Trivia / Pokémon Detective Pikachu

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• Acting for Two: Pikachu and Harry Goodman are both played by Ryan Reynolds. This is because he's not actually playing two separate characters.
• Actor-Shared Background: Just like his actor Justice Smith, Tim is half-black, half-white, though the parentages are different – Smith's father is black, Tim's father is white. The actors' ages are appropriate as well. Many viewers thought Ryan Reynolds was too young to have an adult son, but he is indeed old enough to be Justice Smith's father. A young father since they're only 19 years apart, but still.
• All-Star Cast: The film has quite the cast, including Ryan Reynolds, Ken Watanabe, Bill Nighy, and Rita Ora.
• Ascended Fanon: The fandom's use of replacing God in phrases with Arceus is used by Pikachu at one point, though he does say "God" at least twice in the film as well. By extension, the movie uses the fandom's pronunciations of franchise-related terms and names rather than the anime's, most notably with the word "Pokémon" itself.^note "Poh-kuh-mon", as if the accent above "e" is nonexistent, over the more proper "Poh-kay-mon".
• California Doubling: Ryme City is very obviously London, complete with distinctive Routemaster buses and cars driving on the left-hand side of the road (and Pret-A-Mangers). Other landmarks that prominently appear include the Gherkin and King's Cross Station as Tahnti Station.
• Celebrity Voice Actor:
  • Ryan Reynolds stars as the title character, there’s a good reason for this.
  • Many of them in the Japanese dub:
    • Pikachu is voiced by movie actor Hidetoshi Nishijima, who some anime fans would recognize him as the voice of Kiro Honjo in The Wind Rises. He also replaces Tōru Ōkawa as the voice of the same character from the original game and also Yasuyuki Kase, who is Ryan Reynolds' regular dub voice actor in Japan.
    • Tim Goodman is voiced by movie actor Ryoma Takeuchi, rather than Yūma Uchida from the Japanese version of the source game. He also does a brief cameo in the original English version as a random trainer (With some actually referring to his cameo as Red), being one of the few times a foreign voice actor does an on-screen role in a movie they did dub work for.
    • Lucy Stevens is voiced by the fashion model Marie Iiyoto.
• Channel Hop: Originally a Universal co-production until tensions between Legendary and Universal resulted in Warner Bros. taking over distribution— which brings things full circle in a way, as the first three theatrical films were distributed by them (since Pokémon was Kids' WB!'s flagship series at the time).
• Converted Fanboy: Going into the movie, Bill Nighy had little knowledge of the Pokémon franchise and was only familiar with the trading card game and Pokémon GO. By the end of production, he quickly became a fan and bought as many Pokémon guides as possible to gain more knowledge of the franchise.
• Creator Couple: Héctor Emmanuel Gómez, the Latin American Spanish voice of Roger Clifford, is the husband of Karla Falcón, who voiced Ann Laurent.
• Development Hell: A sequel was announced just four months before release. There hasn't been any news since then, likely due to the film not performing as well as the studio had hoped. Justice Smith has gone on record saying that he's not sure if it will happen, and tensions between Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures have only further clouded prospects. Thankfully, as of March 2023, Portlandia co-creator Johnathan Krisel was announced as being in negotiations to direct the sequel, with The Kings of Summer screenwriter Chris Galleta writing the script.
• Directed by Cast Member: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Héctor Emmanuel Gómez is the voice of Roger Clifford as well as the dub's ADR director.
• Executive Meddling:
  • Plans for a live-action Pokémon film go as far back as 2012 when producers Cale Boyter, Mary Parent, and Ali Mendes all tried to convince The Pokémon Company to give it a shot, but the company wasn't interested at all. The producers would make monthly meetings with TPC executives to throw around any idea for a live-action Pokémon they could. At one point, Paramount expressed interest in working with the producers for the movie, but the talks fell through. It wasn't until the release of Pokémon GO, along with Parent joining Legendary Pictures as vice-chairman of worldwide production, that TPC felt warm to the idea, and even then, it was their call, not the producers', to adapt Detective Pikachu first before moving on to anything else.
  • The Pokémon Company tried to keep Mr. Mime from appearing in the movie because they knew he wouldn't come out well in live-action. Rob Letterman ended up having to pitch the whole idea personally to TPC's president to cajole them into letting him appear.
  • It was also The Pokémon Company's idea to have Ryme City ban battling and using Pokéballs, wishing to show a different, "more elevated" relationship between Pokémon and people.
  • They are also very protective of Ash Ketchum and forbade any reference to him from being made, even going as far as forbidding Tim from wearing a cap.
  • They are similarly protective of Professor Oak and his legacy, as any and all plans to include him were immediately vetoed with the death of their preferred actor.
  • The filmmakers worked very closely with the games' artists in creating the new Pokémon designs, with Ken Sugimori providing detailed notes on the film's concept art to the point he actually made renditions of the movie characters and put them all in the credits. There was also a "Pokémon expert" on set that assisted with names, genders, and terminology.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: "Electricity", the credits song performed by Lil Uzi Vert and Honest Boyz and produced by Pharell, has yet to receive any type of official release. Henry Jackman's rendition of the original games' title music has also not received an official release of any kind.
• Kids' Meal Toy: Burger King had a set of six toys in their Kids' Meals; Detective Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Psyduck, Loudrid, Arkani, and Mewtwo. This marked their first Pokémon-related promotion since 2009.
• Meaningful Release Date: In the movie, it's stated that it's been twenty years since Mewtwo was created. The American release of Pokémon: The First Movie, which featured Mewtwo's birth, was released in North America 20 years before Detective Pikachu got released. The protagonist Tim, on the other hand is 21, which means he was born in 1998, which is the year Pokémon: The Series premiered in North America.
• Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor:
  • Ken Watanabe is dubbing himself in Japanese.
  • Omar Chaparro is dubbing himself as Sebastian in the Latin American Spanish dub.
• Network to the Rescue: Universal's decision to drop the film from their slate during filming left Legendary Pictures scrambling to find a new distributor. Warner Bros., who had been divorced from the Pokémon franchise for over a decade and wanted to produce the film themselves, was in the midst of reconciling with Legendary and saw the perfect opportunity to do what they wanted to do from the start: produce a Pokémon movie.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Owing to the film's more realistic tone, the Pokémon have mostly been recast with other actors instead of bringing back anyone from the show or games. Among the recasts, David Errigo Jr. voices Cubone while Jon Olson, Fred Tatasciore and Jessica Gee-George (among others) voice other, as of yet unspecified Pokémon.
  • An interesting twist happens in the Japanese dub, as Mewtwo's male voice is voiced by Kōichi Yamadera, instead of Masachika Ichimura in the animated films. It should be noted that Yamadera originally voiced Mew, the Pokémon which Mewtwo is based to. Likewise, Eevee and his evolutions are voiced by Wakana Ningyo, rather than Aoi Yūki, through she already voiced Lana's (Suiren) Eevee in Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon.
  • In the same way in the Latin American Spanish dub, Mewtwo's male voice is voiced by Idzi Dutkiewicz, rather than Enrique Mederos, as the latter passed away.
• Permanent Placeholder: The detective movie playing in Harry's apartment wasn't specified in the script. As a laugh, editor Mark Sanger and director Rob Letterman inserted a copy of the fictional gangster movie from Home Alone, Angels with Filthy Souls from YouTube as a placeholder. Nothing could ever top it so they decided to see if they could license it for use in the final film. Miraculously, it was approved.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • One of the concept artists for the film is RJ Palmer, who previously made Fan Art of Realistic Pokémon.
  • Both Justice Smith and Kathryn Newton grew up with the franchise.
• Real-Life Relative: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Alejandro Orozco, who voices Tim Goodman, is the son of Howard Clifford's voice actor, José Luis Orozco.
• Role Reprise:
  • Ikue Otani provides Detective Pikachu's voice when he's speaking to humans that aren't Tim.
  • Archival recordings of Rachael Lillis are used for Jigglypuff.
  • In the Japanese dub, the supporting Pokémon are voiced by the voice actors who voice them in the anime, with some exceptions.
  • In the Brazilian Portuguese dub, Guilherme Briggs reprises Mewtwo from the first movie.
• Same Content, Different Rating: In the US and UK, it is rated PG. In some other countries such as Indonesia, it's rated G.
• So My Kids Can Watch: Quoted more or less verbatim by Reynolds.
• Trolling Creator: Ryan Reynolds "accidentally" uploaded the entire movie onto YouTube a couple of days before it released. 69 seconds in, it turns into a 90-minute video of Pikachu dancing.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Danny DeVito, Dwayne Johnson, Hugh Jackman and Mark Wahlberg were considered to voice Pikachu before the casting of Ryan Reynolds.
  • Katherine Langford, Natalia Dyer and Haley Lu Richardson read for the role of Lucy Stevens before Kathryn Newton was cast.
  • Tim Miller, Jon Favreau, Robert Rodriguez, Andrew Adamson, Mark A.Z. Dippé, Dean Israelite, Shane Acker and Chris Wedge were considered to direct the movie before Rob Letterman was hired.
  • Alex Hirsch was originally credited as a screenwriter. He left the project during the early brainstorming sessions to pursue other projects, never writing a single page of the script.
  • Columbia Pictures, Netflix and Warner Bros. were candidates to help produce the movie, but Legendary Pictures managed to make a more convincing proposal than the former three. Warner and Netflix, in particular, were said to be more aggressive in their efforts, with Warner having had more experience in the Pokémon franchise due to releasing the first three anime films worldwide outside Japan. Fortunately for Warner, failing negotiations with then-Legendary partner studio Universal resulted in Warner eventually getting a piece of the pie after all.
  • The film was actually going to be mostly inspired by the main games and have Pokémon trainers as the main characters, but The Pokémon Company wanted to center the film entirely on Pikachu in order to both make it more marketable and to see if audiences were actually interested in seeing a live-action Pokémon movie before doing anything else. Max Landis (of Chronicle fame) pitched a screenplay where a boy named Red^note the Canon Name of the player character in Pokémon Red and Blue, the son of a masterful Pokémon trainer, begins to feel hostility to Pokémon after his mother had a falling out with her team of trainers, called Team Rocket (no relation to the gang from the games and anime). Landis left the production after Legendary and The Pokémon Company went the Detective Pikachu route.
  • The Pokémon Company felt a live-action Mr. Mime would be too disturbing and was hesitant to allow the team to use the character. Letterman had to pitch the idea of the Mr. Mime scene directly to company president Tsunekazu Ishihara to get the green light.
  • A great number of Pokémon were planned to appear in the movie (about 100) but it was slimmed down to about sixty species. A few species that were considered but didn't make the cut were Steelix, Beldum, Durant, Golbat, and Gardevoir. The modeling team made Sawk and showed it to the Pokémon Company, only to be told that the gi is supposed to be Sawk's skin. They couldn't figure out how to realize that, so Sawk went scrapped. Note that Pokémon Black and White indicate that wild Throh (and by association Sawk) make their belts out of vines, so the Pokémon Company could be mistaken or could have retconned the physiology. (Although it's possible that the belts are still made from vines, but the rest of the "uniform" is skin.)
  • One of the cut sets was a museum containing Pokémon fossils, as well as a scene where a museum guide spooks some kids by having his Ditto turn into a Tyrantrum. Seen here and here.
  • Arcanine was meant to be Tim's Pokémon before it was likely scrapped to focus on Pikachu more.
  • An alternate opening was filmed where Tim is working at his insurance office, having a conversation with a colleague played by frequent Reynolds collaborator Rob Delaney. The opening in question can be found on the home video release.
  • Very early drafts of the screenplay included Professor Oak as a character. His exclusion was due to the fact that Nintendo has long said that their first, last, and only choice to play Oak was the late Robin Williams, who passed away in 2014.

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