YMMV / Pokémon Sun and Moon

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A

• Abandon Shipping:
  • During the prerelease period, Professor Kukui was part of a number of popular ships, including Kukui/Sycamore and Kukui/Guzma. And then the full games came out, revealing that he's Happily Married.
  • Not many people ship Lillie/Gladion since The Reveal that they're siblings.
• Accidental Innuendo:
  • Kukui when you first reach his lab can be heard saying this:
    Kukui: Oh yeah, Rockruff! Let's go! Give it everything you got! My body is ready! Woo!
  • The Masked Royal when inviting you to a Battle Royal for the first time:
    Masked Royal: I'll be in the mix, too, yeah! And now we have our foursome. Woo!
  • A Hiker in Route 5 gets in on the action:
    Hiker Gabriel: So! What do you think of the largeness of my area?^note He's referring to his surface area. Since he has a large area, that probably means he has a large volume, too.
  • The infamous "Press A to pound the ingredients!" during Mallow's Trial.
  • A lot of the playerbase were rather amused by a male Team Skull grunt's memorable line.
    Grunt B: We ain't bad, we're just hard!
  • When the player character and Lillie seek shelter from the rain, in what seems like a very ship-teasy moment:
  Lillie: My skirt got a bit wet...
• Adorkable:
  • Kiawe. Underneath the loud and Hot-Blooded exterior is a dork who gets genuinely surprised at the player being able to identify the very obvious differences in the dances during his trial, and he also has an adorable but goofy grin when he smiles.
  • Sophocles is brilliant and passionate about his inventions, but he's also very shy and awkward around the player.
  • Acerola. Her constant Playful Cat Smile, frequent jumping and dancing around, and lack of understanding of baseball metaphors cement her as this.
  • Not obvious at first, but as the game goes on and Lillie opens up more to the protagonist and others, she veers squarely into this. The best examples being her calling her Significant Wardrobe Shift her "Z-powered form", referring to a lot of relatively simple things as her trials and the fact she will often do a Z-pose after either of those.
  • The Sightseer trainers often come off as oddly endearing despite their enthusiasm, most of the time. The female's defeat pose is particularly cute.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The Alola Sandshrew and Vulpix lines changed to thrive in snowy habitats...in a tropical region based on Hawaii. But what many don't know is that it actually can snow in Hawaii on the highest mountain peaks— which happen to be where these Ice Types are found.
• Annoying Video Game Helper: The Rotom Dex will have a single line of dialogue for the specific area in the story you're currently supposed to be at, regardless of whether or not you're currently following the story or just catching Mons and participating in sidequests. It will repeat this line every time the game loads like a broken record. And once you beat the game's main storyline, it repeats the same few lines for the rest of the entire endgame. If you do something which interrupts its dialogue (such as opening the Ride Pager or Menu), it will repeat itself over and over until it completes the entire message. Every time you catch a new Pokémon, evolve one, or trade for one, it will demand that you "check it out," requiring several additional button presses for something which, in all previous games, was shown automatically. This process feels incredibly grating.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Kommo-o, the final Totem that guards the Altar of the Sunne/Moone on Poni Island, can be a bit of a joke, especially if the player has a decently-leveled Fairy-Type, plus the TM for Dazzling Gleam which can be found in the same area. If you missed that, there's Trial Captain Mina voluntarily giving you Fairium Z without even the need for battle. In addition, it's at Level 45, which is lower than most of the trainers you needed to beat to get to it, and its allies are a mere Level 32. And thanks to the limitations of the SOS mechanic, all you have to do is finish off Kommo-o first; it can't call out that dreaded Scizor as long as that ally Hakamo-o is still on the field.
  • Gladion is intended to be a powerful adversary, but his team falls quite short of it, with his Pokémon having lackluster movesets despite being high leveled.
• Awesome Music: The series has its own page.

B

• Base-Breaking Character: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Best Boss Ever:
  • The final battle against the Big Bad has her take on a terrifying "Motherbeast" form, use a full team of Pokémon with Totem-like stat boosts, and has amazing music.
  • The Final Boss is loved by a vast majority of the fanbase, for having (once again) amazing music, being the region's professor, something fans have wanted to see happen for decades and a Development Gag to a Dummied Out battle with Professor Oak in Pokémon Red and Blue as well as being a challenging fight for a change after the Sequel Difficulty Drop of Generation 6, using a wide variety of Pokémon types with competitive-level strategies (leading with a Stealth Rock setter, using Whirlwind to do extra hazard damage). The fact that this time, you are the Champion defending your title is also seen as a welcomed change and a fitting tribute for the series' 20th anniversary.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: There is an amnesiac man in the middle of Haina Desert, just before the Ruins of Abundance. The only thing he remembers is the shape of a Pokémon whose name begins with "Sol" in Sun and "Lun" in Moon. You'd think it's a reference to the cover legendaries, but he's actually referring to Solrock and Lunatone, which can only be traded over from the Gen VI games. Talking to him again with them in your party jogs his memory, and he talks about how he gifted the Star Power that the Pokémon gave him to a group of trustworthy men 30 years ago. His work finished and his memory restored, he gifts a player either a Sun Stone or Moon Stone in their respective titles, and returns home...in space, by spinning and rising into the sky as if under a tractor beam. He has no significance to the plot. That said, certain hints such as the mention of the group of men and the implication that the "star pulses" are none other than the O-Powers (before he regains his memories, Solrock/Lunatone produce a flash of light and the O-Power noise) imply that the man may have been the first person to bring O-Powers to Earth and gave them to the men who would eventually become Mr. Bonding, thus finally bringing Mr. Bonding's story full circle.
• Breather Boss:
  • In the post-game quest, Kartana (exclusive to Sun) and Pheromosa (exclusive to Moon) both have a catch rate of 255, meaning you can just chuck a Beast Ball at them from the get-go and be done with them.
  • Totem Vikavolt can be considered one, as it doesn't have any attacks to take advantage of its massive Special Attack stat, not to mention it's fairly slow. It helps that the two Totems it's sandwiched between, Lurantis and Mimikyu, are considered much more difficult opponents.
  • Totem Salazzle definitely qualifies as one. It only has a +1 Sp. Def boost, which means nothing if you have a Mudbray from the early on in Akala with x4 Super Effective Bulldoze. It’s bulky enough to survive one hit and strong enough to obliterate it with a single Ground type attack, a lot has to go wrong for it to actually be able to call its allies.
• Breather Level: Mt. Lanakila. It follows the difficult gauntlet that is Vast Poni Canyon (effectively the Victory Road of the game), but is very short and only has two Rival Battles (similar to Gold/Silver's Victory Road), with a lot of the wild Pokémon being unevolved. It's a nice breather before the tough Pokémon League challenge.
• Broken Base: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.

C

• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • Many people weren't surprised that the Aether Foundation were the true antagonists, because there are many examples of "pure" archetypes actually being evil, and with Lusamine as their leader, it was the perfect opportunity for the main series to have its first female Big Bad. Even the game doesn't bother keeping it a secret, since the very first scene has Lillie running for dear life from some of the employees, one of them sporting a Slasher Smile.
  • Cosmog eventually evolving into Solgaleo/Lunala is supposed to be a twist. While it works a little better in Sun since Solgaleo looks and sounds nothing like Cosmog, it's pretty easy for a Moon player to deduce Cosmog's deal, as it and Lunala share a color scheme, gold appendages, a pair of "wings", and a similar cry. However, it should be noted that Cosmog's evolution, Cosmoem, has a strikingly similar appearance to Solgaleo, resembling the lion's mane and directly segueing into the Legendary forms.
  • Lusamine being Lillie's mother is incredibly telegraphed, as they have extremely similar designs and the game awkwardly shoehorns in a line about Lusamine being 40 years old in spite of her appearance the first time you meet her. Gladion being her brother is slightly less obvious, but still easy to figure out as he shares their hair color, knows about Cosmog, and does a lot of angsting about wanting to protect someone.
• Common Knowledge:
  • One fandom rumor surrounding the Ultra Beasts spread like wildfire just after the games were leaked online, namely that the Ultra Beasts had destroyed multiple universes (including alternate universes that Gens I-V were set in, as alluded by Zinnia during the Delta Episode). Many take this as fact in order to play up the horror factor of the Ultra Beasts, and even many tropers on this wiki took the information to be true (it did not help that this theory had the most followers during the post-leak period, when few people would even have the game due to risks associated with hacking, as well as during the early weeks of the games' release, when few people would have reached that point of the game). It doesn't help that the Dex entries also allude to their destructive power, like how Guzzlord is capable of devouring entire buildings, with many people even believing it could swallow entire oceans, which could certainly be the cause of planetary destruction. Within the games themselves, these rumours are, for the most part, vaguely implied, and while the Ultra Beasts are said to be very dangerous, they are not anywhere near the level the rumor stated. The closest thing to them attacking other universes is one of Anabel's (who is strongly suggested to be from the original games' universe) vague memories of defending Battle Tower against a threat before she fell through a Wormhole. Even if the Ultra Beasts were the threat in question, attacking the Battle Tower (and by extension, the Battle Frontier) is a far cry from being capable of destroying an entire universe. That said, a pack of Ultra Beasts, or even one Guzzlord as implied, wiped out Hau'oli City and forced the survivors to flee the planet, and it's further implied Ultra Beasts ravaged the rest of Alola and that world.
  • Another wildly believed 'fact' is that Guzma failed his island challenge. The only thing that has ever been confirmed in-game is that he failed to become a trial captain. But the fact that he was apparently considered for the position at some point would imply that he did in fact clear them. After all, no one would expect someone to teach a class they failed.
  • Contrary to what some players believe, Professor Kukui is not the champion. The player character is, and Kukui's battle is merely a formality to establish that fact.
  • On the competitive side, it was rumored that the ability Unaware, which enables the wielder to ignore the opponent's stat boosts, was Nerfed, typically by also negating the user's own stat changes. This rumor most likely spawned after it was discovered that Talonflame and Gengar, two powerful OU threats, were nerfed through their abilities^note The former's Hidden Ability, Gale Wings, was changed so that it only worked when the user was at full health. The latter got its ability changed from Levitate to the much weaker Cursed Body , and that Clefable, another threat who carried Unaware, was assumed to be getting the same treatment.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: In the Festival Plaza, the most played activity tends to be "Type Match-up Tests!" (and to a lesser extent, "Inverse-type Match-up Tests!") as it has one of the highest Festival Coin payouts.
• Contested Sequel: Big time - opinions about Sun and Moon are all over the place. Fans who play Pokémon games mostly for the main quest love the games, and consider it a big improvement over Gen VI, with a more likeable cast of characters and the story rivaling the much praised Black and White in terms of complexity, and love the bold risks these games took, aspects that its fans continue to praise it for years later. As such, many Gen 5 fans who felt burnt by the Gen 6 games' comparatively basic campaigns and simpler characters flocked to these titles. Fans who don't play for the main quest, particularly competitive players who don't care for stories to begin with, see these games as having a plot too complicated for its own good that's devoid of any actual exploration and is bogged down by long dialogue strings and endless cutscenes; dislike the absence of many loved features such as the PSS, Super Training, Horde Battles, DexNav, and the Amie minigames; and particularly criticize the very small Pokédex when compared to Gen VI (the removal of the National Dex did not help matters). Another part of this fault line is those who like the newly introduced Z-Moves, seeing them as more balanced and more appropriate since every Pokémon can use it, and those that wished they kept expanding on Mega Evolution, which helped many fan favorites come back to life and felt more special with its selective inclusions. And it doesn't stop there: despite winning over many Generation 5 fans and alienating many Generation 6 fans, the games' heavy emphasis on Generation I Pokémon and nostalgia (mainly in how only Kanto Pokémon have Alolan forms) is looked down upon by some in the former group and looked up to by some in the latter group. The best thing you can call a "consensus" about the games is that they're good enough on their own, but don't contribute enough to the series to justify its plot-heavy campaign, whereas Gens V and VI (both contested in their own right) at least made efforts to advance the franchise's storytelling/worldbuilding and Video Game 3D Leap/mechanics, respectively, with detractors attesting that Generation VII exacerbated many of the problems introduced in Pokémon X and Y that came to a head in the more infamously divisive Pokémon Sword and Shield.
• Creepy Cute:
  • Surprisingly, each and every one of the Ultra Beasts turn out to be this in Refresh:
    • Nihilego, despite being a parasitic lifeform, is absolutely adorable when interacted with in Pokémon Refresh. Despite lacking any facial features like Xurkitree, it's surprisingly expressive. For example, it will spin around cutely when happy, and should the player decide to be cruel and hit it by rapidly tapping it or throwing away a Poké Bean in front of it, it will fearfully pull down the "brim" of its hat-like bell to hide away from you.
    • Buzzwole may be a massive, muscular mansquito, but the fact that it flexes at everything (even upon fainting) makes it seem less like a monster bent on destroying the world, and more like a Large Ham who just wants to show off. Its "angry" animation in Refresh is even just a dismissive wave!
    • Pheromosa's default expression in Pokémon Refresh looks rather forlorn, but its face briefly lights up whenever you feed or pet it. Awww!
    • Xurkitree may be an eerie, faceless tree-like tangle of tentacular wires, but there's no denying that its happy dance in Pokémon Refresh is unique and adorable. Its scrapped running animation even has it skipping around in a hilarious, super-joyful fashion.
    • Kartana, a fatally deadly living blade, has animations in Refresh that could only ever be compared to an excited little child. It even floats around happily!
    • Celesteela, who is otherwise some kind of gigantic, ominous biological spacecraft, has a tiny, adorable smile.◊ It's impossible to take seriously in Pokémon Refresh, even when it gets really angry, as it just kind of shakes its head as if to say "no, no, no!". The sound it makes while it sleeps is also adorable.
    • Guzzlord might be the most eldritch and aggressive of all Ultra Beasts, and it would probably pass as a final boss in any other RPG. However, once you go into Pokémon Refresh with it, it turns out to be the most expressive of the Beasts, behaving like a huge interdimensional puppy. One of its potential reactions should you be mean to it is so sad that it's extremely adorable.◊
  • Per usual for many Ghost-types, Sandygast and Palossand. For a pair of demonic, soul-sucking piles of ghost sand capable of possession and mind-control, this line is pretty cute with their constant, hilariously sad-yet-shocked expressions, stubby arms, and shovel hats.
  • Mimikyu. Its first appearance as a totem is Nightmare Fuel and its appearance invokes Uncanny Valley, but once you know its true nature and that it just wants to be loved, you'll want to hug it.
• Critical Dissonance: As per usual with the series, critical reception for Sun and Moon has been very positive, to the point of widespread acclaim. The fandom, on the other hand, is much more polarized, with some praising the games for their surprising depth and story as well as their many improvements over Pokémon X and Y, but also some criticizing the game for having bad pacing, an overemphasis on story, the quality of said story, many features from the previous generation being removed and a shallow range of available Pokémon in-game compared to the past couple of generations. The games' reception (including their relation to this trope) can be summed up as their being the Skyward Sword to Gen VI's Twilight Princess, attempting to shake up the formula but somehow managing to become even more polarizing than the previous entry that ended up being polarizing itself for being too much like the classic games.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Drifloon's Sun entry returns the worries of children being taken away, plus one more bit of trivia.
  Stories go that it grabs the hands of small children and drags them away to the afterlife. It dislikes heavy children.
  • Right before you enter Team Skull's HQ, Po Town, Nanu says that "If you don't make it, I'll make sure your remains at least get back home." The blatant Never Say "Die" nature of the line, the juxtaposition of the implied violent nature of Team Skull with what you'd seen of them so far, and Nanu's completely nonchalant delivery of it are what make it ridiculous.

D

• Demonic Spiders: While the Battle Tree in the post-game is more difficult than the Battle Maison in general, there are a few Pokémon that can randomly come up that can really tear a team apart.
  • Barbaracle, for example, has two powerful STAB moves in Razor Shell and Stone Edge, uses Shell Smash to increase its Attack and Speed to sweeping levels, has enough bulk to typically survive an attack to get that Shell Smash off, and to top it off it also has Double Team and is holding a Bright Powder, which can make hitting it difficult.
  • Defensive Wall Pokémon such as Umbreon (With Confuse Ray, Curse, and Moonlight) or Pelipper (with Toxic, Stockpile, and Roost) can also be a headache if they are allowed to set-up and you don't have a way to shut them down after (like Toxic or a good STAB).
  • Espeon tends to pack the awful combination of Yawn and Protect while outspeeding almost everything, effectively shutting down any attempt at sweeping or setting up by forcing you to switch Pokémon or else end up losing one. It also comes with a Focus Sash so it can at least take two hits before going down.
  • Crobat is like fighting a Darkrai that isn't banned. With 130 speed, it's sure to outspeed your team, and its favorite tactic is to use Hypnosis, a move that puts you to sleep every time it lands. Hypnosis has 60% accuracy, but it doesn't feel like it when the opponent uses that move. Crobat has the nice little power to usually land this move and slowly erase you from existence with Air Slash or X-Scissor. Waking up in time? The AI predicts this and uses Hypnosis right at the time. While Gardevoir can also do this, there's a great difference between 80 Speed and 130 Speed.
  • Gengar is just as bad as Crobat, if not worse. In addition to the blistering speed and use of Hypnosis, Gengar also packs Dream Eater, which deals a good amount of damage and allows Gengar to heal off all the damage you dealt to it. Even if you do somehow outpace Gengar, you're still not in the clear, because Gengar holds a Focus Sash, all but guaranteeing that it will survive a hit and retaliate with Hypnosis. The end result is a Pokémon that can outpace just about anything you throw at it and put them to sleep and more often than not has two full health bars to work with.
  • Whimsicott have the potential to carry the dreaded subseed set. They also tend to carry Cotton Guard, shutting down any physical attackers hoping get a kill on it.
  • Any Pokémon carrying a One-Hit Kill can be this. Notable culprits are Dugtrio, Snorlax, and Landorus with Fissure and Walrein with Sheer Cold AND Fissure.
  • Mega Evolution returns from the Battle Maison, but it's even scarier in the tree. With a few exceptions, all the legal Pokémon that can mega evolve become even deadlier in the tree as their speed and abilities now change/activate immediately after mega evolving, making many of them much deadlier. Particularly scary ones include Charizard's two mega forms, Gyarados and Tyranitar which can set up and sweep you with Dragon Dance, Gengar who becomes super fast and gets Shadow Tag to trap you, and Salamence and Metagross whose speed buffs this gen turn them into vicious Lightning Bruisers.
  • Considering Aerodactyl's already one of the fastest Pokémon out there, the fact that has a chance of holding a Choice Scarf makes it even more difficult to outspeed. Additionally, it typically carries Rock Slide, which hits both opponents in Double and Multi Battles and has a chance of making its targets flinch.
  • Out in the wild, Salandit are usually found packing Dragon Rage, a move that will always inflicts 40 HP of damage to the target, which will be more than half your health at the stage of the game you normally find them in. While they're usually knocked out fairly easily, if you're trying to capture one, odds are it will call for help while you're trying to weaken it. Two Dragon Rages will KO almost anything you have at that point unless it's a Fairy-type.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • Poni Island marks a jump in Pokémon levels. Prior to Poni Island, the strongest trainer the player faces has Pokémon all at Level 41. The wild Pokémon on Poni Island are all Level 43 to 44, trainers with Pokémon whose Levels are 44 to 45, and not too far in, the player faces the Kahuna, whose ace Pokémon is Level 48.
  • Motherbeast Lusamine fight has all her Pokémon at Level 50, after a cutscene you then fight Solgaleo/Lunala right after where they are Level 55. Thankfully they are quite easy to capture.
  • The Final Boss has his ace Pokémon at Level 58. The first boss the player faces in the post game storyline (which is Frontier Brain Anabel) has Pokémon all at Level 61 and also has a Salamence.

E

• Ending Fatigue: Depending on how long the battle against Tapu Koko takes, the ending can easily go on for nearly 30 minutes with the sheer amount of cutscenes, even longer than Final Fantasy VI's ending. In fact many Youtubers have done videos of the final boss, ending and credits and the whole length is over an hour! It doesn't help that you're given no opportunity to save between the Champion battle and the credits, so you're forced to go through all of this in one sitting.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: One reason why fans are divided on Sun and Moon. While the story on its own merits has been met with a lot of praise, possibly even more than that of Pokémon Black and White, some have criticized it for getting in the way of and even obstructing the gameplay.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Sure, Guzma might be a ruthless gang leader and Lusamine might be a child-abusing psychopath, but both have been extremely well-received by the fan community. The former's memetic lines and the latter being a terrifyingly effective villainess, as well as both having surprisingly depressing backstories certainly helps matters.
  • This applies to Incineroar in-universe, as its heel act makes it popular with children. While it's a Base-Breaking Character with the fandom, those who do like Incineroar are generally fond of its personality and Dark typing as well. This trope also applies in an enforced sense, as Incineroar is far more popular as a Fire/Dark type than it would have been as another Fire/Fighting type.

F

• Fanon Discontinuity: Many choose to ignore the in-game claims and evidence, as well as the canon sequel and adaptations, that Lusamine was only an abusive psychopath due to Nihilego's toxins as undermining the Love to Hate appeal of the character, or Fan Wank it was equivalent of them blaming alcohol for their abusiveness.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • With new forms and/or types of existing Pokémon are no longer just limited to fan games (like Delta Pokémon in Pokémon Insurgence) or the TCG (Pokémon-EX), and now in the main series as Alola Forms, the floodgates for re-typing and re-designing existing Pokémon has blown wide open.
  • Just what is the connection between Arceus and Silvally?
  • Because she stated she's going to Kanto to start her Pokémon journey, what Pokémon did Lillie choose for her starter, how is it going, and how well is Lusamine recovering with Lillie?
  • The Ultra Beasts come from an entirely different dimension, and can be a lot darker and more bizarre than general Pokémon. Since they come from an entirely different dimension, fans can create any number of their own Ultra Beasts that just didn't make it through the Ultra Wormhole and thus have yet to be discovered.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: The games claiming Lusamine was only psychotic and abusive due to being influenced by Nihilego toxin, which the sequels and adaptations further proved, were highly contentious as undercutting the Realism-Induced Horror and Love to Hate appeal that made their arc the best received part of the story, especially since their supposed redeeming traits were Informed Kindness. Many, especially those with abusive parents, also saw it as unfairly whitewashing their wrongs.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The games are referred to as "S&M" or "SuMo/Sumo" by English-speaking fans.
  • The French version is referred by some fans as Pokémon Sel (French for Pokémon Salt), an abréviation of Pokémon Soleil et Lune, the French names of the games.
  • Rowlet is called Doctor Hoot (for being an owl adorned with a spiffy bow tie that makes it look like the Doctor played by Matt Smith), and Blathers (due to resembling the owl from Animal Crossing).
  • Lunala, the Pokémon Moon cover legendary, is The Queen of All Zubats. Appropriately, its Dex entry confirms that Lunala is considered female while Solageo is male.
  • Grumpy Cat/Grumpy Litten due to Litten's angry-looking face. Additionally, Litten has been nicknamed Ryukocat due to their similar color schemes.
  • Drampa, a new Dragon-type who looks like the Loch Ness Monster quickly earned the nickname of Falkor, because it looks like Falkor from The Neverending Story.
  • Yungoos is known in some circles as Trumprat, because they think it looks like Donald Trump. Similarly, its evolution is frequently nicknamed "Trumpshoos".
  • Bruxish has been nicknamed Triggerfish since a lot of people think its design is scary or ugly. Doubly amusing, since it is a triggerfish
  • Mimikyu, the Ghost/Fairy-type who disguises itself as a Pikachu, has been called "Pikaboo."
  • "Snowshrew" and "Snowslash" for Alolan Sandshrew and Sandslash, as their Ground-type has been replaced by Ice.
  • The female protagonist is called "Chicken-chan" due to her hat vaguely resembling a chicken's comb.
  • Wicke, a member of the Aether Foundation, is a rather curvaceous woman, in both her artwork and her in-game model. It took the internet all of about 4 seconds before "Thicc Wicke" was thought up.
  • Rockruff's evolution, Lycanroc, has a day and a night form. "Dayruff" and "Nightruff" popped up rather quickly. They get called "Kaden and Keaton" fairly often, too.
  • Zygarde's canine 10% forme has gained the name Garde Dog and Zydoge. The cores have been called Zycore.
  • Due to its tiger-like appearance and bipedalism, Incineroar is often nicknamed "Tony the Tiger", after the mascot of the Frosted Flakes cereal. Others frequently nickname it "Incenaroar", as a reference to wrestler John Cena. Ironically, Cena is a Face wrestler.
  • Due to Alola being obviously Hawaiian-inspired, coming out the same month as the Polynesian-based Disney film Moana, and being based on a coconut crab with the rare chance of being shiny, some have taken to nicknaming Crabrawler "Tamatoa" after the film's villain.
  • The whole region has the nickname of "A-slow-a" or "A-slow-la" due to how slow most of the native Pokémon are in terms of Speed stat.
  • The starters' final evolutions had the odd honor of being leaked twice before official reveal, first on July 2016 in the "Chinese Leaks", with character sheets of the three on multiple poses^note Incineroar's page also included a girl that would turn out to be Trial Captain Mallow, and a second time on October, after datamining the game demo. Before official reveal, people would refer to them as:
    • Decidueye: Robinroot/Robinhoot/Robingroot/Owliver Queen
    • Incineroar: Beltigre/Beltiger/Panthster/Luchalitten/Bara Bait
    • Primarina: Entermaid/Sirene/Poppmaid (sometimes written Popmaid)/Azura
  • The protagonists are often dubbed "Elio" and "Selene" due to the trailer showcasing Battle Royale showing them with these names, alongside version names "Sun" and "Moon". They're nicknamed "Yoh" and "Mizuki" in Japan due to their use in the demos, though the latter seems to be upgraded to canon after her official figure was christened with it.
  • Buzzwole, especially during the pre-release period, was commonly nicknamed "Buffsquito"/"Swolesquito". Humorously enough, its actual name also incorporated the slang word "swole".
  • "The Ministry of Silly Walks" for Team Skull due to their funny walk cycle.
  • Lillie, Lusamine, Gladion, and Mohn are collectively referred to as "The Aether Family".
  • The form of Lusamine and a Nihilego combined is commonly called "Motherbeast."
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • As per the norm with player characters and rivals, the protagonist, Hau, and Lillie are being shipped in various combinations with each other. Hau's canonical crush on Lillie just adds fuel to the fire.
  • Gladion/protagonist has also risen as a a popular ship (more so with the female protagonist), especially in combination with Hau/Lillie.
  • Then of course, there's the usual OT3 (or more) where either Hau, the protagonist (or both of them), and Lillie are all in one big relationship. If Gladion enters the mix, the female protagonist typically ends up with him while the other stays part of the trio to avoid the Incest Yay.
  • Fans who prefer gay relationships overwhelmingly support Lillie/female PC, Hau/male PC, and Hau/Gladion.
• Fanon:
  • The protagonists' names being Elio and Selene (or in Japanese, You and Mizuki). In reality, those are placeholders given to them on promotional materials and they have no official names. The fandom has adopted these names for the sake of being able to call them something apart from Sun and Moon.
  • For a while it was a commonly accepted assumption that the protagonist moved to Alola from Sinnoh, until the demo stated they moved from Kanto. Despite being Jossed, this particular fanon still shows up in fanworks on occasion (particularly with those fed up with the amount of references to Generation I).
  • For whatever reason, it's a commonly accepted headcanon that Popplio's nose will make a honking sound akin to a bicycle horn or clown nose when squeezed or poked.
  • Quite a few people think the unusually dark Pokédex entries of this Gen are just Rotom exaggerating to mess with you.
• First Installment Wins: Lusamine's portrayal in the original Sun and Moon is considered to be by far the best incarnation of her character in any of Pokémon media and even one of the best villains in the series alongside Cyrus, Ghetsis, and Volo, being a shockingly realistic example of an abusive mother who still has a sympathetic side and tragic backstory, who still isn't entirely redeemed by the story's end but not written off as a total lost cause either. In contrast, her counterparts from Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, the anime, Pokémon Adventures, and Pokémon Masters are much more controversial due to them vastly toning down her villainous qualities and largely turning her into another Well-Intentioned Extremist antagonist (albeit still a Narcissist who spurs the games ovearching conflit prior to the climax and postgame), who's even portrayed as a goofy Womanchild in the anime, a Brainwashed and Crazy victim of Faba's actions in the manga, and an apologetic, redeemed mother in Masters. Pokémon Evolutions attempts to combine both versions of her, showing her as determined to save the world by defeating Necrozma, but also being way in over her head and selfishly wishing to capture Necrozma too, cold and cruel to others without any shame, and verbally abusive to Lillie.
• Fountain of Memes: Guzma, thanks to his hammy personality and hilarious lines.

G

• Game-Breaker:
  • The Dusk Ball, already one of the best Poké Balls in the series, became even more useful in this generation due to the more generous nighttime time requirements, providing a ludicrous 3.5x catching bonus (nearly twice as good as Ultra Balls, the best all-around Balls that money can buy, and tied with the Net and Dive Balls, which only work against certain Pokémon) for 12 hours of the day, against all wild Pokémon aside from the Ultra Beasts; this includes Legendaries. This is especially apparent in Moon, as the day/night cycle is reversed, meaning that daytime players can benefit from the increased catch rate for most of their day. This doesn't even factor in the postgame ability to reverse the day/night cycle at the Altar of the Sunne/Moone, potentially allowing players to benefit from the Dusk Ball's catch rate at all times of the day. The only Poké Balls that compete are the Timer Ball (after 8+ turns), the Repeat Ball (only on Mons the player already has captured), the Quick Ball (only on the first turn), the various Gen II balls (one of a kind in Sun/Moon, and very situational to boot), the Beast Balls (only on Ultra Beasts), and, of course, the one of a kind, 100% effective Master Ball. Everything else falls by the wayside. They're also available for mass purchase as soon as the second island.
  • It's possible to game Festival Plaza to get effectively infinite Festival Coins^*Talk to everyone for FC, then "connect" to the internet to save, leave the Plaza immediately, and soft reset. Repeat the process. This can be considerably sped up by having many Fortune Teller tents and getting luck at the Festival Plaza. You can then combine this with a trick involving a 2★ Treasure Hunt stall to get effectively infinite Bottle Caps^*Find someone who gives the aforementioned Treasure Hunt stall, which is guaranteed to give a Bottle Cap the first time. VIP that person, place the stall, get the Bottle Cap, page the VIP, and place the stall in that exact spot. Repeat the process..
  • A more minor one, but the Rainbow Pokébeans. One bean fills over half of your Pokémon's affection meter, meaning that you can fully reap the in-battle benefits of Pokémon Refresh (increased evasion, EXP boost) in no time. Not only that, but evolving Eevee into Sylveon is now a breeze, whereas in Pokémon X and Y it was That One Sidequest.
  • High Critical Hit Ratio moves are generally "meh". There are usually better options available for consistent damage. The Scope Lens is an option that's often overlooked due to the fact it takes up a precious held item slot often better used to power your Z-Moves, and it only increases critical rates by one stage, which still doesn't provide enough consistency to be valuable. However, Sun and Moon's Totem Pokémon have "auras" that increase their defenses, and critical hits ignore these auras. If you hold the Scope Lens and then also use a Dire Hit, you'll critical 100% of the time. Have fun destroying every Totem in the game with little issue.
  • This game introduces a new defensive move called Aurora Veil, which is basically Reflect and Light Screen combined (halving physical and special damage). What's more, this move stacks with Reflect and Light Screen, and can have its duration extended from 5 turns to 8 turns with Light Clay, just like the aforementioned moves. The one downside is that you need Hail to be the current weather condition to activate it, but that can be resolved by just having a Pokémon with the Ability Snow Warning (which Alolan Ninetails has as it's Hidden Ability, plus above average speed giving it the best opportunity to use the move before even getting hit), and Aurora Veil remains in effect if Hail is removed after it's successfully activated.
• Genius Bonus: Game Freak really pulled out all the stops to make the new Mons have some details that point towards their inspiration.
  • The three starters have references to the three alchemical principles.
    • When viewed from the front, Rowlet's outline and bowtie give it the appearance of the symbol for salt.
    • Litten's eyes and facial markings create the alchemical symbol for brimstone◊ .
    • Standing on its tail, Popplio takes on the appearance of the symbol for mercury.
  • Solgaleo continues the alchemical theme—since ancient times, it's been known as "the beast that devours the sun." A lion eating a sun is the alchemical symbol for the purification of a metal, hence Solgaleo's Steel-typing. Not only that, steel is a phenomenal reflector of sunlight, which was portrayed by light-based Steel moves such as Flash Cannon and Mirror Shot.
  • Solgaleo's Steel typing can also be attributed to the fact that massive, old stars have a core made of iron, with the metals made from the nuclear fusion of hydrogen and helium into more dense elements.
  • On Lunala's side, there's often rumors that a full moon has a subtle supernatural effect on people's behavior, in addition to the obvious werewolf myth. One of the more supernatural types in Pokémon is the Ghost-type.
  • In cutscenes, Solgaleo and Lunala's respective cries are transliterated as "La-liona" and "Mahina-pea". These are combinations of actual words in the Hawaiian language, with la and liona respectively meaning "sun" and "lion", and mahina and pea similarly meaning "moon" and "bat".
  • Yungoos is said to always be hungry, is not actually native to Alola, and is based on a mongoose. Mongooses in Real Life are an invasive species in Hawaii known for intruding on the prey of other predators in Hawaii to eat more food, causing them to die out. This reference also ties in with Alolan Rattata. According to lore, Rattata were a common pest in Alola, so Yungoos were introduced to control the population; this encouraged Rattata to adapt, becoming nocturnal and gaining the Dark-type to avoid the diurnal Yungoos. In real life, the mongoose was introduced to Hawaii to curb the rat population, but since mongoose were diurnal and rats were noctural, the two species never interacted and mongooses proceeded to prey on other species.
  • Charjabug, a part-Electric-type, looks a lot like a chubby little 9V battery, while its evolution Vikavolt looks similar to jumper cables.
  • Bruxish has sharp teeth and Strong Jaw as an ability. Real-life triggerfish do indeed have a strong jaw with powerful teeth, allowing them to eat shellfish. Its name also references bruxism, an involuntary habit of teeth-grinding. Triggerfish are also the state fish of Hawaii.
  • Cutiefly is based on the bee fly. Real-life bee flies throw their eggs into bee nests, where their larvae prey on the bee larvae while being taken care of by the bees. Its part Fairy-type could be a reference to the bee fly's real-life habit of pulling off a Changeling Tale. Cutiefly's evolution, Ribombee, references the name of the bee fly family, Bombyliidae.
  • Bounsweet is based on an obscure fruit called the mangosteen, which four generations prior also provided the basis for the Magost Berry. Her final evolution Tsareena is also a queen. Not only does it reference the fact that the mangosteen is known as the "Queen of Fruits", she also comes from Tsarina, a term used for a Russian female ruler. This may sound strange at first, as the region takes place in Hawaii, not Russia. However, Russia had a large presence in Hawaii long before the United States did.
  • At first, Mudsdale's large size might seem unrealistic. However, the height and weight measurements are actually not too far off from its origin. Real-life Clydesdales are around six feet tall at the minimum and can weigh up to 2,000 pounds, similar to Mudsdale's giant proportions.
  • Vulpix, Ninetales, Sandshrew, and Sandslash's Alola Forms having Ice as their primary types caused some confusion as they were Ice-type Pokémon in a tropical region. However, tropical snow on tropical island's higher elevations (such as on the top of very tall mountains) is far from an uncommon occurrence. Further, the lore behind the new forms justifies them retreating to such habitats (their preferred habitats were either too crowded or too dangerous).
  • Oricorio is a reference to a group of birds called bird-of-paradise. Birds-of-paradise are tropical birds known for their expressive colorful plumage and their various forms of dancing and singing. To keep with the Hawaiian theme of Alola, they're also likely a nod to Hawaiian honeycreepers, which share a similar colorful appearance and beak. The forms themselves references real world type of dances, and even give Oricorio designs that match typical attire within those dance styles. Each form of Oricorio residing on different islands, along with the above-mentioned Alola forms, is a possible nod to the evolution phenomena allopatric speciation, where a species population gets separated and gradually evolves into different species due to genetic isolation.
  • Alolan Exeggutor's Grass/Dragon typing might not make sense at first. However, it's partially based on the Dragon Tree, explaining the odd typing.
  • It may seem strange for Crabrawler, a Pokémon based on a crab, to not be Water-type. However, this makes far more sense when you realize that Crabrawler is based on the coconut crab, an obscure crustacean that lives on land and can't swim or breathe underwater.
  • Jangmo-o is likely based on the Mo'o, a mythical Hawaiian lizard- hence its lizard like appearance, Dragon-typing, and being native to Alola.
  • Oranguru has the In-Series Nickname "people of the forest." That's what the word "orangutan" means in Malay.
  • The Alolan forms of Grimer and Muk are based on oil slicks. The yellow residue on Grimer references the kind of residue that appears on car engines when water gets into them while the rainbow design of Muk references the rainbow effect that occurs when oil mixes with water.
  • Rowlet is part Grass-type and resembles a barn owl with its heart-shaped face, likely referencing grass owls, which are in the barn owl family and thus share the characteristic face.
  • Despite looking and acting like a wrestler, Incineroar is a Fire/Dark-type, not a Fire/Fighting-type. This might look like it was just done in order to create a Fire-type wrestler without angering the fans, but Incineroar is based on a heel wrestler, known for underhanded tactics much like Dark-type Pokémon. That bait and switch might even be intentional, as many heels cultivate a persona that encourages the audience to view them as a Hate Sink.
  • The weight difference between Type: Null and Silvally is 44.1 lbs. 44.1 kHz is a sampling frequency used for compact discs, which Silvally's Memories are designed to resemble.
  • The fact that Pikipek, a woodpecker Pokémon, eventually evolves into Toucannon, a toucan Pokémon, might not make much sense at first, but in real-life woodpeckers and toucans both belong to the order Piciformes.
  • Cosmoem looks like a neutron star, which are incredibly dense. At 4 inches tall and over 2000 pounds, Cosmeom is the densest Pokémon.
  • Bruxish's signature Ability, Dazzling, might not make sense as to why it can stop priority attacks, unless you know about dazzle camouflage, an unconventional type of concealment used on ships in World War I. Ships were painted in high-contrast stripes with jarring, irregular patterns in order to confuse and visually overwhelm enemies nearby, such that they couldn't tell how far away the ship was, what type of ship it was, the direction it was going, and in some cases, how many ships there actually were. That is, the intent was to cause enemy first strikes to miss, hence why Dazzling prevents priority attacks.
  • Dhelmise's Signature Move, Anchor Shot, is named after a strategy in urban warfare that ensures enemy soldiers are dead so they won't get up later and do a sneak attack, just like Rex's Art of the same name in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 that topples opponents. The move's actual effects are unrelated though, unlike the Xenoblade version.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Minior are extremely annoying to catch. To start with, it has a low capture rate, though that problem can solved by breaking Minior's shell, making it much easier to catch. The real catch is that it comes with Self-Destruct. Additionally, Minior comes in seven different colors, but what color you get can only be determined by breaking its shell and praying that it doesn't explode, making it quite annoying to try and get the one you want. The only way to get around this is to use a Pokémon that has Damp, which prevents Self-Destruct from working. Thankfully, it does not call for help.
  • Existing overworld encounters in the style of X and Y are back, meaning that you'll be dealing with wild Pokémon attacks even if you have a Repel up. Particularly annoying are the ones nesting in bushes and trees, since they're often unavoidable and there's little indication of a Pokémon hiding there aside from an occasional, easily-missed rustling. There are also burrowing Pokémon (most commonly Diglett and Dugtrio), which move around very quickly and often end up getting in your way. Haina Desert in particular is full of these, making the place even harder to navigate.
  • Berry piles will occasionally have a Crabrawler hiding inside. While this is the only way to catch one, it can be annoying if you just want to do berry collecting and forced to go into a encounter to claim them as your own. And if you think you can just run away from battle and continue your berry harvest, think again. You have to defeat Crabrawler to make it go away.
• Goddamned Boss: Tapu Fini will test a player's patience when trying to catch it. It starts off with Misty Terrain, which protects it from status conditions, so the player has to wait out five turns before trying to use status moves on it. While its offensive stats are not that high, it still has the high base power Hydro Pump that could put the hurt on your Pokémon. It also has Muddy Water, which has a chance of reducing your Pokémon's accuracy, making your attacks harder to land. It also has Nature's Madness to halve your Pokémon's health, potentially putting it in danger. Finally, it has Aqua Ring, allowing it to restore its health, slowly undoing any damage you may have dealt to it.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Festival Plaza's terrible programming and design has one redeeming feature - by saving before entering, fulfilling all of the requests, switching off wireless after going to the internet connection screen but before confirming that you want to save, it is possible to refresh the requests and allow you to claim more Festival Coins without losing any of the ones you just gained by soft resetting after the connection failure message pops up. Additionally, soft resetting causes the guest records to even out to a number that is usually above ten for each category, making the "meet others" request significantly easier; and the amount of FC you can gain in a short period of time helps mitigate Sophocles' randomized facility offerings as you will level up your plaza quickly.
  • For reasons unknown, any Poke Pelago activities will automatically finish when the clock rolls over from January 31st, 2017 and February 1st, 2017. By setting up some activities, then changing the clock^note Which does force other time-based activities to lock for 24 hours, so be careful to a minute before 2/1/2017 and letting it roll over, you can force them to finish instantly. This can be abused repeatedly to quickly level grind Pokémon, farm items, and grow Berries. Unfortunately, the 1.2 patch released on May 17th 2017 fixed this glitch.
  • Two words: swap breeding. You place a Ditto and a Magikarp in the Pokémon Nursery, then produce 30 eggs and put them all in one box. Keep repeating the process unless and until one of the eggs hatches Shiny. Remember which egg hatched Shiny, then perform a soft reset without saving. Swap the Magikarp for the Pokémon you want to breed a Shiny of, then accept the egg that is the same number as the egg that had hatched Shiny. Essentially, this is the Masuda method on steroids.

H

• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Various descriptions of Mimikyu mention how it wants to be as popular as Pikachu. Given the fact that the little guy was hit with Ensemble Dark Horse status almost as soon as it was revealed, we can safely say it got its wish.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Check the main page.
• Ho Yay:
  • The Ship Tease between Lillie and the main character remains more or less unchanged regardless of whether you play as a male or a female. This, in turn, made the female protagonist x Lillie ship extremely popular.
  • Many fans have noticed that Burnet (Kukui's wife) physically resembles Guzma (Kukui's old friend). Kukui has a type indeed.
  • When Olivia teaches her Z-move after the player defeats her, she instructs them to pay special attention to her hip movements. After she strikes her pose, (which accentuates her posterior), the camera cuts to Lillie, who is watching with a broad smile on her face.
  • Fairly late in the game, Hapu comments that she forgot to tell something to the protagonist, because she had "gotten distracted by Lillie's loveliness."
  • When about to go to Aether Foundation to save Lillie, Gladion admits to the player that he considers Hau an “interesting kid” and that it’s surprising how he doesn’t feel overshadowed about being Hala’s grandson. Let’s not forget that Gladion has treated Hau for over the first half of the game as a carefree stupid kid. After a while, Hau reunites with Gladion and the player...and Gladion is back to berate him as usual.
  • From the above scene, when the player approaches Gladion in the port, Gladion is seen smiling for no reason...and then proceeds to ask the player is Hau will be coming along.
  • If you enter the room with the two female Grunts bickering over a uniform mix-up, they react differently depending on the player's gender. They merely threaten to beat you up if you're playing as male, but if you're female, they attack you because you're cute and they don't know what else to do.
  • There's this line Gladion says to the player (regardless you play as a male or a female) during the Champion Challenges.
    "What does a Pokémon Trainer really need to be succesful? I guess everyone might have their own answer. But for me....I want the strongest rival for myself."
• Hollywood Homely: Supplemental material says that Pyukumuku is considered unappealing to tourists, when the fans consider it to be adorable. In-universe, the person at Hano Grand Resort who enlists your help with chucking Pyukumuku on the beach back into the sea mentions this, and says he doesn't understand why they're seen as abhorrent by people from other regions.
• Hype Backlash: As with X & Y, several months after their release, Sun and Moon's massive popularity has started to wane and and the arguments of whether they are worthy followups are becoming increasingly heated. Many of the complaints center around whether giving the games a longer story was a good change, removal of features like the National Dex, PSS and O-Powers, controversial features such as Festival Plaza and SOS Battles, and the games' low maingame difficulty, constant cutscenes, and extreme handholding. A lot of people have expressed their lack of desire to replay the games, due to either the plethora of cutscenes, waiting for Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon and/or the Nintendo Switch installment, or the amount of Temporary Online Content in the form of Mega Stones and Z-Crystals. While the Mega Stones can be traded and some people like to stockpile them by deleting and creating saves on one game and trading them away to another so that other people in the future can get them if they miss out, the Z-Crystals cannot and are completely unobtainable once their events expire.

I-L

• I Knew It!:
  • Many predicted Magearna would be a Steel/Fairy-type based on its Diancie-like design well before it was confirmed.
  • The new region being based off of Hawaii was a popular fan theory months before the Alola region was shown, mostly thanks to the Strange Souvenir.
  • After seeing the small size of the region's map in the starter reveal trailer which consisted of only one island, many fans speculated that there is more to Alola than what was shown on the map and it would consist of multiple islands just like the real world location it's based on. It has now been confirmed Alola consists of four main islands.
  • After seeing the May 10th, 2016 trailer, many fans guessed that Kukui is the regional professor. It was confirmed with the June 2nd, 2016 trailer that yes, Kukui is the Professor of the Alola region.
  • With Grubbin's jaws and its bio stating it loves electricity, many fans predicted that Grubbin will evolve into a Bug/Electric Stag Beetle Pokémon. On June 30th, its evolution forms, Charjabug and Vikavolt are revealed. Charjabug is a Bug/Electric pupa while Vikavolt is a stag beetle.
  • Since Kiawe's (the Fire-type specialist Trial Captain) bio on the official website mentions he has a Marowak, several fans have guessed that Marowak would have a Fire-type Alolan variant. The August 2016 issue of CoroCoro confirms that Marowak has an Alolan variant that's a Fire/Ghost-type.
  • When supplementary material stated that Yungoos was introduced to Alola to try to keep another Pokémon's population under control, many people suspected that Rattata was the Pokémon Yungoos was supposed to hunt, similar to how mongooses in real life were introduced to Hawaii to try to keep the rat population under control. Come the September 1st, 2016 Nintendo Direct, this was confirmed to be the case, with the Alolan Rattata/Raticate having turned into a particularly nasty breed - again, much like aggressive Hawaiian rats.
  • Because Jangmo-o's description stated that it had the pride of a warrior, many fans speculated that its evolution would be part Fighting. The 10/13/16 Corocoro issue later confirmed that both of its evolutions are Dragon/Fighting.
  • When Alola Island was revealed, GameXplain noted the Hawaiian translation for each of the two revealed islands and using the other colors on the trial markers, predicted that the other two islands are Ula'ula and Poni. The reveal of the other three island guardians on October 27 confirms those two predictions.
  • Many speculated that Popplio would become a Water/Fairy-type upon evolving after the E3 gameplay footage shows it can learn a Fairy-type attack called Disarming Voice. And it's revealed that its final form, Primarina, is in fact a Water/Fairy-type.
  • In a similar vein, some fans figured Litten would evolve into a Fire/Dark-type due to it being a black cat. And it's revealed that its final form, Incineroar, is indeed a black Fire/Dark-type heel wrestler.
  • From the moment that the Aether Foundation was shown in trailers, many fans speculated that they were the true villains of the game, with Lusamine being the Big Bad while Team Skull were just pawns. Come to find out that these fans were correct.
  • Building off this, practically everyone called Lusamine being related to Lillie and Gladion in some way due to their similar hair and eye colors. Granted, many were surprised to learn that she was their mother, not their sister.
  • Many fans believed that the Johto starters would be available in-game, following the Kanto starters' appearance in Pokémon X and Y. Not only are the Johto starters available via Island Scan, but the Unova starters can be obtained as well as their final stages.
  • Due to Type: Null having design elements that seemed to invoke Arceus, many fans believed that Type: Null was meant to be an attempt in creating an artificial version of it. This is heavily implied to be the case, as Silvally's signature Ability, RKS System, is not only a clone of Arceus's Multitype Ability, but "RKS" is very similar to the English pronunciation of "Arceus". In addition, a file in the Aether Paradise labs mentions that they went to the Canalave Library in Sinnoh, the region most associated with Arceus, for research while creating Type: Null.
  • Almost as soon as Wimpod was revealed, fans quickly started speculating that it would be the Magikarp of this gen. They were proven right when Golisopod showed up.
  • The Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon announcement showing Solgaleo and Lunala "fused" with Necrozma like how Reshiram and Zekrom were with Kyurem (except using Necrozma as armor rather than a literal fusion) was a popular theory before the announcement.
  • Many fans predicted that the Ultra Beasts were Pokémon you could catch in game, in part based on their unique designs. Come the game's release, they were right; the Ultra Beasts are simply extradimensional Pokémon you can catch after completing the main storyline.
• Improved Second Attempt:
  • One of the major criticisms leveled against X and Y was how bland, annoying and underdeveloped the main supporting cast were. Sun and Moon fix this, as Lillie and Hau and later Gladion are much more developed and useful characters, and consequently are much more well-liked as a result.
  • Team Flare were often regarded with Gen III's Teams Magma and Aqua as being one of the worst villainous teams within the series; in Flare's case, this was due to the members' garish uniforms, higher-ups being given almost zero characterization, their underwhelming teams containing only a limited range of lines, the grunts having better teams than the said higher-ups - who in turn suffered from having sporadic appearances until the climax of the campaign against them, in which many felt was rather rushed - along with the poorly-handled reveal of Lysandre as their leader.^note The anime and Pokémon Adventures manga both did a better job, though; given how better their versions of Team Flare have been received. After Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire modified Magma and Aqua's goals to being more logical and following more interesting paths, along with fleshing out their members, they became some of the most beloved teams and this was seen as a step in the right direction. With Team Skull, Game Freak appears to have continued on that road, as the grunts are full of hilarious personality and seen as a joke by the majority of Alola, and many of the members have strong bonds between one another and some tragic hidden characterization with complications such as low self-esteem, poverty, abuse and homelessness. Fans latched onto them from the moment of their reveal and beyond, and many share the same sentiments for Aether's surprise reveal as the true villains, diverse teams and even more character depth.
  • The Final Boss appeals to fans in a few ways. One, the fight could be seen as an apology for Sycamore not being the Champion, which disappointed many fans in Pokémon X and Y. Two, the fact that the Final Boss is actually really challenging and has a status as That One Boss can make up for Pokémon X and Y having a rather disappointing Final Boss fight. Three, the fight acts as a huge nod to the dummied out fight with Professor Oak from Gen I. And finally, after going through the entire game of never seeing the starter that's strong against yours, it turns out that the ace Pokémon of the Final Boss so happens to be the final evolution of that starter's line.
  • Many people were disappointed that in previous games, the title Legendary served almost no purpose other than being used as a weapon for the villainous team, and thus being given very little time to develop. In Sun & Moon, Nebby is introduced at the beginning of the game, even before the player gets their starter, and develops alongside the player throughout the game. Whilst it is still used by Lusamine for her plans, it is not the major point of them and is only used in its weak, un-evolved form.
• It Was His Sled:
  • Lusamine is the Big Bad, and the mother of Lillie and Gladion, with Mohn being their father.
  • Cosmog evolves into Cosmoem, which evolves into the mascot legendaries. This one in particular is something the website for Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon assumes you already know, and it'll only get worse as later generations render the line The Artifact.
  • To a lesser extent, the Ultra Beasts merely being extra-dimensional Pokémon that can be caught and used like any other and having proper names beyond numbers and descriptors.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Mankey and Primeape, according to their new Pokédex entries. Mankey's bad temper keeps it from making any friends (which just makes it even more miserable), whereas Primeape's entry states that the only way for it to find peace is in death.
  • Though Gladion's easily the most unpleasant rival since Silver, his personality makes more sense when it's revealed that his mother is the incredibly oppressive Lusamine. Additionally, he's been living alone for about two years, and he doesn't have too many friends in Team Skull.
  • Guzma, considering a post-game event hints he was abused as a child. That, combined with his rejection from being a Trial Captain, was likely what put him over the deep end and led him to form Team Skull.
• LGBT Fanbase:
  • Kukui has gathered a large gay male fanbase, with dozen of bara fans making fan art of him. The overly alluring nature of his design, while justified by the tropical weather of Alola, makes many fans believe that this was deliberately what the producers wanted from the start.
  • On the other side, both Lusamine and Wicke have been attracting fans of both genders, and have even started being shipped together themselves.
  • Surprisingly, for a quick gag, there are many who ship Kiawe with Hiker David due to former referring to the latter as fine.
  • Ilima's Ambiguous Gender design and the fact that he had not been given any gendered pronouns for some time before the games' release had some people hoping he would be the first official non-binary character in the series. He eventually turned out to be a male, though.
  • Incineroar has proven to be very popular in the Furry Fandom and bara communities thanks to its humanoid and muscular design, which, ironically, are a good part of the reason it's a Base-Breaking Character otherwise. Tangentially related, "he" and Primarina with "her" womanly design are popular subjects to subvert gender expectations (ie. creating a female Incineroar and male Primarina).
  • Related to the two instances of Les Yay above, both Hapu and Lillie have picked up fans for being (possibly) LGBT characters. Even beyond the instance where she admires Olivia's Z-move pose, Lillie appears ready to make an Anguished Declaration of Love to the player regardless of their gender during the ending, and fanon widely perceives her as bisexual. And Hapu's only declaration of attraction towards another character is aimed at Lillie, making the line between Ambiguously Gay and flat-out lesbian very thin indeed.
  • Due to a arguably ambiguous lines/events, many within the LGBT community have decided to consider the entirety of Team Skull to be gay. Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon seem to have added a couple more lines that "confirm" this.
  • Toucannon's shiny form is beloved by the bisexual side of the community, as the colors used on its beak line up incredibly well with the bisexual flag.
• Love to Hate: Lusamine is loved due to her being extremely well-written while being hated because of vileness and her being an abusive Evil Matriarch.

M

• Memetic Badass:
  • Behold, Tristan, the first Youngster class trainer who managed to beat the Elite Four all on his own.
  • Despite Team Skull's Memetic Loser status, the team's "big sister" Plumeria is getting some of this treatment, especially since she proves tough enough to challenge you for your Champion title in the postgame.
  • Bewear, of all things, became one due to its Fluffy ability letting it take a hit from the likes of Mega Rayquaza. Even more so after the memorable scene in the anime of a Bewear running on water.
  • Lillie, post Character Development, is also considered one for carrying Cosmoem, who weighs over 2000 pounds and is tied with Celesteela for being the heaviest of all Pokémon, throughout the entirety of the journey through Poni Island in her bag. Her chewing out Lusamine before the final battle with the latter earned her some admiration as well.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Similar to Oshawott and Froakie during the pre-release to Pokémon Black and White and Pokémon X and Y, Popplio received this treatment for initially being overshadowed by Rowlet and Litten in discussion on the game's starters and placing last in many favorite starter polls. Like with pre-release Oshawott and Froakie, Popplio was portrayed as The Woobie with many people expressing their sympathy for it, and hoped that its evolutions would redeem it in peoples' eyes. This turned out to be correct when the games were officially released, as Popplio followed the trend of its predecessors for having a much more elegant and badass evolution in the form of Primarina.
  • Team Skull was a target of sarcastic mockery in some fan circles, mainly due to their street gang aesthetic and designs, as well as the fact that their initial schemes seemed to consist of merely roadblocks and graffiti. As for their members; there's Gladion's constant poker-face and hand gestures, Plumeria's description of her own minions as "stupid", alongside Guzma explicitly being noted as a failed Trial Captain. Many of the same fans also loved them, though, for these exact same reasons, especially since it was confirmed that them being Laughably Evil was 100% intentional. You can even walk away from them during your first encounter with them! However, it was then revealed that Team Skull is not the real villainous team, instead being just a pawn of the Aether Foundation, and that Lusamine essentially manipulated Guzma for her own personal gain. This, combined with Gladion being Lusamine's son and a defector from the Aether Foundation, and when travelling to Po Town made it clear how most of Team Skull's grunts, including Guzma himself, are children from broken homes who failed the Island Challenge and thus had nowhere else to go; Team Skull's reputation as Laughably Evil then considerably died down. Now, fans are more likely to see them as Jerkass Woobies instead.
  • On the competitive side, there's Talonflame. Ever since Gale Wings was nerfed in Sun and Moon so that it only activates when the user has full HP, Talonflame has become the butt of many jokes. The fact that the games also introduced two abilities and one terrain (plus another ability that creates said terrain) beforehand that outright prevent priority moves from working and a priority move that Talonflame is x4 weak to doesn't help its status all that much either.
  • Much of the generation as a whole receives this, due to the "Aslowla" meme, referring to the large number of Pokémon with surprisingly low Speed—even Pokémon like Decidueye or Vikavolt, which are explicitly described as fast, and a large number that actually lose Speed upon evolving, such as Incineroar and Crabominable. This is particularly the case with those that aren't even built as Mighty Glacier Pokémon, giving them the unlucky combo of being slow and frail.
• Memetic Molester:
  • Lusamine. Being heavily compared with Ragyo Kiryuin and her most infamous trait will do that.
  • Incineroar also gets this treatment, mostly due to its notorious "pelvic thrust" attack animation.
  • The player character sometimes gets this treatment with the fact you can make them lay on a stranger's bed an get a comment on their smell.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Lusamine is Ragyo ^{Explanation (Spoilers!)} Not long after Lusamine made her debut in Sun & Moon, fans wasted no time comparing her to Ragyo Kiryuin, the main antagonist of the anime series Kill la Kill, with so many parallels between the two characters that Lusamine is considered an outright Expy; both are fine-dressed women who are the presidents of pristine-looking organizations, both are the abusive mothers of two children who eventually come to oppose them, and both are Big Bads whose obsession with an extraterrestial monstrosity drove them into villainy. Some have even gone further and claimed that the whole story◊ is an entire◊ Whole-Plot Reference to Kill la Kill.
  • Interpretations of Litten's evolution family as Fire/Fighting-types, thanks to the infamous reputation that type combination got when it was given to the Gen III, IV, and V starters. Ultimately, its final evolution Incineroar was revealed as a Fire/Dark type, but still has a similar design and theme to the earlier Fire/Fighting starters.
  • "The sun/moon is weak to the sun/moon!" ^Explanation Many expected Solgaleo to be a Fire type and Lunala to be a Dark type. However, it was revealed in the June 2, 2016, trailer that Solgaleo is part-Steel-type, making it weak to Fire-type attacks, and Lunala is both a Psychic- and a Ghost-type, making it take four times normal damage from Dark-type attacks. The phrases "Set fire to the sun!" and "Steel the moon!" became astonishingly appropriate to their weaknesses.
  • Yungoos and Gumshoos being compared to Donald Trump based on their hair and perpetual scowls. Alolan Rattata are jokingly compared to illegal immigrants which Yungoos are trying to drive out of Alola. The formers' moustaches don't exactly help discourage any such stereotypes. It has gotten so bad that Wonder Trades often result in people getting these two with nicknames of Donald Trump or anything related to him.
  • The instant it was revealed why Mimikyu dresses up as a Pikachu, there was fan art of it wearing disguises of other popular characters.
  • Alolan Exeggutor's ridiculously long neck has resulted in it being edited onto all sorts of different long skinny things, as well as being compared to characters with very long necks. It's also become popular to make fun of the fact that it's a Dragon-type while Charizard isn't, ignoring or glossing over Mega Charizard X (which predates Alolan Exeggutor by a generation), or give other Pokémon (or even other fictional characters) fake Alola Forms with very long necks, much like how Mega Ampharos inspires many fake Mega Evolutions with fabulous hair.
  • "It's your boy, Guzma!" has become a popular rally cry for fans of Team Skull.
  • Many jokes about Alolan Persian and Garfield have been flying around, ranging from calling Alolan Persian the Alolan form of Garfield to joking that it is weak to Mondays.
  • Once the stats for the new Pokémon were revealed, the Alola region was nicknamed as "Aslowla" due to the low base speed shared by almost all the non-legendary, fully evolved Pokémon (including the starters, with Decidueye being the fastest of them with a mere 70 speed), and several jokes were made about it.
  • Press A to pound^ExplanationMallow's trial revolves around the player preparing a stew using ingredients found in the nearby wilderness, which culminates in a scene where the player is instructed to "Press A to pound the ingredients." The wording of the prompt caught on with fans thanks to "pound" also being slang for sex, leading one fan to edit a photograph of the moment to simply consist of Mallow's face and the text "Press A to pound." The photoshop became a popular reaction image in response to characters that internet users consider attractive and inspired further edits where "Press A to pound" is juxtaposed with cropped Rule 34 art and suggestive moments in other works.
  • "I see Cosmog is out of the FUCKING BAG again!" ^note The interpretation of many players whenever this happened: Lillie's exasperation of dealing with Cosmog sneaking out of her bag many times during the game. This is not Played for Laughs later on, as this was probably what helped Plumeria kidnap both of them.
  • "Get in the fucking bag Nebby!" ^note Variation of a meme used in the NGE fandom.
  • The noise that Nebby makes, "Pew", has become a meme of its own right.
  • nebbyinthebag has its own subreddit.
  • Constant posts about who the Masked Royal actually is, because it sure isn't Kukui.
  • Lusamine is thinking about those beans.^note The reveal that Lusamine's husband is Mohn from Poké Pelago (known as the Bean Man among fans), has caused fans to edit this image◊ to be her.
  • "Y'all are stupid!" ^note A line provided by Guzma when you first arrive in Ultra Space and this is what he says about you and Lillie arriving. Not helped by the posture in which he says it.
  • Get Out!. ^note Gladion's direct and blunt response if you enter his motel room and try to talk to him.
  • Gladion's Poké Ball hand twitches. ^note In battle, Gladion can be seen clutching a trembling hand, sparking comparison to Owain's Catchphrase from Fire Emblem Awakening.
  • InCENAroar!! ^note Incineroar is portrayed as a heel wrestler. Though John Cena is not a heel, the fandom has made many fanart, videos, and renaming of Incineroar to fit that role. Making it even funnier within the meme is the Four Moves of Doom stereotype that John Cena gets criticized about.
  • On Pokémon Sun and Moon-related MMD's, it's becoming rather common to comment that the dances shown in the videos are actually used to activate ridiculously complicated/powerful Z-Moves.
  • Walking Animations: Someone managed to dump all of the game's models and animations, which people promptly began to mix and match in bizarre combinations, such as Lusamine doing Team Skull's hand gestures or Guzma using a child's walk cycle. Olivia's walking animation and battle intro are particularly popular as it has her doing a hip-swaying strut.
  • Someone managed to find Dummied Out walking animations for all the Pokémon. Naturally, people have take to putting music, either fitting or inappropriate, to these animations.
  • Thanks to not moving during the Supersonic Skystrike Z-Move and its general expression, Toucannon is joked to be capable of flying without using its wings through sheer force of anger alone.
  • Guaranteed Replies ^note An edit of this image, featuring a giant School-form Wishiwashi biting on a fishing hook, often used as a response to troll topics on Game FAQS.
  • Alolan Dugtrio's fabulous haircut(s) quickly garnered a flurry of fan art and hilarious comments and comparisons.
  • Puka is an Alolan Pikachu.^note A one-shot Pikachu appearing in the anime who had blue-eyes and was good at surfing, has led fans to declare he was an Alolan Pikachu and that either he would evolve into Alolan Raichu or all Alolan Raichus originated from him
  • Red and Blue are on their honeymoon.^note Red and Blue showing up in the post game together, with Blue naturally doing all the talking, has led to jokes about them having...reconciling their differences in between their own games and now. And since Alola's basis, Hawaii, is a popular honeymoon destination, coupled with the gratuitous Ho Yay the fandom lays on these two...
  • Super Spin/Spin to Win^note The fastest way to hatch eggs is to ride on a Tauros, find a corner that gives very little freedom of movement, and then move in tight circles otherwise not possible on open terrain; this reminds people of Johnny's Spin technique in Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Steel Ball Run
• Memetic Psychopath:
  • Much like Villager from Super Smash Bros., The player characters have begun getting this treatment due to their perpetual smiles. At least in the western fandom, the female protagonist seems to be more affected; thanks to promotional material showing her using Z-moves (which are more or less the same for either gender) Catastropika^note Literally throws Pikachu at the opponent and Guardian of Alola^note Commands a Guardian Deity, specifically Tapu Koko in the trailer, to smash a Probopass, and she can be seen grinning.
  • Some depictions have a downplayed version featuring Primarina with inappropriate music such as heavy-metal.
• Memetic Troll: Nebby. It cannot ever be contained by the bag for too long, always getting out and causing trouble and endless grief for Lillie.
• Moe: This game continues the series trend of having some downright adorable characters, but it stands out more here than the other generations as they have more screentime.
  • Lillie, oh so much. Even more so once she changes her entire outfit, as a sign of having escaped her mother's influence on her, which makes her all the more lovable. She can even be a full-on Tsundere if the player gives any snarky responses to her.
  • Acerola, the Ghost-type trial captain, very much fits this trope. She is immensely loved for her absolutely adorable appearance, movements in-game (most notably her running animation and her Z-Strike pose), her quirky personality and her friendship with Lillie. She even has a uniquely adorable Playful Cat Smile.
  • Lana also qualifies, particularly during her trial when she tries tricking the player character into thinking Kyogre is causing the rainfall there. Similarly to Acerola, her Z-move pose is also very cute.
  • Even if they are customizable characters that lack a consistent appearance, it's hard not to make the player characters cute.
  • Despite being less outwardly emotional than most of the other characters, Hapu manages to be pretty cute as well.
  • The entire characterization of Mimikyu is that it's dependent on you and needs to be cared for, heavily contributing to its immense popularity.
  • While Popplio already had a cute design, Brionne (Popplio's second evolution form) really stands compared to the other evolution line for Rowlet and Litten. Mainly since Brionne manages to keep a smile on it's face alongside resembling a cheerful Idol Singer.
• Most Wonderful Sound: It would appear that fans consider Stufful's cry to be this.^note At the time of this writing this post has over 35,000 notes. It helps that Stufful itself is a cute, fan favorite Pokémon.
• More Popular Replacement: Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Team Skull has skyrocketed in popularity, quickly becoming much more favored than the likes of Team Flare who mainly came off as bland to many, due to having a much more distinct and compelling story, catchy theme and entertaining personalities. To a lesser extent, Aether Foundation is this as well, due to their varied teams, interesting admins, similarly intersting theme, and being more menacing to make up Skull's lack of it.

N

• Narm:
  • The protagonist keeps a mostly unchanging facial expression through the game. This doe-eyed, brainlessly smiling expression by itself is incongruent and downright inappropriate during important or emotional plot segments, but it's worse when put together with other characters that are more expressive. For example, during the Ultra Wormhole opening event, the camera panning shows Lillie and Hau being clearly horrified, Gladion being upset, and the protagonist...simply smiling and spacing out. Made more glaring by the fact that there are a couple of cutscenes where their expression does change—namely the first time they witness a wormhole opening and most of the cover legendary-related plot scenes—killing any possible excuse as to why they're so blanked out every other time, along with how the protagonists in the previous generation's games had appropriate expressions during dire cutscenes.
  • Z-Moves are supposed to be awesome Limit Break-like moves with a ton to show off in their usage cutscene... but, well, sometimes they're just silly as all hell because of their animations.
    • The first time a player will likely see the Flying Z-Move, Supersonic Skystrike, is in their battle with Kahili. The move involves the using Pokémon flying high up into the air then dive-bombing onto the enemy Pokémon. This leads into hilarity because she uses the Z-Move on Toucannon. Which isn't flying at all in battle except for one of its attacking animations, which isn't even used in the Z-Move's animation. So the whole move is made hilarious because her Toucannon flies up into the air, completely still as a stone, before ramming beak-first into your Pokémon. Generally, whenever any Pokémon uses Supersonic Skystrike and isn't a Flying type — such as Bewear, Dugtrio, and Wailord — you can expect it to rocket off into the sky and fall down completely nonplussed.
    • Xerneas using Twinkle Tackle. Like with Supersonic Skystrike, there's a lot of humor in a Pokémon zooming around while stone-dead still, but with Xerneas specifically there's something just magical about an otherwise awesome Olympus Mon floating around like it's a static png image.
    • Because Incineroar can learn U-Turn and Leech Life, it can use the Z-Bug Move Savage Spin-Out. Said attack has Incineroar thrusting its crotch outwards while it shoots out a deluge of spider web to entrap its target, then swings them around by it. In fact, almost any attack that uses the crotch thrust animation is pretty hilarious (when using Flamethrower, it's insinuated the attack is supposed to be originating from its fiery belt, but it just doesn't look quite right).
  • While visiting Hau'oli Cemetery, the play can encounter a lady and a Machamp at a grave together. The lady tells you a story about how her husband was killed in a crash, how he threw Machamp's Pokéball to safety, and how she used to feel angry at the man who killed her husband, until she realised the other man had a family too. A very touching, moving, poignant and surprisingly dark story. Or at least it would be if the lady were not gathered up in the Machamp's arms the whole time as part of the Pokéride feature. That the TM she gives you for listening is Fling and Machamp constantly cries "Hyah!" almost lands this scene right into Black Comedy territory instead.
  • Lusamine's Slasher Smile is rather unnerving to look at, even for those who saw it coming. Said character's scowling face on the other hand looks ridiculous. It gives the impression of that character having just lost to the heroes at something much more trivial instead.
    • Similarly, try taking the dramatic moment where Lillie finally stands up to her mother seriously when it uses Lillie's comedic, blushing angry pout for her facial expression instead of something actually fitting for the moment.
• Narm Charm: Many of the Z-Moves, such as the aforementioned Supersonic Skystrike, Tectonic Rage, and Twinkle Tackle, can look both ridiculous and absolutely hilarious if used by certain Pokémon. Even if it's difficult to take these massively powerful moves seriously, many fans still enjoy these animations for this reason.
• Nausea Fuel: The "trash" sidequest involves feeding a Grimer "trash" left by Pokémon, which is strongly implied to be poop. The fact that you carry said "trash" the same way as any other item makes it worse.
• Nightmare Fuel: The games have their very own page.
• Nightmare Retardant: The Totem Mimikyu appearing behind you while you're using the Poké Finder during Acerola's trial can be this to some, mainly because you might have seen it coming, it just stands there instead of inflicting some kind of Jump Scare, and it's a Mimikyu, which much of the fanbase finds adorable.

O-P

• Older Than They Think:
  • After seeing the May 10 2016 reveal trailer, many people have noted that this was the first Pokémon RPG to have full-sized models for their human characters in the overworld, and appearing on the battle screen. This is technically true...for the handheld games. Pokémon Colosseum had this feature all the way back during Gen III, in 2003.
  • Another small feature is that the Pokédex shows what the Pokémon can evolve into or forms a pair with on the top screen. People claim that it's a new feature, but something like it did exist in the FireRed and LeafGreen Pokédex.
  • The core concept of the Alola region's rite of passage, to challenge four Island Captains in challenges that do not necessarily include Pokémon battles to test separate skills they need as a trainer, is very similar to the Orange Archipelago from the early anime (although that one still used the "Gym Leader" designation). Ditto for Alola's unique versions of earlier Pokémon, as the concept of Pokémon adapting to the climate was also introduced in the Orange League series, which had a Crystal Onix, Pink Pokémon, and a Butterfree with a unique pattern. Them being different types from their regular forms, on the other hand, harkens back to the Delta Pack of the TCG.
  • As mentioned under Hilarious in Hindsight, an Exeggutor with a long and thin trunk first appears on the Japanese artwork of the Jungle booster box of the TCG from 1997.
  • Even the Poké Ride feature, while certainly new to the main series, is far from new to Pokémon as a whole; the concept debuted in the Pokémon Ranger series, specifically Guardian Signs.
  • This isn't the first time we've had an evil team called Team Skull in a Pokémon game—the evil trio of Zubat, Koffing, and Skuntank from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky also called themselves "Team Skull." (Though only in the English version; they were "Team Poison Rose" in Japan.)
  • Both the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon and Pokémon Rumble series have had non-Pokémon Eldritch Abominations as enemies.
  • A good amount of fans seem to think that color contacts are a new feature, when it actually originated in XY. However getting them in X/Y is entirely optional, and only discovered if you happen to talk to a certain NPC. In Sun/Moon you are given them by Lillie during a plot related cutscene.
  • When Ash-Greninja was revealed to be available in a Sun and Moon demo and was implied to actually be Ash's Greninja from the anime, a few fans cried foul over it. However, the anime has always had a major influence on the games; Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire had Steven mention the Mega Evolution Specials when you show him the promotional Shiny Beldum, Pikachu's Pokémon Speak since Gen VI, several movie characters cameoed in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl (although their localized names are different), Pokémon Yellow is directly based on the anime, and several characters from the anime had their Pokémon made available in the games through event distributions.
  • Some fans have complained about the Cerebus Retcon in regard to Mega Evolution due to it suddenly turning them into bloodthirsty monsters, even though both the anime (more specifically, Korrina's Lucario) and Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon have showed the dark side of Mega Evolution and how important the bond between the Trainer and the Pokémon is in order for them to control the Mega Evolved Pokémon. Also, the fact that Glalie's jaw breaks after Mega Evolving is something that the official website for ORAS already talked about.
  • You can now get a simple readout of the in-battle stat changes of active Pokémon by pressing a button, and when you target an enemy, you get a readout of whether or not the move you're using will be super-effective, not very effective, or nulled outright. Shin Megami Tensei has had both of these features for years, across multiple games — though SMT beat Pokémon to the punch on being a mons game in the first place, so it makes sense it would be both an innovator, and the model Pokémon draws from.
  • The concept of a team of lowlife thieves fronting for another organization isn't original to Sun and Moon, either. Team Snagem and Cipher were doing this back in Colosseum.
  • This isn't Burnet's first appearance. She made her debut in Pokemon Dream Radar, a spin-off game for Pokemon Black and White 2 for the 3DS, where she studied dimensions.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Ryuki, a mysterious musician/dragon master from an unknown region, who challenges the Alolan Champion. He has an incredibly cool and unique design (some say he looks like a Fusion Dance of Lance, Benga and Miror B.) yet is never seen anywhere outside of the Elite Four championship match. However, he has made a lasting impression on the fans who encountered him, who hope he may show up once again, either in this game or the next.
  • Hiker David looks no different from any other Hiker and simply triggers a normal Trainer battle when he makes his appearance, but his hilarious introduction of photobombing Kiawe's Trial and immediately battling the player instead of the Marowak has quickly netted him a ton of fans, and is frequently considered one of the most hilarious moments in the game.
• One True Threesome: Or rather, One True Fivesome. Taking all the different combinations the protagonists, Hau, Lillie, and Gladion are paired in to the logical extreme, a fair number likes to pair them all together at the same time. Though some have reservations since Lillie and Gladion are siblings.
• Pandering to the Base: Like X and Y, Sun and Moon continue to pander to first generation fandom: The hero and his/her mother moved from Kanto region to Alola, Samson Oak the Prof.Oak cousin, Kukui having taken the Indigo League in the past, the Alola forms being exclusive to Gen I Pokémon, Lillie leaving to be a trainer in Kanto and heal her mother with Bill's help, and the special battles against Red and Blue.
• Play-Along Meme: Ask a fan who the Masked Royal is, and they'll tell you they have no idea, but it certainly isn't Professor Kukui.

R-S

• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Just like Oshawott and Froakie before it, Popplio was widely hated for its ugly design. However, many, many Popplio haters ate their words after the elegant and very strong Primarina was revealed to be its final evolution.
  • Bounsweet was really only remembered for her tendency to be Swallowed Whole by other Pokémon without anyone coming to her aid, and was generally seen as a boring Cherubi clone. However, her evolutions saved her from Scrappyhood due to being absolutely gorgeous and appearing to be useful in battle.
  • Alolan Grimer was seen as a worse version of a Pokémon that was already considered terribly designed. The October 14 trailer revealed its evolution, which fans loved due to its funky and nifty design. For the competitive crowd, Alolan Muk is also proving very useful thanks to a relatively unique defensive typing and stat spread that makes it a good anti-meta tank for Psychic types like Tapu Lele, as well as the combination of Poison Touch (all contact moves have a 30% Poison chance) and Knock Off (removes held items that aren't Mega Stones or Z-Crystals, items being very important to a Pokémon's function competitively) making it effective at wearing down certain defensive/tank mons.
  • Araquanid was initially seen as a subpar Pokémon thanks to it being too defensively oriented while having middling HP, and bad speed and attack stats. Then it was found out that its ability Water Bubble, besides dampening Fire attacks and preventing burns, had the hidden effect of doubling the power of Water-type moves, allowing it to hit extremely hard with Water moves- harder than Huge Power Azumarill. Many of its detractors changed their decision after the revelation.
  • Bewear was initially shunned for its lackluster design and stat distribution but then its ability, Fluffy, came to light. At the price of gaining a fire weakness, Bewear is able to halve the damage from all contact attacks. This, coupled with its great HP and solid Defensive stats transformed Bewear into one of the better physical walls introduced in the gen. Its anime appearance definitely made it even more well-loved.
  • The fully-evolved Unova starter Pokémon are among the less popular starters in the series for their lackluster competitive worth (prior to Serperior getting its Hidden Ability) and boring stats and type combinations (particularly for the Fire/Fighting-type Emboar). Sun and Moon make them obtainable as rare wild Pokémon via Island Scan as the first fully-evolved starters in the series that can be caught in the wild, making them cooler, more interesting and more rewarding to hunt and catch for many players. It helps that they have subtle dynamics with Alola's own starters (Decidueye has a bit of a Slobs Versus Snobs foil to Serperior, Incineroar is roughly an Evil Counterpart to Emboar, while Primarina is something of a Distaff Counterpart to Samurott).
  • Prior to Generation 7, Pelipper wasn't very well-liked at all for being a weak evolution to an already unpopular Pokémon. Then Sun and Moon gave Pelipper a small buff to its Special Attack and the Drizzle Ability, the same ability that saved Politoed. Now, Pelipper is praised in the competitive community for being the new premier rain setter due to its access to rain-boosted Water attacks, STAB Hurricanes with perfect accuracy, U-Turn for giving teammates a free switch-in if Pelipper acts before the opponent, and reliable recovery in Roost to keep going. Similarly, Torkoal gained Drought, turning it from a fairly forgettable Stone Wall to a terrifyingly powerful Eruption user.
  • Incineroar was never a proper scrappy but it was given flak due to believing it to be the umpteenth Fire/Fighting starter. As you can guess, people were relieved when it turned out that Incineroar is actually Fire/Dark.
• Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic:
  • The reveal that Zygarde's other formes will be in the game has caused some fans to sigh in relief, as they were worried that because there wasn't a third version in the previous generation, Zygarde was going to become a Missing Secret, like the Azure Flute in Gen IV.
  • Hyper Training makes one of the stats of your level 100 Pokémon to reach its "full potential" (i.e. make it as though it has 31 IV in that stat) without actually changing the IV.
  • Emboar, Unova's Fire-type starter, was criticized for being the third Fire/Fighting starter in a row, with many fans wishing that it were a Fire/Dark type due to its slightly demonic appearance. Incineroar, Litten's final stage, is exactly that — it's a huge, menacing, wrestling-themed Pokémon like Emboar, but it is indeed a Fire/Dark type and its heel status is heavily played up in its lore.
  • After two decades of neglect, due to being overshadowed by Series Mascot Pikachu, Game Freak has finally listened to fans and given Raichu some much needed attention, granting it an Alolan Form and its own exclusive Z-Move.
  • The Dark-type was often seen as the Butt-Monkey of all types, due to being the only one without its own Gym or Gym Leader (there are many Dark-type Elite Four members, but no gyms). When Sun and Moon stated that the Gyms would be replaced with Trials and Kahunas, many people thought that, at least for Gen VII, the type's fate was sealed once again. However, the Ula'ula Island Kahuna, Nanu, turned out to be the first non-Elite Four Dark-type specialist in the series, which stopped those fears and turned the character into an Ensemble Dark Horse. It helps that, in defiance of the above tradition, Nanu outright refused to become an Elite Four member.
  • A very minor one that's easily missed, but Furfrou now reverts back to its Natural Form after removing it from the PC rather than depositing it in there. This means that you can now put Furfrou into a Battle Box and use one of its trimmed forms in multiplayer and at the Battle Tree—prior, you could only use its Natural Form.
  • Another minor one, but fans were pleasantly surprised that Aether Foundation, as the true villainous team in the game's plot, averts Poor, Predictable Rock that villainous teams are known for by having wide and varied teams and strategies.
  • The GTS has the option of filtering out potentially unfair trades when seeking Pokémon such as ignoring any trades demanding legendary/mythical Pokémon, specific parameters involving whether or not the Pokémon offered can be from your region, and only showing demands that match what you currently have in stock.
  • You couldn't remove your character's hat in XY, and an interview Masuda stated that this was intentionally done, as hats were a sign of a player character. After a massive backlash, it seems Game Freak has listened, because this game allows characters to go hatless.
• Salvaged Story:
  • In ORAS, Zinnia's theory of there being an Alternate Universe where Mega Evolution doesn't exist was seen as an out-of-place Diabolus ex Machina that had no actual relevance to the plot. Pokémon Sun and Moon turn it into an actually interesting plot device by implying Anabel is a faller that may have come from the Emerald universe, as well as connecting the theory to the Ultra Beasts and their wormholes.^NoteA faller does NOT necessarily come from another universe, however, as this term simply defines anyone who has passed through an UB portal, including the player character.
  • Quite a few fans have considered the inclusion of Ash-Greninja to be this towards the anime, as if allowing fans to grant it the victory it was denied in the Kalos Finals in the XY&Z anime. Additionally, the penultimate episode of the XY Saga featured Ash releasing his Greninja to help Zygarde, and the fact that it ends up in your possession with the OT "Ash" could suggest that it somehow ended up in your hands (although the anime and games are separate continuities, so this may be more of a Mythology Gag than anything else).
• The Scrappy: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Pokémon Bank has a quite fair share of them:
    • Transfering Pokémon from Gen I and Gen VI to these games is, yet again, a one-way trip. While it's expected for the Gen I games thanks to Early-Installment Weirdness, most aren't happy about not being able to send Gen VI Pokémon back and forth a la Pokémon Gold and Silver, especially since both generations are on the same system and the same service connects them. There's also the fact that it initially wasn't compatible with Sun and Moon until two months after the games' release, a wait that shouldn't have been repeated after the numerous delays in the X and Y era.
    • While all transferred Gen I Pokémon have at least three maximum IVs (though you can't soft reset to ensure they go into the stats you want, which also makes trying to get a specific Hidden Power type a real pain in the backside) and their Hidden Ability, their Natures is all based on the last two digits of the Pokémon's experience◊ (in which case, hope you didn't have a level 100 Pokémon that you didn't want Hardy on). By the way, this isn't something spelled out to you. Gender, on the other hand, is completely random, even though Pokémon Gold and Silver already had a way to consistently determine gender for Pokémon from the original games. While Bank tries to hew closer to Gold and Silver's tactics for determining shininess, it mixes up the roles of the Attack and Defense IVs, so any Pokémon that would have been shiny if sent to a Gen II game won't be when transferred to a modern game, and vice versa. Fortunately, these discrepancies were changed for Gen II's VC release to avoid inconsistencies when trading and transferring.
    • While it's a minor cosmetic difference, all transferred Pokémon appear in normal Poké Balls, so if you're the kind of person who likes using Poké Balls that match a Pokémon's appearance (such as Safari Ball on Tauros or Master Ball on Mewtwo), you'll probably be disappointed. In other minor annoyances, transferring Pokémon up will leave their names in all-caps, and transferring a box containing MissingNo. will cause the names of all Pokémon after it in the box to be shifted around.
    • There are also a number of issues with the games failing to recognize the legitimacy of Pokémon being transferred. Right off the bat, Bank won't allow a Pokémon to be transferred if it knows a move that it couldn't learn in that version, such as a Charizard that was taught Fly in Yellow and was traded to Red for the transfer attempt. Then there are the issues with the Pokémon that got evolutions in later generations: transferring them up to Gen VII and then evolving them convinces the game that they're hacked, preventing them from being traded over online (although local trades seem to work fine); if you were foolish enough to get someone to help you with a trade-based evolution, you won't be getting your Pokémon back.
  • When you go and get a haircut, not only are you unable to preview what the haircut is going to look like (unlike with clothing), but they take your money upfront, so you can't back out of it. And haircuts are not cheap, especially at the beginning of the game.
  • Unlike in X and Y, where you could try on multiple clothing items at once and then buy the whole outfit in one go once you were happy with it, you can only try on clothing items one at a time without buying them—if you switch to another category, you'll lose whatever you were trying on from the previous category. This makes building a full outfit very frustrating and expensive.
  • The SOS system has proven to be a rather divisive gameplay mechanic, in which a wild Pokémon will call for backup. It has replaced Horde Battles from Gen VI as the primary method for Stat Grinding, but there are some who find the method to be more tedious and time consuming in comparison. Not helping matters is that while there is a method for the player to make it more likely that the opponent will call for help, it can also happen completely at random, so if a player is simply trying to capture a wild Pokémon, this can result in a battle lasting far longer than they had intended.
  • Evolution moves, moves that are learned by a Pokémon after evolving regardless of what level they are, are somewhat of a mixed bag in terms of mechanics and what is and isn't an evolution move. While many of them are fairly useful and well-regarded, such as Decidueye's Spirit Shackle and Alolan Ninetales' Dazzling Gleam, Kadabra's in particular is bugged so that, if it evolves at level 16 like it normally does, it will only learn Kinesis instead of Confusion like it usually does, leaving it without an attacking move until it learns Psybeam at level 21. Fortunately, the 1.1 update fixed it so that evolution moves no longer override other moves. Inverted regarding Alolan Marowak, who is only capable of learning its signature move, Shadow Bone, at level 27, while Marowak evolves at level 28, meaning it must be taught the move via the Move Reminder (whose services aren't available until you get to the Pokémon League) in order to know it at all - as a result, many fans wish that Shadow Bone were an evolution move in order to bypass this problem.
  • The revamped fishing mechanic. Now fishing on certain spots is fine as well as having a single rod. However, the stilted encounter rate makes fishing quite a chore. Three things can happen when you throw your line - you either get nothing, an item, or a Pokémon encounter. Now the last one, most of them have a ludicrously high encounter rate for Magikarp, usually being higher than 40%. And the rare Pokémon being around 1%-2%. However, on exactly one fishing spot on a route with such a rare encounter, bubbles will appear above it, and fishing while this phenomenon is occurring will increase the encounter rate of the rarer Pokémon on the route...to no higher than 20%. And if you scatter the bubbles by moving too quickly nearby or fish something other than your target Pokémon from the spot, you have to leave the map and come back, or soft reset the game. And there are several Pokémon that must be encountered in this fashion, including the newly introduced Bruxish, Dhelmise and Mareanie (the latter of which also has the Guide Dang It! of S.O.S. battles on top of the Corsola encounter rate). Older games made it easier to catch more interesting Pokémon by adding higher tier fishing rods- but no such rod exists in Alola.
  • The Ash-Greninja you can receive by playing the game's special demo is attributed to Ash instead of the player. While this is a neat Shout-Out to the anime, it means this Greninja will level up much faster than usual due to it being treated as a traded Pokémon. It's already a slight problem that you receive it as a Greninja instead of it starting from a Froakie so you can use it from the start, but now once you do get your team to level 36 and use it, it will very quickly outpace them and get overleveled, diminishing the difficulty of the game.
  • Certain Pokémon like Magneton and Charjabug require to level up near an electric "zone" to reach their final stage. Unlike the older games where the designated zone is usually within the middle of the game, in Alola it is in the fourth island. While it's good that those two could hold on their own, it is really baffling that the usual spot is at the final leg of the single player campaign, especially when there is a more appropriate and obvious area that could have been used for it (the power plant in Blush Mountain for instance). Even worse is Crabrawler, who can only evolve by leveling up in Mt. Lanakila, which is the point where the main story is almost over. What doesn't help is that Crabrawler doesn't have good enough stats to hold on for this long, only being viable in the early game, which only discourages players from keeping it in their team for very long.
  • During Totem Pokémon fights, the camera will occasionally dramatically look around the battlefield and focus on the Pokémon. The thing is, it'll do that even if you've already decided on the move you're intending to use, thus forcing you to wait until it's done with no way to get it to stop.
  • Festival Plaza is generally regarded as one of the worst features in the game, filled to the brim with aggravating mechanics on top of replacing the PSS from the previous generation as the main communications hub and Join Avenue from Black 2 and White 2. Months after the game's release, a number of people pointed out how its online playerbase seemed to be dwindling in high contrast to Gen VI's - getting matchups on Battle Spot tended to be difficult due to inactivity, and many blame Festival Plaza because of the way it handles online connectivity.
    • Unlike the PSS, you can't connect to the internet on the go without disrupting your adventure. Every time you go online, the game will automatically attempt to use Game Sync without a way to disable doing so and waste precious time. The PC present within the Plaza cannot use the storage system, meaning you will have to exit, disconnect and reconnect if you wish to swap Pokémon from your party with those in the PC or give them items.
    • The facilities in Festival Plaza utilise a unique and difficult to amass currency called Festival Coins. You have no way of choosing what facility you get when you rank up, nor can facilities be upgraded. You can only get what Sophocles offers you, and even with a high plaza rank he can (and will) offer a facility that is blatantly inferior to the ones you currently have in your plaza, making getting any three or five star facilities a chore unless you acquire one from someone else. Certain facilities are version-exclusive, and getting a facility off another player isn't free unlike in Join Avenue. If you want multiples of a certain kind of facility, the price will increase as well.
    • Unlike Join Avenue, only certain visitors will have requests for you to do something or take them somewhere. The 'hints' given to you by the Festival Fans are often extremely misleading and offer no real clue as to which facility they mean, and it's completely random whether or not the ones who ask you to take them anywhere will enjoy the facility you recommend to them.
    • The missions are also a trial, because absolutely no explanation is given for what you need to do beyond the name, leaving you to work it out for yourself while trying to accomplish the mission. Several of the missions are highly reliant on the RNG's compliance with your goals, and nearly all of the missions apart from the type matchup ones give an abysmal amount of Festival Coins for the effort you put into them and can generally be farmed quicker through taking requests.
    • Facilities like goody shops, food stalls and bouncy houses come in more varieties than their Join Avenue equivalents, made worse by each variety having less stock than the ones in Join Avenue. Combined with Festival Plaza having less facility slots than Join Avenue, you'll likely need to have multiples of one type of facility just to get much use out of them.
  • The Battle Tree is the only place to obtain the available Mega Stones (outside of that one Alakazite). In addition to Mega Evolution being totally off-limits until the post-game, the stones cost 64 BP^note Discounting Charizardite X/Y, Blastoisinite, and Venusaurite, which are given out by Red after beating him in Battle Tree Singles.. On the bright side, there's no limit on how many Mega Stones the player can purchase.
  • The return of the Heavy Ball has a consequence unseen in HeartGold and SoulSilver due to the capture rate system's mechanics in Gens III and IV preventing a Pokémon's catch rate from going below one - attempting to catch a Pokémon with a catch rate of 20 or lower that is light enough to earn the Heavy Ball's -20 penalty (the retention of the new Heavy Ball weight tiers introduced in HGSS which removed the neutral zone itself being another divisive thing) will be impossible to catch in that ball as their catch rate will be set to zero and unaffected by multipliers such as status conditions. It's completely inefficient and most players wouldn't be be bothered by this, but people who engage in balltism (the desire to catch a certain Pokémon in a certain ball and/or catch Pokémon in a wide variety of balls) may find this aggravating. The only available Pokémon in Sun and Moon affected by this are the Beldum line and the Tapu, and many balltists were looking forward to having legal members of the Beldum line in Heavy Balls.
  • On the GTS, if a trade has already occurred when attempting to fulfill it, any specific filters such as region and availability is reset, rather than retaining those parameters. Especially frustrating when attempting to search for easily-fulfilled demands. Deposits don't even have the privilege of demanding such parameters.
  • The Rotom Dex has established itself as an Annoying Video Game Helper with repetitive and often artificial dialogue (especially in the post-game content, where it only repeats the same few lines over and over), forcing interactions for things which were once automatic (such as urging you to "check out" new Pokémon), and having no means to disable it as a "feature."
  • Of all the Poké Rides, Stoutland Search is the most disliked. This Poké Ride is essentially a replacement of the bicycle and Dowsing Machine, allowing you to find items on the ground that are not visible, and unlike previous incarnations of the Dowsing Machine, you have to hold down the button in order for Stoutland to sense a hidden item. The problem is that Stoutland moves VERY slowly as it senses an item and there are few indicators to show which direction you need to go outside of an exclamation bubble, making hunting for hidden items a chore. On the bicycle side of things, while it may allow the player to travel fast it also increases the size of their hitbox and prevent them from going through narrow spaces, on top of forcing them to ditch their regular clothes for the controversially designed Ride Wear. In addition, its popularity is not at all helped by being a major factor in a maligned NPC Roadblock, involving a man riding a Stoutland blocking portions of Heahea City because he insists he must find all the items there, that heavily railroads progress through Akala Island.
  • Hyper Training finally puts to rest all the stress of breeding Pokémon/Save Scumming one-off Pokémon for good IVs...or it would, if not for several issues. One, the Pokémon has to be at level 100, and given how the diminishing experience system from Gen V makes a comeback, getting to that level is tedious at best. Two, Bottle Caps are necessary to use Hyper Training, and they're not easy to come by (especially the Gold Bottle Cap that maxes out all IVs at once). When the most reliable way of getting them relies on the very-much-despised Festival Plaza, you know you're in trouble. Three, they don't do anything about Hidden Power, so if you were hoping to change your Venusaur's Hidden Power from Bug to Fire, sorry, bub.^*Though on the upside, its Special Attack and Speed now need not suffer if it does have that type. Four, they don't affect breeding in any way, so don't go thinking you can Hyper Train a Ditto to give Pokémon perfect IVs (for unbreedable Pokémon like Legendaries, though, go nuts).
• Self-Fanservice:
  • A lot of the fan art for Wicke gives her much larger breasts and wider hips than how she's drawn within official art, which was already pretty curvy to begin with.
  • Professor Kukui's fan art often makes him look even beefier and hunkier, when he's already got a toned physique.
  • Lusamine is actually pretty slim compared to most other female characters close to her age in the franchise. Fan artists often ignore that and make her more voluptuous to differentiate her from her daughter Lillie.
  • For Pokémon, Salazzle is usually drawn with its more creepy traits de-emphasized by furry artists to bring her closer to attractive for scalies (ironically this is usually done by making her more animalistic). They usually also increase her size from a short 3.5ft average to as large as an adult human (or taller).
  • You'd be hard-pressed to find fanart of Incineroar that sticks with its design, especially in lewd drawings. Rather than drawing it with its strange Top-Heavy Guy build that gives it tube-like limbs and disproportionately large fingers, many artists draw it with visible muscle toning and proportions closer to those of humans.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike:
  • Perhaps in response to complaints of Pokémon X and Y, and more importantly Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, being on the easier side, Sun and Moon have a sharper difficulty curve and a number of tricks, particularly with the Totem Pokémon and Z-Moves, that lead to a significantly more difficult experience than the previous set of games if you don't over-level your teams. Over-leveling is also harder to do since the Anti-Grinding experience system from Black and White is back. And even when you do overlevel your teams, your opponents will most likely still have tricks up their sleeves that will give them an upper hand. It's gotten to the point where people believe these are the hardest Pokémon games besides Colosseum and Gale of Darkness.
  • The Battle Tree in the post game doesn't pull any punches. Unlike the Battle Maison, which typically had very easy (and somewhat boring) challenges for the first 10 or so matches, Battle Tree immediately starts with difficult trainers with fully evolved and smartly equipped Pokémon that can overwhelm an unprepared player. There are also random trainers that can use Z-Moves and even Mega Evolutions.
• Ship Mates: Generally, ships among the young main cast tend to come in certain configurations that ensure both Lillie and Gladion are paired. Fans who ship the male player character with Lillie, then tend to pair Gladion with the female player character. Fans who ship Lillie and Hau, also like Gladion/either player character. If one prefers Lillie with the female player character, then Gladion is generally shipped with Hau instead.
• Signature Scene: The player character meeting with Lillie on the bridge, shielding Nebby from the attacking Spearow, and being saved by Tapu Koko. To a lesser extent, there is also Nihilego's grand entrance, emerging from an Ultra Wormhole in front of an awestruck player character, Hau, and Lusamine.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The first segment of the game really railroads you with tutorials and excessive hand-holding, even by Pokémon standards. However, it gives you more freedom once you get to the second island.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • On multiple occasions, Lillie's braids clip through her clothes or bag strap.
  • The animation for the Normal-type Z-Move Breakneck Blitz is supposed to cover up the fact that the user's legs aren't moving as it races toward the target, but it only covers up the hind legs on quadrupedal Pokémon, leaving the static front legs fully visible.
  • Lighting has never been Game Freak's strong suit, but Sun and Moon are plagued with even more lighting problems than the previous generation, which was already infamous for having bright nighttime lighting. Melemele Island and several entities like Lillie are plagued with a strange bright glow, even in daytime, the conservation area of Aether Paradise is always brightly lit with sunshine streaming through the tall windows and skylight even during the night, and the lighting of humans and Pokémon in and out of battle don't adhere to the time-based lighting of the environment, especially in battle. Additionally, there is always an odd glare on the top left corner of the screen that is more visible during battles.
  • Sandstorms are simply rendered as a single layer overlay during battle, and so are snowstorms on the overworld. They don't look right at all when the camera is moving around or following you as you move around.
  • During the idle views of the field in between turns, some Pokémon (often large ones) are completely absent save for their shadow at certain camera angles, only to suddenly pop into existence from nowhere as the camera rotates.
  • Side-by-side comparison of Wally's battle model with his Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire one reveals that the Sun and Moon model has a more super-deformed, less detailed look than his original one, on top of making him look younger than he was despite at least a decade passing between the events of the Hoenn and Alola games.
  • Olivia's Stufful toys can blink.
• Squick: If you don't feel grossed out about the idea of picking up "Pokémon garbage", you will be when not only does your trainer use their bare hands to pick it up, but the animation also implies they put it in their pocket.
• Surprise Difficulty: While Sun and Moon aren't your typical definition of easy, the early- and mid-game portions of it are overall manageable enough, especially with Z-Moves ready to obliterate whatever's in your way; many critiques of the games argue that they aren't difficult enough for this reason. Come the storming of Aether Paradise, however, and the game's handholding comes to an immediate and abrupt halt, finally turning the dial up a notch. Unlike all the villainous teams that came before them, the Aether Foundation employees have a diverse, unpredictable, and strong array of Pokémon—No goon uses the same one twice. At the end, you then face off against three powerful bosses, the latter two of which have EV-trained Pokémon that are practically guaranteed to lay a smackdown on your team before they're defeated. And when you first visit Poni Island afterwards? The wild Pokémon are at a higher level than Lusamine's! In addition, the Trainers there aren't playing any games either (with one Ace Trainer using a Z-Move of her own!), and the final Kahuna's strongest Pokémon is Level 48. Long story short, if you've been coasting your way through Alola without ever stopping to train up your team until now (something the game intentionally makes difficult), your odds of getting your ass kicked are extremely high. And this isn't even mentioning the Totem Pokémon and the final boss.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The beginning of the trainer battle theme sounds very much like an upbeat version of the most famous part of "Journey to the Island" from Jurassic Park.
  • A brief menacing ditty (starts from 0:48 in the video, goes to 1:00) played in Lusamine's first battle theme bears a striking resemblance to part of the Cipher Leitmotif from Pokémon Colosseum and Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, such as in the Cipher Admin battle theme from the first game (goes from 0:28 to 0:32 in video, can be heard multiple times after).
  • The beginning of the Alola Elite Four battle theme sounds extremely similar to the beginning of "Together We Ride" from Fire Emblem.
  • The Tapu's theme sounds like Awaken. It helps that both the Tapus and the Pillar Men are a group of 4 super powerful creatures that come from large statues.
  • The beginning of Gladion's encounter and battle themes sounds almost identical to a sped-up version of the intro of "Run Away, Fugitives" and "Escape from the Snow" from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team. This makes sense, as Gladion is a literal "runaway fugitive".
    • His battle theme is reminiscent of "Vs. the Wicked Company", the boss theme from Kirby: Planet Robobot.
  • On a more minor note, the beginning of the Legendary battle theme sounds very similar to that of Deoxys' battle theme from the Gen III games and Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire, most likely as a nod to their shared extraterrestrial links. Afterwards, the song starts to gain a clear resemblance to the X & Y Legendary Battle Theme, to the point where when the song was first leaked, it was in fact considered to be Complete Forme Zygarde's battle theme, though Zygarde is not actually battled in-game.
  • To some, Konikoni City's night theme is similar to “Rhiannon” by Fleetwood Mac.
• Ron the Death Eater: There is a sizable number of fans who absolutely loathe Lusamine. While hating one of the most psychotic villains in Pokemon is likely the intended effect, the loathing goes to the point they ignore they were such due to Nihilego toxins altering their mind, the sequels and spinoffs showing they were merely flawed patents when acting willfully, and even at their worst never did anything so bad their children wouldn't hesitate to forgive them of once cured.

T

• That One Boss: Sun and Moon have plenty of tough-as-nails bosses, especially compared to previous games, especially Totem Pokémon, given that you're usually outnumbered two to one, with one Pokémon in that pair being particularly tough.
  • Totem Wishiwashi. It has great bulk and high offensive stats, and will summon Pokémon that have Helping Hand to further augment its offensive attacks. One such Pokémon would be Alomomola, which can also use Heal Pulse to heal the Wishiwashi. The rain is also up for an infinite amount of time and coming from 140 base special attack at this point a Water Gun can OHKO almost everything in the game while you're not likely to 2HKO it.
  • Totem Salazzle. It's fast and hits hard with Special moves, and its aura improves its Special Defense, giving it some extra bulk against the Water-types you probably brought to deal with it. Once you get its health down enough, it'll eat its Petaya Berry to boost its Special Attack even further. Don't think its movepool is any more forgiving: it's got Torment to keep you from spamming your best move, Venom Drench to lower both of your offensive stats and your Speed, the relatively-powerful Flame Burst for direct damage, and Toxic. Why is Toxic so bad? Well, Salazzle's unique Ability, Corrosion, lets it poison anything, regardless of type, which means there's no way to protect yourself from ongoing damage that doubles each turn. And woe betide you if it summoned a Salandit to help, because the Salandit will follow up with Venoshock, an attack that doubles in power if the target has been poisoned; the Salandit can also use Taunt to keep you from using any status moves, which is just icing on the cake. Even worse is the fact that Salazzle will summon infinite reinforcements of Salandit as one gets defeated, forcing you to focus your attacks on Salazzle and getting hammered by Salandit's Venoshock if they're left unchecked. Sure, you can try to take it out using Ground moves, but this early in the game, you won't be able to find very many in Alola.
  • Totem Lurantis. It starts off with heightened Speed, allowing it to likely outspeed most Pokémon. It has some really hard hitting moves like Solar Blade (a physical equivalent to Solar Beam, except it has 125 Power) and the decently powered X-Scissor. If you don't bring it to below 1/3 health before the end of the first turn, it'll summon a Trumbeak which can wear your Pokémon down with Supersonic and Screech, as well as Pluck to steal any held berries and Rock Blast to prey on the Fire, Bug, and Flying Pokémon that would target Lurantis. However, if you do manage to weaken it that much that fast, it'll summon a Castform instead, which can make the fight a lot more hellish. It has Headbutt, which can do decent damage and can flinch. It has Water Gun which can hurt Fire-type Pokémon. But the kicker is that it can use Sunny Day, thus activating harsh sunlight and its Forecast ability, while also giving it a Fire-type Weather Ball to hit even harder and further punish Bug types. In addition, Totem Lurantis can receive tons of benefit from harsh sunlight, as it will activate its Leaf Guard ability, which prevent status, heals more HP with Synthesis and Solar Blade doesn't require charging. To top this off, regardless of who it summons first, if it's still alive when the first ally faints, it'll immediately call the other one. And Totem Lurantis happens to hold a Power Herb, allowing it to bypass a charge turn for Solar Blade once. Heck, many fans in fact compare Lurantis with Whitney's Miltank, of all things!
    • It stays much the same in the Ultra games, though its partner Pokémon have been changed to Kecleon, who is actually quite a bit easier, and Comfey. Almost all of Comfey's moves are based around supporting Lurantis, such as Sunny Day, Moonlight, and so on, causing Lurantis' stats, already a considerable advantage over your own to go through the roof, and then healing it any time you do damage to it. Multiple trainers have mentioned having to simply outlast the Ultra Lurantis and wait for it to Struggle itself to death, rather than defeat it normally.
  • Totem Mimikyu. Its Disguise ability allows it to survive at least one hit and will guarantee that it'll call in an ally Pokémon. Every ally it calls has Hypnosis. Like Vikavolt, its Totem Aura boosts all of its stats, so it'll be difficult to outspeed and overpower it. Thanks to these boosts, odds are it will survive to call another ally if you KO the first ally first. While having Disguise doesn't save it from getting status effect such as Poison or Burn, it holds a Lum Berry to assure you had just wasted a turn attempting to bypass the loophole.
  • The battle against Hau counts as this after the first visit to the Aether Paradise. His first Pokémon is an Alolan Raichu — a powerful and fast Pokémon that has access to Thunderbolt and Psychic, making it difficult to survive if your team doesn't resist either. His second Pokémon is the Eeveelution that is strong against your starter- so woe betide anyone who picked Litten and found themselves against the Mighty Glacier Vaporeon. Finally, his last Pokémon is his starter, which carries the Z-Crystal of its relevant type. The only saving grace is that this battle does not need to be won to proceed with the game—though this isn't much reassurance if you're doing a Nuzlocke Run; if you don't have a fast Dark type, the Raichu alone could easily cause your Game Over.
  • Any of the Guzma fights can be surprisingly difficult for many, mainly because of his Golisopod. It packs First Impression (a powerful Bug-type priority move that only works when used as the first attack) which, if not resisted, will likely KO your Pokémon (even Pokémon that are at a much higher level than Golisopod) this is especially true if one tries to use Alolan Raichu against this thing thinking it might outspeed. It will follow it up with a Swords Dance and spam +2 boosted Razor Shells (a Water-type move with the chance of lowering your Pokémon's Defence stat) thereafter. On top of that, it's incredibly bulky for the points where you fight him so chances are big that you not only won't ko it in one round, but that you also won't be activating it's Emergency Exit ability in one round either. And Arceus help you if the Ariados he switches into manages to faint one of your Pokémon with Fell Stinger...It will immediately begin spamming +3 ATK Shadow Sneaks and you'll be lucky to even score another hit on the thing. At Aether Paradise, he has two more Pokémon, Masquerain and Pinsir. Masquerain is regarded as a lost potential Pokémon that's another Bug/Flying type, but it will spam Air Slash, which will most likely make you flinch. Good luck trying to hit it, even if you have a Rock type. Speaking of said Emergency Exit ability, it lets it use First Impression once more to likely hand out another KO if your Pokémon does not resist Bug.
  • Lusamine is generally considered to be one of, if not the, hardest fight in the main story. Despite her favoring cute looking Pokémon, her team is full of Mighty Glacier such as Clefable, Milotic, and Bewear. In addition, she is the first trainer in the game to use five Pokémon. And that is not even getting to her Motherbeast rematch where she uses Ultra Beast powers to buff up her Pokémon even further (as in, her Pokémon have one of their stats boosted), while also now having full movesets.
  • The Final Boss, Professor Kukui. He leads with his Lycanroc and uses Stealth Rock, which damages Pokémon upon switching in, and then uses Braviary with Whirlwind to do Stealth Rock damage to you. Braviary also has high Attack and a high BP Brave Bird to use it with. His Pokémon are all EV trained with good movesets. His strongest Pokémon is the final form of the starter you and Hau didn't choose, so it'll absolutely beat your starter, especially since it's equipped with a Z-Crystal matching its type. His Ninetales has Safeguard to protect the team from status effects. He's also got a bulky Snorlax which can tank a lot of hits that aren't Fighting type attacks, and has a high chance of paralyzing with Body Slam as well as High Horsepower for any potential Steel types trying to tank its blows. His Magnezone is also powerful and has Sturdy so one Ground or Fire type move won't be enough to take it down. He also carries 4 Full Restores and 1 Full Heal to use so that Snorlax can easily heal to full health again and can stop status effects.
• That One Level:
  • The second visit to Aether Paradise has high level trainers, multiple boss battles in the whole area and half of them are considered as That One Boss, and is quite large to traverse. It becomes quite difficult and a chore unless you stocked up on high amounts of healing items and includes incredible amounts of backtracking if not sufficiently stocked due to no Pokémon Center nearby or healing provided elsewhere. It could be considered a worse version of the Shadow Pokémon Lab — fitting, as the boss battle at the end shares a few riffs from the boss battle at the end of the Shadow Pokémon Lab.
  • Vast Poni Canyon on Poni Island. This area is equivalent to Victory Road, full of tough trainers, lots of sections that require the Ride Assists (the HMs of this generation), and the only Pokémon Center is all the way across the island ^note somewhat mitigated by a healing Miltank in Hapu's house, as well as the fact that Lillie heals you a total of three times while there - right before you enter, midway through, and right before the trial. Trying to clear the Canyon in one go becomes quite a task, as if you run out of healing items, you'll have to Charizard Glide back to the Pokémon Center, which may mean possibly having to backtrack through the Canyon again. Thankfully, Lillie will heal you at certain points, and just near the end of the Canyon you can use Machamp Shove to create a shortcut to the entrance. This whole section contains at least a few bosses. It starts off with the battle with Kahuna Hapu (who will have rather high leveled Pokémon at that point, nearing Lv 50). At the end of the Canyon is the Dragon Trial, where you face off against Totem Kommo-o (who can take care of Fairy types with its Flash Cannon, and can summon a Scizor as well^note If you have a Primarina, you don't have to worry too much about the Steel type moves). It's then followed by a rematch with Lusamine fused with Nihilego, with all of her Pokémon having heightened stats, after which then comes a fight with the box legendary Solgaleo in Sun or Lunala in Moon. Thankfully, once all of this is done, all that is left is Mt. Lanakila, a Breather Level.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Collecting Zygarde Cells and Cores in itself is a fine side-quest. The problem is that there are Cells that appear only in day or night, as well as ones that only appear post-game puts you in a Guide Dang It! moment. And finally, unless you were keeping a checklist of the cores you have collected, trying to find the last few pieces is going to be an islands-spanning scavenger hunt.
  • Evolving Sneasel into Weavile. Like previous games, this requires Sneasel to hold a Razor Claw at night and then level up. However, getting said Razor Claw is hard: they're only found being held by wild Jangmo-o, Hakamo-o, and Kommo-o. Jangmo-o has only a 5% chance of appearing in the wild in the one place they do so, and only have a 5% chance of holding a Razor Claw, which means a 1/400 chance of finding something with it. It can potentially call a Kommo-o which has a 50% chance of holding it, but that's really, really rare. Getting a Razor Fang to evolve Gligar isn't much better; it's only found on wild Bruxish, which have to be fished up, although thankfully wild Bruxish are a bit easier to come by.
  • Catching Mareanie is a Guide Dang It!-centric Luck-Based Mission. Even if you know what to do, you still need to find Corsola, which has to be fished, which can be done at exactly two locations. For the first you can initiate battle with Corsola at bubbling fishing spot for decent 20%, but for non-bubling spot it's otherwise 1% probability of finding it, so basically it boils down to chasing bubbling spot, trying, quitting area if it's not Corsola, and repeating. The second location has only one fishing spot for 5% chance. When you find it, you need to whittle its health down and keep fainting its allies until Mareanie appears, which can also take a time. And that's not even getting into catching one with Hidden Ability (which reinforces its Stone Wall properties), since that requires fainting at least 10 Corsolae then checking Mareanie for its ability, with the possibility of Mareanie attacking and possibly fainting Corsola while you're doing so, breaking your chain and forcing you find new Corsola. Getting (Prankster) Sableye is almost just as bad, though thankfully fishing is not required for that one.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The adventure forgoing the usual "challenge the Gyms and become the Champion" formula in favor of non-traditional gameplay involving traveling the four islands and battling special boss Pokémon called Totem Pokémon, alongside the islands each having one special trainer (who hold the title of Kahuna) to battle against, got this sort of reaction from some long-time fans. The fact that the game even has a plot has caused people to wonder what everyone is babbling about because they just want to go play online. This isn't the first time this happened...
  • Several of the gameplay mechanics introduced in Gen VI, including Super Training, Horde Battles, and Hidden Pokémon were removed from these games.
  • To the joy of many fans, the Apricorn balls are back. To the absolute ire of the same crowd, you can only get one of each. Not helping is the fact that the balls are very situational and don't affect a Pokémon's catch rate in the usual way other balls do, adding onto the base rate rather than multiplying it.
  • The new Global Link exists solely for recording online actions and providing tournaments, with the ability to get items from it completely removed. When things like the Apricorn Balls and Gems were revealed to be limited and once again unavailable respectively, people were hoping that the Global Link would offer them as a saving grace.
  • Taking into account the Dream World back when Black and White were new games, these games have the lowest percentage of Pokémon available, with just under 400 out of 802 available, around 47%. Additionally, the National Pokédex is no longer in the game and is exclusive to the paid subscription-based Pokémon Bank — Pokémon outside the Alola Pokédex don't even have Pokédex entries, viewable static forms, or playable animations for each form, and their National Pokédex numbers don't even show up on their summary screens. The only way to check whether something outside of the Alola Dex has been registered as caught is through the GTS.
  • Tying on from that, the Pokédex in these games does not allow all of a Pokémon's battling animations to be viewed in their entries unlike the one in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, only showing one or two of a Pokémon's attacking animations. Some examples include Xurkitree planting all of its limbs on the ground when it performs some special attacks, Decidueye drawing a feather arrow and firing it when it uses Spirit Shackle, and Primarina standing up on its tail fins and singing when it uses Sparkling Aria.
  • After introducing the Mega Evolution mechanic in Gen VI and making it an expected feature, fans who welcomed the mechanic were initially happy to hear that it would return despite the introduction of Z-Moves. What those same fans don't like is that Mega Evolutions are restricted to the post-game. Players wanting to use their favorite Megas to play through the story are forced to wait until afterwards just to unlock them. And even then, only Mega Stones for Pokémon found in the Alola Dex and the Kanto starters can be obtained. Some fans are also miffed that there are no new Mega Evolutions, especially since many of the Alola Pokémon have bizarre and unusually weak stat distributions that would highly benefit from such a boost.
  • Several moves, items, statuses, Pokémon and abilities have received nerfs, such as Gale Wings only working at full HP, Thunder Wave's accuracy dropping to 90%, Gengar losing Levitate for Cursed Body, the Soul Dew boosting Psychic and Dragon moves by 20% as opposed to boosting the Eon Pokémon's Special stats by 50%, Parental Bond's second hit only doing 25% of the first hit's damage, and Dark Void going from a good 80% accuracy to a paltry 50%. If you liked the pre-Gen VII versions of all these factors, you'll likely be none too pleased with these changes.
  • While the Poké Ride feature has been met with widespread praise due to rendering the Scrappy Mechanic of Hidden Machines, there are two aspects of this replacement that a number of fans dislike. Riding a Pokémon forces you to wear a costume that obscures your clothing with a bodysuit made of a garish combination of colors that stays visible during battles, and the hitboxes of Ride Pokémon are larger than those of the player or the bicycle akin to Kyogre when ridden underwater in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire and make it hard or impossible to use them in tight places.
  • Sun and Moon also sees the return of the EXP scaling that was used in the fifth generation. Pokémon now get less EXP the higher leveled they are. Add the removal of Trainer Rematches and the lack of the Battle Chateau/Battle Cafe, and the player only has two ways to level grind. Challenging the Elite Four over and over, and exploiting a loophole at the Battle Buffet. Even then, the Pokémon at the Battle Buffet have levels in the mid-50s, while the Elite Four's Pokémon are in the early 60s, meaning training Pokémon to level 100 is still going to take a lot of level grinding.
  • Similarly, these games also retain the fifth generation's single-rod fishing mechanics. Unfortunately, while rippling spots do return, they don't alter the encounter pools very much nor do they guarantee a bite. Com Mons like Magikarp plague the waters of Alola more than ever before regardless of such phenomena, the only rod available is the basic one and you can now only fish in certain spots.
  • The mini-games in the original Pokémon-Amie made it possible to get a Pokémon to max affection in about half an hour of straight care, due to giving you good Poképuffs and increasing a Pokémon's excitement and hunger every time you played so you could pet and feed it between each game and just rinse and repeat. With those minigames removed, and the only source of good Pokébeans (only other way to get any is from the Cafés in the Pokémon Centers once a day, and that'll only get you the most basic Pokébeans) being Isle Abeens which you can't access until after the fourth trial (counting Hala's Grand Trial), getting a Pokémon to max affection in the early game is impossibly tedious; now you can only pet and feed a Pokémon every few fights you use them in, and even then only bit by bit unless you frequently luck out with a used Pokémon needing to be groomed/healed. As a result, the time to max out their affection can easily reach double what it was previously before Isle Abeens is accessable. It might have been meant to be balanced by the Masaladas, but they can only be fed to a Pokémon with at least two empty hunger points, so it's not that reliable, and it's not fun to have to actually pay money to get your Pokémon to love you in a decent amount of time. On the other hand, once you have Pelago, you can collect Rainbow beans that provide so many hearts of affection that you can max out a Pokémon with just 2 rainbow beans and a little light petting (or 2 rainbow beans and 1 patterned bean).
  • While fans are glad that HMs are removed and some of them still exist as TMs, they are annoyed by the inability to use other moves such as Dig and Sweet Scent outside of battle, feeling that it is unfair that these moves are punished for having the same concept as HMs but without the major drawbacks that most HMs are associated with.
  • Normal NPC trainers no longer have individual encounter themes. A short jingle will play after they spot you and that might vary from class to class, but the encounter theme itself is short even compared to the series' older ones and the same for everyone except Team Skull and the Aether Foundation. Some people feel that it's a shame, given the number of encounter themes that became quite popular due to their catchiness.
  • In older games, Pokémon up to Level 100 would always obey you once you collected all eight Gym Badges before challenging the Pokémon Leagues in those games. Sun and Moon changed it so that you would have to become the league champion in order to be able to get all of your Pokémon to obey you, and after clearing all four Grand Trials and before challenging the league, only those leveled anywhere up to Level 80 would obey you without any form of disobedience, thus adding even further to the difficulty of this game. Naturally, some people felt that this change disgraced players of the game.
  • Pokémon that can breed and have permanent different forms such as Minior and the Shellos line will always produce offspring of the same form when females are bred or when bred with a Ditto. For some reason, this does not apply to regional variants despite what has been stated about why and how they adapted - unless the parent/mother is a normal form and holding an Everstone, all offspring will be in their Alolan Form should they have one. This trick does not apply to Pokémon who start off in their normal forms but whose final evos have Alolan variants, meaning that it is impossible to have a normal Raichu, Marowak or Exeggutor with the Gen VII marker.
  • It's only minor, but some fans are disappointed that none of the Pokémon introduced in the seventh generation have gender differences, even the ones who have them and have Alolan Forms. The dimorphism feature was slowly relegated to irrelevance as the next two generations after the fourth drastically reduced the number of new Pokémon with them outside of Meowstic's gender affecting its movepool and abilities, but this generation is the first since then to do away with it for new Pokémon altogether.
  • Talonflame's nerf wasn't well received by the fans, especially for making the popular "Choice Band + Brave Bird" combo useless since Gale Wings only works with full HP now and Brave Bird is a recoil move. And the fact many other game breaking Pokémons kept their advantages only caused more controversy in Competitive community.
  • While Super Potions and Energy Powder got a 10HP buff, most medicines and drinks weren't so lucky - either recovering less HP, increasing in price, or both. Hyper Potions went from being the most cost-efficient potion in the series to the least, going from healing 200HP to 120HP while its price increased from 1200 to 1500. To rub salt in the wound, Moomoo Milk cannot be purchased outside of the much-maligned Festival Plaza and is otherwise only available through daily events or wild Miltank.
  • Starting with these games, Pokémon has foregone the feature where pressing X while in a menu instantly returns the player to the overworld regardless of how many layers of sub-menus they have reached. While this does come with the tradeoff of making rearranging Pokémon and items in the party faster, Pokémon can also be rearranged with touch-screen features and similar tradeoffs are not introduced to, say, the Bag menu. In the case of PCs, this was mitigated by simply removing the other features of PCs, allowing unique selection modes to be mapped to X. But in a lot of other places, this removal is really inconvenient.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Some people have noted the similarities between Sun and Moon and the new sensation that's sweeping Japan that is Yo-Kai Watch. Of note is the Rotom Pokédex being a clear expy of Whisper (a ghost inside of a high-tech device that helps you out) as well as the new protagonists being younger in age compared to the past two generations. Because of this, some fans are already crying foul for throwing what made Pokémon unique out the window in order to try to copy something that's on the same system as it. However, a lot of fans quieted down after the games turned out to be surprisingly dark and deconstructive, akin to Pokémon Black and White when they were first released - a far cry from the wacky and lighthearted YKW.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Professor Burnet is Kukui's wife, yet has only one scene of relevance and is largely ignored for the rest of the game (though she is mentioned to do a number of things offscreen).
  • Colress was rather important in his debut, yet here he's only present as a Battle Tree opponent and a means to obtain a TM and Genesect's Drives, with almost no mention of his prior affiliations with Team Plasma.
  • The game has a lot of hints that Mohn is Lusamine's husband who disappeared during an accident involving Ultra Wormholes, and yet he only ever sits around helping you build up Poké Pelago.
  • Of the four island guardians, only Tapu Koko has any real significance to the plot while the rest are mostly glossed over aside from being catchable in the post-game. Tapu Bulu gets this the worst as it only ever receives an offhand mention, and its respective ruins aren't even visited as part of the main story.
  • Out of all the Ultra Beasts, only UB-01 (a.k.a Nihilego) is fought during the main game and has any real plot-relevance, with the rest all being postgame-only fights.
  • Zygarde is notorious for being the only member of a legendary trio to not have a game centered on its lore. With Sun and Moon introducing Zygarde's new formes and having its pieces scattered across Alola, you'd think said Pokémon would have a major role of some kind, but it gets little more than an optional Collection Sidequest.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Many have lamented that Motherbeast Lusamine would have been more interesting to fight directly instead of a regular Pokémon battle. On top of that, she only has five Pokémon. The sixth slot could've very well been another Nihilego. There were several of them floating around after all, she could have used another instead of the one she had fused with as it was kept in a Beast Ball.
  • The website notes that UB-01 is capable of shapeshifting and never stays in one form. In the final game, its shapeshifting is almost never mentioned aside from when fusing with Lusamine, and even then it still retains its jellyfish-like appearance.
  • Rotom being given a platform that enables him to communicate in human languages was anticipated to be a major advancement in human-Pokémon relations, as Rotom would be able to translate both and provide answers to questions about how Pokémon think and feel that have been asked in previous games. In the game, most characters treat the Rotom Dex as little more than a novelty, and Rotom doesn't interact with other characters very much at all, instead offering the player the occasional quip.
  • When Lusamine causes Ultra Wormholes to open up all across Alola, thus causing the arrival of the Ultra Beasts, one would expect there to be a climactic sense of urgency to stop their devastation, with each one serving as a Climax Boss or even another group of villains to fight alongside the established ones. Instead, this plot point is dropped immediately as it's introduced, and may as well have never happened since the plot changes focus entirely, the phenomena is hardly mentioned aside from Hapu mentioning that she and Tapu Fini battled one together, and the Ultra Beasts themselves are absent until the postgame, despite their big presence in the pre-release promotion.
  • Minor example in the latter half of the game: At one point, after beating one Team Skull Grunt, the other five in the group gang up on you, but it's done as a single battle against a team of five, when they could have done a Trainer Horde Battle as a Call-Back to the previous game.
  • Unlike Gen VI with Mega Stones, no-one in-game asks about or explains the origin or backstory of the Z-Crystals; they're presented as merely powerful objects that simply exist and are seemingly common enough that they're used as trial rewards. While the Z-Power they use is given more of a backstory (with the implications that they may be related to Ultra Space and the Ultra Beasts), the Z-Crystals remain inexplicable.
  • For the first time since Platinum, you get to explore an alien dimension! ...unfortunately, Ultra Space is nothing but a single small hallway towards Lusamine, with nothing in it or any outlandish gameplay elements like the Distortion World's gravity. You see lots of UB-01/Nihilego, but you never fight any of them or encounter any other Ultra Beast. And to top it off, it's a One-Time Dungeon that can't be accessed again when you're done with it.
  • In the post-game, the player can find a portal to an alternate universe. However, the only differences are changing the motif of two insignificant areas, and the in-game time being changed. There is a cutscene where the player gets their own Cosmog, although that is something which could have easily happened in the regular world. Nothing else changes, characters still react as they did in the normal world, as though you've always been in this universe. The player is even still the Champion in the alternate universe. Many have said that the alternate universe should have had the opposite gender character as the Champion, which could have been an exciting Superboss.
  • Po Town is full of potential, being an abandoned, run-down town taken over by Team Skull. Exciting possibilities include getting to see inside the inner-workings of Team Skull, finding abandoned items among the ruins, seeing which types of wild Pokémon would thrive in such an environment. Fans hoping for a taste of Pokémon: Fallout are left sadly disappointed, however. Only two buildings are accessible, there are no wild Pokémon to be found, there are few items to be found (and the items which are found are fairly standard), and the battles with Team Skull grunts aren't anything out of the ordinary. It essentially ends up being the franchise standard "Evil Team Hideout," just surrounded by inaccessible buildings.
  • The Hano Grand Resort is a large, grandiose area that's owned by one of the Elite Four. It could have been the game's equivalent of the Battle Resort or the Battle Chateau, a place where the player could challenge an increasing selection of Pokémon trainers. However, all the player can do at the Resort is fight two battles and get a small handful of items.

U

• Ugly Cute:
  • Popplio, according to a lot of fans. Although its clown-like features and strange design are off-putting to some, its big puppy-dog eyes are also quite endearing.
  • Grubbin's chubby body, stubby little legs, and large eyes make it a surprisingly cute bug.
  • Mimikyu is a Pokémon that's dressed in rags that resemble a poorly drawn Pikachu. Its backstory states that the reason for dressing like this, is because it wants to be loved by humans, just as much as Pikachu.
  • Crabominable to those who like it.
  • Sophocles is chubby and has a weird thin unibrow, but he's an Adorkable little kid who happens to look very cute despite it.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • For all the buzz made about Mega Evolution in Gen VI, it's sidelined hard here. For starters, no new Mega Evolutions are introduced. You're unable to use Mega Evolution until the postgame, and even then you're only given one Mega Stone (Alakazite). The rest all have to be bought at rather high BP prices from the Battle Tree, which is far more merciless than the Battle Maison ever was. To make matters worse, barring the Mega Stones for the Kanto starters, only the Mega Stones for Pokémon found in-game can be obtained. And given that Alakazam only evolves if traded and nobody in-game will trade you one, if you're not intending to try the Battle Tree and don't have anyone to trade with, then no Mega Evolution for you. The downside is that you're required to play Online Competitions for the ones not available ingame, which a good majority of the playerbase doesn't want to do. Thankfully, they're participation prizes, so you don't need to actually try in the battles, you just need to enter matches, but that's not stopping a lot of players from viewing the requirement as unnecessary gating. In addition, the release schedule for the Stones seems to be incredibly slow, judging by the fact that for the first Competition, only two Mega Stones^note Mawilite and Beedrillite were released as prizes. Then some time after the initial announcement, Game Freak revealed that the Mega Stones would be available via codes to all players a few months after the competition, though some maintain that they should've done that to start with. As of September 2017, all of the unavailable Mega Stones are available online. Unfortunately, the codes that provide them all expire at the start of that November, something that the fanbase is none too happy about. Word of God explains that they wanted to focus more on Z-moves, which are available to all Pokémon, rather than the handful that have Mega Evolutions.
  • Sun and Moon brought back Johto's Apricorn Balls much to the surprise of a lot of fans...until you realize that it's only possible to obtain one of each ball. It leaves you wondering why the makers couldn't add some sort of stall or shop in order to purchase more. The only way to obtain more is through Global Missions, and even then they're also limited to one a pop and are only included as stretch goals for reaching double the required amount of points.
  • Sun and Moon's Poke Finder doesn't quite reach the complexity and uniqueness that defined Pokémon Snap, to the disappointment of many of its fans. Any level of interaction with Pokémon is available as the difficult to obtain final upgrade, long after it would have been very useful in racking up thumbs-ups.
  • Sun and Moon brought back the Rustling Grass and Rippling Water phenomenons. However, unlike previous generation games, the ones seen here have quite a half-assed feel to them. You're introduced to the Rustling Grass mechanic early on to catch a rare encounter in Makuhita, but aside from that, Rustling Grass is pretty much non-existent, and the few times the phenomenon does occur ends up being for land Com Mons like Yungoos instead of being rare Pokémon. The Rippling Water phenomenons don't fare any better where instead of rare Pokémon, you'll often encounter water Com Mons like Tentacool and Wailmer.
  • Alolan variants are well-regarded for allowing fresh takes on classic Pokémon and potentially breathing new life into their designs and/or battle prowess...but there are only ten families that have Alolan variants, and all of them are Generation I Pokémon. Many players (particularly those sick of the perceived bias towards "Genwunners") had hoped that there would be more Alolan variants for Pokémon from other generations.
  • QR Code event Pokémon. Only one Pokémon was ever distributed in this format, Magearna, while all other distributions were done using the same methods as Generation VI, such as codes and local wireless at public events.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Colress, of all people, showing up on Route 8 out of the blue. Just to say "good job" and give you a TM, and later the Genesect Drives.
  • Professor Burnet shows up not long after that and just as suddenly, and then it turns out she's Kukui's wife.
  • Why, hello Frontier Brain Anabel. While Looker was expected per usual, no one expected Anabel to be his boss.
  • Grimsley of the Unova Elite Four shows up out of nowhere on a beach at Route 15 and gives you the ability to summon the Sharpedo Poké Ride.
  • Tristan, the Youngster you met on Route 1 and then never heard from since, is one of the Title Defense challengers in the Pokémon League.
  • A variant happened with the grass starter's typing. In fact, it pulls this off twice; the first with Rowlett's reveal, as many fans were pleasantly surprised to learn that there would be a dual-type starter from the get-go ^note This hasn't been done since all the way back in Generation I, with Bulbasaur being Grass/Poison. Then, fans were in for an even bigger shock when it was revealed that its final evolution, Decidueye, was going to be Grass/Ghost, rather than retain its Grass/Flying Typing. To say that no one saw it coming would be a huge understatement.
• Unfortunate Character Design:
  • Yungoos and Gumshoos' designs are supposed to make them look like a Hardboiled Detective (more so for the latter). However, the large tuft of yellow fur upon their heads, as well as the permanent scowl, gives them both a heavy resemblance to Donald Trump.
  • The design of Shiinotic's pink colored lower half makes it unfortunately appear as if a Jigglypuff is giving it a blowjob. The huge default smile painted on Shiinotic's expression does not help alleviate the implications of its design either.
  • Zygarde's 10% Forme has green hexagons all over its body...including the middle of its rear end, unfortunately making it look like it has a big, glowing anus.
  • Salazzle's idle animation, when seen from the front, makes her look like she's...*ahem* "pleasuring" herself. Though given her species' basic concept, this might have been intentional.
  • Bounsweet's white lower half makes it look like it's wearing a diaper or “tightey-whitey” underwear.
  • The Pink Petal that Mina gives you during the last trial looks like a buttplug.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Unpopular Popular Character:
  • Mimikyu. In-universe, its background is that it feels lonely and that's one of the reasons why it dresses with a Pikachu costume. In real life, it's safe to say it's one of the most popular Gen VII Pokémons, to the point it even got its own rap theme song.
  • Also, Pyukumuku. Fans find it adorable, as do many native Alolans, but many tourists are noted to find it disgusting.
  • Team Skull in general has this treatment. They are seen as a bunch of annoying troublemakers to society, but are widely liked and sympathized by most of the fandom.

V-W

• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Like Calem before him, the male protagonist is rather androgynous compared to most of the previous ones, not helped by his similarities to the female protagonist. He's been mistaken for a girl by some.
  • Due to his gender-neutral name and ambiguous looks, people were unsure of Ilima's gender when he was first revealed. Didn't help that both English and Japanese info about Ilima initially didn't give any clear indication about his gender (though other languages referred to Ilima as male).
  • Lana can easily be mistaken for a boy, as she does look rather boyish.
• Viewer Species Confusion: You'll be forgiven for believing Incineroar to be a Fire/Fighting type instead of Fire/Dark, especially since his design and signature move are themed after wrestling.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Unsurprising considering the trend that Pokémon frequently takes, but with slightly more of a presence throughout. The Pokédex entries here are very dark and realistic, for example, many of them elaborate on the predator-prey relationship between Pokémon, whereas previous games and iterations of the franchise barely touched upon such things. Adding to that, the Big Bad of the game is surprisingly dark and twisted, guilty of several types of parental abuse, including emotional abuse, manipulation, and neglect to outright abandonment. Furthermore, Team Skull is a surprisingly cerebral deconstruction of the typical Pokémon evil team with goofy grunts, as it's revealed that they merely ended up that way due to their inability to find better lives and are only doing what they need to to survive.
• The Woobie:
  • Pokémon:
    • Mimikyu wears decades-old Pikachu merchandise because it just wants to be loved. Luckily for the adorable little cosplayer, fans just love it. In fact, this article explains that Mimikyu's woobie-ness is precisely the reason why it's so well loved.
    • Bewear just wants to hug you, and love you, and call you George; unfortunately, its Super-Strength has made it The Dreaded to the people of the islands.
    • Bounsweet is an adorable little berry-like Pokémon, but she is said to smell so good that Pokémon can't resist gobbling her up and the way she moves by bouncing along can cause people to think she's just happily bouncing along when she's actually desperately running from a hazard or something that wants to eat her, thus no one tries to help Bounsweet. It makes you want to catch one just so she's safe from harm.
    • Pyukumuku refuses to leave a place it likes, even if it's exhausted all the food there. The people of Alola take pity on it and try to throw it into the sea when they notice it starving, but it'll just come right back to its home.
    • Much like Mewtwo and Genesect, Type: Null was created for the sole purpose of combat and it is forced to wear a heavy helmet to keep its power and speed in check. It wasn't designed with any sort of coherency in mind, making it look like a Frankenstein's Monster and it wasn't even given a proper name: Instead it has a code name which references the fact that it's "nothing." And even worse, the plot reveals that the three made were put into permanent Cryogenic Suspension and deemed "failures." It seems needlessly cruel when they could have been put into a PC Storage system (if restricted from interacting with others if they're so dangerous), or just straight up euthanized if the Aether Foundation was so worried about it. Instead, the three being kept between life and death until the cryogenic storage equipment broke down actually caused Gladion to leave from the sheer callousness of that action.
    • Corsola has now become one, thanks to it being shown that the adorable little coral creature is the Trademark Favorite Food of new Pokémon Mareanie and Toxapex. While Mareanie and Toxapex are shown to fortunately only eat the branches coming off of Corsola's head and back, it's still explicitly stated in-game that it's a terrifying experience for the poor Corsola even if their branches will eventually grow back. It gets worse when you encounter one in the wild: Corsola can call for help from another Corsola, but on rare occasions a Mareanie will answer their call instead and will start attacking the Corsola. Imagine being one of these poor things desperately trying to find help while facing a trainer's Pokémon only to get the attention of your natural predator instead.
    • It's safe to say that Lunala has effectively replaced Cresselia, an earlier legendary Pokémon that's affiliated with the moon. Lunala has stronger stats and a more appealing design than Cresselia who has little to no chance in competing with Lunala.
  • Humans:
    • Lillie seems to be this from the get-go, with her shy, withdrawn nature and trouble connecting with people. Then it turns out that she's the daughter of the Big Bad, Aether President Lusamine, and lived under her abuse after the latter became obsessed with the Ultra Beasts. Lusamine controlled every aspect of Lillie's life, even how she dressed, and Lillie was left alone with her after her brother, Gladion, escaped from the Aether Foundation to save Type: Null. Two years afterwards, she herself has to escape to rescue Cosmog, who was subjected to Aether's horrible experiments, and as a result is constantly being targeted by the organization throughout the main story. When Lusamine captures her halfway through the plot, she says to Lillie's face that she has no children. Later on, after being fused with the Ultra Beast and losing to the protagonist, Lusamine outright tries to kill Lillie with her bare hands.
    • Gladion, too, particularly after being revealed to be Lusamine's son. While he was with Team Skull, they have no shame in saying out loud that they're only using him and mocking his homelessness. While he's standing right next to them, no less. Then his family life is revealed, and it turns out that he and his sister Lillie were abused by Lusamine, and when he saw what the Aether Foundation was doing to Type: Null, he couldn't bear it and ran away with the artificial Pokémon. He gets separated from Lillie for two years, and when he hears about her again she's being held hostage by their mother. An enraged Gladion tries to fight his way through the foundation to help her, only to be utterly broken by his defeat to Guzma.
    • Team Skull, surprisingly. Not so much the leaders, but the grunts. Many of them have self-esteem issues - no doubt worsened by the fact that they still can't get respect from anyone but other Team Skull grunts - with some outright saying that they feel worthless because they couldn't complete the isle challenges. The part in Po Town in particular reveals just how terrible even their living conditions are and reveals that, despite their actions, they're still normal people. This is actually similar to reality, as some people who feel worthless join gangs because it gives them a sense of unity that they feel they can't get anywhere else.
• Woolseyism:
  • The Japanese name of Silvally's Ability, "AR System", sounds like the "Ar-say-oos" pronunciation of Arceus used in Japan (fitting the similarities between it and Silvally). In English, where Arceus is (usually) instead pronounced with a hard C (thus, "Ark-ee-us"), the Ability is instead called "RKS System".
  • Many of the Z-Moves that have alliterative names in English have fairly mundane names in Japanese. For example, Breakneck Blitz is called Ultra Dash Attack, Supersonic Skystrike is called Final Dive Crash, Continental Crush is called World's End Fall, Malicious Moonsault is called Hyper Dark Crusher, and Pulverizing Pancake is called Go All Out Attack.
  • For the English version, translating Guzma's ore-sama with his infamous "your boy" line. Ore-sama usually has connotations of arrogance, with a bit of familiarity in it as well (i.e. You know me, I'm kind of a big deal). There'd be no better way to show off that arrogance and familiarity in slang terms than calling yourself that. "Your boy" doesn't quite carry the same level of self-aggrandising subtext as the original, but it retains all the smugness. Furthermore, the French version expands his "hated boss who beats you down, and beats you down, and never gives up" catchphrase into an entire rhyming motto a la Team Rocket Trio, and inserts French street slang into his speech.
  • In the Japanese version, the leaders of each island are called Island Kings and Island Queens. The English version chose to give them the title of Kahuna, which is a Hawaiian word to refer to either a wise person, or a leader. The usage of the term easily fits the Hawaii-based Alola region. Their connection to the Tapu also fits the religious and spiritual connotations often associated with the term.

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