[Theory] Tomodachi Life's Stuck & Hiccupping Events

Here's a little insane theory for you all! Or more of a Theory Review?

While doomscrolling X: The Everything App (/s), as one does with the state of everything, sometimes you find a nice distraction to go down a research rabbit hole with. In this case, Twitter user hmii100, whose name I have blurred for "I feel like this probably breaks some community rule" reasons, posited an interesting idea:

Twitter user hmii100 proposes the Tomodachi Life Miis have genetic disorders that lead to their in-game problems.

So, I figured, hey, this is as good a distraction as any, let's see if this is at all plausible, and if not, what another possible reason could be.

Selective Breeding

The best place to start here would be with what hmii100 suggests - the Miis have been passing down some sort of disease genetically that leads to them having intractable hiccups and paralysis.

For those who don't know, like I didn't 48 hours ago, intractable hiccups are hiccups that last more than a month. That doesn't mean they keep going for a month straight; you can have breaks in between the hiccup episodes, but this is part of why those medicine commercials tell you to get concerned if your hiccups last longer than 48 hours. It's usually a sign of something deeper.

So, that being said, could the Miis have developed... something that causes them to have that deeper issue? And is that thing tied to genetics? While it's not impossible, there's a few holes in this theory. The biggest one being the comparison to pugs.

If you know anything about dogs, you know that pugs Should Not Exist. Due to selective breeding, their physique has so many problems that they are predisposed to, to the point where the simple act of breathing is hard for them. To imply that every Mii has been created over three generations of Tomodachi Life games (not counting the spinoffs) to be like this would have some merit, if it weren't for the fact that this is the only evidence there is for it.

In humans, selective breeding tends to make the strength of the gene pool weaker, especially when done on a small set of people, like the Miis would be. We're not talking a country of millions of people here (not to say that it would be fine if it were, because it wouldn't!), we're talking three generations of people living on an island, passing it on to their descendants, if hmii100 is to be believed. And one only needs to look at ye olde European monarchies to see what problems arose from that, both physically and developmentally. Royals unable to speak, walk, or chew became a commonality.

The problem here is that in Tomodachi Life, aside from glasses and these freezing/hiccup episodes, disability doesn't seem to exist? Especially not to the degree of what we would expect from selective breeding across a small number of people for generations. You may have seen people on social media sad they can't have Miis of themselves in wheelchairs. If there aren't even wheelchairs on the island, Living the Dream definitely does not have the accessibility systems that would be required for an island based off of hmii100's theoretical generations' worth of selective inbreeding.

So, with this being an unlikely explanation, what's next?

Back to the Drawing Board

We need a list of things that cause both intractable hiccups and paralysis episodes, and maybe a commonality will emerge. And unfortunately, I am but one Cap'n with access to a computer, not a medical professional, so I probably definitely missed a few.

Hiccups:
Cardiovascular disorders, nervous system disorders, ear/nose/throat disorders, tumors in the spine or esophagus, and gastrointestinal disorders

Paralysis:
Strokes, head or spine injuries, Bell's palsy (facial paralysis), Multiple Sclerosis

The reasoning here is pretty self explanatory. Hiccups are usually tied to the diaphragm or structure of nerves and muscles around it, which can get inflamed or irritated, causing the diaphragm to spasm, and us to 'hic'. Paralysis is caused when something disrupts signals from your brain to your nerves and muscles. Depending on where the disruption is, it can block out anything from a limb to your entire body. The conditions on these lists would then impact their respective bodily systems and functions.

The overlap between these two seems to come in the central nervous system, or simply, the brain and spinal cord. We can rule out stuff like ear/nose/throat disorders because it's unlikely that any disruptions between the brain and the throat are going to lock up your entire body and prevent you from moving.

Gastrointestinal disorders are an interesting one, though. Gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD, or real, real bad acid reflux, can cause hiccups. It's one of the big ones that kept coming up repeatedly throughout my research, and is tied to a lot of nervous system injuries and disorders. For example, on average, more than 1 in 5 patients with a spinal injury develop GERD, according to the NIH. Similar trends show up with Parkinson's, Multiple Sclerosis, and other nervous system issues like functional neurological disorders and injuries to the central nervous system.

Narrowing It Down

So, it's likely that some form of nervous system injury or disorder is causing GERD, which causes the intractable hiccups. But, that still leaves us with too many options for our paralysis. To narrow it down, we need to look at the Miis themselves.

As we've established previously, it's unlikely that all of the Miis are related to each other. Unless you want to overlook the genetic diversity available in things like eye color, hair color, and skin tone, because maybe the Mii God Cap'n is just editing their genome from the default Miis like some sort of Nintendo CRISPR, but even then, you as the Cap'n can categorize Miis as being related to each other or not. And the default is 100% not.

So, we're looking for some kind of issue that can cause the same injury or disorder in every single Mii on the island, regardless of genetic background. And, lo and behold...

A "cancer cluster" is a greater than average number of the same cancer type appearing in people from the same location, usually due to something in the environment. They can even manifest benign tumors of the same type in different people, so even if it's not full blown cancer, something like a spinal or brain tumor can form in multiple people from different backgrounds, because they all frequent the same location. In other words, people living on the same island, due to repeated exposure to the carcinogen, may all develop the same tumors in similar locations on the central nervous system.

This seems like a plausible origin point to me. The only hang up here is sometimes these tumors can take 10+ years to form in adults, but seeing as it can take way less time in kids, I'm willing to chalk that up to Mii physiology. We see human hands in Tomodachi Life and that is Not what the Miis have, and I can't make my human voice sound like a robot.

Even the type of carcinogen sounds like it matches. Ionizing radiation can cause tumors in the central nervous system, which can also lead to functional neurological disorders, like we talked about earlier. And if that's not enough, according to Theorist favorite St. Jude, the tie between radiation exposure and tumors can even lend itself more to benign tumors than cancerous ones in some cases with the central nervous system.

As for what causes this radiation? I could throw several guesses out there, but they'd all be unsubstantiated. Maybe whatever process we use to terraform the island to our whims is done with or gives off radiation? Maybe however we create life itself with new pets at the Palette House involves radiation? That building didn't seem to exist in previous Tomodachi Life games. Maybe it's whatever gives the Miis the ability to summon stools out of thin air and fly! Or maybe it's all related.....?

Conclusion

To end off, a quick disclaimer: none of this is meant to poke fun at anyone who experiences any of these problems, or downplay their experiences. FND, tumors, GERD, and everything else mentioned can be debilitating, and while these symptoms are played for laughs in Tomodachi Life, they're obviously nowhere near as lighthearted in real life. All of the above is simply me trying to find a somewhat realistic explanation for the gameplay mechanics in Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, and wanting to share the awareness and knowledge I gained about these conditions with other people.

Maybe this post'll help someone else doomscrolling to pass the time! Or someone can teach me about something I've overlooked, either medically or in the lore of Tomodachi Life.

Either way, thanks for reading :)