion is set in a gritty, run-down, subway system that features retro computing hardware as background elements, and an electronica soundtrack echoing throughout. The tight black leather-clad protagonist of the expansion, Agent 8, was apparently subjected to biotech experimentation (by a shadowy corporate entity, no less) and shackled with a number rather than a name. Agent 8 is under constant surveillance within the subway and has a remote-controlled kill device strapped to their back at all times. At the same time, they use advanced technology like the smartphone-like CQ-80 device, which can pull up a projected map of the subway system, and their Voice with an Internet Connection Marina hacking into the facility mainframe is both a gameplay mechanic and a plot beat in a few cases. To top it all off, the facility is run by a rampant AI that intends to destroy all life on Earth with a bioweapon death ray.
• Dark Reprise:
  • A remixed version of "Splattack!" plays during the boss fight with a mind controlled Agent 3 which is much more distorted and chaotic. Not only is it a callback to Splatoon 1, but it also reflects the state of the boss during the fight.
  • In addition, a creepy distorted version of "Telephone's Theme" plays when the Telephone reveals itself as Commander Tartar and explains its motives before activating the Wave-Motion Gun on the NILS Statue.
  • A minor-key version of the Splatfest match-start riff plays at the beginning of the "Turf War" upon the NILS Statue.
  • A very sad, hollow-sounding version of "Color Pulse" plays over the "bad ending" cutscene where Inkopolis gets covered in Tartar's primordial ooze.
• Darker and Edgier: The bright and comedic story mode of the main game is contrasted with the Expansion's much more serious atmosphere that deals with much more heavier themes as well such as: racism, self acceptance, and isolation. You're playing as an amnesiac character trapped in a decayed subway system that only travels between testing chambers and possibly doesn't even exist in the same plane of reality as the rest of the game. Agent 8 is the 10,008th person to attempt the trials. Those who fail remain in the subway system without memories of their past, while those who succeed get blended up into a turquoise sludge to become part of a world-killing bioweapon. In comparison to the more light-hearted faux concert final boss of the main campaign, the final boss of the Octo Expansion has you in a Timed Mission to stop said bioweapon from going off and destroying all life on the planet.
• Dark World: Labyrinth Station seems to take place in the tutorial area from when the main game is launched, except the atmosphere is dark and gloomy, with garbage lining the streets, tougher enemies, and sinister music.
• Deadly Gas: In Octo Expansion, Agent 8 describes the Toxic Mist as follows: "The sickly sweet aroma spreads. Its stagnant arms bring only harm, along with sluggish, looming dread."
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: During the ending sequence, you can repeat a phase as many times you want, and all you'll lose is a pittance (seriously, double digits at most) of CQ Points. The final battle lacks even that penalty.
• Disturbing Statistic: As revealed in Octo Expansion, Agent 8 is the 10,008th person to attempt the trials of the underground testing facility. It eventually turns out that before them, all the 10,007 people who failed either were killed during the trials or blended up to supply the ammunition for Commander Tartar's Wave-Motion Gun.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Even before the reveal that Commander Tartar intends to wipe out Inklings and Octolings, Kamabo Co.'s goals and the like are reminiscent of Nazism; for example, Octarians being "sanitized" is eerily similar to "cleansing" (as in, ethnic cleansing), and the Sanitized Octarians are/were put through biological experimentation, making them essentially zombies - keep in mind the Nazis also performed abhorrent experimentation on humans, with effects just as, or even significantly more, devastating. These all fall into place during The Reveal, with Commander Tartar admitting it's orchestrated the genocide and experimentation of over 10,000 Octolings, and using their remains for the sake of creating its vision of an "ultimate lifeform" — which also bears eerie similarities to the idea of a "master race" — then planning to kill everyone else with said remains.
• Downloadable Content: Summer 2018 saw the release of the Octo Expansion, which includes playable Octolings and a new single player campaign around one particular Octoling called Agent 8. After completing it, the player is able to use Octolings in the game's multiplayer mode.
• Dramatic High Perching: In Octo Expansion, Agent 3 does this before their Boss Battle, standing atop one of the beams supporting a massive elevator platform, before jumping down on to the platform with a Ground-Shattering Landing and starting the fight. Later, the Optional Boss Inner Agent 3 appears atop an Octarian UFO before leaping onto the battlefield in a similar fashion.
• Drought Level of Doom: Several test chambers prevent you from refilling your ink tank. Run out of ink and C.Q. Cumber will blow you up on the spot; note that even if the goal is right in front of you when you empty out, you still need to hit it with ink to tag it and complete the test.
• Dub-Induced Plotline Change: Downplayed with the Japanese version of the sixth chatroom log, where Pearl learns that Marina is an Octarian. This would cause a continuity error if translated straight, since the English localization has Pearl drop hints that she already knows Marina is an Octoling during Inkopolis News segments; the revelation is instead changed to Pearl discovering that Marina is specifically an Octarian war engineer.
• Dueling Player Characters: Near the end of the expansion, Agent 8 must fight Agent 3, the protagonist of Splatoon's Hero Mode, who has been Brainwashed and Crazy by the Telephone. Getting One Hundred Percent the expansion will unlock the Superboss, in which Agent 8 imagines what it would have been like to fight Agent 3 two years ago.
• Ear Worm: In-universe, "Calamari Inkanation" from the first game is canonically this, as it is said by Cap'n Cuttlefish to have engraved its sound into the very souls of anyone present at the "concert" at the end of the first Splatoon. In fact, it's such an Ear Worm that it manages to survive Agent 8's amnesia, and according to a chat log in Octo Expansion, its effect was strong enough that induced Marina's Heel–Face Turn.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: Using the option to skip a challenge will award Agent 8 with a mem cake without its memories. The challenge must be completed fully to obtain the real mem cake.
• Easy Amnesia: Agent 8's amnesia is conveniently specific, in their case it helps him/her to get out of the octarian indoctrination in which they have lived leading to search for their identity. That causes Agent 8 to go on an adventure that changes their perception of the world after the events of the Octo Expansion. Agent 8's change can be noticed through their auditive hallucinations in the Deepsea Metro music. Though it later turns out that Agent 8 was one of those Octolings who wanted to leave the army in the first place. As it’s revealed that they too listened to Calamari Inkantation.
• Eldritch Location: Marina states in the chat log that the Deepsea Metro is coated in such powerful electromagnetic waves that reality itself is distorted.
• Eldritch Ocean Abyss: The Deepsea Metro is very thematically similar to the deep ocean, having strange denizens who aren't chummy with Agent 8, dark, eerie locales such as the tutorial area and having large objects floating throughout the test chambers, and, as Marina points out above, reality itself is warped down here.
• Elevator Action Sequence: The final segment of the escape sequence in Octo Expansion takes place in the Spinal Phase, which consists of a massive elevator leading out of the facility. While riding the elevator, you have to face off against a partially-sanitized Agent 3 before you can finally escape to the surface.
• Every 10,000 Points: The game awards one bonus capsule for every 100 points earned in Salmon Run. After reaching 1200 points in a single rotation, bonuses are only awarded every 200 points, but all bonus capsules earned after that point are guaranteed to contain exclusive gear.
• Expansion Pack: Octo Expansion, originally released on June 2018. It adds a second single player campaign where an amnesiac Octoling, with the help of the New Squidbeak Splatoon, must escape from the depths of a subway station and make it to the surface of Inkopolis, at which point the ability to play as an Octoling in Turf Wars is unlocked.
• Explosive Leash: There's a pouch filled with cyan ink attached to your ink tank in certain test stations; if you violate the rules of such a station (like losing an 8-ball, taking damage during a No-Damage Run level, exceeding the time limit, etc.), C.Q. Cumber will detonate it, splatting you instantly regardless of Mercy Invincibility.
• Fighting Your Friend: During the endgame, you have to fight a brainwashed Agent 3, who is not only the agent that Captain Cuttlefish would frequently praise throughout the DLC, but is also the character that you played as in Splatoon 1.
• Final Boss: Unorthodox in that instead of a proper fight, the final boss is a giant game of Turf War played on a massive statue of a human. The entire statue must be covered head to chest in ink with Marina's Hyperbombs to stop the Big Bad from charging his world-ending Wave-Motion Gun.
• Final Solution: Commander Tartar's ultimate plan. It observed the evolution of the new dominant species and became disgusted with the Inklings and Octarians, specifically citing their wars over minor genetic deviations and obsession with trivial fashion choices as proof of their inferiority. Instead of following its prime directive to pass humanity's knowledge to them, Tartar creates a new prime directive: Destroy the world, and then start anew with a sludge of supreme DNA made from past test subjects to create the ultimate new life-form.
• Fling a Light into the Future: Commander Tartar was created to pass on the knowledge of humanity to the next dominant species that rose up. Too bad it decided Inklings and Octarians didn't deserve it.
• Flunky Boss: Octo Oven XXL. It makes the fight much, much, much more difficult.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The four thangs look like pieces of a blender.
  • If you squint when you look at the logo of Kamabo Co., you may notice it looks a lot like soft-serve ice cream, two lines of toothpaste, or a pile of poop; all of which are soft, paste-like materials typically processed to homogeneity, just like what Commander Tartar intends to do to you. Its name also sounds an awful lot like "kamaboko," a type of cured surimi - which is made from pureéd fish.
  • The escape sequence's areas are all named after human anatomy, and the final boss is a weaponized statue of a human.
  • If you pay close attention to the first picture that Pearl shows off of Marina in the chat logs, you notice that she's wearing Octoling armor, hinting at her history with the Octarian Military some time before Cuttlefish fully reveals it.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Just before Pearl pulls out the Killer Wail, her tentacles start glowing pink and get blown up by Dramatic Wind. This emulates what players look like when they use specials in-game.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: A bit more like "interface & story segregation", but still there: after beating the main story, if you return to the Metro to finish out stages and whatnot, the option to return to the main plaza is still labeled "Imagine Inkopolis" and fades to white as it always did. This is in spite of the fact that, by the end of the expansion, you have very definitively made it to Inkopolis and have no need to "imagine" it, as was the in-universe justification earlier; Cuttlefish even says at points, if you talk to him at this stage, that you two should finish your business swiftly so you can return to the city.
• Gender-Inclusive Writing: Used for dialogue related to Agent 3, although this curiously happens after you're allowed to choose their gender.
• Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: Twofold. The Big Bad is a sentient AI created by a human professor millennia ago to preserve humanity's knowledge for when the next dominant species takes over, that's none too happy with the creatures who replaced humanity as the dominant life forms. In turn, Tartar created its own bio-weapon it intends to use to not only wipe out all remaining life but will also end up becoming the new sentient life to replace the old ones.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: In Octo Expansion, Commander Tartar is an A.I. that was created to pass down human knowledge to the next dominant lifeforms after the extinction of humanity. But over the past 12,000 years, Tartar began developing its own opinions on the Inklings and Octarians, becoming disgusted with their societies and lifestyles, and eventually, it created a new prime directive on its own to making a species worthy of human knowledge. Genocide, which is the opposite of what his creator wanted.
• Hacked by a Pirate: Marina's personal insignia is a stylized octopus with a pair of headphones. Whenever she hacks into Kamabo Co.'s systems, a pixelated version of it appears on the screen.
• Hard Mode Perks: Each station in Octo Expansion offers a choice of one or more different weapons that the player can equip before starting, with some optimized to be more challenging for that particular station than others. Attempting a station with a difficult weapon will cost the player more CQ Points, but will also net them a bigger reward for completing the station. While it's possible to earn a sizeable net gain of points from these difficult challenges, the system is very high-risk and high-reward — if you fail repeatedly trying to clear a station with a difficult weapon, you're likely to end up with less points than if you had just used an easier one.
• Have a Nice Death: If you fail a test in the Octo Expansion DLC, the ink pack attached to you blows up, along with the TEST FAILED message.
• Healing Boss: Inner Agent 3 is the only boss in the entire franchise that can heal her/himself.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Since the Octolings started off as an Evil Counterpart Race to the Inklings, this is to be expected for the playable Octolings.
  • Agent 8 was said to been a fierce foe for Agent 3 and Cap'n Cuttlefish. However, after they all got stuck in the Deepsea Metro, Agent 8 loses all of their memories except for hearing "Calamari Inkantation" two years ago, and later teams up with Cuttlefish to get out of the labyrinth. The Mem Cakes reveal that Agent 8 had yearned for life on the surface in Inkopolis Square and getting to do all the fresh activities that Inklings do ever since that fateful musical event, to the point of apologetically leaving behind the Octarian Army.
  • According to a top-secret file in Cuttlefish's possession, Marina was formerly an immensely brilliant and skilled combat engineer in the Octoling ranks, graduating at only 9 years old, and helped design and maintain various Octoling weapons, including the Flooders. Like Agent 8, however, she heard the Squid Sisters perform "Calamari Inkantation" live in Octo Valley at the end of the first Splatoon. Hearing their music made her realize that she could no longer live under the oppression of the Octarians, and she decided to escape and join the Inklings in Inkopolis Square.
  • Chat Session 10 reveals that a number of Octolings have abandoned the Octarian Army and begun integrating into Inkopolis after hearing "Calamari Inkantation" as well. This is the lore justification for other players' Octolings appearing in your plaza.
• Heroic Mime: Lampshaded, just like in the main campaign. When asking if the Calamari Inkanation has etched itself into your soul, Cap'n Cuttlefish says he'll take your confused silence as a "YES!".
• Hero of Another Story: Agent 3 gets separated from Cap'n Cuttlefish and Agent 8 and is presumably wandering unseen parts of the subway and Kamabo Corporation up until they return for a Big Damn Heroes moment before the campaign's final stretch.
• Identity Amnesia: Agent 8 suffers from this upon waking up at the start of the story.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The expansion has its stages named "[X] Station" along with an additional subtitle. They're all references to 80s and 90s popular culture, from popular trends, slang, music and movies, in keeping with the themes of nostalgia prevalent in the DLC. As a more specific reference, the 8-Ball levels are all subtitled with one of the many potential answers the 8-Ball can give you.
• In-Game Banking Services: If you run out of CQ Points and need more to continue, Pearl will let you take out a loan of 3000 points at a time. These loans don't accumulate interest and you can take out as many as you want, but having an outstanding balance will restrict you from unlocking certain features until you've paid it off.
• Item Get!: Octo Expansion has two: standard stages have Agent 8 super-jump back to the subway platform before smiling at their newly acquired mem cake, while the "thang" stages have Agent 8 pose with the item to take a selfie before lugging it into the subway car.
• It's a Wonderful Failure: In the fight against Commander Tartar, if you die or run out of time, you get a short cutscene of Inkopolis being destroyed by Tartar's laser, covered in the primordial soup. Thankfully you're presented with the standard "Continue?" screen afterwards to try again.
• Kaizo Trap: In Octo Expansion, it is entirely possible for you to complete a timed course within the allotted time, but because the goal animation did not finish playing before the clock ran out, C.Q. Cumber still kills you for running out of time.
• Laser Hallway:
  • One portion of the expansion has a series of hallways crossed by inkrails of enemy ink that will splat you if you touch them, forcing you to maneuver through the gaps. The overall effect is clearly inspired by this trope.
  • In the second half, you'll be introduced to hallways with laser beams that must be evaded to proceed. Contact with a laser beam will turn you into fried calamari instantly.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • It's minor, but Callie and DJ Octavio's mem cakes use their designs from this game, which could be a bit of a spoiler if you play the DLC before completing the original story mode.
  • Commander Tartar's true form appears in the artwork for the Final Fest.
• Leet Lingo: Captain Cuttlefish has a tendency to talk this way in the chatlogs with Pearl and Marina. (Mostly by mistake.)
• Left the Background Music On: When you reach Phase 2 during the second half of the DLC, the previously ominous background music is replaced with Off the Hook's "Nasty Majesty". Later on in the stage, Pearl comments on being able to hear their own music, which they realize is coming from Agent 8's CQ-80, meaning they're approaching the surface.
• Level in Boss Clothing: The Final Boss of the expansion doesn't actively attempt to harm you in any way; instead, the entire thing plays out like a game of Turf War, where you need to ink the entirety of the arena before time runs out. Half the challenge of the battle is trying to figure the optimal route to activate all the Hyper Ink Bombs before time runs out.
• Level in Reverse: Octo Expansion has the level Labyrinth Station, which is a reversed version of the main game's tutorial level. In addition to being played in reverse, the level has a darkened atmosphere and features enemies that weren't present before. This allows for fresh challenges in a familiar area; for example, the final segment has you taking cover from an Octosniper along the same straight narrow corridor that was previously used to teach the player basic movement.
• Locomotive Level: Octo Expansion has the Deepsea Metro, a Sinister Subway that serves as the game's main Hub Level.
• Magic Music: It's implied that the Calamari Inkantation may be this. It's said to free Octolings from the brainwashing and/or indoctrination they are subject to (with the phrase "etched into their souls" used more than once), and Cuttlefish even says it has "powers no one can explain."
• Meaningful Name: Kamabo Corporation, or Kamabo Co. for short. Kamaboko is a type of cured surimi (aka fish paste) made by pureeing various fish together, foreshadowing before you even find the first "thang" that what you're doing probably isn't in your best interest.
• Memento Macguffin: Completing trials rewards players with what are called Mem Cakes, physical manifestations of Agent 8's lost memories. Each one represents a memory related to Inkopolis like its residents, brand logos, or turf war paraphernalia. They resemble kamaboko cakes modeled after their subjects.
• Mercy Mode: If you get a game over twice on any of the tests, Marina offers to hack the test into automatically passing you. However, the Mem Cake rewarded will be colorless and won't have all its memories until you finish the test legitimately. In the final sequence, you can skip a phase after dying five times, with the exception for the final boss, which you can skip after just one loss.
• Meta Twist: With the series' love of repurposing random items into tech and weapons, it makes the assembly of the four Thangs seem like it could be a creatively designed elevator or teleporter... until Pearl and Marina panic and confirm that no, it's just a giant blender. For blending whatever's in it. Like 8 and Cuttlefish are right now.
• Metaphorically True: Commander Tartar isn't lying about taking you to the Promised Land. It just means you're going as part of the primordial ooze it wants to blend you into, to help it make the idealized homeland for the "worthy" sentient life it hoped to pass knowledge onto.
• Minimalist Run: invoked You only need to pass enough tests to collect the four thangs; the bare minimum to complete the game is 21 tests out of 80 (just over 25%), not counting the final escape sequence or final boss. Combine that with the test skip function, and you can beat the campaign without any legitimately beating any of the levels.
• Mirror Boss: The Agent 3 fight is ostensibly this, as Agent 3 is capable of everything a normal player can do. The keyword being ostensibly, since, well, he/she cheats like hell.
• Mission Control: Pearl and Marina (using the pseudonyms MC Princess and DJ_Hyperfresh), as well as Cap'n Cuttlefish (using his real name Craig) serve as this for the Octoling protagonist. It also ties into the campaign's Mercy Mode: if you game over twice on a stage, Marina will hack the system so that Kamabo Co. believes you passed the test anyway, allowing you to skip the level (though doing so doesn't restore the protagonist's memories).
• Money for Nothing: Subverted. Depending on player skill, it's possible to rack up more CQ Points than you know what to do with, but after beating the DLC, you can spend extra CQ Points on a vending machine that will give you various items that are of high value in the main game, including Drink Tickets, Meal Tickets, a random assortment of Ability Chunks, Credits, or more CQ Points.
• Mood Whiplash: Most of the stages and story aren't anything too scary until the end of the expansion makes things very dark. This is then followed by a battle with an extremely powerful superweapon that's partially countered by Pearl's super-loud voice.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: The Hyperbomb, a mega-sized Suction Bomb that Marina was developing prior to the events of the story, is used to stop the Wave-Motion Gun at the end of the game. However, the existence of the weapon is never hinted at at any point in the story, making it extremely convenient that Marina just so happened to be working on an ink-based superbomb that could stop the Big Bad.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The Octo Expansion trailer makes a couple of concessions from the actual story of the game.
  • One scene shows Pearl and Marina in the Deepsea Metro's subway. While they do play a central role in the story, the two never step foot into the place.
  • Near the end of the trailer, Agent 8 is seen emerging from a subway tunnel and spotting Inkopolis Square in the distance. The subway tunnel footage was actually taken from the "Thang" levels (the "light" is a glowing bubble you have to pop to get the Thang), while Agent 8 looking at Inkopolis Square from a distance occurs after climbing out of a manhole just before the final boss (which is fully visible in the trailer, just behind 8).
  • Immediately after the above, it shows Agent 8, now wearing normal clothes instead of the outfit she wears in the Metro, standing in Inkopolis Square and looking at her surroundings with awed wonder. In the actual game, 8 never sees the Square at all unless you count switching your character's species after completing the expansion, which just reloads the main hub with no fanfare.
• Nintendo Hard: Octo Expansion is Splatoon at its most brutal. While some challenges can be pretty simple and easy, there are a fair amount of puzzle and platforming challenges are vastly more difficult than anything ever presented in Hero Mode, with some particular tasks being borderline sadistic, such as the No-Damage Run tasks. Rule of thumb is that if any given level gives you five lives or one, you better buckle the hell up.
• No-Damage Run: Several of the tests in the expansion require completing the objective without ever taking damage.
• No-Gear Level:
  • Several test chambers don't let you enter with a main weapon, forcing you to use sub-weapons for offense.
  • Subverted with Girl Power Station, which looks like it's going to be a sub-only test...but then the test chamber proper gives you a choice between 9 main weapons. You'll need that generosity.
  • In the first few phases of the escape arc, you don't have any weapons. You eventually pick up Splat Bombs and an Octoshot.
• No Fair Cheating: In Girl Power Station, all of the hostile Octolings are lined up on a wall outside the battlefield, and Super Jump in at regular intervals. If you attempt to attack them while they're standing on the wall, they will break their rotation to immediately Super Jump onto the field, then add even more Octolings for good measure. It is possible to get them all with the Charger if you have quick hands, but this won't stop extras from dropping in.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: Averted during the escape sequence. The Kamabo Co. facility lacks respawn points, so in-story Agent 8 actually dies for real if you get splatted. The option to continue is purely a gameplay convenience rather than a canonical ability as it is everywhere else in the series.
• Nonstandard Game Over: Downplayed in the ascent to the surface; if you perish, Captain, Marina, or Pearl will call out for you in concern before you respawn. On the other hand if Agent 8 falls or time runs out before covering Tartar's NILS statue in ink, the scene cuts to Inkopolis covered in slime.
• No OSHA Compliance: The expansion features eighty levels of increasingly difficult "tests" that take everything about the single player campaign, kick it way up, then throw on a bomb strapped to your back that activates automatically should you fail to obey some arbitrary rules. Then the final escape sequence sends you through a facility that was clearly not meant for living creatures... which makes sense, given that it's revealed to be built by an omnicidal AI.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: It is not explained how Agent 3 managed to infiltrate Tartar's lair and acquire a employee-model CQ-80 while Agent 8 was in the testing chambers. The entire point is glossed over by the time Agent 3 appears.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: There are stages where you have to run down a clock without taking any damage whatsoever. Taking a hit won't splat you proper; instead, C.Q. Cumber detonates your exploding sack of ink.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: The phone is working with an incomplete slang dictionary, as clearly evidenced by its [SLANG_NOT_FOUND] and [ERROR] messages. It could also be Censored for Comedy, but it's hard to tell.
• Out of Focus: Due to Simultaneous Arcs, the Squid Sisters and DJ Octavio only cameo as mem cakes and photographs appearing in certain chat logs. Marie (but not Callie, due to the dialogue having to make sense for both pre- and post-game) gets a few lines of dialogue in the bonus chat log obtained by completing every stage in the Deepsea Metro.
• Outside-Context Problem: The Big Bad and his Apocalypse How plot have never been dealt with at any point in the Splatoon world, so their appearance comes as a big surprise to everyone present. Thankfully, Marina's analytical skills allow her to devise a plan on the fly to counteract the threat.
• Palette Swap: Almost every enemy in the test chambers is taken from the regular single player mode, but colored an unnatural shade of neon green. The only difference besides color is that according to Marina, they don't register as living creatures. Tartar makes those out of the primordial ooze it made from blending most of the previous test subjects into paste.
• People Jars: When remembering what they look like, Agent 8 imagines themselves suspended in green fluid, completely nude and curled into a fetal position. Whether this is just interesting imagery or something that they actually experienced isn't explained.
• Pinball Zone: Some of the Octo Expansion stages involve guiding large 8-Balls to particular places. Tubular 8-Ball Station contains elements like habitrails, pop bumpers, up-kickers, and whirlpool scoops. Another stage plays very similarly to a bingo machine, a close cousin of pinball.
• Platform Hell: A number of the tests in the Octo Expansion DLC qualify for this, usually of the "fight a large number of enemies while hopping between tiny platforms over a bottomless pit" variety. As a bonus, several of them also require you to move platforms and such by shooting targets while dealing with enemies simultaneously.
• Point of No Return: Once you decide to "visit" the Promised Land, you can't return to the Deepsea Metro until you finish the game. The game points this out by having you confirm three times before progressing.
• Post-End Game Content: Upon escaping to Inkopolis, the player will receive an Octoshot Replica, a Fresh Octo Tee, all of the clothing gear obtained from Iso Padre, and finally, the ability to play as an Octoling in multiplayer matches. Upon returning to the Deepsea Metro, a vending machine will be present in Central Station where you can spend your spare CQ Points and Mem Medals on additional rewards to use in Inkopolis. Attaining 100% Completion — in other words, completing all stations in the Deepsea Metro without help from Off the Hook — will unlock a final, brutal Superboss fight against Inner Agent 3.
• P.O.V. Sequel: The campaign takes place during the events of the game's main story and follows an Octoling who awakens with no memory in an old subway system that is now being used as a underground testing facility. The Octoling, dubbed Agent 8, must undergo a series of tests and collect four "thangs" in order to make it to the "promised land" while Cap'n Cuttlefish, Pearl, and Marina give them support. The events of the campaign are actually more important than that of the main story as the group finds themselves having to stop a villain who despises Inklings and Octolings, and aims to commit mass genocide in order to restart life on Earth for a third time in hopes of creating a better successor race to humanity. The plots also show no overlap, with the main campaign having Marie simply note that her grandfather and Agent 3 are away on a mission and the Octo Expansion having a bonus chat log where she and Cuttlefish chat briefly about dinner.
• Precision F-Strike: Pearl, after Marina offers to do some Hollywood Hacking and help Agent 8 past a station they might be having trouble with: "Are you freaking serious?"
• Pre-Final Boss: The climax of the expansion concludes with a Mirror Boss fight against a brainwashed Agent 3 that is followed immediately with the fight against a doomsday machine controlled by Commander Tartar (the Big Bad of the expansion's story).
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: Once you've collected the third thang, Captain Cuttlefish asks you to help him put up a sign looking for Agent 3, and this determines what he or she looks like when they save Agent 8 and Cuttlefish from being blended.
• Product Delivery Ordeal: The Octo Expansion has a few challenges where the player has to roll an 8-ball to a predetermined goal or through a number of rings in order to complete the current test. It's a difficult task because the ball cannot move on its own, has to interact with a number of features to traverse the level, and is entirely at the mercy of physics — both the level and the various ink shots being chucked around. If the ball falls onto a Bottomless Pit, the mission fails instantly.
• Purposely Overpowered: There are several stages where you get unlimited use of a Special which you can use for the whole stage, and not just for a limited period of time. For example, you can blow up the Baller, and afterwards, it'll instantly recover around you.
• Readings Blew Up the Scale: At the end of the final boss fight in Octo Expansion, Pearl engages in a Beam-O-War with the final boss. During this, the meter for the end of match results pops up, and Pearl's side end up exploding out the other end, resulting in an 888.8% victory for the good guys.
• Recollection Sidequest: Downplayed. Each level cleared awards a "mem cake", which is stated to be a physical manifestation of Agent 8's lost memories. However, there are no flashbacks; each cake simply has a poem attached that gives a glimpse into Eight's psyche.
• Recurring Riff: The theme that plays during the Final Boss reuses the jingle from beating a station and the one for collecting a Thang.
• Recurring Boss: All bosses from Hero Mode save for the final boss reappear in upgraded forms in various locations in the subway. Said upgrades crank up the boss's difficulty by a significant margin.
• Released to Elsewhere: It is told that collecting all the thangs will provide passage to "The Promised Land". The thangs are actually pieces of a giant blender, and going to the promised land is being blended by it to contribute your genetic material to a primordial ooze.
• Ring-Out Boss: Inverted with Revenge of Octo Samurai, where Octo Samurai is trying to ring you out into a Bottomless Pit while you try to splat him with an infinite use Baller.
• "Save the World" Climax: The story begins with a simple objective: escaping the underground and reaching the surface. But in the end, the stakes are higher than ever before in the Splatoon series: a giant superweapon has to be stopped from destroying the world.
• Schizophrenic Difficulty: It's possible to unlock challenges from much later lines early on, leading to super-difficult challenges next to easy ones.
• Schrödinger's Question: Cap'n Cuttlefish's picture of Agent 3 is determined by the player's answers, allowing the player to customize Agent 3 however they wish.
• Sdrawkcab Speech: The chanting voices heard while Agent 8 and Cap'n Cuttlefish are about to be blended are backmasked human voices counting down to the new year.
• Series Continuity Error: Pearl is surprised to learn that Marina is an Octarian, however Pearl refers to Marina as an Octoling during one of the Splatfests prior to Octo Expansion's release. However, this might also just call into question what the order of continuity is more than anything; OE is scripted in such a way as to take place at any point during completion of the base Hero Mode, so it's unclear if they're meant to run concurrently or in order of release or what. If they're supposed to be concurrent in-universe, it makes more sense that Pearl would know who/what Marina is for Splatfests.
• Sequential Boss: The Superboss of the expansion has five stages, and they're all very difficult on their own.
• Ship Tease: Following the release of the Octo Expansion, Nintendo released promotional art for 2020's Valentine's Day and White Day pairing Agent 8 and Agent 3 with each other, though in the game itself nothing suggests they're anything other than enemies-turned-allies.
• Shown Their Work: All of the passengers of the Deepsea Metro are based on animals actually found in the deepest parts of the ocean, such as gulper eels, sea angels, blobfishes, siphonophores, and tunicates. Of particular note is the ping pong tree sponge woman, a species that was discovered not long before Octo Expansion's release.
• Shout-Out:
  • The composer for the music tracks in the Deepsea Metro stages is named Dedf1sh.
  • You can see giant Nintendo 64 cartridges for an Inkling version of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time floating in the backgrounds of certain levels.
  • In the expansion, as opposed to their normal outfits, Pearl wears a gold crown and necklace while Marina wears a head-scarf and a chain necklace, calling to mind the famous accessories worn by gangsta rappers The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur, respectively.
  • The final levels start with a Stealth-Based Mission, and failing them will result in the Mission Control calling out Agent 8's name in desperation. The phases of the final level are also named after internal organs.
  • The station names and taglines make reference to everything from The '80s and The '90s. Movies, music, toys, slang, candy, you name it. Just to name a few:
    • Phat Splatz Station: "Bring da ruckus!"
    • Pop Rock Station: "As 50 yellow balloons go by..."
    • Move It Move It Station: "Ya like to..."
    • Stamped-Up Station: "Stamp-collaborate and glisten!"
    • Right Round Station: "Round round round round..."
    • McFly Station: "Do it with some style!"
    • Targetbuster Station: "Who you gonna call?"
    • Cratebuster Station: "Ain't afraid of no crates."
    • Hasta La Vista Station: "I know now why you ink..."^note  The reference is made more obvious in the station's objective description, as it tells you to terminate all the enemies rather than to defeat them.
    • Girl Power Station: "Ink-a-zig-ah..."
    • Outrageous Station: "Truly, truly, truly."
    • No Whammy Station: "Don't stress your luck..."
    • Can't Touch This Station: "My my my my..."
    • Jump Station: "Might as well..."
    • Goose Station: "Listen to its howlin' roar"
    • Iceman Station: "Jet into the danger zone"
    • Maverick Station: "Revvin' up your Inkjet..."
    • Spin Docto Station: "Just go ahead now..."
    • Schooter McStation: "Just innnk it in..."
    • Brute Rollup Station: "Rock 'n' roll 'em!"
    • Squee-G Funk Station: "Inkulators, mount up!"
    • Pop Star Station: "Don't stop 'till you pop enough!"
    • Whack-Fu Station: "Whack attack!"
    • Bustalicious Station: "Did I do that?"
    • Bring It Station: "Pound the rock!"
    • Labyrinth Station: "Splat magic splat!"
    • Fake Plastic Station: "Looks like the real thing..."
    • Most of the 8-ball levels have some reference to the Magic 8-Ball toy that was popular back then.
  • Pearl's line in the level where you have to shoot switches to stop swinging platforms:
    "Stop, time! I command you!"
  • The phone gives you the CQ-80 and CQ card at the start, but says "they are so bad."
  • Two levels are homages to Space Invaders, pitting you against large groups of enemies that go back and forth between left and right, inching closer every time they change direction. To complete the homage, one of them has destroyable cover (provided by crates), while the other has the final enemy on a much faster UFO.
  • One of Iso Padre's quotes:
    "I ride a subway called Desire, on a long and winding path to Inkopolis Station."
• Sinister Subway: The plot of the expansion takes place primarily in the Deepsea Metro, an old subway system that transports you to a series of test chambers.
• SNK Boss: The Superboss, Inner Agent 3, is an incredibly overtuned version of a player character. The entire fight is a Marathon Boss that involves five different phases, each of which has Agent 3 spamming one of five Special Weapons with destructive regularity, with the occasional Autobomb in between. In order to progress the fight, enough damage must be dealt to break Agent 3's armor, but Agent 3 can Unnecessary Combat Roll at any given time, is far more durable than you in a given phase, and has Regenerating Health. Agent 3 also has roughly 80% perfect aim and will lay waste to you if you don't strafe or haven't managed to ink a path out of harm's way. The entire fight is situated in a 10m x 10m flat box with exactly two solid structures in it, making evasion and recovery extremely hard. Oh, and Agent 3 also has a UFO. If you get splatted at any point in the fight, you have to restart the entire battle from the very beginning. The running joke in the fandom about this boss is the game basically pitting you against a Splatoon hacker.
• Source Music: The music that plays as Agent 8 makes their escape to the surface is actually diegetic: Pearl and Marina notice that the CQ-80 nicked from Agent 3 is picking up radio signals, meaning they're getting closer to the surface.
• Stealth-Based Mission: The first Phase in the back half of the DLC is a No-Gear Level where you must sneak by hostile Octoling troops until you find some weaponry. Being spotted will set any nearby enemy off on you and is likely to get you splatted unless you can squeeze through.
• Story Breadcrumbs: The expansion is more upfront with its story elements, but still has eleven unlockable chatlogs which expand on some of the game's characters and the nature of the Deepsea Metro, in addition to poems attached to the collectibles received at the end of each test chamber, reflecting Agent 8's inner thoughts.
• Stupidity Is the Only Option: You are told about this "promised land" and that the only way to get there is by collecting the four "thangs". While the brutal tests being taken are a sign that something is wrong, it could also be taken as a sign that the "promised land" is a warrior's paradise if it is all it's cracked up to be. What ultimately makes it fall into this trope is that you are asked multiple times if you really are ready to "become part of something greater than yourself", at which point — if not earlier — the player likely realizes that the four thangs are pieces of a cod-damned blender. While there may be some justification via an amnesiac Agent 8, you'd think Cap'n Cuttlefish would know something about fruit smoothies in this day and age; Marina does manage to figure it out, but by then you're already inside and about to be pureed.
• Superboss: The Octo Expansion has Inner Agent 3, accessible after collecting all of the Mem Cakes. Appropriately, the framing device is Agent 8 imagining what would have been like to have fight a non-Brainwashed and Crazy Agent 3. It's a fairly difficult five-phase fight with Checkpoint Starvation, with the boss throwing Auto Bombs often, having short cooldowns on their specials, and performing other techniques that wouldn't be possible in normal gameplay. Defeating them unlocks the Golden Toothpick headgear for multiplayer battles.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity:
  • If you see a station offer 5 lives instead of the usual 3, it does not mean it is an easy station. More than anything, it means that station has many ways for you to lose lives.
  • Girl Power Station lets you pick one of three different subweapons at the start, then lets you pick from nine different main weapons, giving you far more loadout choices than any other station. And then the test tosses you into one of the hardest "Defend The Orb" missions in the game, featuring a squad of Octoling soldiers.
• Symbol Swearing: "#$@%* Dudes Be #$@%* Sleepin'," Pearl's abortive attempt at metalcore. Marina says that no radio station would play it "for obvious reasons", implying it's a Cluster F-Bomb on top of the Intentionally Awkward Title. If you listen to it in the chat log, there is indeed an extended period where Pearl's singing gets bleeped out.
• Synchronous Episodes: The game has its main Hero Mode campaign and the Octo Expansion DLC take place at the same time: the former has Marie allude to Agent 3 and her grandfather Cap'n Cuttlefish being away on a secret mission, while the latter has an unlockable chat log in which Marie and Cuttlefish have a brief conversation in which they assure each other that everything is perfectly fine.
• Timed Mission:
  • Several missions require fulfilling the requirements or surviving until the timer is done.
  • The final objective is a Final Boss that plays out like a single-player version of the game's Turf War mode, along with the three minute timer. The player has to detonate a series of giant ink bombs on a massive solar-powered primordial ooze cannon that's shaped like a human head to prevent it from fully charging and wiping out all life on the surface. Falling off the stage or failing to detonate all the bombs in time will result in a short It's a Wonderful Failure cutscene where your Mission Control mourns the end of civilization.
• Totally Radical: The Telephone in the subway station begins to talk like this after trying to modernize its speech patterns. It drops it later in the game when it reveals itself as Commander Tartar.
• Triumphant Reprise: "Fly Octo Fly", the final boss theme, smoothly transitions into a super epic variant of "Ebb & Flow" (one of Off the Hook's Splatfest songs) for the last minute or so.
• True Beauty Is on the Inside: The game's punk/graffiti look is a little grimy, but represents the fun and rebellious of the good guys like the inklings.
  Iso Padre: Don't turn your back on what's shabby. And don't embrace a thing because it's clean. When you see a beauty in what's broken or run-down, then the whole world will be art.
• True Companions: The game takes care to affirm that Pearl and Marina are as tight as can possibly be and are the best of friends. Pearl even threatens Cuttlefish after he voices some of his reservations about Marina.
• The Unreveal: Whoever attacked Agent 8, Agent 3, and Cap'n Cuttlefish and kickstarted the events of the expansion remains a mystery even after the story's completion.
• Upgraded Boss: The expansion features rematches with "sanitized" versions of all the bosses from the main campaign, which can be found within the Deepsea Metro. These variants all share a neon-green color scheme, and feature several new and more aggressive attacks. Some of these rematches even change the nature of the fight completely — for example, the Octo Samurai goes from a relatively straightforward Damage-Sponge Boss to an inverted Ring-Out Boss whose attacks can knock players out of the arena.
• Variable Mix: In the tutorial area, entering the room containing a key (in which you can use a weapon) adds some repeating chords to the music. This intense version is named #5 thirsty and played in some of the test chambers.
• Wham Shot:
  • Once Agent 8 finds all four thangs, the Telephone tries to bring them and Cuttlefish to "the promised land"... by attempting to kill them with a blender. One Big Damn Heroes moment from Agent 3 later, Agent 8 is forced to escape the facility the hard way.
  • After Agent 3's defeat, Agent 8 finally makes their way to the surface and gets picked up by Off the Hook. However, just when it seems like all is said and done, the platform Agent 8 stood on begins rising out of the ocean...
• What Happened to the Mouse?: It's never quite revealed just who the "someone" is that ambushed both Agents 3 and 8 and interrupted their fight, leading to the crew falling into the Metro. There's a possibility it was Tartar or an agent of it, but nobody expresses any familiarity with Tartar even after it reveals itself, and Cuttlefish doesn't recognize Sanitized Octolings on first seeing them, so unless they were taken by surprise before anyone could see the assailant, it was apparently something... else.
• Wolfpack Boss: Station J-03 / D-08, Girl Power Station. As the name implies, the stage revolves around fighting off an Amazon Brigade of enemy Octolings as they try to destroy an orb you'll be scrambling to protect. Thankfully, you can pick from a wide selection of weapons to face them.
• Womb Level: Much like Arsenal Gear, the final area's phases are named after human anatomy, including the coccyx, villi, belly, intestines, diaphragm, peristalsis, and spinal phases.

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"Until next time... Don't get cooked... stay off the hook!"

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