Pokémon Mystery Dungeon/Headscratchers

• When you are first told of the Time Gears, the partner mentions one in an alter in a volcano. A picture of one on a volcano is shown. But then we see that there are only five, and none of them in a volcano. What was the point of that? Was it cut content?
  • I think there was one gear location we didn't see. We saw four. Treeshroud forest. Fogbound lake. Quicksand Cave and Crystal Crossing. We simply never saw the volcano one.
    • Fifth one is at the Limestone Cavern (special episode 4). The volcano is probably Dark Crater; either Darkrai moved it back and forth (for whatever reason) or the game developers simply didn't bother to change the Time Gear montage from Time/Darkness to Sky. Grovyle does say all the necessary Time Gears when he meets you at Brine Cave, so perhaps there's an "extra" Time Gear if something goes very wrong...?
      • Something did go very wrong. Twice.
  • Who ever said that there were only 5 time gears? Grovyle may have only needed 5, but there certainly could have been more. We just never get to see them.
  • And, if I recall correctly, the partner says 'I've heard that there's even one in a volcano', meaning that it could just be town gossip or such.
  • There are probably five "main" ones that cover more area. The others are weaker and only cover little areas?
    • This seems likely, given how the five "main" ones still only seem to cover the nearby area... Perhaps one of the "little" ones was in a volcano somewhere and that's the one the partner is talking about.
• Magnezone, I know you can't be everywhere at once, but for Arceus' sake, you're gifted with deadlier electrical powers than Zapdos, can't you at least do more of the jobs yourself rather than constantly asking someone else's help?
  • He may actually be doing other work off screen, but can't handle all the work himself or delegate to his officers. Posting jobs at the Guild helps with the workload because there's all sorts of exploration teams out there, of all different types — perfect for when he's ill-equipped to handle a villain himself due to bad type matching.
  • He is probably doing administrative tasks. Not to mention his other officers are probably guarding the prisons so the inmates don't riot or break out.
  • Considering he's also around level 11-16, it would also explain why he needs help so much.
    • One must wonder how he got appointed as the Police Chief in the first place when he's so weak, The Kecleon bros are more qualified then him since they're lv 99 and have an endless amount of backup.
      • His low level may just be Gameplay and Story Segregation, since it would be too easy otherwise.
      • Storywise, the Kecleon Brothers would rather run a store, and they'd probably make poor officers anyway, since if shoppers in dungeons confuse "No" with "I'm not done shopping yet", Kecleon immediately pursues them. And Magnezone has those flashy police lights!
        • ..."flashy police lights"?
          • whenever you turn in an outlaw, the red and blue tips of Magnezone's magnets flash much like police lights.

• And another thing, who here keeps claiming that Primal Dialga is Satan? He's completely lost his marbles, and that's the thing - he's acting purely out of self-preservation, not any malicious intent. If anything, the MD world's equivalent of the Devil is Darkrai, and even then, just that particular one.
  • I think it may have stemmed from how some people see the Bad Future as Hell, which admittedly isn't very hard.

• In Mystery Dungeon 2, you can be given eggs as rewards for missions. Does this strike anyone else as like selling an unborn child into slavery? Don't the eggs' parents care at all?
  • You forget that these eggs come from he dungeon you just explored, so where do you leave the egg? In a cave with crazed Pokemon, or with the nice exploration team that helped you?
  • Sorry, unless the parents actually turn up I'm under no obligation to care.
  • And you forgot a very important fact: as soon as the egg hatches, the newborn is willing to join your team. It's more the case of someone giving an egg they found around for you to care, not selling at all.
    • This seems most likely, since you can get eggs for species that absolutely cannot be bred from whichever Pokemon is giving it to you.
    • Refusing the newborn as a team member gives you a message something like "it went along on its way happily". Yup.
  • Am I the only one who never uses the Pokémon hatched from these eggs? I mean, they're at level ONE. Where do the Pokémon GO anyway?
    • THEY WERE JUST BORN! Of course they're level one. Train them in the Dragon Maze at the Dojo; three go throughs at most and they're in their twenties, problem solved.
  • This Troper has seen a fancomic that explains this. "Please take my unborn child as my thanks! -whispering- See, I had a little one nighter with this Shellos a while back and well, we're on the road a lot anyway. Okay buh bye!"

• In Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue/Red Rescue Team, Butterfree says that she's too weak to brave going into the Tiny Woods to rescue her son, Caterpie. Which raises the question: If she's a high enough level to evolve into Butterfree, how come she's not strong enough to fight the Pokemon in Tiny Woods?
  • Butterfree aren't very strong Pokemon to begin with? Or the "common" Pokemon in that game aren't too used to fighting?
  • Also, given how there are plenty of trainers in the main games with underleveled evolved Pokémon... It's always possible that Butterfree isn't even level 10 yet.

• In Mystery Dungeon, why do so many bosses get up right after you defeat them and KO you? I got such pleasure out of pwning Grovyle and then he just got up and took my entire team down in one hit. WTF?!!! If they all have a one-hit-kills-the-whole-team move, why don't they just use that in the first place?
  • If you were in a mystery dungeon filled with hostile pokés, would you use your strongest attack every time a hostile poké appeared before you?
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation. Don't worry...it pissed me off too.
  • At least they don't force you to start over from the dungeon should you lose the fight.
    • At least they don't force you to restart the entire game should you lose the fight.
  • This Troper likes to believe that he didn't think we'd be enough of a threat to use all of his power on. He attacks us without using more energy than he thinks he needs to, then is surprised as we beat the shit out of him. He then brings out whatever attack it was that managed to beat both of his assailants as a last resort.
  • And, of course, there's the more basic answer that, if he could could just one-hit-kill in the actual fight, then you wouldn't be able to get experience points off him. But that's more Gameplay and Story Segregation, I guess.

• One of the central concepts of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon is that there are no humans in this world. It says as much in each game's opening. The protagonist would be an exception if not for the initial transformation. But this raises two questions. First, how can this be the case in the sequel, considering that in the future, you were a human living in that world? And second, why doesn't anyone ever say "A human? What's that?" in response to an attempted reveal? How do they know what a human is? Did the humans die out ages ago or something?
  • Just like every other animal species seem to have died, too — or it wouldn't be understandable how Pokémon are classified as "dog" or "cat" or "worm", it's not too far fetched to imagine humans have gone the same way round.
  • Alternate universe where Pokemon souls live alongside the actual Pokemon. This explains Gardevoir and Ninetales.
  • You also got teleported out of your own world into the PMD world, and got teleported back at the end, in case you hadn't noticed. That or All Just a Dream are the possibilities.
  • As someone mentioned in response to the question below... It's always possible that humans exist there but are just very, very rare. Otherwise, the partner Pokémon probably would have no idea what a human is.

• What was a human doing in the End of Days scenario in Time/Darkness? Humans do not seem to exist at any other point in that world, so what was he/she doing there?
  • Simple: Grovyle had one cloned somehow (maybe Mewtwo was involved) so the resistance would have access to the Dimensional Scream. Apparently, just like Pikachu have the Static Ability, humans have Dimensional Scream.
    • Where would they have gotten human DNA or fossils from? Yeah, cloning seems to be fairly easy in the Pokémon world otherwise, but we're not shown anything on that in the PMD-verse...
  • I've always figured it was something like this: When you look at your wonder map, you will notice that the land in which the story plays is probably a simple island. Maybe a rather large island, but definitely not continent-sized, seeing as their expedition to Fogbound Lake can't have taken more than two or three days. So maybe there simply aren't any humans on that particular island, but instead on larger continents. There might have been some contact, enough to know that humans exist, but not much else about them. So after this 'End of Days scenario', as you call it, humans tried to find out the cause and some traveled to the island...plus "[...]the world inhabited only by Pokemon" from the introduction probably just sounded more impressive.

• Also, the second televised special has the transformed Piplup react in surprise to Chimchar's speech. This isn't mentioned in the game, but would this mean that in his pre-transformation days, he never understood a word Grovyle, Celebi, Dusknoir or the others said? That's a fairly bleak conclusion, but not impossible.
  • Surely yes. Actually, it does seem that no human can actually understand Pokémon in any way better than "Bowowowow!" "What, Lassie? Timmy fell in the well?" stuff.
    • I don't know. It takes something out of the epic scenes of Grovyle and human meeting Celebi to go back in time, all the while hounded by Dusknoir and ultimately thwarted by Darkrai, if it's done in Pokéspeech. "Grovyle! Grovyle!" "Duuusk..."
      • No, no, no, no. Think of it as this: the player can understand Pokémon; the player character, as a human, cannot. It's just a matter of Translator Microbes... or whatever.
      • Wait! Counter evidence has been discovered! Grovyle and the human shared conversations regarding the Groudon statue and the time travel mishap! The human had to have been able to understand!
      • Could be another effect of your hero's Dimensional Scream, if it's not just another case of this world being different from other games' canon. Remember, at the very start of Time/Darkness, your hero doesn't seem surprised to hear a Pokemon talking to them...
      • I was under the impression that the hero in Time/Darkness/Sky was psychic, albeit a limited one, considering A) It's not unheard of for humans to be psychic (as the main series proved with a whole collection of them plus Sabrina) B) The Time/Dark/Sky hero doesn't seem as phased of having Pokémon talk to them And like the above points mentioned, they hinted that the hero and Grovyle had conversations they could understand prior to the hero's transformation, even talking to each other (on-screen) in the intro whereas the Red/Blue hero was a lot more utterly freaked (the same with the anime short). They either had an ability to understand them outright, could read their minds/thoughts or both (maybe also implanting their own thoughts into their partner and few other exceptions since every other non-plot-important Pokémon only hears "...")C) The above point of how the Time/Dark/Sky character revealed they have the Dimensional Scream ability, which they had before they traveled to the past, meanwhile the red/blue hero only had the vaguest psychic ability to communicate with Gardevoir through their dreams and in visions, but that could've easily been Gardevoir's doing, not the hero's. Although point A and B could be poked at with a stick of how the intro could've been a one-sided conversation between the hero and Grovyle and that Grovyle didn't outright talk, the red/blue hero also sort of "implants their thoughts into their partner" and also has the problem where they never speak up to other Pokémon you use as new leaders to talk with them, there's still a lot more Time/Dark/Sky hero can do that red/blue hero can't to warrant Time/Dark/Sky hero's abilities being because they were a human (once).
      • This troper always thought that this was an area where Pokemon were able to talk, you know, humanspeak. Like Meowth from the anime, for example, except it is natural here. It's valid for the games, at least, where I don't think the player reacts in surprise to talking Pokemon. But as for the anime....
      • It's also possible that the hero simply has a good understanding of Grovyle. I don't recall their conversation regarding the Groudon Statue to have the hero specifically respond to Grovyle's speech.
      • In the first set of games, the player is surprised by talking Pokemon because he comes from a world of humans where Pokémon cannot talk. In this game, he is not surprised because he has heard them before, perhaps due to his psychic abilities, or maybe because this universe just operates differently.
      • I strongly suspect that the real question here is "why did the anime reuse that surprised reaction from the first special when it didn't appear in the second game and in fact directly contradicts its plot?"
      • This troper always assumed that since the the hero can't remember the future, he can't remember that he can talk to Pokémon. Perhaps because of the dimensional scream, he was able to talk to Grovyle unlike any other humans could. As far as he knows, he shouldn't be able to understand them.

• The fact that Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Time/Darkness doesn't feature evolution until (I've been told) the very end bugs me a lot. Isn't evolution part of a Pokémon's life? After all, there's a Marill whose younger brother is an Azurill, it seems just logical. Also, beating Dialga as a damned Turtwig just seems way too off in terms of scale...
  • They normally can evolve, it's just that because time is screwed up, the place where Pokémon go to evolve isn't working. The first mission after clearing the story is to go fix it, though it remains... complicated for the hero and his/her partner. It's not until after Manaphy is recruited and the Marine Resort is unlocked will you be able to get the evolution thing done by defeating and recruiting Palkia.
  • Possibly, beating the game proves that the hero and partner have grown up and that's why they're allowed to evolve. Though as the above troper stated, there is a story reason for it.

• Okay, so Mystery Dungeon 2's whole plot centers on getting the Time Gears to Temporal Tower before it collapses. What I want to know is why the silly things weren't at Temporal Tower to begin with.
  • Well, if the gears are taken from their respective places, time stops there... except that it goes back to normal as soon as they're placed at Temporal Tower, so... um... it makes even less sense than expected! It especially doesn't help that Temporal Tower's the place with all the massive defenses and secrecy when only protagonists have any reason to go there.
    • If time stops in a place when a gear is removed, then wouldn't it make sense that the gears are supposed to be in those places?
  • On that same subject, there are five gears. And the three lake spirits are positioned to guard them. Someone didn't plan things out very well, did they?
    • Well, in one of Sky's special episodes, we learn that a Ditto is guarding one of the gears. Though I still have no idea why the one at Treeshroud Forest doesn't have a guardian...
  • So basically you didn't go through the post-credits storyline.
    • If you're saying Darkrai moved them, it could work, but it brings up another problem: The normal Pokemon - even the three fairies! - clearly think the Gears need to be in their current locations for time to work properly. They've been there for, it's implied, generations, and not even the most hardened criminal will touch them for fear of bringing about the apocalypse. I can buy Dialga not noticing they were gone as their absence caused him to steadily go crazy, and his perception of time has got to be a lot different from a mortal's, but if it took that long to reach critical, that just raises more questions.
  • This troper's theory is that the Time Gears were split up to make it harder to find them, so as to protect them from the possibility of someone trying to destroy them and stop time everywhere or something to that effect. It seems like Temporal Tower is the place you would take the Time Gears to as a last resort, because simply putting the Time Gears back where they are meant to go isn't going to make time start up again (as evidenced by the fact that time didn't start up again after the lake spirits returned the Time Gears to their proper places during the game's plot). Putting the Time Gears into the wall at Temporal Pinnacle works most of the time, though. And it's no stretch to imagine that a powerful being like Dialga would be able to retrieve the Time Gears from the rest of world should he need to do such a thing, even if he's physically nowhere near the Time Gears at the time. He just was going crazy during the plot and didn't think to do so.
  • This troper has seen a theory that says that originally Darkrai found out a way to freeze time in some areas, and to stop the spread of frozen time Dialga had to place the Time Gears there. His sanity was eroded as the Time Gears sat there for generations, and eventually time collapsed and Darkrai reigned supreme, at least until Grovyle stepped in.
  • Maybe they never were "supposed" to be at Temporal Tower in the first place? As mentioned, even the lake guardians think that the Time Gears can't be moved, and, as shown in the games themselves, the Time Gears need to be in their current places to keep time in check in those places.

• In Mystery Dungeon 1, Moltres lives at the top of Mount Blaze and Zapdos lives at the top of Mount Thunder/Silent Chasm. Ninetales lives at the top of Mount Freeze. Articuno, however, lives in Frosty Forest. I find that strange, because I get that Ninetales probably doesn't want to be found, but by the time the player reaches Frosty Forest there is hardly anyone around anyway. Why doesn't Articuno live in Mount Freeze, and Ninetales live in Frosty Forest?
  • Articuno does live on Mount Freeze. It's just that the natural disasters were freaking him (her?) out, so he went to see what was going on and ran into the party.

• WTF is with the Rescue Team badges? You hold it up, the Pokemon gets a magical power and escapes. What kind of power are we talking, how long does it last, and what exactly are those badges that give out powers?
  • We're talking a game setting where a badge gives you the power to breath underwater with the right HM and pokemon. It's best to not think about it.
  • Even worse is how the badges allow you to escape the dungeon without issue if you complete a task, but if you just want to "quit" the mission and leave, activating it causes half your items to be left behind.
    • That could be explained by Mission Control being Jerkasses. They tell you to do something, if you give up, they make you tag/seal/send them half the items in your backpack before letting you retract the Escape Orb.

• Pokemon eat Gummis and Apples. And nothing else? How can one live on nothing but sweets and apples?
  • According to the literal text, the player character only spends a few days in the wild at a time, and usually only one day per excursion. The Apples and Gummis may well only be the equivalent of snacks, and more varied versions of food available at the base. Alternatively, it might just be rule of saving cartridge space.
  • They also eat berries and seeds. Also, in PMD 2, there is a very delicious dinner they eat every night at the guild. (Though it looks like fruit to me)
    • One of the pictures shown in the top menu shows this dinner as mainly apples and oran berries
  • Part of the uplift process. Sapient Pokemon don't need to eat meat if they don't want to.
  • You're forgetting Team Tasty, whom reveal that Swellow are at least known to eat Wurmple.
    • Uh, Swellow WASN'T intending to eat Wurmple; Wurmple, the leader of this team, THOUGHT that Swellow wanted to. Why would you eat your best friend?
    • Yeah, but if Swellow weren't known to eat Wurmple, he would've had no reason to believe that.
  • At least they eat. In any other Pokemon game from Red to Black, your pokémon could feed on air if you chose not to use any consumable items on it.

• Why do Wigglytuff and Lapras have feminine voices in the anime adaptation? I know one's big pink rabbit and the other has those Leia-bun ears, but they're both male according to the game. Admittedly Wiggly kind of sounds like a woman trying to pull off a male voice, but that just raises more questions.
  • This is the problem I find with books/games/manga being made into films/anime. If you play the game/ read the book or manga, you imagine someone's voice to sound a certain way, but everyone would have a different opinion. This makes them sound weird when they're voiced nothing like you imagined. I couldn't watch the anime version because I thought Grovyle sounded too... well, yeah... I just hated his voice. Also, I agree with the Wigglytuff bit. Woman pretending to be a man, hm?
  • Probably a case of not caring on the dubbers' behalf. This troper expected Wigglytuff to sound like Dan Green, instead of just Grovyle. Everybody should have been voiced by Dan Green in that special. Except Dusknoir. He was good.
    • I just wish the guy doing Corphish didn't try to sound like Mr. Krabs.

• Most of the 3 star rarity trade items and equipped items are articles of clothing. I can deal with the equipped items as they are simply things like scarves, caps and ribbons but the trade items really bug me. I mean, the trade items are things like rings, brooches, tiaras, torcs, armlets, veils and even capes and robes. Does anybody find that a bit odd? Pokemon wearing clothes? And say nothing of the legendaries's items. Let's just say that some rather funny images of the legendaries came into my head.
  • Giratina's unique item is the Nether Veil. Giratina is a giant ghost dragon. He would just look silly wearing a veil.
  • Palkia's unique item is the Air Blade. Why the hell would he need a sword?
    • Why the hell not?
  • Dialga's unique item is the Time Shield. He is a giant steel dragon, why does he need a suit of armor? His body is armor.
  • Cresselia is the only legendary who actually looks okay with her unique item. I can see her wearing a veil.
  • Latias's unique item is the Heart Brooch. One problem, she is totally naked. Just where would she pin it?
    • Every Pokemon is naked. She could just be holding it.
      • You wanted to picture an anthro Latias naked? And one other thing, Latias's brother gets to wear a veil!
    • I dunno, when Latias takes the form of a human using her illusion powers, there's just something attractive about that. Not the actual Pokemon, but the human she bases her illusion off of (Bianca or whoever she was).
      • ...dude, you have weird taste.
      • Even weirder, her male counterpart, Latios, wears a veil!
• In Mystery Dungeon 1, if your character is a fire Pokemon they can use moves like Ember and Flamethrower, right? What bugs me is this: If you use Flamethrower or Ember in somewhere like Sinister Woods or Tiny Woods, how do you not set the place on fire? And if you use Flamethrower or Ember in somewhere like Far-Off Sea or Silver Trench, how do your moves still cause damage, since you're throwing fire around in places full of water?
  • For that matter if you are a fire type, especially one with an exposed flame that is linked to your life force (such as Charmander), how do you not die while walking in dungeons completely submerged in water? Or any other fire type teammate?
    • This troper believes that most of the things that are stated in the Pokédex (most of which being ludicrous) are nothing but false myths. But that aside, didn’t one say something about a Charmander’s flame emitting steam if it is raining and/or the flame is put out (I would assume)? Plus, it could always be the other way around; you know, if the Charmander dies, then the flame goes out, not if the flame goes out, then the Charmander dies. And as for the other fire types… uhh… the badge did it?

• The hero in all the games so far is an amnesiac who is fully aware they were human and have been turned into a pokémon. Like all other pokémon in their level range (5), they share the same moves their species would/could know by that level. The hero is also fully capable of using those moves without fail (not including if they miss). Again, the hero was/is a human. How is it that they know how to use their moves (especially their soon-to-be-learned elemental ones) the instant you gain control of them? How is it that they know how not to sneeze/fart out an accidental flamethrower/ember, constantly shock everyone within 50 feet of them or themselves without knowing how to control a thundershock or Static ability, or how to actually use a water gun and not just spit a huge loogie at their target?
  • You are instructed on how to use your abilities, albeit only through the game's "He Knows About Timed Hits" translation. Unless your randomly found friend knows what the forward+ B or start button is, it's not unreasonable to presume that they are getting at least basic in-world instructions at that time. Given the universe's history, teaching amnesiacs dangerous abilities is probably part of the grade school curriculum.
    • It all makes perfect sense to the player (and can turn what could've been a half an hour's worth of a tutorial into a few bearable minutes), but what about the main character? The main character is an amnesiac human that turned into a random pokémon based on their personality and gender (and this is assuming that they don't lie on the interview), so it can't be that they predicted which pokémon they would be and worked into the moves. The partner also probably can't teach them because they will never be the same species or type as the main character and probably have little clue themselves about how the main character's elements work (unless the player cheats). Even if they did, they are whisked away into a dungeon not too long after they meet and it isn't until after they went through the dungeon (and the main character could've used their moves) that the partner could have the time to teach the main character (which is too late). Every other pokémon in the area either are mooks that want nothing more than to see the main character/the partner killed knocked out, or are more focused on getting help than stopping for a few minutes to teach newbies, so it can't be them either. The mechanics that the tutorial teaches to the player also are directed at a lot of the controls the main character shouldn't have a clue of what they are or where he/she could trigger them (unless their human self had been a member of Foxhound, that is), and besides this the thing that stands between them and that tutorial is the fourth wall. Even though it covers everything for the player, and the main character usually is the player, in times they are not, well... Hmm...
      • It's sort of explained even then in the anime. Squirtle is in the same situation as the main character in the games, only this time there is no unseen narrator to explain everything about the game and no unseen player to learn it all for Squirtle behind the fourth wall. He tries to teach himself how to use his water type moves and succeeds somewhat, even though he used bubble when he meant to use water gun, which may imply it's not as hard as it seems.
      • There's also the fact that you've become that pokemon, and so probably have all the natural instincts that come with it.
  • In the first PMD game, you're a human in your home world - but nobody said that this world was inhabited by humans only. The player could've been a trainer for all we know, so he/she knew what moves the pokemon of his chosen species could use. In the second PMD game, you more or less is a trainer in the future, seeing as Grovyle was your partner. So chances are you saw other pokemon of your species around, and likewise saw them use moves. Besides, you start out as a low level, who usually know simple physical moves - surely Growl or Tackle isn't too hard to figure out? As you battle and level-up, you gradually learn how to use your more advanced pokemon attacks, or so I think.
  • This troper thinks that player character has such accidents, but they are too violent to show, and the moves are actually known since Level 1, but to make them 100% safe, you need to reach the required level.
• When it comes to going to Friend Areas, how does it take you so little time - in fact, how do you even get to places like Final Island/Enclosed Island/Southern Island/Serene Sea/Stratos Lookout if your player character doesn't have wings and isn't a Water type?
  • Presumably there's a Flying-type air service or Water-type ferry service, simply falling under the conservation of detail.

• In Mystery Dungeon 2, when Mesprit says "Run for your lives!" the company slowly escapes. Considering the consequences are being frozen in a time-wave...
  • Could be a side-effect of the wave; I saw it as the escape feeling agonizingly slow instead of actually being agonizingly slow.

• Also, when hero and partner finally evolve, instead of sleeping animations, they walk in their beds. That's right. Instead of sleeping, they walk.
  • Sleep-exploring?
  • This one's interesting. The starters all have tons of special sprite animations, including sleeping and rising from bed (different from the sleep status effect every pokémon has), eating food in the mess hall, and the "cheer at the camera" pose. (You might notice they also do a similar "walk" animation when winning sentry duty after evolving). They also get about 8 different mood avatars. As you can imagine, that is a lot of artwork for just one pokémon. So naturally, they didn't want to have to draw all this art for the two evolved stages of each starter as well. This is also the reason you cannot evolve until the very end of the game when you're done using all these animations, since there are no more story scripts.
    • There's also a Gameplay and Story Segregation justification for not being able to evolve until the end. For the majority of the plot, you and your partner are supposed to be naive, somewhat cowardly newcomers, and being unevolved "baby" Pokémon backs up that characterization. How would it look if a big, mean Charizard or a nasty Feraligatr freaked out from everything?
  • And Sky added Eevee, with all of those potential final forms.
  • Still kinda lazy, if you ask me. They could have at least had stuff for the final forms, given that nobody is going to be in the middle form for long.
  • Its more along the laziness on the programmers part, every single pokémon in the game has a sleeping animation. I don't see why they couldn't have used that. (yeah, there is a special 'yawning' animation) But them using their in dungeon sleeping sprites would have been fine, its what the original game did.

• In one of the earlier missions on the first game you have to save Diglett from a high ledge after taking care of Skarmory. However, the only way Diglett could be saved was for the two magnemites you helped earlier to come and airlift Diglett from the ledge, ideally lowering him down either toward you and your partner, to home or to at least the bottom of the mountain. Afterwards Diglett makes a comment that caused everyone around him to wonder if digletts really have feet. In the main series, digletts were very egnimatic where only their heads were ever seen, and that's probably what they're getting at, but if the magnemites had to lift Diglett to get him to safety, they would've had to lift his entire body from the ground, wouldn't they? (Unless they wanted to tear him in half, which is pretty obvious they didn't.) If that's the case, how is it nobody seems to remember seeing a naked diglett hovering between two magnemites across one high ledge of a mountain to another flat surface?
  • Perhaps Diglett kept his dirt around him when they were flying him? It's cold when you're up high, and for all we know there's a taboo among Diglett/Dugtrio's species about letting other Pokemon see your feet.
  • Eh, I always just thought they did it for Rule of Funny.

• This is a relatively minor one, but why was Luxray replaced with Manectric in Sky?
  • Probably because Shinx was made into a starter.

• Delivery quests. So a pokémon's gone to the post office to post request, then to some insane floor in a dungeon (eg: I'm on level 25 of Magma Cavern which several rescue teams couldn't get close to) and wait for you at which point they return to the freaking post office. Why not just meet them there?!
  • They're sending for a rescue from the dungeon itself, they don't go to the post office (like through maybe a special call using an explorer badge). The player can do something similar by sending out a rescue request that another player can take and go rescue you (like someone else with a GBA or DS). I don't think they're posting "please rescue me" and then going and getting themselves in trouble on purpose. And in some cases, the request for help is posted by a different Pokemon, like the ones that say "please rescue my friend Houndoom" or something.
    • But we're not talking rescue missions, here, we're talking delivery missions. You know, the "I can't live without blue gummis please bring me one" missions. There's no mention of the pokémon being stuck on that floor; just that they want you to find the item and deliver it. The question is why do they need to have it delivered there when they're going straight back to the post office with you?
  • Also, the "take me to my love, we agreed to meet" Escort Missions. I mean, I can kind of understand why the Pokemon wants to come along when the mission is a rescue mission, but seriously, Nidorino, the Magma Cavern is not a good date spot. Really. You know what's a good date spot? Pretty much anywhere that is not a high-level dungeon. Take Nidorina out to the cape or to a nice friend area or something. Don't ask me to take you deep into the earth's crust.
    • Because she wanted excitement and thought that going to the cape or a friend area is boring?

• Anyone else find it odd that Wigglytuff and Magnezone seem to be on good terms despite the events of Igglybuff the Prodigy?
  • In fact, that special episode in general was an unsettling example of Moral Dissonance. Magnezone was always shown as a Reasonable Authority Figure, and to see him act like such an uncaring jerk...
    • Uncaring jerk? He was just doing his job, and was only harsh when he thought it was a Hostage Situation. It's not like he went full-on Police Brutality while making the arrest or anything. Armaldo went along willingly in the end, remember? It's not like he beat him into submission and dragged his body away from a screaming Igglybuff... Not to mention how at the end, Wigglytuff states clearly that "I don't believe there's any such thing as a truly bad Pokémon". It'd be a tad hypocritical for him to say that while still holding a grudge towards somebody who was, again, just doing his job.
  • Maybe it was a different Magnezone. Same speech patterns but the Magne-line all sound fairly robotic and similar in the PMD games. Heck, our Officer Magnazone may have appeared as one of the Magnemite mooks back in Igglybuff the Prodigy

• Why didn't the protagonists get to fight all of Team Skull, in the previous games those protagonists mopped the floor Team Meanies a third into the game and Gengar is still a thorn in their sides for most of the story. Seeing them flattened after trying to pick a fight with the Guildmaster was funny but they came back and continued to impede and mock the protagonists; they then steal the relic fragment at the worst possible time.
  • Part of the problem could be that Skunktank tend to explode when you beat them. Just picture going through a tough fight, dealing the final blow... and having that Gasshole blow up in your face for a mutual KO? Factor in a potential Heads I Win, Tails You Lose, like they pulled with certain other battles... Not getting to kick that Smug Snake is frustrating, but what can you do?

• This troper honestly can't remember- can someone please remind me why Grovyle set off to defeat Dialga in the special episode of Sky? It wouldn't have actually helped the player, would it?
  • Time hadn't changed when he returned to the future. While we know it was due to very slow history-changing mechanics, he couldn't be certain of that. For all he knew, you and your partner might have failed. The next step? Survive and plan a new course of action. In this case, stopping Primal Dialga from sending anyone else back to ruin everything sounds good.
  • He probably just wanted to ensure Dialga couldn't send anyone back before the hero completes the mission.

• When Dusknoir first visits the Guild, they make a big fuss about Diglett not being able to identify his footprint. But... he's a Dusknoir. Dusknoir don't have footprints. (And for that matter, how do they identify Pokemon who don't have footprints, like Ghosts and such?)
  • Maybe by silhouette from the bottom?

• Also, was it ever explained why they had trouble identifying your footprints?
  • Whatever species the player character is doesn't come to the area much.
  • I always thought it was partly due to the player character being a polymorph, so some of the physical aspects may have been a tad different.
  • How does the footprint identification work anyway? Okay, so you stand on the grate and Diglett down the tunnel looks up and examines what your footprints look like... only that he can as well see what you look like, since the grate isn't too dense. That rends the footprints system pretty much pointless.

• Why aren't any of the other Pokemon named? I mean, no one thinks it's weird that you or your partner have names, or the Pokemon you recruit, but Bidoof calls himself Bidoof and Chatot's name is Chatot. How hard is it to give the really important characters a name?
  • Taken from the WMG page... either using your real name is taboo in public, or they do have names, it's just that the player isn't privy to them. But, yeah, this bugs me, too.
  • Pokemon call you and your partner by your real names around the guild and in public...for instance, before Dusknoir pulls you with him into the future, so he calls you by name and asks you to come up. He's still pretending to be good to catch you off guard, so why would he knowingly break a public taboo? Second reason: Read the WMG. In the real pokemon games, every trainer you fight has a name, but are they important? Not usually. If they name every trainer in the pokemon games, why not name the pokemon you hang out with in the Guild and pokemon square?
  • Nicknames? They seem pretty commonplace since you can nickname anyone who joins your team, so it isn't impossible that your partner's "name" is really just a nickname and everybody else thinks your real name is one. As for the rest of the characters, there's only one Bidoof around, only one Chatot around, etc. so nicknames aren't necessary and therefore pretty uncommon.

• So how did Koffing and Zubat steal the partner's artifact when neither of them have hands?
  • Well, they would have treasure bags right? Zubat or koffing might have grabbed the artifact in his mouth and then stuffed it in the other's bag? But yeah, it is kind of weird when you point it out...
    • What about those spiky leg things that Zubat's got? He could have used those... maybe. Come to think of it, I have no idea what those things even are.

• In the first Mystery Dungeon, Why is it that, if you are a water type and your partner's a fire type, that the base is for a water type? That's just weird, since assuming that partner would live there before they met you, why would they want to live near water if it kills them or otherwise hurts them? It'd be more logical if every starting base looked like the ones for Eevee, Pikachu, and the like. It's kinda creepy in a way, it's as if they KNOW they'll meet a certain type of Pokemon at some point that they'll make a team with.
  • Does the partner actually live there, though? You always see it coming to your door in the morning as if it lived somewhere else and was just giving you an empty home that would be suitable for your type.

• How exactly did Team Raider "rescue" Dugtrio from the sea? Did they pull him out of the ground and plop him down on the beach? Furthermore, how did Dugtrio get stuck in the sea in the first place? Couldn't he just burrow underground and tunnel his way back?
  • He was just splashing in the shallows, its possible all they did was calm him down. (And he was too panicked to dig.)

• In Sky, Grovyle, Dusknoir and the other future characters are seen still in the Bad Future. But back in the past, the heroes had saved the planet's paralysis. If Grovyle and Dusknoir traveled to the future, shouldn't the planet already be saved?
  • This game's Timey-Wimey Ball dictates that things occur co-temporally. If it takes, say, two hours for the heroes to fix Temporal Tower in the past after Grovyle goes back, it will take two hours in Grovyle's time for the changes to occur. Though that brings up the question of how Grovyle and Dusknoir can get up after being unconscious, scale Temporal Tower, go to Blizzard Island and complete numerous dungeons in between during the time it takes our heroes to climb present-day Temporal Tower.
    • If I'm remembering correctly, Temporal Tower is specifically said to collapse in the future. So... maybe part of the main/middle levels have gone away; whereas in the past it's super-tall, in the future it's very short, and takes less time to climb up. As for why they're the same number of floors when you play them, er, Gameplay and Story Segregation, I guess. Alternatively, Grovyle is just walking really, really fast because he's awesome?
    • Well, there's always the fact that the hero and partner had to get the gears up on that altar thing, hung around and talked to Dialga, and then walked all the way back down the tower before history fully changed. And it's possible that Dusknoir was teleporting him and Grovyle around between dungeons. Though I admit that only accounts for a bit of the time it would take...

• Why is my partner so damn ignorant, especially in the future chapter? You're told that Grovyle is a hero, and that Dusknoir is TRYING TO KILL YOU. Naturally, you, the player, manage to get the pieces together immediately. The partner, however, has the attention span of a gnat. He even wants to go back to Dusknoir and ask him (which would just result in all 3 of us getting killed), and even when you're told that the Time Gears need to be moved to Temporal Tower, which would be a temporary thing, my partner's SHOCKED that Grovyle took a Time Gear from a forest, DESPITE HIM SAYING THAT TIME ALREADY STOPPED, SO THERE WOULDN'T MATTER IF IT WAS THERE OR NOT!
  • In the first case, it could be a combination of denial and being severely shaken by everything happening all at once. Their entire world's been ripped asunder, they're desperate for answers, and still aren't entirely certain that Grovyle is a good guy. (The fact Grovyle was willing to kill them when they stood between him and the last Time Gear likely influences their trouble trusting him; even as the evidence mounts that they should be on the same side, they still remember that moment where Dusknoir saved them from a brutal death at Grovyle's hands...)
    • When was it stated that Grovyle was trying to kill you? If you're talking about Crystal Cave, yes, he was severely ticked off at you, and Dusknoir did swoop in to save you, but when Grovyle went to get the other Time Gears, he was perfectly content with KO'ing Mesprit and Uxie, with nothing indicating that he was actually trying to kill them. Given how much stuff they managed to sneak into this game, if Grovyle was trying to kill you, you'd think it would be a bit more obvious.
  • This just bugged me, too... I can buy the partner not trusting Grovyle immediately during the future segment... But trying to go back to Dusknoir (who had explicitly just set you up to be executed, as opposed to Grovyle possibly almost killing you on accident), and complaining about Grovyle taking a Time Gear when he had agreed to go along with you and Grovyle really has no explanation.

• I can understand why this wasn't included gameplay-wise, but why did your team only send out one exploration team at a time? Later on, you can have tons of Pokemon back at base. Even then, you can only send one team consisting of a maximum of four members at a time. Why can't they organize multiple groups to go out at once? It would be tons more efficient. I mean, what do all those other members DO all day?
  • Maybe they're doing other jobs on their own? The jobs on the boards change every time, even if you personally don't take them all, meaning that someone else is taking on the jobs you didn't do. Maybe some of those Pokemon are the ones in your group who aren't as controlled by the Guild as you? (or the other Guild members) At first I was a little bothered that I couldn't go back to do jobs I wasn't able to take before because of the "only 8 slots at a time" limit (like that they would stay on the board until you took them or deleted them), but then I just realized that the in-game reason the jobs disappear unless you take them is because other Pokemon are probably doing them instead!

• One thing that bugged me. The Amp Plains incident. Why did Dusknoir arrive to save the hero and partner? Why not simply let them die? Everyone respects the great Dusknoir. He could have easily watched them get killed from the shadows, and returned to town with a sob story of how he "tried to get there as fast as he can, but he was too late" or some nonsense like that. Since people respect him so much and aren't wise to the fact that he's deceiving them, Dusknoir could have gotten away with it scott free. He could have avoided ALL trouble and got rid of them just like that.
  • Dusknoir didn't know who the Player was at that time. It wasn't until after he rescued them and they told him about the Player's power (and name) that he put two and two together.
    • Which means he didn't even know that anyone was relevant to his mission, but helped out because it was the right thing to do, both for the potential victims and his reputation. This goes a long way toward his Sky sidestory's outcome, doesn't it?

• Your default name is your species.. That could be passed as amnesia but it's really your name so.. A human kid named "Pikachu"?

• Dugtrio is one Pokemon, right? One dad. But he refers to himself as if he's a trio and behaves like one..SplitPersonality?
  • Could be one dad and two uncles raising a son.
    • I like to think of it as the Dad being all three of the male leads for Full House. Diglett is now both a girl and voiced by Ashley Olsen. Fill in the rest of the guild as the cast as you please.
  • If that's the case, then what will happen to Diglett once he evolves? Will he get split personalities too?
  • He'll become Dugduo and star in a lot of passable to mediocre tween movies.

• Another one I just noticed. I recently restarted, and am stuck at Mt. Bristle to rescue poor Azurill. (I don't suck that bad often, I just got clumsy D8) I failed twice so far. Instead of having another go at the mountain, your partner decides to call it a day. Two things really bug me about that. A) Your partner is leaving poor innocent Azurill at the mercy of the creepy Drowzee. There you are stuffing your face at HQ and only god knows what Drowzee does to poor Azurill in the night... B) If we're clearly not strong enough to take on Mt. Bristle at our level, why don't we, I don't know, get the rest of the guild to help us?! Drowzee is on the wanted poster, right? Why couldn't the partner and hero tell the guild about what was happening?
  • The other guild members probably have more important matters to attend to than teaming up against a Rank E-D criminal. Plus, a lot of the earlier missions are supposed to be chances for the player character and partner to prove themselves as strong expedition members, so they'd try to do everything by themselves.
    • Wait a minute. You and your partner don't get any points for capturing Drowzee, do you? This could be an excellent demonstration of why you should choose a mission from the board and activate it before running off.

• When Dusknoir first appears in Explorers, everyone starts talking about how great of an explorer he is, how he's so knowledgeable, and just how famous he is in general. Problem is, he only recently just arrived in this world, being sent from the future. They never did make it clear exactly how long he's been hanging around looking for Grovyle, but I don't really think it was long enough for him to become so renowned. So what's the beef?
  • Dusknoir went back further than Grovyle did, so he could build up a reputation as a benevolent master explorer, in order to easily convince everybody to help him catch Grovyle. That's what I figured.

• Why do people keep claiming that the human in Explorers was a Future Badass? The title of The Team Normal would have been more appropriate considering he is a meager human (with a power that doesn't work in the time period they're in) up against creatures with razor sharp claws and other superpowered creatures.
  • Did you see the frozen future world? The human survived, that's what makes them a badass. They survived even before they presumably met up with Grovyle and Celebi, and even after that, Grovyle and Celebi can't be around to protect the human all that time. They are still alive, and in the future, that is a major win.
    • The future was dark and bleak, but didn't seem too much more dangerous than usual, aside from the occasional Spiritomb. Areas resembled the usual mystery dungeons, and the main concern our party had was escaping Dusknoir and his minions... who only chased them after they pissed off Primal Dialga by meddling with history. In addition, one conversation in the relevant Sky sidequest suggests that the population was asked if they would accept history being changed. Doesn't that imply that there's still a population, and one that still cares about the opinions of others?
      • Probably Gameplay And Story Segregation - it was implied by Grovyle that just about everyone in the blackened future had gone completely insane, and the human would have had to defend himself against lunatic pokémon, and maybe crazy humans as well. The game doesn't say how, but for all we know, he could have also been a very skilled fighter as a human, and perhaps even used weapons, but this is venturing into WMG territory

• The beginning of Sky's fourth special episode is just odd when I think about it. Did Team Charm disguise themselves as statues for no other reason than to ruin the day of the next explorer who managed to make it to the end of the dungeon?

• So the main two characters managed to fix Temporal Tower and prevent the planet's paralysis, to the point where the future never occurred the way it did and only intervention allows the future cast to remain in existence unchanged. In that case, how does Darkrai remember the whole thing, including interfering with the time travel attempt? Is he somehow immune to time paradoxes? Did offscreen Arceus let him be an additional survivor?
  • A Wizard Did It.
  • Everyone else remembers. The Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory explicitly applies here.
  • Well, it's never stated which time period Darkrai originated from. Given how everyone from the past has Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory... It's likely he's from the past, which would also simplify the fact that that's when Temporal Tower collapsed. If he's from the future, while that would have made it easier for him to find out when the hero and Grovyle time travelled without having to do a bunch of time travel himself, then he most likely would not be hanging around in the past for the post-credits plot, whether he remembers it or not.
• Just what happened to Team Skull, after you beat them in Brine Cave? I've been hearing rumors about them being killed at one point, but I haven't picked up Sky in a long time and simply can't be bothered to play it anymore (that's another story). So what happened to them?
  • We don't know. The fact that they're never seen again after that moment made quite a few people suspicious they died offscreen, though.
  • Another hint toward this fate is that after the protagonists take the relic fragment and leave, it's revealed that none of Team Skull's members can even move.
    • I like to think of it as that they recovered, then left for another place to rob, knowing damn well anyplace is better than the Wigglytuff Guild.

• Why does everyone complain so much about the Perfect Apples incident in Time/Darkness/Sky? I mean sure, it was pretty rude of Chatot to just gripe you out without giving you a chance to speak, but it's not like he's the only person to ever act like that. Chatot would only expect that you wouldn't be able to get things done right because your team messes something up. Is that really unreasonable? Also, someone called Chatot the worst PMD character ever because of that. I don't see how anyone can think that, at least not compared to a character who lied to the player saying that the world would be destroyed if they weren't killed! I might be missing something here, but people take that scene a bit out of proportion if you ask me.
  • I agree with you too. What many people seem to miss was that Chatot was acting out of panic; of COURSE he'd be more snappy and irrational than normal. If anything, Chatot's panic over the Perfect Apple incident should be blamed on Wigglytuff being so spoiled. If Chatot wasn't deathly afraid of Wigglytuff's temper, I'm sure he'd have listened to the hero and partner's explanation.
  • I'll be the first to answer, I suppose. Sure it's unreasonable, but hey, we did our best to get the apples after a mildly challenging dungeon, and got punished (as well as a morale drop) for something that wasn't our fault. At least with Team Skull they get beaten a lot over the course of the story, but Chatot doesn't until Brine Cave, which given the circumstances, acts as his Rescued From the Scrappy Heap moment. It doesn't help that the next day he told us we shouldn't count on going on the expedition, completely unprovoked, we weren't asking about it. It's not logical, it's emotional.
  • Do you even get the chance to explain? Will he listen? No. Considering we're in the team's shoes, our anger towards the situation enlarges as he is essentially blaming YOU.

• Why would Darkrai want to destroy the world in the first place? Did he just do it For the Evulz?
  • I haven't listened to his speech lately, but I got less of an impression that he wanted to destroy the world and more that he wanted to plunge it into darkness. He probably likes darkness.
  • Also, stop replacing his name with underscores.

• In the first two games, what was the point of having Team Meanie say they want world domination. It never comes back, and it's all but dropped for the whole revenge against the player plot. Putting aside the fact that Team Meanie couldn't take over the world to save their lives, if the game was just going to drop it for different bad guy motives, why not just give them something simple as a motive, like that they're only in it for the money (which is kind of true already, just leave out the world domination stuff). It just seems like the team was saying,

"How can we show that these are the bad guys?" "Have them act mean, be selfish, and care for no one but themselves?" "Oh the kid'll never catch on. I know! They'll want world domination! Every villain wants to take over the world!" "But with all the rest of the plot we have written out, won't that be... confusing?" "Ah it's a kid's game, who cares?"

• • Or they decided world domination would be too hard, and with other stronger Pokémon out their to whup their butts to the curb...

• Okay, so at Amp Plains, you and your partner encounter Luxray (or Manectric, depending). In Darkness/Time, at least, Luxray can see you and your partner from anywhere, making hiding pointless. So...how the heck did Team Skull hide from him?! And how is it that Dusknoir found them when Luxray/Manectric, who sees through walls, didn't?
  • I always figured that Luxray/Manectric might have seen Team Skull, but then Team Skull used their gas combo thing as cover to get far enough away so that they could be just out of Luxray/Manectric's range. No idea why Dusknoir managed to see them, though...

• Not so much a complaint with the plot itself, but why do people assume that the Darkrai that you can recruit is the same one as the Big Bad one? It's shown that there are at least two different Celebi in the PMD-verse, so it's possible that there are at least two different Darkrai as well. And you'd think that the hero and partner would have some kind of reaction to seeing the same Darkrai again. More importantly, though, why would Darkrai set up the time portal to take him to the same era he was currently in? You'd think that, since he was trying to escape and all, he'd go somewhere else (most likely at least slightly backwards in time) in order to keep the heroes from finding him.
  • To the first point, I think it's because it makes sense. Darkrai is kind of a lone Pokemon and it's been shown there are loads of different Celebi.

• Another one related to assumptions with Darkrai: why do some people think he moved the Time Gears around? Wouldn't there have been more reports in-game of time stopping in those places? And if he thought that moving the gears would contribute to his plans, wouldn't it make more sense for him to try to break the gears?
  • ...I'm going to ignore the fact that you guys WANT the villains to win. Maybe the Gears are indestructible.