Earlier this year, Nintendo added a new
map to Splatoon 3 called Barnicle & Dime, based on a huge shopping mall. On one side of
this mall is a set of toilets with signs outside, written in a made-up Splatoon language. But if
you convert those signs into Japanese letters, it turns out that they have actual meanings!
One says “josei”, which means women. One says “tansei”, which has a slight typo but means
men. And then, there’s a third sign, which, if decoded, reads in English - “genterless”
aka “genderless”. That’s right - in 2023, Nintendo added gender neutral bathrooms
to Splatoon - isn’t that neat! Now, all three Splatoon games are filled with
this fictional Splatoon text, and while some of it is actual gibberish, just nonsense words, a
lot of it can be decoded into English or Japanese, just like with those bathroom signs. And since
Nintendo never expected anyone to figure out the meaning of these strange looking symbols, some
of the games’ developers hid unexpected words or phrases in plain sight. Which brings us to
Splatoon 2, where one of the designers hid a swear word within the game! It was just sitting
there in front of millions of players' eyes for years and years, and no-one noticed it. So in
this video I’ll show you this secret swear word, I’ll explain how it was decoded, and finally
we’ll take a look at the reaction that players had when this hidden profanity was exposed!
This is the swear word hidden within Splatoon! Part 1: A brief explanation of Splatoon-ese Let me introduce you to Rassicas,
who describes themself as “The CEO of Splatoon Lore”. I think it’s fair to say
that if you sorted everyone in the world by how much time they’ve spent thinking about
Splatoon, Rassicas would be in the top 0.01%. "I made like an iceberg video a couple of years
ago, and I feel like that put Splatoon lore in a little bit more of a spotlight online. So
I've become like the Splatoon lore keeper!" And one thing Rassicas knows more than almost
anyone else about is Splatoon’s languages. But not all of these languages are created equal.
They can be split into two categories - the spoken languages you hear in the game, and the
text you see written around the world of Splatoon. “So there is the Spoken inkling language, which is largely just gibberish, it’s not
really consistent. Sometimes they’ll throw in some words that sound kind of like a
Japanese word, or like an English word.” An example of that is the Inkling girl, who will sometimes say a phrase which
sounds very similar to “thank you”! So yes, there are some examples of spoken
language which sound kind of like real words or phrases. But for the most part, it’s totally
made up! Nintendo composer Shiho Fujii, who wrote the lyrics for all of the Squid Sisters music,
basically said she just used made up words which sounded good: “I chose words that are somehow easy
to sing or stick in your head", she explained. So that’s the spoken language of Splatoon.
But what about the written language - the text you see written on buildings, in shops
and on clothes. Well, this is where things get more interesting. For one, there’s not just
one written language, but at least 15 different "scripts" as they’re known, each with their
own unique set of made up characters. Now, for a long time, Splatoon lore theorists
believed that like the spoken language, these various written languages were just
gibberish, they had no meaning. And that can be true sometimes. You see, the way these
languages are created is that each letter of these scripts can be matched up to a letter of
the English alphabet. It's essentially like a font. Splatoon’s developers somtimes just typed
random letters on their computer, essentially, using that font to create the text you see in
the game. After all, if no-one can understand the meaning behind these languages, then what’s
the point in using actual words or phrases? But gradually, Splatoon fans noticed that
there were some consistent patterns that could be found among these seemingly meaningless
combinations of characters. And then, in 2018, someone on Tumblr called Radley managed to do
the impossible: decode a Splatoon script! Now, the script Radley decoded has come to be known
as “round script”, and here’s how he managed to decipher its meaning. Radley was looking at
this poster for one of Splatoon’s live concerts, when he fixated on the big text right in the
centre, and noticed that some of the letters bore a resemblance to letters from the Roman
alphabet spelling out the phrase “Hi Color”, which is the Japanese name for the
city of Inkopolis. Intrigued by this, Radley kept his eyes peeled for other, similar
text, and gradually managed to build up the entire alphabet. And with that, for the first
time, a complete alphabet of one of Splatoon’s fictional languages had been created, and now fans
could decode some of the in-game text they read. But this “round script” is one of many, many
in-game languages or scripts, and so in late 2021 Splatoon lore theorist Rassicas along
with some members of their Discord server, began a project of trying to get basically every
single Splatoon script fully decoded. Or at least, as many as are actually possible to
decode. And that is where Rassicas made their discovery. The words “fuck you” had
been written in plain sight within Splatoon 2. Part 2: Uh oh, I found a bad word So, in late 2021, Rassicas began work trying to
decode a specific Splatoon script - this one here, which they named “Bubble script”. And so
they began looking for examples of the script used throughout not only the
Splatoon games, but also Splatoon’s various music posters and artbooks. And
on page 107 of the Splatoon 2 artbook, we see some concept art for the shopkeeper
Jelfonzo. Now, a fact you need to know about Jelfonzo is that he wears a different
t-shirt every day of the week. On this page of the artbook you can see Nintendo’s concept
art for each one of those different shirts. “On the concept art for Jelfonzo, you
can see that some of the shirts that he’s wearing [are] written in bubble script.
And one of the shirts, it says ‘you suck’”. That’s right, in Nintendo’s concept art
for Splatoon 2, they designed a t-shirt which said “you suck” on the front! The text
didn’t even need decoding, as the art book tells us right here that “you suck” is what the
t-shirt says. Obviously that’s not swearing, and we’ll get to that in a minute, but
it’s a pretty surprising find, right? So, after seeing all this concept art
of t-shirts with bubble script on them, Rassicas decided to investigate the actual
t-shirts that Nintendo put into the game. So, they asked their friend, a data miner called
Diam, to extract all of Jelfonzo’s t-shirt designs from within the game’s files. And one
of the shirts they dug up looks pretty similar to the “you suck” concept art t-shirt.
Except, when Rassicas took a closer look, they discovered Nintendo had changed
what the text said on the front. “I see the shirt and I’m like
‘hold on a second.’ This does not... this does not say... this
does not say what I think it says!” Rassicas had a building suspicion that the
t-shirt’s designer had hidden an explicit message in it. And after comparing the
t-shirt’s design to their decoded script, they confirmed their suspicion:
this t-shirt said “f ck you” on it. Immediately, Rassicas went to go tell their
Discord community, and all of their friends were shocked. They didn’t even believe it at first! But
before Rassicas informed the public at large about their discovery, they wanted to confirm whether
this t-shirt design was actually featured within the game itself, or if it was just an easter egg
or some cut content within the game’s files. Now, like I said, Jalfonzo wears a different t-shirt
each day of the week. But which day, if any, does he wear this shirt? Well, to find out,
data-miner Diam dug into the game’s code and found out that it was on Tuesdays. Unfortunately,
this was all happening on a Thursday. To wait for the shirt to appear in the game would take 5 whole
days. So instead, Rassicas searched around online to see if anyone had happened to take a screenshot
of Jalfonzo wearing this shirt on a random Tuesday in the past. And pretty quickly, Rassicas found
just what they were looking for: confirmation that the explicit shirt did indeed appear in the
game. It had been in there for years! And while Rassicas was searching online, data-miner Diam was
using their knowledge of Splatoon modding to trick Splatoon 2 into thinking it was a Tuesday. And
they found the exact same thing - on a Tuesday, Jalfonzo would wear this t-shirt, unwittingly
telling players around the world *ahem* f ck you. Part 3: The aftermath So, what do you do if you find
out Nintendo hid a swear word inside one of their most popular
games? Well, if you’re Rassicas, the first thing you do is share that knowledge
with the world! Yes, right after they confirmed that the offending t-shirt did indeed appear
in the actual finished version of Splatoon 2, Rassicas put out a tweet where they shared this
information with the internet. Take a look. The tweet quickly racked up over 20 thousand
likes, and the replies are full of shocked people. “NOT JELFONZO!!” “HOLY SH T” “THIS IS MY NEW FAVOURITE OF ALL TIME” “Ain’t no way” “Splatoon 2 about to get a surprise update”. Yes, and it wasn’t just agentpaint, but many, many
people assumed that after this tweet went viral, and the knowledge of this t-shirt’s surprising
meaning spread throughout the Splatoon fandom, Nintendo would surely update the game and remove
the t-shirt from rotation, right? But amazingly, they did not do that! It’s 2023 as I record this,
and the t-shirt is still in the game right now! Maybe Nintendo never saw Rassicas’ tweet,
or maybe they just didn’t care. Who knows?! But while Nintendo may not have acknowledged this
discovery, the Splatoon fan community embraced it with open arms. During an official Nintendo-run
Splatoon tournament in September 2023, a fan was spotted wearing a real-life
recreation of the Splatoon t-shirt, much to Rassicas’ amusement! It turned
out to be Splatoon fan cowfish13. And, I’m kind of surprised that cowfish13 was allowed
into the tournament wearing the top, to be honest, but I guess if it’s OK to have the t-shirt in the
game, it’s OK to wear it to the tournament too! Now, a big debate actually broke out on the
Splatoon Wiki, too. Admins were fiercely divided over whether the translation of this t-shirt’s
meaning should be allowed to go up on the wiki uncensored. One camp argued that Splatoon was
a family franchise and thus the wiki should be suitable for all ages, while the other camp argued
that a wiki must document what’s in the game accurately, regardless of how appropriate that
documentation is for children. The debate grew so intense that memes were even made about this
incident! Eventually a compromise was reached - if you’re logged out then the meaning is censored,
but if you log in to the wiki, you can toggle profanity on or off in your user settings page.
Phew, all that for one humble little t-shirt! And that is the story of the swear
word hidden inside Splatoon 2! Now, Rassicas gets credit for this discovery, and
I’m really grateful to them for speaking to me for this video! And guess what? The world of
Splatoon’s fictional written text goes much, much deeper than this video touched on
- Rassicas has a truly fascinating 40 minute deep dive into how each one of these
languages was decoded up on their YouTube channel. It’s really well produced and you
should check it out if you’re interested! Either way, be sure to subscribe
to this channel for more strange Nintendo tales and I will see you next week - bye!
