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SPOILERS! Mysteries and Conspiracies of Pokemon

Bulbapedia claims that the Elemental monkeys have some connection to the Three Wise Monkeys, but then admits that Simisage, who should represent Iwazaru, the monkey that speaks no evil, has no obvious connection to that motif, and claims that Simisear is based on Kikazaru, who hears no evil... based on the fact that it has big ears...? So honestly I'm thinking that one's a bit of a reach, but if you want to read into it then Simipour would be Mizaru, who sees no evil, so being blind makes sense.
At the very least having pale pupils is the one singular aspect i can see maybe directly meant to call to the wise monkeys so hey got that going for it as opposed to the utter NOTHING present other wise that people have been bending over backwards to make connections (or INVERSE connections) for the better part of a decade.
 
Bulbapedia claims that the Elemental monkeys have some connection to the Three Wise Monkeys, but then admits that Simisage, who should represent Iwazaru, the monkey that speaks no evil, has no obvious connection to that motif, and claims that Simisear is based on Kikazaru, who hears no evil... based on the fact that it has big ears...? So honestly I'm thinking that one's a bit of a reach, but if you want to read into it then Simipour would be Mizaru, who sees no evil, so being blind makes sense.
I believe the association is based on the fact that Pansear has one hand to its ear (as if trying to listen to something) in both its regular art and gen 5 front sprite. Simisear just inherits the supposed connection from its pre-evolution.
 
I've also seen a theory that the Simis are based on Japanese delinquents, but I can't remember the specifics.
Per TV Tropes:
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The core anime PLA tie-in special came and didn't show any Hisui mons that weren't shown prerelease. Same thing with Hisuian Snow.

Kleavor and Ursaluna will probably be fit into the Paldea anime or whatever they concoct for Gen 9, but for the rest of the Hisuian forms as well as Origin Form Dialga and Palkia... are they just never gonna be shown animated?
 
From passively following the TCG, I think the issue with megas is they (obviously) kept them exclusives to super rares and they evolved from other super rares and there's only so many of those per set. There were some megas that they snuck in through like promo boxes or whatever (& much much later, two tag teams) but even with multiple megas per set the room for everything probably became an issue.

Gigantamaxes have almost ran into the same issue but with some promo sets and some extra, smaller sets, and generally only having a total of 30 to worry about, the only ones currently missing are Appletun (which, like, we have Flapple VMax so...who cares....) and much more confusingly Hatterene.
HattereneV exists, so you'd think V-Max wouldn't be too far behind especially when its counterpart Grimmsnarl already got one, but somehow no.

We only have one more normal set (Paradigm Trigger) and a primarily-reprint set (VMax Climax) so time's kind of running out on that one.
 
So people have mentioned various Pokemon not appearing in the anime or the TCG but here's a new one: Pokemon that have not yet appeared in the Adventures manga.

Adventures is usually incredibly thorough when it comes to showcasing every species, including mythicals. Some of the missing Gen VIII Pokemon are probably due to debut at some point - the SwSh chapter has just gone to the Isle of Armour so Kubfu will almost certainly appear before long, so there's little point bringing those up. Yet even though the XY, ORAS, and SM/USUM chapters have concluded, Volcanion, Marshadow, and Zeraora have yet to appear in any capacity.
 
So people have mentioned various Pokemon not appearing in the anime or the TCG but here's a new one: Pokemon that have not yet appeared in the Adventures manga.

Adventures is usually incredibly thorough when it comes to showcasing every species, including mythicals. Some of the missing Gen VIII Pokemon are probably due to debut at some point - the SwSh chapter has just gone to the Isle of Armour so Kubfu will almost certainly appear before long, so there's little point bringing those up. Yet even though the XY, ORAS, and SM/USUM chapters have concluded, Volcanion, Marshadow, and Zeraora have yet to appear in any capacity.

Eh I’m not really bothered by this, I mean a lotta mythicals just don’t have enough lore to make em interesting enough for me to be invested in a story for them. iirc at points they do have multiple stories running don’t they? Like end of Gen 6/start of Gen 7 had overlap unless I’m misremembering. You can see why they’d skip a mythical or two in that case (especially since its basically required to have a certain amount of chapters dedicated to it)
 
Eh I’m not really bothered by this, I mean a lotta mythicals just don’t have enough lore to make em interesting enough for me to be invested in a story for them.

My mindset here is pretty much the opposite. A lot of mythicals (particularly the ones I mentioned) have so little lore that they often have to *rely* on side canons like the manga to make them interesting. Jirachi and Deoxys for instance were better served by the manga than other canon imo. But I admit that's a personal preference.
 
My mindset here is pretty much the opposite. A lot of mythicals (particularly the ones I mentioned) have so little lore that they often have to *rely* on side canons like the manga to make them interesting. Jirachi and Deoxys for instance were better served by the manga than other canon imo. But I admit that's a personal preference.
If anything the blank slate makes them ideal for just making up a story around them. Like how the anime made up the whole alternate universe where Ash teamed up with a guy with a Zeraora. Or how I Choose You made Marshadow an envoy of Ho-oh for some reason.
 
If anything the blank slate makes them ideal for just making up a story around them. Like how the anime made up the whole alternate universe where Ash teamed up with a guy with a Zeraora. Or how I Choose You made Marshadow an envoy of Ho-oh for some reason.
Legendary Pokémon also has different lore in some continuities.
Does anyone remember the legendary birds in the second film? In this film, they are depicted as titans who can destroy the world if they clash, and also there's a prophecy about Ash who is the only one able to calm them alongside Lugia.
 
Legendary Pokémon also has different lore in some continuities.
Does anyone remember the legendary birds in the second film? In this film, they are depicted as titans who can destroy the world if they clash, and also there's a prophecy about Ash who is the only one able to calm them alongside Lugia.

Important point - that's those specific individuals though. Other legendary birds have been seen in the anime and captured without issue.

This makes it feasible that other very lore-dependent species, like Reshiram and Zekrom, could in theory exist - it's just the ones in Unova that are "important". Not sure how plausible that is for the Tao trio specifically but it's worth consideration.
 
I get the feeling that Game Freak sees the Gamecube titles as completely non-canon. It's most due to how the games are parsed up in the coding.

-Both Colosseum and XD share the same "Game of Origin" slot in the coding of the games. Even paired versions, no matter how similar, have separate ones
-Pokemon caught in either game are listed as being from "a Distant Land". This is NOT a code-word for Orre, not in the least. This is the default region listed if a game's region is undefined in the coding. To give you an idea, in Pokemon Sun and Moon, Pokemon from Ultra Sun, Ultra Moon, and the Virtual Console Gen II games all say they are from a "Distant Land" as well. In case you're wondering

As an extra bonus feat to that last bit, Gen VI did the opposite of Gen VII(Where they just added Games of Origin slots as the Gen went along) and there was 4 game slots that listed Kalos as the region and 2 that said Hoenn all with the Pentagon Mark in X and Y. Datamining on the 3DS was still in its infancy so these weren't really discovered until years later. The final two Kalos slots were never used, but it does pretty much show that X and Y at SOME point were going to get pair of follow-up titles instead of just one "Z" version.

Which gets into another bit of Conspiracy. I believe that, at some point, the whole "Cell" thing from Zygarde was NOT the plan. Considering that in X and Y both Thousand Waves and Thousand Arrows were coded into the game with the same power and accuracy as Land's Wrath, and Core Enforcer was nowhere to be seen, I think the original plan, due to there being TWO unused Kalos game slots, and there were ALSO two unused slots for Zygarde forms in Gen VI's Coding, was that Zygarde was going to get 2 version exclusive forms similar to Kyurem, for one Land's Wrath would become Thousand Waves, and for the other it would become Thousand Arrows. Whatever the case, the whole plan was scrapped sometime before the general plot of the second part of the XY anime series was made, which instead used the Cell idea that by then they likely were already deciding to shoehorn into Sun and Moon, because they wanted an entirely new region for the 20th anniversary so Kalos was going to be left to hang. The process is pretty awkard coding-wise, because they just throw both signature moves into the Zygarde Cube, made Core Enforcer(because Zygarde obviously needed a full moveset's worth of signature moves), and coding-wise there were now FIVE Zygarde form slots total instead of 3 like Gen VI, since how it was coded was that the Aura Break and Power Constuct versions of 10% and 50% Zygarde are considered entirely separate forms instead of being an alternative ability(Battle Bond Greninja and Own Tempo Rockruff as coded in a similar way)

While this is more guessing on my part, I think Slowbro and Glalie got Megas while Slowking and Froslass did not was because the follow-ups would've most definitely added even more Megas, on top of having the ones from ORAS usable in Kalos, and they previously did Gardevoir and Mawile in XY but saved Gallade and Sableye for ORAS.
 
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I get the feeling that Game Freak sees the Gamecube titles as completely non-canon. It's most due to how the games are parsed up in the coding.

-Both Colosseum and XD share the same "Game of Origin" slot in the coding of the games. Even paired versions, no matter how similar, have separate ones
-Pokemon caught in either game are listed as being from "a Distant Land". This is NOT a code-word for Orre, not in the least. This is the default region listed if a game's region is undefined in the coding. To give you an idea, in Pokemon Sun and Moon, Pokemon from Ultra Sun, Ultra Moon, and the Virtual Console Gen II games all say they are from a "Distant Land" as well. In case you're wondering

As an extra bonus feat to that last bit, Gen VI did the opposite of Gen VII(Where they just added Games of Origin as the Gen went along) and there was 4 game slots that listed Kalos as the region and 2 that said Hoenn all with the Pentagon Mark in X and Y. Datamining on the 3DS was still in its infancy so these weren't really discovered until years later. The final two Kalos slots were never used, but it does pretty much show that X and Y at SOME point were going to get pair of follow-up titles instead of just one "Z" version.
Well I mean, I think most people kind of figured the gamecube titles weren't really canon. The Orre games just never get mentioned at all, or referenced or anything, like the majority of other spin offs (the Ranger games are like the one exception and even then its kinda...*iffy hand motions*)

Incidentally we know from the gigaleak that they straight up had 2 z versions planned planned like we have annotated headers for them. It was very funny and leads me tooooo
Which gets into another bit of Conspiracy. I believe that, at some point, the whole "Cell" thing from Zygarde was NOT the plan. Considering that in X and Y both Thousand Waves and Thousand Arrows were coded into the game with the same power and accuracy as Land's Wrath, and Core Enforcer was nowhere to be seen, I think the original plan, due to there being TWO unused Kalos game slots, and there were ALSO two unused slots for Zygarde forms in Gen VI's Coding, was that Zygarde was going to get 2 version exclusive forms similar to Kyurem, for one Land's Wrath would become Thousand Waves, and for the other it would become Thousand Arrows. Whatever the case, the whole plan was scrapped sometime before the general plot of the second part of the XY anime series was made, which instead used the Cell idea that by then they likely were already deciding to shoehorn into Sun and Moon, because they wanted an entirely new region for the 20th anniversary so Kalos was going to be left to hang. The process is pretty awkard coding-wise, because they just through both signature moves into the Zygarde Cube, made Core Enforcer, and coding-wise there were now FIVE Zygarde forms total, since how it was coded the Aura Break and Power Constuct versions of 10% and 50% Zygarde are considered entirely separate forms instead of being an alternative ability(Battle Bond Greninja and Own Tempo Rockruff as coded in a similar way)
While I do agree that the 10%/100% as exactly presented wasn't the original plan, and that whatever the design idea originally conceived was probably more or less scrapped and probably just sitting in a design vault somewhere, I think the "Cells" might have been in consideration at the time and the idea as presented both in the anime and in SM of zygarde's cells being distributed around the region to monitor the ecosystem would likely have been a core tenant to whatever would have happened in Z

The thing that got me thinking that the most was that, aside from Zygarde's obvious cell theming, even in XY Thousand Waves & Thousand Arrows have extremely similar animations to what they have now. During XY we didn't really have context to what the green stuff was meant to be, but "cells" is clearly what they're meant to be and I think that fits perfectly even back then.

I think the idea might have been: it's "50%" by default most of the time, distributes its cells to monitor changes. Then, when Team Flare cause Xerneas/Yveltal to throw the environment out of whack [insert your own plot here], this would cause Zygarde to take initiative and gather all of its cells into a legend-specific "100%" that would be designed to counter the problem.
And then from there perhaps Zygarde would break apart as part of the climax and you'd have to gather its cells to reform it in the post game.
 
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