Pokétheories/Headcanons

[Orion☆]

Lineages and family-related headcanons are in order!

-Although it seems that there is no ancestor to Roark and Byron in PLA... there is: it's Charm. She is related to both Bertha and Agatha - and Bertha is Byron's mother, the wife of the Underground Man, and Roark's grandmother.
-Arezu is a direct descendant of the Diamond Clan founder who looks like R/S/E!Maxie. In turn, she will count not only Mars of Team Galactic among her descendants, but also OR/AS!Maxie, Ariana, and Silver. Maxie, Ariana and Mars are all siblings, born in that order, and Ariana is Silver's mother, but we all know that already even though it was never officially confirmed.
-Iscan and Palina both unofficially adopted the PLA protagonist and had biological kids of their own. Some of their descendants moved to Hoenn and started what would eventually become Team Aqua. (Not sure who would be related by blood to them though - Archie, Shelly, Matt, two of them, or all three.) Marlon also descends from them, which would perfectly explain his "the sea accepts all rivers" approach to life.
-Cyrus's sh!tty upbringing was a direct, and quite likely unintended, result of the reputation Cyllene built as Commander of the Galaxy Expedition Team. She was known for keeping her cool no matter how much was thrown at her, so her descendants aspired to be like her and then passed on the same philosophy to their own descendants, corrupting it in the process.

And one that will almost certainly be proven wrong when Scarlet/Violet come out, not that it isn't a crack theory already:
-Geeta is an Inteleon wearing a human disguise, and Chairman Rose's original starter that he, for some reason, abandoned. She took on a similar appearance to that of Rose and Peony's late mother, and her "team" is really a clowder of similarly abandoned or discarded Pokémon who wanted to make it big, like the Town Musicians of Bremen. In short, she is using her mad spy skills to be loved and appreciated despite her off-putting appearance... although she does, deep down, want to humilliate Rose, not knowing that he has already done that to himself.

 

[Poke fan number 489]

-Guns exist, but using them seems less useful when that ten year old owns god.
-Mewtwo was asleep before you challenge them, and they were just grumpy. Same reason for why they attacked in game. (Disclaimer: Doesn't work for the anime.)
-Victini was made to beat things like Giratina. It's the main reason Arceus would make a Pokémon stronger then them.
-Red secretly has a seventh Pokémon on Mt Silver. A alakazam so he can warm up.
-Oak is a terrible father figure. It might just be canon.
-Galar is the weakest region trainer wise. This is because of most, non-player, people failing at Kabu, thus making them give up, and making other never try.
-The ranking of the Champions from worst to best goes like this.
Trace
(Lance, Alder, Wallace, Steven)
Iris
Blue
(Cynthia and Leon)
If they're in parenthesis I'm not certain on their placement. Player characters are too hard to judge. Not certain on this.

 

[Duck]

Here are some takes I've accrued across the years that I think I haven't seen on this thread before:

- Gengar is Clefable's shadow
- The existence of malasadas imply that Pokémon Portugal exists somewhere out there in the word, probably bordering Paldea

And here's the borderline unhinged one that I came up in like five minutes:

- The existence of Unova and Alola (Pokémon America) and the throwaway mention of Pokémon India (via Copperajah, and possibly Gumshoos) implies that Galar was seafaring and encountered many other countries.

This might tie in with "The War" and explain some things like:
~ why Unova only has native Pokémon in BW (they were mostly isolated)
~ why they started to get more Pokémon in BW2 (relaxed borders after BW, maybe due to PWT or Pokestar Studios and some Pokemon were smuggled in and became invasive species)
~ why Surge is an "American Soldier" (Unovan that kinda ended up in Pokemon Japan after the war)

And would tie in with Galar already having some revisionist history.

Here's one that makes a disturbing amount of sense when thinking about it, hence why I don't want to think about it. Koga isn't really a native Kantonian, he's just a non-PokéJapan foreigner appropriating the ninja arts for who knows what purpose. I hope to Arceus he isn't, but the fact he has a fake Japanese accent both in the anime and in the English version of Masters (whereas his daughter doesn't have one in the latter) is... concerning. He also speaks with an odd accent in the Japanese original, probably antiquated linguistics. I'd really like to think this is just a standard "jokingly slander your fave" kind of theory my brain came up with, but the amount of sense it makes after seeing a certain someone in PLA is tearing me apart. ;_;

Very late but since you're still commenting on the thread I though I'd comment on this.

The odd accent is probably the "samurai accent" (and antiquated linguistics, yeah).

Basically there's a very stereotypical way for samurai / ninja to speak in Japanese period dramas and before Naruto happened, it wasn't uncommon to have ninja / samurai characters speak in those antiquated speech "accents".

Plus, every so often Japanese media just has characters that speak weird for no particular reason. Think Naruto's "-ttebayo" which means absolutely nothing and so translators made do with filler sentences like "Believe it." or "ya know" to fill the dead air / add to the vibe that Naruto is a loud and talkative person.

The intended effect to Japanese audiences was probably just making as obvious as possible that Koga's a ninja.

I guess the analogy to international audiences would be something more like "Koga is a Ren Faire Nerd and he speaks in Old English everywhere because he's a cartoon character. Janine is also a Ren Faire Nerd but since she's associated to Koga, who is not subtle at all, she can be more understated."

It wouldn't surprise me if the Japanese accent in Masters was the translation team trying to localize his ninja speak, since Koga doesn't speak like most people and some other character probably commented on his archaic ninja speak.

 

[EmTheGhost]

Oh boy. Headcanons are my heart and soul, and I'm not sure which of my thoughts to include here as "headcanons/theories" as opposed to straight-out fanfiction 😅 But I'll try. First, the shorter headcanons, which I judge as more "interpretation" than "theory" and/or which are not original to me...

Spoiler:

*In the compicated discourse on which legendary/mythical Pokemon are unique and which are species, I believe that Mew is a species - BUT, whichever Mew you get in any version of the Kanto games (Mew glitch, event, etc.) is the same one that "gave birth" to Mewtwo as described in the Cinnabar Lab journals. Y-you did it, you reunited Mew with its child 🥺
*Steven Stone has met a Latias and/or Latias before, perhaps in childhood - I thought this when he A) seemed weirdly unfazed when Latias/Latios showed up during the Southern Island event & B) gave the player the Eon Flute and called it "one of his favorite items".
*I had the headcanon that the Arceus you catch in-game is just one avatar of the creator Pokemon long before it was confirmed in Legends, so that makes me happy.
*A theory I've seen floating around occasionally is Arceus being an Ultra Beast. I'm intrigued by this, and would come down on the side of sometimes that's a headcanon I adopt and sometimes not - but my interpretation would be that its egg somehow fell through from "Arceus-universe" into the nothingness that would become the Pokemon universe, and Arceus doesn't know and completely "believes its own hype" about being a unique being that spawned in the empty poke-universe.
*Diantha went on her Pokemon journey at roughly the same time as the player character - she never got the chance to go on one in her youth due to focusing on her acting career, so she took a sabbatical to finally pursue this dream in adulthood. When you met her in Lumiose & Coumarine, she was just finishing up in those cities, and she became champion shortly before the player character, sorta like Blue.
*The biggest one that I'm just never gonna change my mind on 😅 sorry is that Solgaleo/Lunala having "no will of its own" in the Dusk Mane/Dawn Wings Necrozma fusion only applies to when it happens the "natural" way, such as in the climax of the games, and the point of the N-Solarizer/Lunarizer is to make it a more symbiotic thing. Furthermore, I always thought that the reason Nebby sympathized enough with Necrozma to agree to this whole thing, despite everything, is because of the similarities in Necrozma's backstory and what happened to Nebby in the Aether Foundation climax (i.e. used by humans for their powers, drained and transformed into a broken form).
*(The headcanon that goes along with the above is that, due to how much of their life they spent on Pokeearth, Nebby didn't know that the Cosmoem stage was a natural part of their species' life cycle. Even outside of the above theory, I just prefer the story that way - the fear of that unexplained transformation being as real for Nebby as it was for the human characters.)
*...This is a dark one, but one I'm definitely not the only one to think of: I'm pretty sure Rainbow Rocket timeline Ghetsis killed N. 😟 I mean, we don't really know what happened to him, MAYBE Ghetsis just stole his legendary dragon and let him walk away, but...
*This is not my original idea, I've read it in various places elsewhere, but I love it - the electric raptor Pokemon that makes up half of Dracozolt & Arctozolt is a distant ancestor of Pikachu. (The cheeks!)
*When the protagonist of Mystery Dungeon: Explorers was human, they used to habitually pick up objects they found lying around - not just the useful items, but anything shiny/pretty/unique, sorta like found object collecting in real life - as a way of finding beauty in the bleakness of their post-apocalyptic world. The story behind this headcanon is that I'd always dawdle about looking for items in the dungeons (because who doesn't?), and during the first sections where you're with Grovyle and he's basically just at the end of his patience with you and your partner, I jokingly thought how awkward I must be making things - BUT THEN I thought wait, what if he lets it slide because it reminds him of his partner?! 🥺
*One of the few I have about the anime: Meowth and James' Yamask from the Unova season were fairly good friends - they bonded over a shared appreciation for human things. (Yamask figured it'd just make things awkward if he revealed the real reason for that...)
*Okay, second anime theory: the unnamed scientists that created the second Mewtwo in M16 were actually Team Rainbow Rocket.
*And a third, significantly more off-the-wall one - and, this theory is not mine, I saw it somewhere else that I cannot recall - Tobias from the Sinnoh league is not a real person. No, that's not just a novel insult towards the character 😅 think about it: Darkrai & Latios are both Pokemon that could be associated with illusions (Dakrai being a dream Pokemon and seemingly creating an illusion of a human man during its event in the game, Latios being a Psychic type and its "sister-species" being well known for making a human disguise), and this guy just shows up out of nowhere with no backstory before the gym challenge, looking almost exactly like his main Pokemon...what if this Darkrai & Latios duo just decided they were tired of humans running the battle scene, made an illusory avatar and swept through the league?? (Pretty off-the-wall theory, I know, but it's pretty much my actual accepted Tobias backstory ever since I saw it. ^_^")

And now, three more "out-there" theories that, as far as I can tell, I'm the first one to come up with:

Eternatus is not the originator of Dynamax

Spoiler:

So, if I have my Sw/Sh story right, Eternatus crashed down on a meteor 3,000 years ago, and brought Dynamax power to earth - but, until it was contained underground, it caused Pokemon to Dynamax uncontrollably and lose their conscious minds with rage. So - if this is the case, what makes us think Eternatus was the "source" to begin with? It certainly acts similar to the uncontrollable Pokemon on the Darkest Day, and one could think of it as "permanently Dynamaxed" given its size and inability to Dynamax any further...My headcanon is that Eternatus used to be a "normal" alien Pokemon (i.e. not colossal, glowing red and skeletal), but it turned into what it is today after a meteor crashed down to its world bearing its own Darkest-Day causing alien Pokemon, but in this case, without any heroes good enough to fight it. Had either of Galar's Darkest Days not been stopped, eventually the perma-Dynamaxed Pokemon there would've started to look like giant, glowing skeletons of themselves as well - and then, whenever just one inevitably made it off the planet on a stray piece of space debris or whatever, the cycle would continue throughout the universe...
(I'm admittedly not sure how the Eternamax form fits into this theory, though ^_^")

Gym Leader Valerie is a Ditto

Spoiler:

She says all that about "always wanting to be a Pokemon" either because she doesn't know her true nature, or as a coded way of expressing her feelings about pretending to be something she's not, whichever you prefer. Details in support include her strange looking nearly all-black eyes (so, she's good enough at the transformation to not have the •‿• face, but still didn't get it quite right), and her status as a Fairy type gym leader (even though Ditto isn't one) - think of the changeling myth!

Regigigas is a Pokemon-human hybrid

Spoiler:

I warned you it'd be out-there See, the Canalave library (in the same region Regigigas was introduced) famously mentions humans marrying Pokemon in the ancient past, and Regigigas feels sorta like a Pokemon that represents the concept of humans in some ways (being Normal type, having a form that feels humanoid at a glance but looks distorted the more you look at it, it creating the Regis which represent Golems, making it the only <i>Pokemon</i> to create artificial Pokemon) - but the main thing that draws me to this theory is the thematic connection. Forgive me if I'm getting anything wrong, but, the Hoenn legendaries already have golems (the first three regis) and Behemoth, Leviathan & Ziz (the weather trio)...with this theory, a connection is drawn between Regigigas and the concept of Nephilim (half-human hybrids that are also described as giants). Again, I'm no expert and this might just not make sense, but it was an interesting connection that jumped out as this theory was forming...

 

[Oskeo]

I can't wait to make some character headcanons, now that I'm paying attention, but here are a few that came to mind right away.

• Pokerus is caused by an array of Virus Type Pokemon that have been partially named and discovered, but this pokedex was not released to the public.
  
• In the depths of Mt. Silver...
  
  Spoiler:

  Red is hiding there with his Pokemon because he is disillusioned and demoralized soon after completing the League challenge.
  
  He realizes it's a sport to enrich the lives of motivated children and collect research data, and his dreams of being the strongest and having the most complete collection were impossible because the lives of his Pokemon, the strategies he relied on, and the data he was gathering were all transient.
  
  Then Silver comes along living Red's dream in spite of those challenges. It inspires Red to travel and keep showing kindness and encouragement to the people and Pokemon he encounters, instead of hiding away and fearing the unknown. (Turned out I had more opinions on that than I thought, now that I finally put it to words.)
  
  
• Missingno is a genetic experiment similar to Ditto, created by performing a magical ritual *cough* coding script *cough* on the same nucleic mass used to produce Dittos
  
• Leon, the Champion from Galos,
  
  Spoiler:

  • Is aware he's a dork, but that's his brand
  • Is balding (It was a fun suspicion while it lasted)
  • Caused the modern Dynamax phenomenon by wishing on a star (Events kind of line up with this one but I'm less interested in it these days)
• Elsewhere, in Galos:
  
  Spoiler:

  • When Eternatus begins to unspool reality, Gloria has the childlike idea, "what a cool, powerful pokemon, I want him on my team." This is the perspective Leon lacked, and every trainer knows that what makes a good trainer is the will to treat pokemon with love.
  • Kabu is a Team Flare member that fled the region to get a fresh start away from his criminal history.

  I wish I had more ready. Pokemon has always caused my imagination to flare up, but I never thought to write down my ideas about it.

 

[PageEmp]

The 'woman' who the BW2 protagonist takes their lost phone is actually a gay man who heavilly cross dresses. No really it does look like that and I'll refuse to see otherwise.

 

[Sweet Serenity]

I remember having a theory that Erika, the Celadon City Gym Leader that specializes in Grass-type Pokémon, was a lesbian back in the day. In the anime, I recall Erika strongly not wanting males in her gym. In the games, all the trainers in her gym are female as well. When she is defeated, she provides winners with the Rainbow Badge, a well-known symbol of LGBT pride, despite rainbows having nothing to do with plants. Other than that, I don't think I have any other theories that I can recall. If I can, I will be sure to provide an update.