Sandbox / Pokemon Characters General

General Player Tropes

• Adapted Out:
  • While all of them have been major characters in Pokémon Adventures and other manga adaptations, many of them (especially the boys) have been passed over by the Pokemon anime, in no small part due to the refusal to retire Ash.
    • None of the Johto main cast took part in the events of Gold or Silver when the anime adapted them, but Ethan and Kris co-starred in The Legend of Thunder under the names Jimmy and Marina, while Silver (under the name Kamon) got a cameo during the special's intro (Marina briefly showed up in an early Diamond and Pearl episode advertising the Pokétch). Jimmy and Marina are, to date, the only male and female protagonists who have met each other.
    • Brendan got to be The Cameo in the opening of Pokémon: Jirachi: Wish Maker, Pokémon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea, and Pokémon: Giratina and the Sky Warrior (the last of which also has Lucas' one and only cameo). Ethan got another cameo in his HGSS design under the name Ethan in Pokémon: Zoroark: Master of Illusions. Wally's gotten nothing.
    • Rei cameos at the end of the Amazon exclusive Legends: Arceus special.
    • Leaf/Green, Calem, and all the protagonists from the fifth and seventh generations have so far failed to appear. Rival Hugh is also absent. (Lillie has been given the Adaptational Badass treatment, being an official Pokémon Trainer, effectively replacing Selene).
  • Several of the above have appeared in Pokémon Generations, including Ethan, Silver, Brendan, Hilbert and Calem (that said, these roles are severely downplayed — Generations replays game events with extra focus on the supporting cast, like Looker and Cynthia).
• Animal Motifs: Many of them are strongly associated with a starter Pokémon or cover legendary, with design motifs from them are sometimes incorporated into their outfits. While the starter they choose is based on the player's choice, there are official artworks that take this concept and run with it. Most notably, Red and Blue are associated with Pikachu and Eevee, respectively.
• Badass Adorable: The majority of the protagonists, male and female, are no older than kids. Generation V's and maybe X and Y's characters are in their teens. They defeat every single trainer in their region, including leaders of the evil teams, the Elite Four and the Champion, can capture Legendary Pokémon (many of which are basically gods), and become the best trainer in their region.
• Child Prodigy: The oldest the protagonists get in the series is 14 in Black and White. They take to Pokémon training instantly and extremely well. Their skill with Pokémon is so great that they are able to defeat adults who have years of experience on them. Many NPCs point out their high affinity for bonding with Pokémon.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Each of them can capture the World of Pokémon's equivalent to Eldritch Abominations (one Gen even allows you to capture the rough equivalent to God).
• Disappeared Dad: The player character generally only has a mother as a regular figure at home; their dad (with the notable exception of Ruby, Sapphire, and their various remakes) is absent, usually without explanation. That said, the characters can be generally assumed to at least have dads, even if they don't show up onscreen, with only the protagonists of Gen II and Pokémon Black and White 2 not mentioning the presence of a father at all:
  • In the Kanto games, examining a certain TV in Celadon Department store will cause the player character to indicate his dad likes sports games.
  • In the Sinnoh games, the player character's father was old friends with Tower Tycoon Palmer.
  • Black and White indicate that the television in the player character's room was bought by their dad.
  • In X and Y, Grace mentions running into the character's father with her Rhyhorn. He also gave the player a PC.
  • In the Alola games, the player character's father is still working in Kanto.
  • In Sword and Shield, Victor's bag is a hand-me-down from his father.
• Dragon Tamer: If they train Dragon-types, they become one by default.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Zigzagged. Plot-critical NPCs seem aware of the fact that by the time you finish the game you've defeated the most powerful trainers in the region, saved the world from the local villainous team, and probably captured at least one Legendary Pokémon in the process. Normal NPCs on the other hand will continue to treat you like a random kid trainer.
• Even the Guys Want Him: This can frequently pop up when playing as a certain gender. Green gets a ton of flirtatious responses from female NPCs due to FireRed and LeafGreen retaining plenty of dialogue from Red and Blue.
• A Father to His Men: Throughout the games, one of the central themes is forming bonds with your Pokémon and taking good care of them. Generation II added the Friendship mechanic, as well as Pokémon that evolve through high friendship, and introduced the move Return, which gets stronger the more your Pokémon likes you. Generation VI expanded on it with the introduction of Pokémon-Amie, allowing you to increase the Affection of your Pokémon by playing with them, feeding them, and petting them. When a Pokémon's Affection is high enough, it may be able to do things like shake off a status ailment or survive an attack that would have knocked it out, out of love for you, its Trainer.
  Recovering from a burn: [Pokémon] blew on its burn and healed it so that [Trainer's name] wouldn't worry!
  Surviving an attack with 1 HP: [Pokémon] toughed it out to show its best side to [Trainer's name]!
  Avoiding an attack: [Pokémon] read [Trainer's name]'s mind and avoided the move!
• Free-Range Children: No one seems to mind that you're just a child who goes through dangerous situations that involve crime organizations and/or Legendary Pokémon who are very dangerous to the health of your mother.
• Friend to All Living Things: They can befriend any Pokémon, from Eldritch Abominations to even the human-hating Mewtwo.
• Friend to Bugs: There is no shortage of insectoid Pokémon they can befriend. This trope can be taken to its logical conclusion with a Bug-type monotype team.
• From Zero to Hero: Just a preteen/teenager from a small town, possibly having just moved there, who goes on to capture Olympus Mons, singlehandedly tear down the local evil organization, and become the strongest Trainer in the region, all without breaking a sweat.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Although they have Canon Names, as protagonists, they can be named whatever the player wants. This applies to a few of the rival characters as well.
• The Hero: As the player character, they're the ones who stop the evil teams from destroying/taking over the world.
• Heroic Mime: As the player character they're usually completely silent besides answering yes or no questions with the occasional internal monologue when examining specific situations. Further Red doesn't speak a word when he appears as a Superboss in later games. However starting in Gen III, the gender not picked would have lines as an NPC. The first scripted lines as a player are in Black 2 and White 2's PokéStar movies. Averted in X and Y going forward the dialogue trees are much more expressive than yes/no, and alter the NPC's immediate reactions (even if it doesn't have much of an impact on how the scene plays out) making it clear that the protagonist is talking, and specific about what they might say.

• Iconic Item: Their hats. Super Smash Bros. even uses them as part of Pikachu's and Jigglypuff's Palette Swaps. Although all the protagonists aside from Red/Green, Hilda/Hilbert, and Kris are seen without it at some point where they temporarily change outfits in their respective games.
• Kid Hero: Until the fourth generation, they were all preteens no older than 12, and while older in later titles (save for Sun and Moon where they're officially 11 again and for Sword and Shield where they're around their tweens), they still never go past their teens.
• Minidress of Power: Green, Dawn, Serena, and Gloria all wear minidresses as part of their default outfits, and they can become the most powerful Trainers in their respective regions. Selene can also wear them via customization options.
• Never Bareheaded: Throughout the first six generations, the protagonists are almost never seen without some sort of headgear (usually a hat, though May wears a bandanna and Nate and Rosa wear visors). The only exceptions are the Pokémon Contests in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl and Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, where Lucas, Dawn, Brendan, and May temporarily go bareheaded. From Sun and Moon onwards, you can ditch the hat.
• Nice Guy: Or girl. All of the protagonists care deeply for their Pokémon and are on friendly terms with most of the supporting cast, often helping out people for little or no personal gain. That being said, Red apparently became fairly detached from his friends in between Gen 1/3 and 2/4 before eventually returning to public life, and the protagonists for Sun and Moon can optionally reply to several requests like a total arse.
• Never Bareheaded: All main characters have a hat (Exceptions being May who wears a bandanna, and the visor-wearing Nate and Rosa, who don't wear hats per se, but nonetheless still sport headgear). While X and Y allows customizing your clothing, it does not allow you to remove your hat even though Calem and Serena appear hatless if they are NPCs. However, starting in Sun and Moon the protagonist can go hatless if they so desire.
• Primary-Color Champion: Lucas in Gen 4, and more specifically his Platinum self, launched the trend for all the boys to be dressed primarily in blue with red as a secondary color, most likely so that their costumes can be adapted easier for the primarily blue-and-red Ash every time he travels to a new region^note He retains his original outfit in Johto, while his Advanced Generation outfit look nothing like Brendan's. The girls generally have more variety in color schemes, like Dawn playing Pink Girl, Blue Boy with Lucas. Before him the dominant colors in protag outfits were red, white, and black. Gen 2 and 3 also had a few splashes of yellow in everyone's outfits.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: The gender of your character typically doesn't affect the story.
• Red Is Heroic: The signature color for the player characters, with almost every protagonist having worn red in their designs. Averted with Hilda and Rosa, whose outfits never feature the color. It's also Downplayed with Brendan, who only wears red in his Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire outfit before switching to orange and green for later titles.
• Related in the Adaptation: In games that feature both protagonists, their families will be different depending on who you play as. It's most noticeable in the Hoenn games, where Brendan or May's father can be either Norman or Professor Birch. Oddly, despite May being Norman's child in the anime, along with Brendan making a few cameos, Birch never even hints at being a father.
• Rummage Sale Reject: Some of their outfits can get weird. For example, Brendan wears shorts over pants in Emerald. It's also possible to create hilariously mismatched outfits if you do desire via Character Customization from X and Y onwards.
• Saving the World: From Generation III and onward, but replace "world" with "all of existence". May and Brendan are the first ones to do it.
• Schrödinger's Player Character: In Crystal, FireRed and LeafGreen, Pokémon Sun and Moon (plus their Ultra versions), and Pokémon Sword and Shield, the character you don't choose never shows up.
• Spanner in the Works: The protagonist in every game is this to the villainous team in some form, eventually leading to defeating them. Hilbert/Hilda from the first Unova games takes the cake since their first interactions with N set off is the first of several things that dismantles Ghetsis' plans.
• Static Role, Exchangeable Character: Except the games with Schrödinger's Player Character, the other player character appears as an NPC but there's no major change to the story.
• Theme Naming: Most trainers have a "version" name taken directly from the title of the games, a pre-release/promotional name that relates to their version name, and a in-game NPC name. The version names are always used in the Adventures manga, and while most other cross-canon counterparts get the NPC name, generally accepted as the overall Canon Name.
  • The Promotional Names tend to follow a theme based on the game they appear in, with the exception of Gen I.
    • Satoshi (Ash) and Shigeru (Gary): Based on creative directors at Nintendo: series creator Satoshi Tajiri, and father of most other names in the Nintendo canon Shigeru Miyamoto. Early-Installment Weirdness used these promo names across many spinoffs and canons, including the 20+ year running main anime making them the most recognizable names in the franchise.
    • In the Let's Go remake of Gen I, the new protagonists' names are Chase and Elaine, with the Rival as Trace. All related to hunting, following, or rather "going."
    • Orlando and Anna: Based on Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.
    • Blair and Whitlea: Meaning roughly Black field and White field.
    • Xavier and Yvonne: Common French names that start with the letters X and Y. They also mean "the new house" and "yew" respectively, corresponding to the fact they just moved to Kalos and the fact that they face a Legendary duo that embodies life and death (which is what the yew is said to symbolize).
    • Elio and Selene: Based on Helios and Selene the Greek sun and moon gods. Updated to Ray and Ailey in the promos for Ultra. Their names relate to light, specifically "beam of light" and "light" in Irish respectively.
    • Victor and Gloria: More obviously glorious victory. A gallant sense of winning appropriate for a region based on the UK, for sword and shield evoking knightly medieval/fantasy weaponry. Alternatively, their names are quoted from the lyrics to the UK's national anthem.
  • Starting from the fourth generation, the Canon Names all follow a seemingly random theme, which is consistent across all languages:
    • Red and Blue (Green), another Early-Installment Weirdness for Gen I. The Version names are used as the canon NPC names for the original Hero and Rival whenever they appear as OptionalBosses. The originally planned female trainer appears as an in-game NPC in Let's Go as Green (Blue) as a nod to how she would've appeared in Gen I proper all along.
    • Ethan and Lyra: Their names are based off of something relating to sound or music, especially string instruments in the case of Lyra.
    • Lucas and Dawn: Names related to light.
    • Hilbert and Hilda: Both their names mean "fight" or "battle".
    • Rosa and Nate: Similarly to the heroes of HGSS, their names also relate to sound, their names sounding like "resonate" when said together.
    • Calem and Serena: "Calm" and "Serene".
    • Kai and Lana: Hawaiian for "Ocean" and "Afloat" respectively, fitting both the abundant water of Gen VII and the Hawaiian Fantasy Counter Part Culture. However these names were only discovered in unused data, and have not seen official use yet. Interestingly enough the female trainer's promo name Mizuki (Selene) has seen official use.
• To Be a Master: Their main motive. Red is one in Generation II, its remakes, and subsequent titles.
• Unique Protagonist Asset:
  • The player characters universally have a greater affinity for Pokémon than basically everyone else on the planet, and can train Pokémon to reach heights of power even beyond trainers who have been working with Pokémon for decades.
  • They are also among the few people to ever be gifted the Pokédex. This gives some some amount of In-Universe Stat-O-Vision as they can analyze monsters they've never seen before, and get even more detailed readouts of monsters they own.
  • Player Characters and Rivals also have access to Starter Pokémon, which come in elements that can have dramatic influence on your progress through the early Gyms (i.e. you can pick a starter that has a type advantage against the first gym leader in no less than five generations' worth of games), while locals are stuck running around with Normal, Flying, and Bug-type Com Mons.
• Virtual Paper Doll: From Gen VI onwards the player character becomes customizable with a wide array of clothes and hair styles. Typically the female player character has a larger selection available, but each successive generation has shortened this gap by giving the male more options to choose from.

General Rival Tropes

• The Ace: They stay competitive with the player character who always becomes the best trainer in the region. They're at least equal to Elite Four Members, if not the Champion, in power by the end of the game.
• Anime Hair: In contrast to the player character's hat, they tend to have instantly recognizable hairstyles.
• Character Development: They get it more than any other NPC. Usually their repeated losses to the player character make them reevaluate their motives or methods by the end of the game.
• Characterization Marches On: According to the developers, due to technical limitations of older games, early rivals were written as jerks because dialogue was really the only thing that they could give them to stand out and the rest the player would fill in with their imagination. As graphics and character acting have gotten more detailed and expressive, rivals have gotten friendlier since having a fully rendered jerk might be off putting. Seen most directly in the evolution from Blue in the Gen I games to Trace in the Let's Go remakes: Oak states that Blue lost to Red because he used his Pokémon as tools and had forgotten to treat them with trust and love, but Trace lost to Chase/Elaine because his kind heart causes him to hold back in battle instead of going all out.
• Child Prodigy: They seem to be the only NPCs to level grind to keep up with the player character.
• Deuteragonist: In most cases, their Character Development parallels the player's own journey and how they've grown through battling and interacting with them.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: The rival will typically pick whichever starter holds an elemental advantage to what you picked.
• Fire-Forged Friends: If they don't start off as True Companions to the player, they will be by the end of the game.
• Free-Range Children: Like the protagonist, they're young children going on adventures without adult supervision.
• Friendly Rival: From Generations III through VI, all rivals are pleasant fellows who are good friends with you, even if they sometimes overlap with Vitriolic Best Buds. Generations VII and VIII have a mix of friendly rivals (Hau, Hop, Marnie) and not-so-friendly (Gladion, Bede, Klara, Avery).

• Guest-Star Party Member: If you get dragged into a two-on-two Multi Battle, chances are high they're gonna be the ones who have your back.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Although they have Canon Names, a few of them can be named by the player.
• Leitmotif: Most get their own theme, as well as their own battle theme if standalone, often reflecting their personality.
• Privileged Rival: Several rivals' parents or other relatives are superstars in the Pokémon World, researchers, mob bosses, Gym Leaders, Frontier Brains, Champions etc.
• Recurring Boss: They must be fought several times throughout the games' main story. Most games also offer a way to fight them repeatedly after the story is over.
• The Rival: To the protagonist.
• Signature Mon: Generally, their preferred Pokémon is their starter, and it's usually the one that's strong against the one you chose at the start of the game. There are a few Rivals whose starter is weak against yours however, like Bianca and Hau. Aside from the starters, some Rivals will also use a Pokémon from an elemental group that will vary depending on your choice of starter. These Pokémon can sometimes cover their own starter's weaknesses, and some Rivals even have a third Pokémon in this grouping to cover their bases type wise, allowing them to use all three types that the starters share.
  • In Red and Blue and Fire Red and Leaf Green, Blue will have Exeggutor, Arcanine, and Gyarados, statistically the strongest Pokémon of their types in Gen I, but he will use the corresponding starter in place of any of them. In Yellow, he has an Eevee instead, which will evolve depending on how many times you've defeated him early in the game.
  • Aside from Blue, Calem/Serena and Hau also use Eeveelutions. Calem and Serena's Eeveelution cover their starter's weakness (such as having Jolteon to fight Water types that threaten their Delphox), while Hau's Eeveelution has an advantage against your starter. To avoid type overlap with his Alolan Raichu, he can have Leafeon rather than Jolteon.
  • Cheren, Bianca, and Hugh all use the elemental monkeys. Cheren uses the one that matches your starter's type, covering his own starter's weakness, Bianca uses the one that is advantageous against your starter, while Hugh uses the one that's weak to your starter.
  • The type of Gladion's signature Mon, Silvally, can be either Fire, Water or Grass and it will be in advantage over the protagonist's starter. In the Ultra games, his Champion Title Defense team will have a Kanto starter that matches the type of the starter you chose.
• Static Role, Exchangeable Character: Occasionally the Rival happens to be the character you don't choose as your player character.
• To Be a Master: Their main motive is to either become masters via the Pokémon League, complete the Pokédex, or just become stronger than the protagonist.

Gym Leaders

• Adaptation Personality Change:
  • Inverted by Yellow, which integrated some of their characteristics from the anime with their game selves; this has influenced some of their ongoing design in repeat appearances, such as Misty's connection to Togepi.
  • HeartGold and SoulSilver give the leaders of Kanto and Johto a few extra character flourishes for comedic effect—Lt. Surge likes cute Pokémon, Erika is a wicked gossip, Clair is a tsundere, etc.—but these extra traits largely exist only in their games of origin.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: It's implied that particularly powerful trainers can be appointed Gym Leaders by the Pokémon League, and some of them even turned out to be the authority figure of the place where they locate their Gyms.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: They are universally much more powerful than the other Trainers in their Gyms and usually the strongest trainers in the game up to that point. While their levels vary due to the typically linear nature of the games, in the story, the Gym Leaders are usually considered the most powerful Trainers in the region bar the Elite Four and Champion.
• Badass Adorable: Several Gym Leaders are young children and cute girls, still doesn't change the fact they're among some of the strongest Trainers in the region.
• Badass Family: Many Gym Leaders are related to each other or to powerful Trainers in the same region:
  • From Generation II, Janine runs the Fuchsia Gym while her father Koga holds a position in the Elite Four. Falkner also inherited the Violet Gym from his father, and Blackthorn Gym Leader Clair is the cousin of Kanto champion Lance, as well as a descendant of a long line of Dragon-type Trainers.
  • From Generation III, Norman is Leader of the Petalburg Gym and also the player character's father. Flannery is Leader of the Lavaridge Gym and her grandfather was a former member of the Hoenn Elite Four. Psychic twin siblings Tate and Liza represent the Mossdeep Gym.
  • From Generation IV, Byron and Roark are a father-son pair of miners who represent Canalave Gym and Oreburgh Gym.
  • From Generation V, triplets Cilan, Chili, and Cress run the Striaton Gym together. Depending on the version, you'll fight either Drayden or his granddaughter Iris in Opelucid Gym, while in the sequels Drayden is the Opelucid Gym Leader and Iris is the Unova Champion.
  • From Generation VI, Korrina is the Shalour Gym Leader and the granddaughter of Gurkinn, an expert on Mega Evolution.
  • From Generation VIII, the Gym Leader of Circhester will either be Gordie or his mother Melony depending on the version. Piers, the Gym Leader of Spikemuth, is the older brother of Marnie, one of the player's rivals and a very popular Trainer. In the post-game, Marnie has taken over Piers' position as Spikemuth Gym Leader herself.
  • Also in Generation VIII, it's noted the Galar region Psychic gym leaders have always been members of the same family line, and they are also known as powerful psychics themselves. Course since they currently are not among the 8 Major Division gym leaders you don't actually get to meet or fight any of them, except for Avery (who has not yet inherited the position) in the Shield version of Isle of Armor.
• Badass Teacher: Morty states that training young people in the ways of Pokémon battle is also the duty of a Gym Leader. Accordingly, most Gyms are filled with the disciples of the resident Leader, who the player must defeat in order to reach the Leader themselves (a few leaders, such as Jasmine, don't actually have any disciples).
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • In the Spanish translation, Generation I Gym Leaders are the only ones to keep their English names (barring punctual exceptions such as Iris). This extends to the Elite Four and even Professor Oak too, but it's more noticeable in the Leaders not just because there are 8 of them but also because the Kanto Elite Four names aren't particularly English-sounding (Bruno even is a Spanish name).
  • Before being Willfully Weak became a uniting trope for Gym Leaders, in the early generations they were sometimes depicted as being truly as weak/strong as they are when you fight them in the story. Falkner in Gen II, for instance, was noted to not even own the Pokémon he used, as they were actually his father's.
• Elemental Powers: Each Gym Leader specializes in a single type of Pokémon, although some Gym Leaders might throw in a Pokémon of a different type as a curve ball. The main exception to this however, is Blue, and so he uses a diverse team of Pokémon based on his Champion team.
• Floral Theme Naming: In Japanese, all Gym Leaders are named after types of plants. For the Galar Gym Leaders in Gen VIII, the plant theme is largely kept for their English names as well.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: The Kanto Gym Leaders in Gen II and the remakes, the Sinnoh Gym Leaders, and the Kalos Gym Leaders each consist of 4 female Gym Leaders and 4 male Gym Leaders.
• Graceful Loser: Most Gym Leaders are accepting of their losses, congratulating you on your victory and giving you the earned TM and Badge with well wishes. There are exceptions though, most (in)famously Whitney and Clair.
• Improbable Power Discrepancy: A gym leader's strength scales with the player's progress through their game, so despite their official League standing leaders fought early on will be weaker than the common trainers and Mooks you encounter midway through. Multiple adaptations indicate leaders select their team to meet a challenger's level, which appears to have become canon late in the fifth generation, judging from Cheren's comment that he can't use his main team as a gym leader. Starting with Emerald, most if not all Gym Leaders will rematch the player in the post game, letting the player see them at their full strength.
• Poor, Predictable Rock:
  • As they focus on a single type, they really test you on your knowledge of type matchups. Bring an advantageous type to their fight and you'll usually prevail. As both the series went on and the further you progress into the game however, the Gym Leaders start to acquire stronger Pokémon with better movepools and abilities, making their teams tougher to deal with even if they're still all the same type.
  • Zigzagged in the Stadium games; a leader's team will observe their designated type in Round One, but their Round Two team is free to include anything they want.
• Punny Name: Every Gym Leader's name is a pun that relates to their type or is otherwise meaningful in some way. For example, Brock is a Rock-type Trainer, and Misty is a Water-type Trainer. Their names in the Japanese version occasionally combine puns related with their type specialty/traits with the Floral Theme Naming frequently used there. For example, the "take" in "Takeshi" (Brock's Japanese name) not only stands for "岳" (mountain peak), but also "竹" (bamboo).
• Red Baron: Everyone gets a cool title that describes some facet of their specializing type.
• Signature Mon: For the Gym Leaders, this trope works on two levels.
  • Each Gym Leader specializes in a certain Type of Pokemon and all the Pokemon in their gym battle (and rematch, when available) are of that type. (Some leaders are indicated — in spinoffs like the original Stadium games or the TCG — to have Pokemon outside their specified Main type).
  • Every Gym Leader further has a signature Pokémon (or several) that they're associated with, which tends to be the highest-leveled member of their team and are nearly always sent out last. When fought in the Pokémon World Tournament in Black 2 and White 2, the Gym Leaders always send out their signature Pokémon first.
• Signature Move: Every Gym Leader gives out a TM, near-universally teaching an attacking move of their specialty type. Accordingly, they will have taught that move to most of their Pokémon. Prior to Generation III, the moves these TMs taught could only be learned by TM, giving you one chance to teach the Gym Leader's move to a Pokémon. In Gen III and beyond, several such TM moves became naturally available to many other Pokémon, making the Gym Leader's connection to the specific move weaker, but still present.
• Threshold Guardians: Their primary purpose is to test trainers. Only trainers who beat eight of them in a region are dubbed worthy of challenging the League. Further, their badges often enable the use of Hidden Machines, special techniques allowing the player to traverse obstacles in the field.
• Willfully Weak: They hold back and/or use weaker teams against challengers who are too low-level to face them at full power, since they exist to test your skill as a trainer, not to stop your journey cold. In games where you can have rematches with them, they show off their full power, where they're all on a roughly equal power level on-par with the Elite Four. This trope becomes more explicit as the generations go on, with Cheren in Gen V noting that he's not allowed to use his main team in gym battles, and in Gen VIII Nessa outright tells the player character that the gym challenge battles are indeed only "test battles" and that it's only after clearing all eight that the Gym Leaders will fight a challenger at full strength.
• Wrestling Doesn't Pay: Many Gym Leaders have secondary jobs/hobbies that are also mentioned in their official titles. Sometimes they relate to their preferred type, sometimes they don't. In some cases, their gyms also double as their non-gym-related place of business. Many of them are just gym leaders, though.

The Elite Four in general

• All-Powerful Bystander: They generally stay out of the way of the main plot, even when it would be good for them to get involved.
  • If you talk to Marshal after you beat him in B/W, he mentions that Alder ordered them to be neutral. This is also discussed in Gen I and the remakes, where a hopeful kid says "wouldn't it be cool if the Elite Four came here and kicked Team Rocket's butt?" Naturally, they never do and you have to do the dirty work yourself.
  • Lorelei does return to the Sevii Islands to help defend a cave from Team Rocket in the postgame of the remakes. Some dialogue in FR/LG implies that she's left her post to defend the island in the future afterwards.
  • Malva takes it to a new level in that she was a member of Team Flare.
  • The Alolan Elite Four isn't formed until after you beat the villainous team, but Hala is seen partnering with Tapu Koko to fight an Ultra Beast unleashed by Lusamine.
  • Averted in Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee, where Lorelei fights off a trio of Rocket grunts that try to gang up on the player character, and Blue later mentions he intends to call on Kanto's Elite Four, if necessary, to help get rid of Team Rocket.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Toughest trainers in the region. The games that feature them in sequential arrangements (from Gold and Silver on) also further exploit this trope by having members of the Elite Four that come later in sequence almost always specialize in types that are weak to or resisted by preceding members, and therefore implying them to be even more badass: Will's Psychic specialty precedes Koga's Poison, Glacia's Ice Pokémon are followed by Drake's dragons, Flint's Fire types come after Bertha's Ground types, etc.
• Badass Crew: Though they never fight together, they're the toughest trainers you can fight, at least until the postgame; even after, they tend to be the among the toughest.
• Boss Bonanza: They're all in the one location. From Gen I-IV, they're fought one after another in a set order, and from Black and White onwards, you can fight them in any order as their levels are all the same, though you fight the Champion after dealing with all four.
• Boss Corridor: From Gen I-IV, you walk between the rooms they're in. This was stopped from Gen V onwards, but returns with a vengeance in Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire.
• Dare to Be Badass: Their mere existence basically serves as this to all trainers in their region, as beating them and then the Champion is seen as one of the hardest things to do, and for good reason.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: Your end goal is to do this to them.
• Elite Four: The trope namer. They're not bad guys, but excluding the Champion, there are always four. No more, no less. Their Japanese name even uses the traditional name Shitennō (四天王) to reflect this.
• Floral Theme Naming: Kalos's and Alola's Elite Four members all reference flowering plants in their names.
• Graceful Loser: They always lose with dignity. The closest that they get to anger at you is disbelief.
• Later-Installment Weirdness: In Pokémon Sword and Shield, the Galar region does not have an Elite Four. Instead, it has a Champion Cup where the Player Character has to fight two of their rivals (Marnie and Hop) in the Semifinal Round (plus an interruption by Bede); three gym leaders in the Final Round; and then the Champion, Leon.
• The Notable Numeral: The Elite Four.
• Obstructive Code of Conduct: The Unova Elite Four reveal that they aren't actually allowed to interfere with challengers outside of their assigned battles. Not even the king of Team Plasma openly announcing that he'll use the champion title for his own agenda is enough to make them break this code.
• Personality Powers: Most tend to behave in relation to their types, but there are exceptions.
• Pre-Final Boss: The final Elite Four member is the last thing standing in the way of the player and the Champion, though starting with Generation V this isn't set in stone since the player no longer has to face the Elite Four in a predetermined order.
• Sequential Boss: Four in a row, followed by the Champion. In Black and White, you take on the Elite Four, then the legendary, then N, and then Ghetsis.
• Smurfette Principle: Karen in Gen II's Elite Four, and Bertha in Gen IV's. Inverted in Gen VII, with Hala (in the original Sun and Moon) or Molayne (in Ultra Sun and Moon) as the only male.
• Threshold Guardians: They act as the final obstacles between a trainer and Champion.
• Took a Level in Badass: An integrated mechanic, appearing in Fire Red/Leaf Green, Platinum, Heart Gold/Soul Silver, Black/White, Black 2/White 2, Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire, and Sun/Moon, which can take quite a few new players off guard. The Elite Four's level will often rise from anywhere between 15-20 levels depending on the generation, with more powerful Pokémon in place of weaker ones. Additionally, owing to the Pokédex being upgraded, they can use Pokémon that aren't normally in that region.

General Champion Tropes

The Champions in general

• The Ace: As the Champion, they're supposed to be the strongest trainers of their respective regions.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: It's implied they have some sort of legal authority, though it's not made clear exactly what their exact responsibilities are.
• Big Good: ZigZagged throughout the series. Some Champions act as guides for the protagonists throughout their journey but leave stopping the evil teams's plots to them (Steven, Cynthia, Alder, Kukui), some don't do anything noteworthy outside the League (Iris, Diantha), while others are actually shown patrolling and defending the region (Lance, Leon).
• Boss Bonanza: They're at the end of one against the Elite Four.
• Color Motif: With the exception of Blue and Trace, the Champions are always assoiated with a specific color that shows either in their Champion room, battle screen or clothes.
  • Lance: Vermilion.
  • Steven: Purple.
  • Wallace: Cyan.
  • Cynthia: Black.
  • Alder: Dark Red.
  • Iris: Violet.
  • Diantha: White.
  • Leon: Burgundy.
• Dare to Be Badass: Their mere existence basically serves as this to all trainers in their region, as beating the Elite Four and then the Champion is seen as one of the hardest things to do, and for good reason.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: Your end goal is to do this to them.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In Generation I, while those who defeated the Elite Four were always called Champions, the concept of a standing Champion (that is one who serves as a final challenge after defeating the Elite Four) didn't exist, and it was implied that the League's Elite Four was led by the member that faces the challenger last. Starting from Generation II, a standing Champion is introduced to lead the Elite Four and gets faced only after the others are defeated. This is explained in detail in Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! where the decision to change how the Elite Four and Champion work is discussed at the end of the game.
• Fighting Your Friend: With Blue being the notable exception, the Champions are friendly to the player, with some of them also serving as mentor figures who provide guidance to the player in their journey, and Trace being the player's friendly rival, then the player challenges the Champion for the title in a climatic battle.
• Final Boss: They're the last big challenge of the main story (or in Mustard's case, the DLC story) before the credits roll. Averted with Alder, as you have to beat N and Ghetsis instead, and you can only battle against Alder in post-game.
• Graceful Loser: They almost always lose with dignity, with the closest that they get to anger being disbelief.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: A meta-example. While the player is capable of using 6 Pokémon from the moment they get their starter, most NPC opponents do not use 6 Pokémon, except for Rivals (and only near the end of the game) and Pokémon Breeders (in some games, and their teams tend to be weaker than the average trainers in the area to make up for that). Champions however, always have a full team.
• King Incognito: While Alder and Leon introduce themselves as the Champions immediately, and Blue and Trace weren't the Champions until the end, usually the Champion is a recurring character who doesn't show any signs of their status aside from a few clues until you defeat the Elite Four.
• Personality Powers: Zig-Zagged. Some of them have their personalities and teams built around a general theme (around a specific type or motif), while others don't.
• Signature Mon: While as individuals they all have their own ace, as a whole, they favor Fossil Pokémon and the pseudo-legendaries ^note  Powerful non-Legendary, non-Mythical Pokémon with a three-stage evolution line and a base stat total of 600 before Mega Evolving.. Starter Pokémon as well as other powerful Pokémon that don't meet the definition of a pseudo-legendary, such as Gyarados, Milotic and Aggron, have also shown up in a number of Champion teams. Many of the Champions also include at least one Dragon-type Pokémon in their teams, even if they do not specialize in Dragon types.
• Walking Spoiler: Generally, the Champions fall into this, since the game keeps the identity of the Champion a secret until the player faces them in the Pokémon League, until the games have been out for long enough, by which point, the identity of the Champion becomes something everybody knows. The only exceptions are Alder and Leon, who are casually introduced as Champions in the first five minutes of their screentime.

Villain Teams

• Authority Equals Asskicking: Higher-ups tend to be more than a step-up compared to the average Grunts, with the Leaders being the toughest of them all with a tendency towards mixed typing.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: Multiple villain teams have schemes that involve stealing Pokémon, exploiting them for profit, or trying to harness the power of the region's legendary for their Evil Plan. That said, many of the villainous team leaders have a Crobat on their team, which can only evolve through friendship. Maxie, Archie, and Lysandre can also Mega Evolve their Camerupt, Sharpedo, and Gyarados respectively, which requires a strong bond between the Trainer and the Pokémon to work.
• Bat Out of Hell: Grunts of any team will frequently have a batlike Pokémon on hand. Crobat is often used as a method of showing that they're not all bad, because Golbat can only evolve into Crobat if it shares a deep personal friendship bond with it's trainer.
• Cats Are Mean: They frequently have the region's resident cat on hand. Particularly noteworthy ones include Glameow, Purrloin and, of course, Meowth.^note that's right!
• Chest Insignia: All of their standard uniforms have their symbol on the chest.
• Dark Is Evil: Grunts in most teams seem to favor Dark types. Justified in Sword and Shield, where Team Yell is a group of Trainers from the Dark-type Gym — but then again, they're not evil, just obnoxious.
• The Dog Bites Back: Starting in Gen III, the villainous teams often try to take control of Legendary Pokémon to exploit their powers. It never goes well for them and almost inevitably backfires (with Team Plasma being the only ones to successfully exploit a legendary...twice, actually). This is most prominent in X and Y, where once you rescue Xerneas/Yveltal from Team Flare, the game gives you to the chance to switch it into your team so you can use it against Lysandre.
• Highly-Conspicuous Uniform: Their outfits tend to be pretty loud.
• Mooks: Perhaps the most notable feature of the teams' grunts is that they are the only trainer class not to be given individual names. Sun and Moon even makes jokes about how everyone in Team Skull is named "Grunt".
• Only in It for the Money: Team Rocket, Team Plasma's leadership, and Team Flare's grunts fall under this category; Team Galactic also went in this direction very briefly when they were under Charon's leadership. Team Skull also desires money, but this is only a secondary goal and they're really in it for family bonds with each other and respect from everyone else.
• Pet the Dog: Many Team Admins and Bosses tend to have a Crobat in their team. Crobats can only evolve from Golbats that have max friendship with their trainers. Though they could have stolen them, gotten them through trades, or otherwise acquired them without expressing care for them. In the Gen VI games, Lysandre, Maxie and Archie gain the ability to Mega Evolve one of their Pokémon, something they could only do if they shared a strong bond with them.
• Poison Is Evil: Poison-types are a common choice for grunts in all teams.
• Primary-Color Champion: Teams Rocket, Galactic, Plasma, and Skull provide villainous inversions; as while the player characters in all games wear primary colors, these Teams favor blacks, whites, and greys in contrast.
• Recurring Element: Regardless of the Team, there are three Recurring Element Pokémon its minions will almost always favor: The region's early game mammal/rodent (Raticate, Patrat, Yungoos, etc.), the region's annoying bat (Zubat, Woobat, etc.) and the region's cat (Meowth, Purrloin, Glameow, etc.)
• Signature Mon: While there is some regional variation, it is telling that every single team based in a region with the Zubat line in its regional Pokédex uses them. (The outliers being Team Yell and the Black 1 and White 1 version of Team Plasma.)
• Stealth Pun: Several teams' Japanese names are rendered as "[X]-dan" ("dan" translating to "Team"), which can also be read as "bullet". For example, "Rocket-dan" can be "rocket bullet".
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Hoo boy. While one can be excused for not doing their job when their Pokemon are disabled, every single team without fail is limited by the types or groups of Pokemon available to them ^spoiler Team Yell are exempt due to being Spikeburg Gym Trainers in actuality, and the Aether Foundation defies this for the most part, fall victim to the tripwire mentality ^note They are only able to detect trainers who are in a straight line in front of them outside of cutscenes and tend to not take valuable items like keycards with them when they're defeated.
• Theme Naming: Applied to several characters, with each team having a different theme.
• Walking Spoiler: It's difficult to talk about the teams and their leaders, especially in later generations, without hitting something significantly spoileriffic.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Teams Aqua, Magma, Galactic, Plasma, and the leaders of Team Flare are all aiming to do what they think is best for the world. Well, Plasma's leaders claim to, but many of the grunts buy into it. Team Yell's goal is smaller (supporting a friend and trying to bring promotion for their hometown that needs help), but they still take things too far.
• You Dirty Rat!: You can pretty much always assume that the villain team of any given region will have that region's Com Mon mammal, which is usually some sort of rodent.