• A new LGBTQ+ forum is now being trialed and there have been changes made to the Support and Advice forum. To read more about these updates, click here.
  • Hey Trainers! Be sure to check out Corsola Beach, our newest section on the forums, in partnership with our friends at Corsola Cove! At the Beach, you can discuss the competitive side of the games, post your favorite Pokemon memes, and connect with other Pokemon creators!
  • Due to the recent changes with Twitter's API, it is no longer possible for Bulbagarden forum users to login via their Twitter account. If you signed up to Bulbagarden via Twitter and do not have another way to login, please contact us here with your Twitter username so that we can get you sorted.

What are your game headcanons?

I mean... that type of territory makes literally everything meaningless. No deaths matter, no personalities matter, no actions matter, anything can be reversed (no offence to comic fans, but such stuff in Pokémon... isn’t really a good supplement to it’s already mediocre story writing).

A couple Dialgas existing simultaneously doesn’t suddenly make everything meaningless - that’s a huge leap. That’s not really the aspect of comics (the “Status Quo is God” element) that I was referring to anyway - I meant more like, they have multiple pantheons based on real gods, which should come with loads of contradictions, but they manage to coexist, because it’s fiction. You can bend it however necessary.

If Dialga are just powerful animals then it’s definitely not an issue, but even if you do take the view of them being closer to actual deities, there’s no reason there couldn’t be more than one. Dialga was created by Arceus, so you could infer an intention or an intelligent design behind it. Time is an extremely vast continuum - maybe Arceus felt that there should be multiple Dialga and Palkia in order to keep things running smoothly (never put all your eggs in one basket) or in case something happened to one of them. I mean, it’s clear from the Sinjoh Ruins event that Arceus can create more of them if it sees fit anyway.

Even more so if you think that Arceus created the entire multiverse - maybe it needed to create a spacetime trio for every universe in the multiverse.
 
A couple Dialgas existing simultaneously doesn’t suddenly make everything meaningless - that’s a huge leap. That’s not really the aspect of comics (the “Status Quo is God” element) that I was referring to anyway - I meant more like, they have multiple pantheons based on real gods, which should come with loads of contradictions, but they manage to coexist, because it’s fiction. You can bend it however necessary.
I think he's more talking about the idea of infinite multiverses, not with Dialga specifically. Comic books' approach where X is canon, but Y is also canon in another universe, and Z is canon in another universe, onward to infinity can make some people feel like it doesn't matter what the outcome of a story is, because there's thousands more out there where things might have been just slightly different, and continuity doesn't matter much when they can just change things as they like.
 
but that they have sort of done with the Pokémon multiverse - OR/AS is in a separate universe to R/S/E and I’ve seen a lot of people debate how every other game fits these two universes while ignoring the fact that US/UM implies that the heads from the evil teams in the Rainbow Rocket story have all come from universes where they succeeded - meaning there’s actually a lot of confirmed canon time lines with different events.

Throw in the anime and it’s even messier - I always thought of the anime existing in a separate universe to the games before I even understood the concept of a multiverse.


I personally find it easier to think of each game as being in its own universe to better explain why the new Pokémon were completely absent before - this is particularly the case with Gen 1 - Gen 2. How are all these Pokémon that were “recently discovered” so common in the neighbouring region when no one had any clue about them such a short time ago despite clear evidence of inter region travel?
 
A couple Dialgas existing simultaneously doesn’t suddenly make everything meaningless - that’s a huge leap. That’s not really the aspect of comics (the “Status Quo is God” element) that I was referring to anyway - I meant more like, they have multiple pantheons based on real gods, which should come with loads of contradictions, but they manage to coexist, because it’s fiction. You can bend it however necessary.

If Dialga are just powerful animals then it’s definitely not an issue, but even if you do take the view of them being closer to actual deities, there’s no reason there couldn’t be more than one. Dialga was created by Arceus, so you could infer an intention or an intelligent design behind it. Time is an extremely vast continuum - maybe Arceus felt that there should be multiple Dialga and Palkia in order to keep things running smoothly (never put all your eggs in one basket) or in case something happened to one of them. I mean, it’s clear from the Sinjoh Ruins event that Arceus can create more of them if it sees fit anyway.

Even more so if you think that Arceus created the entire multiverse - maybe it needed to create a spacetime trio for every universe in the multiverse.
@TechSkylander1518 expressed what I meant to say, I’m not specifically referring to Dialga in this context (I was not really in the mood for Dialga theories due to real life issues, and I don’t hold a strong opinion about it anyway, I’m open to new interpretations). I just hope that Pokémon doesn’t have to end up with comic book like justifications: Iron man went evil and destroyed the world, and now he’s fine again and everything is good! Someone died and came back to life for the 100th time! Such stuff, I know, adds to the charm of comic books for some, but Pokémon shouldn’t adopt that magnitude of hand waving.

I usually don’t ponder about that kind of stuff since game mechanics sometimes have to contract the "story" for gameplay purposes.
 
I personally find it easier to think of each game as being in its own universe to better explain why the new Pokémon were completely absent before - this is particularly the case with Gen 1 - Gen 2. How are all these Pokémon that were “recently discovered” so common in the neighbouring region when no one had any clue about them such a short time ago despite clear evidence of inter region travel?
I pretty much prefer to think as every save file is canon. But then again, that's so trading and version exclusives make sense.

EDIT: And the Entralink, even though the characters themselves question how it works.

@TechSkylander1518 expressed what I meant to say, I’m not specifically referring to Dialga in this context (I was not really in the mood for Dialga theories due to real life issues, and I don’t hold a strong opinion about it anyway, I’m open to new interpretations). I just hope that Pokémon doesn’t have to end up with comic book like justifications: Iron man went evil and destroyed the world, and now he’s fine again and everything is good! Someone died and came back to life for the 100th time! Such stuff, I know, adds to the charm of comic books for some, but Pokémon shouldn’t adopt that magnitude of hand waving.
Don't think they're going to rely on that. Otherwise, Lusamine would have been fixed pretty easily. Also, the changes you mention in comics are generally because they have to pull massive reboots to make the characters keep being the same, at least physically. Otherwise, Bruce Wayne would have died of old age by now.
 
I think he's more talking about the idea of infinite multiverses, not with Dialga specifically. Comic books' approach where X is canon, but Y is also canon in another universe, and Z is canon in another universe, onward to infinity can make some people feel like it doesn't matter what the outcome of a story is, because there's thousands more out there where things might have been just slightly different, and continuity doesn't matter much when they can just change things as they like.

@TechSkylander1518 expressed what I meant to say, I’m not specifically referring to Dialga in this context (I was not really in the mood for Dialga theories due to real life issues, and I don’t hold a strong opinion about it anyway, I’m open to new interpretations). I just hope that Pokémon doesn’t have to end up with comic book like justifications: Iron man went evil and destroyed the world, and now he’s fine again and everything is good! Someone died and came back to life for the 100th time! Such stuff, I know, adds to the charm of comic books for some, but Pokémon shouldn’t adopt that magnitude of hand waving.

I usually don’t ponder about that kind of stuff since game mechanics sometimes have to contract the "story" for gameplay purposes.

I get what's being worried about here, I just 1) don't think my interpretation of Legendary Pokémon has any bearing on it, I was just saying in response to BackSet that I've seen fictions, such as Marvel and DC comics (I could name other examples, I just felt like those would be the most recognizable ones), with far more bizarre free-for-all cosmologies than Pokémon merely having a couple Gods of Time or Space or whatever simultaneously, and 2) I think it's a more nuanced issue than simply having the capacity to explore other continuities through a multiverse. I mean, for all that we know, the multiverse could be an actual thing in real life (humor me here), but the fact that another me might exist in a parallel world wouldn't mean the people I matter to wouldn't be sad if something tragic happened to me. At the end of the day, the universe alone is already incomprehensibly vast, but people still matter on an individual level due to the connections we form and the bonds we share. With comics, the problem is more, as prog rocker says, that they continually reboot the IP, which makes it feel like characters can never truly experience meaningful, lasting growth, and Pokémon hasn't really used its multiverse to that end. It's only thus far exploited it for the traditional "What if things went slightly differently in another version of reality?" narrative, which I think is a valid storytelling tool that can be used to good effect (not that it necessarily was in USUM, but that's a different post for another time).
 
Last edited:
I get what's being worried about here, I just 1) don't think my interpretation of Legendary Pokémon has any bearing on it, I was just saying in response to BackSet that I've seen fictions, such as Marvel and DC comics (I could name other examples, I just felt like those would be the most recognizable ones), with far more bizarre free-for-all cosmologies than Pokémon merely having a couple Gods of Time or Space or whatever simultaneously,
Oh, I think it was DawningWinds' earlier mention of each save being alternate dimensions putting the idea of infinite verses in my mind, my bad.
I mean, for all that we know, the multiverse could be an actual thing in real life (humor me here), but the fact that another me might exist in a parallel world wouldn't mean the people I matter to wouldn't be sad if something tragic happened to me. At the end of the day, the universe alone is already incomprehensibly vast, but people still matter on an individual level due to the connections we form and the bonds we share.
I agree with that for the most part, but I feel like even this gets undermined by the idea of infinite realities. If every possibility exists in one universe or another, tragedy is just inevitable- if you prevent anything bad happening to you, you're almost inflicting it on the you from another reality. (That's really impossible, though, or at least impossible to happen with any means of making contact with other universes, so it's nice to know that any multiverse we could find would be run by choices, not a rule about possibilities.
It's only thus far exploited it for the traditional "What if things went slightly differently in another version of reality?" narrative, which I think is a valid storytelling tool that can be used to good effect (not that it necessarily was in USUM, but that's a different post for another time).
Yeah, I definitely enjoy stories like that a lot more. (Into the Spiderverse and the Phineas and Ferb movie come to mind for me- although I'm sure the former probably would go into infinity, because Marvel) I'd love to see Pokemon take a crack at it more seriously, maybe even having two alternate regions that you explore in one game, but it doesn't seem likely considering how little time was spent on things like Entralink or Annabelle.
 
Without changing the core of the typical Pokémon story I think it’s be very difficult for them to do something like that - it would fit better as a sideline game, I’m thinking like Colosseum/XD.

The easiest starting point for that which fits the main cannon that I can see is having the player based in Alola (where we already know there’s a lot of inter dimensional stuff happening) perhaps starting as a research assistant for Burnett. They could tie in a typical “gym challenge” type story with the player needing to clear the trials to access various areas to get to dimensional rifts, a really clever potential twist could be that the player gets stuck in another dimension and has to do their version of the gym challenge to find a way home.

A game like this could also have a cameo from Professor Willow (who I’ve always interpreted to be in a different universe to the main Pokémon games) and could even use some lore from other legendaries for a bit of inter dimensional fun - Dialga/Palkia/Giratina spring straight to mind as legendaries that could easily be weaved into the story quite organically.
 
Big Pokemon following you shrank because of the Poke Ball. You can see it with Wailord as the one following you is a lot smaller than the wild encounter.
 
Hop didn't choose a starter Pokémon weak to yours. He chose the one with a type advantage over the starter that was going to stay with Leon.
I’d really love if this could be true, but how would Hop know that Leon would train and use the third starter?
The decision was last minute iirc when the third starter looked unhappy.
 
I like to think that the reason some pokemon look so human-like and have human mannerisms is due to the same reason our domestic dogs and cats ended up this way: their ancestors had traits humans appreciated, so intense selective breeding ensued and caused, for example, the average wild Incineroar to die out and slowly be replaced by the anthropomorphic variant we know.
 
Back
Top Bottom