Video Game / Pokémon Masters

Trainers throughout the series' past and present shall assemble, in the first gacha game in the franchise's history.

Pokémon Masters is a 2019 mobile game in the Pokémon series that was released for Android and iOS devices on August 28th, 2019, produced in cooperation between The Pokémon Company and DeNA, the same company who co-developed with Nintendo for mobile games based on their existing franchises. It was then rebranded as Pokémon Masters EX on its first anniversary.

Masters takes place on the artificial island of Pasio, where the Pokémon Masters League is being held: a grand tournament that invites Trainers from the world over to compete against each other. In Pasio, Trainers form sync pairs, a duo between a Trainer and a single Pokémon, and ally with other sync pairs to compete in 3v3 Pokémon battles. You are placed in the shoes of one such Trainer, who arrives on Pasio and quickly befriends Kanto Gym Leaders Brock and Misty.

The game's story is divided in several arcs:

• Pokémon Masters League Arc: To gain entry to the PML, the player and their allies set out to collect five Badges held by particularly strong Trainers scattered across the island, and along the way add some familiar faces to your party on the journey to conquer the PML. However, during their journey they will have to contend with some particularly powerful foes: Lear, resident Jerkass and the creator of Pasio, and the villainous Team Break, a band of masked thieves who steal Pokémon from other Trainers and are at odds against Lear for reasons unknown.

• Villain Arc: Later, after the conclusion of the PML, the story shifts away from the player character as everyone faces a new threat: Team Rocket's leader Giovanni schemes to take over Pasio, but clashes against their rival organization Team Plasma who shares the same goal. Later, Team Flare's leader Lysandre captures two Team Rocket grunts and learns that Giovanni has been manipulating every evil faction leader and their subordinates to further his own agenda. In the meantime, Paulo, a rival to the player character, faces his shortcomings as a trainer and quietly ponders how to become stronger, even if it means taking unconventional methods to do so after seeing the villains showcasing their ill-gotten powers.

• Mysterious Stones Chapter: Prof. Bellis comes to learn from Rei about Mysterious Stones that have the same properties as Sync Stones but don't act quite like they do. As the mysteries of these stones are being investigated, Rei senses that Volo is quietly spying on their moves...

The game enables players to form teams using famous Pokémon Trainers from past main-series games. The concept originated from Game Freak character designer and founding member Ken Sugimori, who had the idea for a game where every single character from past games would appear.

The game has a four-minute animated trailer.

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This game provides examples of:

A-M

• Aborted Arc: Early chapters in the game's story mode sets up a mystery of Team Break's masks having the ability to mind control their hosts leading to the question as to who's making them and for what purpose. After Lear is introduced this plot thread is dropped with the mind control aspect of Team Break being quietly retconned away, and the team now being presented as a group of thugs without a leader or goal.
• The Ace: Red is heavily implied to be this for the entire Pokemon Masters League. Lear, the founder of the tournament, was shown to be able to fight on par with Iris, who is stated to already be Unova's Champion (and thus strong enough to defeat Alder). Despite this strength, Lear regularly vents about how frustrated he is to have lost to Red, implying that Red's strength surpasses that of a typical Champion. This is in line with his strength in the main series; as of Pokemon Sun and Moon, he is one of only two trainers with a title implied to be beyond that of "Champion" — namely, "Battle Legend" — a title that he shares with Blue.
  • Red's description refers to him as a "legendary" trainer, and his sync move with Charizard is Living Legend Blast Burn. Being called legendary when even other Champions are not referred to as such cements Red's reputation as the strongest trainer even among Champions. His Charizard's stats, moves, and abilities also make it the most fearsome Striker Pokémon in the entire game as of his release, with no clear weaknesses. The Developer Letter preceding his release even explicitly notes how powerful he is in-game and how long players have been waiting for him in particular to arrive. As of the Kanto Villain arc, he's outright stated by Paulo to be the strongest trainer in history, putting him above every single other Champion. He also wipes out half of Team Rocket on Pasio with just his Snorlax, while multiple Gym Leaders and Elite Four members had their hands full with the other half, then returns to take down Giovanni and wipes out the entire base by Gigantamaxing. His Snorlax also takes multiple hits from Mega Mewtwo Y and keeps fighting, only going down when Giovanni super-charges it beyond its Mega Evolution's normal limits.
  • Cynthia was also shown to be able to defeat a massive number of Team Break members on her own, shocking even Acerola (a Trial Captain-turned-Elite Four member and the honorary niece of Nanu, who is implied to be even stronger than herself).
  • Blue's stats far and away surpass those of every other sync pair in the game as of his release, with his Pidgeot's Special Attack being the only one in the game over 400 points (for reference, the next-highest — Karen's Houndoom — is in the mid-300s). Like Red, this is in line with Blue's status of a Battle Legend in the main series.
  • Leon manages to defeat Blue and his Blastoise in an exhibition match. While this doesn't necessarily prove Leon is stronger than Blue overall, as the battle was said to be fairly close, it does indicate Leon is in a similar tier of strength as Blue and perhaps Leaf; as Blue concedes that Red is still stronger than him at this age, this still leaves the comparison between Leon and Red up in the air - Blue even notes with all the experience he has fighting Red's Charizard he expected to have an easier time with Leon's. Of course, when Blue and Red later return as adults in Sun and Moon, they appear to be even, so this suggests Leon's strength may still be less than their adult selves.
• Adaptational Curves: Zigzagged. Because this is the debut of many characters for the first time with full 3D models (as opposed to 2D artwork or chibi models), their physiques are a lot less ambiguous. In particular, females like Hilda, Winona, Lucy, Nessa, Cynthia, and Viola are shown to have much more obviously large chests than in their artwork, which downplays their assets somewhat. Slightly subverted for Skyla and Zinnia, however, as their chests appear to be slightly smaller than their art depicts (much more so in Zinnia's case). Nessa is a notable case as while she's not exactly hugely-endowed in Masters, she still has a noticeably curvy bust compared to being almost flat-chested in her artwork. Misty is depicted as older than she was in Red, Blue and Yellow, and is curvier for it. This is especially noticable in her swimsuit sync pair, where she has a bigger bust than Nessa.
• Adaptational Modesty: Swimsuit Misty is based on her FireRed and LeafGreen design, but with less skin visible. Gardenia's undershirt was also lengthened to cover more of her midriff.
• Alice Allusion: The "Curious Tea Party" event gives Lillie, Sonia and the Subway twins new costumes based on Alice, the Queen of Hearts and the Mad Hatter respectively.
• Allegedly Free Game: The game has a premium currency in the form of Gems, which can only be used to buy more sync pairs from the gacha system. Gems can be obtained at a fairly steady rate by playing through missions and battles, so it doesn't pressure you to spend real money just for a chance at obtaining a new sync pair. Everything else in the game, such as battle items, can be easily obtained as quest rewards or by grinding up coins to buy with. The game even lets you set a hard cap on the amount of gems you can buy at any given period of time, and differentiates between gems that were purchased and gems obtained through play. You can't use earned gems to purchase daily discounted sync offers, but the story itself hooks you up with a good handful of trainers just for playing through it.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us:
  • April Fools 2021 had Team Break take over the Pokémon Center, but due to a majority of them being intimidated by the staff, they don't get to do much damage.
  • The Final Villain chapter has Team Rocket run amok on Pasio after Giovanni gets ahold of Hoopa Unbound with hundreds of Legendary Pokémon for his grunts to wield, and they eventually break into the Pokémon Center with Professor Oak and the triplets holding them off so the heroes can escape to confront Giovanni.
• Alternate Self:
  • The Tapu featured in the Alola Villain Arc are stated to hail from different worlds, yet are still determined to protect everyone from danger regardless.
  • The Galar Villain Arc features a Chairman Rose who hadn't yet caused the modern Darkest Day after trying to control Eternatus and turned himself in to the police as a result, meaning that he'll still be headstrong in trying to solve his millenia-from-now power problem at any cost. This confirms the suspicions of the heroes that Hoopa has been bringing in people from different timelines.
  • Like in the base game, it is implied that Rei and Akari are alternate versions of Lucas and Dawn, and Rei even more so, as he's canonically the one who was dragged in from the modern day to Hisui.
• Always Accurate Attack: The Piercing Gaze ability alongside some unique abilities such as Giovanni's Cunning ensures the user will never miss with their moves unless the target is using a "Phase" type moves like Fly or Shadow Force. Additionally, all damage-based sync moves always hit their target, and if they affect the entire opposing team, will negate any of the aforementioned active "Phase" moves.
• Always Someone Better: In spite of Lear being strong enough to pressure Iris, a Champion, he still harbors a massive inferiority complex due to losing against Red and feels uncomfortable just being in his presence. Many other characters in the game acknowledge directly or indirectly that they look up to Red and his abilities in spite of their own strength, and the game itself also lampshades this fact through developer comments and its mechanics.
  • Lance feels that the title of "strongest" isn't one worth chasing after due to having witnessed Red end Blue's tenure as Champion almost instantly and establish himself as being even stronger.
  • Blue himself proudly declares himself to be the strongest trainer in the world during his Sync move and various conversations, but despite this confidence (and strength that might even back it up), he at one point walks this back and points out that he's the strongest other than Red.
  • Even the developers go out of their way to note that they know that Red is someone many players have been waiting for, and that they made him as strong as he is to live up to player expectations. Fittingly, he is the first mascot for the game — being the face of the App's icon and having the largest portrait in the official art, despite being surrounded by fellow Champions among others. Upon release, his Charizard also appropriately has greater combined offensive stats than any other sync pair in the game and can max out its stat boosts using just its own moves, foregoing the need for supports that Lance's Dragonite often relies on.
  • Despite the sheer power of the other Champions in the game prior to Red's release (Blue, Cynthia, Lance, and Steven), only Red is described as a "legendary" trainer in his description, and his sync move "Living Legend Blast Burn" only emphasizes his superiority even more.
  • Kris's "A Day With..." storybit is about this — she's wondering if it's even worth chasing after being Champion anymore, because there's so many others who have taken and lost the spot. She wants to find something she's truly good at.
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: Completely inverted in Cyrus' battles during the Sinnoh Villain Arc, which takes place inside Darkrai's created nightmare of a cloudy black void.
• Ambiguous Gender: Trainers occasionally address their Pokémon as female/male when their profiles state they're male/female, such as with Marley and her Arcanine and Candice and her Abomasnow.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different:
  • The field parts of the "Blasting Off Again" event takes place in James's perspective. You even kidnap your player character's Pikachu.
  • Ultra Beasts were introduced into the game with the Family Ties event, Lusamine pairing up with Pheromosa. Guzma and Jasmine later followed suit for the Poké War Games event, pairing up with Buzzwole and Celesteela respectively (though they are entirely optional). A Halloween event then added Naganadel, with the game revealing that it’s an evolved Poipole.
• Anachronic Order: For the Villain Arc of the main story, the chapters for each region are listed in the order they originally came out. However, after Kanto, the story jumps to the Sinnoh chapter before backtracking to the two preceding regions.
• Animal Motifs: The game purposefully invokes these through the Sygna Suits, unique outfits that combine aspects of the wearer's new partner Pokémon with those of their original look. This also occasionally applies to certain characters' seasonal outfits or special costumes.
  • Brock's Sygna Suit features triangular markings on both his fingerless gloves and the back of his shirt that are reminiscent of the impressions on a Tyranitar's body.
  • Elesa's has two blue and white ribbons that resemble the limbs of Rotom, a bustle with the shape of Rotom's lower body forming at the bottom, and the shade of orange Rotom possesses on her bustle, gloves, and headphones.
  • Grimsley's has the star marking of Sharpedo's body on the armbands, suspenders, collar, and cape, the scars of Mega Sharpedo on his pants, gloves, cape, and collar, and Sharpedo's overall color scheme.
  • Downplayed with Red's Sygna Suit, which is based predominantly on his original outfit but features Mega Charizard X's flames on his jeans and hat pin. His Thunderbolt Sygna Suit has straps that are reminisce of Pikachu's G-Max Move, while his Neo-Champion outfit has a pin that resembles Articuno's head and the inside of his cloak shares the same color of the Freeze Pokemon.
  • Cynthia's features motifs of Kommo-o's scales in her jacket, pants, shoes, ribbons, and ring as well as Kommo-o's colors throughout. Her Renegade Sygna Suit, on the other hand, has Giratina's color palette and a similar headcrest, while her Aura Sygna Suit uses Lucario's palette.
  • Blue's entails Blastoise's cannons and shell patterned onto his jacket, pockets that resemble the openings of Blastoise's shell, and Blastoise's shades of blue and cream. His Neo-Champion outfit has coattails that resembles Zapdos's tail wings.
  • Leaf's is characterized by Venusaur's flower patterned on her hat and bag and Venusaur's shades of blue, pink, green, and brown throughout.
  • Lusamine could be a non-Sygna Suit example, due to how similar (albeit coincidentally) Pheromosa looks to her and vice-versa. Her actual Sygna Suit features prismatic jewelry and a multicolored pattern near the neckline similar to Necrozma's prism, while its color scheme evokes that of Ultra Necrozma.
  • Acerola and Hilbert's Halloween outfits qualify, being based directly on Mimikyu and Mightyena respectively.
  • For her Palentine outfit, Serena's purse, hairtie, and the neck ruffle of her sweater are all reminiscent of the cotton on Whimsicott. Her Sygna Suit utilizes 50% Forme Zygarde's color palette and patterning, her EX style is even based on Shiny Zygarde. Her Neo-Champion dress contains patterns similar to Greninja's hands.
  • Dawn's Palentines outfit features hair clips and the brooches on her socks similar to the strawberries on Alcremie and her apron appears to be directly based on Alcremie's body, as well as the chef design as a whole being based on Alcremie (according to the Sword and Shield Pokédex) being commonly used as helpers in cookery to make cream for dishes. Her Sygna Suit includes a hat with a ribbon reminiscent of Cresselia's wings, as well as a gemstone that resembles the purple growth on Cresselia's head. It also invokes Fairytale Motifs of a prince, especially that of the one from Sleeping Beauty. Her New Year's outfit is Justified, in part because Valerie intentionally designed it to resemble her Oricorio.
  • May and Burgh also have this in their Easter outfits, though the ears on May's outfit resemble those of Buneary far more than of Lopunny. Burgh's suit on the other hand utilizes Togepi's color scheme.
    • May also has her Anniversary 2022 outfit, which has Latias' color scheme — regular form's red and white for the default style and Mega form's purple for the EX style, as well as a triangle on the bodice similar to that on Latias' chest. Her Sygna Suit, meanwhile, has Blaziken's color scheme and a crop top that shares features with Blaziken's head.
  • The Summer outfits of both Gloria and Marnie use the color palettes of Inteleon and Grimmsnarl, respectively. For the latter's Neo-Champion dress, it visually looks like Galarian Moltres' wings.
  • Leon's Sygna Suit has a black outfit with red and purple patterns on it as well as his arm bands that match Eternatus. Addiitonally his EX form has a resemblance to Shiny Eternatus.
  • Steven, Lillie and N's formal wear in the Second Anniversary event are based on shiny Rayquaza, Lunala, and Reshiram respectively.
  • Morty and Caitlin take it one stage further by basing their Halloween outfits on their respective Pokémon's Mega Evolutions.
    • Morty's Sygna Suit has the same colors as Shiny Ho-Oh along with the Pokémon's feathers being patterned on his hoodie.
  • The buttons, armbands, detailing of the coat, and toes of the shoes of Cyrus' Sygna Suit all resemble Darkrai's red growth. Additionally, the scarf resembles part of Darkrai's body and the overall combination of red and black with Cyrus' own blue hair and eyes closely matches Darkrai's color scheme.
  • Giovanni's Sygna Suit not only utilizes the color palette of Nidoking, but his fedora also has a nudge resembling the ears of Nidoking.
  • Ethan's Sygna Suit resembles a pilot's outfit, referencing Lugia's secondary type, and in addition to sharing his color scheme with Lugia, he wears a patch on his jacket bearing the Silver Wing, one of the two artifacts needed to summon the Legendary Pokémon.
  • Lyra's Sygna Suit has a green and blue color scheme reminiscent of Celebi's as well as a train patterned with the Mythical Pokémon's wings.
  • Kris' Sygna Suit has Suicune's diamond pattern on the dress, shorts, and sandals, and the two loose ribbons coming from her corset resemble Suicune's tails.
  • Brendan's Sygna Suit has Latios' color scheme — regular form's blue and white for the default style and Mega form's purple for the EX style — and a headgear that resembles Latios' ears.
  • Steven's Sygna Suit has a color scheme of green, orange and black reminiscent of Deoxys', with the sleeves of his coat featuring a pattern of a chromosome which resembles Normal Forme Deoxys' arms, as well as a gemstone on his chest that resembles the crystalline organ in Deoxys' chest. Additionally, the outfit is stated in-game to be made for space exploration, befitting Deoxys' outer space origin.
  • Nate's Neo-Champion outfit features coattails that resemble Shiny Haxorus' axe.
• Anti-Climax:
  • The "Two Champions" side story revolves around Lance and Cynthia, and the debate surrounding which of them is "the strongest Dragon-type master". Just as they're about to settle the debate with a battle, a group of Ace Trainers arrive to challenge them, and Lance and Cynthia team up with you to battle them instead. Then they move to a stadium to duke it out... and Iris and Clair arrive to challenge them, taking Rosa to their side in the process. After that, they decide they've worn their Pokémon out and agree to postpone the battle until the PML finals.
  • The final story chapter of the Poké War Games event has the team leaders' Pokémon charging each other with the screen fading to white before impact, but there is ultimately no conclusion as to who won.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • The characters you earn in the story are recommended for the next chapter. Your Pikachu and Rosa's Snivy are super effective against Barry and Piplup, who will be helpful against Flannery's Torkoal, who will be useful against Erika's grass-type, etc.
  • Special items called Evolution Shards are required in order to take part in the Evolution Stories, and they can be pretty hard to get hold of, costing up to 300,000 coins when you require three of them before Evolution Material Drills came along. If you fail the story, you get the Shards back, so you can try again immediately without having to buy more of them.
  • Failing a Supercourse stage won't count against the number of times you can challenge a particular stage — only actually winning ticks it down.
  • In battles which use Stamina, if the match ends in a loss or the player quits, Stamina won’t be consumed until they actually win.
  • Hatching a Shiny Pokemon will guarantee it has three skills.
• Anti Poop-Socking: An update one year after release implemented a Stamina Meter, which can be refilled with Gems, the Daily Gifts or a Rank-Up. Also, the characters are aware of the time, and will suggest that you go get some sleep if it gets too late. Likewise, they also greet you in the morning. Whitney will greet you with the regret of her staying up too late and not getting enough sleep.
• April Fools' Day: On April Fools Day 2020, all music in the game’s menus was replaced by 8-bit music from Red and Blue. April Fools Day 2021 had the PML center being taken over by Team Break. April Fools Day 2022 had a bunch of Dittos copy the trainers. April Fools Day 2023 saw Lear order an event where the only move that could be used was Metronome. April Fools Day 2024 had Volkner cause a blackout in the Pokémon Center much to Lear's anger.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Each team can only be composed of up to three sync pairs. This is also enforced In-Universe regarding the rules of Sync Battles. While a trainer is permitted to own several Pokemon, they are not allowed to use more than one during a battle except in special circumstances such as when Lear pits the Player and Ash against each other in a traditional 6-vs-6 battle from the mainline series.
• Artificial Brilliance: In case that your side is going to defeat one foe once you have already queued an attack before the foe has done so, if their Pokémon (usually the leader) was meant to attack, the opponent will have someone else queue up an attack while their team member goes down to avoid losing a turn.
• Artificial Stupidity: The AI used when the a battle is set to Auto is... not very tactical, to say the least;
  • Type Advantages and Disadvantages are not considered by them, just using the strongest move in the team over and over again without using anything else.
  • They use support skills basically at complete random, often using them all at once if they do, even if doing so will allow the opponent to fire off their sync move and wipe all those stat bonuses (at least before the update that removed the debuff(s)).
  • They will exclusively use moves that take three bars if a character has them, and will happily wait in place taking hits to charge one. Even if the opponent is weak and would go down to a weaker move^note and yes, they will also happily waste sync moves on nearly-dead opponents. Even if that move hurts them. Set the AI to Auto when Phoebe is on the field and watch her Dusclops/Dusknoir Double-Edge itself to death without pause.
• Ascended Meme:
  • Guzma and Nanu's victory quotes are ones that the fandom took a large liking to. Specifically:
    Guzma: Y'all are stupid!
    Nanu: I'll be sure that your remains get safely back home.
  • A badge you can get is called "Dragonite, Hyper Beam!", which is an obvious reference to the infamous scene from Gold/Silver where Lance straight-up orders his Dragonite to use said move directly on a Team Rocket Grunt outside of a battle.
  • The English version has Brock gripe about losing out on claiming some "jelly-filled donuts" during the Battle Buffet Event.
  • A scene from the Trials on the Isle event references how the player character in Sun/Moon would constantly have an unchanging smile even in unfitting situations. The scene suggests that Elio and Selene make these faces while deeply lost in thought. Selene's Rowlett even has a move called "Stare 'Em Down!"
  • Gloria is often headcanoned as having a Scottish accent. Here, every character from Galar has a UK accent.
  • Sygna Suit Wally is paired with a shiny Gardevoir, which is a reference to his catching tutorial in the original game having a chance for his caught Ralts to be a shiny, which he doesn't keep due to the predetermined teams system.
  • Nemona's event references a meme from towards the end of her game, where the player can turn her down from being rivals, only to be stuck in a loop until they agree. This is recreated with her pestering Bede to be on a team with her.
• A Taste of Power: Most 5* sync pairs added post-game, such as Hilda and Caitlin, have had their releases accompanied by side stories in which you get to battle with them, with all their moves and abilities unlocked and their level no lower than 30.
  • Some events require you to use fixed sync pairs at fixed levels and (previously) with all four of their moves unlocked. This is subverted when you reach and exceed those levels with the sync pairs you actually own, though.
• Badass in Distress:
  • The tutorial starts with a Punk Girl and a Street Thug harassing Sinnoh League Champion Cynthia and challenging her to a battle. Cynthia claims that her and her Garchomp are too exhausted from recent battles to take up their offer, and Rosa protests that they can't just challenge her whenever they want. It's up to you, Brock, and Misty to put them in their place.
  • The conclusion of Interlude 6 sees Lear being kidnapped by Team Break after having all three of his Pokémon defeated by them.
  • In "The Ideal Formula", the player, Cheren, Hilda, and Hilbert are all taken prisoner by Team Break so that the latter could be used to lure N to them. This only happens because the group willingly surrenders themselves after Team Break uses a little girl they had taken hostage as leverage.
  • In the Kanto chapter of the Villain arc, many trainers on Pasio — especially those from Kanto end up in a panic when it's discovered that Red confronted Giovanni when it looked like he was about to initiate a Team Rocket-wide mission, and has been missing for 3 days. Lance and Blue in particular aren't sure what to think, since Red is even stronger than them, but the fact Team Rocket is still causing havoc and he's now no where to be found implies something happened to him. It later turns out Red actually immediately wiped out HALF of the entirety of Team Rocket with just his Snorlax, then went into hiding for 3 days so Snorlax could recover. The fact Giovanni is surprised his Snorlax can Gigantamax also suggests he did this without Snorlax using the transformation. This still counts as Red being out of commission, though only because of how many trainers he had to take on and his limited Pokemon on hand (seemingly only Snorlax, and at most also Charizard).
• Black Comedy: A badge you can earn is called "Dragonite, Hyper Beam!", which you earn by using Hyper Beam against 10 Pokémon owned by Black Belts. This is an obvious reference to the infamous scene from Pokémon Gold and Silver where Lance orders his Dragonite to use Hyper Beam against a Team Rocket Grunt, who even apparently appears as a Black Belt NPC at the Pokémon Center. Lance even does this in his "A Day With..." episode as he takes down a fleeing Team Break member.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Colress in Paulo Interlude 3 concludes that unlike humans, Pokémon lack their complex way of thinking, so they follow what their trainer does regardless if they're heroic or evil, which he guesses is why villains are capable of using Sync Stones if they're just as determined as more altruistic trainers.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • When playing solo, rapid-firing cheap moves and/or support skills to mill through the sync move counter faster can help if you need to get your sync move out before the opponent. (This doesn't work as well in co-op, since your teammates are eating up time with moves of their own.)
  • Pokémon gotten from eggs lack sync grids and most of them are not worth the effort to raise as they fill low-effort niches next to the many sync pairs who can do so much more. However, they can become very important to clear Legendary Gauntlet battles with said low-effort niches needed to fulfill battle conditions to make them doable and help in increasing winning streaks.
  • Sygna Suit Giovanni has this in mind with his Nidoking, as despite it having access to Dynamax, it's basic compared to his Mewtwo which he describes as vastly more powerful than Nidoking, but the latter makes up for it with more versatility as it has access to three different-typed moves that cannot miss and using their Dynamax variants can buff his team in the right situation.
• Bottle Episode:
  • "The Dragon that Rules the Sky" Legendary Event takes place exclusively on the glaciers of Pasio and only focuses on three characters: Zinnia, Professor Kukui, and the player. It centers around the latter two's pursuit of Rayquaza before they run into Zinnia, upon which the focus switches to her endeavor to bond with Rayquaza.
  • "The Star of the Contest" Story Event focuses exclusively on a Sync Pair Contest in which the player, Dawn, Wallace, and Fantina compete against each other. As such, the sole setting is the stadium where it is being held.
• Brains and Brawn: The story "The Girl in Black and White" focuses on Roxanne being the brains to Hilda's brawn.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: With the Team Rocket Trio's addition to the game, naturally they do this on occasion. In particular, one of James's level-up quotes is this:
  James: No one can stop us now! Not even the writers!
• Breakout Character: Two characters in particular, while fairly popular in the main series, have enjoyed their popularity skyrocketing even further thanks to Masters: Rosa and Skyla.
  • Rosa received additional characterization, interactions with many characters, and some very well-received and quirky animations - her thinking face going on to become memetically linked to her. As she was initially somewhat overshadowed along with Nate by Hilda and Hilbert from the original Black and White, Masters has helped her stand apart and become a fan favorite. She also happens to be an initial Trainer Lodge option to hang out with (right next to N).
  • Also from Unova, Skyla was chosen as one of the PML Leaders, is given to players as a free character, has had very positive interactions with many other characters, and also has some very expressive animations. While she was popular since her debut in Black and White for her cheery demeanor, strength as a Gym Leader and fanservicey design, what has helped her even more than Rosa is that she is an extremely helpful Support sync pair, even compared to many that must be scouted, and with her sync grid unlocked has become the premier Healer Support for the game. This resulted in her winning in a landslide over many other sync pairs in the game when DeNA had a poll for the first 6 Stars EX Pair to release. Both Skyla and Rosa also had Christmas seasonal releases as well.
• Broad Strokes:
  • Every character seems to be lifted after the ending of at least one of the games they appeared, with a vague awareness of events outside their home region. Masters is loose with which paired version, enhanced version, or remake is treated as canon for each character and how much time has passed between generations. Considering that Hoopa may be dipping into other timelines, canon by character may be the canonical answer...
  • The Alola Trial Captains, Kahunas, Elite Four, and Team Rainbow Rocket exist, apparently placing the game after the Generation VII games overall. Yet, Red and Blue are still teenagers instead of adults, while Grimsley is still his younger self by default (though he does appear as his older-looking redesign from Gen VII during the Poké War Games event)^note his dialogue at the end of Chapter 25 confirms that his visit to Alola hasn't taken place yet. The game also seemingly retroactively canonizes the events of Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, as -besides Giovanni appearing in his Team Rainbow Rocket depiction- several Alolan characters are depicted as their counterparts from those versions rather than those from the original Sun and Moon (i.e. Molayne being one of the Alola Elite Four, Lillie's partner being Clefairy, etc.). Curiously, Elio and Selene appear as they originally did, rather than their Ultra designs.
    • It's up to interpretation however which version of Lusamine appears here, with some things mentioned in the "Family Ties" story event indicating it is her original counterpart (albeit without her evil personality). The "Light Devourer" story event fully confirms that it is indeed her Ultra counterpart that appears.
  • All of the NPC Champions from the core series are shown to still have their titles (except Blue/Alder, who lost their titles to Red and Iris respectively, and Wallace, who is only a Champion in Emerald). The only player character from the core series who is confirmed to have once been a Champion is Red, which is primarily due to him being the canon protagonist of the Kanto games.^note Professor Kukui also implies in a random conversation at the Pokémon Center that one of the Generation VII protagonists is the current Champion of Alola, but it remains unspecified as to which one it is. It remains unclear if any of the other protagonists shown in the game have ever attained the title, despite the main story of every core series game up to Pokémon Sword and Shield ending with the player defeating the reigning Champion (barring Pokémon Black and White, where this can only be done in the postgame) . This is especially noteworthy in Leon's case, as he is still touted as the undefeated Champion of Galar even after Gloria's introduction to the game.
  • While there is usually a clear protagonist-based character, there's also a fair amount of Merging the Branches when it comes to Schrödinger's Player Character. Kris is able to recall events of the main story in the Johto games, despite not even existing in the remakes.
  • Characters also get more range through fanservice nods to their anime and manga counterparts. Team Rocket is pretty much lifted just from the anime rather than Let's Go or Yellow.
  • When Rose and Oleana show up, they have no memories of Rose trying to start the Darkest Day and his eventual arrest. Victor mentions that there have been cases of people showing up in Pasio with "apparent" memory loss, but said cases aren't about amnesia rather than them truly not knowing anything about events they should remember, meaning that Hoopa is not only bringing people in from different dimensions, but also from different times in said dimensions.
  • Nemona wears her Pokémon Scarlet uniform, and her dialogue, as well as her partner Pokémon, place her from after the events of the main game.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: While the Punk trainer sprites can come across as intimidating, a lot of them are very friendly towards you and others during interactions. The Punk Trainer in the Pokemon in Particular tends to say the best type of Pokemon are the Adorable Type.
• Brutal Honesty: Cheren takes this approach with Lear in Interlude 5, essentially telling him to his face that his attitude makes him unfit to be a king. Lear notes that it's been a long time since anyone was so blunt with him.
• But Thou Must!: ...say Yes to letting story-mandated characters like Rosa or Flannery join your team. When Rosa asks if you were reconsidering your offer for her to join your team, your options are "Nah, we'll be counting on you", and "Nope, welcome to the team." This trend continues to much of the campaign and "A Day With..." sync pair bond missions. Lampshaded in Jessie's mission, where if you hesitate in welcoming Team Rocket to the crew, she gets furious and joins your team to spite you, anyway.
  Jessie: You don't want me?! I don't care if you turn me down! I'll tag along anyway!
• Call-Back: Lana tries to ship Victor and Mallow when she learns Victor gave her an Applin, which is a folklore tale that will confess their feelings for each other and ensure a happy future together (as said so by the guy in Hammerlocke for the quest about it). To her dismay, no one catches on to this.
• Canon Immigrant: As special collaborations with the Pokémon anime:
  • The Team Rocket Trio appear as part of the Double Trouble and Blasting Off Again events. Unlike their previous game appearances, and every other character in the game, they are explicitly the anime versions of the characters, as the event is a tie-in to the newest Pokémon movie Pokémon: Secrets of the Jungle, Meowth can speak human language for the first time in the games, and the trio's Japanese and English voice actors reprise their roles from the anime.
  • Ash Ketchum later appears as part of The Classic Thunderbolt Event wherein he gets transported to Pasio while training for the Masters Eight. He was later made as a Master Sync Pair.
• Canon Welding: While the game tries to avoid this by having the Gen 1 and 3 characters be from the Mega Evolution continuity, aside from the aforementioned Team Rocket being the anime versions, Kris and Lyra somehow co-exist in spite of Lyra replacing Kris in the Gen 2 remakes, while Hilbert and Hilda use their Pokémon Black Version and White Version designs in spite of Nate, Rosa, Cheren, and Bianca clearly being from Black 2 Version and White 2 Version. Not to mention N winds up forming sync pairs with both Reshiram and Zekrom in spite of him normally only getting one of them, depending on the version you play.
• Character Development: The game is clearly set after the events of every entry in the series, with characters commenting about events that had already happened. Some of the characters are even developing further as people, such as how Gardenia came to Pasio as to get over her fear of Ghost-types, how Cheren has grown into a mentor after becoming a Gym Leader, and how Iris is sizing up to the other adult Champions.
• Character Select Forcing: Certain events like Extreme Battles and Region Daily Rotation give x5 boosts to all stats to sync pairs who represent the chosen themes. However, as far as Galar representation goes, there aren't enough Galarian sync pairs to get through normal means due to the fact the majority of them are locked behind limited-time banners and, as of this edit, there is only one being able to obtain for free (Hop), and only four available (Piers, Nessa, Bea and Allister) to get from the permanent gacha pool.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Hoopa, who in an early chapter is revealed to be responsible for bringing some of the PML contestants to Pasio. Team Break later steal it and force it to start summoning Pokémon to Pasio for them to use.
• Chromatic Arrangement: All starter trios are red, green, and blue, but this is doubled with the Kanto trio in their Sygna Suits, with the red-wearing Red commanding the Fire-type Charizard, the blue-wearing Blue with the Water-type Blastoise, and the green-themed Leaf partnered with the Grass-type Venusaur.
• City on the Water: The entirety of Pasio, an artificial island. It's even commented on how realistic the volcanoes are, which have live lava. There's also a set of ruins which are actually mishmash replicas of actual ones from other regions, which tend to attract Legendary Pokémon who confuse it for their own. Talking to Maxie in the Pokémon Center has him express excitement in Pasio's construction and tried (but failed) to get Lear into Team Magma for his knowledge, but plans to analyse it for himself and possibly construct something similar in the future.
• Combatant Cooldown System: Pokémon can only use moves when enough of the team's shared move gauge has filled over time.
• Combination Attack: In co-op, when you and your allies attack in succession without the opponent getting a move in enough times, you trigger a Unity Attack, in which everyone teams up for a powerful strike on an opponent. The power of the attack is boosted if one of the sync pairs in it is a super effective type, further if two are used, and even further if three of the same type, in which case the attack turns into the type of the users and becomes even more powerful.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Well, it is Pokémon. To its credit, the game does sometimes provide disclaimers that the AI opponents' capabilities do not reflect their playable versions.
  • Most enemies have sync moves that can hit your whole party, which your own sync moves can't do (unless your sync move is used by a 6☆EX strike sync pair). Enemies often also charge their sync moves in fewer actions than the player, though this is balanced out by giving the computer relatively low APM. Enemy sync moves used to remove all your stat boosts, but this was removed in a January 2020 update.
  • Certain playable trainers originally couldn't have their Pokémon evolved into their final forms, but if you face those same trainers in an AI battle, they will be using those final forms. For example, you can't evolve Phoebe's Dusclops into Dusknoir, but when you face Phoebe in the Supercourses and in Stage 17 of Story Mode, she's using Dusknoir. This ended in February 2020, when every such trainer had their Pokémon's evolution released.
  • In Chapter 18 of the PML Arc, Hilbert apparently has five moves available to him (two attacks and three support skills) when four has always been the hard limit. This is possibly balanced out by the fact that Hilda only has three moves.
  • Co-op battles give bosses moves that they shouldn't have available to use when under the player's command.
  • Post the PML arc, boss fights against certain trainers capable of Mega Evolving can most likely allow them to unleash their Sync Move right off the bat at the start of the battle while you're still stuck slowly counting down to your Sync Move trigger.
• Continuity Nod: A lot.
  • If there was official art or battle intros for any named trainer, the game basically replicates it all in 3D form (such as Burgh dropped on his knees when he's a boss fight) or face shots when using support moves (such as Hilda's VS. trainer shot from her debut game).
  • One of the random trainers who can show up in the Pokémon Center is a Black Belt who talks about how he used to be a security guard for a gift shop and is now scared of Hyper Beams. He's the poor man who Lance ordered Dragonite to attack at Mahogany Town back in Pokémon Gold and Silver.
  • Brendan reminisces about watching the stars with May, as they do after the end credits of Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. He also says her eyes were pretty like stars.
  • Rosa talks about how she had some roles in movies filmed at Pokéstar Studios, and she still tries to keep up on her acting skills even now. For extra fun, Snivy's evolution mission has Brycen showing up in-character as Brycen-Man to challenge her, complete with a Zoroark.
  • Drake refers to Mr. Briney as his "old friend" several times, something that was previously established in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.
  • When chatting in the Pokémon Center, Gym Leaders will occasionally mention other Pokémon of theirs that they left behind at the Gyms. These other Pokémon are always ones that the Leaders did in fact use in Gym battles in the original games.
    • One example may be a case of Canon Discontinuity, though: Flint mentions his Drifblim... which he only used when you fought him in Diamond and Pearl. However, numerous continuity nods both in the main games and this one (see the "New World Dilemma" example below) suggest that Platinum is the canonical Gen IV game, and in it, Flint's Drifblim is replaced with a Flareon. The possible answer for this is that the Flint in the game is the one from Diamond and Pearl instead of the one from Platinum.
    • Or, possibly, Platinumverse Flint also has a Drifblim, but simply never uses it in-game.
  • During the "Two Champions" event, Lance recalls that, back when he was a member of the Elite Four, he was beaten by a trainer who claimed to be "the greatest". Then, three years later, another trainer came along and beat both of them. He explains that this is why he has no interest in titles like "the strongest" — because you won't be the strongest for long.
  • During the "A Day with Professor Oak" Sync Pair Story, Blaine says that he and Mr. Fuji used to research Pokémon together. Their friendship was first established in FireRed and LeafGreen, then followed up on in Let's Go.
  • When Cynthia first sees Cyrus at the start of the "New World Dilemma" story event, she notes that the last time she saw him, he was being dragged into the Distortion World by Giratina. Cyrus replies that he has no idea what she's talking about, revealing him to be from the Diamond and Pearl timeline (specifically the "Pearl" one as he trains Palkia). Then at the end of the event, after Cynthia defeats him, Cyrus gives the exact same Villainous Breakdown speech his Platinum counterpart gave, right down to his parting threat that one day, Cynthia will wake up in a world without spirit.
  • During the Beachside Rivalry Story Event, Marnie helps out at the Team Break eatery. Since the team has reformed by now, they act not so differently than Team Yell, whom Marnie is used to helping out. The two Team Break members even call her their boss.
  • In the Sinnoh Chapter of the Villain Arc, there’s an in-game nod where Cyrus recalls Sophocles's words from “A New World Dilemma” that they can't be friends if they lose human spirit. Earlier on in the same chapter, in the hideout, Cyrus brings both Dialga and Palkia out, similar to what had happened in Platinum, except this time, Dialga is unwilling to cooperate with Cyrus, resulting in Cyrus calling Dialga useless to him and trying to use Palkia to outright destroy it.
  • The "Blazing Battle with Ash" has no continuity nods for Ash, but rather the Rising Star girl who gave her Torchic to the player. She shows up for the last battle because her Torchic is battling.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: While bosses are not necessarily immune to status conditions unless they have a passive which prevents specific ones, later ones tend to have passive abilities which makes it so that they heal from them quicker than player characters.
• Contrived Coincidence: Played for Laughs according to a male Swimmer, who discovered that every single other swimmer in Pasio somehow decided to buy the same exact swimming trunks.
• Cool Mask: All members of Team Break wear one. Unlike other villainous teams, Team Break doesn't have a standard uniform, so this is the only way to identify their members. For some reason, the designer behind them thought it'd be a good idea to put glue on the inside so it can stick to the wearer's face.
• Cosmetic Award: Certain events have these which remain even after the event is completed.
  • Getting a featured sync pair's letter during the Palentine's Events awards a cutscene where the writer of the letter you got gives you a unique, permanent souvenir in your Bag along with 10 gems.
  • The Poke War Games event also has this with Golden Spheres that are rewarded for completing each of the featured character's Battle Prep events.
• Covers Always Lie: Of the seven trainers (minus the player characters) who appear in the game's splash image, only Brock and Rosa were actually playable at launch. The rest were gradually added until the end of March 2021. Best exemplified by the app's original icon — it was Red, who didn’t show up for a good six months. From then on, the app tends to use a recently added trainer for the icon.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • In Chapter 5 of the Main Story, the player is forced to battle Lear and is defeated in a single hit.
  • The player is put on the receiving end of two in "New World Dilemma". First, Cyrus easily knocks out their Pikachu when the latter acts to protect Cheryl's Blissey. Then, when the player, Cheryl, and Sophocles confront Cyrus later on, Cyrus' Palkia takes out Blissey and Pikachu each with only one strike. It is thanks to Cynthia's intervention and defeat of Cyrus that the day is saved in spite of this.
  • Downplayed in "Give and Take". The player, Calem, and Serena are all able to defeat Lysandre's Honchkrow with little trouble. It is only when Lysandre reveals that he also has Yveltal on hand that he wipes the floor with all three of them and Professor Sycamore, and even then the Professor is able to evenly match Lysandre once Xerneas allies with him.
  • The Eternal Rivals Time Trial event’s storyline starts off with the player’s Pikachu being defeated rather easily by Raihan’s Duraludon, due to Duraludon being fast. Not long after, Raihan and the player battle Piers and Gloria, with the match being quicker than the battle between the player and Raihan, with Duraludon taking out Gloria’s Zacian and Piers’ Obstagoon (despite the player’s Pikachu falling in the process) with one hit apiece.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Zigzagged.
  • The game gives many of the player characters a set starter. For instance, Red, Blue and Leaf have Charizard, Blastoise and Venusaur respectively.
  • Multiple player characters have also been established as the heroes of their respective games. Those that have been confirmed are Red, Ethan, Brendan, Dawn, Hilbert, Rosa, Serena, Gloria, and Rei; only the hero of the Alola games (Elio or Selene) remains unclear.
  • Even when choosing heroes, Masters doesn't strictly follow the conventions regarding starters in their games of origin. Brendan is Norman's son in Masters, but his partner Treecko has the type-advantage against May's partner Mudkip (when in the original games, May would have Torchic^note However, Sygna Suit May does use a Blaziken, which she reveals is the same one that she traveled with throughout Hoenn). Meanwhile, Dawn has a Turtwig to Barry's Piplup, due to the fact that Flint is already paired with Infernape, thus making Dawn's pairing with Turtwig a necessity. But since she's childhood friends with Barry, she's the protagonist.
  • On a lesser extent, Flint and Volkner have Infernape and Luxray respectively as their aces while Flint talks about his other non-Fire-types instead of his full Fire-type team from Platinum, and Dawn, Lucas, and Barry don't have their winter clothing on, implying that they do not come from the third version of their games. On the other hand, the rest of the characters seem to come from Platinum because they do allude to the events there such as Giratina and the Distortion World; a lodge's topic that get Cynthia and Dawn super interested to talk about when such dimension doesn't exist outside of the Platinum plotline, which implies that maybe everyone does come from Platinum
  • Nemona is seen wearing her Pokémon Scarlet uniform.
  • In Legends Arceus, you were able to choose if you were a version of Lucas or Dawn who was isekai'd and if you had amnesia like most Fallers or if you remembered everything, and even if you came from a world where there were no Pokémon at all. The Hisui arc establishes that it is Rei who fell, that he came from a Pokémon world, and that he is also amnesiac like Fallers are.
• Cutscene Boss: During Skyla's chapter, a very pissy Lear forces the player into a one-on-one fight against his Krookodile. Lear's Krookodile handily wipes the floor with the player's hilariously underleveled Pikachu, and he tells you off before he and his posse book it.
• Damager, Healer, Tank: An effective strategy is to group your sync pair trios into these sorts of roles, with the Tactics menu letting you ensure that enemies will keep their focus on the Tank instead of the others. Most notable are the Sygna Suit versions of the Pallet Town Trio (Red, Blue, and Leaf), who are specifically designed to be put together as a team and compliment each other in this fashion; Blue and his Blastoise are the Tank, having high defenses and the ability to buff the stats of the rest of his team, Leaf and her Venusaur are the Healer, giving healing effects and spreading poison and defense debuffs like the plague, while Red and his Charizard are the Damager, having ludicrous attack stats and the ability to hit both physical and special defense after Mega Evolution.
• Darkest Hour: During the Villain Arc, Paulo unleashes Hoopa Unbound after he witnesses his Rockruff disappearing in front of his eyes trying to endure Ghetsis's Kyurem's attacks. He proceeds to waste Kyurem by bringing Legendary Pokémon and leaves to become "the last evil" by eradicating the rest of the other (former at best) evil organizations and their leaders, no matter if some of their members aren't into doing evil anymore. He ends up recruiting remnants of Team Break by force and gives them Legendary Pokémon to wreck havoc upon Pasio. Later, in the final episode, Paulo decides to take on Giovanni as his last target and turns down an offer to join him. And just when Paulo is about to fight, Giovanni uses his sync stone to get Hoopa Unbound on his side rather easily, leaving Paulo with nothing; not even his Team Break members, who ditch him immediately to join Giovanni instead. What follows is Pasio being besieged by rogue Legendary Pokémon under Giovanni's orders, and not even the Champions stand a chance of beating them.
• A Day in the Limelight: Masters was designed to highlight the human trainers for once, instead of putting the focus on the Pokémon like most spinoff games do.
• Death or Glory Attack: Grimsley (Kimono) works around like this. You'd need to know if the opposing member has a powerful attack like Hyper Beam, Giga Impact or Head Smash, then set up his Bisharp with two skills in advance so she's prepared to take the next hit. Either this fails and you're a bit worse off than before and wasted your setup, or it succeeds and the intended target goes down in one hit.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Although most of the Trainers are already pretty buddy-buddy with each other, in the PML Arc you will typically have to beat them in a Pokémon battle before you can obtain their sync pair. Although in Barry's case, he mistakes the party for Team Break grunts and challenges you to a fight before Rosa can get a word in.
• Developer's Foresight: In the 4th Anniversary "Fight Through Kanto's Best" Extreme Battle Event, an additional passive was granted to the enemy team, which triples the enemy's defense and special defense if a terrain is active, likely to prevent people from cheesing the stage using Sygna Suit Thunderbolt Red (who can only use his primary damage dealer if electric terrain is set up).
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: Extra missions for Legendary Arena matches require you to have at least three Sync Pairs with matching Theme Skills taking it on, but this doesn't mean they have to be the same team from start to finish. You could for example have extra-powerful teams who don't fit the criteria to take the boss down to its last health bar and deliberately stall for a loss before defeating it so you get kicked out to the Sync Pair Selection, then finish it off with the required team members.
• The Dreaded: Red is this for Lear, who constantly vents about how frustrated he is to have lost to him. Lear is so wary of Red that just giving the opening speech for the Pokémon Masters League with Red in attendance unnerved him enough to have to blow off steam about it afterward to his retainers. Blue even takes the time to correct himself when claiming he's the strongest trainer by noting he's only ever lost to Red, meaning even he wouldn't claim to be stronger.
• Dream Match Game: Trainers from across the series are available to recruit and battle.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Several characters make an early appearance during certain events before becoming properly available during/after those events.
  • Mallow makes her debut as a boss during the "Rosa's Party" storyline.
  • Wallace appears alongside Steven Stone in the "The Strongest There Is!" event.
  • The Serena update adds a talking Meowth as occasionally appearing in the Pokémon Center, who mentions his two friends that got lost looking for a Mythical Pokémon, no doubt teasing an event involving the anime’s Team Rocket Trio.
  • Both Lisia and Ryuki first appear during the "Summer Superstars" event.
  • May appears alongside Brendan and Wally during the 2021 New Year's Rally, greeting the player on January 4th.
  • Diantha appeared alongside Champion Iris during the "Shining Heart of Dragons" story event.
  • Lana and Kiawe first appear during the "Trials on the Isle" story event.
  • Maxie and Archie appear as enemy characters in the second phase of the weather event. Their story event, "Masters of Land and Sea", also has their respective admins appear at the end.
  • Sidney first appears as an enemy character during the Type Team-Up event in August 2021, also appearing in the lobby on August 8th conversing with Piers and Grimsley.
  • Allister appears in cutscenes and as an enemy character during the "Midnight Spookfest" event.
  • In an instance of a variation of an already available character making an early appearance, Grimsley appears in his Gen VII design during the "Poké War Games" event.
  • Sonia appears during story cutscenes in the "Winter Wishes" storyline.
  • The Striaton triplets appear at the "Curious Tea Party" event at the first riddle.
  • Prior to the implementation of the Galar Villain Arc, Rose can be clearly seen as one of the silhouettes in the Villain Arc tab along other villains whose storylines haven't been implemented.
  • In Iono's story event, Grusha can be seen in the background with his back turned.
• The Eeyore: Several characters get depressed (hilariously, or otherwise) after defeat.
  • A Hiker says he's trying to chase his dream of being a master. After his defeat, he realizes he can't achieve that dream.
  • A young trainer attempting to impress his girlfriend by battling your team gets smashed. In a depressed funk, he moans the fact he's never gonna be cool at anything... except setting tents, and further bemoans the fact he'll be bragging about being only good at setting tents.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Much like other Pokémon spin-offs like Pokémon Shuffle, type matchups are greatly streamlined compared to the main series. Pokémon are weak to one type only, but may have attacks of two or three types. In addition, Pokémon weaknesses are determined on a case-by-case basis instead of being tied to their typing; for example, the Normal difficulty Level Up course features a Slugma (Fire) that is weak to Rock but NOT weak to Water. Similarly, all type immunities are removed, meaning Normal and Ghost can hit each other, Poison can hit (and even inflict the poison status on) Steel, Ground can hit Flying, etc.
• Enemy Mine: It's possible to recruit Giovanni, Jessie, James, Cyrus, Ghetsis, Lysandre, N, Archie, Maxie, Zinnia, Guzma, Plumeria, and Lusamine as sync pairs — the latter seven have already done a Heel–Face Turn in their home games.
  • In the "Father or Foe" event, N and Ghetsis call a temporary truce to fight Giovanni.
• Engineered Public Confession: In the Sinnoh chapter of the Villain Arc, the heroes manage to broadcast Cyrus announcing his plans to rid the world of spirit, which Cynthia also shows to the Team Galactic Admins, causing doubt among them.
• Evasive Fight-Thread Episode: The "Two Champions" story event goes to some lengths to avoid a conclusive answer to the question of whether Cynthia or Lance is stronger.
• Even Evil Has Standards: While Lear may be a dick to the general public, even he knew that mistreating a time and space-warping being would be a horrible idea, so he fed Hoopa donuts in return for it willingly finding and bringing contestants for the PML. If said contestants didn't want anything to do with it, they would be sent back without any hassle.
• Evil All Along: The "Verdant Guardian" event has Calem, Serena and Hop team up with a scientist interested in Zygarde. He backstabs them, sends a Dragalge to attack Zygarde and steal its cells, and reveals himself to be a Team Break member and a major sociopath.
• Exact Words: During an Expedition Event featuring the player helping Ball Guy find Sophocles' and Molayne's lost Voltorb, they find a Preschooler who is asked if she knows what a Voltorb is and if she's seen one, who replies that she hasn't. If you ask her again a few more times, Ball Guy gets an idea and asks her if she knows what an Electrode is, which she happily replies that her friends are still playing with it nearby, since it evolved offscreen beforehand.
• Exposed to the Elements: In Pryce's story segment, Flannery follows the player, Barry, and Norman around a glacier to look for him, and consequently shivers the entire way due to her attire.
• Expy Coexistence: This is the first game where Ash and Red are depicted as distinct trainers and are capable of interacting with each other.
• Face of a Thug:
  • A thug you encounter in Chapter 10 of the PML Arc mentions that he has a mean-looking face, so most people run away instead of battling him.
  • One of the Team Break goons — a female Punk (who are sharp-toothed and are usually mean as Hell) — happens to get in your way during Lear repelling the Team Break assault on the main town. She's terrified of battling the player and is on the verge of tears the entire time, yelling that she didn't mean to do anything, promise.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: The Elite Four in Champion Stadium can be divided this way. There would be two Fighters (one focusing on brute strength and the other would be unusually resilient), one Mage (who prefers using Special Attack moves), and a Thief (who utilizes gimmicks such as evasion and status effects).
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: Once Professor Oak and Mew use a sync move, their moves will be replaced by Fire Blast, Thunder, and Blizzard.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Adaman and Irida, both of whom hail from Hisui in the distant past, are playable characters in present day Pasio.
• Fish out of Water:
  • When you first meet Calem, he's still trying to adjust to the sync pair mechanics after being used to the traditional mechanics from the main series.
  • In "A Day With Evelyn", she's still a bit shaken about how the sync pair mechanics only allow one Pokémon per trainer during battle since she usually runs the Double Battles at the Battle Maison. Likewise, her sister Nita isn't used to working in teams since she's in charge of the Single Battles.
  • Tina, Paulo's old rival, shows up to Pasio having just missed the League, and without a clue as to how sync pairs work. It's a chance for Paulo to catch up with an old friend, introduce her to the player character, and further consider Giovanni's offer.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: When scouting for sync pairs, you can tell what you're about to get based on the animations of the Poryphone. If an antenna pops up out of the top of your Poryphone during the scouting animation, you're about to roll a 4*. If lightning sparks out of the port the Poryphone is put in and the screen flashes rainbows, followed by the antenna becoming a satellite dish, then congratulations: you're about to roll a 5*!
• Food as Bribe: It's revealed that Lear gave donuts to a Hoopa in exchange for bringing contestants for the PML, which it happily did under that condition.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Elesa's Sync Pair Story reveals her purpose for coming to Pasio is to look for the tailor who makes Sygna Suits, as she seeks to have one for herself. As of Chapter 24 of the PML Arc, she is revealed to have obtained a Sygna Suit with Rotom, which became a playable sync pair the following month.
  • During Jasmine's costume event episode, Sabrina expreses some interest in her outfit and leaves, which makes Rosa react with surprise while Jasmine and Hilda are talking. Later on, Sabrina dresses up as a New Year 2022 Sync Pair with Volkner.
  • At the end of "Together in an Unknown Land," at Pasio's ruins, Rei begins to look around as if he senses he and Cynthia are being watched while Cynthia's Giratina is acting up for a bit. When the two move on from the area, the tip of a Togepi's head is seen sneaking behind a pillar, all which imply that Volo is somewhere in Pasio, spying on them.
• Funny Background Event: In Iono's event ''The Electrifying Influencer'", Ball Guy can be seen making poses in the background at various points. The last scene of the event reveals that this was invoked by Iono, as a challenge for viewers to count the number of times that Ball Guy appeared in her streams.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Story-important trainers with Pokémon that can evolve, such as Rosa, will always show up in their first form. This means that Snivy and Piplup will be present with Rosa and Barry, regardless of whether you've already evolved them in your party.
  • Also, the events usually don't take into consideration what happens during the story. Case in point, even after their final defeat, Team Break appears in events anyway.
  • During the events of "Midnight Spookfest," certain characters, such as Morty, express surprise at seeing Caitlin without Darach by her side. Morty remarks at how strange the sight is in the very first segment of the story, and Darach himself makes note of the fact that for this event, he would be watching his young mistress from afar, and giving her space. This would be a fair enough characterization if one solely took Pokémon Platinum into account. Darach would be likely stick to his mistress like glue upon first arriving in Pasio. The issue is, at the time of the event, Caitlin had been a playable character for months without much sign of Darach. He helped run the Battle Villa, but he only became available as a playable unit after the event started, so it would seem somewhat late to feel surprised at Caitlin being on her own.
• The Ghost:
  • Trainers will often talk of friends and other Pokémon of theirs that they left back home, but those characters don't appear in the game (or in a lot of cases, they don't appear yet).
  • It's mentioned that a fashion designer is behind the creation of Sygna Suits, but we have yet to meet him in person.
  • At the end of Sygna Suit Lusamine's debut event, she mentions a scientist who gave her two devices that can fuse or separate Necrozma from Solgaleo or Lunala, but has no need for either. Said scientist was most likely Colress, who created the N-Solariser and N-Lunariser devices in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, and wouldn't make a physical appearance until Paulo Interlude 3.
• Gilligan Cut: After Cynthia defeats Cyrus in battle, she and Sophocles both express hope that the defeat will make him see sense and change his ways for the better... cut to Cyrus staring into the sunset and declaring, "I haven't changed". While you do recruit him immediately after, his recruitment quote has him tell you straight up that his plans haven't changed either.
• Glass Cannon:
  • As in the main series, Korrina's Lucario. Despite only being a 3* pair, Lucario sports great offensive pressure, with access to buffs like Dire Hit, Mega Evolution, and Power-Up Punch after Mega Evolving. However, its Defense and Sp. Defense are lackluster, and repeated usage of its strongest move, Close Combat, will quickly whittle away at what measure of defense it has, if any.
  • Even compared to most other Strike-category sync pairs, Roark stands out as being all offense. With his attack buffs and his final skill giving him perfect accuracy on his next attack along with refilling the move gauge, his Cranidos/Rampardos can easily Head Smash things into oblivion, but Head Smash also retains its hideous recoil damage which will inevitably shave off half of Cranidos's health bar or more on each hit. His expanded sync grid, however, contains multiple skills that can reduce the recoil, allowing you to downplay this and help him stay alive for longer.
  • Due to her choice of partner being an Ultra Beast, which are known to heavily sacrifice one or more stats for another, Lusamine has some of the weakest defenses out of all characters available (as Pheromosa are known to sacrifice defense for offense and speed).
• Gratuitous Foreign Language:
  • All Professors in Masters sprinkle basic non-English words into their dialogue. Blue, being the grandson of a Professor, inherited this habit.
  • Later lampshaded and mocked when, during a mission with Professor Bellis, a Collector approaches the Professor and asks to go on a date...
    Mi corazon is going doki doki because you're so belle, capiche? How about tu and je go for a walk conmigo?^{Rough Translation}My heart is going 'beat beat' because you're so beautiful, do you understand? How about you and me go for a walk with me?
    • ...and Bellis declines because she has no idea what he just said.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Some story events allow players to temporarily use a featured character, even if they haven't obtained them, in story battles with fixed teams.
• Guide Dang It!: In the "Verdant Guardian" story event, which involves Zygarde and Sygna Suit Serena, while finding all the Zygarde cells is mostly simple, one of them is more tricky — the player must speak to a Lass repeatedly until she finally moves out of the way, which isn't clear as at first it seems like she's just repeating her dialogue until it changes to "...", which is the only hint that you need to keep going.
• Healer Signs On Early: Your Player Character and Brock both start with the Potion skill. The first sync pair you get from the story after Brock and Misty is Rosa, a Support buffer who has X Sp. Atk All and can learn "Time to Energize" to instantly charge the Move Gauge.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Giovanni claims he wants to make one when joining the player character's team. Of course, he then says to himself that he's not sure if he wants to really go through with it. The end of the PML Arc reveals that he never intended to carry this out at all.
  • Played more straight with both Team Magma and Team Aqua where at the end of the Hoenn chapter of the Villain Arc where both Maxie and Archie call a truce and agree to work with everyone else in taking down Team Rocket. On top of that, Courtney becomes a playable sync pair.
  • Once Team Rocket shows their true colours and takes over Pasio, every other evil organization team up and fights back against them, allowing you, Paulo and Tina to get to safety and stop Giovanni.
• Heel Realization:
  • A Swimmer talks about how he can't find any strong Pokémon to capture because someone always interferes with his attempts. Another Swimmer says that there aren't any wild Pokémon on the island, which makes him realize that he was actually trying to steal them the whole time and didn't know it.
  • A Team Break goon put his mask on wrong during the Team's assault, and regrets joining. He notes that the mask makes him feel really bad, and is glad the player is able to knock it off.
  • One Team Break goon can't bring himself to force a Hoppip he stole to battle, finding it too cute. After you beat him, he resolves to return it to its rightful owner.
• Here We Go Again!: At the end of the PML, Lear mostly goes back to his snobbish self out of frustration due to his coronation being postponed, prompting him to announce a second PML in order to settle things with the player character. Also, the remaining members of Team Break who haven't gone to work with Lear decide to strike out on their own, and Giovanni decides to move forward with his own plans...
• Hopeless Boss Fight: During Victory Road, Leon's first battle has him use a special skill that maxes his defenses which effectively reduces your attacks to scratch damage. After a few pitiful attacks from you, he immediately calls off the battle to teach you about critical hits which bypass defense boosts, and then you start again with a Dire Hit.
• Hope Spot: In Interlude 5 of the PML Arc, just when it looks like Cheren is about to get through to Lear, the latter is baited into fighting Team Break alone, subsequently disregarding all of what the Gym Leader said about how the prince's overdependence on his own power has made him short-sighted.
• Impractically Fancy Outfit: Jasmine's Special Costume during the War Games event is a Celesteela-themed kimono which she finds is really hard to move around in, which is a problem during an event which is pretty much a 'capture the flag' game. She eventually decides to play like a Mighty Glacier against the opposition, which is very effective.
• Infinity +1 Sword: In the final stage of the Battle Rally, you are given an item to purchase called the Apple Cup. It's the most expensive item that ever spawns in the Rally Shop, but it gives an endless host of beneficial effects that turns even the Ultimate Battle derived battles into a joke. ^Effects Raises the Attack, Defense, Sp. Atk, and Sp. Def of all sync pairs by 500%. The first time the user enters each battle, reduces the user’s sync move countdown by three. Lowers the total number of moves the user needs to use before they can unleash a sync move by the number of allied sync pairs participating in battle. Restore one MP for all the moves of sync pairs that use a move successfully. Reduces damage by 50% when the user is hit by an attack. The move gauge charges very quickly. Lowers the Attack, Defense, Sp. Atk, Sp. Def, Speed, accuracy, and evasiveness of all opposing sync pairs by six stat ranks. Raises the user's Attack, Defense, Sp. Atk, Sp. Def, Speed, accuracy, and evasiveness by six stat ranks the first time the user enters each battle. When an allied sync pair uses a move successfully, reduces the sync move countdown by one. Applies the Supereffective ↑ Next effect to sync pairs that use a move successfully. Only the first time the user enters each battle, they are affected by the following: Enduring
• Interface Spoiler: Zig-zagged with regards to the boosted sync pairs for each event. Some of them will show up during the event (in which case, the fact that they're boosted spoils their appearance), but others won't. For example, Clemont and Elesa are both boosted for the "Eccentric Electrician" event that's supposedly about Flint and Volkner; Clemont shows up halfway through, but Elesa isn't even mentioned.
• In the Name of the Moon: Dawn does one in her Sygna Suit story.
• Irony: In Sword and Shield, Eternatus' Eternabeam move is a powerful attack which forces it to recharge on the next turn like the Hyper attacks. Here, it recharges the Move Gauge, enabling it to attack straight away.
• Jerkass:
  • The two Punks who aggressively demand Cynthia battle them after she just got done with a fairly big battle. Not only are they hilariously underlevelled and interrupting a conversation, they also threaten the player. Needless to say, they get what's coming to them.
  • A Lass gets mad at you when she realizes you're not a photographer here to model her session, and tells you that you're ugly and should go bother other ugly people.
  • Lear immediately insults your intelligence based on your fashion sense, nurses a grudge solely because of this, throws you into unwinnable battles to assert his dominance, and treats his Pokémon as nothing more than disposable tools who'll be thrown away if they don't perform to his standards.
  • Team Break members are almost all uniformly egotistical assholes dead-set on robbing you of your Pokemon and insulting you the entire way through.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: In a side-story, Lear's perfectly capable of being nice and welcoming — several Pasio visitors gush about his generosity, philanthropy, and dedication to making Pasio for everyone. Too bad he shows none of this to you.
• Jiggle Physics:
  • Surprisingly for a Pokémon game, some of the bustiest girls in the game like Karen, Lorelei and Olivia actually have mild jiggle physics for their chests, which respond to the movements of the characters.
  • Despite being much more modestly endowed, Gloria also has mild jiggle physics as well in her swimsuit for her Summer 2021 variant, which are only visible in some of her animations (like when she points to the sky). Nessa and Bea are a bit larger than her and also each have jiggle physics, though only apparent in some animations for Nessa.
• Karmic Thief: Subverted and deconstructed during the "Solve the Case (Pt.2)" event. The impostor Phantom Imaginate exclusively targets members of villainous teams, partly in the belief that their partner Pokémon must have been stolen in the first place and unloved by them, but mostly out of a self-serving desire to be praised for "rescuing" the Pokémon. In reality, the victims had all long since gone straight (one, a Team Flare member, isn't even in uniform when her Pokémon is stolen), their Pokémon were all caught legitimately and genuinely cared for by them, and the heroes are outraged by how selfish their true motive is. Played straight, however, by the real Phantom Imaginate, who accepts a request from one of the victims to steal their Pokémon back from the impostor.
• Kayfabe: The concept forms a major part of the "New Heroes Are Born" event. The Masked Royal and Crasher Wake are shown fighting a pair of jobbers and doing a good job of selling them as threats before dispatching them. When Barry and Selene are invited to take on the jobbers, it's clear they don't understand the concept of kayfabe and win the fight in one hit, which bores the audience. Penny has to explain to them that a close, tense match is much more exciting to watch than a Curb-Stomp Battle, even if it means you have to hold back and take hits on purpose. When they give it another go at the end of the event, they do a much better job.
• Lame Pun Reaction: A Rising Star's response to a Punk Girl's joke.
  Punk Girl: What keeps Crobat going?
  Rising Star: Hmm... You got me there! I dunno! What keeps a Crobat going?
  Punk Girl: Heh heh... Bat-teries!
  Rising Star: *sigh* And I had such high hopes for that one...
  • Elesa frequently makes attempts at good ones, but they all fall flat.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • Some of the story events give away major plot elements from whatever mainline game the event's central character hailed from, such as Cyrus getting dragged into the Distortion World by Giratina at the end of Platinum, or Lusamine being the true Big Bad of Sun and Moon. The menu icon for the Villain Arcs also features silhouettes of the main participating villains, one of whom is Chairman Rose, who wouldn't be released until July 2023.
  • A very notable one is Ash, who is stated to be a member of the Masters 8. It should be noted that most of the anime's dubs had not reached this point yet when the event took place.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • One Collector at the Pokémon Center gripes about his failed attempts to catch Legendary Pokemon, since someone already beats him to the punch in every region. He wonders if it's the same person who's been catching them all, which may be true regarding the player.
  • If talked to at the Pokémon Center, Giovanni recalls his Rainbow Rocket evil plan in Alola, which failed because of a kid. He then comments that the protagonist reminds him a lot of them, who technically might be the same person in regards to the player.
• Legion of Doom: The Villain Arc of the main story sees Giovanni rebuild Team Rainbow Rocket to wreak havoc and plans to use the other villainous teams via co-operation or manipulation.
• Limit Break:
  • Sync moves are powerful attacks that can be performed by sync pairs after completing a certain number of actions. ** In co-op, chaining enough attacks together will charge a meter and trigger a Unity Attack, which can be taken further if all players summon the same type to participate and changes the Unity Attack's type, otherwise it turns into a neutral-type attack.
  • Certain pairs have access to Dynamax moves which can only be used once per battle, but they don't require a charge time and can be used straight away, alongside some extra buffs.
• Loot Boxes:
  • The game uses a gacha system to scout new sync pairs. If you get a repeat of a sync pair you already have, their sync move will level up and become more powerful (and if the sync move is maxed out, you'll get upgrade materials for other trainers instead). The story mode provides a healthy number of free trainers, but most sync pairs can only be obtained through scouting them in the shop for gems.
  • Some events use a "Token Box" system instead of the traditional voucher setup in other events, which has you collect special tokens where 10 of them pull a random item out of a mystery box (up to 100 at a time for 10 pulls), which lasts until the box is empty or its Grand Prize is pulled and the player can choose to skip to the next one at the cost of not being able to access any skipped boxes again.
• Lost Voice Plot: During "A Touching Sepia-Toned Song", Rosa ends up losing her voice at the times of the big performance which worries everyone. Thankfully her Meloetta fills in for her in the nick of time and they manage to win.
• Magikarp Power: The Trope Namer was added much later, but there are other examples.
  • Glacia's Glalie does extremely pitiful damage, even to Pokémon that are weak to Ice-types, and even with her sync Move, which upgrades Glalie into Mega Glalie. It takes a lot of Training Manuals and level uncaps to make them do real damage, and even then, her role is still more about spamming basic attacks to repeadtly heal herself until a sync move is ready.
  • While sync pairs from the gacha start at 3*+, Egg Pokémon start off at 1*, meaning their stats are initially so low that they're not worth using. This is especially noticeable with Egg Pokémon that can also be obtained as regular sync pairs, such as Victreebel and Onix. Once you max out their Affinity and get them up to 3* or more, however, they become just as strong as the gacha sync pairs, if not stronger.
• Modular Difficulty: Master Mode in the Champion Stadium arena allows the player to choose parameters that give advantages to opponents in exchange for more points when they are defeated. Accumulating points will give rewards to the player.
• Luck-Based Mission: Interactions at the Trainer Lodge have very misleading percentages as a conversation goes on and on. There is still a high chance that an interaction may end at 95% or even close to that.
• The Medic: Several characters such as Dawn, Rachel and Champion Blue serve as this having items such as Potions and Skills that heal either one member of the team or all of them.
• Mighty Glacier: Strike Sync Pairs that primarily focus on 3-4 bar attacks tend to be this, especially if they have the "Hit The Gas" passive skill which ups the cost for all of that pair's moves by one bar in exchange for higher power. They can deal out heavy amounts of damage, but tend to drain the Move Gauge very quickly unless they have skills that recover the Move Gauge or are paired with units that can refill it, otherwise you're stuck doing nothing while it's refilling.
• Mythology Gag: Has its own page.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Unlike all the other sync pairs, Leaf, Professor Sycamore and Sygna Suit Dawn use sync moves that aren't offensive, granting major buffs to either all allies, charges the move gauge and raising almost all of everyone's stats, or recovering HP, curing status and charging the move gauge respectively.

N-Z

• Named by the Adaptation: Kris, Barry, Elio and Selene, who were cases of Hello, [Insert Name Here] in their debut games, are properly named here. In both Kris and Barry's case, their first selectable default name became their canon name, the latter being a recursive nod to his anime counterpart.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The sheer number of trainers who appeared in the trailer but weren't playable at launch was well into the dozens. Subsequent releases have gradually whittled the number down but it's still not quite zero.
• New Season, New Name: In celebration of the game's 1-year anniversary, and to reflect how much the game had been refined over that period, the title officially changed to "Pokémon Masters EX".
• New Work, Recycled Graphics: Pokémon models and animations are once again reused from the 3DS titles. The trainer models are all built from scratch, each with their own different heights (something usually avoided in mainline games) and extremely detailed animations and expressions..
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Due to the presence of Eternatus bringing Dynamax energy to Pasio, it became possible for certain Pokemon to Dynamax.
• Not Me This Time: Of a sort — Rainbow Rocket Giovanni is accused of his counterpart's deeds, which, given what kind of person they are, they've most likely committed those deeds in their own region. Rainbow Rocket Giovanni notes that they have him confused for their Giovanni, but runs with it, anyway.
• No Ontological Inertia: In the Johto Villain arc, Team Rocket's Giovanni reminds his subordinate Archer that defeating the owner of Pasio isn't all that's needed to take control of Pasio.
  Archer: We did it, boss! Pasio has finally fallen into the hands of Team Rocket!
  Giovanni: I wonder... Just because we've taken down its owner doesn't mean the job is complete.
• Not So Above It All: After some kids make fun of Koga and Clair's outfits, the two are surprisingly hurt about it, which you'd never expect from their usual personalities.
• Off-into-the-Distance Ending: There's a weird variant where a Hiker you meet is described to be strangely powerful and wise when you first go into the Glacial area. Once you beat him, he laughs and says you've made him realize his true calling in life is ice hiking. He walks off into the sunset (sundown, really), and a blurb appears that legends claim to this day he is still ice hiking.
• Older Than They Look: Hilbert and Hilda are using their designs from Black and White even though Cheren's design and Rosa being a Trainer show that Black 2 and White 2 has already happened. As a result, even though Hilbert and Hilda are the same age as Cheren, they look a couple of years younger than him.
• One-Steve Limit: A variation. Few sync pairs even share evolutionary families, much less the same Pokémon: the Pikachu line (the player's Pikachu, Lt. Surge's Kantonian Raichu obtainable through spending Battle Points, and Hau's Alolan Raichu), the Rockruff line (Olivia's Midnight Lycanroc and Kukui's Midday Lycanroc, plus major NPC Paulo has a Rockruff), the Eevee line (Leaf's Eevee and Valerie's Sylveon, plus Rachel's and Karen's Umbreon), the Onix line (Brock's Onix and Jasmine's Steelix), the Ralts line (Wally's Gallade and Diantha's Gardevoir) and the Togepi line (Burgh's Togepi and Skyla's Togekiss). The only potential duplicates come because of the Pokémon Egg feature, as the player is given one of the three Kanto starters while the Sygna Suit versions of the Kanto cast also have the three Kanto starters.
  • If the player character is not counted, the first aversion of this came in the sync pair of Leon & Charizard, sharing the same Pokémon as Sygna Suit Red. There are no restrictions to using the two in the same team, and the player's Charizard can make up the third member to form a team of three Charizards.
  • As time goes on, more aversions occur, including certain sync pairs purchased with Battle Points, such as Morty & Mismagius (sharing the same Pokémon as Fantina), and Zinnia & Salamence (sharing the same Pokémon as Drake), as well as certain sync pairs with Shiny Pokémon, such as Steven (Anniversary 2021) & Rayquaza (same Pokémon as Zinnia), Sonia (Special Costume) & Tsareena (same Pokémon as Mallow) and Sygna Suit Morty & Ho-Oh (same Pokémon as Silver).
• Out of Focus: Aside from filming the opening cut-scene from offscreen, the Player Character sits out the Poké War Games event.
• Palette Swap: In addition to shiny Pokémon being available, certain sync pairs can be raised to 6☆ to unlock their EX style. This, in addition to powering up their sync move, recolors the trainer's outfit, usually to match the colors of their Pokémon.
• Pimped-Out Dress: Some of the Sygna Suits, seasonal outfits and Special Costumes are this.
  • Elesa's Sygna Suit is a Rotom-themed dress.
  • Lillie's 2021 Anniversary outfit is a Lunala-themed ballgown.
  • Hilda wears a Diancie-themed princess ballgown in the Poké War Games event.
  • Lusamine's Sygna Suit is a qipao themed after Ultra Necrozma.
  • Sonia's Tea Party costume is a Queen of Hearts-themed red dress that resembles a modified version of the ones worn by the Battle Chatelaines, along with a little crown like her Shiny Tsareena.
• Play Every Day: There are daily login rewards. The game entices you to log in the next day by telling you what you'll get.
• Power Creep: Downplayed. New sync pairs don't necessarily have higher stats than old ones - Brendan/Mega Sceptile, the strongest sync pair at launch in terms of base stat total, is still the fourth-strongest as of the 4.5 Year Anniversary. What new sync pairs do tend to have are Skills and Trainer Moves with much more powerful and elaborate effects, as well as access to newer mechanics like Master Skills, Buddy Moves, Max Moves, and EX Roles, which older sync pairs don't have.
• The Power of Friendship: The main method to use Sync Stones properly is if trainer and Pokémon share a special bond with each other. This becomes deconstructed when it's discussed how people like Giovanni can use the special power of the stone if he's a ruthless man not into friendship. Colress explains that Sync Stones commonly react to bonds, except the bonds don't necessarily have to be positive for them to work, because as long as trainer and Pokémon come to a mutual agreement of any kind, they don't need a bond made out of friendship. This only puts into question the entire rationale of friendship evolutions from other games having been on good terms at all.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Regarding the raising of hatched Tyrogue, the mainline series has them evolve into Hitmonlee, Hitmonchan or Hitmontop based on whether their Attack or Defense stat is higher than the other or exactly the same respectively. Here, they're guaranteed to evolve into one of the three depending on their sync pair type while disregarding their stats.^note Strike becomes Hitmonlee, Support becomes Hitmonchan, and Tech becomes Hitmontop.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: Exaggerated. Players can recruit sync pairs of every previous player character from the core series once they've been released.
• The Problem with Pen Island: A humorous example happened after the game changed its name to Pokémon Masters EX. #Pokemonmastersex began to trend on Twitter. Since then, the official Twitter account very subtly acknowledges this by going back to the previous #PokemonMasters hashtag instead of the new one it used in previous tweets before it went viral.
• Production Foreshadowing: The Sinnoh chapter of the Villain Arc, tying into the release of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, has Cynthia getting a second Sygna Suit and forming a sync pair with Giratina to stop Cyrus. Come Legends: Arceus, the distant prequel to the Sinnoh games, Cynthia's Hisuian counterpart, Volo, is revealed to have teamed up with Giratina, albeit in a much more sinister capacity as they are the main villains of the game.
• Promoted to Playable: Every recruitable sync pair that isn't a player character in the main series games becomes this, even Canon Foreigners like Rachel and Sawyer who are introduced in this game.
• Pronouncing My Name for You: Due to Suddenly Speaking and Suddenly Voiced, almost every character who hadn't already been introduced in the anime and who doesn't have a mundane-sounding name will reveal how it's supposed to be correctly pronounced upon their first recruitment.
• Purposefully Overpowered:
  • Master Fair-exclusive sync pairs are among the most powerful in the game. A significant factor in that is that they all come with an exclusive Master passive skill that greatly increases damage dealt by their entire team while also significantly reducing incoming damage, and the skills get even stronger for each team member from the same region as the Master Pair. The trade-off is that in addition to only being available to scout on temporary banners, they're only half as likely to appear as other 5-star sync pairs on their respective focus banners.
  • The Apple Cup in the Battle Rally is an obscenely-powerful item only purchasable for the final stage which grants you a myriad of buffs such as maxing out your stat boosts while bottoming-out your opponents, charges your Move Gauge to a ludicrous degree and makes each of your moves charge the Sync Move by 2. The offset is that it costs 500 Rally Points, which can take a chunk out of your Rally Medal winnings since your leftover points are converted to medals.
• A Quest Giver Is You: Players can form Expedition Teams to deploy and gather resources to exchange items for.
• Random Drop Booster:
  • During rallies, rewards earned in the Training Area are doubled.
  • Certain items can be exchanged to boost the resources obtained by Expedition Teams.
• Reflexive Response: In one story event, Steven, Shauna, and Looker are investigating a series of Pokémon thefts. Shauna, who's noticed a pattern among the victims, asks one of them (a Lass) whether they're involved with Team Flare. The girl denies it, but when Shauna begins reciting the Team Flare chant, she reflexively joins in, outing herself and confirming Shauna's suspicion that the thief is targeting members of past villainous teams.
• Remember the New Guy?:
  • For most sync pairs, the Pokémon comes from their trainer's team from the mainline games (or in the case of protagonist characters, it's a starter, a Pokémon they would encounter in the game's story, or one they use in their NPC role.) Otherwise, and usually for trainers with sygna suits or seasonal outfits, this trope comes into play, with the trainer using a previously-unseen Pokémon they've implied to have caught in the past. However, some of these sync pairs do receive explanations, either from the trainer explaining how they found the Pokémon, or from a related event story showing the two forming a sync pair.
  • Lucas shows up with no explanation in the Sinnoh portion of the Villain Arc, despite having been totally absent in the game for more than two years before that, and it's implied he was on Pasio the entire time. Similarly, Team Galactic's commanders, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, also show up without fanfare, while the arrival of rank-and-file Galactic grunts were a big deal.
• Retcon: In the Howling Shield of Eternity story event, despite both Gloria and Hop owning Zacian and Zamazenta respectively, Gloria never did catch Eternatus even though it was a forced capture. Here, it's stated that it simply got beaten when it was confronted but allegedly fled, and it ends up being owned by Leon as a Sygna Suit Pokémon here.
• Reused Character Design:
  • Most of the common trainer classes seen in the game reuse a design they had in a previous generation.
  • In a similar fashion to the Super Smash Bros. series (another Nintendo IP), a great deal of characters, particularly those from before the Diamond and Pearl era, reuse their designs from their most recent appearances, except where noted below:
    • Zigzagged with the Kantonian characters, who tend to use either their FireRed and LeafGreen or HeartGold and SoulSilver designs, with the only exception being Giovanni (who appears in his Team Rainbow Rocket guise from Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon). Zigzagged further with Red, Blue and Misty, who each appear in their Sygna Suit, HeartGold and SoulSilver and Let's Go designs by default, though their FireRed and LeafGreen designs are available as optional sync pairs.
    • Outdated Outfit applies to Kris and almost, if not, all of the current Frontier Brains who show up in the game such as Thorton, Noland and Lucy; all due to Kris and almost every single Frontier Brain (sans Tower Maiden Anabel, and to a much lesser extent, Caitlin) appearing in their first and only game in the franchise before Masters (Kris from Crystal and Noland and Lucy from Emerald respectively).
    • Maxie and Archie appear in their Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire designs rather then their original designs that were used for their alternate counterparts in Gen VII.
    • The only exceptions to the characters from Unova are Iris, who initially appears as she did in the original Black and White rather than their sequels (though her Champion attire became available from mid-March 2021), Grimsley, who also appears in his original design by default (with his kimono look from Alola becoming available from late November 2021), Elesa, who by default uses her B2W2 design (but switches to her original design when using Emolga) and Ghetsis, who uses his Black 2 and White 2 design despite his most recent appearance in Gen VII using his original design (granted, like Maxie and Archie, his appearance in Gen VII was as an alternate counterpart).
    • Elio and Selene strangely use their original designs rather than their Ultra designs, despite the game's implications that the events of the Ultra versions of their home games are canonical.
• The Rival: Paulo and Lear are both this for the player, with the former declaring it in determination when he battles you alongside Wulfric and Wikstrom. Blue also continues to see Red as his rival in addition to his best friend, and despite recognizing that Red is probably the one trainer stronger than him, Red also still considers Blue to be his own personal rival.
• Sand In My Eyes: In "The Eccentric Electrician", when Flint is moved to tears, he claims he's practicing using Scald with his eyes.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: At the end of the PML Arc, Lear announces a second PML immediately after the first one ended, since he planned, managed and hosted it, and wants to settle things with the player character.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: During the Galar Villain Arc, the fellow Electric-type inventors decide to support Rose about his Sync Stone energy development monopoly to avert a disaster a millenium from now, but they later come to realize that his ideas are way too limiting on Sync Stone usage and quit, much to his disappointment. Not that it stops him from continuing with it.
• Secret Test of Character: "Mechanized - Love and Solitude" has Lusamine arrange a fake emergency at the fancy party she was holding by having two guests pretend to be Team Break members who hold a third guest hostage, with Gladion proving to be an excellent partner for Magearna, who apparently wasn't lost in a mixup and was intended for Gladion from the start.
• Sequel Episode: "Blasting Off Again" is one to "Double Trouble", continuing the events of the Team Rocket trio’s arrival on Pasio as they attempt a heist during a festival. By the end, they get defeated, but decide to stick around and help the player further, with James and his Weezing joining you as a sync pair.
• Sequel Hook:
  • The Stinger at end of the PML Arc, the first main story arc sees Giovanni declaring it's "time to sow some chaos" after hearing about the second PML tournament. This leads to the Villain Arc.
  • Both the Team Flare, Aether Foundation, and Galar chapters end with hints as to the upcoming chapter.
• Sheathe Your Sword: Lusamine's solution to facing Dusk Mane Necrozma is to just heal its injuries.
• Shout-Out:
  • Diantha’s Special Costume during the Poké War Games event bears a heavy resemblance to Artoria Pendragon.
  • Sawyer bears a striking resemblance to Enrico Pucci.
  • Cyrus' Darkrai-themed Sygna Suit featuring a black Badass Longcoat with a grey undershirt and red gloves bears a heavy resemblance to Joker, which also fits the latter's own Starter Mon Arsene which focuses on "Curse" element moves like Darkrai's Dark typing.
  • The Spanish localisation renames all of Gloria Alt 2's Cinderace's moves after the Spanish localisation of Captain Tsubasa.
  • Neo Champion Leaf's outfit has a huge resemblance to Hu Tao from Genshin Impact.
• Shout-Out to Shakespeare: Lear, who is of actual royalty (a prince-in-waiting), thrives on being sucked up to (and has two sycophants who do so), and is brash, mood-swingy, and disposes of loved ones on a whim.
• Signature Mon:
  • Most trainers in the game are paired up with their most well-known Pokémon. For example: Cynthia has her Garchomp, Red has his Charizard, Whitney has her Miltank, and Brock has his Onix. A few, however, didn't have a signature to begin with (the most obvious being Factory Heads Noland and Thorton, who don't even have set teams in their home games due to Battle Factory rulesets using random rental Pokémon) or use a Pokémon other than their famous one; for instance Lt. Surge uses a Voltorb/Electrode instead of his Raichu (likely due to Hau already having dibs on Alolan Raichu and the player having Pikachu, which has the potential to evolve), and Lusamine uses a Pheromosa instead of her Bewear (justified in-game during a sub-area in the Family Ties event in that it came to Lusamine out of nowhere and had been with her since).
  • Darach's appearances in the Battle Villa and Chapter 27 may be a subversion; he is paired up with Houndoom and Gallade, respectively, both Pokémon he has when you challenge him in the Battle Castle in Platinum/HeartGold/SoulSilver. When he became playable, he uses Staraptor, another Pokémon he used in those games.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: The Sygna Suit, a specially-made costume produced by a mysterious fashion designer in Pasio (and thus exclusive to this game) for certain sync pairs on special occasions.
  • Brock gets his in the interlude between Chapters 10 and 11 of the PML Arc, indicating his shift from the role of mentor to teammate.
  • Elesa's purpose for coming to Pasio was to seek said fashion designer and obtain a Sygna Suit of her own. She gets one prior to Chapter 24 of the PML Arc.
  • Grimsley, having been knocked out of the PML in Chapter 15, is convinced by Will and Karen to join their team and re-enter, and obtains a Sygna Suit to signify his change of allegiance.
  • Cynthia gets her first one during the "New World Dilemma" event, after she decided that she has to get serious in order to defeat Cyrus. She gets a second one paired with Giratina during the Sinnoh Villain Arc.
  • Blue and Leaf get theirs during the one year anniversary event, and they are implied to have changed into them to join a team with Red.
  • Averted with Red, who's already in his Sygna Suit in all his appearances in the game from the start.
  • During the Villain Arc, Cyrus, Giovanni and Lysandre get their own Sygna Suits. While it's unknown how Cyrus got one, Giovanni specifically states during the Johto chapter that he got inspired by the concept and had his own one made, and Lysandre's was made using Team Flare's own research.
• Skill Tree: The Sync Grids system allows a Sync Pair to have additional stat buffs and abilities from a hexagonal grid, which starts from the centre and branches out to other nodes. However, the available nodes are limited by the Sync Pair's move level (the grid usually fully opens up at Level 3 while some powerful pairs have Level 5 nodes) and each node costs energy depending on its value while some lower-end pairs barely have a grid outside of the free 6 minor buffs from the centre. You can save up to four presets for the right situation.
• Starter Mon: The player character starts out with Pikachu, and Brock and Misty (and their Onix and Starmie) also join immediately so as to make a three-pair team. Rosa and her Snivy and Whitney and her Miltank also come pretty darn close, as they join you at the end of the Forced Tutorial section before you download the rest of the game data. Also, in the first egg update, the player could get one of the Kanto Starters.
• Stat Overflow: The game gives you 200 Stamina as a login bonus, invariably taking you over the cap, and some paid bundles also come with extra Stamina. While there's a hard cap of 999 Stamina, anything you earn beyond that goes into a "Temp Storage" area to be collected once you do run out.
• Stealth Sequel: Giovanni's special event reveal that Pasio is where Rainbow Rocket Giovanni ended up directly after the events of Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, and he is still plotting to take over the world.
• Sudden Name Change: The Buddy Moves were renamed in an update from B Moves to having different names such as Sygna Suit Mina's B Protect becoming Sea Deity Protect.
• Suddenly Speaking:
  • Nearly every former Heroic Mime protagonist in the series appears her and has spoken dialogue.
  • Red is a double subversion, remaining quiet as usual. His general speechlessness is lampshaded by Flint during his Sync Pair Story, but as a shocking first for Red, he actually speaks written dialogue — saying "Words are unnecessary!" when Flint asks how he commands his Pokémon if he barely ever talks. Turns out Red and his Pokémon are so in sync that his gestures tell them exactly what they need to know.
• Suddenly Voiced: Since the main series games lack voice acting, virtually all characters in the game make their voice acted debut (not counting their anime counterparts, who often have different backgrounds and don't follow the games quite as closely). Special mention goes to Red, who is more faithful to his main series self than the version of him in Super Smash Bros. He has a voice, but only grunts.
• Super Mode: Some sync pairs have the ability to Mega Evolve or change to an alternate form upon using their sync moves.
  • The Mega Evolution persists after using the sync move and enhances the Pokémon and may change their moveset. In some cases, a more powerful and/or practical move replaces one of the Pokémon's attack move slots. The drawback is that Mega Evolution sync moves have weaker base power than the other sync moves. For some trainers like Karen and Agatha, this game marks their first time using Mega Evolution (as the mechanic did not exist in their original games). These additions are noticeable considering some trainers that have used Mega Evolution in their home games, like Drake and Brendan, lack the ability to do so here, though Brendan would get the ability to Mega Evolve Sceptile in June 2023.
  • During the Villain Arc, Giovanni and Zinnia receive upgrades which allow them to Mega Evolve their Mewtwo and Rayquaza respectively, without sacrificing their sync move power. The currency required to unlock these upgrades are locked behind time-limited events.
  • Sygna Suit Lusamine's Dusk Mane Necrozma and Sygna Suit Serena's 50% Forme Zygade transform into Ultra Necrozma and Complete Forme Zygarde respectively upon using their sync moves. However, unlike most sync pairs with Mega Evolutions, the base power of their sync moves are not lowered, and their transformations multiply all their stats by 1.2, while Mega-Evolving sync pairs only increase certain stats.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The "Blazing Battle with Ash" event has Ash having his Dracovish use Fishious Rend on Scottie/Bettie's frozen Torchic.
• Thinking Up Portals: The majority of time-misplaced trainers who ended up in Pasio were all brought over by Lear's Hoopa using its rings either by Lear's orders or Hoopa's usual mischief. Furthermore, this also explains why many characters appear as they were met but haven't aged a day next to others, explaining the reason why the Kanto trainers appear as their kid selves rather than being full-grown adults.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: When Chairman Rose and Oleana appear on Pasio, this confuses the Galar gang, because they distinctly recall that their Chairman Rose was defeated and willingly surrendered, and when they allude to events like the Darkest Day or the fact Rose should be serving community service, all this does is get confusion from Rose and Oleana. It turns out that whatever or whoever pulled this Rose and Oleana pulled them specifically from before they were able to carry out the Darkest Day, and it is further implied that it's specifically from the same timeline and not simply an Alternate Universe.
• Title Scream: Whenever the title screen art changes, one of the featured characters will call out the game's title.
• Totally Radical: An Ace Trainer in Chapter 23 tries to talk like this — key word being tries. His teammates find him very embarrassing, and he manages to horrify several passerby before you put him out of his misery.
  "I'm dope and phat and fly, right? I'm dope and phat and fly... right?!"
• Trailers Always Lie: Red and Ash never do fight each other in the "Blazing Battle with Ash" special event. In the event proper, Ash never does see Red, but Red is able to sense him from afar and sees his battle against the player character, but he leaves when everything is over. Leaf notes that Red wishes to fight Ash, but the event ends there with both never seeing each other.
  • Ironically, despite not being shown battling in the trailer, Cynthia is the one who fights Red in their own story event secluded from Ash's.
• Training from Hell: Red puts the young trainers he's mentoring through this in the Kanto Neo Champion event, going at them with his full strength and defeating them over and over. This actually works, as Red eventually beats the fear of losing out of them, so they can focus fully on enjoying their battles without worrying about the outcome.
• Transmutation: The Type Shift passive skills, inspired from the Refrigerate/Aerilate/Pixilate/Galvanize/Normalize abilities from the mainline games, changes Normal-type moves to any other type to make up for types that don't have high power moves, such as Bug Shift Hyper Beam on Alder & Volcarona.
• Uncatty Resemblance: Invoked by the fashion designer behind the Sygna Suits, who specifically tries to incorporate a Pokémon's design into its Trainer's outfit. A notable example is Elesa's, which has Rotom wings attached to it.
• The Unfought: Zigzagged. The PML arc has a team consisting of Sygna Suit Red, Blue, and Cynthia. You never get to fight this team at all - presumably, they somehow lost in a round offscreen. But you do get to fight each of the team members in different teams. Cynthia is fought in the quarterfinals alongside Darach and Caitlin - but, oddly enough, in her own Sygna Suit. Meanwhile, Red and Blue team up with Leaf and the latter two get their own Sygna Suits, becoming the Final Boss of the arc.
• Video Game Delegation Penalty: You can have your team battle automatically. However, not only does the auto battle AI suffer from severe Artificial Stupidity, it can only use one move where you could have queued up three if you were controlling your team directly.
• Villain Protagonist:
  • Giovanni openly states that he is still planning his evil schemes, and the player only allows him to join the party so they can keep an eye on him. True to his own words, he moves on with his plans after the PML's conclusion.
  • Zinnia borders on the Anti-Villain shades, like her counterpart in Delta Episode of Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. She Defrosts in the latter half of her Legendary Event "The Dragon that Rules the Sky" story arc, though.
  • The player in the Team Rocket episode, having been utterly convinced Jessie and James are truly good guys. Jessie later joins the player's team to leech off of them until she can go chase Celebi again. Even after the truth is revealed, they're willing to work with them still since they can tell Jessie and James care for their partners, although they also note they still plan to stop any schemes they try enacting.
    • Taken to new levels in the "Blasting Off Again" event: you actually play as James for most of it, and there's an entire sequence where you get to sneak through a fireworks festival and steal other Sync Pairs' Pokémon, including your own Pikachu.
  • Cyrus, like Giovanni, openly states that he still plans to destroy and remake the world. Unlike Giovanni, absolutely no explanation is given for why he decides to join up with the player; his event doesn't even show him asking to do so. Ditto for Ghetsis after he does so as well.
• Villains Out Shopping:
  • If you add Villain-type Sync Pairs like Giovanni or Ghetsis to your favorites list, they'll casually hang around the Pokémon Center, hold (slightly) friendly conversations and potentially be the Sync Pair who gives you your free daily item.
  • In the "A Pasio Spectacle" event, Maxie is seen at the volcano with his Groudon, who is happily playing in the lava.
• Voice for the Voiceless: Flint does most of the talking on Red's behalf in "A Day With Sygna Suit Red".
• The Voiceless:
  • Red, almost completely, though. Besides grunting, he only says one line.
  • Courtney, Tabitha, Shelly, and Matt are this when they show up at the end of the "Masters of Land and Sea" story event, indicating that they were not ready to be released as sync pairs yet.
• Wham Line: Red isn't one for talking, so on the rare occasions he does speak, it has this effect.
  Red: Words are unnecessary!
• Wham Shot: At the end of Rei and Akari's introduction arc, Rei and Giratina are helping Cynthia investigate some ruins, only for both of them to suddenly start noticing something strange occuring. Rei internally wonders if what he's suspecting is true before leaving with Cynthia... and then, we see a Togepi, Volo's Signature Mon, scurry past...
• Yank the Dog's Chain: The "Father or Foe" event has Ghetsis swearing to N that he's changed his ways and wanting them to have a real relationship as father and son. N is conflicted about what to do, but eventually decides to give Ghetsis a chance to prove that he really has changed. He hasn't, gaining N's trust was just a part of his latest plan.
• You Have Failed Me: In the PML Arc, Lear uses a Staraptor in his second boss battle. When asked about the Krookodile he used last time, he says he released it as punishment for losing to Red's Charizard and tying against Iris' Haxorus. Then after that gets beaten, he’s shown using a Donphan to fight Team Break. When Cheren then beats his Donphan in Interlude 5, he clearly anticipates this reaction from Lear, as the very first thing he says is to assure him that the loss wasn't Donphan's fault and that it fought well. Lear's attitude starts to change, as seen in Interlude 6, where Lear, in a failed attempt to stop a horde of Team Break members, uses all three Pokémon he commanded throughout the story.
• Writers Suck: Whenever James hits maximum level, he says, "No one can stop us now! Not even the writers!"
• You Can Talk?: During the "Double Trouble" event, when Team Rocket's Meowth first speaks to the player, they can have this reaction. Oddly enough, Meowth doesn’t acknowledge the player’s startled response.
• Zero-Effort Boss: Subverted with Hapu. Unlike the other PML leaders, who have to be fought for a badge, Hapu gives you hers for free on account of you standing up to Team Break and then battles you anyway for funsies.

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