Ashes Of The Past / Tropes D to F

Tropes A to C | Tropes D to F | Tropes G to K | Tropes L to O | Tropes P to S | Tropes T to Z

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D

• Damsel out of Distress:
  • May and Max are kidnapped by a group of poachers along with six starter Pokémon, but May uses the starters' skills to escape and hold off the thieves long enough for The Cavalry to arrive.
  • Then Gender-Inverted with her son; Manaphy is captured by the Phantom Pirate's ambush in Chapter 212, but manages to use Heart Swap and Acid Armour to get away, and use a water wing technique Wartortle taught him to get back to the group.
• Danger Sense: All Absol have a "disaster sense" that tells them about disasters that are likely to occur. Unfortunately, that sense goes haywire once they get a look at Ash, which causes them to Freak Out and try to run away. Ash's own Absol from Forina is an exception, as she specializes in "chance-dancing", and is eventually able to see the nuances of the disasters surrounding her trainer. Even she lost control, though, when mega-evolution amplified her senses.
• A Day in the Limelight: Chapters are often interspersed with scenes of other supporting characters and Pokémon away from the main group and their travels. When a whole chapter is made up of these scenes, it's usually referred to as "Ashes Nowhere To Be Seen".
• Dead Man's Switch: Pikachu uses this in a battle tactic, by controlling an electrical shield made out of a dizzying number of charging electrical currents, all requiring a high degree of control. But as soon as his opponent puts him to sleep, that control slips and the currents all unravel in a colossal electrical explosion.
• Death Course: A corridor in the Temple of the Sea turns out to be this. Turns out Manaphy had been living there for so long he forgot that he hadn't yet turned off the traps in the current timeline. Luckily they weren't designed to keep out Lucario.
• Death Is Not Permanent: Whenever Ash dies, the Sacred Ash that Ho-Oh gave him in the beginning of the story will resurrect him/prevent his death. However, there's only so much Ash in that bag of his...
• Defeat Means Friendship:
  • Conversed by Squirtle and Charizard when they wonder whether defeating Hunter J's Salamence means that they'll become friends. Charizard doubts it.
  • A number of times, Ash and Co. encounter some unsavoury trainers that they have to beat and show the error of their ways, and they sometimes turn up in the future having turned over a new leaf.
  • Subverted with Marcus. When he is beaten by Ash and Co. employing extreme force majeure, he leaves Michina in fury. Unfortunately, this has extreme ripple effects that leaves the present horrifically changed. It's only when Ash and Co. win him over by diplomacy that things finally go right.
• Defusing the Tyke-Bomb: This happens to N as in canon, except that the defusing is done by Mewtwo's book about the relationship between humans, Pokémon, and the intricacies of being a caught Pokémon, giving N the insight and curiosity required to defuse himself.
• Demonic Possession: The King of PokéAtlantis possesses Forrest when he is accidentally freed, then is tricked into trying to do so to Zorua, which ends his threat for good.
• De-power: Team Galactic's capture of the Lake Trio and having them put in stasis renders Ash unable to Remind people of the old timeline.
• Descriptiveville:
  Brock: That's Remoraid Mountain. It's got Remoraid Lake on top of it, it's near the Remoraidian Ruins which used to be inhabited by the ancient people called the Remoraidians, and you'll never guess what Pokémon are up there.
  Ash: Octillery.
  Brock: Probably.^note Since, you know, Remoraid DOES evolve into Octillery at Level 25.
• Deus ex Machina: Played straight to amazing effect when Ash, after his resurrection, understands the purpose of the GS Ball and calls out Arceus from it to help stop Original Team Galactic. Considering Jiraichi desperately wished for things to turn out alright, this is justified as well.
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • Quoted word for word when Dexter turns into a Porygon.
  • Ash didn't expect Casey would have a plan to defeat Charizard on their first encounter. She pulled the FEAR strategy on him (elaborated upon above, under the Adaptational Badass trope).
  • No one at all expected the massive Dragonite at Bill's lighthouse to a) be Australian and b) be holding a truck-sized can of Foster's Beer. Everyone tries desperately to forget that it happened.
  • No one expected illusionary counterparts to Suicune and Raikou at the Hale Manor.
  • And definitely no-one expected Pikachu to be captured in a Dark Ball.
  • And absolutely nobody, not even the readers, expected Squirtle to actually succeed in Mega Evolving.
  • Even Team Rocket couldn't have seen James' Moltres costume leading to a chain of events that led to them accidentally capturing a real Moltres. Ash, upon hearing it, gives a Flat "What".
    • It doesn't end there. Even after turning over a new leaf, Team Rocket never thought that they would finally get their hands on a Pikachu. Let alone a cosplaying one.
  • Team Magma and Aqua both showing up in person to capture Jirachi caught everyone off guard.
    • The monster Groudon in Forina, Ash and Co. were expecting. The monster Kyogre, not so much.
  • Kyogre and Groudon undergoing Primal Reversion and beating Rayquaza.
  • When Norman's Lopunny Mega Evolves, he gets angry at Casper mocking him about how his Mega Evolution makes him look even more feminine, and kicks him. Casper, unaware that Mega Lopunny has the Scrappy ability that allows Normal-type attacks to hit Ghosts, goes flying.
  • For all that Ash and Co. have lived through in both timelines, the catastrophe that is the Delta Episode is something they've never had to deal with. And it's suitably epic.
  • No one expected the Mastermind of Mirage Pokémon event to occur, and it has been confirmed that Ash and Co. never had to deal with that in the original timeline.
  • Solidad, who May faces in the Kanto Grand Festival, likes researching her foes to figure out the best way to take them out. She was completely unaware of Joltik though, and as a result prepared to fight Blaziken, leaving her caught off guard by both the Pokémon and the tactics she used with Manaphy.
  • The Fossil Pokémon mass revival early in Sinnoh likewise takes the gang by surprise.
  • Max's opponent having his Sharpedo go Mega catches him and Kris by surprise, especially since his "sea-air ballistic shark attack" cry baffled them.
  • During the events at Alamos Town, Ash didn't expect the ceremonial sword he got from the Togepi Kingdom to have a spirit of a female knight inside it, much less for it to become a Honedge.
  • After their second attempt to resolve the events of the Jewel of Life after the first went awry, Brock was expecting their attempt to work or another Apocalypse How, not a land covered in crystal.
    Brock: ...okay, that's not what I was expecting. There were two options, and this is the third...
  • Everyone is taken aback when the Team Galactic from the original timeline emerges from the portal created by the Team Galactic of the current timeline, having been secretly assisting their counterparts the entire time.
  • Original Cyrus, having come from the old timeline, is astonished at the presence of the Fairy-type, specifically, when a Mawile No Sells his Primal Palkia's Spacial Rend.
• Didn't Think This Through: Several times in-story, often where battle plans don't always work out due to overlooked details.
  • The Legendary Beasts can run fast. So fast, in fact, that Raikou's challenge against Ash passes through a reserve where catching Pokémon is illegal, right under the noses of some alert Rangers. Oops.
  • Team Aqua and Team Magma didn't think about what would happen if both Kyogre and Groudon underwent Primal Reversion.
  • When a spar with Norman's newly Mega-evolved Lopunny sends both him and Blaziken up into the sky, after May uses Altaria to catch him, Blaziken points out that 1: she could have just returned him; and 2: he knows two moves that send him up that high all the time, so he could have just come back down himself, causing May to Facepalm. (Norman comments that he suggested it in order to get May and Altaria to bond, as the two were having issues with flying together).
  • One prominent example occurs during the events of Pokémon: Destiny Deoxys. May, Brock and Drew have intercepted the haywire robots, have found the core robot, have gotten a pass up to it to give the main control room a chance to reset them... only to realize that they never told anyone in the control room to do anything.
  • Dawn's Swinub shows up early, and it's pointed out that, with how big Mamoswine are, they should bring him outside before reminding him. Ash then picks him up, forgetting for a minute that that's how he reminds Pokémon. If Lucario hadn't pulled a Fastball Special again and gotten Swinub outside before he evolved...
  • Paul lampshades this when he learns of his previous self's choices when fighting Cynthia (he sent a fairly inexperienced Chimchar out against her Garchomp).
  • Lugia finds a few problems with his housesitting of Altomare while the Eon twins are out: he's a bit too big for the garden, a lot too big for the canals, and he can't turn invisible or shapeshift.
  • Suicune should've remembered that Aura Speech isn't translated across electronic mediums like TV and radio, before she agreed to give the opening speech at the Indigo League Conference.
• Did You Just Have Tea With Cthulhu: In Chapter 296, N ends up teaching Arceus how to make tea.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
  • After becoming Lugia's apprentice and learning Aeroblast, Ash's Pidgeot does this to the Shamouti Bird Trio on a semi-regular basis.
  • During the Whirl Cup, Misty beats Suicune with only two of her Pokémon, since she knows what Suicune had been struggling with while training with Ash.
  • During the Scuffle of Legends, Pikachu's Volt Crash stuns Primal Kyogre long enough for Mega Rayquaza to knock her out with Dragon Ascent.
  • Abound during the Battle Finale of Legend against Original Team Galactic and their suborned Primal Creation Trio, including Mawile punching Primal Palkia in the face, and Ash actually staggering Primal Dialga and Palkia with Sacred Sword.
• Discard and Draw:
  • Paul gives away Chimchar to Ash because he couldn't work with his training style, but asks Ash to get another Pokémon that will. Ash obliges with a Challenge Seeker of a Cranidos.
  • Roland, after evolving into a Gallade, mentions that he'd just gotten used to being able to No-Sell Dragon types when facing one (Gallade loses his Fairy subtyping in exchange for a Fighting subtype).
• Discontinuity Nod:
  • Dexter brings up the events of the infamous banned Porygon episode, which none of the others can remember. He attributes the memory loss to seizures brought on by the digital environment.
  • In Chapter 252, aka Sinnoh 15, Ash and company arrive in Heartome City, a pseudo Hearthome City. Saphroneth made this decision because of a translation error in the anime where the crew arrived in Amity Park before they ever arrived in Hearthome.
• Disguised in Drag: Ash does not like having the canon moments he did this in brought up.
• Disqualification-Induced Victory: Ash and Donphan win a skateboard race and thus Mawile's egg even though Squirtle and Pikachu finished first. Squirtle's Horn Drill Breaker propelled himself and Pikachu to the finish line in record time, but it also also disintegrated their skateboard in midair.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength:
  • Ash's Mawile finds out that her Mega-Evolution has Huge Power, by sending her friend Goodra into the wall with a single punch.
  • Reshiram's power means that even though he wants N to use a Poké-ball on him, he keeps accidentally obliterating the ones used on him.
  • Mavis's Pokémon have trouble keeping their attacks not excessively strong. The number of times her team has wrecked her own gym can attest to that.
  • Casper as Mega Banette finds out just how strong he is by throwing Blaine's Rhydon clear out of the volcano crater.
• Don't Do Anything I Wouldn't Do: A variant when Misty tells Pikachu, "don't let your trainer get into any trouble he can't get out of!" Pikachu responds that he wouldn't be able to tell what that looks like.
  Pikachu: On the list of things he can get out of we've already got the collapse of time itself and a fossil apocalypse.
• Doorstopper: As of March 2020, with the main storyline complete, the fic exceeds 1.9 million words. It also has 299 chapters.
• Dope Slap: Combined with Shamu Fu when Ash annoys Misty and she slaps him in the face with "a very surprised Goldeen".
  Misty: No more lip from you, mister Ketchum.
• Doppelgänger Attack: The effect of Beat Up, Substitute, or having Parental Bond on any Pokémon other than a Mega Kangaskhan.
• Double Knockout:
  • A subversion during Ash's first battle with Lorelei. Both are down to their last Pokémon, his Tauros and her Jynx use Fissure and Sheer Cold at the same time, they both hit... but Jynx manages to hold on with a Focus Sash while Tauros succumbs.
  • A three-way knockout during Max's gym battle with the Fairy-type gym leader Mavis, where his Ralts and Charmander hit Mavis's Mawile in a mid-air three-way collision that takes all of them out at once.
  • And the final Contest battle between Jessie and Zoey N knocks out all four combatants in a huge explosion.
• Double Take:
  • Iris takes a quick glance at the news before she leaves on her run, then comes back in a second later because the news features Ash and Giratina.
  • Meowth does one when Ash is resurrected from dust.
• Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto Us: Cinder is able to use preemptive retaliation as a justification for using Payback before her foe can attack her.
• Dramatic Irony: After the events in Gracidea Vale, Cyrus finds it amusing that Ash would be trying to Remind Giratina but can't because of the Perception Filter and the fact that the Lake Trio have been captured. Joke's on him; Azelf managed to transfer Giratina's Reminded memories to Ash before they got captured, meaning Giratina can be Reminded and rendered immune to Galactic's anti-meme effect.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: As Ash's team grows absurdly stronger with their experience and the number of Legendaries on it, a few elements keep him from Curb Stomping everyone, even the final boss of Team Galactic. On an everyday basis, Ash's Humble Hero preference to allow his opponents to give a good showing (unlike someone like Tobias) means he won't use his A-game unless they specifically ask for it. With regards to Team Galactic, an unforeseen Perception Filter means that unless someone is Reminded by Ash of the old timeline, they will not be able to see, perceive or remember Team Galactic, and around half of Ash's new Legendaries do not apply.
  • During the Battle Finale of Legend, Mewtwo is focused on defense to keep the vulnerable members alive, and the Creation Trio, when faced with Original Team Galactic's Primal Creation Trio, have to focus on neutralizing any conceptual or metaphysical attacks like rapid aging, unmaking, spatial collapse, etc., thus leaving it to the rest of Ash's team to battle directly.
• The Dreaded: Ash, after winning the Indigo League Champion. He becomes even more feared after Spell of the Unown, where Charizard, after some bizarre Mega Evolution activation and transitioning, started beating back the Unown-created Raikou, Suicune and Entei on live television.
  • The Officer Jennys in Johto have evidently been printing Ketchum Incident reporting slips.
    • Lance explains how bad Kyogre and Groudon undergoing Primal Reversion was by showing that he had two Ketchum Incident reporting slips stapled together. The entire audience gasped.
  • When the Gym Leaders of Kanto hear that Ash is coming back after the Hoenn League for a few months, they manage to keep themselves from panicking outright, but only just.
  • Even some Legendaries are starting to hear about Pikachu, Team Rocket's Moltres is careful to be polite when he approaches her for the first time.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Norman's Lopunny is male, having his gender mistaken is his Berserk Button, and doesn't initially care much for his Mega Evolution due to it making him even more feminine. He gets more excited after seeing how powerful it makes him though.
• Dude, Not Funny!: While progressing through the Mystery Dungeon storyline, Aaron and Co. reach the point where they're told by Xatu of the human who invoked the Ninetales curse. Apparently a variant of the event happened to Aaron during his life and he is not happy that Arceus included it.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Zigzagged. After becoming Indigo League Champion, Ash garners a lot of respect, and a lot of people do fear battling him, but his eccentric, borderline insane behaviour, along with his Pokémon's tendency to do the impossible^note which is routine in Squirtle's case, means they have issues taking him seriously.
• Dungeon Bypass:
  • Ash goes to the Rota Kingdom and frees Sir Aaron's Lucario on his Indigo League run, leaving the issue completely resolved when he returns during his Battle Frontier run. He still goes to the Tree of Beginning, but this time it's to pay respects to Sir Aaron's resting place.
  • The Fuchsia Gym requires challengers to navigate an obstacle course before they can face Koga himself. Jessie and James get through by having Abra teleport them to the goal, which Koga promptly disallows for future challengers. Ash and his Pokémon get through by using Aura Sight to spot the traps and just smashing through the walls. Ash's interview in Goldenrod reveals that Koga disallowed that from then on as well.
  • Ash tends to do this a lot. For example, in one of the Orange League gyms, one of the challenges is a race. While it's implied that you're supposed to use a water type, Ash instead uses his Pidgeot... which is capable of supersonic travel. Again, the leader vows to specifically require the use of a Water-type in future.
  • Ash's various Pokémon, coupled with future knowledge, allow him a lot of bypasses. Managing to cut weeks of aimless wandering in the woods thanks to not being lost helps, and the ability to move extremely quickly (via Suicune or Pidgeot, for example) enables them to get from one place to another with minimum of fuss.
  • It really helps Ash that many of the "Dungeons" that popped up in the original time line simply don't show up due to Team Rocket not being as antagonistic here. Whole episodes worth of problems simply vanish, or become much simpler to fix without the team exacerbating them.
  • The entirety of the original plot of Pokémon: Jirachi: Wish Maker is taken care of by a restored Jirachi using Future Sight to show Butler the consequences of his plan to restore Groudon. Unfortunately, when Butler steps down, Team Aqua and Team Magma both step up, resulting in things being worse than before.
  • Lucario manages to get through many of the Temple of the Sea's traps without a scratch.
  • In Pokémon: Giratina and the Sky Warrior, the traveling-to-Gracidea part of the movie is instantly resolved on account of all the teleporters Ash and Co. have on-hand. Unfortunately, like Jirachi's movie, that doesn't mean things are easy by a long shot.
• Dying Moment of Awesome:
  • Several seen during the Time Crash. Included in their number are Keldeo's parents' final stand against a rampaging Reshiram and Ash's father breaking a tidal wave over Pacifidlog.
  • In the original timeline, Latios had one, stopping a tsunami… but averted in this story, because Mewtwo took care of it.
• Dynamic Entry: When running to save an injured Houndour, Ash jumps off a cliff and lands on a Golem, hitting it with Force Palm in the process.

E

• Early-Bird Cameo: In terms of being seen and not joining the main cast immediately:
  • During Ash's Hoenn Run, a few scenes in Unova are shown, involving Iris in Opelucid City and Cilan and his brothers setting up their gym.
  • Clemont shows up in the Delta Episode, though only in the scenes in Kalos.
  • Serena becomes Dawn's pen-pal midway through the Battle Frontier. After the events in Alamos Town, she realizes exactly who her new pen-pal is now traveling with.
  • Grings Kodai briefly appears when Silver takes a wrong turn when trying to find the Temple of the Sea. Saphroneth lampshades that Silver got so lost he ended up in the wrong movie. He appears again during the events of Giratina and the Sky Warrior.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The first Kanto chapters were written around the early days of Pokémon's 5th Generation (before the localized named of Unova was revealed in fact), and with no feedback before publishing, and were originally posted on Saphroneth's Deviantart page. After a hiatus, the author resumed writing beginning with The Power of One retelling, just as Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire were about to be released, and posting his works on SpaceBattles.com for feedback. The contrast is quite visible.
  • One unavoidable problem is that the original anime was self-contained with just one hundred and fifty Pokémon in the Kanto region. So certain plot points - like Sabrina's father saying that you "Need a Ghost-type to fight Psychic-types" - don't make nearly as much sense in a world where Dark-types (which can No-Sell psychic attacks) are known to exist, but didn't exist at the time the episodes were made (or Psychic getting Nerfed by later generations). The author dealt with it by making a Discontinuity Nod to some of the generation 1 flaws (like the fact that all the local ghosts were also Poison-type, and thus vulnerable to psychics).
• Enemy Civil War: As a result of N's early departure along with Reshiram, a schism has developed in Team Plasma between those who follow N and those who follow Ghestis.
• Enemy Mine: Primal Kyogre and Groudon are beating onto each other until Rayquaza popped up in Chapter 165. Then they ganged up on him.
• Engineered Heroics: The Zapdos hanging out with Casey has a wild Aggron show up that he can "protect" from it, presumably to impress her.
• Entertainingly Wrong: When Noland sees Ash and Co. arrive at the Battle Factory, he correctly assumes that Ash is challenging the Battle Frontier, since Scott would've jumped at the chance at inviting him as soon as possible. That's all well and good, but at the chapter's end, we find out that Scott never formally issued Ash the challenge yet, and is now running around trying to find him.
• Epic Fail:
  • This happens sometimes when a Pokémon uses Fissure on a battlefield where the ground isn't deep enough.
  • The only outcome when a group of pirates ambush Ash and co., who normally have Pokémon out of their balls as a course of habit, while there's a Poké-ball-disabling meteorite somewhere in the vicinity.
  • In the Kanto Grand Festival, a Graveler beans itself on the head with its own Rock Throw, and a Flaafy zaps its trainer.
  • Barry's Smeargle tries to Sketch Lucario's Aura Sphere seeker variation. He only gets one ordinary Aura Sphere.
  • When a Skuntank tries to spray Lucario, not only is he able to shield his nostrils with Aura, he then proceeds to use the skunk Pokémon as a very smelly flail against its allies.
• Equippable Ally:
  • Several Double-battle teams in the Ever Grande conference have this tactic, including a Machamp with a Magikarp (it evolves mid-battle, but is taken out before its partner can try to do the same with the new Gyarados), an Ariados with a Roggenrola, a Pelipper with a water-boosted Pineco, and May's Porygon2 forming itself as bracers on Blaziken and attacking from there as if they were his weapons.
  • Ash's new Honedge counts, since he'd been wielding her as an ordinary ornamental sword since well before she manifested as a Pokémon. When used in multi-battles, her teammates also often wield her as such.
• Establishing Series Moment: See the dialogue on the main page? That firmly establishes the premise of the story as well as sets the tone for the series.
• "Eureka!" Moment:
  • During the Delta Episode, the odds of stopping the Meteor of Doom are too close to call, when Brock has an idea (helped by Absol preventing him from losing his train of thought), that they could just get a meteorite from a museum that could help Rayquaza go Mega and thus stop the meteor.
  • While trying to figure out why their attempts at solving the events of Pokémon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life keep resulting in Bad Futures, Tyrantrum asks how Ash and Co. stopped Marcus the first time without all their strong Pokémon, leading to the realization that the solution is not force, but diplomacy.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: If Jessie and James catching a Relicanth for his mother is any indication, Giovanni seems close to said mother, despite his criminal activities.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Giovanni's primary issue with the Iron Masked Marauder's actions is that he intended to use Celebi's powers to supplant him. But he's not upset because of the risk of losing his power, his influence, or his resources, nor is he all that upset about the gall that the Marauder had in doing that when Giovanni and his organization were responsible for building him up to having all of his power in the first place. He says that he can forgive all of that, but the one thing that he can't is that because of Vicious's attempted tampering with time, he might have lost his Persian.
• Evil Versus Oblivion: The purpose of Rocket executives, or at least the department the promoted Jessie, James, and Meowth are in. You can't rule or make a profit in a destroyed world, so somebody needs to point Idiot Heroes in the right direction to protect all those potential victims. This doesn't mean that Team Rocket as a whole is a group of good guys now — they still run shady operations like not-entirely-legal gambling — but it more means that they want to prevent people from rocking the boat too much.
  • Case in point, the TRio show up whenever something like Primal Kyogre and Groudon shows up, and assist Ash in holding them at bay.
• Exact Words:
  • A distracted Roxanne asks how many Hoenn Gym Badges Ash has. Ash answers "none". Hilarity Ensues. Roxanne later decides to word her questions more carefully in the future. (In fairness, Ash did double-check that she was serious about her challenge level.)
  • As a pre-gym challenge, Wattson tells Max he and his team have to stay on Raikou for 30 seconds. He means his robo-Raikou bucking bronco, but Max knows where to find another, calmer, real-life Raikou instead, and just sits on his back, and since his team are all in his Poké-balls on his belt, they stay on too. Wattson takes this in good humor, though Max says that, if he hadn't, he would have just shocked the robot until it stopped working and sat on it then.
  • Iris has to do a report on the history of Gyms in Unova, and she's not liking it. Upon a closer look at the assignment, she decides to just do it on the history of one Gym that she likes, because that isn't disallowed.
  • The night before Ash's Battle Factory match against Noland, Noland's Articuno asks Entei if he has any tips for battling Ash's Pokémon. Entei answers that Mawile is weak to Ground attacks and to not let your guard down around her, advice for a Pokémon Ash probably isn't going to use tomorrow.
  • During Drew's Contest Battle against Solidad during the Kanto Grand Festival, he orders his Flygon to "grab [her] new teammate". While it's seemingly obvious what Drew's planning, there are three points to note: Flygon's teammate is Roserade, one of Drew's oldest Pokémon, he recently caught a Butterfree, and there's a Butterfree on Solidad's team. As such, Solidad doesn't parse Drew's order until it's too late.
  • Byron wants his gym destroyed during Ash's challenge (since he plans to rebuild it anyway) without any collateral damage to the surrounding area. Giratina packs the entire building off to the Reverse World.
    Giratina: I believe I have met the requirement for the battle. Where your gym once stood is now only a hole.
• Explosive Results: Seems to be what happens if a Pokémon uses too many held items at once. Gary has taken finding out why as his new project, already anticipating the displeasure from his Pokémon.

F

• Failed a Spot Check:
  • When Eusine meets Morty (at the moment in the middle of a Gym Battle with Ash) he excitedly talks about his new findings about various legendary Pokémon trios in Johto and Unova... not noticing that a good number of the Pokémon he mentioned were seated in the stands watching Ash's battle with Morty at that moment (as well as their copies). Ash lampshades it by his increasingly loud not-laughter.
  • Distracted by homework marking, asking him how many Hoenn badges he has and him not wearing his (In-Universe) iconic blue outfit, Roxanne fails to recognize Ash as a multi-League winner, and gives him a beginner's gym challenge. Hilarity Ensues.
  • One not Played for Laughs: With it having been several centuries since the last time they fought using that power, coupled with a thick layer of ash from a volcanic eruption, Rayquaza doesn't notice that Groudon and Kyogre have undergone Primal Reversion until he's charging right at them with Dragon Ascent. Groudon gets his claws on him, and a Curb-Stomp Battle from the both of them ensues.
  • Celebi, tired of Ash missing Dawn, tries to just drop him onto her... after he had finally seen her.
  • Zinnia approaching Rayquaza to try to tell him to stop the Delta Episode meteorite... in the middle of a space center's landing pad, right after Rayquaza, Mewtwo, assorted other Legendaries, and a space shuttle full of trainers have just gotten back from trying to do just that.
  • When climbing the Sky Tower, Dialga and Palkia forget that they can float, despite Giratina doing so the entire way up.
  • Ho-Oh was planning on being used in Ash's battle against Brandon, but he was so caught up in a battle with a newly-reminded Buizel that he completely missed it.
  • When Ritchie asks how Max knew that Fortree town has a Contest, Max points to the giant poster next to them.
    Max: I worked it out.
• Fainting: Croagunk faints when he hears about Brock having a girlfriend.
• False Reassurance: Before battling Brawly, Ash tells him that he will only use one of the Pokémon that he used in the Silver Conference, and reassures him that it is not Lugia. After Ash uses Squirtle instead of a Legendary, Brawly probably didn't expect him to finish with Latios (who was at Altomare during the Conference). Brawly takes it pretty well, actually, and puts up enough of a fight to make Ash resort to Mega Evolving.
• Famed In-Story:
  • Ash eventually gains a reputation with his various accomplishments and how he achieves them. This is what his league profile says about him.
    Profile: Ash Ketchum. Winner of the Indigo and Orange Leagues, this young trainer is probably insane and completely unorthodox, and so are his Pokémon. Half the things they do should be impossible. His preferred style is probably sweeper, but it's hard to tell. His starter Pokémon is a Pikachu. Class - probably A.
    • He also has a reputation for absolutely pulverizing Gyms that he fights in. By the Johto Arc, the Gym Leaders have started to move their battles outside... not that it always helps.
    • He played Genghis Khan in a movie once, but this doesn't come up often.
    • It's gotten to the point that even technically wild Pokémon, like those from the Dragon Holy Land or the Valley of Steel, have heard of Ash before he gets there.
  • Ever since the Greenfield Incident, Ash's Charizard is pretty much a local celebrity in the Charicific Valley.
  • Pikachu is turning into this as well.
• Fangirl:
  • Ash gets one of these as an opponent during the Silver Conference.
  • Ash's Swellow turns out to be one for Pidgeot.
  • Iris is this for a lot of trainers, including Lance, Cynthia and Ash. She even has posters of them. It makes for an amusing scene when her memories are finally restored.
• Fastball Special:
  • Lucario, who knows Fling, seems to be especially guilty of this. Pikachu tends to be his favored projectile, with the first occasion being against Drake's Ditto.
  • Bayleef also used Pikachu as a discharge-grenade against a group of Aipom that stole a ball she, Pikachu, and Totodile had been playing with.
    Bayleef: "Say hello to our little friend."
  • A Mega Kangaskhan also utilizes this with her own empowered child.
  • In Chapter 280, Infernape and Gliscor experiment with using Gible as a Draco Meteor "artillery shell", though this strategy seems to be up in the air after Gible's evolution.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Lampshaded in the second Temple of the Sea chapter, where the Phantom Pirates become the third individuals, after Hunter J and Jessebelle, to use actual guns.
• Field of Bones: Jessie's Cubone (based on Archer) can manifest her reality marble, which takes this form. After she gets therapy, it becomes a simple grass field.
• Fighting in the Playground: Ash's gym battle with Norman has their last two Pokémon exit the gym and continue their battle by Flynning across a school playground.
• Fight Off the Kryptonite: Overcoming the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors weaknesses Pokémon have by various moves and tactics is a major theme, especially with Ash and his Pokémon. Norman and Ash both agree that, to an experienced trainer, the type chart is just another challenge.
  • Most Absols with their Danger Sense have a Freak Out when they see Ash. Ash's own Absol, however, manages to see the nuances beneath the mess of disasters and slowly gets used to it.
  • The standout example is Charizard, who is training to swim.
• Finger in a Barrel: Delta, Max's Mantine, tries to pull this on Juan's Wailord by gumming up its blowhole with Ice Beam. Unfortunately, all that did was give Wailord an ice cannonball.
• First-Name Basis: As in the anime and games, a lot of one-shot characters and a few recurring characters are only known by their first names. This is partially lampshaded during Lucario and the Mystery of Mew, as after Ash, Brock, May and Max have been introduced with their full names and knighthood titles, the herald announcing them panics and just announces "Casey, and her Riolu." Casey complains about them not getting her surname.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Revived Fossil Pokémon in general tend to be this. The same also counts for the Rota Lucario, though he gets a lot more time to adapt to it than he originally did.
• Fix Fic: Technically a subversion. Most Fix Fics completely ignore canon after a certain point, but this one only works because the characters have knowledge of canon.
  • However, Ash getting his Goomy early on was written as a response to Ash releasing Goodra mid-XY series. Of course, no one would have predicted that Goodra would return for the Kalos League and the Team Flare attack following it.
• Flat "What":
  • Ash gives a very well deserved one upon hearing that Team Rocket somehow caught a Moltres.
  • When the Quintessential British Gentleman Noctowl faces off against a Royal Blooded Vespiquen and proceed to indulge in some British Ham-to-Ham Combat, Ash has this reaction.
  • Baron Alberto's reaction to the idea of him becoming a Lickilicky.
  • This is Tobias's reaction when, for the very last battle in his and Ash's Sinnoh League final match, Ash sends out his Butterfree, having not used a single Legendary.
• Flynning: What happens when Keldeo goes up against Norman's Ditto.
• Foil: Tobias is this to Ash, even long before he even gets to Sinnoh. In contrast to Tobias using his Legendaries as his first choice and rarely if ever using any of his others, Ash makes deliberate effort to not use his Legendary Pokémon unless their opponent directly requests it and gives all his Pokémon equal training and attention, no matter their strength.
  • When they finally meet in the Sinnoh League finals, their views on battle itself are contrasted, with Tobias seeing not putting forward your best at the start as disrespectful, and Ash seeing absolutely stomping your opponent and not giving them a chance at all as disrespectful.
• Forgot About His Powers: In chapter 219, Dialga and Palkia have been complaining about having to climb the Sky Tower. At the top Aaron gets fed up and reminds them that they both have ways to float, and that Giratina's been doing so the entire way up.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Sometime in Kanto, Brock mentions that applications for the Elite Four involve Legendaries. We see exactly what that entails when Misty gets scouted for the Kanto-Johto E4.
  • Ash gets his fortune read by a Natu in chapter 71, but gets the result of "Tilt." The Natu in question could only see about four days out before "Everything got confusing." Four days later was when Ash fought the Iron Masked Marauder, resulting in a Time Crash and the world being fundamentally altered.
  • Around the Ever Grande Conference, a few characters take note of meteor showers happening more frequently. Then the Delta Episode rolls around.
  • During the meeting to select the new Kanto-Johto Elite Four, Koga mentions that he's training up his daughter Janine to take over Fuchsia Gym. Guess who Max battles on his Kanto Gym run?
  • People and Pokémon that Ash can remind of the old timeline always look brighter in Aura Sight. When Ash activated Aura Sight for the first time in the story, he could see Misty, who was an hour or so away from him, but he couldn't see Gary, even though he had left just a short while before Ash did. When Ash meets Zoey, who also can't be reminded, he takes her to the Lake Guardians to find out what's going on; it turns out that both she and Gary were at Spear Pillar trying to stop Cyrus in the old timeline, and that proximity to the time collapse inhibited the memory restoration.
  • A little before Sinnoh kicks off, people start noting that Ash's (ornamental) sword isn't a very normal sword. Come the events of Rise of Darkrai, said sword turns out to be a Honedge, one that was previously a human knight by the name of Kari Burns.
  • During the Battle Finale of Legend, Skitty's Assist ^note which randomly turns into a move that one of her allies knows turns into a supercharged meteor shower that no-one recognizes as Judgment. At the battle's climax, Arceus emerges from the GS Ball in Ash's possession.
• For Science!: Steve's Metagross is quite excited after Pikachu hits it with a boosted Volt Crash. Steve's other Pokémon all hide behind Entei for protection.
  Metagross: So much power in such a small Pokémon! Fascinating! Let me do science to you.
• Fossil Pokémon Apocalypse: As the result of the bedrock Altomare is built on being made of limestone and a pair of Pokémon thieves with delusions of world domination having access to the DMA.
  • And then Ash and Co. encounter a second Fossil Rampage in Oreburgh City.
• Four Is Death: After the Scuffle of Legends, Ho-Oh reveals that his Sacred Ash is now halfway used up, after using it to revive Ash for the second time, which implies that there is only enough for four resurrections.
  • However, Ho-Oh also mentions that the Sacred Ash was being used to prevent Ash's death by Aura Exhaustion while he was using Secret Sword, so he could have simply lost enough energy to have otherwise died multiple times.
  • And with the Sacred Ash fully used up after Ash's third death in the final battle against Team Galactic, this means his last death (by disaster or natural causes) will be his fourth and final one.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: As in canon, Manaphy using Heart Swap on any two people or Pokémon results in this. When the two are from different species, it's actually a crippling move, as the targets don't have any practice using their new limbs (especially if they're wings).
• Fridge Logic: In-universe, the characters sometimes question odd pieces of logic, usually from the games, Pokédex lore or anime.
  • Ash being able to carry small Pokémon that should actually be too heavy for him to carry, such as Larvitar and Hippopotas. In this timeline, he can use Aura as an explanation; in the old timeline, he had no such excuse.
  • Lance, during his time infiltrating them, wonders why Team Magma has a submarine.
  • Pokémon learning moves the games say they can't but logic says they can, like Machamp and Rock Throw (as Pikachu puts it, it's basically picking up a rock and throwing it, not that hard).
  • Similarly, James' Koffing/Weezing used Counter in the anime, but cannot learn it in the games. Blaine can't understand how Weezing uses it in his gym.
  Meowth: Pokémon learn a lotta things they ain't supposed to.
  • The Rockets point out that Jessebelle's characterization doesn't really make sense. She acts like a gold digger... yet has enough disposable income to hire an army of mercenaries on a whim and get in contact with world-renowned criminals like Hunter J.
  • The idea of Spoink needing to constantly bounce to maintain their hearts is brought up. Turns out the scans got it backward; their hearts are what drive their springs.
  • When Morrison's Beldum evolves into Metang, Mawile wonders, if Beldum need to fuse with another Beldum to evolve, where the other Beldum came from, since it happened right when he was coming out of the Poké-ball.
  • In the "Mystery of Mew", Brock ends up discussing with Pikachu how Pokémon can tell different individuals of the same species apart with Pokémon Speak.
  • During the Battle Frontier arc, Arcanine being called the "Legendary" Pokémon is brought up.
  • Sabrina giving out the Marsh Badge is brought up. Apparently, she and Koga applied at the same time, and the paper-pushers goofed and assigned them the wrong badges, and they just went with it.
  • The Pewter Gym, despite being mostly solid rock, has a sprinkler system. When asked about it, all Brock says is that building codes don't make sense.
  • In the first Temple of the Sea chapter, there's a bit of this on how Buizel's Aqua Jet works.
  • When Ash can't remind Zoey, even though Paul was apparently eligible for it, Ash and company start questioning sone inconsistency in who he can remind. Apparently the difficulty with Zoey was the result of her being near the Lake Trio when Cyrus captured them as part of his plot in the old timeline's final moments. Gary being close as well is why he didn't show up on Aura Sight but was remindable anyways due to his bond with Ash.
  • Brock asks how come Pokémon can understand humans, even prehistoric Pokémon who lived when English didn't exist yet. Pikachu changes the subject.
  • The League field choices are questioned at one point.
  • After the gang is introduced to Z-Moves, Brock asks why a Pokémon can apparently only carry a Mega Stone or a Z-Crystal, and not both.
    • The held item limits are lampshaded by Gary, and he starts studying it.
  • Kari knowing the term Pokémon when she came from a time before it is lampshaded. Her best guess is that she picked it up unconsciously when she was just a spirit in a sword.
  • Then we have a literal example, when the Rotom that was hiding in Ash's fridge (stored in his pouch) comes out to protest a bunch of outlandish things happening to Ash and Co that were the result of a Mismagius's Hypnosis.
  • "Griseous" is a word meaning "grizzled" or "a light-colored surface mottled with dark spots". Giratina's Griseous Orb is a chunk of faceted yellow crystal, not in any way orb-shaped. Giratina says it got encased in dolerite once and he just didn't bother cleaning it.
  • Some onlookers wonder how Whirlwind being used on a Flying-type in the sky makes them go back into their Poké-ball.
  • A discussion is held about a guidebook specifying different Pokémon being from different regions, despite some of them being from the same evolutionary line (like Togepi and Togetic being Johto Pokémon, but Togekiss being a Sinnoh Pokémon). In the same vein, what counts as the region a Pokémon is from - the region of their birth, where they live, or where the guidebook says their species is from.
• Friendly Enemy: Jessie, James and Meowth. After their memories got restored and Ash explained the situation to them, of course. Then again, considering that Ash knew them well enough to restore their memories in the first place, they were probably already that anyway.