Unknown Dungeons - Television Tropes & Idioms

Gray Remora is a small, cowardly boy who has spent his entire life in the lab of luxury, cuddled and tended to by his fabulously wealthy widow mother. With his only friend, an obese, nerdy Dodrio named Dr. E, Gray would love nothing more than spend the rest of his life in Pallet Town... Until, one day, he is called down to the local professor's laboratory to do an errand for the man. On the way, he accidentally captured a violent Charmander who he inexplicably names Xewtwo, earning him the ire of one Serena, a self-proclaimed ace Pokemon trainer. The Charmander belongs to the professor, Adonijah Saffron, who invites Gray in for a light lunch and cheerfully bullies and shames him into going on a pokemon journey.

Apparently, over ten years ago, a tyrannous trainer by the name of Judas Krissinger successfully wrangled the title of Champion for himself and promptly used a series of bribes and assassinations to make sure things stayed that way. As such, training has ended for over a decade, and Adonijah has decided that Gray and Serena would be perfect for fixing that little problem! After giving them both Pokedexes and some advice, he merrily sends them on their way on a journey... filled with misery and mental torment.

Gray, who's only reason for agreeing is being completely gutless, is just a magnet for trouble. Not only does every pokemon he seem to catch seem to be insane or homicidal, but he has attracted the unhealthy attention of the mysterious Testament organization and its whimsical metallic master, Lord Iron Mask, Serena, the Squirtle trainer and hateful Tsundere who considers him a worm, Northa Rocketto, a conwo—conman who wants him for his money (and eventually becomes the trainer of Bulbasaur), and Syndor, the odious assassin of Judas Krissinger who wields a wicked object of death called a "gun"...

In the midst of the sea of madness he makes a single honest friend in Clow, a sad, red-headed girl who is as much of a The Woobie as he is; even more so, considering how she turns out to be none other than the daughter of Judas Krissinger by her mother, who is a slave.

Unknown Dungeon is downright gleeful in mocking, parodying, and mildly deconstructing and reconstructing various aspects of Pokemon. Throughout the story, it may be notable to note that not only are the human characters developed, but some of the Pokemon characters and villains get some development as well. The universe it takes place in is rather different from the one typically seen in the anime and games; only the places and Pokemon remain, with the characters from the other series being completely non-existent, among other major changes.

Two versions of the fanfic exist: one on the Nsider2

forums and one on FF.net

. For reasons only known to the author, a few cuts have been made to the FF.net version, the most prominent being an entire early chapter, but the majority of the changes consist of some chapters from the original Nsider2 version being simply fused together. It was completed on March 30th, 2011, over two years after it originally began. This fanfic has spawned an entire series of fan-fics based on the many pokemon generations, resulting in a sequel based on the second generation, "Beasts of God", a prequel based on the third generation, "Tribes of the Trinity", and a side-story based on the Sevii Islands, "Pyramid of the Stars."

Tropes found in this work:

Affably Evil: Lord Iron Mask is so affably evil, he spends most of his time helping the protagonists. Rize is a lesser version of this, even showing concern for Gray and Co. at some points.
A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Subverted. All the AIs in the series are enormous assholes, but they're just doing exactly what they're built to do.
A Man Is Not a Virgin: Subverted hard with Gray, who turns down sex every time it tries to happen to him. That doesn't stop Epsilon from mocking him about it, or insisting that he get it over with already so he won't be owned by a virgin loser anymore.
Animal Talk: Just like in normal media, pokémon can understand each other and humans but humans cannot understand them. Unlike in several fanfics, however, pokémon talk is translated in between brackets.
Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever
Ax Crazy: One of the Iron Mask's minions, Kruxis, seems to be this, although he was only heard, not seen. Also, Syndor.
Evil Plan / Batman Gambit: Iron Mask certainly seems to be pulling one off, although we've only had some glimpses of what he's trying to pull. He does manage a small one in an early chapter, however, when he sparks a revolution in Pewter City just to get the Duke to come to him for aid, so that he can be killed by Iron Mask.
- His ultimate plan turns out to be to grant three new trainers the starter Pokemon he's infused with the power of the Legendary Birds and have Gray, Serena, and Northa train them so they can be prepared to defeat his Ultimate Pokemon, Mewtwo, which he made to determine who would have the right to achieve the dream he never could achieve: to become a Pokemon Master. Whoever managed to catch and defeat Mewtwo would essentially "win" his game.
Berserk Button: Call Northa a girl. Go ahead, do it.
Big Bad: Strangely, Iron Mask and Judas Krissinger seem to be sharing this role, although Iron Mask has implied Judas is nothing but an Unwitting Pawn. Neither of them are playing their roles all that well, though, with Iron Mask practically being an ally and Judas spending most of the time on his throne.
- Ultimately Iron Mask eventually unleashes the plots that have been foreshadowed for ages and unleashes them all on Kanto without remorse, cementing his position as the true Big Bad.
Bishōnen: Northa, to his displeasure.
Card-Carrying Villain: Lord Iron Mask happily considers himself this.
- And he apparently forces it on his underlings.
Teslam: "Standard Villain Protocol. I must follow it or Iron Mask will kill me."
- Eventually, he stops abiding completely by these cliches, and becomes much much much more dangerous.
Chekhov's Gun: The Yellow Ball, which turns out to be a pokeball made specifically to capture Zapdos.
Chekhov's Gunman: Angel, who Northa bumps into in an earlier chapter, showing his Kingler off to impress her. She shows up later in Celadon City after a special disc of hers is stolen by Testament grunts. After Northa retrieves it for her, she starts following the group around. It isn't revealed until Seafoam Islands that she's actually the daughter of Lord Saffron. The stolen disk contains the cry of Lugia,that when played on Silph Co. will make the legendary birds unite there.
Deadpan Snarker: Epsilon, Gray's intelligent Pokedex, who tends to serve as the counterbalance to Gray's inexplicable optimism when the rest of the world takes a break from doing it.
Does Not Know His Own Strength: Gray has shown a surprising amount of strength at times. He managed to casually pull several very large pokemon out of the water with a normal fishing rod and he managed to keep hold of Xewtwo's tail when it was hanging over a cliff.
The Dragon: Arson tends to act as this to Iron Mask, while Syndor is this to Judas.
Driven to Suicide: Xewtwo, after losing for the first time. Against a Weezing, to boot. Fortunately, Gray stops him, burning his own hands on the dragon's tailflame in the process.
Dude Looks Like a Lady: Northa, who looks so girly even his first pokémon thought him a woman when they first met. It's also a huge Berserk Button for his part.
Dysfunction Junction: Big time.
Eldritch Abomination: TRIOTRIOTRIO, Gray's Dugtrio, either is this or thinks he's this, as he spends most of his time speaking in Lovecraftian purple prose describing his Eldritch-ness, so he parodied this trope as well. Either way, it got us this little exchange when he's terrorizing one of the Electric Gym Leader's Pokémon:
Electabuzz: "Find a happy place, find a happy—"
TRIOTRIOTRIO: "I ATE THE HAPPY PLACES."
- More seriously, something called Aranulan is implied to be beneath the titular Unknown Dungeons
- Then there's Missingno.
Evil Uncle: Gray's aunt, Lady Cerulean, is the female version of this.
Expy: Xewtwo is obviously an expy of Ash's Charizard, with two main differences: he's been like this ever since he was a Charmander, and he's truly violent against Gray, even attempting to outright kill him.
First Kiss: Several. Gray has his with Clow (and vice versa), Serena presumably has hers with Gray, and Angel probably has hers with Northa.
Five-Bad Band: There seem to be two groups of villains who work together but are nevertheless separate in their loyalties, so some share roles.
- The Big Bad: Lord Iron Mask and Judas Krissinger.
- The Dragon: Arson and Syndor
- The Brute: Kruxis Lasher, judging from his dialogue, and later, Pathos.
- The Evil Genius: Met Teslam
- The Dark Chick: Rize, due to his disability, while Lady Cerulean acts like this for Judas.
Five-Man Band: The main characters roughly form a group like this, even if they aren't always together.
- The Hero: Gray
- The Lancer: Serena
- The Smart Guy: Epsilon
- The Big Guy: North
- The Chick: Clow
- The Sixth Ranger: Angel.
Fortune Teller: Gray bumps into one named Dare in Pewter City, who tells his fortune using tarot cards. As it turns out, he's the priestlord of Pokemon Tower and one of the Elite Four.
Genre Savvy: Lord Iron Mask, who gleefully indulges in every evil cliche in the book without shame, being fully aware of what he's doing, going as far as sing villain songs despite not being in a musical.
Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex: Subverted Gray and Serena, after having gone through physical and psychological hell in their battles against Lord Iron Mask, have an encounter in the Pokemon Center they're staying the night in. They're already clinging tightly to each other and Gray's halfway through unclipping her bra when he realizes what they're doing and he quickly retreats, deciding he doesn't want to have sex with Serena just because they've just been through, as it would be meaningless and simply be a form of leeching off each other for hollow emotional support.
Jerkass: Serena acts like this, a lot. But she does have a Hidden Heart of Gold.
Jerkass Gods: Articuno and Zapdos have both acted like this when they appeared. Especially Zapdos.
- Moltres just wants to be left alone, though.
Kissing Cousins: As it turns out, Gray and Clow.
Leet Lingo: Dr. E often speaks in this, although he does it less as time goes by.
Luke, I Am Your Father: Clow turns out to be the daughter of Judas.
- Later, Iron Mask bemoans that he isn't able to do this to Gray like he planned after the boy discovers his back story.
Mad Scientist: Red, Gray's and later Northa's Pikachu talks like he is this.
- Teslam is a more straight example, with a menagerie of misshapen mutants all his own.
Mood Whiplash: Very deliberately.
Moral Event Horizon: Iron Mask passes this when he murders Professor Saffron, if not even before hand.
Not So Harmless: Lord Iron Mask, starting when he murders Dorphus, Gray's butler, and kidnaps all of Gray's family. Nobody knows he did this, however, so he gets away with acting as friendly and cheerful as ever. Then he moves on progressively to nearly murdering Gray in a fit of passion, murdering Lord Saffron out of nowhere, killing Adonijah Saffron, and raising an army to conquer Kanto, all while doing his best to make Gray's life miserable for giggles.
- This happens again when One-Eye half-murders Dragon.
Overlord Jr.: Judas is this to Iron Mask.
Random Encounters: Parodied. Gray's Pokemon leave long trails of beaten and bloodied Pokemon whenever they're on routes...
Rasputinian Death: One Eye was electrocuted, had his neck stabbed through with a venomous horn, struck by a lightning bolt while in a pool of water, struck with a Blast Burn, stabbed again, then tossed off a skyscraper.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Lord Saffron to Gray in Chapter 66.
Rick Roll: Iron Mask freaking Rickrolls Gray and Serena right as they were having a rather friendly/romantic moment. Serena responds by trying to hurl him out the window of the airship they were in at the time.
Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Right in the middle of the scale, mostly because, while many horrible things do happen to Gray, quite a few decent things happen as well.
- Gray himself is extremely naive and idealistic, and while his naivety tends to screw him over, his optimism has arguably helped him a good deal, especially where his Pokemon are concerned.
Straw Feminist: Widow is a violently over-the-top version of this, but it's obviously not meant to be taken all that seriously.
Swiss Army Tears: Parodied in Cerulean, where Widow cynically beats up Taito, Gray's Paras, in order to get some tears to heal some of Gray's wounds. Played straight, however, when Syndor has either killed or fatally wounded Gray, and Xewtwo's Tears of Remorse revive him.
Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: Gray is ridiculed for being very short for his age, while Serena is very tall.
Unresolved Sexual Tension: Lots of this between Gray and Serena. Even after they actually kiss each other for the first time, it's still unresolved!
Unwitting Pawn: Iron Mask has implied Judas is this, while Rize has done the same for both Gray and Serena.
- At the end, it turns out that this trope applies to nearly everybody.
Villainous Breakdown: One-Eye goes through this twice, once when Serena's Electivire is hurling a slew of brutal insults and then again when people just won't stop interrupting him in the middle of killing Dragon, degenerating into a scaly mass of swearing, babbling sea serpent.
Tsundere: Serena.
WHAM Episode: After the Tohjo Conference, Lord Iron Mask brutally murders Lord Saffron out of nowhere, blows up the airship Iris, and informs everybody that he's decided he wants to conquer Kanto. And Dare's apparently Gray's father. To nobody's surprise.It turns out Dare isn't Gray's dad,but a clever gambit to trap Gray and Co. into Silph.
- Then he broadcasts his plans to conquer Kanto, along with a brutal murder of Professor Saffron, specifically just so Gray could see it.