Fanon / Pokémon

The world of Pokémon is a rich one, so it's no surprise that the fandom would get inspired to fill in a few blanks.

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General

• A number of renameable characters had their default names treated as official.
• Pokémon Colosseum and Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness being canon to the handheld games. This is possible but not explicitly confirmed.
• Most Legendary Pokémon have sexes. It's just technology cannot figure them out. Even those without a sex can have a gender. Fans in general tend to write Legendaries as one gender more than the other:
  • Articuno and Moltres are female while Zapdos is male.
  • Mewtwo is more aggressive and portrayed by male voice actors almost everytime it does speak, so it is always male, except when referring to a specific Mewtwo.
  • Mew usually being pinned as female because it's pink, Mewtwo is seen as an Opposite-Sex Clone, and it was stated to have "given birth" to Mewtwo.
  • Raikou and Entei are male while Suicune is female.
  • Ho-Oh is female to contrast the masculine Lugia (though this is sometimes inverted). Interestingly, Takeshi Shudō, Lugia's creator, always saw it as female.
  • Celebi is usually female.
  • The "Regis" are usually all male, but Regice is sometimes female due to the high-pitched voice it had in the anime.
    • Alternatively, they may be seen as quite literally genderless due to them being very similar to robots.
  • Groudon and Rayquaza are male. Kyogre varies but is often female.
  • Jirachi is usually seen as male.
  • Azelf and Uxie vary, but Mesprit is always female.
  • Dialga and Giratina are male. Palkia varies heavily; to some it's male due to its masculine voice in the anime, to some it's female due to its predominatly white and purple color scheme.
  • Heatran can be either gender, but its gender isn't set or hinted at, so it varies.
  • Darkrai are all males to contrast the all-female Cresselia.
  • Manaphy is mostly male (Y'know, Prince of the sea and all that).
  • Shaymin was originally seen as female, but the release of its Sky Forme made thoughts on its gender vary wildly.
  • Arceus is the Pokémon equivalent to God, so of course, questions about its gender (or whether it even has one) will have varying answers.
  • Cobalion, Terrakion, and Keldeo are male while Virizion is female.
  • Despite Reshiram, Zekrom, and Kyurem all being given male voices in the anime, Reshiram is usually seen as female due to its design while Zekrom and Kyurem are male.
  • Victini is usually considered male, while Meloetta, in both its forms, is always considered female.
  • Yveltal and Zygarde are male while Xerneas is female.
  • Diancie is universally female while Volcanion is male.
  • Hoopa used to be considered female, but with the reveal of its Unbound Form, it is now often male.
  • Among the Tapus: Tapu Koko and Tapu Bulu are male. Not just due to their masculine designs but also that roosters and bulls are specifically male chickens and cattle. Tapu Lele and Tapu Fini are female due to having Tertiary Sexual Characteristics (longer hair and feminine figures).
  • Solgaleo and Lunala are considered respectively male and female evolutions of Cosmog and Cosmoem, even in-universe according to the Pokédex.
  • Necrozma, Marshadow, Zeraora, and Meltan (and by extension Melmetal) are most often male.
  • While the Pokédex only says Zacian might be female,^note "This Pokémon has slumbered for many years. Some say it's Zamazenta's elder sister—others say the two Pokémon are rivals." fans have largely adopted the in-lore gender as canon. Zamazenta is usually considered male, the "younger brother" to Zacian's "older sister".
• Similarly, for the Ultra Beasts:
  • Nihilego is female per its explicitly stated resemblance to a young girl/Lillie.
  • Buzzwole and Pheromosa are male and female, respectively, Insect Gender-Bender traits notwithstanding.
  • Much like Nihilego and Pheromosa, Xurkitree is seen as the same gender of its "Counterpart" Guzma.
  • Kartana and Celesteela are a Tiny Guy, Huge Girl duo.
  • Guzzlord is thought to be male.
  • Due to being made up of 150 or so brick-like lifeforms, Stakataka could be both or neither sex. Blacephalon is thought of as male.
  • Poipole and Naganadel could be both since there's no indication that they're one-of-a-kind (This may actually be true for the other Ultra Beasts regardless of appearances).
• 'Real world' countries exist and the regions are either part of countries (Unova is a state, Kanto is in Japan, etc), a few regions replace countries while others are left alone (i.e. Canada exists but Unova replaces America), or the regions are just similar to other countries.
• Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh are often depicted as a part of one big country called "Poképan" by fans, though it's also common for the regions to be individual countries. The series treats them as individual countries but it's never been specifically jossed that they're a part of one country.
• Due to Wobbuffet's Pokédex entries talking about how it desperately tries to hide its tail, fans commonly believe Wobbuffet's tail is its true body, while its blue "body" is a decoy, though this has never been stated.
• Many Pokédex entries have questionable data, with some such as Spoink's, Victini's, and the Galar fossils' being outright nonsense. Fans tend to handwave the Pokédex entries as myths and urban legends. Alternatively, the protagonists themselves write the entries. The rather cynical entries of Sun and Moon are believed to be Rotom being either Brutally Honest or a Troll, with most fanworks depicting and leaning on the latter due to some Mega Evolution entries contradicting those in X and Y and Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire and how both Sina and Dexio, who both practice and know Mega Evolution, appear in Gen VII. It also helps that Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon didn't have entries for all the other Mega Evolutions available, with some Mega Evolving-capable Pokémon such as Altaria, Rayquaza, and Diancie not being in the Alola dex.
• It's assumed that fossil Pokémon are only part Rock type because they've just been brought back to life from a fossil, and they originally didn't have the Rock type or were another one.
  • Kabutops was Water/Bug, Aerodactyl Dragon/Flying and Omastar was a pure Water type (You could argue it could've been Bug too since it's a mollusk, but for some reason mollusk Pokémon like Magcargo or Gastrodon don't tend to be Bug types).
  • Armaldo was Water/Bug while Cradily was Grass/Water.
  • Rampardos might have been Fighting type, while Bastiodon was a pure Steel type.
  • Carracosta was a pure Water type, while Archeops was a Normal/Flying.
  • Aurorus was pure Ice type and Tyrantrum was Dragon/Dark type.
  • The Gen 8 fossils weren't restored properly, and that's why they aren't Rock types.
  • The existence of Relicanth, who is explicitly stated to be a Fossil Pokémon that just didn't go extinct muddies it all a bit, since it is, in fact, Rock/Water.
• It's never stated how Pokémon breed (though anime episodes, like "Forest Grumps" with Ursaring and "Crossing Paths" with Dustox, show that they have mating seasons) or even if they have genitals, but most people assume they breed like animals and most have sexual organs.
• There have been a few "related Pokémon" theories, too:
  • The theory has persisted that Venomoth and Butterfree were accidentally switched in development, due to Butterfree's color and face matching Venonat, and Venomoth resembling Metapod's shape.
  • Gastly being remnants of Cloyster is a common idea, largely thanks to their similar expressions and Gastly coming after Cloyster in the Kanto/National Dex.
  • It's common to believe that Cubone are evolved from baby Kangaskhan that have lost their mothers. This idea is supported by some leftover data in Red & Blue suggesting the two were meant to have some sort of evolutionary connection (an unused Marowak evolution has it nurturing a Cubone), though the fact that baby Kangaskhan haven't been made a separate Pokémon that could evolve into either casts doubt.
    • Going off of the apparent fact that new-hatched Kangaskhan are Born as an Adult with a baby already in their pouch, there's another theory that claims the "mother" and "child" are actually twins with one getting the lion's share of growth hormones in the embryonic stage.
  • Some theorize that Voltorb are actually possessed by Haunter, due to their identical eyes.
  • Many believe that Genesect is a genetically-engineered Kabutops due to their similar body shape and age.
  • Many fans speculate that Gengar are the shadows or ghosts of Clefable.
  • There is a common theory that the three Pokémon that died in the Burned Tower and were revived as Entei, Raikou, and Suicune were a Flareon, Jolteon and Vaporeon. This is backed up by the three having the Eeveelutions' normal abilities as their Dream World Abilities. Less commonly, they're believed to have been three Eevee, and their revival is thought to have acted as powered-up Water/Thunder/Fire Stones. Alternatively, Pokémon Generations has led fans to speculate that at least one of them was either a Houndour or they're from a currently unknown Pokémon species
  • It's often stated that Tauros and Miltank are opposite gender-counterparts of the same mon like the Nidoran line(s) and Volbeat/Illumise, but this has never been stated in the games or the anime. It actually has some basis in game-play — their stats total the same, they're always found in similar/the same locations outside of Safari Zones, etc. — but, nevertheless, the fact that you can't get Tauros by breeding Miltank (or Miltank from breeding Tauros with a Ditto). The same applies to the Vullaby (female) and Rufflet (male) lines. Practically confirmed by Sun and Moon putting them on the same Pokédex page, though they still can't produce eggs of the other from breeding.
  • One well-known theory states that Ditto are a by-product of the experiments involved in creating Mewtwo from Mew's DNA, drawing on the fact that Mew and Ditto are the only Pokémon that can Transform, are both pink normally and blue when Shiny, and that wild Ditto are found in the Abandoned Laboratory where Mewtwo was born.
• There's a fan theory that reinterprets Giovanni as a benevolent Well-Intentioned Extremist devoted to defending the Pokémon universe from Mewtwo. However, there are also some that take it further and also propose that all of the other villain teams are enemies of Team Rocket, as hinted at in their anime Expository Theme Tune. According to the theory, each line in Team Rocket's famous Villain Song alludes to their goal to stop another villain team and their future plans (however, the Terrible Trio's motto is actually a butchered version of the official motto):
  • "To protect the world from devastation...": To stop Team Aqua and Team Magma from consuming the continents with floods and/or evaporating the oceans.
  • "To unite all peoples within our nation...": To rally the common people against the wealthy and elitist Team Flare and their plans for world domination.
  • "To denounce the evils of truth and love...": To oppose the well-intentioned extremists of Team Plasma, who justify their actions by claiming to expose the true barbarity of Pokémon battles and liberate oppressed Pokémon out of compassion.
  • "To extend our reach to the stars above": To fight Team Galactic, whose plans for world domination involve looking for legendary Pokémon in space.
• Pokémon who gain a Ghost typing upon evolution don't really evolve—they died and resurrected into their next stage.
  • Related to this, its never been confirmed that Ghost Pokémon in general are Pokémon that have died and were reincarnated as their respective species. There are a few that are stated to be reincarnated humans but as mentioned above, Pokédex entries are to be taken with a grain of salt.
• Real world animals existing alongside Pokémon is a controversial subject in the fandom. The fact Pokédex entries refer to Pokémon as things like "Mouse Pokémon" or "Seagull Pokémon" and list them as prey for Pokémon implies they exist, but thus far the only the animals to appear ingame are barnacles (In Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs), fish, butterflies (both in X and Y and some TCG artwork), and, if you want to get technical, humans. Gen 1 adaptations depicted more animals, but as the Earth Drift began animals became less common, with only marine animals and insects still appearing on occasion. It's often seen that conservation of detail is why animals are never depicted. Wild Pokémon have also probably caused animals to become less common. It's often assumed that animals are primarily used for food, as games like ORAS and SM clearly depict meat but don't refer to them as being from Pokémon.
• Alternatively, the series takes place After the End. Either the Pokémon are mutated animals or humankind ruined their original world and were sent to the Pokémon's world after Arceus took pity on them. Some go as far as to say humans themselves are just another kind of Pokémon. Pokémon being alien visitors that popped up also appears sometimes. "Pokémon as aliens from another planet who appeared one day" was actually Takeshi Shudo's plan for the anime, but the only elements of this present are from the first season Clefairy episode and Pocket Monsters: The Animation.
  • This has led to claims (some jokingly, some semi-seriously) that the movie Annihilation (2018) is a Spiritual Stealth Prequel to Pokémon, albeit deconstructed and Darker and Edgier.
• The lifespans of Pokémon is never clearly discussed in the series. The anime implies they live comparably to humans but the games are less clear. For fans, it's seen either as varying from species to species. In general Pokémon either have similar lifespans to their animal (and plant counterparts) or they live longer than them but usually still have shorter lifespans than humans, though some Pokémon can easily outlive humans (such as is commonly seen with Gardevoir and Lucario in fan-works). Due to Urban Legends from the anime, bug types are speculated to have very short lifespans. Legendary Pokémon are thought to be immortal.
• It's assumed that in the Pokémon world, there is either a low compulsory age for school, that Trainers are allowed to forgo school until they finish their journey, or that traditional schools don't exist. This is because school is rarely ever mentioned. In the games (and most adaptations) we only ever see Trainer Schools that are themed around Pokémon. Battling Trainers based around school, like Schoolkids and Lasses, shows that they're enrolled in Trainer Schools. In How I Became a Pokémon Card normal schools exist, in The Electric Tale of Pikachu Ash is only on his journey during vacation and needs to return to school afterwards, in Pocket Monsters: The Animation ten year olds are legal adults who don't require schooling, Pokémon: The Power of Us features a high schooler character, Ash attends the Pokémon School in Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon, and both Goh and Chloe have the choice between going to school and being a Pokémon Trainer in Pokémon Journeys: The Series, with Chloe attending school more than Goh.
• The default position for the whereabouts of the main character's Disappeared Dad is that they're either dead, on a journey, or are working away from home. Occasionally you will see the idea of your mother having never married come up.
• A popular theory on why Grunts are nameless is that the protagonist doesn't bother to ask their names (or the Grunts don't disclose them), unlike with other battles.
• In the games, the Elite Four are battled in empty rooms. However, thanks to the influence of Stadium and adaptations, many fan-works depict these battles happening in stadiums with an audience. The same oftentimes applies to Gym battles as well (which was canonized in Let's Go, and later made a core part of the setting in Sword and Shield).
• Many Legendary and Mythical Pokémon are treated as in-universe deities and/or Single Specimen Species by fans. This is true for some of them, like Arceus, the Creation trio, the Lake trio, the Tao trio, and the Island Guardians. Mew also tends to be treated this way, though in canon it isn't a Single Specimen Species and is suggested to be the common ancestor of Pokémon rather than a creator.
  • In works where some Legendaries aren't Single Specimen Species and are sapient, it's common to introduce the concept of a "prime" or "alpha" Lengendary as the leader of its respective species.
• A Common Tongue exists that makes cross-regional communication easier. Eventually jossed, with clearly foreign speakers present starting in Gen 4 and Scarlet and Violet where the game's academy teacher, Salvatore, teaches various languages.
• In-game, it's not entirely clear how Technical Machines (TMs) and Hidden Machines (HMs) work, beyond the fact that they're compact discs which can somehow teach a Pokémon a move, and that prior to Gen 5, the Technical Machine variants are one use only and break immediately after being taught to a Pokémon. Possibly thanks to this comic, it's become common fanon that they're actually instructional DVDs, with video tutorials that teach Pokémon a given move.
• A common thought is that being a Champion comes with certain duties and expectations if not outright political power and leadership of their region. This is a view held in both game and anime based works. In canon there is no indication that a champion has any expectations beyond 'being very strong' and any power they have is less based on any inherent position powers and more their own personal reputations. A champion like Leon has influence because he's famous, not because he has established legal powers.
• With Pokémon Legends: Arceus outright confirming that the catchable Arceus is merely a weaker avatar of the actual Original One combined with the Nintendo "Gigaleak" revealing a rough beta design of Arceus, some fans have embraced the idea of the beta design being Arceus's true form/"Origin Forme" or at least the closest humans can come to seeing it. Fan artists usually polish the design to make it look more otherworldly or incomprehensible (example).
• It's nearly-universally accepted that of the Generation 8 fossils (which are incorrectly reassembled by Cara Liss, resulting in a Mix-and-Match Critter), the original form of the Fossilized Bird (which creates Arctozolt and Dracozolt) would have been a velociraptor-like Pokémon named Velozolt, while the Fossilized Fish (Arctovish and Dracovish) was Dunklevish, based on the dunkleosteus. Both of these have become popular Recurring Fanon Characters as a result. The true forms of the Fossilized Drake and Dino do not have the same level of consensus, however.

Canonized/Jossed Theories

• Professor Oak being the rival's paternal grandfather, and as such the rival's last name being Oak. Canonized in FireRed/LeafGreen.
• The Pokémon that Bill was fused with being a Clefairy. Canonized in FireRed/LeafGreen. In Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! however, Bill was shown to have fused with a Nidorino instead.
• For whatever reason, quite a bit of fan material has Red and Blue as very good friends, despite the fact that the original manual in both English and Japanese states that the two used to be the best of friends until Blue suddenly started to bully Red one day for no discernible reason, and him being infamous as a Jerkass. In fact, Red being an extension of the player, and by Blue's in-game dialogue, one can probably assume they're Vitriolic Best Buds at best (which is pretty close to the approach Pokémon Origins took). It's possible that they became friends again after Red became champion, which was later canonized.
• Game Silver being Giovanni's son. This became fanon when FireRed/LeafGreen mentioned Giovanni has a redheaded child, and how one canon explicitly shows that the two are father and son. The idea was made into the games' canon in HeartGold/SoulSilver.
• Giovanni committing suicide at Tohjo Falls. Jossed in Black 2/White 2. Since then, some fans have opted for a Bungled Suicide instead.
• Similary, Red being dead. Jossed in Black 2/White 2.
• The Striaton Trio is the Shadow Triad. Jossed in Black 2/White 2, though this only created a new fanon that they were replaced by a new Triad after the initial games. Which was again jossed via Memory Link event in the same games, though it still doesn't stop people from trying to figure out ways around it.
• The Kanto and Hoenn games, and the Johto and Sinnoh games, taking place simultaneously. Canonized by a tweet from scenario writer Toshinobu Matsumiya regarding the official timeline of the games.
• Gym Leaders having multiple teams of Pokémon, with which they can provide an appropriate level of challenge to trainers of different levels. Canonized in Black 2/White 2 by Cheren's mention that he's not allowed to use his old team against you in your Gym battle against him, and also mentioned in Pokémon Origins.
• Giovanni is Red's father. Jossed. Though you could say neither possibly know it, Red has a line clearly signifying he knows who his father is.
• Red has red eyes, and Blue and Leaf have green eyes. This is inspired by Pokémon Adventures and goes with what colours their names represent in Japan, more or less. Jossed in all official art, models, and sprites, which have all three of them with brown eyes.
• Ethan having gold eyes and Silver having red eyes. Ethan's eyes are actually gray. Silver has red eyes in HeartGold/SoulSilver's intro, which is actually Off-Model as his official art and other sprites show him with grey eyes. Much like the above, this may originate from Pokémon Adventures^note Though, early concept art for Silver does depict him with red eyes. The actual GSC games used Black Bead Eyes.
• Brendan has white, or white and black, hair. Jossed by Word of God that he's wearing a hat. The remakes make it obvious by both giving him longer, brown hair that peeks out of his hat, and showing him without his hat.
• Red's post-FRLG design having black hair. Thanks to the way his sprite looked in HGSS and BW2, many fans assumed that Game Freak had combined his classic design with his modern design. SM clearly josses this as Red's model depicts him with brown hair.
• Either Anthea or Concordia are N's mother. Concordia is the more common choice due to Theme Naming with N, whose full name is Natural Harmonia Gropius; Concordia is the Roman goddess of harmony, Harmonia is her Greek counterpart. This has been jossed by B2/W2, as the two women reveal that all of three of them were orphans taken in by Ghetsis, thus making Anthea and Concordia N's adoptive/foster sisters.
• The concept that the protagonists are all best friends is non-canon in both Unova games and the Kanto games. Leaf isn't present in any game thus far, and in Unova the opposite-gender protagonist first meets you after you begin your journey and doesn't otherwise interact with you. However, to be fair, most fiction that makes them childhood friends are doing it in an attempt at Merging the Branches, as most other games have the other player character present as a recurring NPC.
• Red as a stoic, Bishōnen Memetic Badass with straight black hair and red eyes. This isn't canon in any game. It's just a fan representation of Red loosely based on his classic design with elements of Red's Adventure counterpart sprinkled about. It became so popular that at one point most fans seriously thought this interpretation - which is nicknamed "Pixiv Red" or "Uber Red" - was how Red seriously looked. Due to backlash, along with Super Smash Bros., Pokémon Origins, and SM the design is going out of style.
• People often call the modern, brunette Red "Fire" to distinguish him from the classic, and especially fanon, Red. This was most common during the DS era and has become uncommon after Origins helped popularize Red's redesign more.
• Red as extremely quiet, even pre-timeskip. Possibly Jossed before that point at least by Blue calling the protagonist a "chatty gossip" (albeit this is as equally likely to be him being sarcastic), and definitely by Copycat clearly mimicking Red, and some random, rather easy to miss interjections from him throughout the game. Post-timeskip, on the other hand... It's made even more ambiguous in canon as it's become a Running Gag for Red to speak in ellipses. Blue implies in Sun And Moon that Red doesn't talk much, so it's possibly Ascended Fanon. As an ironic inversion, post-timeskip Red talking with perfect speech in Japanese fanworks, as well as some western fanworks, with him merely being stoic and unemotional, often pops up as well. It could be for the sake of convenience, but for all of Red's reputation for silence it's surprisingly common.
• Pokémon are eaten by humans. Briefly appears in Pokémon Gold and Silver but was explicitly confirmed, at least that it happened in the past, in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl.
• Giovanni as a Villain with Good Publicity. In game canon, it's the other way around: people know Giovanni is Team Rocket's leader but people don't know who the Viridian City Gym Leader is.
• Due to Mewtwo's somewhat-recent creation and the fact that most shouldn't know about it, it's often believed that whenever someone mentions there being 150 Pokémon in the Kanto region, Mew is regarded as the 150th Pokémon, and not the 151st. Pokémon Origins, however, changes the number to 149 known Pokémon until episode four, where both Mewtwo and Mew appear.
• Ethan's name being "Gold". This is due to him not having a Canon Name until the remakes, but many fans still use it.
• During Generation 4 and 5, there was a fanon that Kanto, Johto, and Hoenn Pokémon didn't have gender differences. Gender differences acted similarly to regional differences, so most female Pikachu in Kanto would have "normal" tails unless they had ancestors from Sinnoh or Unova. Future generations jossed this by showing regional differences are a case of retcon: no matter the region, a Pokémon has them.
• Kris' name came from the English box-art for Pokémon Crystal but was finally confirmed nearly two decades later in Pokémon Masters.
• Prior to his anime appearance, Barry's fanon English name was "Damion".^note Both Barry and Damion are pulled from the list of names he could have in the games.
• Kris and Lyra are the same character, just redesigned, similarly to how Red was given new clothes and brown hair in his redesign. It's been confirmed that Lyra was designed without thinking about Kris and Pokémon Masters depicts them as separate characters.
• While eventually jossed, you used to see a lot of fans believing the human Aster that Zinnia's Whismur was named after was her daughter, and still see a bit of it after the Word of God. According to a 2015 interview, Aster was the person who previously held Zinnia's position as Lorekeeper.
• Verity from Pokémon: I Choose You! is the daughter of Cynthia. Her mother is described as powerful Sinnoh trainer and she looks exactly like Cynthia, except her hair is shaded darker. When asked in an interview, director Yuyama clarified that it isn't Cynthia because "her hair color is different". Fans were quick to ignore this and continue to work with the idea.
• Red's classic outfit is a red-and-white jacket, similar to Ash's original jacket. He actually wears a red vest over a black-and-white shirt. This wasn't made clear until concept art for Let's Go came out.
• Trainers all beginning their journeys at the age of ten. While this is canon to the anime, the games have made no such statement, and you can in fact battle trainers who are much younger, including preschoolers- though they usually aren't found in places that would indicate that they're out challenging Gym Leaders. In fact, the stated minimum age that trainers can be to participate in Island Trials in Sun and Moon is eleven.
• By proxy of the above, all the main protagonists of each game being ten. The only protagonists to have a canon age are Red, who is eleven, the remake versions of Brendan and May, who are twelve^*As the rival. It is unknown if this also applies to their player character versions, and the main characters of Sun and Moon (and rival Hau) who are stated to be around eleven. Hilbert and Hilda are outright stated to be older than previous protagonists. However, this seems to be more from the way Pokémon is known outside of the fandom influencing the fandom itself, and in some circles making said mistake can be a source of mockery.
• Due to the fact that all the player characters are mostly Heroic Mimes in the main games and the spin-offs, some people occasionally characterize them as being The Speechless. They may use sign language as their main form of communication with others if this character trait is chosen for them. If you read the dialogue it's obvious the protagonist talks and is being replied to, it's just we're never shown it; and strangely enough, the most talkative one so far is Red, the same one known for being quiet. However, how much is mostly up to the player's imagination.
• Fans often assume that mammal-looking Pokémon nurse their young. If gameplay is any indication, newly hatched Pokémon eat solid foods like adults do.
• That newly hatched Pokémon are babies and that most age comparable to animals/humans. Considering that in the games, most newly hatched Pokémon are able to breed just like "adults", and that Pokémon can freely hold off evolving to the next stage, there's nothing to indicate that "age" as a concept can easily apply to Pokémon.
• It's generally thought that the main religion in the Pokémon world worships Arceus (often in a Crystal Dragon Jesus way in Western fan-works). Pokémon Diamond and Pearl does contain a church however it's never specified what it worships and the games suggest Arceus isn't well-known. Some regions are seen as worshipping their regional Legendaries (which is canon in Alola). Hoenn citizens are often treated as being the equivalent of Jewish, due to their Legendaries being based on Jewish mythology.
• Not once had someone said "Oh my Arceus" or otherwise used "Arceus" as a substitute for "God" in canon ^note In Pokémon Detective Pikachu, Detective Pikachu gets scratched under his chin which leads him to exclaim "Sweet Mother of Arceus", but it is unknown if this movie aligns with the rest of Pokémon's canon., and it's implied very few people even know Arceus' name or that it exists, but it pops up constantly in fan works. In the earlier days before Arceus was created, using "Mew" (or less commonly other Olympus Mons) in place of "God" was rather common. This is probably due to confusing the idea of creator deities (much like Pan Gu from Chinese Mythology) with supreme beings (like God from Abrahamic religions). Arceus leans towards the former in regards to creation of the Pokémon World.
• Missingno. is treated as a real and existing Pokémon. Post Sun and Moon, fans have latched onto the idea of it being an Ultra Beast.
• The protagonists of each game is True Companions with the opposite gender protagonist, often as a way of invoking Merging the Branches. For example, Red and Leaf live in the same town and are friends. Likewise, both sets of Unova duos are childhood friends. Another common piece of fanon is all these sets of protagonists being Half-Identical Twins (this usually appears for Red and Leaf, Hilbert and Hilda, and Elio and Selene). In works that include Kris, it is common to see her and Ethan as True Companions as well. This second player character always gets the one weak to the "main" one or the third one left after the rival gets one.
• Red and Leaf are Half-Identical Twins. Leaf has never appeared post-FRLG outside of spinoffs, and doesn't seem to exist alongside Red (as she is essentially a female incarnation of him). Green from Let's Go makes no reference to even knowing Red, so it's ambiguous on her part as well.
• Professor Oak's age is usually pinned between 50 and 65. Going by him being 10 years younger than Professor Rowan in the Sinnoh games, he should actually be in his 40s in the Kanto games.
• Silver being physically and/or emotionally abused pops up sometimes. This is despite how in the actual event revealing Silver's parentage, he seems to have used to respect and trust his father quite a bit, and the way he talks to Giovanni is in no way close to how an abused child would talk.
• A relatively obscure piece of anime concept art gives Lucas a mild case◊ of Anime Hair. Most fans either ignore it or don't know of it. As a result, most fanart gives Lucas a more normal, short hairstyle.
• Dawn, and to a lesser extent Lucas, are often depicted with Tsurime Eyes instead of their canonical Tareme Eyes. This is especially common in fan-art that depicts them as serious or stoic. This is partially influeced by Platinum Berlitz (a Dawn counterpart) from Pokémon Adventures having Tsurime Eyes.
• Hilda and Hilbert are fraternal twins. In canon they've never apparently met until they became Subway partners, making this unlikely unless they're long-lost relatives.
• The Alola protagonists’ names as "Sun" (male) and "Moon" (female). Unlike most protagonists, their names weren't given in supplementary material or in the anime. The closest were prerelease videos and screencaps calling them "Elio" and "Selene", which were taken as a grain of salt due to previous pre-releases calling the characters non-canon names (like "Xavier" for Calem and "Blake" for Hilbert). It was later suggested that those are their official names (Selene's official figure uses her Japanese counterpart's name, "Mizuki"), however most fans prefer to use "Sun" and "Moon". Post Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon has a good number of players refer to the protagonists by their promotional Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon names, Ray and Ailey respectively and refer to them as different from the original Sun and Moon protagonists.
• Due to a misconception involving his Pokémon battling trophies, many fans believe that Guzma plays golf. Probably not helped by the fact that his dad has a collection of golf clubs that he implicitly beat his son with.
• Gladion's hairstyle stems from hiding an injury caused by his mother. Sometimes, he's outright blind in that eye. In canon, he has both eyes un-injured.
• This is a fanon brought on by misconceptions, however many assume Jessie's Missing Mom died in an avalanche. The Birth Of Mewtwo radio drama showed that Miyamoto somehow survived and is still looking for Mew. She underwent a Sanity Slippage and won't go back home until she captures Mew. An alternative fanon is that she's an astral projection.
• A Dub-Induced Plot Hole in Brock's debut stated that his mother was dead, when in the Japanese version she and her husband both abandoned their kids. This, combined with the general lack of a family resemblance between her and her kids (though a few have her hair and skin tone), has resulted in many western fans writing Lola as Brock's step-mother.
• There was a popular theory that the anime featured multiple universes. While this was canon in the games, the anime never touched upon it aside from Pokémon: I Choose You! introducing an alternate version of Ash. It was frequently believed that the Ash featured in Sun and Moon was a separate incarnation of Ash from the one in previous seasons and was the Ash from Pokémon: I Choose You!. Some believed the "current Ash" began as early as X and Y or even Black and White, but most fans leaned toward the "original Ash's" story having finished with X and Y. This theory was jossed when Misty and Brock reappeared in Sun and Moon.
• Delia and Professor Oak are on a First-Name Basis due to their friendliness. In canon, Oak does use "Delia" sometimes but Delia calls him by his title. A work-around this is that Delia only uses "Samuel" in private to avoid giving people the impression (wrongly or rightly) that they're dating.
• Many people call Platinum "Platina" because it both sounds more feminine to them and less "weird". Somewhat Justified since that’s her name in Japanese.
• In Adventures, Silver and Blue are canonically self-proclaimed as Like Brother and Sister, yet a lingering perception goes that Silver secretly has a crush on her.
• There's a common misconception that most of the Pokedex holders in Pokémon Adventures start at ten. Many began at eleven or older.
• Red's Distaff Counterpart in FireRed and LeafGreen is named "Leaf". This came from her placeholder data. It was later implied by a piece of merchandise and then canonized with Pokémon Masters.
• Leaf and Green are separate characters. Pokémon Masters confirmed it.
• "Sun" and "Moon" as the Alola protagonists’ names has been jossed. For several months prior to release, they didn't have canon names. The closest they had were Selene and Eilo, which were later revealed to be their eventually canonized names. However, those names were used in promotional screencaps (which almost never use the canon names) and so fans took them with a grain of salt. Due to "Selene" sounding too similar to Serena for many fans, the names "Sun" and "Moon" were usually used for the SM protagonists (especially prior to their canonical names being revealed).
• The Johto rival is named "Silver". This was confirmed with Pokémon Masters.

Games

General for Mainline Games

• The player's mother being a single mom is the go-to depiction that she gets, in order to explain why almost every player character (except for the Gen 3 games) has a Disappeared Dad. The circumstances behind the father's absence, whether he's dead or the parents have divorced, vary but there are some common depictions in some specific games (see Sun and Moon entry).
• Save for where Schrödinger's Player Character is not in effect (such as the Gen 4 games), fanfiction that has both the male and female player character present often depicts them as siblings, usually twins. This is often done when elements from both versions of a mainline game are incorporated together and because it makes for interesting character Foils, especially given how some common fanon depictions of the player characters contrast from each other.

Red/Blue/Yellow/FireRed/LeafGreen

• The infamous "Red killed Blue's Raticate" theory. The idea is that Red accidentally killed Blue's Raticate during a battle (or that it died from injuries), explaining why it's not on his team afterwards. It's rarely played seriously nowadays outside of creepypasta and various Nuzlocke runs, especially the more story-oriented ones, with the preferred fanon being that Blue either released Raticate or put it in the PC because he was disappointed in it.
• There's one popular fanon that combines both the game's fanon with the anime's canon. Giovanni having to do with Mewtwo's creation (anime) and that all of the criminal activities that Team Rocket does were to try and stop Mewtwo once he broke free (games).
• Blue's starter is either a Squirtle or an Eevee, with Red's being a Charmander or Pikachu, with the latter choices being because of Pokémon Yellow (and because Red's highest level Pokémon is his Pikachu). Often times fans will give classic Red a Bulbasaur and classic Blue a Charmander due to it being his starter in almost all Gen 1 artwork. Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee feature classic versions of Blue and Red with Charmander and Bulbasaur starters.
• There's a persistent piece of fanon that there was a war that ended a few years before the game, which oftentimes killed both Red's dad and Blue's parents. Like the Raticate theory it's rarely brought up too seriously. (There has canonically been a war during Lt. Surge's lifetime but it isn't mentioned when or where).
• Erika is a Lipstick Lesbian due to her Rainbow Badge and attitude on men (at least in the anime, though her fellow trainers play it straight). If she's shipped with anyone, it's usually Sabrina, however Jasmine is a second option.
• Erika as narcoleptic is a common interpretation due to her Sleepy Head qualities. She's depicted as sleepy in almost all of her scenes in the games. It's potentially due to Sleep Powder, however she's the only one affected in the Gym so many fans wonder if something is just wrong with her. Others see it as related to drugs.
• It's unknown what happened to Blue's parents, but it's typical for them to have died prior to the games. This is canon in Pokémon Zensho, where they got into a car crash when Shigeru was an infant, but never specified in other adaptations.
• Red is stoic and quiet. Adaptation counterparts, official art, and in-game dialogue (particularly Copycat's dialogue and possibly Blue mocking you as a "chatty gossip") imply Red is a normal, even Hot-Blooded, kid, at least in the Kanto games. Possibly Ascended Fanon as of Pokémon Sun and Moon. To coincide this all, many fans portray Red as peppy when he started his journey but have him become more stoic as he ages.
  • There's another common interpretation that Red is hot-blooded but also deaf or mute.
• Bruno and Brock being related in one way or another, due to their names, similar appearances (spiky hair, thick eyebrows, and brown skin in the anime) and Bruno using several Rock and Ground-types in his team, compounded by Rock, Ground and Fighting being grouped together in the TCG. Lessened for some once Bruno got a slight redesign from Generation III onwards, but Misty's canon admiration for Lorelei made it more plausible for others.
• Red stayed on Mt. Silver for three years. It's never stated in-game. For all that's given, Red could have been traveling and you just met him while he was training.
• Daisy as being Blue's guardian. The games imply that Oak raised them, though it's vague enough for even both ideas to be possible (Oak raised them growing up but now that Daisy's older she takes care of Blue).
• It's assumed that Agatha either died between prior to the Johto games, retired from being an Elite 4 member, or retired from being a trainer outright. Lorelei is also assumed to have retired.
• In fanon it's common for Sabrina to be depicted as intimidating or unapproachable when she's really just quiet (maybe even shy). This is related to the below fanons that she later attempted to try and seem more approachable.
• Sabrina and Erika as close friends. This is because they're the only two adult female Gym Leaders in Kanto and because Fan Wank has it that they traded two of their Pokémon in Stadium for each other.
• There is an NPC in the Kanto games (specifically a Gentleman who is in one of the rooms on the S.S. Anne) that mentions that he's a Global Police Agent. Fans like to pin him as Looker.
• Giovanni is Red's biological father. This is far less common than with Ash, but it still pops up.
• Erika makes and sells perfumes. This comes from the anime and is supported by the "Erika's Perfume" card, but is never mentioned in game canon.
• Professor Oak is given two different backstories: One, based on the anime, is that he's wanted to be a Pokémon Researcher since childhood, while the other, based on the Adventures manga, is that he is a former Pokémon Champion (and rival to Agatha) who calmed down later in life and became a Researcher.
• Red being on the autism spectrum has caught on due to his stoic, quiet personality.

Gold/Silver/Crystal/HeartGold/SoulSilver

• If Ethan is the protagonist, he will be an outspoken Hot-Blooded Guile Hero as a foil to Red's The Stoic, as seen above. If Lyra is the protagonist, then Ethan will be depicted as In Touch with His Feminine Side due to owning a Marill as a NPC.
• Thanks to her "rural" look, Lyra is often depicted as a tomboy, though not quite as tomboyish as May or Hilda. This is often used as a contrast to Ethan or Dawn.
• Kris is often a hands-on Action Girl tomboy.
• Lyra is also portrayed as being very cheerful, ditzy, and naive. While this is canon with when she's an NPC, it's still common when she's the player character, partially to contrast Silver, and partially for amusement (mostly in regards to Silver constantly losing to someone that much of an antithesis) and/or shipping value.
• Silver being neglected shows up almost as often as him being abused, and comes off as slightly more plausible, especially seeing as Giovanni rarely seems to even acknowledge his existence, gladly abandoned him the minute he lost to an eleven year old, and prioritized rebuilding his team over raising his own son.
• Ariana and Giovanni are Silver's parents. Given her apparent age, the fact that she's arguably second in terms of authority out of the four Executives (behind Archer, though they may be Co-Dragons), her idolization of strength, her red hair that matches Silver's, her English name (Ariana is Welsh for "silver"), and the fact that she's the only female Executive in Team Rocket, fan speculation places her as Silver's mother (though the nature of Giovanni and Ariana's relationship is left up to personal interpretation). Less common is that Mars is their child too, thus making her Silver's older sister. Sometimes Roark is depicted as Silver's half-brother, but this is rarely used seriously.
• Kris is an In-Series Nickname that is short for "Crystal". It's canon in adaptations but ambiguous in the games. She's only referred to as just "Kris" in the games.
• Morty as being The Stoner.
• Ethan will usually have a Cyndaquil as his starter in fanworks, and some fans speculate that Lyra (or Kris) will take the third leftover starter that players and the rival did not choose, therefore her being given Chikorita. If Lyra's the protagonist, she's sometimes given Cyndaquil instead, or more commonly she still keeps Chikorita (moving Cyndaquil to Silver); either way Ethan keeps the Marill he has as an NPC. Official art usually gives Lyra Chikorita, while Ethan actually Totodile or Chikorita. Pokémon Masters gives Kris a Totodile, Lyra a Chikorita, and Ethan a Cyndaquil.
• Fan-works are evenly split on whether Ethan or Lyra are the protagonist. Ethan is often used because he's physically similar to Red (and because he was the original Johto protagonist). However, many fans prefer Lyra as the protagonist due to her physical similarities to Red's redesign (and due to the gender contrast with him). Pokémon Masters indicates that Ethan is the protagonist due to having no familial relation with the daycare couple and being described as having a hand in Silver's Character Development.
• Erika's sneaky expressions in this generation (Stadium 2 included) imply that she's more than what she seems.
• Karen and Will being either best friends or lovers is common. In canon, the two are both Elite 4 members but they don't interact on-screen.
• Sabrina became more casual-looking between FRLG and HGSS in an attempt to look less intimidating. She wasn't pleased that others were scared of her and decided to reinvent her look.
• Proton's Psycho for Hire nature has led to the fanon that he's a sadist. He often also gets written as a Depraved Bisexual or Extreme Omnisexual.

Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald/OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire

• Brendan is presented as Birch's kid most of the time, with May obviously as Norman's, as she was in the anime. This is often done either due to the anime's influence or due to a preference for May. However, it's not too uncommon to see fanworks of the opposite because Brendan-sans-hat resembles Norman while May resembles Professor Birch (however, she also looks like Norman's wife). ORAS made May as the protagonist even more common because Brendan's redesign doesn't really resemble any of the parents. As a result, fanon has it that his Ambiguously Brown skin-tone is a tan from Brendan running around in the Hoenn sun (in contrast with May's lighter tone, as she just moved from Johto). Pokémon Masters went with portraying Brendan as Norman's son, likely due to their similarly dark hair colours.
• May will usually have a Torchic starter and Brendan a Mudkip in fanworks, especially if May is the protagonist. Official art usually also gives her a Torchic. Pokémon Masters gives Brendan Treecko while May gets Mudkip.
• Before Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, May is thought to be a no-nonsense Hot-Blooded tomboy. This is likely inspired from her Emerald design and her Adventures counterpart Sapphire, who is exactly as described. It also serves as a contrast to Dawn's more feminine traits, especially in the anime. It's still present in ORAS fanworks, however they're more likely to play her as a Tomboy with a Girly Streak.
• Maxie and Archie's names are actually "Maximilian" and "Archibald" respectively, and the names they're called by in-game are only nicknames.
• While it's canon that Brendan is wearing a hat, some fans who like the white haired Fanon version of him make him wear a beanie but also have white and black hair. It helps that this makes him resemble a fusion of Lan Hikari and Eugene Chaud from Mega Man Battle Network. However, this is clearly not the case in the remakes.
• Courtney in the remakes is either on the autism spectrum or is a robot.
• Wally is asthmatic. This is due to fresh air helping him and because his Adventures counterpart has some sort of lung-related illness.
• Phoebe as being from Alola, or having family in Alola. This is due to her Hawaiian-esque character design (such as her skin tone, dress, and flower in her hair).
• May having a Precocious Crush on Steven is common in fan-works.
• Brendan/May has a crush on the protagonist. This is implied with Brendan in Emerald and made a bit more obvious in ORAS.
• Flannery's family name is assumed to be "Moore" since that's the name of her grandfather in the anime. In the games her grandfather isn't named.
• Wally's Gardevoir is the Team Mom of his team and has a paternal relationship with his trainer. His Gallade in the remakes is treated similarly.
• Due to her association with dragon-types, personality, and occasional beast-like stance, Zinnia from ORAS' Delta Episode is commonly depicted in fanart as having Cute Little Fangs.
  • Zinnia is often written as the last Draconid, bar her grandmother. While she mentions herself as the last Lorekeeper, it isn't said in game that the tribe is so reduced. This is frequently used in Rule 34 for Only You Can Repopulate My Race scenarios. It is, also, however, not a universal rule, as other stories will take from Adventures where the Draconids are more numerous.

Diamond/Pearl/Platinum

• Dawn's starter is usually depicted as a Piplup, due to the anime and to contrast May and her Torchic. This usually means Barry has a Turtwig and Lucas has a Chimchar. According to official art, Dawn's Signature Mon is actually Chimchar while Lucas is associated with Piplup. Pokémon Masters gives Barry a Piplup and Dawn a Turtwig.
• Dawn being an Aloof Dark-Haired Girl pops up just as much as her being a Genki Girl does. Both she and Lucas are occasionally characterized as The Comically Serious or The Stoic. (In Lucas case, it's usually with Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl).
• Dawn is more often depicted as the protagonist and Barry's childhood friend, with Lucas as Professor Rowan's assistant. Masters goes with this portrayal as well.
• Dahlia is Latina. Canon in Pokémon Adventures, but ambiguous in the games.
• Volkner is often associated as being a big brother figure for Meghan, the Pokékid who's in his gym.
• It's ambiguous, but some people think Gardenia has red hair and a headband. Others see it as multicolored hair. Her beta design◊ appears to confirm that the black part is a headband.
• Dawn is often depicted as a Badass Adorable and Girly Bruiser, though not as often as Red.
• Dawn is often associated with Darkrai and Giratina.
• Pairing Dawn and Cynthia together is extremely common in fanworks. This however isn't always mutually romantic. Other options are an Intergenerational Friendship, Cynthia being a mentor or older sister-type person to Dawn, or Dawn having an unrequited Precocious Crush on Cynthia. If the fanwork creator does like them as romantic, then some opt for them getting together once Dawn is older.
• Agatha and Bertha being sisters or otherwise related. They have similar English and Japanese names, look a lot alike, and talk similarly.
• Dawn being an earnest and diligent ingenue is also very common, especially to contrast her childhood friend and rival Barry.
• Fantina being from Kalos, since she peppers her speech with Gratuitous French in the English translation (in Japan it is Gratuitous English) and Kalos was created as the Pokéworld equivalent of France. Another interpretation that mixes her English and Japanese portrayals is that she's from Canada (or a Canada equivalent).
• Riley is a descendant of Sir Aaron from the eighth movie. Sometimes combined with the "Ash is also descended from Sir Aaron" theory, making Riley and Ash related.
• Riley and Byron are friends (or more), since Byron mentions that he asked Riley to take up the position of Oreburgh Gym Leader. Additionally, Riley is a close friend / Big Brother Mentor to Byron's son, Roark, because he turned down the position of Gym Leader for Roark's sake, wanting him to be considered first.
• Roark being related to Silver and/or Mars is a common theory based on their similar hairstyles. The usual theory is something like "Ariana and Byron had Roark, then separated, then Ariana went to Kanto, married Giovanni, and had Silver and Mars."
• Byron being the Team Dad of the Sinnoh Gym Leaders, since he appears to be the oldest of them. It helps that he already is a father.
• Dawn being a Proper Lady and a more feminine foil to the tomboyish May, Lyra, and/or Hilda is common, especially when she is depicted as Silk Hiding Steel. This rang true to her Adventures counterpart, Platinum, who is the heiress of a rich family.
• Riley as an older brother figure to the protagonist. With Dawn, this often involves a Precocious Crush.
• Byron is often portrayed as encouraging his son to find a girlfriend, or being a Shipper on Deck for Roark and a specific girl (wanting grandkids is optional). Most often, the girl in question is Gardenia, but other options include Candice, Maylene, Cynthia, etc. If Roark is portrayed as gay or bi, he'll usually still be in the closet and trying to hide that fact from his father, or dealing with having feelings for Riley or Volkner.
• Before it was implicitly confirmed in during the Rainbow Rocket Episode, many believe that the author of the old notebook in Rotom's room was a young Cyrus before he went off the deep end.
• The building in Hearthome City called the "Foreign Building" is a church. This is heavily implied but never outright stated. What the church worships varies by interpretation but the most common consensus' is that it's an Arceus-worshipping church, a non-denominational church, or a Christian church.
• Team Galactic uses Code Names. This is because it seems too coincidental that all of their admins have Stellar Names.
• While Charon is meant to be a Hate Sink, some fans go even farther by portraying him as hoping that Cyrus fails with his plan and dies so Charon himself could take over Team Galactic. Others portray him as a manipulative mastermind who allowed Cyrus' misanthropic tendencies to worsen and influenced him into deciding to end the world. In a case of Ascended Fanon, the versions of Charon seen in the Pokémon Adventures and Diamond & Pearl Adventure! mangas seem to run with this view of him.
• While Riley's age is unknown, he's often assumed to be several years older than Roark, due to Byron initially choosing him over Roark to be the Oreburgh Gym Leader. It helps that Byron himself says he doesn't know how old Riley is. Those same in-game statements are also used as evidence that Riley is a close friend of Roark and Byron, to the point where it's common to depict the three of them as a family in fan works.
• Byron is nearly always portrayed as a single parent, since his wife/Roark's mother never appears or is even mentioned. Typically he is said to be divorced, but more rarely he is portrayed as a widower. The anime suggests that he lives apart from his wife but they are still married, since Roark mentioned asking him to come home for their wedding anniversary.
• Roark is often made into The Woobie in fanfics, living in near-poverty due to being a coal miner, trying to impress his dad, dealing with a Missing Mom, dealing with insecurity over being Sinnoh's most inexperienced Gym Leader or some combination of those.
• The Underground Man's exact relation to Roark & Byron is never clarified but it is most common to assume that he is Byron's father and Roark's grandfather. Similarly, Bertha is sometimes believed to be Byron's mother and Roark's grandmother, and the Underground Man's wife.

Black/White/Black 2/White 2

• Hilbert, Hilda, Cheren, and Bianca are given a fanon age of sixteen when they start their journey. Nate and Rosa are pinned as only a bit younger, around thirteen to fourteen (with fifteen being rarely used).
• N is either on the autism spectrum or has some form of bipolar disorder.
• N being bisexual due to having Ship Tease with the protagonist regardless of gender.
• Given Ghetsis' reputation as "the most evil Pokémon villain" and his status as an Abusive Parent, it's very common for fans to speculate just how abusive he was to N. This speculation ranges from him beating N to flat-out raping him. In the games, he's shown emotionally and verbally abusing N, but is never shown going beyond that.
• On that note, fanon has it that Ghetsis intended to kill N once his plan was complete and N was no longer needed as a pawn. This is subtly implied in-game, where his Hydreigon has at least one supereffective move for every member of N's final team, including the legendary dragon, but never stated outright.
• It is never stated how Ghetsis injured his eye and arm, but it is popular to assume that he got it from being attacked by his Hydreigon after mistreating it. In-game, there is evidence that Ghetsis treats his Hydreigon badly — in Black 2 and White 2, it has a maximum-power Frustration in its moveset, which is only achievable with the lowest possible level of friendship (0).
  • In Black and White, Hydreigon is also level 54, which should be impossible since Zweilous evolves at level 64, leading to another theory that Ghetsis somehow forced it to prematurely evolve.
• If Hilbert is the protagonist Rosa is the heroine, and if Hilda is the protagonist then Nate is. This is despite the fact some dialogue implies the two Heroes are the same sex. Pokémon Masters appears to be taking the former approach, with Hilbert explicitly portrayed as the protagonist and Rosa implied to be the same.
• Back when Rosa was introduced, there was an error on the Japanese site that referred to her as a boy. Since then it created a boom where Rosa was presented as transgender or a Wholesome Crossdresser.
• Cheren is sometimes depicted as a trans man.
• There are two Shadow Triads. The first consisted of Cilan, Chili, and Cress. They disbanded after Pokémon Black and White and the new trio were sent to beat them as shown in the Memory Link event. This is in response to the Memory Link in Black 2 and White 2 jossing the theory that the brothers were the Shadow Triad. Many fans have decided that the two trios are separate individuals.
• Due to their Strong Family Resemblance there's a small fanon that Ghetsis and N are related, just not biologically parent and child. Ghetsis being his uncle or N really being his biological son that was later abandoned in the woods, only for Ghetsis to adopt him later, are the most common theories.
• Bianca's reason for being clumsy is due to poor eyesight. This is why she wears glasses in BW2.
• Bianca's glasses were given to her by Cheren, or stolen from him, because he no longer has glasses in BW2 while she has new ones.
• Elesa is bisexual. It's implied in the games but never confirmed. Fans also often depict her as Skyla's girlfriend.
• Iris is either black or Pokémon's version of Native American.
• Alder also being Native American is a popular fan theory.
• The games take place ten years after Platinum. This is due to an ex-Team Rocket grunt having settled down in Unova and having a young child. There are some who take a five year gap so older characters can interact with the characters in Black/White and Black 2/White 2 without being too much older. Post-SM fans have begun leaning towards the latter due to how young Red and Blue seem, though the fact those games take place in a different timeline could explain why they're younger than they should be.
• Hilda is usually a badass Ladette-in-the-making and a boisterous tomboy in fanworks.
• In contrast to Hilda, Rosa is usually depicted as a cute dorky Girly Girl.
• Hilbert usually has Oshawott as his starter, with Hilda having a Snivy as her own in fanworks. Likewise, Nate will be given a Tepig (partly due to the Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 movie trailer) while Rosa has an Oshawott. Despite this, in official art, Hilda and Hilbert are most often portrayed with Tepig, and Rosa with Snivy.
• The reason why Sabrina stopped being a Gym Leader is ambiguous. The fan consensus is that she wanted to seem more approachable and friendly, and she didn't like being a Gym Leader in the first place (which comes from her quotes about being pacifistic), though she ended up type-casted as a villain due to her intimidating looks anyway.
• Hilda/Hilbert didn't become champion. The reason is because they were stopped before being initiated into the Hall of Fame and they didn't re-challenge the League later.
• Hilda is usually depicted as the protagonist of the first games. With the sequels, fan-works are evenly split between Nate and Rosa (with a slight lean towards Nate due to the animated trailer and to make him contrast with Hilda in terms of gender).
• Sir Swears-a-Lot Roxie is very common due to her punk persona.
• While not as common, some fanarts depict Nate and Rosa to be stronger than they look since the sprite of their bed in their bedroom appears to have a dumbbell on top of it. This gave people ideas that Nate and Rosa work out in their spare time before the start of the game.
• N's mother died giving birth to him.
• Subway Boss Emmet is often depicted as owning lots of Joltik. The reasoning is that since his Galvantula has two perfect IVs, a good nature, and a move it can only know via breeding, the process of breeding said Galvantula produced several Joltik that didn't have the qualities Emmet was looking for and he ended up keeping them. How many Joltik Emmet has varies from "a few" to "enough to bury people".

X/Y

• Since Mewtwo has a Mega Evolution despite being created millennia after Mega Stones were, both forms of Mewtwonite are unique and man-made just like Mewtwo itself is.
• Serena is often depicted as either a Genki Girl or a Tsundere. Some will even take the latter further and make her a Lovable Alpha Bitch or The Perfectionist.
• Serena is usually given a Fennekin starter while Calem has a Froakie. This leads to Serena usually being depicted as the protagonist. Pokémon Masters also implies Calem is in his rival role.
• On certain corners of the Internet the Hex Maniac in Dendemille Town who sells Moomoo Milk is often portrayed as... hum... having made it herself.
• Shauna being bisexual due to the fact she has Ship Tease with Calem as the protagonist while also barely changing the dialogue for Serena as the protagonist.
• Calem and Serena are either on the high end of sixteen or are seventeen. This is because they're explicitly older than the sixteen year old Emma but are still not adults yet.
• Shauna as having Arabian ancestry (or a Pokémon equivalent) due to her Arabic name and Ambiguously Brown design.

Sun/Moon

• Due to their Wise Beyond Their Years tendencies, some fans assume that Acerola and Hapu are either Older Than They Look or Really 700 Years Old. Acerola's connection to the supernatural and Hapu's Non-Standard Character Design are also used as "evidence" for this idea.
• Fan-works lean toward the female protagonist rather than the male, especially regarding protagonist/Gladion and protagonist/Lillie shipping. Selene is often portrayed as a calm, altruistic Nice Girl. In other fan-works, especially Selene/Lillie and Selene/Gladion ones, Selene is often characterized as a friendly but impulsive Plucky Girl who always smiles but has a darker side underneath.
• The Anabel from the post game missions is the same specific character as the Frontier Brain from Pokémon Emerald. ^note It's possible, but all that's officially known is that she passed through an Ultra Wormhole at some point and had amnesia; whether she's the same Anabel from previous games or an alternate version from an unrelated alternate universe is never explicitly stated.
• The Ultra Beasts destroyed the alternate universe that Anabel is from, and she was knocked through an Ultra Wormhole while defending the Battle Tower from their attack. ^note The Ultra Beasts are only stated to be from another dimension, known as "Ultra Space", and have not been shown or stated to have destroyed any universes.
• The alternate universe(s) that the Ultra Beasts destroyed are the ones from the original Gameboy games, and everything in the current canon comes from the remakes, which are in a separate continuity (and universe). ^note It's never explicitly shown that the Ultra Beasts have interacted with (or destroyed) any universes directly involved with the games, and the post-Gen 3, pre-Gen 6 games seem to take place in a different continuity.
• The protagonist's mother is a single mother. Your father never appears and is sparingly mentioned, your mother's bed seems more like it's for one person, and the protagonist calls their dad "father" which is less personal than what they call their mother ("Mom"). While this is a common headcanon for all protagonists (bar Brendan/May) for obvious reasons, there's a bit more evidence for it here. Some fans headcanon that she divorced or outright left her husband because he was abusive to her and their child. This is done to make the player character similar to Gladion and Lillie and, to a lesser extent, Hau. Rotom in USUM mentions that the protagonist's father sent their mother a letter that made her happy, which implies in at least that timeline that the protagonist's parents are together but the father still lives back in Kanto.
• The protagonist being a Perpetual Smiler. This is due to the fact the character's model isn't as expressive as the other characters. During many, but not all, in-game cutscenes where NPCs act as expected (such as shocked or fearful) the protagonist keeps their smiling expression. Previous protagonists had expressive faces, but the Sun and Moon protagonist just smiles a lot. Can overlap with them being a Stepford Smiler.
• Due to his androgynous design and the fact he's rarely referred to with pronouns (and for a while, his gender was unknown pre-release), Ilima being non-binary has caught on.
• Mina as an Erudite Stoner due to her spaced-out demeanor. Pokémon Masters does give her a stoned impression.
• Ilima's Exotic Eye Design and generally laid-back personality mixed with his status as a schoolteacher sometimes leads to him being portrayed as an Erudite Stoner.
• It's widely believed that Guzma was physically abused by his father. The games imply this during the post-game, in which you can visit his house, where his father's room is full of bent golf clubs. His father also says the line "I tried to set that boy of mine straight, but when I did, I was the one who got beat". Less common however, is that Guzma was instead emotionally abused and retaliated by beating up his dad, or that the golf clubs were bent by Guzma himself in anger.
• It's also believed by some that Guzma and Kahili of the Alola Elite Four were childhood friends, or even related. This is based on the fact that both of their fathers' share a love for golf, and how Guzma and Kahili have specifically similar mannerisms, such as them squatting during battle.
• Similar to Silver and N, Lillie and Gladion are often depicted as physically (and occasionally sexually) abused by their mother Lusamine. The games themselves only imply emotional abuse and manipulation.
• Selene and Lillie as the Tomboy and Girly Girl respectively.
• Fan works of Lillie as a teenager or adult will depict her as a Statuesque Stunner. It does seem probable as she's already tall for her age and her mother Lusamine is quite tall herself.
• Lillie is implied to be from a region besides Alola. Fans pin her as either from Kalos or a currently unspecified region.
• Lusamine's obsession with being beautiful and youthful extends to an obsession over her weight, based from her thin appearance. This often extends to forcing her children on a restricted diet as well.
• Similar to N from B/W and Shauna from X/Y, Lillie's relationship with the protagonist has romantic undertones no matter their gender. This has caused the fanon that she's bisexual. Her reaction to Olivia's Z-Move pose only adds fuel to the fire.
• The protagonist being only half-Kantonian. This is due to the fact the mother is Ambiguously Brown, despite the canon protagonist's design being lighter-skinned, and due to their fluency in Alolan/English despite coming from a Japanese-based region.
• Lillie as suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is due to a combination of her Dark and Troubled Past, her anime counterpart's fear of Pokémon, and her Adventures counterpart PTSD. Sometimes Gladion also has PTSD.
• A fanon most prevalent amongst shippers is that Red and Blue are on a honeymoon together.
• Lillie's scene on Exeggutor Island is oftentimes seen as Aborted Declaration of Love due to the romantic-seeming atmosphere and dialogue.
• Lusamine in Sun and Moon is typically seen as mentally ill on top of being Brainwashed and Crazy by Nihilego. Generally the issue will be present before Nihilego and Mohn's disappearance but was made worse by both events.
• It's a common headcanon for Gladion to be depicted as a trans boy.
• Gladion's age is never clarified but fans assume he's no older than 14. Some even have him as Lillie's Half Identical Twin.

Sword/Shield

• Depicting the female protagonist as a tough and easily angered girl with a thick Scottish accent.
• In contrast to the above, some have taken to portraying the male protagonist as a very meek and soft spoken English boy.
• Marnie as a trans girl has caught on in some circles.
• Allister and Bede are both often depicted as either a trans boy or as non-binary due to their Bishōnen looks.
• Grimmsnarl and Hatterene are thought to be different genders of the same species of Pokémon due to them being one gender, covering their whole bodies with hair, and being inspired by fairies.
• Gym Leaders Bea and Allister, despite being version exclusive characters, both live in Stow-on-Side and are actually good friends, having a very close, sibling-like relationship. Some take it a step further and have the two as being outright brother and sister.
• Because Kabu is said to have come from Hoenn, many started to take the idea that he is related to Flannery, who is the fire type Gym Leader in Hoenn. His exact relation varies from person to person, but he is generally not considered to be Flannery's Elite Four member Grandfather due to Flannery's grandfather having an appearance in the main anime.
• In some fanworks, usually in Victor/Hop and Hop/Gloria fanworks, due to the default appearance of the protagonist looking distinctively Asian compared to majority of the NPC's, it's common to depict either Victor/Gloria's family to have migrated from a Japanese region to Galar and Victor/Gloria is native to Galarian culture due to living in Galar for as long as they remembered.
• Because of the sharp contrast between his infant-like face and extreme musculature, many fans haven taken to portraying Milo as a Dumb Muscle with a childlike Simpleton Voice. The latter was jossed in Twilight Wings where Milo has a regular-sounding voice.
• A concept gaining traction is that the Hattena line is much more tolerant of strong emotions coming from their trainer, and the surprisingly violent Pokédex entries rather correlate to the behavior of specifically wild ones.
• Given their similar ages, many like to think that Nessa, Piers, and Raihan were fellow Gym Challengers and rivals to Leon and Sonia back when they were newbie trainers. It's heavily implied with Raihan, at least, given that he views himself as Leon's greatest rival (and the feeling is mutual).
• Nessa's one-sided rivalry with Milo is often interpreted as her filtering a major crush on him into battling to get his attention, often with her denying her real motives the whole time. Raihan's obsession with beating Leon has been interpreted the same way.
• It's unknown what happened to Bede's family. Fans depict him as an orphan with a Dark and Troubled Past.
• Bede's relationship with the protagonist is similar to the way fanon depicts Silver and the Johto protagonist. He's often depicted as tsundere.
• It's generally believed that between Milo and Bea, Milo is the stronger of the two and could easily beat Bea in an arm wrestling match, but is such a sweetheart he'll often throw the matches, much to Bea's displeasure.
• Many fans like to depict Kabu as being very close with Milo and Nessa and has a father-like relationship with the two, likely stemming from how the three make it a tradition to see off any Gym Challengers who defeat Kabu. Sometimes it's taken even further and he's basically the Team Dad for all the Gym Leaders except Opal and Melony.
• Nessa being Archie's and Shelly's daughter, due to her being a Water-type Trainer and having an appearance somewhat similar to them (all three of them have dark skin, and Nessa has dark hair with blue highlights similar to Shelly's).
• Due to her status as a former underground idol, some fans like to believe that Klara's encounter and battle themes are actual songs from her failed album.

Legends Arceus

• The player character and Lucas/Dawn from the Sinnoh games are the same person. This is left intentionally ambiguous in the actual game, but often used in fanfics.
• Similarly, the rival being NPC Lucas/Dawn's ancestor.
• Professor Laventon being from Galar, due to his Funny Foreigner status, the English version of the game inserting various "British-isms" into his speech and him mentioning that Copperajah is from his homeland. Others theorize that he comes from the region Copperajah is said to have been transported to Galar from.
• Seeing as Commander Kamado has a wedding photo on his desk and we later learn that his paranoia comes from the destruction of his old village, it's generally accepted that Kamado lost his wife when his village was destroyed.
• Volo being non-binary due to his androgynous, bishonen looks was one that started fairly early on. Post-release, Melli got the same fanon.
• Volo is already Ambiguously Related to Cynthia, but it's common for people to depict him as also being related to Lusamine.
• Volo being immortal or otherwise Long-Lived is a common one.
• Volo's relationship with Mistress Cogita is unclear in canon, but most fans agree that she's his aunt. A smaller number of fans depict her as his mother or grandmother.
  • Some with Shipping Goggles on who also don't believe they're related (unless they're those kinds of fans) would also occasionally depict the two as having some sort of romantic relationship, though it's usually one-sided on Volo's end
• Though Volo calls himself a Pokémon Wielder instead of a trainer, many fans depict him as still maintaining a genuine bond with his Togepi. It helps that Togepi can only evolve via The Power of Friendship. Their photo together, which is one of the first of many that is displayed on Dagero's shop, is also often used to show their genuine bond.
• Ingo's presence as a Faller led many to wonder how his brother Emmet's holding up back in Unova. Some portray him losing his mind with worry, others portray him taking extreme measures to find Ingo and bring him home, still others portray him as having also become a Faller and ending up in a completely different time from Ingo.
• Cyrus was inspired to start Team Galactic because of Captain Cyllene's stories about the Galaxy Expedition Team passed down through his bloodline. This is subtly hinted at in the Daybreak update, where Cyllene assures Commander Kamado that she intends to keep the memory of the Galaxy Team alive by passing it down the generations. Sometimes used for angst by depicting this as a posthumous case of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero for Cyllene.
• Some fans portray Barry (and by extension, his father Palmer) as being the descendent of either Irida (due to them being blond), Adaman (since they have some personality traits in common such as being headstrong and impatient), or both.

Scarlet/Violet

• Arven:
  • Depending on the version, Arven is the son of either Professor Sada or Professor Turo, and his other parent walked out shortly after his birth. This combined with the professors referring to their partners as "that man/that woman" leads some to assume that Sada and Turo are both his parents in both versions, and what truly differs is which parent walked out. This has also fueled fan speculation that there is much more to the story than the opposite-version professor "just" walking out.
  • In fanart, he's sometimes depicted as having heterochromia, with his hidden eye being brown like Turo's. In-game, there are occasional frames that show that both of his eyes are the same color.
  • While there's no clue as to how exactly Arven got his Mabostiff, only that he's had his partner since it was a Maschiff, it's common to have it be a gift from one of both of his parents.
• For the sake of brevity or to smooth over continuity issues, Naranja and Uva academy are sometimes depicted as either being two different parts of a larger University or are outright combined into one academy that has a portmanteau name.
• Penny:
  • With her being an introvert, socially awkward, not being great at reading people and tendency towards Brutal Honesty, as well as her attachment to her fluffy Eevee bag and the fact that she's a victim of bullying, it's fairly common to headcanon Penny as being autistic.
  • Penny being trans is also a common headcanon, due to her baggy, alternative clothing, and the fact that she uses a Sylveon as her ace. Along with her Sylveon being trans flag colors, her hair is red and blue, and red can be seen as a more saturated version of pink. Once again, the bullying aspect also ties into this, as like autistic kids, LGBTQ kids are often targets of bullying.
  • Her eyes being slightly reminiscent of Melli's has some people theorizing that she's his descendant.
  • Some fans believed that Penny's father is Peony from Sword and Shield due to the way Penny described his father to be similar to how Peonia reacts to her own father and Penny mentioning how she's nicknamed "Pen-Pen" by her father in a near identical way Peony nicknames Peonia as "Nia". Add that with how Penny was initially from Galar, and how Peony's wife as shown in his Rare league card is given the beauty model with lighter skin contrasting Peonia and Peony both being Ambiguously Brown was given support as well to this Fanon, supporting the theory and claim that Penny might have taken after her mother instead of her father. The Mochi Mayhem DLC epilogue for Scarlet and Violet confirms this as early in the DLC story, Penny has a call with her dad saying "Ughh, no, it's not gonna be an "Adven-tour" - No one says that!", with the phrase being something that Peony often says in the Crown Tundra DLC at varying points.
• Jacq having previously worked with Professor Sada/Turo is a common headcanon due to him having a similar interest in science and research, albeit him either being their subordinate or not as close to them as Clavell is implied to be.
• The Professors being alumni of their respective version exclusive Academies is a common trope in fanfiction. The other adult or older characters are also often depicted as being alumni and having known the professors either in passing or personally, with Clavell usually being depicted as such since his dialogue makes it clear he's an old friend of theirs.
  • Likewise, in works that have the aforementioned Naranja and Uva Academy combination, Sada and Turo are usually depicted as having first met each other as students. This is a fairly popular depiction in works focusing on their relationship and how it started, occasionally having them meet and befriend each other as children.
• Rika:
  • Because of her Bifauxnen appearance, she's popularly headcanoned as either being a transwoman in the process of transitioning or just comfortable with how she looks. Alternatively, some depict Rika as nonbinary in fanworks.
  • Her and Geeta are commonly depicted to be a couple or at least, Rika having a crush on her (or vice versa).
  • In lighthearted works, and simply because many find it adorable, Rika doting on her Clodsire pops up a lot in fanfiction.
• You'd be hard pressed to find a fanfic that doesn't have Hassel and Brassius be a couple, often having them be Happily Married, with the ship coming from their close friendship in the game and the nicknames they gave each other that sound like what you'd hear a couple call each other.
  • Hassel's Flapple being a gift from Brassius, seeing as the Pokémon is part Grass type and one of its pokédex entries says that it's given as a symbol of love.
• A common theory was that the Time Machine wasn't actually what its name indicates but, unbeknownst to the Professor, a "wishing machine" that created things straight from someone's imagination. This is mostly due to the inconsistencies behind the Paradox Pokémon and how it fits into the overall lore and the fact that they look perfectly like the explorers' sketches of what they believed Pokémon from a different time would look like. While this has since been confirmed to not be the case by the Indigo Disk, some fans continue to run with this belief due to a dislike of the actual reason.

Pokémon Go

• The entire game is actually a Villain Episode in the Pokémon universe, and Team Valor, Team Mystic and Team Instinct are warring criminal syndicates in the vein of Team Rocket and their imitators. As supporting evidence for the theory, fans point to the fact that organizations in the Pokémon universe with "Team" in their name have historically been evil, and to the fact that the general premise of the game (acquiring as many Pokémon as possible and using them to wrest territory from rivals, without thought to training them or earning badges) is oddly similar to Team Rocket's M.O. in the anime. This fanon is a piece of Lost in Translation as the Japanese version uses the Gratuitous English "Team" instead of the usual "-dan" (Gang).
• Spark being a cute, dorky, sometimes somewhat stupid, Nice Guy in contrast to the fiery Candela and Emotionless Girl Blanche, is extremely popular.
• The trainers names as "Go" (male) and "Gogo" (female).
• Team Instinct as the Butt-Monkey due to having less members than the other teams.
• Blanche as nonbinary due to their androgynous design and the fact their artist has stated their gender is up to the player. The official consensus was originally that Blanche is a woman, but Go has since switched to neutral pronouns for Blanche.
• While there is still no official confirmation on which Pokémon the team leaders have in their parties, you can rest assured that nearly all fanart of them will give them the appropriate Eeveelution (Vaporeon for Blanche, Jolteon for Spark and Flareon for Candela). This was shown among what team leaders use in the PvP Team Leader Training, but Blanche uses Glaceon instead of Vaporeon.
• Despite the rivalry between the teams, Candela, Spark and Blanche are frequently portrayed as True Companions in fanworks. Not necessarily an inaccurate portrayal, as they're implied to be on good terms despite their rivalry.
• In fan works, the male Trainer will almost always be affiliated with Team Instinct (or just Spark) and wear yellow clothes, while the female Trainer will be affiliated with red and Team Valor.

Spinoffs

• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon takes place in Humanity's Wake. This is implied in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team by the presence of an abandoned lab, Gengar having been a human in the past, and the fact the characters know of humans. Later games imply that humans still exist, but are so rare that many of the Pokémon don't believe they're real.
• The above is applied to the PokePark games as well, which are also often believed to take place in the same universe as the Mystery Dungeon games.

Anime

• There are six common candidates for Ash's father. Pocket Monsters: The Animation, a novelization written by Takeshi Shudo says Ash's dad was a random deadbeat who left and amounted to nothing, but it's only considered semi-canon as many things contradict the actual anime and other theories are more common:
  • The Team Rocket leader, Giovanni. In the non-canon Pokémon Live! it's stated he and Delia dated but fanon claims he was Ash's dad (this was intended but scrapped in development, however Word of God is that there is still subtext that they're related). Whether Giovanni knows he is Ash's father or not differs from person to person, as does if Ash is related to Silver's anime counterpart.
  • Alternatively, Professor Oak is Ash's father. This is because Oak is close to Delia and he acts as a father figure to Ash. The usual thought is that Delia ended up pregnant while being Professor Oak's student but they hid it due to the scandal it would cause. Delia either claimed she was impregnated by her estranged husband or outright made up a husband.
  • Ash's dad is Silver from the episode "The Search for the Legend", due to having a lot of similarities to Ash and having some reaction to Ash being mentioned around him. Alternatively, Silver is Ash's grandfather.
  • A flashback shows Ash as a young child alongside a trainer with his Rapidash. The man's face is never shown but many fans have interpreted him as Ash's father.
  • Ash isn't a Red counterpart. He's Red's son. This is most commonly used in fanfics versus serious discussion of the anime.
  • One Sun and Moon episode features a character named Dia with a hat based off of Red's. Fans theorize that he could be Ash's dad due to the fact Ash is a Red counterpart, despite him dwelling in an entirely different universe than Ash's (fans assume that a version of him also exists in the main universe).
  • As a joke, Ash's dad being either Ho-Oh or Lugia gets thrown around a lot.
  • It’s very common to see people joke about Mr. Mime being Ash’s father.
  • While 'Papa Kukui' is a common fanfic archetype from the Sun and Moon era, he is rarely made Ash's biological father, though it does occasionally happen. He is usually depicted as Ash's fatherly parental substitute or in some cases taking on full parental roles alongside Burnet.
  • While Ash is generally made to be related to Sir Aaron, he is only very rarely written as Ash's father (as while the two are very similar, Sir Aaron would need to be written to having time traveled for it to work). Most fan writers will instead write Ash as either his reincarnation, his distant descendant, or both. Queen Rin, who Sir Aaron served, is frequently also Ash's ancestor, though this is not a stringent trend and oftentimes Ash is not related to her if he's genetically related to Sir Aaron.
• A lot of fanfic writers believe that Delia lied about Ash's father being on a journey, most commonly either to cover up that he's dead, he's a deadbeat, or he is the criminal Giovanni. ^note  In fact, this was Takeshi Shudo's intent for Ash's dad, as shown in his light novels. In summary: Ash's dad ran off after Delia became pregnant at 18, supposedly to become a Pokémon trainer. However, after never hearing from him, Delia checked with the Pokémon League and found out he never registered as a trainer. She still told herself and Ash that he was on a journey as a trainer though, and one of the reasons Ash wants to be a trainer himself is the hope that he'll one day meet his dad.
• Delia and Professor Oak being romantically involved, or at least having mutual feelings, comes up a lot. This was especially prominent during the Original Series days of the fandom. Interestingly, this isn't commonly applied to the idea of Professor Oak being Ash's father, and is generally depicted as occurring after Ash's birth.
• There's a rampant amount of Ambiguous Gender for the anime's Pokémon. Due to this fans have to fill in the blanks. It's assumed most of Ash's Pokémon are male except for a few:
  • Pidgeot is often considered to be female.
  • Many people think Gliscor is female due to its sensitive personality and its affections for Ash resembling both Chikorita's and Aipom's (albeit more platonically).
  • Chimchar was originally seen as female. Once it evolved into an Infernape, it became more common for fanon to view it as male.
  • Until the Sinnoh arc canonized Pikachu as male, there was a large sum of fans who assumed he was female. This was especially prevalent amongst Ash/Pikachu and Meowth/Pikachu fans. Even when Buneary was introduced many thought of her as either gay or a feminine boy in contrast to the tomboyish Pikachu.
• Genders for the Pokémon of Ash's co-stars weren't mentioned often until Black and White, leading fans to fill in the blanks:
  • All of Brock's Pokémon are male except Vulpix.
  • May's Blaziken and Munchlax are usually considered male, while the rest of her team is female.
  • Max's future Ralts usually appears as a female, though some fans see it as male due to it being an expy of Wally's always-male Gardevoir.
  • Dawn's Piplup was originally seen as female due to the fact he wore a girl's cheerleader outfit several times, however he was eventually confirmed to be male. Buneary, Ambipom, and Togekiss are confirmed female. Pachirisu can go either way with fans, however it's implied to be male due to its design more resembling male Pachirisu. Mamoswine is confirmed male. Quilava is usually depicted as male.
  • Team Rocket's Pokémon are all male, except for the ones confirmed female and James' Mime Jr (who is also sometimes depicted as male).
  • Misty's Togepi is depicted as either male or female, with a lean towards it being female.
• One Name Only is the standard for characters. Fanon has tried to give many characters given names and surnames, which also often apply to their game counterparts:
  • May and her brother Max have the last name "Maple".^note This plays off of Brendan Birch — see the Ruby and Sapphire section above.
  • "Ashton" Ketchum or "Ashura" Ketchum as Ash's full name. Eventually someone actually calls him "Ashton", but he corrects them, saying his name is "just Ash".
  • Dawn "Berlitz", named after her Pokémon Adventures counterpart.
  • Misty "Waterflower", due to a misunderstanding about her sisters title. Less common but "Williams" is also often used.
  • Drew "Hayden".
  • James "Morgan".
  • Jessica "Rochester". Her first name is canon, but the surname is not.
  • Iris "Dragonlight". Iris "Cuasorome" has also caught on.
  • Cilan "Dent".
  • Serena "Yvonne" or Serena "Gabena", both derived from her counterpart in Pokémon Adventures^note Even though Yvonne is actually Y's first name (in the English translation at least); her actual last name is Gabena.
  • Clemont and Bonnie "Citron" from the former's Japanese name.
  • Giovanni's surname as "Rocketto", from the Japanese pronunciation of Team Rocket (Roketto-dan).
  • Brock tends to run with the Meaningful and Punny theme for Gym Leaders, as "Slate". However, Eric Stuart was quoted in 2006 as claiming Brock's last name was "Harrison" in K-Zone magazine. "Henry" is also a surname that is sometimes used, especially in older works.
  • Lillie "Aether", coming from the name of the Aether Foundation.
  • Lt. Surge's given name is "Mathias".
  • Cynthia "Shirona".
  • "Kamon" is the name of the Johto rival's anime counterpart. This comes from the choice of names in Gold.
  • Sabrina "d'Avalon". Even if not that, she's usually given a French surname.
• Brendan is Birch's son. It makes sense considering the games, but Professor Birch never mentions him and Brendan never speaks or meets Ash and co. (He only cameos in several of the movies during the Hoenn-Sinnoh era).
• Brendan is May's Forgotten Childhood Friend in fanworks where he appears (likely due to this being the case for their Pokémon Adventures counterparts, Ruby and Sapphire)
• Lucas is Barry's childhood friend and has a Chimchar starter. This is due to the anime making Barry and Dawn strangers (instead Dawn is childhood friends with Barry's expy, Kenny).
• Even with people who don't ship Ash/Misty, it's common for people to think Misty has an unrequited crush on Ash.
• James' Trademark Favorite Food used to be jelly-filled donuts (technically rice balls) in the earlier days of the fandom but this fanon has largely been forgotten.
• Candice being a lesbian pops up a lot.
• Cassidy really does remember Butch's name, she simply does that to annoy him.
• Due to his gravely voice and because Smoking Is Not Cool, Butch being a smoker is common in fan-works.
• If you're looking at Jessie/James fanart set in the near-future, there's a very high chance James will have his hair pulled into a ponytail. This comes from the Babies Ever After of them in The Electric Tale of Pikachu depicting James with a ponytail and Jessie with short hair. Jessie's hair is usually not cut in fanart, however it will often be depicted loose instead of in her usual Anime Hair style.
• Fan-art of Misty as a teenager or adult often have her using her post-Pokémon Gold and Silver haircut. If not that, then they give her long hair.
• Zoey is often written as a Butch Lesbian. This often goes with either the above-mentioned interpretation of Candice as gay or Dawn and Zoey as a couple.
• Ages:
  • Word of God is that Ash is Not Allowed to Grow Up and that he will constantly be ten. Until the confirmation in Best Wishes, almost all fans thought he was aging. His maturation over the arcs made him seem older (not helped by him being a mentor to both May and Dawn), it isn't physically possible for him to go through so many regions in under a year, he celebrated the anniversary of him and Pikachu meeting in the Original Series, and his design was perceived as looking teenage by Sinnoh. This idea wasn't helped by his second English voice actress using a noticeably deeper voice than the original, making it seem like Ash's voice was breaking. Another odd point is the Magnet Train in Goldenrod City, which completed its year-long construction in between EP158 and BW141. Fan-works usually depict Ash as at least thirteen by Sinnoh, with the common theories being either that each arc is one year long, each arc is two years long, or earch Arc is under a year long in the 8-10 month range (depending on how old they want Ash at the time of story). Even with the confirmation that he's still ten in the first episode of Black and White and later Words Of Gods, many fans just ignore that and continue to present Ash as older than he canonically is (which is easy considering how mature looking Ash's Kalos redesign was).
  • A creepy theory is that Pikachu didn't actually save him from the attack of the flock of Spearows in the very first episode; instead, he got into a coma and everything that happened after the attack are merely comatose dreams.
  • When trying to decide how old Ash 'should' be, a few methods are employed. The most basic and widely accepted take, the one that most fans will accept if used, is the idea of one generation being equal to one year. So Ash in Kanto is 10, Ash in Johto is 11, and so on^note Usually the Orange Islands, Battle Frontier, and Decolore Islands are lumped in with Kanto, Hoenn, and Unova for simplicity sake. A few more subjective methods are also used for those who want a different method, including events in series like talk of seasons, the coloration of Deerling, and in-universe events like the Magnet Train. Other methods include treating every episode as a day in universe and mapping Ash's aging to the events of Pikachu and Pichu and the third Movie, though in general fans will accept any explanation used as long as the end result is Ash being older than 10.
  • In regards to other ages it is generally accepted that Misty and Serena are around if not the same age as whatever Ash's is, with Iris being slightly less common but generally treated as around Ash's age. Misty can occasionally be a year or two older. May is generally a bit younger, and Dawn younger still but within a similar enough age range. Brock (who is canonically fifteen) is generally seen as older than Clemont, who is closer to Ash's age. Cilan is further variable. There isn't really a fanon for how old the Alolan and Journeys companions are considered, as while canon implies the latter are his age fans will sometimes make them younger than Ash for a variety of reasons, including playing up Ash's higher level of experience in his and Goh's dynamic and minimizing the questions that come from having a school of kids Ash's age around that Chloe in particular creates.
  • It's frequently cited that Misty is two years older than Ash as mentioned above. This is occasionally used to explain her somewhat risque clothes in the Original Series, and why she's taller and more mature than Ash. This is debunked in-series as she's mentioned being Ash's age more than once (most notably in an early episode where her reaction to waking up to see Ash's Caterpie in her personal bubble was to scream, at least in the Japanese version, "This is the worst possible way a 10-year-old girl could start her day!"). This fanon likely comes from The Electric Tale of Pikachu, a Hotter and Sexier manga adaptation where Misty was age lifted to twelve.
  • Ash's Pikachu is generally written as an adult Pokémon. In canon he has a Vague Age, with the only confirmation being that he was a young Pichu when Ash was six years old in the first episode of Pokémon Journeys, meaning he's at least four years old when the series starts.
• One of the two unseen trainers that received their starters before Ash was the anime counterpart to Leaf, Red's Distaff Counterpart from FireRed and LeafGreen. She is sometimes called "Amanda" (which is one of Leaf's name options).
• Riley is a descendant of Aaron. He looks extremely similar to him and has aura powers like him. Due to development lead times, it's hard to tell if Riley's design in the games was based on Aaron or if Aaron was based off Riley.
• There is one universal Common Tongue in the anime. The games show that the regions speak different tongues, but Ash never seems to come in contact with any language barriers. A Diamond and Pearl episode implied that English as a concept exists separate from whatever language the characters are speaking (most likely Japanese), but that has largely been ignored aside from Rotomdex confirming other languages exist. This fanon also applies to adaptations like Adventures and Pocket Monsters which feature characters talking to ones from other regions with no issues.
• When it comes to Ash's 30 Tauros, many like to imagine that the ones Ash chooses to battle with throughout the series have actually all been the same one Tauros, and is the leader of the herd thanks to its battle experience.
• With SM042 showing a Pidgeot flying around Oak's lab, fans were quick to take to the belief that said Pidgeot is Ash's. Jossed in Journeys which has Ash reuniting with Pidgeot.
• The clones in Pokémon: The First Movie are Opposite Sex Clones. This applies to Mewtwo itself. In the games it has No Biological Sex (or at least no known one), but in the anime it has a male voice. Mew, being small and pink, is pinned as female. In at least the remake Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution, the clones are the same sex as the originals (as Pikachu's clone doesn't have a feminine tail).
• Thanks to Pokémon Sun and Moon, fans have come up with a multitude of theories that Puka from the surfing themed Kanto episode "The Pi-Kahuna" is actually an Alolan Pikachu. The flashback even has Puka washing ashore onto the Kanto region as if the Pikachu somehow ended up floating away from the Alolan Islands.
• Giovanni as Jessie's father occasionally appears to explain why he keeps Jessie around. Even if he isn't her father, it's often assumed that he had an affair with Jessie's mother Miyamoto (with the alternative, for those who think Giovanni was a child before Miyamoto went missing, being that Miyamoto was a Cool Big Sis to him).
• Delia having a Dark and Troubled Past as a Team Rocket member. This is from the non-canon musical Pokémon Live! and is mainly used in works where Giovanni is Ash's dad.
• Ash's aura abilities is is believed to be due to him being related to Sir Aaron through one of his parents. It's a fairly even split in fanfiction if he inherited the ability from his father, or from Delia. If the former it tends to be tied into where Ash's father is at the moment. The latter is always seen when Ash's father is either irrelevant or evil (for example Giovanni.)
• Delia is 29. It's mentioned in Pocket Monsters: The Animation but never clarified in the anime itself. The book is a bit dubious with ages (for example, Ash is several months older than he is in the anime), however fans take Delia's age as canon. You'll occasionally find people rectify Ash's younger status in the anime versus Pocket Monsters the Animation by having her be 28.
• In Jessie/James fan-works, Meowth will near always be a Shipper on Deck for the couple. He's grossed out by their affection but is annoyed at seeing their Unresolved Sexual Tension. Meowth has joked about their relationship in the second movie, but otherwise doesn't mention it.
• Jessie has Commitment Issues and abandonment issues due to her past experiences with love, her time in foster care, and her own Parental Abandonment.
• When giving the main female characters Self-Fanservice, there are a few accepted fanons:
  • May is generally depicted as the most busty of Ash's female companions, generally followed by Misty and Serena (Though what order the two are in following her is often at the writers' discretion and Misty can alternatively be depicted as fairly unbusty if her older self takes from the games more than her anime sisters). On the opposite end are Dawn and Iris, who are rarely given a large bust (though Dawn will generally be given a rather attractive ass often prone to upskirt and panty shots).
  • Misty will typically be depicted asgrowing up to be tall and similar looking to her sisters, with the above wild card of the exact size of her bust.
  • Of the Alolan girls, Mallow is generally given the largest bust, while Lillie and Lana will generally be depicted taking after their mothers in appearance and generally have fanservice emphasis in areas other than bust.
• It's often assumed that Blue's Adapted Out sister Daisy Oak exists in the anime but is either conveniently off-screen or is on a journey.
• How Delia makes an income is never discussed in the show itself. One fanon is that she owns a restaurant, which comes from Pocket Monsters the Animation. Another fanon is that she is a Pokémon researcher (or at least an assistant), which comes from the third movie mentioning she was a student of Oak's in the past. On occasion you will see it implied that Ash sends a lot of money he makes off tournaments or such to her to live on or that Ash's missing father does send money home, though usually if it is discussed Delia earns her own money.
  • Ash earning money as a trainer is also something that is never discussed in series (as prizes tend to be objects like food, citizenship, and held items), though Ash earning money as a trainer is usually the method that is implimented if discussed.
• Similarly, fanon will often implement the idea that Ash does have personal finances, with a general split between the earnings being as they are in the game (he gets money anytime he wins), and this only applying to league or tournament placings.
• Mondo from the 1998 radio drama It's a White Tomorrow, Team Rocket! retired. This is mainly because fans mistook Christopher, an ex-Rocket member who looks like him from a Sinnoh episode, for Mondo. This also explains why he hasn't appeared outside of the radio drama.
• Because they've been close friends for years, many write Delia as being The One That Got Away for Spencer Hale.
• Serena kissed Ash on the lips at the end of XY. They had a Kissing Discretion Shot which made it ambiguous, but the anime had never shyed from cheek kisses so fans speculated that it was a censored mouth-to-mouth kiss. It helps that the following arc has the same thing happen between Professors Burnett and Kukui, a confirmed couple.
• While Ash being called 'the Pride of Pallet Town' is canon, specifically originating from Pokémon 4Ever, him being called 'The Prince of Pallet Town' is entirely fanon, and the title of 'Pride of Pallet Town' is much more widely used than a single narrator quip at the start of a movie.
• The general consensus is that being a "Pokémon Master" involves becoming champion. In canon, no definition of being a Pokémon Master has ever been given and no champion is ever referred to as such. The closest given is that, according to Ash in the I Choose You manga adaptation, it's "above" even being the best trainer in the world.
• Pikachu is often given a Dark and Troubled Past to explain his claustrophobia and his mean behavior during Kanto. Pikachu is usually depicted as either an escaped Pokémon or wild Pokémon, often being caught just the day before. This generally uses elements from The Electric Tale of Pikachu, where he was chewing on wires the night before; and Pokémon Yellow, where the starter Pikachu is randomly caught by Professor Oak just before being given to the player. In canon, Pikachu's life before Ash is unknown. He appears to be unfamiliar with how Pikachu typically act, but nothing outright is ever said about his past. Even when the first episode of Pokémon Journeys: The Series revealed how he evolved, no explanation was given for his initial behavior.
• During the Diamond & Pearl series, there's a theory out there that the Dusknoir used by Conway later on is the same one that saved his life in the episode, "Ghoul Daze." This was never confirmed and Conway never says it's the same one and Ash and his friends don't recognize it either.
• It's never mentioned what Delia studied while Professor Oak's student, but common fan consensus is that she studied botany Pokémon. This gives her a Flower Motif and fits her interest in plants.
• There's fanon that Misty's parents died years ago and Misty's older sisters predominantly raised her.
• Ash's mother Delia was a student of Professor Oak's (and one of his top students at that). Pokémon 3 never explicitly states that Delia was Oak's student. She's depicted in a photo with Spencer and Oak, but Delia looks several years younger than Spencer. The Japanese version says Spencer helped her with homework, which may mean she was a high schooler in the photo but may also mean they were classmates.
• Verity's mother in Pokémon: I Choose You! is Cynthia's younger sister. Fans originally thought she was Cynthia herself, but the movie's director debunked that. Cynthia has a younger sister in the games so fans chock the resemblance to a Strong Family Resemblance.
• Speaking of Strong Family Resemblance, there's a number of fans who believe that Paul (and by extension, his brother Reggie) is related to Brandon in some way (usually his son), due to the heavy resemblance between the two of them, particularly their hairstyle and stern, square-shaped eyes.
• It's typical of fans to play up how much Ash has Seen It All: where in canon he will generally be excited by anything he sees but will often be a bit less freaked at seeing, say, a legendary Pokémon than his regional companion (just enough to catch the companion's notice and disbelief, not enough to not freak out or be excited), in fanfics Ash will often treat this stuff drastically more casually with many fanfics have characters question just how Ash and sometimes his friends can be so casual.
• Ash still having the Pokeballs of his released Pokémon, allowing him to easily bring them into use at any time the series or fanfic writer wants. There is nothing that says Ash doesn't, and even a hint or two that he does here and there (such as Ash giving Professor Oak five Pokeballs before going to Alola when he had only three Pokémon from Kalos with him in his party when he left the region), but at no point was it ever shown that, say, Greninja can't be captured by someone else, or that Ash explicitly still has Butterfree, Pigeot, Goodra, Greninja, and Nagadenal's Pokeballs.
  • Semi-related is the idea that these Pokémon are not legally released a la Paul's method of Pokémon disposal. Again there is nothing saying that Ash did this or did not do this, so fans tend to lean in the direction of 'they are legally still Ash's'.
• May is sometimes depicted as getting a throat condition after her appearance in Diamand and Pearl, rendering her unable to speak and justifying why she didn't see Ash for such a long time afterward, if at all. Of course, this is taken from her Japanese voice actress, Kaori, having said throat condition in real life, which is why May never reappeared in canon short for a non-speaking cameo in ''Journeys''.
• In the Masters Eight tournament of Journeys, it has become a fairly common interpretation of Leon's defeat of Diantha that he used the same Dragapult's Dragon Tail strategy he would later use against Ash: having his Dragapult damage and switch out Diantha's team to weaken it to set up a sweep by his Rillaboom. This would, per the interpretation, explain how his defeat of her was so lopsided and work with several of his exchanges with Diantha (him calling his victory lucky would be in regards of his Dragapult not dragging out Gardevoir, whose Fairy typing would have rendered this strategy moot as Dragon Tail would not affect it). There is no evidence for or against this in canon, as Diantha doesn't comment on the strategy against Ash one way or another.
• The movies will be treated as canon, which they are generally are to the main series with a few exceptions, typically taking place between the episodes the movie debuted between with the odd adjustment here and there for flow purposes (for example, moving Movie 6 a few episodes after its debut to not be set smack in the middle of an arc in Slateport City).
• Delia, or any parent in the anime such as Johanna, Grace, and Meyer without a visibly present partner, being single. Because of the absence of any fathers, or in Meyer's case mother, in relation to the single parent of Ash, Dawn, Serena, and Clemont and Bonnie respectively, most fans tend to default to them being either divorcees, widows or widowers, or having never married. With the non-Delias it is most likely a result of no mention of the other parent at all, combined with the general absence of fathers in the games (at most they get mentioned off handily and are never seen, bar Norman). With Delia the earlier mentioned 'deadbeat or dead' interpretation tends to be the reason, with so little mention of him in the main continuity that it is not hard to imagine him as completely absent (in the movie continuity he is mentioned more, but that is not the main continuity). In general fans, especially western fans, see absent parents as clearly a sign of them not being present in the lives of the family at all, versus the native Japanese fanbase where parents being absent for work for prolonged periods of time is much more common and expected, leading to far less assuming the worst.

Manga

• Pokémon Adventures:
  • Yellow has either amber, yellow, brown, or yellowish-brown eyes depending on the fan-art. This is largely because her official color is hard to figure out.
  • Yellow is a major Shrinking Violet.
  • Red is an orphan. This is due to him being the only Pokédex holder with no known family.
  • The RS arc ends with Ruby and Sapphire being transported to an Alternate Universe, where all future arcs take place. In their 'real' universe there's still an apocalypse going on and they're presumed dead.
• Pokémon: Diamond and Pearl Adventure!: Cyrus as Mitsumi's adopted father. In the manga he took her in, however their relationship is never referred to as a parent/child one.

Miscellaneous

• In Pokémon Live! Delia and Giovanni are shown to have been a couple in the past. The show itself mentions that they dated but Delia broke up with him and married Ash's father. Fans, however, more commonly depict Giovanni as Ash's father. This is helped by Word of God that in an earlier script Giovanni was his father, and even in the final product there were intended to be implications that Giovanni was Ash's dad.

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