YMMV / Pokémon Scarlet and Violet

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • When speaking to Geeta after defeating all the Gym Leaders again, she asks the protagonist for a place where they can talk in peace without being disturbed. The protagonist then brings Geeta to their bedroom. Way to go, tiger.
  • A similar thing happens at the beginning of the Indigo Disk's story, where the scene of Carmine getting jealous when Drayton claims he's taking you on a date is immediately followed by her showing you to your dorm room. It also doesn't help that you can go to sleep in your bed and Carmine will still be there when you wake up.
  • In reference to her Goomy, a trainer in the Chilling Waterhead proudly proclaims "My Goo loves dark places!"
• Adorkable:
  • Atticus's old-fashioned Shakespearean way of talking, his love of acting like a ninja, and his hobby of making spunky clothes for his friends make him come off as a major dork, and it is absolutely endearing.
  • In terms of Pokémon, we have Wooper's new regional evolution. Take an already endearingly goofy Quagsire, make it long instead of tall, and make its vacant smile take up even more of its face, and you get Clodsire, a creature so adorably silly you can't help but match its smile when you see it.
  • Hassel looks rather serious in his official art, but he's more friendly and energetic in classes; he refers to the Gible he uses to demonstrate Terastalizing as "Professor Gible," and he breaks into hysterics whenever he's proud of someone.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Nemona's obsession with the player character being her ideal rival, her adoring body language with them, etc., can very, very easily be interpreted as her having a crush on them. Notably, in the end, she pushes for their relationship to continue for life, as well as her line about the player "never needing another trainer".
  • Professors Sada and Turo invite a lot of this, considering that they died before the story started, and their only representation in-game is an AI who outright confirms that it isn't a perfect replica of them. Did they truly have noble intentions? Were they really apathetic to the harm their plan would cause, or were they merely ignorant of it? What prompted their desire for a "paradise"? Why did their spouse walk out on them (and was their spouse the opposite version Professor)? Did they genuinely love Arven as much as the AI claims they did?
    One thing left unclear is exactly how much either professor knew about the effects of Paradox Pokémon on the environment and whether (or how) this affected their outlook on the time machine. On one hand, none of the original professor's writings indicate they were aware that Paradox Pokémon would upset the modern-day ecosystem, with it specifically being the Professor's AI which gives this revelation to the player, and it was this discovery which apparently changed the Turo/Sada AI's opinion on using the Time Machine, implying that, had the original Professor made the same discovery, it would have horrified them and possibly caused them to re-think their position on the Time Machine. On the other hand, the AI's horror and shock at discovering the sheer lengths the Professor went to in order to protect the Time Machine gives the implication that the Professor was dead-set on protecting the machine no matter what, which would make sense if they were aware of the effects but persisted anyways, believing the ends justified the means.
  • One common interpretation with battling Gym Leaders (confirmed by dialog in several games, including this one, and other media) is that the first time the player challenges them, they are not using their "official" teams nor are they battling at their full capacity, only doing so for rematches. After the Indigo Disk DLC expanded on available rematches, some have also extended this to the Elite Four and Geeta as well. Were they actually going all out their first time, or were they actually holding back and only showing their "true" strength and best team(s) in their rematches?
  • Just how innocent were Drayton's intentions when he manipulates you into dethroning Kieran from his Champion position? Drayton insists that he's doing it to save the League Club and this does feel genuine, given the wistful way he talks about the old days of the club's activities. However, the fact that he immediately takes the opportunity to rub Kieran's loss in his face makes him look somewhat needlessly vindictive, leading some to wonder if Drayton was at least partially motivated by a desire to get back at Kieran for winning his title of strongest student in the school. Drayton's Coaching conversation with Kieran post-Mochi Mayhem seems to confirm the latter interpretation, as he continues calling Kieran "ex-Champion" to the exclusion of calling him anything else (including his name) as a form of "well-earned payback", evidently not caring that it makes Kieran uncomfortable and upset.
  • Unlike Ogerpon of Teal Mask before it, the Indigo Disk mascot legendary Terapagos has very little to show or tell the player what its personality or desires are, as it gets very little screentime only at the very end of the expansion's story. Why did it start approaching the player character upon first awakening? When Kieran Terastallized it, did it attack him and then break his Master Ball on purpose, or was it merely unable to control itself?
  • After The Reveal of Pecharunt's backstory via the official Youtube channel, Pecharunt itself is subject to this. Is it truly evil? Was it always merely seeking love from its adoptive parents? Was it motivated more by selfishness (less "I want them to love me!" and more "I want them to love me!")? While the website implies that Pecharunt is aware of the negative side-effects of its actions, it's unclear if it's truly malevolent or simply thinks the ends justify the means. There's also the fact that this recontextualizes its actions in the Mochi Mayhem epilogue — was it seeking the masks so that it could finally finish its goal of bringing them to the old couple, tragically unaware of the fact that they're almost certainly long dead by now? Did it somehow figure out that they're gone and try to take over Kitakami out of pain and grief? This video brings up the additional question of whether or not the video can even be trusted in the first place or if it's just another case of Pecharunt trying to goad sympathy from the audience. The video maker also pulls up the fact that, almost immediately after the video was uploaded, Pokemon's official Twitter account made posts shouting "MOCHI MOCHI!", further suggesting that this is simply another case of Pecharunt trying to manipulate people.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The Reveal that Penny is Peony's daughter was met with confusion by many, noting how different the two's skin colors are (some even theorizing that Penny's adopted). In real life, mixed race relationships can indeed result in children with vastly different skin tones, and we know from Peony's Rare League Card that his wife looks more like Penny.
• Americans Hate Tingle: Like their predecessors, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet were very well-received in Japan with a 38/40 Famitsu score, but were very divisive among Western gamers who were generally less tolerant of the game's design elements and more critical of its performance issues.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • In the Victory Road story, Geeta's team is among the weakest statistically of any Champion, with half of her team being outright unimpressive (Avalugg, Gogoat, Veluza), and the other half, while interesting, are prevented from using their full potential — notably, her Kingambit can never make the most out of its Supreme Overlord ability due to never being sent out last, and her ace Glimmora that does come out last should really have been sent out first to reap the benefits of Toxic Debris. In addition, outside Glimmora, her team composition leaves her with two Psychic Pokémon and three Pokémon weak to fire, putting her at a severe disadvantage against a few Pokémon such as Skeledirge, Volcarona, and even Houndoom who gain STAB on attacks super effective against those five^note Even Glimmora is not safe as the aforementioned Pokémon can learn Grass or Ground moves as well. This may be intentional, as she's not the Final Boss of the game or even her own storyline: the following battle with Nemona out-levels her. The Indigo Disk on the other hand has her sharpen up for her rematches: her Glimmora and Kingambit's positions are swapped to let them use their abilities better (with said Kingambit also packing Tera Flying, allowing it to resist its former weaknesses to Fighting and Ground), and she swaps out Gogoat and Veluza for Chesnaught and Dragapult.
  • Meanwhile, the fight against the Final Boss of the Starfall Street story is underwhelming, to say the least. Penny's team consists entirely of Eeveelutions, which could be fairly threatening if only they were built correctly, but that's not the case: all of her Pokémon suffer from having one STAB attack (2 in Flareon's case), maybe a single other coverage move that often doesn't target types that resist their STAB, and Quick Attack and Baby-Doll Eyes taking up the last two move slots. These are moves that most Pokémon of their level would've and should've forgotten for much better options by now. The biggest blow to that fight is that the fight right before her is much more difficult and has a well-rounded team, with a fully-evolved starter that counters yours as the ace. This may even have been a case of Gameplay and Story Integration, since Penny is canonically considered one of the weakest battlers out of the main cast and someone who isn't used to fighting her own battles, plus her dialogue in the cutscene before the fight also implies that even she doesn't think she stands a chance against you and is only battling you because she feels like it's her duty, and it's later implied from her dorm room that her team for that battle were her pets rather than a formal team. The much tougher fight beforehand is likely meant to make up for ending the plot with such an anticlimactic battle for story reasons.
  • The Final Boss of Violet, because half of their team shares a weakness to Ground, meaning a good Ground-type such as Krookodile can easily sweep the floor with them. (In fact, two of these Pokémon have a double weakness!) In contrast, Sada's team of ancient Paradox Pokémon is a little harder to sweep due to the few Pokémon having type coverage also being able to withstand an assault; this would require players to use different Pokémon. However, if your team doesn't have a Ground-type, they can still be a tough fight in Violet, since they do still have decent coverage in terms of their moves.
  • The Final Boss of The Teal Mask DLC can be this if you follow the intended level curve the game sets if you enter the DLC before completing the main game. The wild Pokémon, trainer, and story battles ramp up at a steady and reasonable pace if you play along, starting the DLC at around Level 10 and ending at the mid-to-high 30s. The final fight with Kieran ranges from 33-38. The epic four-phase battle against Ogerpon? Level 20. Even if you're trying your best not to overlevel, you'll most likely steamroll Ogerpon without even trying. Oddly enough, it's moveset implies that it was actually meant to be level 30 in the fight, which would have been a more appropriate level for the battle, so Ogerpon being underleveled for four-phase fight was likely an accidental oversight.
• Awesome Art: Despite the extremely inconsistent quality of the graphics, many of the up-close textures on Pokémon, characters, and buildings are detailed and very nice to look at, and some Pokémon such as Charizard, have updated models that give them more personality than in previous games. Some of the wide-open environments can also turn out as Scenery Porn despite the game's limitations.
• Awesome Music: Quite a few tracks in this game are mind-blowing, as you can peruse here.
• Base-Breaking Character: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Best Boss Ever:
  • The Final Boss of AI Sada/Turo and the Paradise Protection Protocol has been met with significant praise by fans for being a suitably epic and climactic encounter that successfully manages to feel appropriately cinematic. The latter fight uses the game's interface in a creative way to increase tension by refusing to let you send out any Pokémon, then slowly revealing that your Koraidon/Miraidon is able to fight for you, going up against its own counterpart. The fantastic music helps as well.
  • In terms of Gym Leaders, Ryme is extremely popular for being a Double Battle, just like Raihan from the previous generation, and also just like Tate and Liza all the way back from the third generation. Her team is also well built for the format, with moves like the Speed controlling Icy Wind and Light Screen to mitigate any Special attacks she faces. Given that she's one of, if not the only Double Battle in the entire game, as well as having the crowd provide stat boosts to both sides, it forces players to plan in ways they wouldn't have expected.
  • The battle against Ogerpon in "The Teal Mask" DLC. Instead of a standard legendary battle, you instead fight Ogerpon four times, each time using one of its masks and Terastalizing, allowing it to show off its unique form changes.
• Best Level Ever:
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon in the base game is considered one of the best locales in the franchise. The player and their friends begin a slow, ominous trek down the Great Crater of Paldea into Area Zero, which was heavily built up by the entire game before this point — all the player knows is that it's so dangerous as to be off-limits to the student body of the academy and that something happened here that traumatized the player's box legendary and heavily wounded Arven's Mabosstiff. As the player travels through the area, they start encountering mysterious Pokémon that vaguely resemble normal Pokémon but are far more dangerous and aggressive, the journal entries scattered through the area hint at just what happened here, their Friendly Rivals banter and express some fun dynamics as well as some introspection into their characters, the underground crystalline landscape provides a ton of Scenery Porn, and the mysterious, alien music manages to be both haunting and exciting. Then The Reveal about the professor drops, capping off with the Final Boss, detailed in the above Best Boss Ever entry as one of the best battles in the franchise.
  • The Terarium of The Indigo Disk is also considered one of the best Pokémon levels. It features varied, lush, multi-layered environments with lots of vertical exploration, along with two large cave dungeons that are more involved than any of the caves in Paldea. Many elements (particularly the music and one of those caves) are a love letter to Pokémon Black and White, and all Trainer battles are challenging Double Battles that use competitive strategies. It also introduces the Synchro Machine, which goes beyond the "walking Pokémon" feature to let you play as your Pokémon as a novel and efficient way to auto-battle and collect items.
• Breather Boss:
  • If it happens to be raining at Team Star's Schedar Squad base, the battle with Mela goes from being relatively challenging to a complete joke. Not only will her Pokémon's fire attacks be greatly weakened from the rainfall, but her Torkoal's Drought ability will completely fail to activate. You still have to take her Revavroom's Blazing Torque's high burn chance into consideration, though.
  • Out of all the 6-Star Tera Raid bosses, Ditto is by far the least problematic to deal with, even while fighting solo. It's practically guaranteed to be packing Imposter as its ability, meaning that it automatically transforms into your chosen Pokémon. This provides a few cheese strategies: When playing solo, bring a Pokémon who only has one attacking move and arrange so that said Pokémon is immune to its own attack, for example, a Pokémon with Ground attack holding Air Balloon or a Normal Pokémon with Ghost attack or vice versa etc, as long as the Ditto's Tera type isn't immune to said move. Add attack buff to your Pokémon, and the Ditto will fall without being able to retaliate. When playing online, Ditto's Imposter will always copy the host's Pokémon, so if you are the host, you can bring, say, a Magikarp, leaving your teammates free to destroy the Ditto effortlessly.
  • Much like it is in competitive play, Slaking is a complete pushover as a Tera Raid boss, as well. Thanks to Truant, it only moves once every turn (in fact, Truant will activate multiple times if it tries to attack more than once), giving you plenty of opportunities to set up stats-boosting moves, and if you know semi-invulnerable two-turn moves or moves that protect yourself, it will be completely helpless to do anything against you. It can't even effectively utilize Facade, as it removes status conditions from itself almost immediately, thus knocking Facade's power back down to 70.
  • While not as big of a pushover as Ditto or Slaking, a 6-Star Blissey can also be handled solo. While it does have enormous HP and great Special Defense, it still has very low defense, which a good physical-based attacker with Taunt can easily exploit. Even if Blissey does knock you out once, you have most likely broken past its barrier with plenty of time still left to spare at that point, leaving it easy pickings for you once you revive.
• Broken Base: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • Cassiopeia is Penny, the leader of Team Star. The former is pretty blatantly hinted at in-game since Penny mentions she's good with computers and Cassiopeia's main talent is hacking into things, and many fans suspected the latter (or at least that she was connected to Team Star somehow) given that less information was revealed about Penny in the pre-release than Nemona and Arven, leading to guesses that her role in the plot was too spoiler-heavy to mention much. Additionally, for people who know their astronomy, Casssopeia is a constellation of 5 main stars, which lend their names in turn to the 5 squads of Team Star - Schedar, Segin, Ruchbah, Caph and Navi.
  • Saguaro revealing that he is super into sweet foods — a fact he wanted to hide because the students think he's a manly man and it would ruin his image — is fairly obvious considering he wears all-pink, complete with an apron with felt patches in the shape of Fairy-type Pokémon.
  • The reveal in The Teal Mask that the Loyal Three are the villains of the story while Ogerpon is actually innocent and the heroic character could have been a twist were it not for the fact that the previous group are a bunch of incredibly shady-looking poison types, while the supposedly "terrifying monster" is a Cute Monster Girl. It gets even more blatant in the actual game, where your first time even learning about Ogerpon and the Loyal Three has Kieran mention that he thinks the ogre couldn't possibly be as bad as the stories say, foreshadowing with the subtlety of a jackhammer that Ogerpon isn't as bad as people believe.
• Catharsis Factor: Any event in which 5-Star Blissey Tera Raids spawn across Paldea qualifies. You get tons of Tera Shards and Rare/Exp. Candies from beating them, their only known moves are completely worthless^note to be specific, their moves are Heal Pulse (which heals their opponents), Softboiled (which only restores a very small fraction of their HP, since they're Tera Bosses), Seismic Toss (which does minimal damage to high-level mons) and Last Resort (which runs off their horrendously low Attack stats), and they don't play dirty by negating your team's stat changes/Abilities or taking your Tera charges. You actively have to go well out of your way and try to lose against them. It's especially therapeutic if you've had the misfortune of dealing with them in PvP battles due to their self-healing abilities.
• Common Knowledge:
  • Everyone talks about how Tinkaton hunts Corviknight in order to make its hammer. In actuality, Tinkatuff's Scarlet dex entry states that its hammer is made from Pawniard and Bisharp, and as Tinkaton, it daringly launches rocks at Corviknight with the already-built hammer, seemingly for sport. (A reference to Tinkaton not actually being a good matchup against Corviknight, learning zero supereffective moves against it) This also extends to the rumor that Tinkaton's shiny form has its hammer become the same color as a shiny Corviknight; in actuality, shiny Corviknight is bright silver, while shiny Tinkaton's hammer is a reddish rust color.
  • Iono is often called a VTuber. While her design and mannerisms definitely resemble a VTuber's, in-universe, she doesn’t use a virtual avatar for her streams. She shows her real-life appearance on-camera, which would make her, in VTuber dialect, a fleshtuber.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • When the Cinderace the Unrivaled raid was sicced upon players, one Pokémon rose above all others as the most reliable hard counter: Stored Power Slowbro. Slowbro is a Water/Psychic Pokémon with decent bulk, allowing it to stave off the onslaught of Physical attacks that Cinderace wields at its disposal and counteract the Bulk Ups that it uses to bolster its offense. In addition, it learns Iron Defense, which can turn Cinderace's hits into Scratch Damage, Nasty Plot, which boosts the power of its Special Attacks, and Stored Power, a 20 Power Special Psychic move that gains 20 additional Power for every stat boost the user has. With both maxed Defense and Sp. Atk from Iron Defense and Nasty Plot, Slowbro can completely wall Cinderace and hammer it with effective 780 Power Special attacks every turn and obliterate its HP before it has a chance to get shields up or wipe the party's buffs. And that's when it's used solo. Effective support Pokémon such as Armarouge, Espathra, or Miraidon can also Reflect to protect the team and use Taunt to prevent it from getting free Bulk Up, Burn it to cut its damage output further, or lower its Sp. Def with Lumina Crash or Acid Spray to guarantee a One-Hit Kill.
  • The Mewtwo raids in September 2023 had players building one specific Pokémon to deal with it: Tera-Bug Mew with Leech Life, Struggle Bug, and Swords Dance, with at least one Mew packing either Misty Terrain or Elecric Terrain. Psychic and Bug resist or take neutral damage from all of Mewtwo's attacks, both of Mew's attacking moves hit super-effectively, Struggle Bug reduces Mewtwo's massive Special Attack damage^note  It also goes through Mewtwo's (extremely tanky) shield to apply the debuffs, which is a massive help considering Mewtwo's absurd Special Attack, Leech Life gives Mew healing for the long battle^note It's also a physical move, attacking Mewtwo's weaker Defense that it can't patch up, unlike its Special Defense, which it has Calm Mind for, and Swords Dance allows it to really build up its power, with Misty Terrain or Electric Terrain being cast right before Mewtwo's shield breaks to shut down its attempt to recover full health via Rest. This makes the fight quite easy if everyone's running it, so seeing all your teammates with this exact Mew in the Mewtwo raids is shockingly common. As a bonus, Mews in the raid also get the unique Mightiest Mark upon completion, giving more incentive to use one.
  • When it comes to general special attackers, Arceus stands out front and center. With all of its stats surpassing base 120 and access to every type in the game through the Plate items, all it needs is a moveset consisting of its signature move Judgement, Calm Mind, Acid Spray (unless the opponent is a Steel-type) and either Recover or Giga Drain, and pair it with a Tera type of your choice. Since Arceus learns most moves in the game, you can also mix and match moves depending on whether you need to shut down status moves with Taunt or status conditions with Electric/Misty Terrain (though retaining at least a damaging move, either Calm Mind or Acid Spray, and recovery), or even replace Judgement with one of the Powerful, but Inaccurate options if you so wish^note Though it should be noted that this works best for Fire Blast, Hydro Pump, Thunder, Blizzard, Focus Blast and Hurricane. The result is one of the very best offensive Pokémon for any given raid period, and one that you'll see at least once in a while because of just how effective it is. This only became more notorious after the DLCs introduced the Stellar-type, meaning you don't have to change Arceus' Tera type each time you want to change Plate.
• Contested Sequel: Many people, even those who enjoyed the games, consider Pokémon Scarlet and Violet to be held back by noticeable performance issues. However, the games doing away with the restricting linearity of previous 3D games, particularly Generations VII and VIII, was warmly received. Fans are largely divided between those who find them unengaging and poorly-designed on top of that (with many of the other criticisms of past 3D games also applying here) and those who see beyond the bugs and glitches and enjoy the open-world design, new ideas, and characters and story. Metascores aside, Scarlet and Violet are widely considered better games than Pokémon Sword and Shield (which were slammed by many for It's the Same, Now It Sucks!), but failed to garner the more widespread praise of Pokémon Legends: Arceus, with most critics and fans agreeing that Scarlet and Violet are a step down from the latter game.
• Critical Dissonance: Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are the lowest-rated main series Pokémon games on Metacritic, with middling critic scores of 72/100 for both versions. Despite this, the games broke sales records for the series and for Nintendo games in general. While critics and fans largely agreed on the games' plethora of bugs bringing down the experience, fan reception relative to previous Switch entries was notably more positive than critics' comparative opinions; there are a good number of fans who consider them to at least be superior to Pokémon Sword and Shield^note which got significantly better reviews and Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl^note which held the previous record for the lowest-rated main series games, stating that while the latter two sets of games felt very stale and stagnant, Scarlet and Violet at least tried to innovate on the formula, to the point that an occasional fan refrain is that they tragically could have been among the best games in the series if they weren't Christmas Rushed.
• Critic-Proof: Despite the many bugs and dozens of critical complaints about the game (becoming the lowest-rated core series games on Metacritic), they are one of the most successful games by far. It became the most pre-ordered game in the franchise and sold over 10 million units in their launch weekend, completely overtaking any other Nintendo game sold during that time frame.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • In the original Japanese script, after Larry sends out his Staraptor, he says he'll show the player the working adult's special technique, before using Facade. The Japanese name for Facade, "kara genki", literally translates to "Fake Cheerfulness", creating a pun that's equal parts hilarious as it is depressing. Similarly, in the English translation, he'll tell the player character that he hopes "a kid like you has no reason to use it" after giving them the TM for Facade^note which retains a similar definition by meaning any kind of fake front.
  • The entire premise of Mochi Madness: A Pokémon brainwashing an entire town? That's pretty scary. A Pokémon brainwashing an entire town with mochi cakes that cause those who eat them to do a silly dance and energetically shout about mochi over and over again? It's such a bizarre, off-the-wall concept that you may find yourself forgetting about the danger everyone is actually in and just laughing at how absurd the whole situation is.
• Diagnosed by the Audience:
  • Penny being autistic became a popular headcanon almost as soon as she was announced, due to her being shy, not attending classes often, and her attachment to her fluffy Eevee backpack, hinting at it being a comfort item of some sort. Once the game came out, she would show other characteristics like social awkwardness and poor social reading skills. Furthering this, she founded Team Star to fight back against bullies — autistic kids are, unfortunately, an extremely common target for bullying.
  • Nemona has also been fan-diagnosed as having autism, ADHD, or both (as that is extremely common). There is a post-game scene where Nemona discusses her history with Pokemon battling, and her description matches perfectly with that of an autistic special interest. She also frequently misses social cues or fails to read the room, such as when she makes insensitive and oblivious comments in response to Arven pouring his heart out in Area Zero, which Penny chides her for.
  • Kieran is yet another character often fan-diagnosed as autistic, thanks to his introverted personality, his fixation on Ogerpon (which can be read as a special interest) and how his extreme emotional reactions to his more devastating losses which, especially in The Indigo Disk, could be read as meltdowns. He has several animations that could be interpreted as stimming, such as tapping the front of his foot, straightening his loose hair and beating a fist against his hip; and others where he constantly avoids eye contact while talking. After Mochi Mayhem, his dialogue with Penny at the club even has both at a loss at how to have any semblance of casual conversation.
  • Larry quickly became referred to as "depressed", which wasn't surprising given his entire character is a stereotype of a beaten-down and exhausted office worker, not to mention his signature move is Facade, which he uses with the preface that "real life isn't all about just being true to yourself" as if he's got personal experience with it and which is specifically power-boosted when the user is suffering from a negative status effect. How much of his persona is performative for the position and how much of it is legitimate isn't clear, but most fans assume it is legitimate. It's presumable as well that the perception of depression may also be attributed to his cynical attitude.
  • Grusha is speculated to have either depression, some form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or both from the snowboarding accident that led to his Career-Ending Injury. He's introverted, has a somewhat melancholy demeanor, often waxes on how dangerous life can be and cautions to the player about how one little slip-up can instantly upturn your entire life, implying that his accident still haunts him to this day. There's also the fact that his Signature Mon, Altaria, is known for comforting its trainer by embracing them in its wings and humming to them. It's easy to put two and two together and assume that Grusha's Altaria provides or had provided him with comfort after his accident.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • You can generally get away with picking any decently-statted Pokémon that has a good type matchup and just clicking buttons until you win in most Tera Raids that are 5-Star and below. 6-Star and especially 7-Star Raids, however, tend to require much more thought into what Pokémon to bring and how you build them, and even then, they are rarely pushovers, even with good counters.
  • The Indigo Disk DLC is a lot more challenging compared to the base game. First, all trainer battles at Blueberry Academy are not only higher leveled than the main story's final boss, but they're all Double Battles (with the exception of rematches), which demand more strategy over how your composition supports itself and better tactics since you need to make twice as many decisions per turn (save for the one guy in the Coastal Biome who uses Luvdisc and Pikachu). The BB League Elite Four in particular sport full teams of around level 80 Pokémon (with the highest going up to level 82, putting them close to Red's and Cynthia's levels in terms of difficulty), use held items, Hidden Abilities, and competitive movesets (most of which are taken directly from popular VGC strategies), and they all avert Poor, Predictable Rock by using a Pokémon that doesn't match their preferred type. If you're bringing your level 100 Pokémon from the main game it won't be a cakewalk unless you're using Legendaries (especially ones that are Game-Breaker territory) or have trained their IVs and Effort Values properly, and even if you are, one of the Elite Four's challenges requires you to build a team specifically with Pokémon only caught in Blueberry Academy anyway ^note the challenge in general comes from Drayton, though it only requires you to beat everyone but Drayton himself with said Pokémon, meaning you can easily use a team caught in the Terrarium to beat the weaker trainers to complete the challenge before switching back to your normal team to battle Drayton afterwards. All in all, this DLC acts as Gen IX's Post-End Game Content answer to the similarly challenging Battle Facilities in previous titles.
• Disappointing Last Level: After a uniquely themed Wutai land in Kitakami and the sprawling and dynamic Blueberry Academy, The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero ends with the Area Zero Underdepths, a small, linear dungeon. This is especially disappointing considering how well-received the "main" Area Zero was in the base game, as many fans were hyped for an expansion of the area based on pre-release datamined info. Furthermore, the Underdepths don't have Pokémon or items that can't already be found elsewhere, giving them very little reason to be revisited aside from one chamber guarded by a Stellar Tera Garchomp that contains a ton of Tera Shards and items.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: For those who aren't fond of the glitchiness of Scarlet and Violet, many people tend to praise the story a lot more than the gameplay, noting the depth of the supporting cast to be unique from previous games, with the stories being just as heartfelt or amazing, with some genuinely unique twists to parts of it.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: See here.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • Despite the crocodile-like Fuecoco arguably breaking the fan theory where a respective generation's Fire-type starter is based on an animal from the Chinese Zodiac^note According to the fan theory, the dragon, rat, rooster, monkey, pig, dog, tiger, and rabbit have been represented so far (in that order), with the snake, sheep, horse, and ox being left, some are speculating it could later evolve into a limbless snake, feathered serpent-like Quetzalcoatl, or otherwise dragon-like Pokémon not unlike Generation V's Serperior. While less common, a few have also speculated it might evolve into something horse-like due to its hooved back legs and apple-like coloration (which are a common trait for horses), or something ox-like due to male crocodiles being called "bulls" and Spain's association with bullfighters. Ultimately, Fuecoco's final evolution turned out to be Skeledirge, which looks like a crocodile. However, the theory still has some defenders, with arguments varying from different Zodiac's influence, to various stretches in logic (as in arguing that it fits into the role of the snake or the bull).
  • There is a theory that gym leader Iono is actually an android being controlled by a Rotom. She shares a lot of personality traits with Rotom (namely being mischievous and attention-seeking), and people around the city say that she has been streaming for a long time, but they're not sure how old she is as she hasn't really aged. Visually, her smile is reminiscent of Rotom (particularly in Mow Rotom form), and her overly-long sleeves resemble Rotom's appendages. In the battle with her, she doesn't actually use a Rotom, despite Levincia being a tech hub that has Rotom in the wild nearby. Then the end of the game reveals that lifelike androids exist within the setting: the AI Professor is stuck in the crater due to needing to be near the Tera crystals, as they have a beneficial effect on machinery. An android controlled by a Rotom wouldn't have that limitation as the Rotom would be in control, rather than an AI, and alternatively, the hexagonal mesh suit that Iono wears under her coat is similar to the description that is provided for how Tera crystals are used to power machinery - via a lattice of iridescent hexagons.
  • When Terapagos was officially revealed, it immediately raised some eyebrows that despite otherwise fitting the description of the entity from the Crater responsible for Terastalization, its shell is notably covered in pentagons, not hexagons as it was described in each version's Book, and breaking the shape's status as the Arc Symbol of the phenomenon in general. Fans were quick with a range of theories, from Terapagos being the entity's incomplete form (comparable to Zygarde), not the entity itself but only connected to it (being its offspring, a pre-evolution like Cosmog line, or a common variety of a rarer species like Carbink/Diancie), or a total Red Herring, with Pokémon Horizons: The Series particularly fueling the first two speculations by revealing what appears to be "baby" Terapagos that lives in Liko's pendant.
  • Paldea and Kalos being neighboring countries like their real life counterparts is a wide enough theory to border on Fanon, but there were (largely pre-release, now seemingly Jossed) theories that drew deeper connections between the two. The most common being that Paldea was the kingdom/country that Kalos was at war with in the history given in Pokémon X and Y, and that the Great Crater of Paldea was created by AZ hitting Paldea with the Ultimate Weapon, which would also explain its otherworldly properties. (Although the history given for Paldea seems to indicate the Crater had already been there since prehistory.)
  • The final trailer for The Indigo Disk has two shots showing three starter Pokémon from different generations together^note Squirtle, Treecko, and Tepig in the first and Fennekin, Totodile, and Snivy in the second. Many have theorized that these two trios (especially the former) are going to be the starter Pokémon in a new Legends game in the same vein as Legends: Arceus, which has Rowlet, Cyndaquil, and Oshawott as starter Pokémon (though this has clashed with an also-popular theory that a Unova-based Legends game is up next, as both trios contain Unovan starters and it's generally assumed that said starters will be featured as wild Pokémon if that happens).
  • A popular theory prior to "The Indigo Disk" releasing was that Terapagos was actually the Time Machine itself, and that instead of really bringing Paradox Pokémon from other times, it was granting the wishes of the Professor to find them and creating them whole cloth like Tulpas. This was because the information about Paradox 'mon seemed contradictory and far-fetched coming from sketchy paranormal magazines, and how Arven remarks how confusing it is that Heath observed them long before the Time Machine existed. This is mostly jossed after an event has the Player Character meet the (non-AI) Professor in what seems to be a Stable Time Loop.
  • With the discovery of Pecharunt and its status as The Corrupter, a number of fans have theorized that it's at least partly responsible for how Kieran Took a Level in Jerkass over the course of the DLC story. The "Mochi Madness" epilogue mostly josses this, as Kieran is the only character other than the protagonist to not fall under Pecharunt's control (the poison effect seen in Pecharunt's victims is briefly seen around Kieran's fist in "The Teal Mask," but just what it means and what effect, if any, it had on Kieran himself remains unresolved).
• Even Better Sequel: Despite the graphical and performance issues, it's widely agreed that Scarlet and Violet is a step above Sword and Shield for its ambitious, open-world design and willingness to truly shake up the Pokémon formula, along with a surprisingly good storyline (especially during the final route); many (but not all) fans agree that there's a genuinely good game hidden underneath all that mess.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Pecharunt and the Loyal Three are the first Pokémon in the main games to take center stage as the primary villains of their DLC stories with little human involvement, and have their fans who like them for being malicious Pokémon.
  • While a species and not inherently "evil", Roaring Moon is the third Dragon/Dark-type in the series,^note counting the entire Hydreigon line together, and is a highly aggressive and savage prehistoric dragon. It's also one of the bigger fan-favorites of the generation, especially in the West.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: The implication in The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero that Paradox Pokémon aren't past/future versions of pre-existing Pokémon, but Pokémon from alternate timelines whom were brought into the main Pokémon world by Terapagos' power has been derided by some fans for being an extremely weak and anticlimactic explanation for what the main game kept open as a major mystery, as well as robbing the former of their mystique in favour of making them a replacement for Ultra Beasts, although the game still leaves some room for interpretation.
• Fandom Rivalry: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Fanfic Fuel: The premise of the Paradox Pokémon inspired many artists to create their own fan made Paradox Pokémon. Even before this games release, the quick realization of the game's theme being "past and future" led fanartists to create "Proto" and "Neo" forms of Pokémon, essentially being Mega-Evolution versions of Paradox Pokémon.
• Fanon:
  • Thanks to the employment of differences between versions of the games, either Professor Sada or Turo turns out to be Arven's mother/father, depending on the version, with the identity of the other parent not being disclosed. You will be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn't just outright consider Sada and Turo wife and husband, and thus Arven's simultaneous parents because of this, especially since Arven was clearly designed to resemble both of them anyway. This has fueled speculation over what actually happened to the opposite-version professor. It turns out this theory was somewhat true, with Area Zero containing a notebook written by Sada or Turo that states their significant other "walked out" soon after Arven's birth, with the person being mentioned heavily implied to be either Sada or Turo.
  • Some players believe that the Player Character is a former Galarian native due to their mother's use of British slang, such as when she worded her offer to Director Clavell to join her for tea as "Join me for a cuppa", having a Skwovet (which were introduced in Galar) as a family pet along with the closet in their room being decorated with an Applin and Hatenna sticker (both also introduced in Galar), as well as the starter town being placed in a geographically similar location to Gibraltar (a British overseas territory on the Iberian peninsula) or the provinces of Cádiz and Málaga (areas with a significant British emigrant population). Apply this theory to the description of the fridge in your house when you interact with it ("It's the new fridge you bought when you moved."), and it definitely seems to be going somewhere.
  • Larry's boss for his office work is not explicitly revealed in the game. But with Geeta being his boss for his Gym Leader and Elite Four position, some players, if not most of them, believe that Geeta is also his boss for his normal job as well (given this normal job is at the Pokémon League too). If this is true, the poor guy can not catch a break due to having the same person as his boss for all of his jobs.
  • Penny brings up her dad at one point during a dialogue in Area Zero. Due to her not mentioning her mother in said dialogue, fans have assumed her father is a single parent. One of the major arguments in favor of this is Pokémon's interesting parental characters. Only for Mochi Mayhem to joss this outright by showing that she's related to Peony.
  • Rika is commonly interpreted by fans as a Cuddle Bug who adores cute things, since her ace is the adorably goofy-looking Clodsire, and because of the amusing contrast such a personality would have with her hyper-professional appearance.
  • Despite not having in-game genders, the partner Koraidon in Scarlet is often portrayed as male, and the partner Miraidon in Violet is portrayed as female (much like the legendary duos of other gens).
  • Thanks to his wannabe Totally Radical nature and the memetic popularity of Among Us (and resultant jokes involving Amoonguss), several fans have joked that Clavell caught his Amoonguss after assuming the species was popular with the kids, and no one had the heart to tell him they were referring to something else entirely.
  • It's generally assumed by the fanbase that, had Arven not been able to save his Mabosstiff in time, then it would have reincarnated into a Houndstone after its death, since Houndstone's Pokédex entry says it's the reincarnation of a "lovingly mourned" Pokémon.
  • Arven is sometimes potrayed with heterochromia, with one eye blue and the other brown, to reference both Sada and Turo in a similar way the two shades of his hair do in canon.
  • Ship art of Brassius and Hassel often shows them with Applin imagery, due to the fact that it's a Grass/Dragon Type, referencing both of them, and Applin being a common gift between lovers in Galar. Hassel also has a Flapple, which is one of Applin's evolutions. The fanbase greatly enjoyed the reveal of Dipplin, with it having two smaller dragons living in the same apple, which could also be used as a metaphor for Hassel and Brassius.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Fans started calling Sprigatito "Weed Cat" due to its green color and parts of it resembling a marijuana leaf. Some have also called it "Grass Cat" or "Salad".
  • Once Paldean Wooper was revealed, fans often referred to it as "Pooper", due to its primarily brown colour scheme and Poison/Ground typing. Likewise, its evolution Clodsire is known as "Poopoo Mudfish" for similar reasons.
  • Miraidon and Koraidon are collectively referred to as the 'raidons. "The Legendary Motorbikes" has also picked up some traction.
  • "Gay bird" or "Gay duck" for Quaquaval due to its flamboyant appearance and style combined with its 87.5% chance to be male.
  • "Sia" or "Lady Gaga" for Espathra, with the bird's hairstyle bearing a great resemblance to the hairstyles those two artists have sported before. To a lesser extent, Espathra is also called as "Nicki Minaj" by some players.
  • Brassius is frequently referred to as "Weed Hubert" due to his strong resemblance to Hubert von Vestra from Fire Emblem: Three Houses and his team being Grass-type Pokémon.
  • The Orthworm found in the Path of Legends storyline is often referred to as the Alaskan Bullworm due to its massive size.
  • Mabosstiff's mob boss theme has had fans nickname it "The Dogfather".
  • Professor Turo is as often known by his nickname of "Professor Gigachad" as he is by his actual name due to his resemblance to the meme.
  • Perrserker is sometimes referred to as a "raidcat" by fans interested in Tera raids, as a team of 4 of them can easily slaughter most raid bosses.
  • Chien-Pao is often known as "Mega Weavile" in the competitive community, as it shares the same typing and similar role as Weavile, yet it's stronger in every way possible, from stats to movepool (especially since Weavile's best moves were cut from its learnset), outclassing it entirely. Coincidentally it bears a slight resemblance to the beta version of Sneasel discovered in the leaked Gold & Silver Space World 1997 demo.
  • "Lag Lake" for Casseroya Lake, being one of the areas the game, in particular, has trouble running.
  • In the same vein as "Lag Lake," we have "Lagtree Thicket" for Tagtree Thicket, another area in the game with notable lag issues.
  • "All Might" for Palafin, both being a Superman Substitute and having a very scrawny and weak-looking base form.
  • Thanks to its status as a Composite Character of Gardevoir and Gallade, fans commonly refer to Iron Valiant by a name that combines the two (e.g. "Gardellade").
  • In competitive circles, Cyclizar is sometimes referred to as "Tornadus-C" due to having a very similar toolkit and role to Tornadus-Therian in previous gens; both are hazard removers (Rapid Spin/Defog respectively) that get Knock Off and U-Turn and have the ability Regenerator, both like to use Heavy-Duty Boots, and both can run an offensive set to trick up would-be checks.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With Xenoblade Chronicles 3, since the Paldea world map looks very similar to that of Aionios, and because a bunch of the new Pokemon designs heavily recall specific characters from that game^note Armarouge and Ceruledge strongly resemble Cammuravi and Ethel, two rivals from that game. The Tinkaton line is often compared to Sena due to being small girls who wield enormous hammers, the Sprigatito line is often compared to Juniper or Mio due to their shared Cute Kitten aspects, as well as Meowscarada's mask which strongly resembles M's, and Ogerpon is often compared to the Nopon species due to her face, name and general body shape. While Xenoblade fans often rib on Scarlet and Violet for their inferior graphical quality and poor optimization compared to XC3, it's common to find fans who enjoy both games while acknowledging their relative strengths and flaws or to find Pokémon in trades and playthroughs with Xenoblade-themed nicknames. This becomes Hilarious in Hindsight, given that both games have a similar plot twist of the main authority figures that you barely interact with turning out to be antagonistic robot duplicates.
  • Also with fellow open-world game Sonic Frontiers. While the Pokémon and Sonic the Hedgehog fanbases had already had significant overlap, both Scarlet and Violet and Frontiers released in Fall 2022 to similar fan and critical reception; many fans were able to commiserate over their respective games getting highly polarized receptions and having innovative new ideas hidden under a mountain of technical and design flaws.
    • To a lesser extent, fans of the game sometimes overlap with fans of Rune Factory 5, another game that garnered excitement at launch, only to be released to mixed reviews and massive technical flaws. Similar to Sonic Frontiers, fans of the game acknowledge that, while its production issues make it harder to appreciate, it does still have hidden depths to it that make for a surprisingly enjoyable time.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Chien-Pao is an absolute menace of a legendary Pokémon. It's best described as Weavile but better (and Weavile is already good) - it sports an excellent 120 Attack and 135 Speed and has access to powerful moves like Icicle Crash, Sacred Sword, and Throat Chop. But what really makes Chien-Pao absurdly cracked is its Ability, Sword of Ruin. It applies a Defense debuff to all surrounding Pokémon except for Chien-Pao itself, ensuring it hits really hard from the get-go. What makes Sword of Ruin so powerful is that it's a Defense debuff aura that's permanently active as long as Chien-Pao is on the field, resulting in one hell of a sweeper that doesn't require too much setup, eventually sending Chien-Pao to the banlist to accompany the below-mentioned Chi-Yu. In Double Battles, Sword of Ruin can even empower another quick Glass Cannon on its own team for an all-or-nothing all-out attack strategy simply by being present.
  • Chi-Yu is effectively Chien-Pao's magical counterpart, sporting an excellent 135 Special Attack and a great 120 Special Defense, and its Ability, Beads of Ruin, applies a permanent Special Defense down debuff to all surrounding Pokémon, also ensuring that its attacks are going to seriously hurt. Even though its 100 Speed and miserable HP make it vulnerable to some hard-hitting faster Pokémon, Chi-Yu still proves itself to be such a menace that it becomes the first Treasure of Ruin to be banned by Smogon.
  • All three of the starters' Secret Arts are extremely powerful:
    • Torch Song, Skeledirge's signature move, is pretty busted. It's an 80 Base Power Fire-type move that gives Skeledirge +1 Special Attack every time it's used. What's even better is that you can buy the Throat Spray and let Skeledirge hold it, making that initial +1 jump up to +2. Skeledirge also gets hard-hitting Special moves like Flamethrower, Shadow Ball, Earth Power, and Hyper Voice, so with enough Speed investment, it can easily sweep entire teams (especially if it has the type advantage).
    • Flower Trick, Meowscarada's signature move, isn't far behind it: it's a 70 Base Power Grass move that, like Aerial Ace, bypasses accuracy checks to always hit, and in addition, it always results in a critical hit (barring the use of held items or abilities that prevent critical hits). In practice, this means that Flower Trick is actually a 105 Base Power attack that never misses and cannot have its power diminished via attack debuff or defense buff, and due to Meowscarada's high Speed, it can frequently use the move as an overwhelming pre-emptive strike and sweep teams very quickly.
    • Rounding out the starter trio is Quaquaval's signature move, Aqua Step. It's an 80 Base Power Water-type move that runs off of Quaquaval's high attack and guarantees a speed boost each time it's used. Combined with its hidden ability Moxie (which boosts Quaquaval's already high attack every time it scores a KO), and you've got a powerful physical sweeper that more or less combines the power and typing of Waterfall (minus the flinching, and even that can be remedied with King's Rock) with the stat-boosting sweeping prowess of Dragon Dance.
  • Naclstack's Salt Cure can easily make Titans a joke. Salt Cure is a move that removes 1/8 of a Pokémon's health each turn, with that going up to 1/4 for Steel and Water-type Pokémon, which either two or three of the titans (Orthworm and Dodonzo, as well as Iron Treads in Violet) are. The Pokémon is easy to get, very bulky, and can learn Protect with a TM, allowing for even more stalling. Additionally, since it can get Sturdy as an Ability, you can be always guaranteed to pull Salt Cure off.
  • Palafin is commonly referred to as "Slaking if it didn't have Truant", and for good reasons. Initially, it has horrid base stats, but its ability Zero To Hero brings its stats up to Olympus Mons levels for the rest of the battle just by switching out, in a game that has mandatory Shift mode. And did we mention it has a Jet Punch, a 60-power STAB Water-type move with Action Initiative, as its Secret Art? Even in PvP, a common strategy is to lead with Palafin and instantly switch it out — the lost turn is well worth the benefit of having an Uber-tier Mon for the rest of the battle. The dolphin's only Kryptonite Factor, aside from trapping moves and Abilities, is Tera Raids, where it can't switch out and transform into its secret identity.
  • Iron Hands is regarded to be one of the best Pokémon to use in 5 and 6-Star Tera Raids. It has an extremely high HP stat of 154 to let it reliably tank hits, and an incredibly high Attack stat of 140 to let it bring on the pain. Said Attack stat can be easily ramped up even further with the use of Booster Energy and Belly Drum, the latter of which maxes out its Attack in exchange for halving its HP, which considering how high its HP is, still allows it to tank some hits. With enough boosted Attack, Iron Hands is capable of defeating more than a few 5-star raids in a single blow, bypassing the shield entirely and skipping straight to the rewards. Becomes even more so when The Indigo Disk gave it a powerful new Electric type move called Supercell Slam (the Electric type version of Jump Kick) to replace the relatively weak Thunder Punch and Cast from Hit Points Wild Charge.
  • Another Raid Breaker is one that returns from Sword and Shield: Perrserker. Much like the last Generation, it utilizes its Hidden Ability Steely Spirit to boost the power of it and its team members' Steel-type moves to absurd levels, and the Ability stacks with itself as well as Terastallization. As a result, raid teams that carry either nothing but Perrserker or two or three Perrserker designed to support a hard hitting Steel-type (Often Dusk Mane Necrozma or Zacian-Crowned for a physical attacker or Archaludon for a special attacker) are common, often one- or two-shotting most Raid Bosses with ease.
  • The Crown King of slaughtering Raid Bosses solo is Annihilape by a landslide. Annihilape will almost always be targeted in solo raids, meaning that its Signature Move, "Rage Fist," will quickly gain power, and this power boost is not lost when it faints or switches out. A bulky Annihilape with Drain Punch for recovery can solo just about anything the game throws at you, and even if it is forced to faint, the power boost will remain. Eventually, in such a drawn-out battle, Annihilape will be chucking out hits with more power than EXPLOSION, and with STAB will make it the strongest move in the game. Add in its Hidden Ability Defiant, which will turn any stat drops into free +2 Attack boosts, and Bulk Up and you have a ape that can nuke anything in raids with Rage Fist or Drain Punch.
  • Both of the version mascots are great at bringing down Raid Bosses, mostly because of their stats, signature Abilities, and access to a STAB self-healing move. Koraidon has Drain Punch along with Orichalcum Pulse to boost its Attack, as well as other Fighting and Dragon moves along with Fire-type moves boosted by the sun it sets up (and potentially Fire-type Terastallization). Miraidon is arguably even better, with Parabolic Charge boosted by both of the effects of Hadron Engine (electric terrain and Sp. Atk boost). This makes the box legendaries ideal choices to equip with items that boost moves of a single type (Black Belt or Magnet) or choice items (Choice Band or Choice Specs), as they can simply spam Drain Punch or Parabolic Charge (along with other moves if not equipped with a choice item) to hit hard while keeping themselves alive.
  • Espathra is also solid in the story, raid battles, and PVP. It has good Speed and Special Attack and a devastating Secret Art in Lumina Crash, that harshly lowers the target's Special Defense every time it hits, which can shred most Tera Raid bosses and by itself is enough to be a broken addition to a story team. It also gets two great abilities in Opportunist^note Punishes the opponent for setting up by copying their stat boosts which can make it a devastating counter for Raid Bosses that like to buff their stats, and the ever-useful Speed Boost, on top of access to STAB Stored Power, which can potentially become a nuke when combined with either of these abilities and Calm Mind. In fact, those moves combined with Speed Boost even got it banned to Ubers on Smogon.
• Gameplay Derailment: Due to a Good Bad Bug involving online raids, if a Tera Raid fails, everyone involved will get the rewards anyways. Everyone but the player who hosted the raid, that is. Ever since the glitch has been made public knowledge, hosting a raid to help deal with 5-star or higher dens now comes with the risk of players who will throw or bring intentionally bad Pokémon just so they can run the clock and get the rewards. Even if you aren't the host, this still ruins the fun for players who want to actually catch whatever Pokémon is in the raid. Thankfully a patch later reversed this.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The leader of Team Star, Cassiopeia, is named after a constellation, while each of the squads is named after a star. Specifically, the five brightest stars of that constellation.
  • Toxapex's Violet Pokedex entry, along with its Pokedex picture, states a previously unknown rivalry with Bruxish over territory and how it always loses. Not only is this a clever application of type advantage in wild Pokémon dynamics (Psychic beats Poison in this case), but in real life, some species of Triggerfish (Bruxish's basis) are known to be among the few predators actually able to prey on the Crown-of-Thorns starfish (Toxapex's basis).
  • Naranja/Uva Academy is mentioned in history class to have been founded 805 years ago, which (in the year following release) matches the age of the University of Salamanca, Spain's oldest university in real life.
  • The Pokédex mentions Palafin and Barraskewda competing with each other over prey, reflecting real-life dolphins and barracudas doing the same where their habitats intersect.
  • Finizen evolves into Palafin at Level 38, referencing the publication year of Action Comics #1, where Superman debuted, 1938.
  • Iron Leaves's running animation is based on the way real-life quadrupedal robots run, such as those built by Boston Dynamics.
  • Bombirdier:
    • Its cry is very quiet, almost inaudible—just like actual white storks, the animal Bombirdier is based on.
    • Bombirdier is also based on the BR.20 Cicogna (whose name means "stork" in Italian), a bomber airplane that was used by the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. Said Nationalists would turn Spain into a brutal and repressive dictatorship after winning the war, hence why Bombirdier is a Dark-type.
  • Ryme is a rapper who uses Ghost-types. In hip-hop, "ethering" someone means destroying them so thoroughly with a diss that they have no convincing responses.
  • Meowscarada being partially based on both magicians and Mardi Gras makes as much sense as its other two starters basis when you learn that France is also part of the Iberian Peninsula. Additionally, the origin of modern magic shows can be traced back from France and Spain did occupied New Orleans at one point.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Extremely small Pokémon such as Flittle, Capsakid, or worse, Floette^note who is an evolved Pokémon unlike the previous two are difficult to see on the map and can be encountered by accident. Foongus can even disguise themselves as Poké Balls too!
  • Tauros can be found in massive herds early-game, and are extremely annoying due to their aggressiveness and high (for that point in the game) stats. Worse still, their high Speed stats make it hard to run away from them.
  • Veluza (commonly found in Casseroya Lake and other late-game water areas) are extremely annoying in the overworld. Once they acknowledge you, they will swim at a breakneck speed to encounter you, and it's possible to have one ambush you out of nowhere just because of this. This can be annoying if you're trying to focus on other Pokémon. Ironically enough, their speed isn't even their highest stat (in fact, it's their second lowest). Fortunately, they're a Jack of All Stats Pokémon with slightly higher attack, and as long as you have something that counters Psychic and/or Water types, they're not hard to take down at all.
  • Despite having been welcomed by the fandom for their design and endearing backstories, Greavard and Houndstone can be problematic for players not interested in encounters while standing in one place, especially when exiting the pause screen or a Tera Raid menu, as they spawn from underground almost anywhere and have the aggressive overworld personality of chasing the player down and initiating a battle upon contact. It also doesn't help that Greavard's candle flame, while still buried, can be mistaken for a sparkling hidden item, triggering a sudden battle instead of expecting to make a quick pick-up.
  • Lokix of any level tend to have priority moves in their arsenal, ranging from the weak Feint to the rather powerful Sucker Punch and First Impression, the latter two of which Lokix gain STAB on. Farming Lokix for their Attack EVs can become tedious as they will whittle down your Pokémon's health, forcing you to heal in between farming.
  • In the Ogre Oustin' minigame found in the Teal Mask DLC, many players will grow to hate the Skwovet and Munchlax lines due to them appearing frequently to attempt to devour all the berries you've placed in your basket. Even worse that the latter line, especially the evolution Snorlax, devours your berries in a rapid pace.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • Certain Raid Pokémon have earned their infamy already through how annoying they are to deal with:
    • 5★/6★ Greedent isn't exceptionally dangerous for its raid level, but it's extremely tanky and usually packs Bullet Seed (an attack with an extremely long attack animation) and Stockpile (which boosts their already respectable defense). If you get a Greedent with a particularly troubling Tera type (such as Fire, since Bullet Seed counters all of Fire's weaknesses), beating one before the timer runs out can come down to pure luck with how many full roll Bullet Seeds/Stockpiles it does.
    • 5★/6★ Gengar isn't an insurmountable hazard once you figure out how to deal with it, but a Damage-Sponge Boss with Cursed Body^note If an attack hits Gengar, there's a chance that attack may be disabled; only one move per Pokémon can be disabled this way forces you to bring Pokémon who know at least two offensive moves, with the second move being a sacrificial move to specifically trigger Cursed Body. The next problem is that Cursed Body is not guaranteed to trigger on the first hit, forcing you to use said buffer attack repeatedly until it finally gets safely disabled while Gengar poisons and/or confuses your team. And should your Pokémon faint, Cursed Body's effect is removed on revival, forcing you to bait Cursed Body with your sacrificial move again.
    • While 6★ Gardevoir is a pain to deal with due to its Calm Mind spam, its male counterpart, Gallade, is thankfully much easier to deal with. However, like Gardevoir, he also packs Will-O-Wisp to patch his low physical Defense, on top of having access to Hypnosis once the timer has ticked a bit, and his ability is chosen at random so you could end up with Sharpness, which may turn his Psycho Cut up a notch. And as usual for Fighting-type mons, it also packs Close Combat. Fortunately, the latter move will leave it vulnerable after a few Defense/Sp. Def. drops, letting you open fire if you survive.
    • Dondozo and Amoongus are infamous for potentially being impossible to solo if they have the wrong Tera type; even more favorable Tera types are difficult to take down alone. Dondozo has incredible bulk and can boost its Water attacks with Rain Dance, while Amoongus has the guaranteed-to-cause-sleep move Spore (unless you bring a Grass-type, someone immune to Sleep/powder moves, or a Pokémon holding Safety Goggles) and excels at making people waste time using the Heal Cheer to wake their Pokémon up. Even in online play, Dondozo and Amoongus raids will often end in failure if the other players don't know what they're doing.
    • 6★ Sinistcha can make you tear your hair out. Already a Mighty Glacier with Stun Spore, it has the tendency to cast Matcha Gotcha on its last legs/at the end of the fight and sometimes just, won't, stop, putting you on a shorter time limit compared to other raid bosses. There's also the possibility of your Sp. Def. dropping no thanks to Shadow Ball and Energy Ball, or getting perma-crippled by Scald if you were using a physical attacker. And if its Tera type is Fire or Electric (whose weaknesses are all weak to Energy Ball) and you don't have a mon that turns those moves into neutralities/immunities, good luck.
    • 5★ and especially 6★ Poliwrath can get extremely grating for one reason: Haze. Given the absurd amount of HP high-level raid bosses have, just about the only sensible strategy to fight them is to bring Pokémon who can give themselves attack buffs and/or give the boss defense debuff, but Haze ensures you'll never have that buff/debuff active for longer than one turn, wasting your time and putting you in an extremely tight time window to finish the raid. Oh, and if you don't run buffs and debuffs, you'll instead have to content with Poliwrath using Bulk Up, leaving it the only Pokémon in the raid to have any buff.
    • As part of 2024's Valentine's Day raid event, 5★ Luvdisc is quite annoying to face. With a moveset of Hydro Pump, Safeguard, Aqua Ring and Soak, as well as Charm and Rain Dance as additional moves, and either Swift Swim or Hydration (which activate thanks to rain), Luvdisc is extremely annoying to one-shot despite its terrible defenses; attempting and failing to do so will often result in Luvdisc putting up its shields, anti-debuffing itself, debuffing you, and resetting your Tera Orb charges. While it's not a particularly strong Pokémon, these traits still make it a pain to bring down, all for a few Exp. Candies and Fairy Tera Shards.
  • As for Legendary Pokémon, Pokémon that know a recovery move can be very annoying to catch without a proper gameplan. Without a move to prevent them from recovering (such as Taunt to prevent it, or Encore to force their use at full health), whittling down their HP to the sweet spot becomes much harder. Chien-Pao and Ho-Oh are notorious examples, both hitting hard right off the bat and also healing whatever damage they took.
    • Of these, however, Fezandipiti deserves a special mention. In addition to knowing Roost, it has both Flatter and Swagger in its moveset, so not only will your Pokémon spend most of the fight confused, both attacking stats will likely be raised, increasing the chance of an accidental fainting if you're not constantly switching out. It's arguably one of the best targets in the game up to that point for the Master Ball.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Remember the Backwards Long Jump from Super Mario 64? You can do something similar when riding Koraidon/Miraidon; by facing away from the direction you want to go, jump in place, then during the apex of the jump, tilt the stick towards where you want to go. If done correctly, you should be jumping backwards with your mount still facing away, allowing you to keep jumping backwards as long as you keep spamming the jump button. This bug can be used to scale steep hills that you aren't supposed to, which in a similar fashion to, again, Super Mario 64, should allow you to reach places that you should theoretically reach later in the story.
  • If your Switch is linked to two controllers, holding the left joystick on both of them will cause the PC to go twice as fast. This is sadly not that useful since it is still slower than Koraidon/Miraidon's dash, which can be obtained within minutes of leaving Mesagoza. This exploit was patched in Version 1.1.0.
  • Throwing your Poké Ball to engage a wild Pokémon has an unintended side-effect of potentially teleporting your character across impassable terrain. What this means is that even before you gain traversal abilities for your Raidon (or heck, before you even gain your Raidon), you can cross small rivers or ravines, making this technique desirable for speed-running and sequence-breaking.
  • Once you obtain Koraidon's/Miraidon's battle mode after clearing the main story, there was an exploit where you could duplicate it multiple times, thus sending multiple copies of itself to your Box. This allowed you to have it both in Battle Mode and in Ride Mode at the same time without having to rely on the second instance you get or having to manually switch each time. Even better is that the glitch was used to duplicate any held item, resulting in a fast way to get multiples of rare items or lots of money. It ended up being patched out in an update early in December 2022, however, though players who already have cloned Koraidon/Miraidon from the glitch can still use it to duplicate items and save a ton of grinding.
  • There is a glitch that causes the Elite Four battle theme to not play properly and loop its first part indefinitely. There are players who genuinely liked how the "broken" music sounds because it helped make the battle feel more intense. This, however, was fixed.
  • Flutter Mane is exceptionally easy to shiny hunt; due to an apparent glitch, standard Flutter Manes will despawn immediately during the daytime but shinies will not. Using a proper sandwich to boost the encounter rate will essentially turn the lower depths of Area Zero into an empty room where nothing but shiny Flutter Mane will appear.
  • It was revealed that Dondozo's Order Up giving a stat boost even when the move is nullified by Protect or similar moves was unintended and was patched out by the Version 1.2 update. Many players were surprised this was revealed to be a bug since it wasn't fixed until after VGC Series 1, where said interaction has singlehandedly turned games in tournament play.
  • One particularly amusing bug involving Okidogi (and perhaps other Pokémon as well) is when you order him to use Knock Off, Okidogi leaps forward to strike then jumps backwards to his starting position... except that he actually end his jump an inch or so behind his actual original position. With enough Knock Offs, Okidogi will keep inching backwards until he ends up standing far behind the battle arena or even falling off a cliff behind him.
  • Male Indeedee and female Indeedee have slightly differing movesets. One of the moves that was different between them was Trick Room, with only the Male being able to learn it via TM. However, due to both the male and female sharing the same 4 moves if caught from a raid, and a raid-caught Indeedee always having Trick Room, this led to Female Indeedee receiving it as well. Due to Female Indeedee being more useful in VGC compared to its male version with its higher defenses and other better move options, it went without saying that it was a great addition to its moveset. Interestingly, Game Freak caught wind of this^note Likely due to 3 of the top 8 Regulation A teams in VGC utilizing Trick Room female Indeedee., and rather than fixing female Indeedees in a patch via removing the move,^note As was done with such cases in Sword & Shield female Indeedees were able to learn Trick Room via TM starting in ''The Teal Mask''.
• Growing the Beard: Like their predecessors, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet improved via their DLC. While The Teal Mask didn't get much notable praise over the base game, The Indigo Disk is widely considered a refinement that irons out some of the base game's flaws. The most notable of these improvements are much more dynamic and lush environments than the Paldean mainland that are fun to explore (even with the game's subpar graphics), a much more satisfying feedback loop via the Blueberry Quests that provides some form of sidequesting, more interesting and multi-layered maps, a widely expanded Pokédex, and extra postgame quests (both overt and hidden) that provide more content. While the game's infamous performance issues haven't been improved for the most part, many people will point to The Indigo Disk as the best part of the game, much like The Crown Tundra was for Pokémon Sword and Shield.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The games introduced Nymble line with its final evolution, Lokix reminiscent of Kamen Rider. Kamen Rider Gotchard later introduces Hopper1, a Grasshopper Chemy who later transforms into CrossHopper as part of its Mid-Season Upgrade, who can walk on two legs similar to Lokix.
• Ho Yay:
  • While trekking through Area Zero, Nemona and Penny start reminiscing about their time with the protagonist. Arven butts in to tell them that they can't compete with the foundation for his friendship with the protagonist, which comes across as him trying to show up a perceived romantic rival. The conversation is exactly the same regardless of the protagonist's gender.
  • Hassel's and Brassius' relationship definitely seems very close, with Hassel taking Brassius under his wing when he was having a lower period in his artistic career. The two even call each other pet names ("Brassie" and "Hass"), which gives their interactions a possible romantic twist. Fans have also noticed that Hassel has a Flapple on his team — it's established that its pre-evolution, Applin, is given as a present in Galar to a person you are romantically interested in. Given that Applin and Flapple are Grass/Dragon Pokémon, and Brassius is a Grass-type gym leader (and Hassel is Dragon-type specialist), some fans have used it to put them together.
  • Tulip and Dendra are noted to be friends since childhood, and Dendra is more than happy to lead Tulip's gym challenge. With the way Dendra describes Tulip during said challenge, you can easily see her as having a crush on Tulip.
  • Similarly, Dendra's personal stories at the school revolve around her learning how to cook... so she can pay back Miriam for helping her out so much. She also mentions how much she appreciates and admires Miriam. It's very easy to read as Dendra having a crush on her.
    • Dendra and Miriam's League Club interaction in The Indigo Disk features Miriam wondering when Dendra will make another sandwich for her. When Dendra then says she's done with sandwich-making for good as she thinks she has mastered it after her one success, Miriam is surprised and persuades her to continue the training alongside her, which can be interpreted as Miriam asking Dendra out on a date.
  • As the Teal Mask DLC's story goes along, you start to notice some bits of Ship Tease from both Kieran and Carmine toward your character, and it's the same whether you're playing as a boy or a girl, so you're getting it from one of them either way.
  • Goes both ways in the Indigo Disk DLC. Drayton will invite the player to eat lunch with him. Regardless of the player character's gender, Drayton refers to it as a date and Carmine immediately becomes jealous, resulting in Ho Yay with either Drayton or Carmine depending on whether you're playing as a boy or a girl.
  • Director Cyrano and Director Clavell's reunion at the beginning involves Cyrano cheekily calling Clavell "Velly" and depending on your dialogue choices, Lacey can inform you that Cyrano and Clavell are old college friends. Already there seem to be parallels between these two and Brassius and Hassel.
  • Mochi Mayhem features Penny rather unambiguously telling the player character she thinks their mom is pretty. She also calls Carmine pretty during their League Club interaction, but that one's more of a backhanded compliment than anything else since she says that at least Carmine is pretty on the outside (and only drops the "outside" bit when an angry Carmine asks her to repeat that).
• Hype Backlash: While Tinkaton is pretty universally liked as a Pokémon, there are some fans (many of which otherwise enjoy it) who are baffled by its sudden huge fanbase and don't understand where all the love comes from, finding it to be a charming and unique Pokémon but nothing special. Some of this also comes from people who liked Corviknight just fine before Gen IX who think Tinkaton's introduction has already given it a raw deal and are worried it's doomed to be nothing but Tinkaton's Chew Toy going forward. Some are even worried about the possibility of Game Freak overmarketing it at some point (like with any Breakout Character Pokémon), dooming it to the same fate as other once-beloved Pokémon like Charizard and Gardevoir that ultimately became textbook examples of this trope.
• I Knew It!:
  • It was near-universally predicted that Fuecoco's final evolution would be a Fire/Ghost type with a Skeleton Motif. Sure enough, Skeledirge ended up fitting the description, with one caveat; fans also believed that Fuecoco's line would incorporate a spicy pepper motif (especially given the idea of "ghost peppers"), which instead went to the Capsakid line. Those who'd managed to connect the dots to the Mexican holiday of Día de los Muertos, however, managed to hit the bullseye, what with Mexico being a former Spanish colony IRL.
  • This Reddit post guessed that the Central Theme would be regarding the contrast of Past vs. Future merely from the logos and the first trailer. The second trailer and related info drop confirms this, with the professors and the main legendaries having names and designs related to past and future.
  • Many fans assumed that Koraidon and Miraidon would have alt forms resembling motorcycles for the player to ride based on their handlebar-like plumage and their wheel-like throats. Sure enough, Koraidon's Builds and Miraidon's Modes were introduced around the beginning of August 2022. They also correctly assumed that they'd be connected to Cyclizar somehow in the same vein as how the Legendaries of Sun and Moon are alternate evolutions of Cosmog. While Koraidon and Miraidon aren't evolutions, they are alternate Paradox forms of Cyclizar.
  • Once it was revealed that there would be multiple story branches in the game, plenty of fans guessed that the player's three classmates — Nemona, Arven, and Penny — would each be connected to one of those branches, with Nemona specifically pegged as being connected to the traditional "challenge the gym leaders" path. The "Seek Your Treasure!" trailer revealed that Nemona was indeed tied to the League Challenge (dubbed the "Victory Road" branch) and Arven to the "Path of Legends" branch, while Penny is the mastermind behind Team Star, the villains of the "★ Starfall Street ★" branch. Additionally, all three of them are the last battles of their respective routes.
  • Thanks to Spain's (the country Paldea is partly based on) history of bullfighting, many fans thought that the bull-based Tauros line would end up getting a regional form. Sure enough, it ended up getting three, with each version getting a standard variant and a themed-variant (Scarlet gets the Fire/Fighting Blaze breed, while Violet gets the Water/Fighting Aqua breed).
  • Since his appearance makes him look like a combination of the two, a number of fans pegged Arven as Professor Sada and/or Turo's son (either the child of both of them or one whose parentage depends on the game chosen). This ultimately turned out to be true; Nemona outright refers to Arven as Professor Sada/Turo's son early on in the game.
  • One artist managed to accidentally predict Koraidon's exact shiny palette five months before the game even released!
  • The fact that Scarlet and Violet would have DLC (which was confirmed on February 27, 2023) was predicted by many people, due to the number of sequel hooks shown in the Secret Final Campaign and multiple Pokémon whose existences are hinted at but never explored by the end of the base game.
  • When Walking Wake was revealed, a number of fans speculated that Raikou and Entei would be getting their own Paradox forms, with a surprisingly common theory that the former in particular would be based on long-necked dinosaurs such as Brachiosaurus and Diplodocids. The Pokémon Presents video would confirm this to be true, with the reveal of Raging Bolt, though Gouging Fire wouldn't be as such.
  • Similarly, many fans also expected that Cobalion and Terrakion would get Paradox forms after Virizion got one via Iron Leaves. They were proven right when Iron Crown and Iron Boulder were revealed.
  • Many fans predicted the Pokémon revealed on April 17, 2023 would be Terapagos due to its appearance. The Pokémon Presents on August 8th, 2023 confirmed this prediction.
  • Quite a few fans guessed after she was revealed that Briar would be the descendent of Heath, owing to her clothes being scarlet and violet and her seemingly significant role. This was confirmed to be the case after The Teal Mask came out.
  • Many fans correctly guessed that all three members of the Loyal Three would be part Poison-type, since their shared ability Toxic Chain was revealed beforehand. Thanks to other moves they were seen using in the trailer, their secondary typings were also guessed correctly; Fighting for Okidogi, Psychic for Munkidori and Fairy for Fezandipiti.
  • Many fans were quick to guess that the Loyal Three were not the paragons of heroism they were being praised as even before the DLC came out, due to their sinister, thug-like appearances and their poison-inflicting signature ability sticking out in a franchise where poisonous attacks and villainy often go hand-in-hand. Upon The Teal Mask coming out, it was revealed that they were indeed evil and Ogerpon only got a bad rep due to people misunderstanding the events of the fight between it and the Loyal Three.
  • Dipplin, being able to use the Eviolite, led to many players speculating that it had a final evolved form that would be revealed in The Indigo Disk. Sure enough, Dipplin can evolve into Hydrapple by learning Dragon Cheer, a move introduced in The Indigo Disk.
  • When fans started speculating what the other Legendary Beasts would look like as Paradox versions, many predictions for Entei involve it resembling the appearance of a Triceratops. While not exactly on the mark, Gouging Fire resembles a Styracosaurus, a related dinosaur that shares a few similarities.^note While Gouging Fire's "eyebrow horns" can be mistaken for the brow horns of a Triceratops, they are flat and point sideways, functioning more like eyebrow ridges.
  • Upon the naming of Drayton, it was heavily speculated that he was related to Drayden in some way. Reasons included their similar names and hair colours, Drayton using Archaludon as his ace implying his specialisation in Dragon-types like Drayden , and the revelation of Blueberry Academy being located near Unova. Sure enough, a conversation between him and Hassel in the DLC reveals that Drayden is Drayton's grandfather.
  • After the release of Teal Mask, a few fans looked back at the August Presents and began suspecting that the faceless character wearing a red tank top under a white jacket is Kieran considering what happens in the DLC, so much that several fan artists drew Kieran in that outfit even before Indigo Disk was released. The December trailer and the released second DLC confirmed this.
  • With the Loyal Three not being the paragons they were thought to be, and being based on the tale of Momotaro, with the titular protagonist being nowhere in sight, fans began speculating that there would be a "trio master" based on Momotaro. Particularly eagle-eyed fans even noticed a cropped-out figure in the cutscene detailing Ogerpon's story, which linked up to a plushy in the Peachy's stand in the DLC. Sure enough, the Indigo Disk DLC secretly added Pecharunt, which is based on Momotaro, linked to the Loyal 3, and has a "closed-off" form with its shell that looks like the cropped-out asset. In fact, the plushy was Pecharunt.
  • A popular theory surrounding Penny was that her unseen overprotective dad is Peony from the Crown Tundra DLC of Pokémon Sword and Shield. Sure enough, Mochi Madness seems to confirm this when Penny speaks with her dad on the phone, mentioning how he describes their trip as an "adven-tour" and describing him as "mega-ultra" annoying, both phrases that Peony frequently uses himself.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: The game has removed the option to use Set Mode, the option to disable switching Pokémon when your opponent sends out a new one (while you can choose not to switch Pokémon, resulting in the same outcome as Set Mode, it means a formerly unneeded extra button press each time). This was commonly considered the closest thing the games had to Hard Mode; as such, many players weren't pleased to see it removed. This is also awkward as Set Mode is always turned on in PvP.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: The Ogre Oustin' minigame introduced in the Teal Mask DLC has garnered this reaction from players attempting to use it. While the easy mode is generally manageable alone (both solo and especially online), the same can not be said for the normal and especially the hard mode. The minigame has players ride and collect berries to put in baskets, but unfortunately that proves too difficult from the moment you place any in the basket you will have to repeatedly spend time guarding your baskets from greedy mons and collect berries at the same time. To make matters even worse, there's an option to warp you right to your basket, but you must drop everything you've collected. Not to mention in the harder difficulties, Munchlax and Snorlax eat though your collection with remarkable speed. This leaves players with the only option to work in a group and even then there's no guarantee you'll be able to handle the chaos.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Penny can be rather abrasive with her biting remarks, but with the amount of bullying that she'd been put through all throughout her school life, is it any wonder that she'd become as bitter and jaded as she is today?
  • The Loyal Three could arguably be considered this, as they were nothing more than ordinary Pokémon who were unhappy with themselves before being mutated and brainwashed by Pecharunt, whose orders led them to their deaths at Ogerpon's hands.
  • Pecharunt itself, according to its lore story, wanted to be loved so much that it brainwashed the old couple who adopted it into becoming insatiably greedy just to gain more. While the story makes it clear that its actions were still amoral, it also makes it rather pitiable.
• Junk Rare: See the series' sub-page here.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • A ludicrous amount of Toku fans are here for Lokix, a blatant homage to Kamen Rider.
  • Some fans bought the DLC mainly for the Synchro Machine in The Indigo Disk, allowing them to control their Pokémon directly ala the PokéPark games.
• LGBT Fanbase:
  • Quaquaval received this as, despite appearing masculine and having a 7:1 ratio of males to females, it seems to be inspired by female dancers from Brazilian Carnaval, leading to jokes about it being a flamboyant "gay bird", if not an outright drag queen. This attracted many gay fans that made a lot of memes from this comparison.
  • When the professors were revealed, Professor Turo became a bit of a sensation among gay male fans between his skintight outfit and his beard.
  • Mr. Saguaro is very popular among gay male fans, particularly from the Bara Genre, with his highly muscular figure being complemented by a tight bright pink shirt and an adorable apron.
  • Rika gained a lesbian fanbase shortly after release due to being one of the series' first overtly butch-looking characters, with her sharp features and classy suit having many women swooning. She placed first in a Japanese poll asking women which fictional characters they fantasize about dating.
  • And, of course, the male player character who, for the first time in the core series, can buy and wear feminine clothing options, allowing you to play as a drag queen or just a boy with no hangups about gendered leg clothing.
• Low-Tier Letdown: The Stellar Tera Type was hyped up in initial marketing as a powerful Tera Type that possesses the powers of all Types, sacrificing the defensive benefit of Terastalization for pure offense. The actual, ugly truth is that the mechanic appears to have been perhaps over-balanced; while you get a boost to all of your attacks, the attack boost amounts to a measly 20% bonus damage for non-STAB attacks and the standard 2x bonus for STAB; furthermore, each bonus is only good once per type, meaning that the momentum boost you get off of the Stellar-type wears off very quickly relative to the investment you have to put in considering that you only get one Terastalization per game. This makes the Stellar-type borderline inferior in virtually every use case where you would want to use a Tera to gain an advantage, since normal Terastalization confers defensive counterplay and superior long-term damage. Tera Raids do bypass the "once per type" rule by boosting attacks multiple times, so it seems as if the Stellar-type was made with Raids in mind. Outside of Raids, however, the only Pokémon who would realistically be caught using the Stellar-type is Terapagos, who despite being confered the boosts permanently (even outside of Tera Raids) is also gimped by its reliance on needing Terastalization to transform, and even then merely becomes a mediocre Legendary.
• Magnificent Bastard: The Final Bosses of the game caught many players off-guard for how ingenious they are: Professor Sada (in Scarlet) / Professor Turo (in Violet) was Arven's parent who discovered and utilized the Terastal phenomenon while exploring the Great Crater of Paldea. The Professor proceeded to use the Tera crystals to create a time machine with hopes of building a paradise for their family, using the machine to bring over Pokémon from the past/future, in spite of their threats to Paldea's ecosystem. Even with the Professor's untimely death as a result of their research, their numerous security systems and failsafes, including forcing their AI copy to battle any threat to the machine and, in the event that would fail, locking all Poké Balls except their own, would defend the time machine from the protagonist and their friends, demonstrating the Professor's willingness to allow the destruction of the region for the creation of paradise.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Maushold quickly became this upon release, despite its unassuming appearance and stats. This is due to a combination of Population Bomb, one of its signature moves that can hit up to an absurd 10 times (with Wide Lens greatly increasing the chance of it hitting 10 times due to the number of hits being accuracy reliant), its Hidden Ability Technician, which boosts each and every Population Bomb hit, and Tidy Up, its other signature move that combines the effects of Dragon Dance and Defog into one powerful move. With Terastallization, it can even patch up its lack of Steel coverage with Tera Blast.
  • Annihilape has also proven to be one of the most broken threats in the game but was much more upfront with its threat level than Maushold. In addition to having a great Base Stat Total of 535 (the same BST as the strongest starter of all time, Swampert), it possesses excellent stat distribution and a nearly unopposed offensive type combo with Fighting/Ghost (which is also a solid defensive type combo, too), making it a Lightning Bruiser right out of the gate. This would have been enough to cement it as a metagame threat, but Gamefreak decided it wasn't vicious enough and gave it Rage Fist, a Signature Move with the potential to hit with a Base Power of 350! This massive windfall has turned it into one of the most viable Fighting Pokemon of all time, and that is some stiff competition.
  • Oddly enough, Larry is gaining a reputation despite, or perhaps because of, being just an average guy who can easily be confused for a regular NPC due to him having three jobs of being an office worker, a gym leader, and an Elite Four member and not doing any showy moves when performing actions such as Terastallizing his Pokémon. Some even believe that if he stuck to just solely Pokémon training, he would easily be the strongest trainer in the world. Perhaps he inspires similarities to another extremely powerful character who began his journey as an ordinary, soul-crushed Salaryman…
  • After returning in the Indigo Disk DLC, the Blastoise family became this thanks to what many considered to be both the best redesign and revamp movement any returning Pokémon in the game for finally using its cannons in some moves and its swimming animation being considered awesome by both using its movement differently if battled in the water and using its bottom shell holes as a rocket. Many are even comparing it to Gamera.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Geeta quickly became notorious for being one of the least-threatening Champions in modern memory, with some truly bizarre team decisions and a poorly-chosen ace. ^{Battle Spoilers}Glimmora, her ace, is a solid Pokémon… as a lead, given its natural ability to set hazards. She sends it out as her very last Pokémon, and also sends out her Kingambit, a Pokémon almost tailor-made to make a Last Stand, early in the battle. She also has a Gogoat and Avalugg, the latter of which is a notorious Low-Tier Letdown, and her Espathra, bafflingly, has Quick Attack rather than numerous other, better coverage options. Thus, fans often portray her as incompetent to the extreme, with other Champions confounded as to how she could supposedly be the top Champion of Paldea. While this may be intentional, as Nemona, who is fought immediately after Geeta, is portrayed in-universe as a stronger trainer (and has a higher-level team) and Geeta isn't even the Final Boss, the depiction of Geeta as a fumbling embarrassment to the title and concept of Champion is nonetheless a common one. The fact that the Gym Leaders tend to have mixed feelings about her as well as her treatment of Larry has also led people to characterize her as a Pointy-Haired Boss. The Indigo Disk does slightly mitigate this by switching up her team order^note Glimmora and Kingambit are swapped, allowing them to use their intended roles much better. and replacing some of the members^note With Gogoat and Veluza being replaced by Chesnaught and Dragapult to make it far more effective, letting her put up a much better fight.
  • Corviknight. Thanks to Tinkaton's portrayal as a Memetic Psychopath and fan exaggeration of its tendency to knock Corviknight out of the sky, it's often portrayed as a hapless victim of Tinkaton that's terrified to take to the skies of Paldea. These memes tend to ignore the fact that the dex entry refers to Tinkaton attacking Corviknight as a "daring" behavior, i.e. something not without risk for the Tinkaton itself.
  • Tinkaton itself is also this despite its popularity, merely due to its very mediocre 75 Attack stat. Fans treat it as if it's incredibly weak and disappointing compared to what its giant hammer would suggest, when in reality it's in the RU tier of Smogon competitive singles due to its positive traits.
  • Spidops, the evolved form of one of the game's Com Mons, became notorious due to how stunningly poor its stats (barely above 400 total) are in a game otherwise full of Power Creep. When it's not the butt of jokes among fans (a common one being that it was created to give the similarly hopeless Ledian a friend), it's being hyped up as a fake Memetic Badass who could be the ultimate entry hazard user in the bottom-most competitive tiers like PU and ZU, with some taking the gag far enough to try it in the highest tiers.
  • Iron Jugulis gets this for being one of the more uninspired Paradox Pokémon and for its funny name, but also for inheriting Charizard's "curse" of being a dragon Pokémon that isn't even Dragon-type, in 2022.^note Charizard at least had the excuse of Early-Installment Weirdness concerning the Dragon type. Fans speculate that something must have gone wrong during the Hydreigon-robot mating ritual that allegedly created the species. Even in battles, it can't learn Hydreigon's best nuke option of Draco Meteor^note which can only be learned by permanent Dragon-types, Mew, and Arceus and has to settle with the Awesome, but Impractical Hurricane instead.
• Memetic Molester:
  • Nemona secretly following the protagonist across the region to watch all of their Gym Battles, combined with enforcing But Thou Must! when it comes to them accepting her as their rival, and some of the wording of her dialogue makes her sound passive-aggressively jealous if the player battles anyone besides her, has resulted in plenty of fans construing it as potentially entering Stalker with a Crush territory, with some even going as far as depicting her as a Yandere for the protagonist.
  • Rellor itself got revealed as one after the 1008 Pokemon video thanks to its unsettling-looking face◊ (which isn't too noticeable when it's normally walking on the ground), which led fans into interpreting it as a creepy predator. The fact it's also a dung beetle doesn't really help matters much either.
• Memetic Mutation: On the franchise page.
• Memetic Psychopath:
  • Tinkaton is a small, cute Pokémon that holds a massive hammer, and its Pokédex entry describes how it attacks other Pokémon unprovoked. This has led to fans depicting it as a psychopath who murders other Pokémon for fun. Its Dex entry of knocking out Corviknight from the sky has also spawned memes of it being brutal and merciless to the bird. It doesn't help that in the 1008 Pokemon video, Tinkaton swings her hammer at the viewer.
  • Bombirdier became one thanks to a combination of its resemblance to the Delivery Stork and its canonical habit of dropping rocks and other objects for fun getting interpreted as dropping things on people For the Evulz (despite its dex entries only implying it doesn't consider where the objects land, nothing about it intentionally targeting anyone). Needless to say, it didn't take long for people to start joking about it using babies as ammunition.
  • Iron Bundle is a robotic Future Badass version of Delibird that proved to be a Game-Breaker on Smogon. The sheer ridiculousness of this led to fans interpreting it as a Bad Santa to the extreme, that wants to kill everyone on its "naughty list" (which is everyone). Comparisons abounded to Robot Santa from Futurama, including by Smogon themselves when explaining their ban of the Pokémon. Fans also love to joke about how Iron Bundle is basically Delibird going through one of the biggest revenge arcs ever, which worked a little too well.
  • Kieran becomes this after slowly experiencing Sanity Slippage during the Teal Mask DLC. This culminates in him becoming obsessed with beating the player, complete with a Death Glare and Slasher Smile. Naturally, fans joke about how Kieran will kill the player. Sure enough, the climax of the Indigo Disk has Kieran nearly succeed in killing the player... alongside himself, his sister, and his teacher when he causes Terapagos to go berserk, which ends up causing him much guilt.
• Mis-blamed: After the game was released with bugs and issues with the visuals, many fans and critics blamed the hardware, with the Switch being simply too weak to run the game. Other fans and critics, however, pointed out that the Switch was perfectly able to run even bigger and more complex games, like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and even infamously beefy games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Crysis Remastered Trilogy, and Persona 5 Royal. The blame would actually lie on Executive Meddling forcing the developers^note many of which were fresh out of college, although Monolith Soft had hired developers of a similar experience level to much better results going through crunch to attain an unrealistic release date — which is in turn the fault of business mandates setting a strict release schedule, not the developers being inexperienced^note again, less experienced developers don't necessarily lead to a worse final product if given enough time or setting out to make an underwhelming product. If anything, it's been agreed that Game Freak's ambition has only grown since the Switch generation, with Scarlet and Violet being their most ambitious project yet, but the timeline for releases is yet to be adjusted.
• Moe:
  • All three of the new starters are absolutely adorable — Sprigatito is a wide-eyed Cute Kitten that retains its cuteness even after it evolves to Meowscarada, Fuecoco is a small, chubby crocodile, and Quaxly is a smiling little duckling!
  • Chi-Yu is a cute little fish with big round eyes and an equally adorable cry of "Splashy splashy!". It'd be absolutely huggable if it wasn't literally made of fire and also the malevolent embodiment of envy.
  • The Teal Mask DLC introduces Ogerpon, the mascot legendary of the DLC. Once her mask pops off, she's shown to be absolutely adorable with a cute face with Cute Little Fangs, as well as stumpy yet adorable proportions. Combined with her tragic backstory, it caused the fandom to near-unanimously want to protect the little ogre overnight.
  • The Indigo Disk DLC also introduces Terapagos, the Hidden Treasure of Area Zero. It has a perpetual smile on its face and has star-shaped irises like Ogerpon. Upon awakening, it lets out an adorable yawn before it locks eyes with the player character and starts walking towards them, much to Kieran’s dismay.
• Narm:
  • Despite all the design motifs of motorcycles, Koraidon itself only runs on four legs, with the "tires" on its neck and tail being just its curled-up tail and inflated throat sac compared to its Violet counterpart.
  • Similar to Piers in Pokémon Sword and Shield, one of the Gym Leaders, Ryme, has a musical-based aspect to their character, with her specifically being a rapper. But like in the aforementioned game, there's no voice to go along with her rapping. At least this time, there's text to get an idea of what's being sung/rapped, though it's still quite awkward.
  • The lack of any voice-acting in cutscenes sticks out even more this time around, thanks to the clearly cinematic presentation incorporated and the presence of a fully-vocalized Ed Sheeran song during the credits. This is especially glaring during the final scene of the game where the main characters all start their return home after shutting down Area Zero, where a scene which is clearly intended as heartwarming can come off as downright awkward due to it feeling like it's lacking voices that aren't actually there. The characters also have field dialogue conversations in the final dungeon a la Xenoblade Chronicles 3, but they're conveyed entirely through subtitles and can be easily missed since they occur during gameplay and go by rather quickly with no option to pause them.
  • Many fans saw the eating animations as this. They get preceded by your character eating thin air, with a flat image of the food in the background (Sword and Shield at least had the courtesy of portraying your trainer lifting a spoonful of curry to their mouth). Each food will provoke two animations in order: one for the type of flavor (sweet, spicy, dry, etc.) and one for the quality of the food, which results in silly sequences where your character smiles and enjoys a sweet sandwich then suddenly collapses in response to its poor quality, or fanning their mouth after eating spicy potatoes before snapping to a neutral smile as if the spice spontaneously stopped having an effect. And that's without mentioning the various visual glitches that may often happen, such as the player character's face staying frozen (hence showing them taking a bite without actually opening their mouth).
  • While Area Zero still otherwise does a pretty great job remaining ominous and alien, one point that does hurt its mystique a bit is the fact that the Paradox Pokémon are the only unique encounters in it. This isn't normally that big a deal, but one particular moment of The Road Home, your first encounter with a Paradox Pokémon in the Crater, has Penny mistake one for its normal counterpart and say it's good to see something familiar for once, which strikes as a bit strange since up til that point, you've encountered nothing but Pokémon you can find in the rest of Paldea, or at least their evolved forms.^note This might make a little sense considering it's Penny talking, who's a big enough shut-in that she might not be used to running into any wild Pokémon face-to-face.
  • The Final Boss fight against AI Sada/Turo is nothing short of epic and an emotional fight. But, they have a line for if/when they score a critical hit against the player saying it was All According to Plan. This will happen even if the critical hit either doesn't do a lot of damage (due to being resisted) or is a move that doesn't do a lot of damage (Such as Fake Out).
    • Trainers' lines regarding critical hits (whether them taking it or dishing it out) in general feel narmy, as while lines for other situations (such as using super-effective attacks) are more varied and thus sound more normal, whenever a critical hit happens, your opponent will specifically say critical (hit) somewhere in their response, which is a rather silly way of Leaning on the Fourth Wall.
    • Trainers expressing disbelief over landing a critical hit against them, in particular Kieran practically breaking down and ranting at your luck in the final act of The Indigo Disk, can feel overly dramatic if the move that hit them was something like Flower Trick, which is guaranteed to crit.
  • For the Mochi Mayhem story, any drama that could have been gotten from Pecharunt managing to take control of your friends as well as the citizens of Kitakami is undermined by the fact that everyone who falls under its control is apparently compelled to say nothing but "mochi" and do the chicken dance.
• Narm Charm:
  • Koraidon's run can look a bit goofy, but that makes it more endearing. It's like a car from The Flintstones.
  • In a meta sense, there’s something amusing about one of the most infamously buggy games in the series having a glitchy AI for a Final Boss.
  • From Mochi Mayhem, the goofy chicken dance and chant of "Mochi" that Pecharunt's victims do can still be seen as rather unsettling, since they're clearly not acting normally and are usually doing so with rather uncanny smiles on their faces.
• Nausea Fuel: The ability "Cud Chew" is practical, but essentially involves the Pokémon regurgitating the berry they just ate and eating it again.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: The games quickly became infamous for their copious amount of glitches and graphical hiccups, yet it still didn't stop it from selling 10 million copies in 3 days. In fact, some people even overlooked said glitches and memed them.
• Obvious Beta: The game infamously suffers from copious amounts of bugs and graphical errors due to the strict deadline the developers were forced to work with, releasing less than a year after Pokémon Legends: Arceus.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Non-standard Tera types aren't the first time Pokémon could become unusual types completely different than their original typing. The Pokémon TCG did this as far back as Gen 2 with the Crystal Pokémon from the Aquapolis and Skyridge expansions, who could temporarily change type when basic energy were attached to them.
  • These aren't the first Pokémon games that allow the player to challenge gyms outside of a specific order. Pokémon Red and Blue give the player a lot of freedom after they beat Misty, letting them tackle the gyms from Lt. Surge to Blaine in (mostly) any order they'd like. Similarly, Pokémon Gold and Silver let you take on Pryce before Chuck and Jasmine, even though he comes later in the order of Gym Leaders.
  • This isn't the first Pokémon game to introduce a Gym Leader who is also an Elite Four member. Koga of the Indigo League started off as a Gym Leader in Pokémon Red and Blue before becoming an Elite Four Member by Pokémon Gold and Silver, although this was over the course of two games rather than one. Then there's also Hala, Olivia, and Acerola from Pokémon Sun and Moon, who filled roles similar to Gym Leaders from other generations before returning later in the game as Elite Four members.
  • The final boss of the Indigo Disk destroying Kieran's Master Ball isn't the first time a Master Ball has failed to contain a Pokemon. Quite infamously, an episode of Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire, "Whiscash and Ash", has a character attempt to catch a Whiscash with one, only for the Whiscash to swallow it, rendering it ineffective.
• One True Threesome:
  • Or rather, One True Foursome, as fans have come to adore the well-developed relationship between the protagonist (Florian/Juliana), Nemona, Arven, and Penny post-game to the point that the concept of Polyamory between them is considerably as popular as the common shipping between the Player Character with one of the three friends, especially if one cannot decide on who to pair off. This can get bumped up to Fivesome in works that include both protagonists.
  • With the inclusion of Kieran and Carmine, showing how well they got along with the Paldean friends post-Mochi Mayhem and when visiting the League Club, it goes up to Sixsome; Sevensome with both protagonists included.
• Play-Along Meme: Similar to the Alola games with Professor Kukui and the Masked Royale, whenever Clive is brought up, you'll find plenty of people talking about what a cool, hip young student he is. Nothing like that Director Clavell guy at all.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: The Indigo Disk is generally agreed to have weaker story content than the base game and The Teal Mask, with Terapagos and the Area Zero Underdepths in particular being underexplored despite being the namesake of the expansion. However, many fans also find its gameplay to be the best of the three parts, with well-designed, difficult battles, various quality-of-life improvements, a functional sidequesting system that rewards pretty much anything you do in the Terarium, and bonus features that add extra play value to the game.
• Popular with Furries: Like every Pokémon game, it has received a lot of attention from furries for its designs, especially Meowscarada, Quaquaval, and both Koraidon and Miraidon.
• Preemptive Shipping: Shipping the player character with any one of their three rivals quickly became popular before the games actually came out, though Arven was the most popular choice with Nemona as a close second.
• Ron the Death Eater: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Self-Fanservice:
  • Professor Sada has slightly toned abs but is about as lean as most adult female characters in Pokémon. Despite this it is very common to see fanart of her drawn with six-pack abs and/or just extremely muscular all over as a lot of fans feel that a more muscular physique is more fitting of her cavewoman aesthetic.
  • Rika is a striking example of a Bifauxnen, but fanart likes to take things further with her design by making her taller and giving her sharper facial features, despite her being just as tall as any other adult woman in the game.
  • Perrin is already a very attractive character, but a lot of fanart puts heavy focus on her breasts and cleavage, midriff, and butt, and she had a lot of fan-art since she was revealed in the trailer for the Teal Mask DLC.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: If one counts the DLC as a sequel to the main story, then The Indigo Disk absolutely counts, as it has some of the toughest mandatory trainers in the entire franchise in almost exclusively double battles (which lend complicated strategies that can cripple an unprepared opponent): the trainers in the expansion (to say nothing of the BB Elite Four) all carry competitive Pokémon with very smart strategies and very astute AI, which they will use to completely disabuse you of the notion that you can just steamroll through with your maxed out team. That's right: it's very possible to lose to a team that's dozens of levels lower than yours in this if you don't prepare for it.
• Ships That Pass in the Night:
  • Grusha/Rika has gained a surprising amount of traction on Archive of Our Own, even though the two characters never interact in the game. The main reason seems to be that they were both subjected to Viewer Gender Confusion (Grusha for being a Long-Haired Pretty Boy, Rika for being Bifauxnen), which as a result means they'd make for a perfect example of a Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy pairing. Another reason is that Rika is named after a "fiery" spice (chili in Japanese, paprika in English), while Grusha is the Ice-Type Gym Leader, making them a kind of Opposites Attract.
  • Nemona/Carmine (both platonic and romantic) quickly became a popular pairing after the release of The Teal Mask. This is largely due to a combination of their shared love of battling and their opposing personalities, which made fans start seeing Carmine as the ideal Stock Shōnen Rival to contrast Nemona's Stock Shōnen Hero traits. A lot of fans are hoping that they'll meet in The Indigo Disk DLC and while they didn't meet then, they did briefly meet in the epilogue.
  • As Penny never got to meet any of her fellow Team Star leaders in-person until the end of her storyline, many fans ship her with Ortega or Atticus, with fans of the former ship pointing to Ortega seemingly displaying a crush when they first meet, with fans of the latter pointing out that Penny finds Atticus hot.
• Shocking Moments:
  • While many fans had anticipated a new mainline Pokémon game would be on the horizon in the near future, almost no one anticipated it'd be revealed so soon after the release of Pokémon Legends: Arceus and that it'd be coming out later in 2022...though given the rigid nature of the release schedule for the series, perhaps it should've been more expected.
  • Arven revealing his injured Mabosstiff, caused many shocked players to immediately do a 180 on their view on Arven, from seeing him as a Jerkass to The Woobie.
  • The reveal that Professor Sada and Turo were Dead All Along, and the present one being an AI was a massive twist absolutely no one expected, and the fact that they were explicitly killed further added to the shock.
  • Ed Sheeran producing the credits theme, Celestial, was already fairly surprising, as not only did it mark a very rare instance of a celebrity collaborating on a Nintendo product (and an even rarer instance of it being a Western one, as opposed to other examples like Shigesato Itoi, Tsunku, and Shinya Arino), but it also marked the first vocal theme for a mainline Pokémon game. Toby Fox rearranging it for the credits of The Indigo Disk, and incorporating more melodies from the in-game soundtrack, was even more shocking, though. Who would've thought Toby Fox would produce an official remix of an Ed Sheeran song for a Pokémon game just a few years ago?
  • Stellar Form Terapagos breaking the Master Ball that Kieran caught it with sheer power, a sight never before seen in the series.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The game is rather hands-off and lets the player explore the majority of the Paldea region however they please once they get past the tutorial. Said tutorial consists of getting your starter, battling Nemona, rescuing your box legendary before following behind it in a Reverse Escort Mission, battling Arven, battling Nemona again, battling two Team Star Grunts, going to school, getting introduced to all three quest lines, and then unlocking your legendary as a mount before finally getting access to the rest of the region with much less restraints. Even speedrunners take just short of an hour to get through the game's extended tutorial.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • A not-insignificant number of reviews noted that the game suffered from pop-in, textures being pixelated, slowdown, and more. This is especially egregious in an early-game moment where you and Nemona get a view of Mesagoza from atop the Poco Path lighthouse, yet it falls flat because the city is shown as a low-poly texture akin to Super Mario 64. And if the textures aren't glitching, there's a good chance that the models could glitch out too, with their limbs flopping and bending the wrong way, or stretching out to an abnormal degree (though this usually only happens when using multiplayer).
  • Much like in Legends: Arceus, character and Pokémon models tend to drop in framerate when far enough away. However, this tended to come at the game's disadvantage in some cutscenes as characters can be visibly spotted moving in frames so low you can count them on a hand. Special mention goes to an early-on moment when the player is being introduced to their class, and nearly every student is rendered in really low framerates due to the camera's position, making for a really awkward view and impression for the player. Stationary Pokémon encounters such as the Loyal Three also look like they're suffering from a seizure if viewed from a distance, to hilarious effect.
  • Every Pokémon has a lower fidelity model with less polygons than their regular one, which is meant to help with game performance and only be seen when the player isn't close enough to notice. The problem is that the distance the Pokémon models switch at is way too close to the player, making the change incredibly noticeable. Adding to the problem, the camera is far enough back during battles that the game will swap to the lower fidelity model of wild Pokémon and zoom in on them during their intro animation, making these models impossible to ignore.
  • Unlike in Legends: Arceus there are now animated buildings (mainly windmills) that can be seen from long distance. These do not have lower fidelity models and instead operate with longer distance = lower framerate in mind, and given their nature as large buildings, the player is almost never going to be close enough for them to operate at full speed.
  • When meeting Sada/Turo for the first time in Clavell's office, it's painfully obvious that the feed on the screen is a static image, while the game loads a separate scene to show the professor animate proper. Ironically, it works somewhat as foreshadowing - given the twist about Sada/Turo.
  • As with other Pokémon games from around the same time, NPCs have a select set of animations, can rarely do more than one thing at a time, and can never make direct contact with each other unless they're in a fully animated cutscene (which are few and far between). The scenes in Scarlet where Koraidon licks Penny's face are meant to be sweet, but they're bogged down by Koraidon appearing to simply lick the air a few inches away from Penny despite her disgusted reaction. Those scenes look even goofier in Violet because Miraidon doesn't use its tongue at all despite both it and Penny using the same animation set, so Penny appears to freak out at Miraidon moving its head near her.
    • Related to character animations, if a character is looking at someone, they follow them with their head, rather than their eyes. This can lead to scenes like Carmine's initial appearance in the DLC epilogue, where as she's bobbing up and down doing a chicken dance the heads of all of the present characters can be seen visibly bobbing up and down trying to follow her.
  • As detailed in this Tumblr post, one of the biggest contributors to the game's poor frame rate is actually the result of the game being too detailed for its own good. While the game's engine aggressively culls most objects outside of a narrow region around the player, it doesn't do this for the ocean. Said ocean features a dynamic reflection system, procedurally generated waves, and a semi-transparent color gradient... and is exponentially larger than Paldea itself, meaning the game is constantly rendering a colossal pretty-looking ocean. Adding to the problem, the game's skybox is a sphere (skyboxes in other games either hug the terrain or are domes to be efficient) and is exponentially larger than the already colossal ocean.^note The post extrapolates that if Paldea is taken as being the size of the real-life Iberian Peninsula, the ocean is larger than the Earth and the skybox is larger than the Sun Consequently, the game frequently chugs because it's constantly rendering the comically outsized ocean and skybox, even though the player will only ever see a comparatively tiny portion of both.
  • In a small bit of Developer's Foresight, the player character will react with discomfort if there's heavy weather like a rainstorm or sandstorm in the area. Unfortunately, they're not programmed to recognize if they're actually in it, which can lead to your trainer shielding their eyes from a rainstorm while standing completely dry under cover, or even inside a cave.
  • From the DLC epilogue, humans under the influence of Pecharunt gain a purple aura surrounding them. For most of the epilogue these characters are some distance from each other, but during the final battles against Nemona and Pecharunt at least a dozen of them are stood clustered together in the background, and the framerate noticeably drops whenever the camera is pointed in their direction.
• Stoic Woobie:
  • Larry has to work multiple jobs, two of them being a Gym Leader and a member of the Elite Four at the same time, and he doesn't have time for idle chitchat with him, hinting that Geeta will dock his pay because of this. He is a major Perpetual Frowner and always has Dull Eyes of Unhappiness on his face, yet is still also a very decent fellow who even treats the player to a meal after their Gym battle. This is lessened when the post-game reveals that he works so much partly by choice, as he actually has to get ordered to take more time off than he would otherwise; nevertheless, Larry is always seen as quite pitiful, and one of the most endearing and beloved characters in the game.
  • Grusha, the gym leader of Glaseado Mountain. He comes across as jaded and cynical, only because he used to be on top of the world as a professional snowboarder before losing it all to an accident that left him unable to compete. As revealed in his rematch dialogue, he's insecure about potentially losing his position as gym leader due to it being one of the only things he's good at that he can still compete in. It doesn't help you have to crush him in battle anyways to progress the post-game quest line, although he takes it well.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • Many fans have noticed quite a few similarities between the Treasures of Ruin battle theme and Daler Mehndi's "Tunak Tunak Tun," leading to many memes and mashups.
  • "Team Star Boss Battle Theme" bears a lot of resemblance to "Light the Fire Up in the Night" from Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth.
  • The sandwich-making theme sounds like a piano version of the Super Mario Bros. 2 character select song, especially the intro, which sounds like a heavily simplified version the other song's intro.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • Many fans were surprised about and have expressed weariness towards the prospect of a new mainline Pokémon game being released in the same year as Pokémon Legends: Arceus and announced only one month after its release, with concerns being made towards the game taking attention away from Legends: Arceus (thus cutting its life short and screwing it out of updates and DLC beyond the "Daybreak" content update, leaving it with its very limited Pokédex) and the game being potentially Christmas Rushed in order to meet its Winter 2022 deadline (which was unfortunately proven true with the full game's Obvious Beta nature). Some even called for the game to be moved to 2023 or even 2024 instead and let Legends: Arceus be in the spotlight for 2022, just to give Game Freak more time to develop the game.
  • Although the preview was very well received based on most of the information released, the protagonists' designs have been decried by many as looking uninspired, too childlike, only wearing school uniforms, and (for the in-game models) deviating too much from the Sugimori artstyle that all previous protagonists had. Many fans made redesigns of their own idealized protagonists, while others hoped for customization options in the game that would help to set them apart.
• That One Attack:
  • The sheer abundance of Azumarill and Iron Hands in the raid meta usually causes players to get tripped up at least once when fighting Raid Umbreon. Umbreon knows Foul Play in Tera Raids, a Physical Dark attack that uses the target's Attack stat for damage calculation. Given Azumarill and Iron Hands users will typically Belly Drum on Turn 1, a Foul Play will One-Hit Kill them, causing them to lose access to Belly Drum if they don't want to be a liability and struggle whittling away at it without the ability to triple their damage.
  • Counter and Mirror Coat are just as problematic. Thanks to raid bosses usually being of lower level than your Pokémon (thus having low Def and Sp Def) but having utterly monstrous HP, it's way too easy to deal damage several times your Pokémon's max HP without defeating the boss, resulting in these two moves being guaranteed instant KO. Your only option to stop them is to bring a Ghost type or special attacker (for Counter) or a Dark type or physical attacker (for Mirror Coat) Pokémon, which can mess up your strategy to deal with the raid boss.
  • Status effects in general can utterly ruin your attempt to beat a raid boss, whether it's sleep or freeze that just never ends, or paralysis, confuse or infatuation that flat out stops your Pokémon from doing anything if you're completely unlucky. While Heal Up cheer can mitigate this, you can't rely on it much since you can only use it three times per raid, it doesn't heal all status effects (e.g., it doesn't help against infatuation), using it robs your Pokémon its turn, and the raid boss will just recast the status effect at the next available opportunity anyway. Having a Pokémon that flat-out negates those status effects is godsend (until the raid boss decides to negate the abilities from activating), but not all such Pokémon are decent hard hitters which thus cause you to time out instead, especially if the boss has super-effective attacks against those Pokémon.
  • Any move that cuts your accuracy/raises the boss' evasion can be a disaster since unlike with attack and defense buffs, your raid cheers have no means to fix this accuracy issue, not to mention that you must hit the enemy to charge your tera orb, thus missing too many times delays your terastallization even more and consequently crushes your damage output in a mode where you're hounded by the timer.
  • Encore. Because you can bring only one Pokémon to any raid, Encore will lock your Pokémon into using one move for several turns without you having any means to cancel the effect, thus severely restricting your choice of what Pokémon to bring. Even the precious few Pokémon with abilities that can ignore Encore (such as Gholdengo) still have to worry about the raid boss nullifying their ability for one turn and immediately following that up with Encore, which can be more than enough to completely screw you over.
  • To a much lesser extent than Encore, Taunt can also be disastrous since it means you cannot use non-damaging moves to stack up buffs and debuffs, which are crucial for high-level raids.
• That One Boss:
  • Because of the game's nonlinear structure, any of the major storyline bosses can become this if you don't go out of your way to beat them in the recommended order (aside from the deliberately lower-leveled ones you're intended to fight first). However, the Team Star Bosses are most notorious in this regard; on top of having a team of multiple powerful Pokémon^note All of them except for Mela have at least one Pokemon that cancels out or neutralizes one of their weaknesses. However, Mela's Torkoal has Drought, which weakens Water moves anyways, each of them closes out their battle with their Starmobile, a customized Revavroom with the Boss' signature type. Said Revavroom also has a Secret Art with a high chance of inflicting a nasty status ailment on you and will have some way to frequently boost its Speed, either through an Ability like Speed Boost or a move like Flame Charge.
    • Of note is Mela, whose Team Star base appears near where the first Titan and second Gym are, so you would assume you should fight her at about the same point as those two (doesn't help that the trailer showcased her first before anyone else, implying her to be a Warm-Up Boss), yet her levels (which you have no way of knowing unless you look them up beforehand) suggest she should be fought after the third Gym/second Titan and after defeating Giacomo, the actual lowest-leveled Team Star squad boss. Wander in too early and you'll be faced with a pretty nasty fight bordering on Wake-Up Call Boss. Her Starmobile is the one with Speed Boost, and its Secret Art of Blazing Torque has a high burn chance, which can cripple your physical attackers. That being said, fighting her in rain can easily make her a cakewalk.
    • On the topic of Team Star, Eri, the strongest of the five bosses, can be difficult. She has the most Pokémon in her team (5, including her Starmobile) and they have a good type coverage of moves. Her Starmobile also can quickly turn into a deadly sweeper by using Shift Gear to boost its attack and speed and Combat Torque to reduce the defense of your Pokémon — not to mention the Stamina Ability, which boosts its physical defense each time it takes a hit. Even saving her for last can still give some players a hard time.
  • Clavell is considered much more difficult and trickier than the final opponent of the Starfall Street plotline. His team is well-balanced and consists of Pokémon that can be really problematic. His first Pokémon, Oranguru, comes packing Reflect, greatly handicapping your physical attackers if he uses it, as well as the combination of Yawn and Dream Eater. His final Pokémon, which he Terastallizes, is the fully evolved starter that counters yours. If his starter is not Quaquaval, he will also have a Gyarados that knows Earthquake to counter Electric-types. The actual final battle of the story seems like more of a joke fight in contrast.^note A full team of Eeveelutions that do almost nothing but spam Baby-Doll Eyes.
  • If you fight her on an equal level, Iono is surprisingly tough. Being an Electric-type Gym Leader means that the only super-effective type against her is Ground, and even then it will be hard, as she has a Wattrel (an Electric/Flying-type) and a Mismagius (with Levitate). Another problem is her quite fast Luxio, which can be even more annoying as it has Bite, so expect your Pokémon to flinch. Lastly, her Bellibolt is really sturdy and its ability raises the strength of the next Electric-type move it uses every time it's attacked. Plus it has Water Gun for Ground-type Pokémon.
  • Both of Larry's fights will give you a run for your money:
    • When fought as the Normal-type Gym Leader, he continues the long tradition of Normal-type Gym Leaders being under this trope. His Komala is nothing much to worry about, aside from forcing a switch or wasted turn if it gets out Yawn, but after that is Dudunsparce, who can either paralyze your Pokémon with Glare, or attack with one of two powerful attacks: either Hyper Drill, a 100 BP STAB Normal-type move that bypasses Protect and similar moves, or Drill Run, an 80 BP Ground-type move with an increased chance to crit. It's also bulky enough to take a couple of hits, giving it a chance to whittle, or even sweep your team if you're unlucky. And bringing a Fighting-type might not save you, as his last Pokémon, and the one he Terastallizes, is Staraptor, the Disc-One Nuke of Gen IV. It only knows two moves, but that's all it really needs thanks to its monstrous Attack and Speed. The first is Aerial Ace, an always accurate 60 BP Flying-type STAB move, which will kill any Fighting-types short of Annihilape who try to take advantage of its only weakness, and Facade, the move that made Norman so dangerous. It has 70 BP, gets both the STAB and Tera Type bonus, and doubles in strength if you use a status move. If you don't have a proper strategy going into the fight, you're going to have a hard time.
    • When fought again as the third member of the Elite Four, he proves to be just as dangerous as before. For this fight, he switches from specializing in Normal-types to Flying-types, not only tripping up anyone who sent out a Fighting-type thinking he would send out a Normal-type, but also giving him a wide variety of Pokémon to use, including his Staraptor, which now has more dangerous moves such as Brave Bird and Close Combat. As for the rest of his team, they all come loaded with powerful moves, and one or two tricks to deal with Flying's weaknesses. The Tropius he leads with will use Sunny Day to take advantage of its Chlorophyll ability and one turn Solar Beam, his Altaria comes with Flamethrower to punish anything that tries to use its x4 weakness to Ice, and his Oricorio comes in Pom-Pom style, eliminating Flying's weakness to Electric. Finally, his ace Pokémon for this fight is Flamigo, the Disc-One Nuke of this game, and it comes with Scrappy so that it can use Close Combat on Ghost-types
  • Arven. It is no overestimation that his second battle is one of the hardest of the entire game especially if you're underlevelled — and considering the storyline's preceding battle is against Pokémon several levels lower than his ace, you likely will be. He has very sturdy Pokémon, like Cloyster and Garganacl, and fast ones, like Toedscruel. And be careful, as all of his Pokémon are prepared to face at least one type they're disadvantaged against (Greedent has Psychic Fangs for Fighting-types along with Earthquake for Rock and Steel-types attempting to wall it, Cloyster has Icicle Spear for Grass-types which it gains STAB for, Scovillain has Zen Headbutt and Energy Ball for Poison and Rock-types the latter also gains STAB, Toedscruel has Earth Power for Fire-types which will hurt harder due to gaining STAB, Garganacl has Body Press and Earthquake for Steel-types, and Mabosstiff has powerful counters for all three starters (Crunch for Skeledirge (which is its main STAB) and Play Rough for the other two). Cloyster also has Light Screen, which will be dangerous as most of his Pokémon already have really high defense (though it won't do much to Cloyster as its Special Defense stat is laughably poor even with Light Screen up), while Garganacl has Stealth Rock. Even if you know about all this beforehand, he will still be a challenge for players.
  • Tera Raid bosses with stat-boosting moves or abilities tend to be severe headaches as the mechanics of Raid battles often conspire to have them trigger those boosts several times in quick succession, resulting in Damage-Sponge Boss who also hits so damn hard or is almost impossible to kill from maxed-out buffs. Below are specifics:
    • 6★ Dragonite. Already a Pseudo-legendary, Dragonite hits like a truck and is quite bulky on top of it, but the thing that makes it extremely dangerous is the fact it packs Dragon Dance as part of its normal moveset. Since a Tera Raid boss will use moves against other Pokémon, how this works is that, despite using Dragon Dance once on-screen, there's a chance it will have used it against other Pokémon as well, resulting in at least +3 or even +4 in a single turn! It's not uncommon to hear about this mon giving a lot of people grief; if you can't constantly spam Clear Smog (to remove its buffs) or Taunt (to prevent it from using DD), you'll very quickly end up with a boss that will continually one-shot your Pokémon before you can even move. And if it debuffs your stats? Consider yourself lost. Your best best is, ironically, to pray that Dragon Rush misses.
    • 6★ Gardevoir, similarly to Dragonite, loves spamming Calm Mind, making its Sp. Atk. hurt like hell and rendering it as good as immune to special attacks. While it doesn't pack coverage for Steel-types, its decent coverage and access to Thunder Wave and Will-O-Wisp are still painful to deal with, leaving you with incredibly few ways to beat it.
    • 6★ Corviknight packs Hone Claws. While this means it doesn't boost its Speed like Dragonite, it's still a Mighty Glacier who packs even better coverage than Dragonite does, as Body Press combined with either Iron Head or Drill Peck (the combo of Fighting/Steel and Fighting/Flying) tends to have few reliable switch-ins. It also packs Mirror Force as its ability, making, debuffing Corviknight's stats a no-go unless you switch/supress its ability.
    • 6★ Flareon can be surprisingly difficult if you play solo because of its ability: Guts. With the inability to cripple its Attack through burns and the tendency for the AI to spam status moves as soon as possible, plus the fact Flareon uses Sunny Day and Curse after its HP drops to certain thresholds, you'll be quickly left with a Pokémon whose Fire moves will even outdamage Tera Blast.
    • 6★ Annihilape thankfully doesn't pack Bulk Up as part of its normal moveset, but it still uses the move every certain HP threshold. Thanks to its access to Focus Energy, it can outright ignore any Defense buffs you set up by simply critting through them, chewing through massive amounts of health, especially thanks to Shadow Claw. Attempting to debuff it will end badly since it packs Defiant, which gives it a +2 Attack boost, making playing with bots a massive toss up since there is the chance to get a partner with a Pokémon with Intimidate; this will also give Annihilape a net +1 Attack boost every time they faint and revive. The saving graces (if you can call them that) is that its Secret Art, Rage Fist, is not a part of its normal moveset, only using it when time is almost up (to ensure the battle ends); additionally, it loves spamming Close Combat when it cannot get a positive matchup with Shadow Claw, which lowers its defenses and gives you an easier time taking it out — if you can survive.
    • Moxie Gyarados is especially a problem when playing solo. Given that NPC Pokémon tend to be Curb-Stomp Cushions that are still wiped out in a few hits, you and they'll be progressively unlikely to survive its massive Attack that keeps boosting itself up with each kill, until it reaches a point where Moxie makes Gyarados constantly one-shot everyone. If you can manage to supress its Ability with something like Skill Swap or Worry Seed, you'll still have to contend with a hard-hitting combo of Aqua Tail, Crunch and Ice Fang, plus Taunt to stop you from boosting after a certain HP threshold and Dragon Dance as its HP reaches the red, which isn't pretty at all.
    • Moxie Salamence is similarly gnarly as Gyarados (if not worse). It has far better stats and typing, and in a twist, is one of the only two mons (alongside Talonflame) to pack Tera Blast in its normal moveset (when it is generally used by the Eeveelutions), narrowing its list of potential checks even more. It even uses Dragon Dance at a higher HP threshold than Gyarados does, letting it wipe your team out with little effort once it gets a boost; this causes, again, to supress its ability to not be a guaranteed win.
    • As for 7★ Tera Raids, in addition to being time-limited events, they're the ultimate tests of planning, training, and coordination with other players, but none moreso than Mewtwo, whose Raid took place in the weeks leading up to the launch of The Teal Mask DLC. It immediately opens with a shield and then proceeds to use Calm Mind to send its already-brutal Special Attack through the roof, before unleashing Tera-boosted Psystrike and Ice Beam on all opponents; should the shield be broken, Mewtwo will use Rest not too long after and consume a Chesto Berry to immediately get back up to full HP without any downtime, all while the timer continues to tick away. Anyone who brings a Dark Tera type, or a Dark-type in general^note unless they're Ghost/Dark, and the two mons with that typing, Sableye and Spiritomb, are mediocre choices on their own, will also regret it as Mewtwo will immediately spam Aura Sphere to counter and destroy them, making Tera Dark Mew more difficult to use. The sole advantage on the players' side is that anybody who brings a Mew to the Raid will be granted increased stats for it (a Mew was released through Mystery Gift alongside the event), but even with this, toppling Mewtwo is a tremendous feat. And if you don't have Nintendo Switch Online and have to beat it with nothing but bad AI partners? Arceus help you.
  • Amarys of the BB League Elite Four sports a full, cleverly-assembled team of powerful Steel-type Pokémon. With every Blueberry Academy student engaging in Double Battles, she leads off with a duo of Alolan Dugtrio and Skarmory. The former is a fast Ground-type who'll spam STAB Earthquakes that won't hurt the latter, and has a Focus Sash to offset its complete lack of bulk. Skarmory's Ability is Sturdy, meaning that both Pokémon require two hits apiece to put down, and that it's almost guaranteed an opportunity to set up Stealth Rock. If it's allowed to stay on the field after that, Skarmory will use Body Press to take advantage of its massive Defense stat or Whirlwind to simultaneously disrupt your strategy and trigger Stealth Rock. Amarys also has an Empoleon brandishing a Mystic Water-boosted Hydro Pump to drown any Fire- or Ground-types, and a Scizor whose moveset of Pounce, Trailblaze, Bullet Punch and Aerial Ace not only benefits from its Technician Ability, but ensures that it has total control over which side gets to strike first. Speaking of Speed control, Amarys's Renuniclus averts Poor, Predictable Rock in her team and will use Trick Room, immediately turning the Mighty Glaciers on her team (like itself) into Lightning Bruisers. And with a combo of Protect, Leftovers, Magic Guard, and a defensive EV spread, you can bet your ass that Reuniclus will be sticking around to punish your Fighting-type Pokémon with Psychic. Her ace Pokémon, Metagross, is a psuedo-Legendary with huge stats all-around except Speed (unless Trick Room is active) and a colorful movepool enhanced by its Expert Belt. Against a healthy opponent, its Hard Press move hits as hard as a pre-nerf Meteor Mash, and its Terastallization jacks up its power up even further. In all probability, Amarys is likely to be far and away the most challenging member of the Blueberry League Elite Four that you'll face.
  • Kieran's battles in Teal Mask are manageable, even when he swaps several of his Com Mons out with some heavier hitters near the end of the DLC, but the battle against him in Indigo Disk, where he becomes the BB League Champion, is a whole 'nother ball game. He starts off with Dragonite and Politoed, the latter having the Drizzle ability and the former knowing Hurricane and Thunder, moves that are 100% accurate in the rain. Next up is his Porygon-Z with an Adaptability-enhanced Hyper Beam further boosted by a Life Orb, a combination that can one-shot all but the tankiest Sp. Def. builds. Most aggravating of all, though, is his Grimmsnarl, who's packing a Prankster-boosted Light Screen and Reflect for Barrier Warrior purposes. Grimmsnarl will use both these moves at the earliest opportunity, and because he's holding a Focus Sash and you can't Prankster-Taunt Dark types, you are very unlikely to knock him out before he sets both barriers up. Combine this with his Incineroar lowering your Attack further with Intimidate, and his Hydrapple holding an Assault Vest (which highly boosts Sp. Def, at the cost of being unable to use Status moves) and knowing the insanely dangerous Fickle Beam attack (which has a chance of doubling its power from 80 to 160), and, unless any of your team members know any barrier-breaking moves such as Psychic Fangs or Brick Break, you'll be in for a very hard time knocking the second half of his party out. Brought out an Ice-type against said Hydrapple? Kieran will make you quickly regret your decision by Terastallizing it into a Fighting-type. He may have taken a level in jerkass and arrogance, but Kieran damn well earned that Champion title.
  • Kyogre is an utter beast to capture without Catching Power active. While Pokémon that know a recovery move can be very annoying to catch without a proper gameplan, Kyogre packs a move that will eventually work no matter how hard you try to prevent it: Aqua Ring. With what's essentially a free Leftovers recovery at the end of each turn, it makes both Encore and Taunt useless, since both the effect will already be active, and Kyogre does not have much PP on its offensive moves. And much like Chien-Pao and Ho-Oh, it hits extremely hard right off the bat, especially when rain is active (both from Drizzle and naturally if the overworld decides to spite you). Either you use the Master Ball, or pack a Smeargle with the Aqua Ring + Imprison combo and hope for the best!
• That One Sidequest:
  • To complete Mr. Saguaro's friendship story, he requires a Sweet Herba Mystica, a rare ingredient that is only found in the very difficult 5 and 6-Star Tera Raids. The Sweet variant only drops from specific Pokémon in the raid, and is not guaranteed, meaning there's some luck involved to it as well. The Teal Mask DLC did add a way to get one of each Herba Mystica, but it's locked behind a sidequest... and cold hard cash that has to be spent to get the DLC in the first place.
  • The Blueberry Point Quests in a group mode in The Indigo Disk make gathering said points significantly quicker and adds group quests (which are required to get certain legendaries unlocked) worth a significant amount of points. The problem is that only some of those group quests are easy: some ask you to take a group selfie of some form, and others ask you to catch a certain Pokémon. But then there are the others, such as resource heavy ones like making a four-star sandwich (which requires one each of every Herba Mystica, which are substantially rare drops) and the absolutely maddening Ditto Block quests where you have to find multiple masquerading Ditto in a single biome. And the quests do recycle, so if you're into getting BP, you will be ripping your hair out as your Herbas deplete and you spend a half an hour finding that last Ditto alongside your equally confused friends. And that's when you play with your close friends: trying these quests with complete strangers can and often will be an exercise in futility as some of these quests require all four participants to be at the same place together doing the same thing, and you can always expect there's that someone who'll just wander off on their own disregarding their teammates who absolutely need their help to complete the quest.
• They Changed It, So It Sucks:
  • Clothing customization options are severely limited compared to Sword and Shield. While you still have a variety of hats, socks, shoes, glasses, and backpacks to choose from, your actual clothes are only 4 sets of school uniforms based on the seasons, and it's Color-Coded for Your Convenience based on the game you're playing (if you're playing Scarlet, it's orange. If you're playing Violet, it's purple). Since both genders wear the same exact clothing, it disappointed fans who had wanted more clothing options to choose from, especially since not only did the color scheme of the main uniform clashes with other clothes, but that the uniform in general looked very tacky. The winter uniform has been better received than the other versions (especially in Violet) and facial customization is far more extensive than in any previous game, allowing for player characters that look nothing like the default Florian/Juliana, but whether or not this is enough to make up for the lack of outfits depends on the player. Some players were okay with having to wear uniforms, but disliked that they were full-body outfits with no option to mix-and-match the shirts and pants.
  • Fans and critics were disappointed that the removal of the Set battle mode (when you defeat an opponent's Pokémon, you won't get a warning that they're about to send out a particular Pokémon, and if you want to switch out or not), a feature that has been implemented since the very first generation, was removed and that the default Shift battle mode (you get the option to choose whether to switch to a different Pokémon) was the only way to play. Many fans cried foul that they removed a way to make Pokémon battles more challenging, while some were mildly annoyed that they'd have to just manually skip the entire prompt for them to still feel like they're playing on Set.
  • Players of Legends: Arceus have found the inability to just throw Poké Balls to catch field Pokémon disappointing.
  • Unlike in Legends: Arceus, Shiny Pokémon no longer play a sound or sparkle when they spawn in on the overworld. Many fans were disappointed in the fact that it makes shinies very easy to miss at times, especially on smaller species in big areas, or species with more subtle shinies. Not helping is the overall denser landscaping of Paldea's maps in comparison to Hisui's, with loads of foliage that Pokémon like to hide in among other obstructions. This is especially problematic on species whose shiny forms are very similar to their original colors, making it very easy to walk past a shiny without realizing it.
  • Eight years after Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire stirred up significant controversy by leaving out the Battle Frontier despite it having been introduced in Emerald, Scarlet and Violet one-upped it by getting rid of the Battle Tower altogether. While it means that every item that was once only available by spending BP can now be bought with money depending on your in-game progress, the series has now been deprived of the primary post-game challenge that has been available in all but three games since its introduction in Crystal more than twenty years prior.
  • Scarlet and Violet is the first game in the series where the Pokémon League cannot be refought whatsoever, although Academy Ace Tournament is something of a replacement. This is particularly a bummer for those who want to battle Rika and Poppy; Geeta and Hassel are two of the four possible final opponents in any given Academy Ace Tournament^note The other two being Clavell and Nemona, and Larry can be refought once using his Gym battle team, leaving Rika and Poppy out in the cold. This is fixed in The Indigo Disk, where all of the Elite Four and Geeta have postgame rematches at Blueberry Academy.
  • Dynamic overworld weather returns, but with an odd caveat that may or may not be a bug. The overworld weather can change during battles at random in real time, and can not be superceded by weather-changing moves or abilities. This can work in the player's favor just as often as it can work against them. Mela can get screwed over if it decides to rain and prevent her Torkoal from setting up harsh sunlight with Drought, while the player can simultaneously get screwed over if a sudden rainstorm weakens your fire moves or boosts the power of an opponent's water moves with no way to account for it, or if you're trying to catch a rare Pokémon in Asado Desert when suddenly a sandstorm comes by and said Pokémon is not immune to sandstorm. It doesn't help that most battles occur outdoors and in the overworld.
  • While Walking Wake didn't cop as much backlash since it's one of the many Ancient Paradoxes who have drastic differences from their contemporary counterparts, many people were not thrilled to learn that Iron Leaves was just a robotic Virizion instead of looking like the imaginary Swords of Justice fusion depicted in the Violet Book when the two were officially revealed in early 2023.
  • In VGC, the first iteration of the Video Game World Championships for a given Generation used to feature a limited Pokédex in some form, forcing players to think up unique strategies using a limited pool of Pokémon and allowing Pokémon that would otherwise see no use get their time in the spotlight, such as Pachirisu in 2014. Scarlet/Violet is the first game where this tradition was changed via the introduction of Pokémon HOME, whereupon it was announced that the 2023 VGC World Championships would be played using Regulation D rules, which includes all Paldea Dex mons except Koraidon and Miraidon and any Pokémon added to the game in the HOME update. The vast majority of VGC players called foul on this change almost immediately as the HOME roster adds a truckload of overpowered Game-Breaker Pokémon like Ursaluna and Regieleki and essentially denies a huge number of newly-introduced Paldea Pokémon from ever showing up on the big stage because they're outclassed competitively by the Pokémon joining through the HOME update.
  • Much like Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire, Ultra Sun/Moon and Sword/Shield before it,The Indigo Disk brings back a ton of Legendary Pokemon for players to find and catch as static encounters. This includes Meloetta, giving players a chance to obtain a Mythical Pokémon previously only obtainable through events, much like Deoxys, Arceus and Keldeo before it. In a baffling display of Game Freak Breaking Old Trends, however, dataminers have found that all of these encounters are Shiny-locked. This has caused much outrage and criticism from fans, especially the Shiny hunting community, with many of them having been genuinely excited to have a chance to obtain Shinies of these Legendaries, with some of them even wondering what the point of bringing the Legendaries back is and why they've suddenly decided to stop making them available for Shiny hunting. A particularly cynical theory is that there will be a future event based on the Black Rayquaza from Pokémon Horizons: The Series and every Legendary Pokémon got screwed over in order to draw more people in to the hypothetical event . Meloetta especially hurts in that regard, as it has never had its Shiny form distributed through events, thus ruining the chance to obtain a legitimate Shiny.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Nemona arguably ends up getting less development as a character in her path compared to the paths of the other two major characters, Arven and Penny. Arven's path is tied into his desire to heal his injured Mabostiff and his complicated relationship with his Professor parent, while Penny's is tied into her complicated relationship with Team Star and her own role in its creation as Cassiopeia, as well as the dynamics of the Team Star Bosses and fleshing out Director Clavell. Nemona, by contrast, can feel extremely lacking by comparison since it primarily focuses on her desire to help build the player up as her true rival Champion... which can be boiled down to her just popping up and cheering you on while fighting you from time to time. It's even more noticeable given she had also interacted with the box legendary Koraidon/Miraidon, but barely seems to notice or care about it after the introduction until the very end of the storyline with the AI Professors. Her Secretly Wealthy background is only mentioned at the "Way Back Home" segment, and while she had some story circling about her academy life post-game, not much is elaborated about her home life and her relationship with her own family beyond what has been implied.
  • While Larry and Hassel both have a presence outside of the Pokémon League, Rika and Poppy aren't as lucky. They are both introduced to the player once or twice after collecting a certain number of Gym Badges, fight the player during their Champion Assessment, congratulate them after beating Geeta and watch their fight against Nemona in Mesagoza, and then vanish from the game altogether. Unlike past Pokémon games, the player can't re-enter or rematch the league in the post-game, and neither of the two appear anywhere else in Paldea. Compare to Larry and Hassel, the former doubling as a Gym Leader who can be rematched once in the post-game and the latter being the player's art teacher who gets plenty of screen time and is one of the possible final opponents in the Academy Ace Tournament. Even worse for Poppy, since she's never shown to have any particular importance except as the second Elite Four member, not even any hint how she got there at a young age. She's just... there.
  • While the variants of the Paradox Pokémon are well received, and time travel is an explicit plot point, some wonder why there weren't any fossil Pokémon, especially given that in game lore implies that they looked different in the past.^note This might be because there wouldn't be any counterparts in Violet if Scarlet got fossil Pokémon. Even The Indigo Disk only re-introduces the Sinnoh fossils while leaving out fan-favorites like Aerodactyl^note Limited to a mention in Cranidos' Scarlet Dex entry. and Tyrantrum, unlike The Crown Tundra where every single fossil Pokémon was catchable in the wild for the first time ever.
  • Despite going through the trouble of giving Tauros a whopping three different regional varients, plenty of people found it a bit strange that Tauros's female equivalent, Miltank, not only didn't get a Paldean form, but doesn't appear in the game at all.^note That being said, Tauros was likely included due to Spain being more famed for their bulls than cows.
  • The Teal Mask DLC sets you up with three other students for a trip to Kitakami... but they're just generic NPCs who quickly disappear from the plot. Many lamented not getting to hang out with Nemona, Penny, and Arven, but this is likely a consequence of making DLC playable before you have formed a group and completed the main game. This has since been rectified with the reveal of the Epilogue, where you revisit Kitakami with Nemona, Arven, and Penny, though, according to the trailer, you have to complete a specific post-game sidequest and the entirety of the Indigo Disk's main plot to even unlock it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Many fans have lamented that of the three story routes, the one most relevant to the plot of the Secret Final Campaign (Path of Legends) is also the shortest. It doesn't help that the Titan Pokémon fights are very easy and simple — compared to the Totem Pokémon from the gen VII games, they don't have any fancy tricks like stat boosts or summoning extra Pokémon, which some feel could've made them more interesting.
  • The gym leader rematches are framed as evaluations of the gym's performances in Geeta's stead. After returning to each gym and defeating them again, you meet back up with Geeta at your dorm, at which point she'll ask a couple questions about which gym leader was the easiest, hardest, who was your favorite, and so on. It doesn't matter what you answer with, Geeta will just pat you on the back for a job well done afterwards and your answers are never acknowledged again, not even getting unique dialogue. It's especially jarring considering how some of the gym leaders will talk about how they might lose their positions if they don't perform well for you, but this never goes anywhere or is acknowledged again.
  • Some fans also believe that the school setting could have been utilized better, and even bring in the other school into the main story to set up a “school vs school” aspect to the plot. A few even suggest that rather than being a senior, Nemona should have instead come from the other school, which would have added to the rivalry between her and the player. The Indigo Disk DLC, which has the player go to a different school as an exchange student, seems to have pleased the majority of these fans, however.
• Trans Audience Interpretation:
  • It's become very common to headcanon Penny as transgender: she wears a hoodie (it's not uncommon for trans people, especially ones who haven't medically transitioned far, to wear baggy clothes to obscure bodies they're not fully comfortable with, and the term "dysphoria hoodie" specifically exists); she's shy, geeky, and very good with computers (an archetype often affectionately associated in the trans community with trans women); she loves Eevees (a common favorite with LGBT Pokémon fans, especially trans players) and has Sylveon as her ace (who is the exact colors of the trans pride flag). It certainly doesn't hurt that she's True Companions with rebels who created their own group to protect themselves and others from bullies, which can resonate with LGBT players.
    Penny: Shine bright like the starry sky and become who you really want to be!
  • Due to Grusha's feminine appearance and bulky/covering clothing (though the latter is also explained by living in a cold environment), some fans interpret him as being a trans man who hasn't medically transitioned.
  • Rika of the Elite Four has a distinct Bifauxnen appearance with sharp facial features, a collared shirt with suspenders and a tie, and a slender figure that includes a rather flat-looking chest. Some fans headcanon her as trans due to her appearance, typically either as a transgender woman who enjoys owning her appearance without medical transition or as a nonbinary person who happens to favor traditionally feminine terminology for herself, such as she/her pronouns.
  • Fezandipiti's story states that he was born with dull, short feathers, and his wish to become beautiful led him to the Toxic Chain, which blessed him with much larger and more vibrant feathers. Since some species of birds (Including pheasants, Fezandipiti's basis) have the males having showy, vibrant feathers, while the females have a more drab appearance, this has led some fans to depict Fezandipiti as transmasc, with his wish and granting being seen as similar to gender reaffirmation. Some like to extend this to his allies as well, particularly Okidogi.
• Ugly Cute: While Clodsire is more incredibly awkward-looking than outright ugly, its awkwardness is exactly what makes it so adorable.
• Unconventional Learning Experience: Short of the Herba Mystica variants, most of the sandwich recipes in the game are quite practical to make. Following them can really up your sandwich game.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Shared with the franchise page.
• Unexpected Character: Although several fans did predicted cross-generational evolutions as a concept to continue in Scarlet and Violet, this game and both The Teal Mask and The Indigo Disk DLC introduced new evolutions to Pokémon not many expected to receive.
  • Girafarig into Farigiraf, since it's a Johto-related evoluton that is Normal / Psychic that came after Legends: Arceus where Stantler, another Johto Pokémon, can evolve into another Normal / Psychic in Wyrdeer.
  • Bisharp into Kingambit, considering that Bisharp was already an OU staple among Smogoners until the SV metagame, and is already solid in-game. This is especially notable as Kingambit is the first cross-generational evolution introduced to an Unova Pokémon in their standard form, not counting the White-Striped form of Basculin.
  • The DLC reveal trailers brought evolutions to two Pokémon of the Galar region, which by itself is unexpected. Applin gets a new branched evolution in Dipplin in the Kitakami region of The Teal Mask, but this is nothing compared to Duraludon, a Pokémon with 535 Base Stat Total, gaining a new one in the form of Archaludon in The Indigo Disk. What makes this even more unexpected is that Duraludon has a Gigantamax form in the Galar region like Flapple and Appletun, the two evolutions introduced alongside Applin, and while it isn't the first not fully evolved Pokémon to have an evolution and a Gigantamax form, it's the first one that isn't synonymous with "Pokémon Mascot". When The Teal Mask came out however, Dipplin one-upped Archaludon because it was able to use Eviolite, which shocked players because it meant that the already unexpected evolution was going to evolve again. Sure enough, The Indigo Disk introduced Hydrapple.
• Unfortunate Character Design:
  • Sprigatito's leaf marking on its face combined with its reddish-pink eyes make it look like it has a marijuana motif, leading to many jokes about it being The Stoner. Its final evolution Meowscarada looks even more high due to its slanted pink eyes.
  • Similar to fellow mascot legendary Palkia, Miraidon bears a striking resemblance to a penis, thanks to its long body and rounded exhaust-like legs. This has led some fans to dub it "Miraidong".
  • Varoom can fall into an unfortunate look when viewed as a silhouette (typically in Tera Raid Battles): without seeing its contours and features, it looks quite like a dick and balls with wings.
  • Wiglett and Wugtrio, in all their phallic, extendable glory. It's impossible to talk about them without cracking one joke or two. That is, if you didn't look at Wiglett's shape and white coloration and think of sperm instead.
  • On a similar note, Orthworm, a red/pink worm Pokémon, was guaranteed to be an unfortunate design from the start. Especially not helped by player's likely first contact with it being the massive Steel Titan.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Geeta's eyes are overly big and cause her to look odd and perhaps a little creepy.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Compiled together with all other entries here.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • When Grusha was first revealed, his Pretty Boy features and his debut trailer not confirming either way led to many fans (and even some game journalists) assuming he was female. The official website ultimately confirmed he was male, though not before he was subjected to Rule 34 by artists who'd assumed otherwise.
  • Similarly, many first-time players assumed Rika was male due to her Bifauxnen appearance, though this wasn't as widespread since she wasn't revealed in trailers beforehand and in-game dialogue quickly clarifies that she's female.
  • When the DLC was first announced and Fezandipiti was revealed, many thought it would be female or at the very least a genderless Pokémon that's treated as if it were female like other legendaries such as Manaphy or Lunala. In the game itself however, Fezandipiti will always be male.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The textured Pokémon models have been praised in particular, being on par with the Bandai Namco Pokémon titles, Pokkén Tournament and New Pokémon Snap. To elaborate further on the details one can see on the Pokémon themselves, there are a variety of tiny details that one only really notices if you take the time to look closely. One can see the veins in the leaves of grass-type Pokémon like Hoppip, the fur on fluffy Pokémon looks truly soft and cozy to the touch, metallic Pokémon shine and reflect light in a realistic manner, reptilian Pokémon have visible scales that shine in the light, the list goes on and on.
• The Woobie:
  • Despite initially appearing to be somewhat of a Jerkass, Arven quickly reveals himself to be a very sympathetic and multi-faceted character. The son of Professor Sada/Turo (depending on which version you play), Arven's parent was much more interested in their research than raising their son. As a result, Arven's only real source of love and companionship in his childhood and throughout his life was his trusty Mabosstiff. Then after an incident in Area Zero, Mabosstiff got so hurt that he couldn't even stand or open his eyes, and no amount of healing at a Pokémon Center or using Potions could heal him. This leads Arven to recruit the player character to help him on a mission to obtain the legendary Herba Mystica in the hopes of curing the thing he cares about the most. Although Mabosstiff is thankfully cured at the end of the Path of Legends storyline, Arven gets another punch to the gut when it's revealed that Professor Sada/Turo is long dead and has been replaced by an AI. And then that AI gets permanently sent to the past/future in order to shut down the rogue time machine the original professor invented, but not without telling Arven that they genuinely love Arven as much as his parent did in life. The poor guy needs a break.
  • The cover Legendary, who is eventually revealed to have been beaten within an inch of their life by a second Koraidon/Miraidon and witnessed Sada/Turo's death at the hands of said second cover legendary, leaving it with severe physical and emotional trauma by the time the player finds it at the beginning of the game. The poor thing shrinks down in fear and straight-up refuses to come out of its Poké Ball when you go to Area Zero for the first time, and when the second Koraidon/Miraidon appears, your Koraidon/Miraidon cowers in front of it. Because of all this, it is truly awesome when the Paradise Protection Protocol rendering the player and their friends helpless and siccing the second Koraidon/Miraidon on them to get rid of them by any means necessary gives your Koraidon/Miraidon the courage to enter its combat mode and fight for them. However, this isn't the end, as the epilogue to The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero after clearing The Indigo Disk has the actual Professor return from a displacement in time; upon reuniting with them, Koraidon/Miraidon is joyous (regardless of the Professor not being familiar with it yet), only for the professor to leave as a result of the time displacement closing, with Koraidon/Miraidon being visibly sad to see the professor leave only a very short time after reuniting with them. All of this just makes you want to give the poor bike lizard a hug.
  • In The Teal Mask DLC, Ogerpon is written in Kitakami's folklore as a dangerous ogre who terrorized the land long ago until she was driven away by a trio of Pokémon who supposedly laid down their lives to stop her and were given heroic sendoffs, being revered as the Loyal Trio. In reality, the opposite was true and much uglier: Ogerpon was actually the companion of a mysterious man whose appearances scared the locals of Kitakami and refused them entry, but both were content with living on Oni Mountain together. The only villager who took pity on them was a mask maker who gifted them ornate masks so they could interact with the locals, but their famous masks drew the attention of Pecharunt, a manipulative yet Obliviously Evil Pokémon that empowered and controlled three unknown Pokémon to transform them into the "Loyal" Trio. The ruthless trio of bandits attacked Ogerpon's companion and took three of their four masks. In a panic upon seeing their home in ruins, Ogerpon ran to the village looking for her master (whose fate goes unexplained but is heavily implied to have died), only for a brawl to take place which led to Ogerpon being branded as the villain and the "Loyal" Trio being revered as the heroes for centuries. It takes Kieran's efforts to get the true story spread about Ogerpon, ending her loneliness once and for all.
  • Kieran from the DLCs. He starts off as a meek kid from a small town and an aggressive older sister. He then befriends the player character and there seems to be a little bit of Ship Tease between them as they enjoy their time together at the festival. Unforturnately, the player character meets with Ogerpon, a Pokémon who the townsfolk believed to be a fearsome monster and Kieran’s idol, and the player is forced to keep their encounter secret from Kieran because of Carmine and their grandfather. The perceived betrayal and the constant losses to the player in battles starts wearing down on his fragile mentality and causes him to snap later when Ogerpon prefers to be with the player instead of Kieran. Losing the chance to bond with Ogerpon causes him to undergo a Face–Heel Turn, undergoing a major personality change and devoting himself to become the strongest Pokémon trainer in Blueberry Academy. He then loses his title at the hands of the player (and the player can send Ogerpon out during the battle with him, causing him to call the player out). Finally, in his desperation to become stronger, during the trip to Area Zero Underdepths, he forcefully catches Terapagos with a Master Ball after seeing it's taken an interest in the player, yet the kid doesn't get to have Terapagos for long due to its Stellar form being too unstable to control; though it's a case of Laser-Guided Karma at its finest, it's still rather pitiful.
• Woolseyism:
  • The language Teacher, Salvatore's Gratuitous Foreign Language varies according to the language setting you pick at the start, with Salvatore peppering French in his dialogue if you choose English. For example, if you play the game in Spanish, he will instead pepper an English word here and there in his dialogues.
  • One of Director Clavell's friendship stories has him ask the Player Character the meaning of a peculiar slang word. The word itself changes in multiple translations. In English, he asks what "Cheugy" means; in German, it's "Cringe"; in Italian, it's "Chill", and so on, depending on the language setting.
  • In the original Japanese version, Rika speaks in the Kansai dialect. The Italian translation keeps the flavor by giving her a Roman accent instead.
• WTH, Costuming Department?:
  • The Violet Paradox Pokémon have been met with a rather mixed reception. Although some of them have been well received as useful in fights, with regards to their design, some believe that making all of the Paradox Pokemon just robotic versions of other Pokémon was repetitive and uninspired. Iron Thorns, Jugulis, and Leaves are commonly cited offenders. The fact that all of their shinies have the same chrome coloring does not help matters. Compare this to Ancient Pokémon who were generally more well-received due to being based on a wider variety of prehistoric creatures (not to mention more variety in names than "Iron {insert noun here}"). That being said, there are a few exceptions, namely Miraidon for looking completely different from Cyclizar and Koraidon while also being very expressive in its own right, and Iron Valiant due to it effectively being a fusion of two Pokémon at once. There are also some fans who think the idea of robotic Pokémon is cool and like them just the way they are or would prefer if their designs were modified to be more than just "X Pokémon but metal and with LEDs," as some have put it.
  • Given that the Shiny Pokémon mechanic has been around for decades, fans are flabbergasted that Gamefreak somehow still managed to make Shinies that are bad in terms of being virtually indistinguishable from their normal coloration that you'd be forgiven for thinking they're the exact same mons at first glance. The Charcadet line, for example, have Shinies that are identical to their regular ones save for their eye colors, the Mauses have their blue clothes (which are close to a near white) changing to a similarly near-white tan, and Gholdengo's orange lines change into silver. Not the coins themselves, but its orange outlines.

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