I always figure it was more because it was intended to challenge C as the "on the bare metal" language, eith the intent unpredictable code "flakes off" if you s

I always figure it was more because it was intended to challenge C as the "on the bare metal" language, eith the intent unpredictable code "flakes off" if you stick to the safe subset. The plethora of chemistry puns then just sort of came along naturally. No clue on the crab though, unless it was a tongue in cheek reference to the phenomena by which things are said to inevitably evolutionarily converge toward crab, and that being a loose metaphor for the tendency of rust devs to implement X, but in Rust.