Still all tags for me.
But now that I've read up on this entire thread, let me bring my own mystery about the Unown that I've been wondering: Where were the Unown for the last 5 years? And why did they choose to appear again in a random Mirage Cave rather than actual ruins of a former civilization like they used to be? My only guess is that when Hoopa was pulling these islands around, he teleports them through the Unown dimension and for that island a bunch of them just were pulled out with it.
Image Unown: Oh... sorry, didn't realize not everyone saw the images. Moving on...
Unown Location: Yeah, now thinking about it, out of all the regions that should have Unown, why not Unova and Kalos which use the 26 letter English alphabet? Well for whatever reason I guess the ancient people who use the Unown were from the Johto and Sinnoh regions. Hoenn's ancients used braille while Unova ancients used a unique form of calligraphy (though oddly both were also based upon the 26 letter English alphabet). Kanto and Kalos ancient people either didn't have a unique form or writing or we haven't seen it (though Kanto's could have shared theirs with Johto). Anyway, this means for Kanto, Hoenn, Unova, and Kalos they are considered foreign Pokemon since there's (normally) no location in those regions where there's an access point to the Unown dimension.
As for the Unown appearing in a Mirage Cave (which I haven't gotten yet, making that two Mirage Spots that I now know of I haven't been to despite having been playing the games for months and having visited certain Mirage Spots DOZEN of time. And of course they're the most boring Mirage Spots, not one that contain Unown or that last TM I need to get!), as you said that's Hoopa's doing. ALL the Mirage Spots are Hoopa teleporting the whole island over from wherever in the world it torn it from, Pokemon and all. The cave is probably a natural spot where there's an access point to the Unown dimension, Hoopa could have pulled it to Hoenn for that very reason just because it was a unique location (but for no special reason, it's just playing around because its kind of a jerk like that... oh well, benefits the player at least and that's all that matters).
Though that does bring up an interesting question, can Hoopa pull Unown from their own dimension with its rings? We know it can creating a ring through time and space, though nothing about rings connecting to other dimensions. Oh well, I suppose just using its ring to connect to a location where the Pokemon World has access to the Unown Dimension is the next best thing. And the reason it's not a ruin is because 1. in-universe it could actually be a location that not even an ancient found, it could be secluded where little to no human has ever gone or at least formed a settlement and 2. meta-wise the designers didn't want to make ruin graphics. :P
Though that also brings up an interesting thought about Mirage Spots, well more a missed opportunity. It would have been awesome if the Mirage Spots also teleported popular locations in the Pokemon World like the Ruins of Alph, Pokemon Tower, Cerulean Cave, Slowpoke Well, Glitter Lighthouse, Dragon's Den, etc..
I think I found the missing map linking all the pokemon games together!
NAH! That's still too organized.
Some Pokedex entries say that when two or more Unown appear together, they generate an odd power, so maybe their power helped Hoopa to pull the islands around, thus transporting them too?
Speaking of which, other Pokedex entries state that it's not known whether Unown came first, or if the alphabet came first. If the alphabet came first, that pulls up the question of how Unown were shaped into alphabets. Since their impressions are found on ancient tablets, maybe ancient people bred Pokemon into different shapes for easy writing? idk, but I find the thought of people breeding Pokemon into the shapes of letters just because they're too lazy to carve words themselves amusing :p
Unown Power: I think Hoopa is perfectly powerful enough to pull the islands, otherwise all islands would have Unown if it needed their power.
Origin Unown: And wouldn't it take more effort to breed a species of Pokemon which take a shape of an alphabet then just carving the letters (
also Unown can't breed)? Anyway the most logical explanation is that ancient civilizations discovered the Unown and, seeing the different forms and the strange power created when they came together, based an alphabet system around them using their forms as letters hoping that doing so would draw the power generated when Unown's come together. Oddly it seemed to have worked as any place with Unown writing have Unown able to appear in it or at least is a mystical feeling location.
Another wild theory is that maybe Unowns didn't exist until man creating a writing system. Well, THEY did sort of exist, but only as pure energy similar to the power Arceus uses to enhance its power. However somehow ancient people discovered locations in the Pokemon World where they could access this power and to use it they bound the power to symbols they turned into an alphabet. Before long the energy, now having something to attach to, took a physical form resembling the symbols and became the Unown. This origin has a more mythological and mystical twist to it if you like that sort of thing more than logical explanations.
Has it ever been discovered what the "Strange Souvenir" is for?
Trade Quest To End All Trade Quests: Being its depicts a Pokemon that's a protector of a region that we haven't seen before, probably hinting at something next Gen? Or maybe it'll have a hidden use in XY2, like there will be someone looking for it in XY2 so if we transfer it over from XY and give it to that person they'll give us something. Hmm, actually, it would be neat if they actually gave us a Pokemon and told us to "bring it to the region this idol is from" which would be the next gen and if we transfer that Pokemon over and bring it somewhere it'll activate something! Of course that would be a lot of planning and complexity, the payoff would have to be pretty good.
Ah yes, continuity my old nemesis. While discussing and speculating timelines is within the boundaries of the thread topic, I doubt we'll ever get a Hyrule Historia over it. Expecially since ORAS pretty much gave future developers a carte blanche to do whatever they want.
Spoiler on Episode Delta: at one point they spell it out that the original R/S/E games exist in a separate parallel universe without Mega Evolution, allowing both the original and remakes to be "canon." This is reaffirmed when you enter the Battle Resort, as your opposite evil Team speculates that in another world they were the bad guys. All of this suggests that there are tons of parallel pokeverses (like, each game cartridge is it's own universe, and when you trade you are transferring pokemon between parallel universes).
I love this idea since it means Legendary pokemon can remain as super rare one-of-a-kinds but still explain how you can have a box of 30 Lugia's. For some reason the concept of legendaries breeding in secret just cheapens them to me.
I can see some opposed to it, because it does allow writers to pick and choose whatever continuity they want to maintain (like Juan never existing or "Where's Koga?" in the PWC). So far Gamefreak seems to not go to overboard and keeps a loving honor to its Poke-history.
But to those still trying to weave this tangled web of timelines, I warn you that a couple snarls have already appeared. Genesect's Drives is a big one, in that they now appear in Kalos and especially the Hoenn region despite Genesect explicitly being created shortly before Black/White's story started. I guess you could say that the drives could have been made for Genesect's Techno-cannon and not the beast himself, so the drives exist in the past because the weapon's creation predates Genesect's revival. Or something. Still seems like back-peddling to me though.
Timeline x2: We know roughly when games are suppose to take place in the Pokemon timeline, its just that the timeline involves alternate timelines and dimensions. What we don't know is exact timeframes and if remakes should be considered retcons or yet another alternate dimension (at least for the Gen I and Gen II remakes).
Where Do Legendaries Come From: I would say some Legendaries can breed... it's just they don't want to in captivity. I fully believe most Legendaries, if not just immortal, can live for hundreds and thousands of years thus don't really need to breed that often. And when they breed it's probably to assure that there's a future member of its species to take its place when it finally passes away. It doesn't breed just because a trainer it considers worthy of obeying wants to breed for one with perfect IVs. The only time that happened was with Arceus creating a Dialga/Palkia/Giratina in that HGSS event and who knows what it did that (maybe it knew of the events that happened in DPP (Gen II and Gen IV happened at the same time) and so decided it was probably time to create another timespace trio JUST incase, giving the player in HGSS one as a nice gift (and probably to show off its true power which it so ever rarely gets to do in front of an audiance)). ANYWAY, I would agree though that alternate timelines would indeed explain why we can have multiples of Pokemon, especially of the ones who are suppose to be one of a kind. :P
More Than One of Us: Well Juan exists, its just that he's not needed in Ruby, Sapphire, and ORAS since Wallace is still Gym Leader (and he is mentioned, Lisia will say Wallace had a mentor named Juan after beating her in the Master Rank). And Koga is not in the PWT because at that point he would be an Elite Four member who for some reason weren't invited unless they became Champion like Lance (I still consider PWT non-canon anyway). GameFreak honestly does whatever they want, keeping a (VERY) loose history so that they could explain away certain things or have certain characters cameo (though the cameo needs to make some sense).
Driving A Plothole: Yeah, Genesect Drives is a bit of a mystery. The guy who gives it to you in ORAS just gives it to you without wanting you to ask any questions, saying he got it off the Unova black market. How we knows about Genesect who knows. It could be possible that the Genesect project was happening around the time of Gen III, though I imagine N wouldn't order the scientists to cancel the project until a bit later as, by Gen III, N would still be a kid and not told all the things that Team Plasma are doing or have any say in what goes on. Still, that doesn't explain how that guy got the drives or how he knows of Genesect. Seems odd that someone who would be working on the Genesect project to leave, taking a set of the drives and not only selling them but telling whoever bought them they belong onto Genesect (if I'm forced to come up with a reason, maybe that person thought what they were doing to be immoral and wanted out. So they took a set of the drives and ran off, selling them on the black market to get money to move far away from Unova as possible. They just told the guy about Genesect to make the Drives sound valuable/possibly warning him about the monster that would soon exist).
Genesect is originated from kalos, if I recall an NPC mentions it's fossil was obtained in the cave near the Rhyhorn rider mini game.
The Hiker that gives you the Drives in XY never said that. He only said he got the Drives from an associate from Unova. Unless you're talking about someone else.
I can't find that quote but I still believe you.
Technically it's a fossil pokemon from 300 million years ago that team Plasma roboticized, and the "creation" I'm referring to is when Team Plasma revived and upgraded it. So the drives for the cannon are Team Plasma creations.
While less for why the drives appear in Kalos (although that is a bit of a mystery), most timeline theories put the Unova games after the Hoenn ones, which wouldn't make sense for the drives to appear in ORAS (save for explanations like mine above) because Genesect as we know it hasn't been created yet. That's what I was referring to.
Unless you are saying these are 300 million year old fossilized computer disks? ;)
Of course the real reason is they had to get in the game somehow and I'm just picky.
Already talked about how they appeared in Hoenn above. As for how they appeared in Kalos, as I said the Hiker got it from an "associate" in Unova. My guess this associate is someone who knew a guy/was a Team Plasma scientist working on the Genesect Project. When N cancelled the project the scientist took a set of the drives as a keepsake/to sell and either sold it to someone who then gave it to the hiker or was the friend of the Hiker and gave it to him as a souvenir for his travels.
But yeah, obviously the real reason the drives can be found in the games is because, well, without them you take away Genesect's gimmick. :P And honestly you can consider such character non-canon to the story, existing as only a metagame concept.