Darkest Pokemon Game Moments

[Palamon]

What, in your opinion are some of the darkest Pokemon game moments? Don't mention Pokedex entries here. Or romhacks/fan games.

In my opinion, those elderly people in Pokemon Ranger Guardian Signs blowing up an entire island that people lived on. In the story of Pokemon Ranger Guardian Signs these four elderly people blew up an Island known as Dolce Island. All the Pokemon and people who lived there had to evacuate to survive. Yes, this really happened in a Pokemon game.

A lot of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is honestly pretty dark. But, I find the plot of Super Mystery Dungeon to be the darkest since the sun is getting closer to the Pokemon world which is incredibly devastating and will doom their entire population.

Team Plasma freezing over an entire city with their frigate. No matter what, climate change is catastrophic and devastating.

Btw while X/Y was "dark" in ways, I actually consider it edgy, not dark.

Nothing else comes to mind right now, though, that I personally find dark.

 

[Amore]

Well obviously you've got the classic fight against a recently-murdered Marowak in RGBYFRLG...oh, and then in HGSS (unsure about the originals) they tear down Pokémon Tower, keeping only a few memorials in the new venue, in favour of a radio tower! The former is just horrifying, the latter is made worse by the fact that I can't see even my own dysfunctional government signing off on that irl.

For me, N's whole origin is basically what if Tarzan was brainwashed by a Bond villain? He's permanently messed up, and given their common appearances its highly likely that rather than just adopting a child from the woods Ghetsis had deliberately abandoned him for a few years (probably whilst taking the mother for a nap with the fishes) before taking him back in and raising him as a child soldier. Oh, and then when N actually fulfils his "destiny" and befriends the legendary pokémon, Ghetsis first betrays him by attacking the trainer of the other legendary, then again by torturing N's legendary in merging it with a brainwashed Kyurem! Given N can talk to pokémon, whatever Zekrom says during that process has got to be heart-rending.

 

[Zeostar]

Team Rocket murdering a Marowack in the Pokemon Tower.

 

[_confused_piplup_]

Hmm not sure those can be considered good examples, but a part from the things said before, only two events come up to my mind:

- Cyrus' grandad basically saying that his parents expected too much from him, which is basically some psychological child abuse. It makes sense because that brings Cyrus to isolate from others and have very distorted ideas about human kind and emotions.

- Guardian Lakes caught in the Team Galactic's secret lab. It's clear they are suffering and it gets even worse with the background music and with the NPCs saying that they were forced to do these experiments.

Well, a honorable mention would be the main character in DPPT catching Dialga and/or Palkia, basically causing the loss of these two legendaries' powers and probably a time-space distortion, if the things written in Cyrus' computer were real lol

 

[Orion☆]

I concur with the one about Marowak. It is easy to miss, but this is the moment that establishes from the get-go that certain people are willing to kill Pokémon if it serves their nefarious purposes. The Slowpoke Well incident is the same, except non-lethal for the Pokémon involved.

(Bonus: It's more or less implied across canons that the one behind both incidents is the same person - the sadistic Proton. Again, this isn't something brought up often when people talk about the most evil Pokémon villains but hoo boy is he a piece of work.)

Any instances of parents abusing/neglecting their children falls into dark territory too. Not just Ghetsis using N as a pawn mentioned above, but also Giovanni walking out on Silver in HG/SS and all the nasty stuff Lusamine did to Lillie and Gladion in the Alola games (especially in the original S/M. Sheesh.)

Lastly, one I haven't seen mentioned is the implication that people can and will disappear from their world if it suits a higher being's purposes, or just by random chance - and worse, lose their memories of pretty much everything short of their own name. With all the Men in Black shenanigans, it glossed over in Looker and Anabel's case, but it was finally hammered home with Ingo and the protagonist (who may or may not be Lucas/Dawn) in PLA. They may be strong Trainers (and a competent investigator in Looker's case), but holy hell, why take them away pretty much permanently from their homes and loved ones without so much a warning!?

 

[ReKoil]

Silver comes to mind.
He steals a starter Pokemon and treats all his Pokemon like expendable trash.
There's also Giovanni abandoning Silver in HGSS as already mentioned.

In X/Y, Geosenge Town pretty much just gets destroyed and never rebuild. I can't remember if any of the resident people or Pokemon get hurt or die, but nobody bothers with rebuilding the town @_@

 

[Drayton]

A guy probably snooping you and the professor in New Bark town, eventually stealing pokemon from the lab and attempt to stop team rocket since he's father is also former team rocket that red twarted in the past. He seems edgy at first and use pokemon as a tool. Fan games thought me more about Silver past.

Infamous part was Marowak murderer, that's why the ghost appear in the pokemon tower until put to rest.

N been used by Gensis for his motive, imagine just brainwashing your son or kid for doing bad deeds.. YOUCH

PMD have more darker than you think, XY seems just EDGY than dark. Rebuilding new world kinda conquest.

 

[Sheep]

The Abandoned Ship/Sea Mauville in ORAS I've always viewed as being particularly dark, especially with half of it sticking out of the water like that. Really depressing. Of course there's Ghetsis trying to kill you also.... not very surprising for him but still grim. :s

 

[Palamon]

How in the world did I forget about Team Rocket killing a Marowak... I feel so dumb right now. That is one of, if not, the most horrifying thing in all of Pokemon, if I'm being honest since Marowak's ghost cursed all of Lavender Town, I'm willing to bet. Not a theory, or anything, but.

This isn't really super dark or anything, but remember when Team Plasma kicked that poor Muuna in Black/White? Claiming they're liberating all Pokemon from people to free them but then they go and turn around abusing a Muuna in the Dreamyard. :| I feel things would have been a lot worse for that poor Pokemon if Musharna hadn't come in and did that illusion with its Dream Mist.

Also, I mentioned this in my op about PMD, but.

I remembered something from time/darkness/sky. The entire Darkrai plot where Darkrai posed as Cresselia in the player character's dreams. Telling you that you and your partner "don't belong in this world" and trying to convince you and your partner Pokemon to be erased from existence to save the world. That was incredibly messed up and it almost worked, to the point of "Cresselia" telling Palkia about it to try and have the God of Space end you and your partner's lives. Darkrai almost succeeded in erasing you and your partner from existence, as well. I don't know how I didn't mention this instead of Super Mystery Dungeon Time/Darkness/Sky's plot was dark in a lot of it.

 

[Duck]

I guess the darkest thing that comes to mind is the pervasive sense that there are no laws in Pokemon (even if theoretically we do have a police force).

In Kanto, someone breaks into a house, leaves a clear trail of the path they took, and the police stands uselessly not doing any investigation.

In Johto, Lance has his Dragonite Hyper Beam a person with zero care for the fact that could kill a person.

In Hoenn, the artificial climate change, Mt. Pyre robbery and submarine robbery would go completely unpunished if the protagonist didn't exist or didn't happen to know where to go next / the teams were a little bit more competent.

But perhaps the situation with the biggest feeling of hopelessness is the fact that Team Plasma commits a terrorist attack at the league, there is a whole group of grunts that were apparently never prosecuted and are just chilling in Driftveil saying they're redeemed while completely ignoring the damage they were accessory to (at best, assuming they weren't outright perpetrators) and then Black Plasma levels a city and the gym leader the next town over basically says "I don't care, I'm nice to everybody." and there is no other adult figure that can help fight the bad guys.

It's up for two 15 year olds and one 18 year old to save the day. A 20 something shows up for 15 minutes, but it's just to discuss his daddy issues and then fly away having done nothing of substance.

 

[Palamon]

I guess the darkest thing that comes to mind is the pervasive sense that there are no laws in Pokemon (even if theoretically we do have a police force).

That's... pretty dark. I can only recall two arrests in the entire franchise being Charon in Platinum, and the Seven Sages in Black/White. There really are no laws, indeed...

 

[Nah]

I think it's less that there's no laws in the Pokemon world and more that the police are completely inept and no other (competent) forces/organizations/whatever the right word is exist, even after all this time.

Still relatively dark though, in that basically any particular region or even the entire world just has to hope that there always conveniently happens to be a prodigy between the ages of 10-16 around that can single-handedly take care of any mafia or calamity that comes. Because they literally have no other options and are fucked if there isn't one.

 

[Orion☆]

I think it's less that there's no laws in the Pokemon world and more that the police are completely inept and no other (competent) forces/organizations/whatever the right word is exist, even after all this time.

Still relatively dark though, in that basically any particular region or even the entire world just has to hope that there always conveniently happens to be a prodigy between the ages of 10-16 around that can single-handedly take care of any mafia or calamity that comes. Because they literally have no other options and are fucked if there isn't one.

I was going to bring this up as well. What is actually even darker about this is the layer of realism that this brings to the games, because we live in a time where law enforcement is incompetent most of the time, criminals from all walks of life get away with any crime, and the wrong people get unfairly punished. I do agree that the punishments for the evil teams could be much tougher, though - and proportional to the nature of their crimes. Sure, Charon, Xerosic and the Sages were arrested, Rose turned himself in and Ghetsis is incapacitated at best and dead at worst... but, for crying out loud, RR episode happened because no one bothered to arrest Giovanni or Faba!