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Pokemon has been around for over 25 years, consisting of countless anime, films, at present nine different generations of main series games, over 1,000 Pokemon, worlds, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:dozens of spin-off titles. Keeping all of these different components lore-friendly is a tricky business, and if you thought Pokemon wasn't complex enough to have lore... well, how wrong you are.
The Pokedex entries and narratives for the main games handle the overarching story of Pokemon pretty well, but we have to go deeper to unravel the intricate ball of wibbꦕly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff that connects all th෴e main games. Below is all you need to know in order to understand just what the hell is going on with the Pokemon timelines.
Updated August 19, 2023 by Hilton Webster: Pokemon isn't exactly a series you look at and think to yourself "I wonder what's going on with the timeline?" unless you're a diehard fan, which you probably are if you're reading this. We've given this article a run-over to make it all that much clearer to wrap your head around the surprisingly complex Pokemon timeline.
Direct Sequels
It would be logical to think that, in the shorthand, all Pokemon games are technically sequels. They seem, for the most part, roughly contemporary to the real world. They even have Nintendo consoles in your own room. The thing is, Pokemon games have all their own lore, and a lot of that grows across entries. So let's start off with the games that are actual sequels.
The original Pokemon games Red & Green (or Red & Blue for the Western world) were the birthplace of the entire franchise, something that would become a worldwide phenomenon. These were followed up with Gold & Silver, which seemed impossibly large for the little cartridge they had to fit on. Unlike almost every other Pokemon game that comes later, Gold & Silver, the second generation of Pokemon games, were direct sequels to the original.
Though the majority of the game takes place in Johto, the post-game brings you back to Kanto where you see it dramatically changed from the previous game, events having followed on from the preceding years. This style of continuation wouldn't happen again until Black and White.
The fifth generation of Pokemon games takes place in the Unova region. Though scant mentions of previous games are made in any other game, we can assume Black & White take place after the original two generations due to the presence of a single Team Rocket grunt who seems to have fled from his previous job. Instead of the typical third game in a generation, Black & White was instead followed up with numbered sequels, taking place exactly two 🌠years a🧔fter the previous. Likely the clearest the games ever were in that regard.
Shared Characters
In many ways, the games do actually follow sequentially, there are usually just some twists and turns along the way. Shared characters are a great reminder of this, many of them appearing as cameos in later games that make placing these games in the timeline a little bit easier.
- Looker: First, and perhaps most prominently, is Looker. An international police agent that first appears in Pokemon Platinum, he has since appeared in multiple other games investigating various events, both criminal and extraterrestrial. In most cases, we see him sequentially, though he plays his cards close to his chest so as not to reveal too much.
- Cynthia: Perhaps most renowned of all the Pokemon Champions, Cynthia has reappeared more than most other characters in the series, appearing in generations four, five, and seven. In Gen five, she will actually reference the events of Gen 4, and appears in Gen seven in the Battle Tree. Like most other characters, Sun and Moon's cameo characters are aged quite a bit from their original appearances.
- Red And Blue: This duo is inextricably tied, more than anyone else in the series. Serving as the protagonist and rival respectively in the original game, they appear multiple times over, even in the Let's Go games having already completed their quests. Most recently, the duo have appeared in Gen 7 in the Battle Tree. As with Cynthia and other recurring characters, they are the most aged in Sun and Moon.
There are plenty more characters that reappear across the series, including Grimsley of the Gen 5 Elite Four, though these are the most prominent, firmly establishing Sun and Moon as the farthest ahead in the timeline that we can clearly see.
Where Do The Remakes Fit?
A slight wrinkle in all this is the remakes. When the games come out, they are typically in release order. For the remakes, this needs to be rethought a little. You see, they do still roughly follow with being contemporary for the time when the remake was released, but now have to contend with why they are years ahead of the original games' releases.
For FireRed & LeafGreen, the timelines remain functionally untouched. With HeartGold & SoulSilver, it gets more complicated. Now, even though it still takes place as a sequel to Pokemon Red & Blue (and thusly its remakes), it also introduces the Sinjoh Ruins. Here, Arceus and the legendary trio of Gen 4 are tied, with Arceus able to birth a new member of the trio when brought here. Even more, Cynthia appears here during her travels away from Sinnoh. All of this is to say that the events of Gen 4 do occur after Gen 2, though much more closely than one♐ might have previously expected, with Gen 3 occurring simultaneously.
The next pair of remakes came alongside X & Y, the sixth Generation. X & Y are already odd in the timeline, with only a scant reference to Blue and how he plans on visiting Kalos. With Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire. These games still remain tightly within their pre-determined period, though introduce the wrinkle of mirage spots, dimensional rips in space-time that allow legendary pokemon from other regions to appear. This isn't an explicitly referenced point of the story, but it hints further at things introduced in Sun & Moon.
Finally, we have Gen 4 and its two new installments. On one hand, we have Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, such close remakes that even Platinum wasn't considered in their creation. There's really not much to consider here. Legends: Arceus, on the other hand, is very fascinating. Advertised as a prehistoric jaunt into Sinnoh, the actual story reveals to us that it is actually a time travel adventure, a favourite technique of the Pokemon games༺ lately.
This doesn't fundamentally shift the timelines at all. Legends clearly does take place in the past, but it is interesting to see Arceus directly whisk someone from a modern time to the past to solve an issue of, you guessed it, timelines at risk of destruction.
Ultra Wormholes And The Pokemon Multiverse
Now, let's get on to the real meat of what makes the whole timeline stuff confusing - the Multiverse. You're all probably sick of the term and likely didn't expect Pokemon of all things to make a plotline out of it, but that's exactly what it did. Introduced in Sun & Moon and massively expanded in the Ultra versions of the games, Ultra Wormholes are, as they are theorised to be in reality, tunnels through space and time.
We technically see these for the first time in Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire, though they aren't used as a plot element until the Ultra games, where we see Ultra Beasts, functionally aliens from other dimensions entirely. Even more, Giovanni of Team Rocket creates the new Rainbow Rocket with the power of Ultra Wormholes in these games, bringing the leaders of other timelines to his own one to create the ultimate team of villains.
However, rather than ripping them from different periods of time, he actually takes alternate versions of these characters from different dimensions. The clearest example of this is with Ghetsis, who has succeeded in his own plans but does not recognise the Colress of this world, who has appeared from the Pokemon Black & White games that we know. Once again, this places Sun & Moon as the farthest ahead games in the timeline, though playing with time and dimensions like this doesn't bring the reality of these other worlds any closer to understanding.
Everything Seemingly Disconnected
Following on from Sun & Moon, the games have tried much less at tying themselves together as clearly. X & Y feature next to no cameo characters, and the same can be said for both Sword & Shield and Scarlet & Violet. Even G🌌eneration 3 is more firmly placed by circumstantial evidence rather than anything directly stated.
One aspect of particular note is the appearance of Necrozma in the Sword & Shield Crown Tundra DLC, as well as many other legendary Pokemon. This is remarkably similar to the events of the Gen 3 remakes, though with more context this time around. It's a stringent tie, though with the nature of a multiverse, it can be hard to say where Sword & Shield takes place as a result.
Mega evolutions, dynamaxing, and all other regional phenomena are fascinating circumstances because they beg the question of why, exactly, don't these appear in other games? Mega evolutions are the most widespread, appearing in Sun & Moon's post-game, though never again. In many ways, dynamaxing is a combination of both mega evolutions and Z-moves, but this is purely from a gameplay perspective. Even Scarlet and Violet's terastallization exists in a similar vein.
Scarlet & Violet also have no explicit place in the timeline, though there are hints at something. The games also deal with paradoxes with new Pokemo🐠n that have evolved to be something entirely different from what we know, and also deal with time shenanigans. Most notable, however, is their themes of past and present, a defining feature of these paradox Pokemon.
These are also the themes of Black and White, the games next in line for theoretical remakes. With (at the time of writing) upcoming DLC characters already bearing similarities to Drayden and Iris, it could well be that Scarleꦯt and Violet are ultimately connected. However, quite literally, only time will tell.