"Today, I'm gonna be doing a Nuzlocke of Pokémon Emerald, with a twist..."
Pokémon Friendlocke is a Let's Play series created by YouTube content creator, Saltydkdan, that takes the rules of a traditional Nuzlocke challenge, but applies an additional twist; every single Pokémon Salty catches is represented and controlled by one of his friends.
As expected, Hilarity Ensues.
Far more comedic and light-hearted than your average Nuzlocke run, it was initially streamed in early January of 2021 on Twitch, before eventually reaching its conclusion in March. Later on April 7th, highlights of the streams began to get uploaded to YouTube, with new episodes releasing twice a week, before reaching its conclusion on April 21st, spanning a total number of 5 episodes.
The series quickly gained considerable popularity on his channel and in the Pokémon community at large, with fans quickly planning out their own Friendlockes and creating large amounts of fan art.
On the same day of the final episode's conclusion, it was announced a second season would be produced, this time on Pokémon Black and White. The second season's first stream would go on to air on May 16th, 2021, while the first highlight video was uploaded on YouTube October 2.
On November 18th, 2022, the day that Pokémon Scarlet and Violet released, a proper third season focusing on Violet began streaming. Given that the games had just come out, this season featured a mostly blind playthrough that ditches the randomization from Season 2. The highlights for this run would begin airing on November 4th, 2023.
As should be expected, WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
Saltydkdan's Pokémon Friendlocke provides examples of:
- Aborted Arc: Sara indicates early in Season 2 that she had some interest in Claire. Claire would die before she could elaborate on it.
- Actor Allusion:
- At the beginning of Season 2, Salty (as his Author Avatar) mentions that he's moving "back" to Unova from Hoenn. Unova is based off of New York, where the Real Life Salty is from.
- Mal and Collin’s status as an Official Couple in the seasons where Mal survives long enough for him to join the party likely stems from them dating in real life.
- Aerith and Bob: There are plenty of normal names like Sara, Collin, Jay, and Hannah... and then you have Sauerkraut, Kringo Fuk, No Idea No, Borat, Luke strwr, and Grunpilo.
- All for Nothing: A multilayered example occurs in Season 3, during the battle with Clavell. Not wanting to risk Puppie getting killed by Gyarados's Earthquake, Peppy sends in 4est to put it to sleep first... only for it to almost immedietly wake up and hit Puppie with Earthquake. It then becomes very clear that Puppie was never at risk of dying to even a Critical Hit, meaning that they had nothing to worry about from the word "Go".
- Animal Talk: Played with; It's implied in Season 1 that Salty is the only one who can actually understand his Pokémon, while everyone else just hears Pokémon Speak, similar to Detective Pikachu.
- Animation Bump: The first highlight video of Season 2 begins with an animated intro that ties the story with the first season's, along with an in-universe explanation of the randomized Pokémon.
- Anti-Climax: A few deaths aren't treated with much gravitas.
- Pastey's death in Season One is responded to by everybody else raging out at him for not evolving.
- Jayyweed's death elicits no real response in comparison to the other three killed by Ryme's Toxtricity. Given he and Gerber both lead to everybody dying, it's hard to say he doesn't deserve it.
- Anyone Can Die:
- As is expected of a Nuzlocke. By the end of Season 1, 9 (previously 10) members of the party are dead.
- In Season 2 all but six members are dead.
- Season 3 ends with nine members still alive.
- April Fools: For April Fools 2022, Salty uploaded "season 3 episode 1
", which seems to be another typical Friendlocke, this time of a randomizedPokémon Pearl. Then Gerber explodes in the first battle, ending the run instantly. The remaining 50 minutes of the video consist of just a black screen with the text, "Thanks 4 watching!!" - Author Avatar: The main gimmick of the series revolves around this, with the Pokémon trainer being Salty's (at least in the first two seasons), while all of his Pokémon are his friends.
- Berserk Button: Pastey does not like the idea of someone having a tulpa of him.Donation message: there are 8 billion people on earth. what do you think the chances are of somebody having a pasty tulpa?
Pastey: DIE. Who sent that message?! - Bookends: The Pokémon Black Friendlocke ends the exact way it began: With the opponent dying thanks to recoil damage.
- Breaking Bad News Gently: When Salty tells Claire about Tracey's death.Salty: We went to the fire-type gym, and some stuff happened.
Joe: Tracey's taking a nap.
Salty: She has used the move Rest, and sadly, she does not have Sleep Talk, allowing her to use moves while sleeping. - Breaking Old Trends: The first two seasons had a bad track record of things going wrong and the first deaths of the season coming in the third streams. But finally, in stream 3 of season 3, nobody dies... because the first death came in the second stream, but no deaths happened in the third.
- Breather Episode: The fifth stream of Season 2. After the Total Party Wipe in the third stream and the sheer absurdity of the fourth stream, almost nothing notable happens in the fifth, outside of some plot development.Oni: What a lukewarm stream.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: After Team Magma gets Professor Cozmo to guide them to Meteor Falls, his meteorite is stolen, he loses his shoes, and then Team Aqua circumcises him. Which is weird, because he already was circumcised. note
- Brick Joke
- In the first stream of Season 1, Derek's fans asked if they could get #releasegerber trending on Twitter. Derek then questioned if they could be more annoying than Dream, who is known for overtaking the Twitter trending page. Flash forward to the fourth stream of Season 2, where Derek's fans got TWO Friendlocke hashtags trending (#clayisoverparty and #MIKEYDEEZBABY). And it just so happened that Dream's real name is also Clay, the resulting confusion and outrage from some Dream fans causing the hashtags to become trending insanely fast.
- In Season 1, Collin was caught as an Illumise, a relatively useless Pokémon, much to Salty's amusement. In Season 2, Brady was also caught as an Illumise, which infuriates Salty. Even worse: Collin was the next friend to be added to the team. Collin was almost an Illumise for two seasons in a row!
- Also in Season 1, Derek ends the joke of his Pokémon doing confessionals Total Drama-style with a Non Sequitur by asking if anybody has Flappy Bird on their iPhone. Fast forward to Season 2, where the recently revived Hannah turns out to have an iPhone with Flappy Bird still on it.
Jay: You didn't delete [Flappy Bird] yet, did you?Joe: Yeah, wait, hold on, did you keep it on your phone?Hannah: Oh no, I still have it.Derek: YES! YES!Joe: Holy shit! - Cerebus Rollercoaster: Season 2 has a lot more roleplay elements, with a ton of comedic characters, but it also has much darker moments than the first season, namely two full team wipes.
- Cerebus Syndrome: Season 2 has this. And no, it's not because of Team Plasma, they're a lot more stupid here. Copious amounts of Lore is built, and Deaths in this season hit harder. Derek loses an entire team not once but twice in this playthrough. There's a good reason why Episode 4 is fittingly titled I feel dread.Salty: So tired...
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot:
- Mykyie was perfectly set up to avoid his death had he evolved, but he died anyway. As a Primeape, he was set to evolve into the Ghost Type Annihilape had Salty taken him to grind out Rage Fists. As an Annihilape, he would have been immune to the Counter that offed him. Similarly, Mykyie was only put into that position because Derek wanted to look for clues on the Normal Type gym's puzzle and ended up in an optional battle, fully announcing that he was also fine with just looking up the answers online. To rub salt in the wound, Mykyie was very close to evolving anyway, as Salty only had to level him up with a Rare Candy after he was healed at the Pokecenter to get him to evolve.
- The gym battle against Ryme started with Gerbicycle 2 and Jayyweed attacking each other, as part of some sort of "plan" between the two. Jayyweed dies, and the resulting panic and a further series of unfortunate events leads to GrAce, Hannah, and Blorpido all dying. Tragically, just like Mikey before her, Hannah could've been evolved before the battle to bulk up her defenses.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- For the most part, Hoenn's Elite Four are taken care of fairly handily. While there is a close call or two, basically all of them are dealt with swiftly and with minimal difficulty, with every part that is generally considered difficult getting handled before it becomes a problem. The only one of them who proves to be any sort of challenge is Drake, on account of them being responsible for Forrest's death.
- Miraculously, the champion of the Hoenn region, Wallace, proves to be a complete joke. Due to his entire team being nothing but Water-types, the reincarnated Gerber one-shots all of them with Solar Beam. The team, understandably, finds this both disappointing, and hilarious. It's part of the reason why the reincarnation rule was dropped for Season 2
- Dark Horse Victory:
- Season 1 had two teams made to defeat the Elite 4, one that went in with full expectation of them dying and the other consisting of the strongest team members. Then the "cannon fodder" team beats the Elite 4 with only Forrest dead, and Gerber mauls Wallace in the biggest AntiClimax imaginable.
- In the finale of Season 2 Derek loses all of his strongest team members to Ghetsis, including a freshly caught Legendary. All he's left with were the last six Pokémon that he didn't coordinate or prepare to use at all, and hopes were low. They ended up beating Ghetsis with nobody else dying.
- Decoy Protagonist:
- Lark the Quaxwell in Season 3, which is actually Lampshaded by Derek and the other team members. After being the most prominent and beloved Pokémon on the team, as well as the starter Pokémon, Lark is unceremoniously killed off while trying to catch a wild Mankey. To make matters worse, this is before the first Gym badge.
- From there, Mykyie takes center stage in a repentant redemption arc. He dies to an optional battle in a fight drenched in irony before the Normal Type gym, while Christene's dies after being given center stage for most of the stream and even getting an evolution. The torch was passed on to Braidy from there.
- Defeat Equals Friendship: Every member of the party prior to being caught is initially introduced attacking Derek, sans Tracey, (S1), Jay (S2), and Lark (S3) on account of being his starter.
- Denser and Wackier: Season 2 could be seen as this, since most of Derek's Pokémon take on some more wild personalities and characteristics.
- Downer Beginning: Stream 6 of Season 3 starts with the Ghost Type gym, where Ryme kills fan favorites Jayyweed, GrAce, Hannah and Blorpoido. The latter three all died thanks to Gerber backing out and letting them get obliterated by Ryme's Terastalized Toxtricity.
- Downer Ending
- Early Game Hell
- In "Pokémon: Friendlocke: Season 2." Salty's starter doesn't know any attacking moves, making the first few fights a war of attrition. After he picks up a few more friends and Igglybuff levels up to 9, the game starts to look beatable.
- Played for Laughs in the April Fools episode, where we get a repeat of Salty's unfortunate luck in getting completely useless starters. His options are Wynaut, Abra, and Regice. Making the obvious choice, Gerber is brought into the call as the new mon, only for the two to see Gerber is now stuck with only one move to fight with... Explosion.
- In "Pokémon: Friendlocke: Season 2."
- Exact Words: After capturing Jae in Season 2, Salty asks what her name is; she responds with "I have no idea." So he names her "No idea". He then asks if he spelled it right, to which Jae responds "no," so Salty makes it "No idea no" note .
- Game Mod: There are a few extra modifications to the games in the first two seasons.
- This is first applied when Mikey refuses to evolve to Golem, and to avoid the same issue as Pastey, Salty adds in a second evolution that uses a Thunder Stone that is functionally the same as Golem, but visually is a more muscular Graveler wearing Mikey's shades. Similarly, Rayquaza is replaced with CHATQUAZA at the end of the game.
- The randomiser itself being a mod regardless, there are a few changes to Black's game in Season 2 such as sprite edits to make the trainer look like Salty's Author Avatar, changes to the game's text, and even a special event!
- Gone Horribly Right: In Season 1, Mikey was a Geodude/Graveler/Graveler 2 that was looking for the perfect opportunity to kill a fellow team member in a Double Battle using Self-Destruct just for the hell of itnote . Come Season 3, the Mankey the team encounters that would become Mikey once it was caught ends up killing Lark due to bad luck and nobody realizing the destructive power of the Mankey's Anger Point ability. Once he becomes said Mankey, he immediately regrets what just happened.
- How Dare You Die on Me!: After Pastey refuses to evolve, he dies not even 15 minutes afterwards. Unlike almost every other death, Salty isn't sad, he's pissed, angrily yelling that Pastey would have survived had he evolved.Chrissy: I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed.
Salty: I'M mad!! - Irony:
- In the first season, Tracey and Pastey were the first two people to die. In the second season, on the other hand, they’re among the final six left.
- After the disaster that was Jay and Gerber cooking, leading to four people dying and the gym challenge against Ryme nearly being lost, Red would join the team as "Da Cheff!", who is a chef.
- Laser-Guided Karma: During a Pokémon TCG opening, someone donates $50 for Derek to bend one of the packs in half, which he does. The pack ended up having an Ultra Rare Cramorant-V in it (luckily, it's not a very valuable card).
- Lighter and Softer: Compared to your average Nuzlocke run (which already tends to be a little comedic, at the very least), this is far less serious. At every turn the party's infighting and tendency to downplay the situations they find themselves in make even the most important moments in the story seem like complete jokes. Even a handful of the deaths aren't taken too seriously!
- Mood Whiplash: Stream 4 of Season 2 can be considered a Breather Episode after the previous stream ended with Derek's party getting completely steamrolled by Clay, but things get tense after Joe's sudden death, Coach Cos sharing an inspirational letter from her Auntie Sandslash, and Derek discovering A War Memorial to all the Pokémon who died in Season 1.
- One-Steve Limit: Narrowly averted; Both seasons feature both "Jay" and "Jae". Seasons 2 and 3 play it straight as Jae is renamed No Idea No and Vriska.
- Orwellian Retcon: Originally, the fight against the Superboss in the Season 1 streams that ended in a Total Party Wipe was done just for fun, wasn't considered canon, and wasn't included in any of the edited videos of the season. Come Season 2's almost final stream, Derek decides to tell his teammates what happened before the Final Battle, declaring it canon after all. The footage that was previously unseen by those who didn't watch the full streams or VODs is added into the edited episode as a Flashback to get everyone up to speed.
- Overly Long Gag
- In Season 1, Derek and everyone in the party spend at least fifteen minutes imitating the noises made by
a pufferfish eating a carrot. And that's the edited-down version! - To sell the bit for the April Fools video, only the first 8 minutes have content. The remaining 50 or so minutes is simply a black screen with "Thanks 4 watching!!" on it.
- In Season 1, Derek and everyone in the party spend at least fifteen minutes imitating the noises made by
- The Protagonist:
- In the first two seasons, Salty's Author Avatar Derek serves as this.
- In Friendlocke Violet, this role is instead taken by Peppy, a green-haired trainer designed by the chat with an obsession with lemonade.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: On account of being streamed live, everything that happens in the series entirely depends on the actions of Salty and his friends.
- Recurring Element: A few traits persist in the characters between seasons.
- The Water-type starter whose most valued attack is Water Gun dies early on after only evolving once. Lampshaded by Lark's death in Season 3, where Joe suggests that the starter next time will die on the very first stream and Grace predicts that the starter will die before the stream even starts.
- Collin's Pokémon in the second and third seasons are both very phallic; Callin constantly talks about his balls while Grunpilo laments how he looks like a penis.
- Mikey getting a Pokémon with a lot of physical strength. He also tends to kill his own teammates, killing CHATFORM with an Earthquake in Season 1 and then killing Lark in his debut fight with Fury Swipes in Season 3.
- To enforce One-Steve Limit, Jae is not named per her actual name in Seasons 2 and 3, being called "No idea no" or NIN in the former and Vriska in the latter.
- Chat gets to control a Pokémon given to the player without a fight. CHATFORM and CHURMY also get killed off rather soon, while CHATQUAZA and CHATBIKE are both draconic box Legendaries.
- What starts as Jay and Gerber making a few jokes leads to very tragic deaths including egging Derek on to fight Clay in episode 3 of S2, which lead to the first team wipe; convincing him to do the gym challenge in stream 5 and getting Mykyie killed; and opening Ryme's gym battle with Gerbicycle killing Jayyweed, which was the first domino of a near-team wipe.
- Red getting a Normal-type Pokémon in every season (including the April Fools season, where they're a Porygon), and all of them being Joke Characters.
- Mal and Collin become an Official Couple in both Season 1 and Season 3. This doesn’t end up occurring in Season 2, as Mal dies before Collin joins the party.
- Pokemon who end up being fans of enemy trainers like gym leaders tend to get killed by them.
- Remember the New Guy?: Parodied, as in the April Fools episode, Derek insists a potted plant in the corner of his room has always been there on his past adventures. Cut to flashbacks of past Friendlocke episodes with the potted plant edited into the scene, appearing in the moving van from Season 1, Derek's room at the start of Season 2, and even the final emotional scene with N at the end of Season 2.
- Revisiting the Roots: Derek has stated that, after Season 2 having so much more roleplay than Season 1, that he'd like to return to something more like early Season 1 for Season 3, where nobody was playing a character up until Kenny's arrival.
- Running Gag:
- In all three seasons, the live chat asks Derek at the start if they can talk about the Five Nights at Freddy's lore.
- In the Season 2 premiere, some fans would try to send Text-To-Speech messages related to the phrase "God I love the limited 3D in this game, it's so charming," much to Salty's chagrin. Salty agrees with the sentiment of the limited 3D effects being charming, but despises the messages.
- Nobody being able to pronounce Opelucid City in Season 2 Stream 6.
- Throughout Season 3, Peppy will often buy tons of lemonade in bulk while saying “lemonade” over and over again.
- Scissors Cuts Rock: How Tracey ends up dying in Season 1. Flannery's Torkoal lands a sun-boosted Overheat on Tracey, who—despite resisting the move—dies to it anyways.
- Self-Imposed Challenge: In-Universe, the Friendlocke as a whole is this, having the rules of your average Nuzlocke run (only being allowed to catch the first Pokémon encountered on any given route, and releasing a Pokémon if they faint in battle, as that's considered being "dead").
- Sequel Difficulty Spike: The first season had a few major deaths, but a surprising number of them were out of either hubris or coming onto the team too late. The only team wipe was a post-game fight taken immediately after fighting CHATQUAZA. The second season had Early Game Hell and many more deaths, to the point of two team wipes. The third season accelerates how fast the starter dies, and people keep dying at a much faster rate. While the results of Gerber and Jay cooking their way to four deaths wasn't an outright team wipe, everybody agrees after the fact that it's going to be almost impossible to beat the Champion at this rate.
- Serial Escalation: Lampshaded by the group at the end of Stream 2 of Season 3 while reflecting on Lark's sudden death, noticing an unfortunate trend of Water-type starters dying before they hit their prime. For reference, Tracey the Marshtomp died in Stream 3 of Season 1, while Lark died even faster not even an hour into Stream 2.Joe: I feel like next season, the starter's gonna die in the first stream, like it's just getting faster and faster.GrAce: At some point, the starter's gonna die before the stream even starts.
- Shameful Strip: Archie does this to himself after being defeated by Derek at the Seafloor Cavern.
- Shout-Out:
- In episode #1, Gerber and Mal have confessional cams in the vein of Total Drama.
- When the team is talking about possibly ordering Grubhub, the first suggestion Tracey has is that they get Pasqually's Pizza, a secondary brand to Chuck E. Cheese.
- In the middle of a battle, Tracey seemingly gets a message from Lois Griffin about how she'll become a part of her.
- Following an issue with Rock Smash, Derek launches into a tirade about how little sense the game makes using the script of Joker (2019).
- Season 2's N is a big fan of Friday Night Funkin'.
- The fourth stream of Season 2 had Derek commence a Twitch raid towards T-Pain.
- Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness: Generally slides way further toward the former, though occasionally in the more important moments of the series it slides into the latter, namely during or after specific battles where the team's lives are on the line.
- Soft Reboot: The Violet season returns to something like the earlier parts of Season 1, where character acts were rare and most were just acting as their normal selves. While there are some bits, such as Joe's olive oil scam and Hannah's accents, they're minor and far less definitive than the bits from the last two seasons. While some do make characters for their Pokémon specifically, they've become more uncommon. It also forgoes numbering, being called "Friendlocke Violet" instead of "Season 3" or "Season 4."
- Stylistic Suck: CHATFORM's extremely (and deliberately) short Really Dead Montage is presented in a deliberately crummy Windows Movie Maker presentation, complete with comic sans.
- Take That!:
- Tracey asking Obama why he's committed so many war crimes in the very first stream.
- From the Season 2 finale:Salty: You know, I told myself I wouldn't be making the same errors over and over again, but much like a YouTube vlogger who probably dropped out of high school, there was no way I had actually learned from any of my mistakes.
- Tempting Fate: Salty Is confident he can power through Flannery's gym because he has Tracey on his team. They end up being the first casualty of Season 1.
- Total Party Kill: Although no season has ended in failure, there have been three instances in which a single trainer managed to wipe out an entire party of Derek's Pokémon.
- The first instance was an optional fight against Steven, whose party kills a very underleveled Jay, Mal, Claire, Gabi, Kenny, and Joe.
- The second instance was the infamous fight against Clay, who takes out the similarly underleveled Churmy, Mal, Gabi, Lark, and Sauerkraut.
- The third (and currently final) instance was against Ghetsis, who kills Giratina, Jae, Luke, Ken, and Gerber.
- Undignified Death:
- Mikeydeez* in Season 2, who gives a boastful speech dedicating the battle to his fallen friend Joe, only to walk directly into a Fake Out, which not only stuns him, but lands a critical hit. When he tries again, he misses with Blaze Kick and gets killed in a single hit.
- In Season 3, Collin/Grunpilo ends up fighting a Starmobile more than 10 levels below him. He then proceeds to go from mostly unharmed to on the verge of death from a single attack, get poisoned, and then die from said poison due to using Dig, which prevents him from being switched out. In the words of Joe, he got ran over by a truck and choked to death on the exhaust fumes.
- xkenbagelx creates a big hype around his usage of Metronome, building his showman persona around it, deleting all moves other than it and somehow managing to get the perfect move from it almost every time he uses it. However, when faced up against A.I. Turo, he manages to use Tackle and Growl, the moves that a Starter Mon starts with, and is easily two-hit ko'ed by Turo's Iron Moth.
- Video Game Randomizer: The very heart of Season 2, as all wild Pokémon encounters and field items had been shuffled and made random.
