Ashes Of The Past / Tropes L to O

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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L

• Laborious Laziness: Abra actually works pretty darn hard at being as lazy as possible. He is capable of teleporting Team Rocket to many places in a very short amount of time, creating shields that are capable of protecting them from Mewtwo, and is able to stand on his own in Pokémon Matches far above his weight class... all in the name of getting a little extra sleep.
• Lame Pun Reaction:
  • After the Fuchsia Free-for-all, Lara congratulates Ash on giving her Rapidash a good run, "In fact, that was positively rapid, Ash!" Ash doesn't quite groan, but he's left asking "Why?"
  • When you have Pungeon Masters like the TRio's Wobbuffet or Ash's Glalie around, there are bound to be several. Oftentimes it involves the former's teammates delivering a Dope Slap or the opponent the latter is fighting getting extra resolve.
  • One time, while watching his Quintessential British Gentleman Noctowl battle a Vespiquen with Royal Blood:
    Ash: What.
    Pikachu: I think they're having a Battle of Brit-ing.
    Ash: That was terrible.
  • After a rather serious event, Pikachu tries to lighten the mood by making a pun, eliciting this reaction from everyone... except Cynthia.
• Lampshade Hanging: Some of the sillier/weirder/crazier stuff that happened in the anime gets commented on by the characters.
  • Sabrina's father telling Ash that only "A Ghost-type Pokémon can defeat Sabrina," is lampshaded as not only is Ghost not immune to psychic powers, Dark types are super effective against Psychic-types, and the only Ghost-types in Kanto are also part Poison-types, which are very weak against Psychic types.^note The former part can be excused by Dark-types not yet existing when the episode was written in the first place, but still...
  • Everyone can't help but comment that due to the disproportion of non-Rock-types to Rock-types in his possession, Brock's claim of being the Rock Gym Leader isn't very strong.
  • After Arc is knocked out by Iwalani's Decidueye using the Bloom Doom Z-Move, the spectating Pikachu feels relieved that, for once, he's not the one on the receiving end of a Pokémon from a new region showing off their skills.
  • 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.
  • During Ash's exhibition battles with the Elite Four before Lorelei, Agatha and Lance retire, when Mr. Goodshow announces Bruno, he says he "still doesn't understand the Onix" as Bruno is a Fighting-type master and Onix is a Rock/Ground-type.
  • In Chapter 252, the group approach a town they think is Hearthome City, but Cynthia corrects them in that it's actually Heartome City due to a misprinting error on the maps. The Japanese original anime episode had the location be just a random location, but the English translation had it mistakenly located in Hearthome City, hence the lampshade.
  • Chapter 290 has Barry talking about the idea that if trainers lock eyes they had to battle. Palmer comments that if that was a law, then someone like Cynthia would have to battle half the audience every time she made a public speech.
• Large Ham: Ash's Squirtle, oh so very much. Same with Gary's Blastoise. Ash has this to say about his Squirtle:
  Ash: I've heard of showy, but that turtle takes the cake.
  • Mewtwo lampshaded it asking if Gary's Blastoise was feeling well.
  • The aforementioned Squirtle and Blastoise are massive Gurren Lagann otaku, so it's justified... somewhat.
  • Sceptile goes full royal herald when introducing his son Chikorita to his family at his tree, due to a bet with his aunt.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Team Galactic has found a way to make everyone forget about them and cease to notice their operations.
• Last-Second Chance: When Arceus emerges into the Battle Finale of Legend, He offers Cyrus one last chance to accept mercy. Cyrus cuts him off mid-sentence with an order to Team Galactic to hit Him with everything they've got.
• Laugh Themselves Sick: When Squirtle tells Brandon's Heatran that "it's time for you to learn some basic physics!" Pikachu falls off Ash's shoulder and collapses on the ground laughing.
• Layman's Terms: In 221, when a Deoxys shows up, Ferris has to keep prompting him to speak in terms others can understand.
• Lemony Narrator: The original version had a couple of instances of this such as saying "Guess which one Ash was interested in." when describing Pewter City finishing with the Gym and Meowth telling the narrator to shut up as he's only using the binoculars when the narrator describes him as a menacing presence before the narrator says that it was only Meowth who admittedly couldn't be sinister if his life depended on it.
• Left the Background Music On: When Latios and his Latias paramour are together on a date in the garden, his sister plays romantic music.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • When Sir Aaron is about to talk about the properties of his hat, Arceus hushes him, telling him that the readers don't know yet.
  • Misty remarks, "Fancy seeing you here," when facing Jessie in a Contest final for the first time, to which Dexter responds, "What do you expect? You two are main characters, of course you get to fight in the finals."
  • Pikachu not remembering the anime episode with the Porygon, and the mention of epilepsy by Dexter, is a reference to how the episode was banned as a result of epilepsy attacks it caused, and thus never shown out of Japan.
  • A bit of a meta example based around the written medium. One of the Porygon created from Dexter is named Laserbeak, but his name is legally considered Laser beak. Dexter comments that he can't tell if it's meant to be a space or an underscore. Since all Porygon text is underlined, it's impossible for the reader to tell either. (If you copy the text and paste it without the underline, it's revealed to be a space.)
  • When Ash comments on Raikou having run all over Johto fighting Gym Leaders, Maurice asks if that's a speed run.
• Let Me Get This Straight...: After Dr. Akihabara deduces that Porygon evolve into their later forms by going through difficult digital tasks, one of his assistants reiterates that his solution to get a digital Pokémon to evolve... is to train it.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again:
  • The events of the canon B-Button League and the hyper-powerful Magikarp and Feebas are this to Pikachu.
  • Ash feels this way about his Disguised in Drag canon moments, and in Chapter 209, he gets mad at Pikachu for bringing one up that he had managed to forget.
• Limb-Sensation Fascination: May's new Spoink and Casper and Guy, Max's Shuppet and Shroomish, all go through this when they evolve.
• Limit Break: Z-Moves.
• Literal Genie: Jirachi is friendly, but doesn't have complete control over his wish-granting powers, and as he notes, they "can be a bit literal." Such as when Max wishes that they could find an Electrike who would like Wattson, and his own Electrike gets teleported onto his head.
  Jirachi: I guess Arc liked Wattson?
• Living Crashpad: Happens to Ash a couple of times when restoring unevolved Pokémon that end up spontaneously evolving and falling on top of him. Brock's Forretress and Ash's own Donphan are two examples.
  • As is Ash's Glalie, who ends up flattening Lucario.
  • Ash almost becomes one for Dawn thanks to an impatient Celebi not realizing Ash and his friends had just seen Dawn after Celebi had been thwarted trying to get Ash and Dawn to meet.
  • In the "Wish Maker" chapters, Houndoom uses Beat Up to cushion the fall of several Pokémon who had gotten caught up in the Pichu Brothers' antics.
• Living Lie Detector: Reshiram. Ghetsis planned to use Exact Words and keep N ignorant so that he could get N and the Legendary to follow his plans, but N's experiences led to him questioning Ghetsis's doctrine and letting Reshiram see the deceit in his followers' hearts.
• Locked Out of the Fight:
  • Colonel Hansen's Mega Gengar has Shadow Tag, keeping its opponent Sceptile locked in and everyone else locked out.
  • Serena is unaware that Dawn knows Ash. Until Alamos's aftermath...
  • During huge crises, Ash is often prepared to bring in his entire team to handle it, but sometimes circumstances happen to prevent Dexter's transceiver from working and keep the majority of Ash's team out of the way. Examples include Team Magma's jammer in Forina, the ambient EM radiation in LaRousse City, and the time-spatial warping in Alamos Town (which also works as a Teleport Interdiction field against Mewtwo and the Eon Twins' sight-sharing).
  • About half of Ash's team is left out of the Battle Finale of Legend, since due to Team Galactic's Perception Filter, any un-Reminded ally who cannot see, feel or even remember that they have an opponent to fight would just be liabilities and targets in such a chaotic melee.
• Logical Weakness:
  • A Pokémon who is using Foresight to target and strike Ghost-type Pokémon with Normal/Fighting attacks means that they have to keep their eyes open at all times, making them more vulnerable to being Hypnotized.
  • Molly's Eevee's unique power of switching between her base form and all her Eeveelutions at will may give her a tremendous amount of versatility and even immunity to many types of attacks, but she can still only be in one form at any one time. Hitting her with multiple attacks of varying types at the same time means she can't hide in any one form to nullify all the damage, which is difficult but not impossible for skilled trainers and Pokémon.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • In the Orange League, Cissy's racing challenge merely specifies that the trainer must ride on the Pokémon's back. It doesn't say anything about the Pokémon having to be a Water-type... so Ash uses his supersonic Pidgeot.
  • In the Kanto Grand Festival, May uses a Splash Contest Seal to provide water for Glaceon's Ice Beam to get around the Appeal's one move limit.
  • When Tyrantrum is having trouble deciding what he should do, Ash realizes that there's no rule against him becoming Mawile's Pokemon...
• Love Hurts:
  • Happens to both Brock and Charizard when they go back in time - the latter because Charla, his mate in the Charicific Valley, no longer remembers him, the former because Professor Ivy, his first true love that was lost in another dimension from a Freak Lab Accident, is now alive and well.
  • Far more humorously, James' various Grass-type Pokémon tell him that they constantly Glomp on him because he feels/smells "Really nice to Grass-types." Given that thus far this includes a pitcher plant with fangs, a Venus flytrap and a cactus, he doesn't feel the same way. It's taken to a head when he visits a Grass Pokémon reserve and is literally dogpiled by its residents.
  • Sceptile's meeting with Meganium brings up a few bad memories about his love life.
• Lower-Deck Episode: There are a few "Ashes nowhere to be seen" chapters, which focus entirely on various other characters that Ash's journey has affected.

M

• Magic A Is Magic A: Magic and Aura are not the same: Aura is self-directed, while spirits guide magic. Using Aura to alter the effects of Magic can lead to catastrophic results, as is trying to do one using the other. Ash almost died when he tried to use Aura to reverse the spell that transformed him into a Riolu - Aura doesn't have the the safeguards and it's near-impossible to track all of the "fiddly little bits" of such physical alterations.
  • There are three powers that humans can acquire that give them abilities on par with Pokémon, and all are exclusive to one another - Psychic powers, Aura, and Magic. Each has their own rules and abilities.
• Magikarp Power: The Trope Namer in action, as this time around, James puts in the effort of actually training the Magikarp he bought from that con artist and ends up with a Gyarados that doesn't just want to blast him into the middle of next month.
• Magnetic Weapons: Pikachu uses a railgun against Brandon's Registeel. Which is to say, he connects himself to Registeel with two conductive rails and launches him. Into a mountain.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: After Vicious (the Iron-Masked Marauder) is captured, he has a stroke in prison — courtesy of Giovanni's Persian and its Shadow Claw.
• The Man Behind the Man: Turns out that Team Galactic were secretly supported by their counterparts from the Original Timeline, working to keep their Perception Filter up, and keep their grand plan working smoothly until they create the portal and allow their original timeline counterparts to emerge into the new timeline.
• Manchild:
  • The Shamouti bird trio act incredibly immaturely, to the point that their Lugia (rightly) claims that his young son is more mature than they are.
  • Groudon and Kyogre act a bit like this, even whining to Rayquaza like kids trying to blame their argument on each other. In chapter 200, Rayquaza finally has enough, tells them off, and makes them get off of their butts and do their jobs like they're supposed to.
• Many Spirits Inside of One: Spiritomb, of course. The one Ash battled that was sealed in canon has about 24 spirits that are fairly stable and reasonable; the rest are out for indiscriminate revenge.
• Mascots Love Sugar: The squirrel-like Pokémon Pachirisu really likes her sweet Poffins despite her Trademark Favorite Food being nuts.
• Meanwhile, in the Future…: The story frequently cuts to the sub-dimensional bubble where Arceus, Sir Aaron, Dialga, and Palkia play lots and lots of board games while waiting for Ash's changes to the timeline to take effect. Now, they've progressed to Sengoku Basara, Pokémon Conquest and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon via Arceus's reality warping.
• Mental Health Recovery Arc: There are segments where Ash uses Aura Purge to help people and Pokémon work through their issues with a Battle in the Center of the Mind.
• Meteor of Doom: The Delta Episode. And despite what Zinnia thinks, it's going to take a lot more than just Rayquaza to get rid of this high-speed, mountain-sized problem.
• Mid-Battle Tea Break:
  • A literal one happens during Ash's gym battle against Erica. Ivysaur and Gloom are locked in a stalemate against each other, easily healing any Scratch Damage the other manages to inflict. During that time, Erica and Misty enjoy some tea, a bored Ash starts looking up the record for the longest Pokémon match in history, and both Pokémon resort to using the nearest computer to look up their movesets in search of anything that will turn the tide one way or another. Ivysaur wins when he discovers he knows Fury Cutter.
  • Mew teleports off mid-battle between Max and Sabrina to go get some lollipops.
  • When Teams Aqua and Magma are trying to steal the meteorite at Mount Chimney, while two of their members are playing tug of war with it, their Poochyena are just watching the battle placidly and deadpanning to each other about their trainers.
  • Barry's Smeargle calls a break during a battle with an Onix because Barry keeps asking it to use moves it hasn't Sketched yet.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: While it seems that something interfered with its planned orbit, it seems that the Delta Episode asteroid nearly destroyed the world because the Deoxys using it as a transport failed to keep an eye on its path. Parallels are made to letting cruise control run wild for 50,000 years.
• Mind Probe: The Mastermind of Mirage Pokémon uses one on Pikachu to extract memory data on all the Legendaries he has seen (which is a lot).
• Mirror Match:
  • Ritchie Getem and Ash's battle is deliberately made to have this vibe.
  • The Mirage Pokémon battle is also this, with the caveat that the Mirage Pokemon are essentially Nigh-Invulnerable.
• Missed Him by That Much:
  • When Dawn travels to the Hoenn Grand Festival, Celebi tries to get her and Ash to meet, but keeps failing. This happens often enough that by the time they actually do meet each other, Celebi doesn't notice and just drops him directly on top of her.
  • When Ash goes to find the Battle Pyramid near Cerulean City, he finds that it moved less than a day earlier. Related, Scott trying to find Ash to invite him to the Battle Frontier in the first place.
• Mission from God:
  • Arceus himself gave Ash the mission of making sure Cyrus doesn't succeed.
  • Ritchie is on another one due to his destiny entanglement with Ash.
• The Mole: As in canon, Lance is one for Team Magma. This time, Misty does the same for Team Aqua.
• Moment Killer: After the seriousness of Team Galactic having a Shadow Lucario, Pikachu tries to lighten the mood by making a pun. Everyone is annoyed, except for Cynthia.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • The serious discussion with Ash and Co. about Team Galactic and their Perception Filter effects ends with the Tauros shooing everyone out of their barn because there's a game on TV.
  • At one point, Entei has a meaningful discussion with Ho-Oh over how the latter relates himself to the three legendary beasts, and how they should think of him, given that he created them to be siblings.
    Ho-Oh: ...but I think that if the term father can be used for me, then I am honoured to claim it as well - and treasure it.
    Entei: I suppose that makes sense. And I am glad you feel honoured. *beat* So, about my allowance...
  • The relief after the Battle Finale of Legend and the final defeat of Team Galactic is interrupted by reinforcements arriving, no longer affected by the Perception Filter, led by Ho-Oh, who is very annoyed that he missed everything again.
• Monster Adventurers:
  • Raikou started his own version of this by going around fighting the Johto Gyms for badges. Using himself. He does manage to get all eight badges of the Johto Area before challenging Ash again.
  • Mawile catches a Pokémon of her own: a pacifist Tyrantrum.
• More Dakka: Muk's typical battle strategy is to use all the TMs he's eaten at the same time. The first time he did this, he performed about twenty attacks in about three seconds. The result practically obliterated Whitney's gym.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Chapter 166: Giovanni's Persian can display a scarily large amount of teeth:
  Persian chose that moment to yawn, displaying a great deal of teeth.
  "If that's all?"
  Jessie, James and Meowth did not quite flee the room.
  • This is also the immediate opinion/reaction of some Pokémon on their first meeting with Mawile.
• Motivation on a Stick: Lampshaded: when Mawile helps her friend Tyrantrum eat cotton candy by sitting on his nose and holding it out in front of him on a stick and string, Tyrantrum comments that he feels like he ought to be running.
• Motive Misidentification: When the Team Rocket Trio attacks a Team Galactic facility in Oreburgh City with Humongous Mecha, Cyrus believes it retaliation for a previous defeat dealt by Team Galactic, just the sort of thing that Yakuza like Team Rocket would do. Little does he know, the Trio are using that attack as a distraction while Meowth and a few others infiltrate the facility to pilfer a few things.
• Mugging the Monster:
  • Happens when Misty encounters the Invincible Pokémon Brothers trying to horn in on Cerulean Gym. When she offers to battle them for the gym, they instantly accept... only to learn too late that their opponent has a Mega Gyarados and is the newest member of the Elite 4.
  • Team Rocket's re-encounter with Rico the Poison-type poacher ends up going this way.
    James: Hey Jessie, did we do the motto?
    Jessie: We didn't do the motto.
    James: Poor guy, he didn't get that chance to surrender.
  • Anthony and his world's most powerful Pokémon Pelipper end up on the wrong end of this when he comes across Ash and Co.
  • In Sinnoh, both a Froslass trying to blackmail passing trainers into helping her find her son, as well as the poacher responsible for kidnapping said son, both fail to recognise Ash and Mewtwo until it's too late.
  • A Team Aqua gang burst into a Pokémon Center and announce that they're taking over — with Ash present. Before anyone else can react, Nurse Joy speaks up. Subverted when it later turns out that they were just a distraction all along; the real plan was to steal a map to help locate Kyogre's blue orb.
    Joy: Mr Ketchum?
    Ash: Yeah?
    Joy: Please don't break the building.
• Mundane Utility:
  • Psychic-type Pokémon are often used as LinesPokémon to keep stray attacks from hitting spectators. Also, Pokémon like Diglett and moves like Grassy Terrain are used to rebuild damaged battlefields.
  • Vulpix uses Safeguard to carry a Fire Stone without triggering her evolution into Ninetales before Brock has properly paid for the Stone.
  • Brock uses Charizard's and Quilava's flames and Torkoal's heat for cooking. Audino also does the same for Team Rocket using Moltres's flames.
  • Audino also uses the immense power of Mega Evolution to chop potatoes faster.
  • Mewtwo can use his telekinesis for movie special effects. As can most Porygon.
  • Mimey (Delia's Mr. Mime) can use his Reflect to avoid getting pricked by his sewing.
  • Glaceon can help make ice lollies.
  • Karen's Absol uses her Danger Sense to fast-forward past movie commercials to exactly the right spot in the film. Because going too far is a disaster.
    • She can even sense when a movie is so bad it's a disaster.
  • Latias uses her telekinesis to paint.
  • The Lucario Kingdom in Sinnoh uses a Mega Lucario to play Baccer. Unfortunately, said Mega Lucario is more than strong enough to destroy the ball completely.
  • The Shiny Entei avoids flossing by simply incinerating anything in his mouth that can't withstand volcanic temperatures. This is actually the way that self-cleaning ovens work, so it's arguably Truth in Television.
  • Celebi uses time travel to go into the future, and retrieve a sequel book, which hasn't been written yet, to one she just finished reading so she won't have to wait for it.
  • Dr. Akihabara's Cybermon assistant trainers use the digitizer to play RPGs.
• Murderous Malfunctioning Machine: The result of the Tree of Beginning's Mew putting off the system updates for its Regi golem security is that errors happen and they end up attacking people who mean no harm.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: When Charizard engages J's Salamence in battle, he asks why his opponent is following someone like her. His reply, it's his duty, and he has served her faithfully since birth, and that's all he says.
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling:
  • After an Ambipom uses its Pickup ability to throw a Heart Scale at Totodile, a scene change shows Gary Oak (who assembled a huge Chain of Deals to get a Heart Scale) muttering something in his sleep, hundreds of miles away.
  • After Noctowl and Vespiquen have their "Battle of Brit-ing", ending with a double knockout, one of the spectators remarks to his neighbor that, "I have this vague sense that we missed something there."
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: In Oreburgh City, the group meets and befriends a reanimated Tyrunt, a Pokémon whose evolutionary line is known for its brutality, that is a pacifist and dislikes seeing other Pokémon getting hurt.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Arceus creates a second Dialga to send Ash into the past, and later creates a second Palkia to round out his gaming group. In Heart Gold and Soul Silver, Arceus could create a copy of one of the Sinnoh Dragons if brought to the Sinjoh Ruins.
  • Ash mentions having Dexter develop a way to jailbreak TMs so they could be used more than once while they were in Unova during the original timeline.
  • Bulbasaur / Ivysaur's unusual move pool has precedent in the original anime, where a dubbing error had Ash instruct him to use Whirlwind.
  • Ash using Charizard, Ivysaur, and Squirtle for his battle against Erika in Celadon City, much like the Super Smash Bros. Pokémon Trainer.
    • Later in a three-on-three, Meganium, Quilava and Totodile use a Triple Finish, Johto version, against Wattson and his team.
  • James expresses surprise over not whiting out and waking up at the Pokémon Center after running out of usable Pokémon during a battle.
  • Ash and Gary face each other in the finals of the Indigo League.
  • When Ash mentions to Norman how he met May in Hoenn, Norman states that he was considering have his family settle down in Hoenn, referring to how the player character in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, who is the child of Norman, was actually moving to Hoenn from another region at the beginning of the game.
  • Casey and her Rattata execute the FEAR strategy ^note Focus Sash, Endeavor, Quick Attack, Rattata on Ash's Charizard.
  • May and Max's new Pokédex (soon to be Porygon) A.I.s are named Ethan and Kris respectively.
  • One of Wobbuffet's puns refers to Growlie and Ninetales against a Skarmory as "Fighting flyer with fire!", which was the U.S. name of the anime episode 131. Psyduck promptly lampshades this with "It's been done," to Wobbuffet's confusion.
  • The Entei from Spell of the Unown knows how to use Sacred Fire. In Gen VI of the games, Sacred Fire was added to Entei's movepool.
    • And Ho-Oh ends up teaching it to Ash's own Entei as well.
  • Molly's Eevee, which she dreams up with the Unown's power, is capable of evolving, devolving and switching between its Eeveelutions at will, similar to Vee from Pokémon Adventures.
    • Also, she is able to use the special Eevee moves from Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, like Sizzly Slide and Buzzy Buzz.
  • The Battle Tower near Olivine City, which only made a cameo in the anime, is visited. On its wall, there is a coat-of-arms with the official motto Nil Sine Pokémon^note Nothing without Pokémon.
  • James still has the infamous Moltres costume. Strangely, Moltres is now interested in him.
  • The third personality that assists Ash during his battle with Sabrina's dark side and creepy inner child is the gentle, jovial shrine maiden incarnation from the Electric Tail manga side who represents her childhood dreams before her powers.
  • In chapter 147, Carnivine encourages a Sunkern to become an athlete and mentions how the team that beat Jessie and James during the Pokéathalon had a Sunkern MVP. Sunkern is one of the few Pokémon capable of achieving five stars for all of the Pokéathalon's events.
  • Team Rocket's newest cell member is the famous cosplaying Pikachu from ORAS.
  • Chapter 151 gives Ash and Co. a new tagalong: Mew. S/he only stays for that chapter, though.
  • When Winona hears about a Pikachu flying, she asks if someone tied balloons to one again.
  • When Dawn hears Dexter talking, she wonders if he's a Rotom.
  • As it turns out, Dawn's last name is Berlitz.
  • The Delta episode interrupts the Hoenn league.
  • Pikachu considers getting a cap just like Ash's.
  • While meeting Lucy, Max wonders why her Battle Pike has that name. Lucy says that it used to be called the Battle Tube (its name in the Japanese versions), but marketing thought it wasn't dramatic enough.
  • May's present for Ash's 14th birthday is a Poké-ball alarm clock... that won't break if he throws it at the wall.
  • Ritchie's grandparents live in Alola.
  • Dawn is messaging Serena.
  • Max considers teaching his Aron Ferris the moves Sandstorm and Endeavor to make use of his Sturdy ability, which is the beginning of the SABER strategy ^note  Sandstorm, Aron, Shell Bell, Endeavor, StuRdy .
  • During his run the Indigo League, Max faces off against Pete Pebbleman on the Ice Field, as Ash did in the old timeline.
    • Also, he ends up losing the Indigo League in the 5th round to the Alolan trainer Iwalani, a trainer he met on the way in who has Pokémon from a region he never knew about, which parallels Ash's losses to Ritchie and Harrison.
  • Chapter 252 has Gary go back to his Pokémon Rival roots and teleport to Sinnoh to challenge Ash out of nowhere.
  • Just like the first scene of the anime and the opening of Pokémon Red, a battling Nidorino and Gengar are the first thing that Ash and Co. sees after their third attempt to Set Right the past of Michina, except that these Pokémon are gigantic and that they've returned to another Bad Future where Pokémonopolis and Pokéatlantis never stopped their war.
  • The idea of trainers having to battle if they locked eyes is Lampshaded during Chapter 290.
  • Generation 1 games contained a bug that made psychic types immune to ghost attacks. Here, Dexter mentions that previous scholarship incorrectly listed psychics as immune to Ghost moves because they were measured on a Meloetta (which is part-Normal).
  • When Pikachu can't remember having been digitized to fight a virus attack, Dexter tells him that it, "Must be the epileptic attacks, it was a very risky environment and frankly I can see how you'd have problems with your memory."

N

• Narrative Profanity Filter: Has happened in the story by censoring profanity by Leaning on the Fourth Wall with the idea of unprintable speech, for example:
  The Electric-type legendary grumbled something unprintable.
• Negated Moment of Awesome:
  • Ash's Goomy, Max's Shroomish and Shuppet, and many other trainers' Pokémon are all proof that evolving mid-battle doesn't necessarily guarantee victory.
  • Rayquaza's Dynamic Entry via Dragon Ascent is brought to a halt when he rams into not Groudon, but Primal Groudon.
• Never Heard That One Before: Lance and Agatha have heard all the type jokes, and are not amused when Lorelei makes one at them.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands:
  • It takes Ash coming Back from the Dead for the last time and Jirachi making a desperate wish, but Ash figures out how to operate the GS Ball and release Arceus and the God Squad to stop Team Galactic for good.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: All the levels that Ash took in badass when he got sent back in time come back to bite him (but mostly Brock and Misty) in Spell of the Unown, as Molly, inspired by Ash's success at the Pokémon League, utilized some of his strategies during her battles against them. And since she was already capable of curb-stomping them in canon...
  • The multiple levels in badass continue making things worse especially during the movie events, as the villains get butterflied into levels of badass too.
  • Especially done so in Heroes, since Ash deliberately seeks out Latias this time around - which gets her captured and put in the DMA rather than her brother.
  • Done to 'oof' levels in Arceus and the Jewel of Life, since the group's first attempt to fix the past ends up making things in the present worse and they have to try it multiple times before they work out what they're doing wrong.
• Nigh-Invulnerable:
  • The Mirage Pokemon are so dangerous because they can take hits that would knock out a real Pokémon and keep going. Even a Volt Crash by Pikachu only disables his counterpart briefly, and even if one is thrown out of simulation range or immobilized, the system can instantly render another one to replace it.
    • Mewtwo hits his Mirage double with a massive psychic blast, basically an unfocused Hyper Beam, and while it's damaged, the system heals it within seconds.
  • The GS Ball is completely invulnerable, and during the Battle Finale of Legend, Ash uses it to deflect or neutralize even Dialga and Palkia's space-time-warping attacks. Justified since it's actually a pocket dimension containing Arceus and the God Squad.
• No Body Left Behind: Ash is enveloped in Primal Dialga's Roar of Time, and when it fades, only the GS Ball and some flecks of dust are left.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • A Dr. MacGuire appears to describe the crisis during the Delta Episode.
  • Todd visits the home of Atsuko Nishida, who owns a lot of Eevee.
• No Endor Holocaust: Given that Ash and Co. chose to skip the events of Porta Vista, that means the crazy developer Nastina was not stopped trying to develop the Tentacool shores and the Tentacool would still invade and try to destroy the city... if Dexter hadn't anonymously notified the authorities.
  • This trope is enforced by Mewtwo, who makes sure all of Ash's movie-level adventures don't have global repercussions.
  • The fragments causing an aversion of this is why they can't just smash the Delta Episode asteroid into pieces. When Mega Rayquaza does end up smashing it, specific care is made to make sure that the pieces are deflected away from Earth.
  • Another aversion is when Ash's battle with Zero in the Reverse World does a lot more than cause a glacier to slip in the real world, they also cause avalanches, flash fires and rogue storms that Ash's friends have to stop.
• No Kill like Overkill:
  • The three moves Charizard, Pikachu and Pidgeot unload on Falkner's team during Ash's gym battle with him: Blast Burn, Volt Crash and Aeroblast.
    • And later Pikachu uses Volt Crash on Morty's Jellicent, just because he feels like it.
  • Muk. When your default strategy is a multi-attack Beam Spam, this almost always applies.
  • Frustrated with his underlings' continuous failed attempts to kidnap Manaphy, Captain Phantom finally decides that enough is enough and he's going to send every man, machine and Pokémon he has on one overwhelming assault to get his prey. But against a Legendary like Ho-Oh, that's still not enough.
  • Max's Deoxys battles a Mega Sharpedo and ends up throwing all the water out of the battlefield.
• No Name Given: The trainer of the Graveler May and Skitty face in chapter 219's contest is only referred to as "Graveler's trainer", with the judges even lampshading it at one point.
• Non Sequitur, *Thud*: When Pikachu fries Roxanne's Golem, he lets out one of these before collapsing, as does Brawly's Conkeldurr.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Right off the bat, the Authors Note at the end of the rewritten first chapter states:

"You may have trouble understanding who SPOILER is, why SPOILER and what the SPOILER is doing with a jet aircraft."/

(Obviously the question is answered later on, but encountering this passage in the way that you do piques one's curiosity.)

• Brock's extremely negative reaction to hearing Professor Ivy's name in this fic is implied to be because she became trapped in the realm of the Unown after a Freak Lab Accident, and Brock felt guilty about being unable to save her the first time around. The fact that he uses his foreknowledge to prevent this the second time through is therefore why he is okay with mentioning her again when they all go to Johto, especially since they've actually hooked up.
• Pikachu and Co.'s misadventures with the Pichu brothers also count. During the Millennium Festival, one said misadventure ended with them stuck on a roller-coaster gone haywire.
• An experiment investigating Diglett's sensitivity to ultrasonics that left Professor Ivy's lab Covered in Mud.
• Keldeo has had more than a few flying Pokémon try to use his horn as a perch. And he's amazed at what has tried.
• The Pichu Bros getting stuck in Ash's Bag of Holding.
• Mawile apparently once tried to get Tyranitar to fly by bribing some Pidgey, but she couldn't get enough to pull it off.
• Apparently there are some model train enthusiasts in Saffron that actively ask Sabrina to turn them into dolls.
• After Max gets a badge from Erika, Celebi shows up congratulating them for something that she forgot had unhappened.
• Apparently Barry's dad once let him borrow his Dragonite, and he told it to use Hyper Beam. Apparently, only two trees got knocked down... because the third was completely blown to splinters.
• Zorua once teamed up with Casper to pull a prank that involved her pretending to be a sombero for two entire hours.
• Lucario downloading courtly romance novels and somehow keeping Dexter from realizing who did it.
• An out-of-universe noodle incident involving some spilled shampoo in a tube station resulted in a short hiatus in fall 2018 as Saphroneth required healing time and physiotherapy for a shoulder injury.

• No-Sell:
  • What happens when a Shedinja with a Mimicked Entrainment move Entrains its Wonder Guard ability onto a Spiritomb? Two Pokémon who, between them, can do this to every damaging move in the game. Colonel Hansen managed to pull this combo off during the adventure in the Mirage Kingdom, but luckily, Misty's Togekiss had just the right moveset to circumvent their defenses.
  • What Magic Bounce does to all non-damaging moves. Even Aura Purge.
  • Reshiram has N try to capture him in a Poke Ball, but he's so strong that when he's caught off guard by the sensation, his struggling causes the Poke Balls to explode, forcing N to keep going back to the store for better options.
  • The effect of any Poké-ball on a caught Pokémon. Even a Master Ball on Ash's Ho-Oh.
  • The King of PokéAtlantis's Demonic Possession is technically a Psychic-type ability. Guess what happens when he tries it on a Dark-type.
  • As a Fairy-type, Mawile is this against Dragon-type attacks, even space-warping ones like Palkia's Spacial Rend. Original timeline Cyrus, who has never heard of Fairy-types before, is flabbergasted.
  • What Arceus does to Original Team Galactic's last-ditch Alpha Strike.
• No Sense of Direction: Ash's complete lack of such is emphasized and lampshaded in this story.
  • This helps them to get to Shamouti Island the day before they arrived in the previous timeline.
  • Dexter has a GPS built in, so this is somewhat averted... but in order to collect various plot coupons and friendly Pokémon, they still tend to go far out of their way to where they went the first time.
  • Silver tries to go to the Temple of the Sea... and somehow goes from the sea to up a river without noticing. One of Lapras' cousins does the same thing later on.
  • Reaches its (il-)logical conclusion near the end of the events at Professor Rowan's Summer Academy, when Ash gets flung into a maze and immediately comes out the other side. It's described as being "negative lost".
• No Time to Explain: Arbok has to resort to this to direct his Team Rocket teammates when Team Galactic attacks, on account of half of them not even being able to see them, let alone react to them. It doesn't help much.
• Not Quite Flight: Ash's team used in his battle with Winona are all Pokémon that are not Flying-type or have Levitate, but can still fly in a variety of bizarre ways. Lampshaded when an exasperated Winona outright asks "How many Pokémon do you have that can fly when they're not supposed to? It's only supposed to be Flying-types and Pokémon with Levitate that can do that..." and Ash protests "I could have used Flying-types, But… I thought this was better, because most of them have only just got this working."
  • This is apparently Mawile's hobby: help as many Pokémon as she can to fly.
  • Max's Charmander Corona eventually manages to hover, and she can even fly via a flame construct. She can't maintain it for long, but it's impressive.
• "Not So Different" Remark: When Mewtwo realizes he's facing a Mewtwo, he empathises with him, first for thinking he's in the same Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds state that he was, then when he realizes it's akin to him under Giovanni.
• Not What It Looks Like:
  • A group of Rangers mistakes Raikou's challenge with Ash as him trying to poach the Legendary.
  • Later, Manaphy's training is mistaken by Jackie as an attempt by Phantom to kidnap him.

O

• Obfuscating Stupidity:
  • On an occasion where Ash had to collect the tears of an Aipom, he acted like a complete klutz for the Aipom to cry laughing, then quickly collected its tears and left in perfect step.
  • Team Rocket played their eccentricity to the hilt when they staged an assault on a Team Galactic facility, using loud arguments, Humongous Mecha and a lot of property damage to make Cyrus think it was for retaliation for a previous skirmish, instead of a distraction for Meowth to infiltrate it.
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • Koga has to keep doing this when people start Cutting the Knot on his Gym challenge, like Abra teleporting Team Rocket through.
  • Cissy of the Orange Crew has to specify the use of non-Flying types in her racing challenge, after Ash won it using his supersonic Pidgeot.
  • To balance out Jirachi, Sabrina's Mew friend agrees to help with Max's battle. After they transform into a Groudon, Sabrina clarifies and bans transformations.
  • Manaphy has his use of Heart Swap in Contests restricted after the judges learn what his version does.
  • One of these is suggested after a trainer finishes a Pokemon Orienteering course in 14 seconds by abusing her Kadabra's Teleport Spam.
  • After an attempt by a Contest trainer with a Musharna who tried to put the audience and judges to sleep and give them dreams of a good performance four years ago, they added a rule that "the performance must happen".
  • Arceus keeps having to do this to foil the PMDing God Squad and their plans to bypass parts of the games' challenge. Examples include preventing them from using Diglett to build a canal and flood out Groudon, thwarting their attempt to look through Dungeon Floors one at a time with Palkia's Space Master abilities by causing the portal to open into a body of water, and preventing them from using their powers to circumvent important plot events like getting captured by Dusknoir.
• Odd Name Out: The twelve Porygon created from Dexter are named Leo, Rooster, Scorpius, Laser beak, Dragon, Guanna, Laocoön, Apollo, Babbage, Dahak, Fenris, and Bob.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • Everything Mewtwo does during movie events to enforce No Endor Holocaust.
  • Gary's Kalos League victory.
  • The Lake Trio browbeating Kyogre into creating rainstorms to soak up the heat from any Delta meteor fragments that make it into the atmosphere.
  • The majority of Ho-Oh wiping out an entire Phantom Pirate military battalion, complete with attack helicopters and missiles.
  • Molly's Gym Battle with Gardenia.
  • Mawile managing to calm a revived Tyrunt down.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Butterfree hears Misty calling for her Seel to use Natural Gift, but can't immediately remember what that does, until he sees Seel unleash a blast of flame.
    I now officially hate Occa berries.
  • Ash and Pikachu's reaction to Lt. Surge's Thunderstone accidentally making contact with Pikachu.
  • A similar reaction happens when Team Ketchum gets blown to Shamouti Island, since they remember full well all the trouble that happened there.
  • When Pikachu gets captured in a Dark Ball, this is everyone's reaction.
  • Frequently paraphrased with these three words: "That's torn it."
  • Professor Yung's reaction when Dexter tells his Mirage system to create a Riolu, a Pokémon with Always Lawful Good ingrained into it and thus giving his system a conscience.
  • Related to the above, this is Ash's reaction when he sees that Team Galactic has created a Shadow Lucario, despite the aforementioned ingrained Always Lawful Good.
• Oh, No... Not Again!:
  • Gary frequently says this whenever he sees Ash's escapades on the news.
  • Brock has this reaction when, for the second time a row, a Rockruff that Professor Ivy gets for him turns out to be a Zorua in disguise. Luckily, the second time was just his first Zorua playing a joke; he really did get a Rockruff.
• Omake: One set after the 18th movie, in which Hoopa summons four alternate Ashes for an impromptu chat.
  • These other Ashes? The canon one, the Master, Pokémon? one, one who managed to save Lucario at the end of the eighth movie (based on a one-shot by Saphroneth), and one who is a Mew (originally based on a reviewer's comment, but which Saphroneth eventually made another Master, Pokémon? series about this Ash).
• Omniglot: Adept enough aura users can easily communicate with Pokémon, and Pokémon with similar skill in aura can do so with any human. Much of the humor in the fic is the result of Ash and Co. being able to fully communicate with their Pokémon, becoming more aware of their... quirks. Molly Hale also gained this ability as a result of her encounter with the Unown.
  • Ritchie develops the ability to communicate with Pokémon through his Psychic Powers.
  • Steve from the Silver Conference can also can communicate with his Pokémon, though the how isn't explained.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten:
  • Brock is starting to get this feeling when people say he's more of an "Illusion" Gym Leader than a Rock Gym Leader.
  • Invoked by Charla when Ash's Charizard is beaten by Casey's Raticate — after having previously lost to it as a Rattata. She's laughing when she promises that he'll never live it down, and she follows through, too.
    Charla: Now, show whoever you're fighting what Charizard are made of! After all, I don't think it's going to be a Raticate.
• One Degree of Separation:
  • Falkner apparently captured the Aerodactyl that Ash and Co. released in Kanto.
  • May's mother Caroline and Serena's mother Grace were once rivals in their youth, and as a result, Serena becomes Dawn's pen-pal.
    • And once Serena realizes all the connections between her and the famous trainer Ash, she's thrown for a loop.
  • One of Ash's Butterfree's children joins Drew on his journey.
  • The Latias owned by the Pokémon inspector Nurse Joy (and the girlfriend of Ash's Latios) is apparently the sister of Tobias's Latios. Moreover, Tobias mentions he met his Latios through his sister, implying that his sister is said Nurse Joy.
• One-Hit KO:
  • During the Kanto P1 Grand Prix, Ash's Primeape starts and ends the battle with Gary's Golem with a single Master Blow.
  • Lucario's first battle against a Mirage Machoke has him do enough damage to knock out or stun a Machoke with his first blow. After that, Yung adjusts things so that his opponent will register battle-ending damage with a flash and continue on.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • A Character of the Day that Ash and Co. meet in Johto is also named Cyrus. Lucario lampshades it, making sure it's not that Cyrus.
  • Why Max's Mightyena is nicknamed "Cinder" and not "Ash" or "Ashes".
  • Averted when Ash and Co. arrive in the Kingdom of Rota, where there three Lucario present, none with nicknames (Ash's Lucario, Aaron's Lucario, and the Royal Messenger Lucario from Sinnoh). And later on Casey's Riolu evolves as well.
  • When throwing a tournament, and deciding the order via slips from a hat, the ranch Pokémon forget to account for the non-nicknamed multiples at first.
  • In the Kanto Grand Festival, May faces a Gary that's not Ash's rival. She's surprised for a moment at first, but admits in hindsight that it makes sense for there to be more than one Gary.
  • Captain Phantom's Chatot is nicknamed Casey. It confuses a certain Zapdos when he meets the smaller Flying-type, given that he was recently playing baseball with a trainer with that same name.
• One-Word Vocabulary: Mr. Suziko, who just says "Remarkable", such as in Chapter 180, until the end of Chapter 299, where Nurse Joy says it instead and he summarizes the contest in her place:
  "It's a draw!" Mr. Sukizo announced. "A wonderful display of skill, where the two Coordinators are exactly evenly matched to the point that they can't even be separated by a tie break!"
  He spread his hands. "It's a heartwarming reminder that sometimes, even though a Contest is about picking winners, ultimately what really matters is that everyone does their best and has fun doing it!"
  "Remarkable!" Nurse Joy agreed.
  Mr. Contesta rubbed his temples. "I think I need a stiff drink. Nothing makes sense any more."
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Ash and Misty knew that with foreknowledge, Brock was able to save Professor Philena Ivy from being pulled into the Unown dimension. But then he gets to a Pokemon Center and doesn't hit on Nurse Joy. Misty's first reaction is to assume that he's not feeling well, but he says that he has a call to Philena to make.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Yes, even in a fanfiction. The author's British accent accidentally slips through occasionally, such as calling Ho-oh a "Whacking great phoenix," or Ash calling his mother "Mum" when typically he (Ash) speaks with a more North-American version of English.
  • Chapter 54 has Meowth refer to a game as "football" and lampshades the Separated by a Common Language by having Victreebel ask what kind and Meowth say that this "ain't Unova or Orre", both Fantasy Counterpart Cultures to parts of America. Japanese is actually one of the few languages where the word for football/soccer is derived from the latter word rather than the former.
• Original Character:
  • Jessie and James catch a Cubone and an Abra, respectively, and later have an Audino added to their cell.
  • Ash hatches a Mawile, and later has a Honedge added to his team.
  • Misty gets her hands on a Kabuto, which evolves into a Kabutops in the middle of a fight against Entei, and later captures a Chinchou. And she uses a Milotic during her time as a Team Aqua mole.
  • Max gets an Electrike as a starter, later captures a Mantyke, and gets a Charmander from Professor Oak. He also hatches an Aron.
  • Professor Ivy gives Brock a Rockruff, that turns out to be a disguised Zorua. He later gets an actual Rockruff.
  • At the daycare where she originally got Glaceon, May gets a Joltik egg.
  • A revived Tyrunt/Tyrantrum joins Ash's team... in a fashion.
  • After Dexter becomes a Porygon, transferring his data to other Pokédexes turn them into Pokémon too. Damos, Professor Oak's assistant AI, and Ethan and Kris, the Maple siblings' Pokédexes, all count.
  • In the Johto festival where Dawn originally got Quilava's egg, she instead gets a Skarmory egg.
• Otaku: Ash's Squirtle, Gary's Blastoise and the entire Squirtle evolutionary family are all Otaku of one type or another.
  • At one point the group encounters a Blastoise that claims he isn't one of these- he's just memorized half of Negima. Which, admittedly, given that we'd seen "The Hidden Turtle Village" and Gurren Lagann Squirtle and Blastoise, technically does count.
  • One Squirtle, witnessing May's Blaziken kicking, vows to become the strongest kickboxer in the world, a la The Strongest Desciple.
  • May's Wartortle, however, sees to be the only member of the Squirtle evolutionary line thus encountered that has no major obsessions. At the very least, she's far less obvious about her particular obsession (Disney movies) than the rest.
• Out of Focus: The Team Rocket Trio in Johto only really make appearances in the movies and Mewtwo Returns, aside from short scenes back in the Rocket base. This is mainly because they don't follow Ash around anymore, as he's proven himself capable to Giovanni, and they have proven themselves as great for PR.
  • Somewhat surprisingly, the author has managed to avoid this in regards to Ash's Pokémon, almost all of whom get to have a shot at at least one Gym after they leave. However, the sheer number of Pokémon that he manages to collect mean that there are those which aren't seen by the reader for long periods of time. Almost all of them manage to come back for the Altomare incident, though.
• Outside-Context Problem:
  • The Delta Episode asteroid is something that never happened in the original timeline, so Ash and company have no forewarning for it.
  • The Mirage Pokemon situation was never encountered in the original timeline either, leaving everyone completely unprepared, especially when Mewtwo gets a good look at his Mirage double and realizes what he's fighting.
• Overly Pre-Prepared Gag: This seems to be the case during Max's gym battle with Juan.
  (Juan throws out a Dive Ball which has contest seals on it)
  Juan: Whoops, I seem to have forgotten to remove the seals.
  (Dive Ball releases a Sealeo)
  Juan: See? I forgot to remove the seals.