An Exhaustive List of Octarian F.A.Qs... and Answers!
There's one thing I've noticed about the Western Splatoon fandom.... and that's the weird amount of misconceptions, mistranslations, and misunderstandings about the Octarians.
For some reason it's often lore about them, surrounding them, or about their activities that always seems to have this happen. And so I want to help correct that! They're a super cool faction and I want to work on people hopefully understanding them better, while helping to correct misconceptions about them.
This will be long, there will be many citations and pictures both. Shoutout in particular to Inkipedia and inkfish translator rassicas, and the hard work of both, for this.
If there's any common lore misconceptions that I left out, please let me know! I'm including every single one I can think of, but I probably missed something somewhere.
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General Octarian Questions
Q. How are Octarians made? And are Octolings made the same way?
A. Octarians are made from severed Octoling tentacles (The Art of Splatoon + SplatoonBase) that are then somehow animated. Ones with more tentacles are "more intelligent"; they're sapient, either way.
Octolings are not, to our knowledge, created like this. The existence of SashiMori's Paul suggests that Octolings undergo the same life stages as Inklings do. (Similarly, Diss-Pair's Warabi has lore that mentions having parents.)
There is concept art in HaikaraWalker (the Octo Expansion artbook) that depicts Octolings mutating from Octarians... but it seems to just be concept art.
Q. Did Octavio brainwash the Octarians into obeying him? Wasn't music used to make them obey?
A. No, they were never brainwashed. Octavio uses his music to keep the Octarians in order and to keep their working rhythm correct-- like a military march. Inkipedia compares the Onward! jingle to "a call-and-response clapping rhythm used by teachers to grab students' attention in elementary schools". It does sound like that...
Now, if you want to say that Octarian propaganda is brainwashing, yes, that does exist.
Q. We've only ever seen feminine Octoling soldiers. What's with that?
A. The "rival Octolings" we meet in the story modes are all part of a special military unit that's female-only. They're referred to as "Takozonesu" in Japanese, a mashup of "tako" (octopus) and "amazons". Not every female Octoling can be one of these, and this group isn't completely representative of Octolings in the military.
There are male Octolings, they're just not part of this one group. (Fun fact, did you know that these Octolings are voiced by Callie and Marie's voice actors?)
Q. What's with the green sclera on Octarians?
A. There's no confirmed canon reasons. Octolings are very inconsistent about it, as well; Octavio has it and so do many enemy Octolings, but not other Octolings of note.
It could just be that the whites of their eyes are really reactive to stuff in general, since sanitized Octarians have black sclera. The green color could also just be something that happens with age while living in the domes.
Q. In Octo Expansion, Marina calls Octarian society "oppressive"-- how oppressive is it really?
A. This descriptor is actually inaccurate to the original Japanese, and was added in localization. (The Splatoon 2 Retranslation Project has a more accurate version over here! Thanks @shiverhohojiro for the link.) Octo Expansion has some notorious details that were added in localization, like Craig being more racist than usual or the omission of Commander Tartar's chatter about humankind.
That said. The domes are an isolationist* military-centric society, with emphasis on meritocracy. Octolings go into professions for things they're good at, not necessarily for what they want to do. Resources like electricity are limited, so they have to structure life around that detail, and strictness logically follows. The military doesn't tolerate slackers or nonsense, but talented people seem to do well for themselves based on how Marina's life was. Even so...
A lot of music, culture and artwork gets made down there! And they have things like beachside domes, bowling-themed domes, amusement park domes and even circuses... so it's not completely strict. There's a lot of room for silliness, it just needs to be in the right place.
So, to be totally fair? We don't know much. It's not perfect, but it's also not a hellish place to live if you wanted to stay. * They trade with Salmonids, but don't seem to do so with anyone else.
Q. Can they respawn? Are we killing them when we splat them?
A. Yes, they can use respawn technology in the same way Inklings and Octolings do. The only situation where an Octarian explicitly dies is, potentially, during the escape phases in Octo Expansion!
Q. Where/how did they make the domes?
A. Leftover human technology, meant to be similar "last resort shelters" made by humans. Think Alterna, but on a smaller fragmented scale.
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Questions about DJ Octavio
Q. Why do we always see him in octopus form? Can he shapeshift?
A. Octavio can't shapeshift because of an injury from the Great Turf War. He was able to do so before and during it, however!
Q. We know Octavio leads the Octarians, but what is he? A king, an emperor, or what?
A. He is a Japanese shogun, as referenced by his title in the first Splatoon: "DJ Takowasa shōgun". We don't know if he was appointed by an emperor, if he was part of the previous shogun's family, or if he just sort of... took up the mantle (haha octopus joke) after the Great Turf War.
Q. Did he brainwash Callie?
Based on the information we have... I am inclined to say, no, he didn't brainwash Callie.
Callie was in an extremely stressful period of her life, Octavio reached out to talk, and... we don't know what happened next. But the context feels like Callie might have joined willingly. In reference to the Hypnoshades, it's important to note that hypnosis as a concept is incredibly variable, with one argument made that "you cannot hypnotize an unwilling participant".
"But, didn't he say--"
He likes music puns. He's a DJ. It's supposed to be funny, why aren't you laughing? (What this line was in JP, I wonder...)
... But, I feel like the evidence stacks up. It suggests that Callie wasn't kidnapped or brainwashed or forced to join the Octarians. It was probably an escape from fame and loneliness for her-- the Hypnoshades helped her get away from that and just have a good time. But with Octavio being a guy to hold a grudge, nothing got to be that simple, and Callie was ultimately weaponized against the New Squidbeak Splatoon.
It remains very up-to-interpretation because we don't know, exactly, what happened behind the scenes. But Callie fosters zero ill will towards the Octarians, even after being rescued... and if fiery, outspoken Callie doesn't seem to be angry about it, what does that say about the matter?
Q. Why do all the tentacles piloting the Great Octoweapons have the same scar as him?
A. Because they're directly cloned from Octavio and are then made to pilot them, presumably because they have the muscle memory to operate as pilots. Octopuses have very complicated brains and neural centers that extend out into their arms.. so this cool bit of sci-fi checks out.
Q. How old is Octavio, really?
A. We don't know. But the narrative often parallels him with Craig Cuttlefish, who mentions in Octo Expansion that he's 130 years old. It would be fair to assume Octavio is also, at least, 130.
Q. Why is he so gigantic in Splatoon compared to the other games?
idk man, you tell me. I think this is much funnier and cooler than later games, though.
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Octo Expansion + Octarians Questions
Q. It's suggested that there were thousands of test subjects before Agent 8. Where did Kamabo Co. get all of these people?
A. Not only is it suggested that the Deepsea Metro may be accessible from other train lines, but it's also plausible that the subterranean networks that the Octarians use could be connected to the Metro. (Thank you for your hard work, Dodo.)
Test chambers always reminded me of Octarian domes, anyways, with the large amount of highly versatile space they have, and how it'd only make sense underground.
After all, Commander Tartar offered a glimpse of "the promised land", and that plays very specifically into the Octoling desire to see the surface world again. ("A utopia of light beyond your wildest dreams".) Its appearance as a telephone even seems to evoke an Octarian's face, which they're more willing to trust.
Q. Are sanitized Octarians a hivemind?
A. They're something like that, being hollow shells that have lost their memories and identities while submitting to a higher force. (This can be fixed, as we've learned.) They seem responsive to being assigned roles, what with Acht being made to produce music while other sanitized Octolings act as enemies in test chambers.
Commander Tartar's ideology revolves around a lot of "giving up one's individuality for the greater good" and "joining something bigger than yourself". To "eliminate the general idea of the individual" for "a harmonious world"... "becoming one with existence".
I think that carries a lot of interesting implications. You can draw your own conclusions, since there's no explicit canon answer.
Q. Was Acht sanitized willingly or unwillingly?
A. Public twitter info suggests that they were sanitized willingly, to "get rid of doubts and conflicts involving production" and to commit completely to music. But in Side Order, Acht says that it wasn't done willingly.
There's a lot of ways to interpret this. Maybe they wanted to at first, had a last-minute realization that they got tricked, and ultimately didn't want it. Maybe they committed completely and don't want to say it. Maybe social media is lying to us completely, in the same corporate word-twisting ways that Grizzco also uses, to make Kamabo Co. seem better. So... who knows?
Q. How does the Kamabo Corporation have clones of the Octo Canyon bosses?
A. Uh...
... I don't actually know. Clearly they have pretty advanced technology going on, so maybe they actually did manage to replicate and clone these bosses perfectly?
Or, maybe, it's just a psychological recreation of Agent 8's memories. Octo Expansion has a lot of stuff like that, so it feels pretty possible!
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Anyways, that's all... for now. I'll probably only edit in more sources and tweak details on this post, but it's completely possible that I might need to add more things later.
