Shiver

“	You think you're cool? Sharks call ME cold-blooded. But you can call me Shiver!	”
— Return of the Mammalians

Shiver is a character in Splatoon 3 and one of the three members of the band Deep Cut, alongside Frye and Big Man, with whom she co-hosts both Anarchy Splatcast, the news show of Splatsville, and Splatfests. She is also the third boss of Return of the Mammalians. Her signature color is a saturated light cold blue.

Appearance

Shiver is an Octoling with pale skin, thin, light-red colored lips, red eyes with light red pupils in the shape of an infinity symbol (like octopuses in real life), one eyelash on her visible eye without the mask-like black marking other Octolings have, red eye makeup under her eyes, red-tinted fingers, blue-purple tentacles with darker tips that curl outwards, and matching-colored triangular eyebrows. She has the same teeth and ears as playable Octolings.

Shiver's right ear is pierced with three shark tooth-shaped earrings. Her hair obscures her left eye. She wears a white sarashi under a translucent purple shawl with a large silver octopus head charm with red tassels hanging from it, black leggings with two cuts at the sides, and black thong shoes with red wedge soles. On the back of her head, surrounding a large suction cup on one of her tentacles, she wears a white circular headpiece designed like a shimenawa rope. In certain circumstances she wears a shark mask, alluding to a real-world kitsune mask.

Return of the Mammalians

Shiver and the rest of Deep Cut are initially hostile to Agent 3 and the New Squidbeak Splatoon, declaring that all the treasure in Alterna is theirs to plunder and that they won't let anyone else have it. Later, when the team agrees to give the treasure (now a broken down tool) to Deep Cut, Shiver, along with Frye and Big Man becomes the player's ally and helps them in defeating Mr. Grizz.

Boss

For detail on the boss phases, see The Pursuit of the Precious.

Shiver is the third boss of the single-player campaign, Return of the Mammalians and the second Deep Cut boss.

Gender

When Shiver was first revealed in the Splatoon 3 Direct, neither the presentation nor other promotional material (such as the announcement dialogue for the Splatoon 3 Splatfest World Premiere and references to Deep Cut on the official website) specifically referred to Shiver's gender. This was consistent across all languages, and text in languages that require it (French, Italian, and Spanish) did not refer to Shiver in ways that would require inflecting adjectives or verbs for gender. This did not apply to Shiver's bandmates Frye and Big Man, who were referred to explicitly as female and male, respectively. When referring to herself, Shiver's dialogue used plural forms, as part of the group, or used the passive voice. The Japanese text did not have Shiver use any common first-person pronouns that traditionally connote gender (such as atashi or boku). In the Direct, Shiver used the pronouns "uchi" (an informal pronoun usually used by younger women, especially in Kansai dialects) and "onore" (an archaic pronoun usually used by men). These pronouns may be portraying Shiver's Kansai dialect through the use of yakuwarigo ("role language"). Most official social media posts referring to Shiver also made no mention of her gender, except for one Nintendo Portugal message that used "pela", implying Shiver to be female.

In contrast, Shiver's bandmates Big Man and Frye were referred to at reveal with terms connoting male and female grammatical gender, respectively. For example, Frye introduces herself in French as "the queen of eels", Spanish as the "[female] marine choreographer", and she uses a feminine definite article in her Portuguese introduction.

This resulted in speculation about Shiver's gender and the possibility of her being non-binary or ambiguously gendered. However, official sources such as interviews with Nintendo of America executives and the media's preview game access soon clarified that Shiver is female and is referred to using the pronouns "she" and "her" in-game.

Trivia

• In Japanese, Shiver speaks with a very pronounced Kansai-ben dialect, specifically using the Kamigata (Kyoto) dialect. This includes referring to her Splatfest team with the second-person pronoun あんさんら ansanra, using the idiom おきばりやす okibariyasu ("Hang in there!"), using the copula どす dosu instead of です desu, using 何いうてはん nani iute-han ("What are you saying?"), and many other examples.
• Shiver is the first Octoling to ever explicitly be shown to have a tongue in-game. The title art of Naughty vs. Nice has an Inkling sticking her tongue out, but until the battle with Shiver, no Octoling has ever been shown to have a tongue. Frye also is shown to have a tongue when she is battling and speaking to the player in the single player mode.

Gallery

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  Closeup introducing Shiver.

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  2D art of Deep Cut with Shiver on the left.

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  3D art of Deep Cut with Shiver on the left.

• File:S3 Icon Shiver.png

  Shiver's character icon.

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  Animation of Shiver dancing during a Splatfest as shown in the Splatoon 3 Direct.

• File:S3 Shiver boss intro.png

  Boss introduction.

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  Shiver's 2D artwork

Etymology

"Shivering" refers to the reaction of shaking in response to cold or fear, in contrast to Frye's name, which suggests heat and warmth. A "shiver" is also one of the collective terms for a group of sharks.

"Fūka" is a common Japanese female given name, usually written with kanji 風花 (wind-flower) or 風香 (wind-scent). It is also a pun on 鱶 fuka (with a short u), the Japanese word for "shark". This refers to Shiver descending from a lineage of shark trainers.