Splatoon 2 - TV Tropes

• 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, shielding them from most damage and letting them roll along the ground and up walls, 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.
• 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.
• 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 .
• Ascended 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.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: In-Universe. Marina questions why a new Splatfest is occurring when Chaos vs. Order was supposed to be the last one. Depending on the language, Pearl says because they haven't done a Splatfest in a while or just because they get to do a Mario themed one.
• 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, combined with the bouncing and long-lasting nature of the bubbles making it an unpredictable and heavy-hitting weapon.
  • 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 Discontinuity: The dialogue for the Super Mushroom vs. Super Star Splatfest (especially in the Japanese version) implies that the three repeat Splatfests since Chaos vs. Order didn't actually happen in-universe.
• 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. Fair, considering that the sprinkler does laughable amounts of damage to an enemy and can be easily shot down by any main weapon.
• 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 variant of a hero 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 and weakened 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, or land trick-shot kills on hiding enemies.
    • 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 and can easily be outpaced by a swimming enemy.
  • 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, raises their own goal out of enemy reach, 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: One of the new weapon types are the Dualies: pairs of ink-spitting pistols that enable the user to do Unnecessary Combat Rolls by jumping while firing. After doing so, the user will enter a "turret mode" where the gun is enhanced somehow and has perfect accuracy, but they cannot move for a brief period. This game introduces five types of this class:
  • The Splat Dualies are a balanced Dualie-type weapon with average damage, range, and painting capability. Rolling will cause them to start firing faster than usual.
  • The Dapple Dualies are a short-range Dualie set that spits ink way faster than the Splat Dualies, and even faster after rolling. In exchange, its Arbitrary Weapon Range is shorter, and its dodge rolls cover less ground.
  • The Glooga Dualies fire powerful shots, but less rapidly than the Splat Dualies. Dodge rolling won't increase its firing rate; instead, the shots travel further than usual.
  • The Dualie Squelcher has the longest range of any of the Dualie weapons. Dodge rolling causes the two guns to merge into the previous game's Dual Squelcher, and the user can move sooner after rolling.
  • The Tetra Dualies are a short-range pair of dualies like the Dapple Dualies. They don't gain the crazy firing speed of the Dapple Dualies when rolling; instead, they are able to roll twice as much as any other Dualie and fire during the rolling animation, giving the user crazy-unpredictable movement.
• 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 ^tentacles, Marina.

  • Also used in the same concert:

    Pearl: Gotta get the ^ink 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:

  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 .
• 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 
• 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  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!

• 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: This game introduces the Brella class of weapons, which are umbrella-shaped weapons that launch scattershots of ink at enemies. Tapping the button will shoot it, while holding it down opens the canopy to protect the user or Cherry Tap enemies with Collision Damage, and holding the trigger even longer will eject the shield to move forward. There are three varieties:
  • The Splat Brella is a normal umbrella. It's middleweight, with average stats, modest range, and a decent two-hit kill.
  • The Tenta Brella is an umbrella-shaped weapon constructed from a camping tent that extends from a walking stick. It's heavy, will slow the user down, and the canopy only opens after a delay, but has the most projectile range, is capable of a one-shot splat, and its Brella shield is the tankiest one in the game.
  • The Undercover Brella is a spy gadget with a one-way visible canopy. It has the weakest shield, but the lightweight property lets it move the quickest. The damage is poor, but it can paint a whole lot to enable its team to move around, and it has the unique property of being able to shield while still firing but lacking the ability to launch the shield.
• 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:
• 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:
  • 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 Naisu dama,^note  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.
  • After winning the Final Fest, Pearl assuages Marina's fears of Off The Hook breaking up by saying "I'm just playin', Marina. You know I love you." It's a riff on Eminem's typical catchphrase when dissing a person he respects.
• 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  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.
• Wham Line: During the announcement of Chaos vs. Order, Pearl and Marina have a more heated debate than usual regarding which of the two teams is better compared to previous Splatfests. Pearl gets fed up with it and says this, as a way of letting the players know that this Splatfest will decide the future of Splatoon.

  Pearl: I hereby invoke Article 4 of Splatfest Law. That means the losing side has to accept the world the winning side wants!

• "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.

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 
• 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  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...
• 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.