The Truth About Pikmin Series Treasures

The Pikmin series is more than just a video game series about an astronaut (or cosmonaut for Russian readers) named Olimar meeting the titular leaf/bud/flower-headed sprites. The treasures that Olimar and the Pikmin encounter are based on objects found in real life, indicating that whichever planet Olimar crashed on once had human life on them. Another clue that supports the theory that PNF-404 was Earth in a life after humans was that Olimar had a Geiger Counter, which is used to measure radiation. Given that the Geiger Counter was going wild and letting out a lot of noise, this could be proof that PNF-404 could be Earth in a life after humans perished from high radiation levels.

Speaking of real life objects, some of these treasures found in the Pikmin games are video game-related items including game cartridges, a game disk, controller parts, parts that used to be R.O.B. the Robotic Operating Buddy (The head and the gyro blocks) and a Game and Watch handheld (The game in particular being Ball). There are references to other Nintendo franchises, mostly from the Mario series, with the most notable one being Mario Paint. While batteries and an SD card, which are featured as treasures, are not video game items, some of the batteries featured as treasures were the power source for some models of the Game Boy handhelds (excluding the Game Boy Advance SP and Game Boy Micro), and the SD card was a storage device for the DSi, DSi XL, 3DS, 3DS XL and 2DS handhelds. A few of the treasures in Pikmin 2 reappeared in Pikmin 3 as fruits, with all of them being from the fruit-themed Succulent Series. This could be a hint that whichever planet inhabited by Pikmin (excluding Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour) once had human life on them.