- Joined
- Sep 28, 2023
- Messages
- 2,747
- Reaction score
- 358
- Pronouns
- She/Her
- It/Its
- Any
Specifically, it was one of the grunts at Slateport Harbor that Archie and Shelly sic on you to buy time while they escape with the submarine. The grunt said, "I can fight like Poseidon even on land!" And after I predictably annihilated him, he said, "Poseidon is not so good at battles on land!"
This reference to Poseidon has interesting implications. We know that many Legendary Pokémon are revered as gods, and to my knowledge, gods that are explicitly not Pokémon are never mentioned.
Now, in the early generations, the games made occasional references to places in our world. For instance, Mew was found in the jungles of Guyana, a Silph Co. Scientist complains about having been sent to the Tiksi Branch in "Russian no-man's-land" (and yes, Tiksi is an actual settlement on the Arctic coast in Siberia, near the Lena River, the Soviets built two military airfields there, and to this day it is the northernmost settlement with a population of over 5,000 people), and Arcanine's PokéDex entries state that it is revered in Chinese legend as late as Heart Gold. Heck, the Pokémon world's Kanto directly takes its name from its equivalent in our world. But by Gen 6, most such references had been phased out, indicating that Pokémon takes place not in an alternate version of our world, but in a completely different world with little in common with our world: not its history (for a start, Unova, Galar, and Paldea seem far less imperialist than their real world counterparts, though granted the latter two regions did not yet exist), not its geography (last I checked, New York City and France don't have deserts smack dab in the middle of them), not its mythology (we don't hear about Arcanine being revered in certain parts of the world again until Sun, which only describes it as appearing in "ancient Eastern folklore," clearly evoking China but distancing itself from the actual place), not in any respect, aside from the now seemingly inexplicable existence of Nintendo and Game Freak that continues even in Scarlet and Violet.
I don't think they started actively retconning direct references to our world until Gen 7 (see the Arcanine example above), but they were definitely moving towards that in Gen 6. Which makes this reference to Poseidon all the more curious. It suggests that either a people in the world of Pokémon venerated a humanoid god of the sea in Poseidon, or a people worshipped a Legendary Pokémon like Kyogre or Lugia and referred to it as Poseidon for one reason or another. Perhaps there was even some syncretism involved, either between multiple Pokémon or between a Pokémon and a non-Pokémon deity. And in any case, whoever worshipped Poseidon had enough influence on global culture that someone in Hoenn, which is based on Kyushu in Japan and thus has almost nothing to do with Greece, would casually refer to him. (Granted, again, the Pokémon world's geography is different to ours, but there are still enough similarities, such as a China-like region being associated with "the East", that I find it unlikely that Hoenn and a hypothetical Greece-inspired region would be much more closely related.) Like, imagine if someone in Paldea or something made a similarly casual reference to Susanoo, the traditional Japanese god of the sea.
Also, side note regarding the comment that "Poseidon is not so good at battles on land!" Poseidon was also closely associated with earthquakes, so the grunt is mistaken on this front. He just sucks at battling. Plus, a single Mightyena doesn't exactly evoke the wrath of Poseidon.
This reference to Poseidon has interesting implications. We know that many Legendary Pokémon are revered as gods, and to my knowledge, gods that are explicitly not Pokémon are never mentioned.
Now, in the early generations, the games made occasional references to places in our world. For instance, Mew was found in the jungles of Guyana, a Silph Co. Scientist complains about having been sent to the Tiksi Branch in "Russian no-man's-land" (and yes, Tiksi is an actual settlement on the Arctic coast in Siberia, near the Lena River, the Soviets built two military airfields there, and to this day it is the northernmost settlement with a population of over 5,000 people), and Arcanine's PokéDex entries state that it is revered in Chinese legend as late as Heart Gold. Heck, the Pokémon world's Kanto directly takes its name from its equivalent in our world. But by Gen 6, most such references had been phased out, indicating that Pokémon takes place not in an alternate version of our world, but in a completely different world with little in common with our world: not its history (for a start, Unova, Galar, and Paldea seem far less imperialist than their real world counterparts, though granted the latter two regions did not yet exist), not its geography (last I checked, New York City and France don't have deserts smack dab in the middle of them), not its mythology (we don't hear about Arcanine being revered in certain parts of the world again until Sun, which only describes it as appearing in "ancient Eastern folklore," clearly evoking China but distancing itself from the actual place), not in any respect, aside from the now seemingly inexplicable existence of Nintendo and Game Freak that continues even in Scarlet and Violet.
I don't think they started actively retconning direct references to our world until Gen 7 (see the Arcanine example above), but they were definitely moving towards that in Gen 6. Which makes this reference to Poseidon all the more curious. It suggests that either a people in the world of Pokémon venerated a humanoid god of the sea in Poseidon, or a people worshipped a Legendary Pokémon like Kyogre or Lugia and referred to it as Poseidon for one reason or another. Perhaps there was even some syncretism involved, either between multiple Pokémon or between a Pokémon and a non-Pokémon deity. And in any case, whoever worshipped Poseidon had enough influence on global culture that someone in Hoenn, which is based on Kyushu in Japan and thus has almost nothing to do with Greece, would casually refer to him. (Granted, again, the Pokémon world's geography is different to ours, but there are still enough similarities, such as a China-like region being associated with "the East", that I find it unlikely that Hoenn and a hypothetical Greece-inspired region would be much more closely related.) Like, imagine if someone in Paldea or something made a similarly casual reference to Susanoo, the traditional Japanese god of the sea.
Also, side note regarding the comment that "Poseidon is not so good at battles on land!" Poseidon was also closely associated with earthquakes, so the grunt is mistaken on this front. He just sucks at battling. Plus, a single Mightyena doesn't exactly evoke the wrath of Poseidon.