i love splatoon!!! and i think there's a lot of things that splatoon does that make it really interesting. i'm hoping to eventually document as many thoughts as i have about the series here. this might get a little verbose, sorry! i'll try to add some pictures later. (this is also going to be pretty disorganized)

[some thoughts about bands; come back later!]

the music in the game is usually (with the exception of normal gameplay—battles, singleplayer levels, salmon run, etc.) coming from an actual physical location in the game's world. the lobby has speakers inside and out, and the sound design is set up such that you can actually hear where the sound is coming from, if you have headphones on. when walking around the towns of each game, if you come near a shop, you will hear the shop's music. if you go near the trains, you might catch the jingle that it plays when it arrives. if you go near the grizzco office, you will hear the salmon run lobby theme.

and this does still happen in gameplay areas as well! just not for whatever main theme is currently playing. the most obvious examples are tower control and clam blitz. the tower and clam baskets both have jingles that play when certain things happen, and they're played from the objects themselves! the main battle stages have more sound design going on than this, though. if you visit a stage in recon mode in splatoon 3, you can hear sounds coming from whatever objects you have the camera near.

one really interesting thing about splatoon is it's usage of real-world time as a justification for worldbuilding. there were 2 years between the first and second game, and 5 years between the second and third game. for the second and third games, this time has actually passed diagetically! what could have been happening in that time? this is a question that the team behind splatoon actually has answers for! a number of things are documented as happening, but most interesting to me are events that occur in the game's various in-universe bands. [more thoughts about this to come later!]

[some thoughts about lore tidbits; come back later!]