It's an iconic Pokemon that has been owned by all of Red's counterparts. There's no proof that it's based on just the anime. I'm not going to lie that Satoshi may have been the Red that started the trend though.
To represent Geeration I better while not favoring either one of the Eevee evolutions at the same time.Also the fact it used to be Espeon but then they changed it to Lapras I think was meant to drive the point home a little harder. Why would they give his team less type coverage if not to make a point?
Either way there's no way of proving which of us is correct, you believe it to be based on Pokemon Yellow, I think it's the anime. The fact that yellow is based off the Anime as well means we're kind of both right.
Yellow is not "based" on the anime. It incorporates popular aspects inspired by the anime. It's still Red, Green, and Blue to the core with neat extras.
As for Pikachu, it's too iconic to be owned by anyone other than Ash, they can get away with the odd COTD having it but even that's been a while ago.
Um, WHAT? All of Red's incarnations have owned a Pikachu. Your logic fails.
There's no need to be rude. You can't say my logic has failed as we don't know the answer yet. Of course Pikachu can appear in different media, they appear in the wild in almost every game, but in terms of the anime there is only one Pikachu anyone pays attention to, I'd be extremely surprised if this new Red had one, but like I said we won't know until it comes out.
And Yellow is based off the anime for aspects to which you referring, Ash got a Pikachu, so Yellow got a Pikachu, Ash was able to get all 3 Kanto starters, so Yellow allowed you to get all 3 of the starters. Now whether for the Mt Silver battle they decided to get the idea straight from the anime, or the aspects of yellow that derived from the anime, either way the root of it is still the anime.
Ash already had 1 water type in Blastoise but then they added Lapras, his iconic Pokemon from the Orange Islands which meant he had 2 water types. You are right that they are all ingame events in yellow, but it's a bit weird that in the remake out of all ingame events they only picked ones Ash owned, no Porygon, Eevee line was removed, no fossil Pokemon for example.