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Main Characters
Rusty
"Look out world! Today's the day I become a Pokémon master!"
The... "hero" of the story who strives to be a Pokémon master. His efforts in this regard are less than successful or even sane.
- Ambiguous Innocence: Completely and blissfully ignorant of everything as he destroys everything in his path.
- Anti-Role Model: He’s an example to show gamers and newcomers to the franchise how not to be a Pokémon trainer.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Apart from getting his Pokémon killed or injured through incompetence, he at one point, states that he throws them away when they're injured.
- Because Destiny Says So: Rusty is utterly convinced that he is destined to be the greatest Pokémon master ever and he will insist any coincidental happenings as proof that he must fulfill his destiny.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: The montage from "EV Trainer" shows he's capable of learning a great amount of information in an apparent short amount of time. He learns everything he can on EV training, but disregards it because it wasn't fun. This is Rusty in a nutshell, he can learn what he needs about to on Pokémon, but he doesn't want to study anything since he's no longer in school.
- Butt-Monkey: The second biggest butt monkey right next to his own Pokémon. He gets his head slammed into a tree by his Geodude, attacked by an Eevee, beaten to near-death by Battle Bart, and tasered by a cop.
- Chronic Pet Killer: He always manages to get his Pokémon killed on one way or another.
- Combat Pragmatist: He wins a battle against a bug catcher by throwing his Kakuna at his opponent's Rattata.
- Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the player character in each of the games. Rusty has very little knowledge of Pokémon, straight-up abandons his home after his parents forbid him from going on a journey, and has to sleep in the woods and eat garbage to survive.
- Dirty Coward: Upon being caught in a trap by Team Rocket, Rusty is more than willing to give up his Pokémon to save his own life.
- The Ditz: He's not the sharpest tool in the shed.
- Downer Ending: He's forced to give up on his dream and work at his dad's deli forever. However, this is only a downer ending for him. For literally everyone else, his suffering equals a Happy Ending.
- Enfant Terrible: For a ten-year-old, he does a lot of things to earn everyone's ire and disdain.
- Everyone Has Standards: Openly calls EV training not fun and thinks Julian deserves to have his Cleffa stolen after he admits wanting to marry his fairy baby once she came of age.
- Fastball Special:
- His first Pokémon battle involved throwing Pikachu the Kakuna at his enemy's Rattata.
- He instructs his Geodude to throw him over the tree blocking his path after teaching his Geodude strength. The Geodude throws him at the tree.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: His eyes are constantly obscured by a pair of glasses, and he is the most unfit of all to be a Pokémon trainer.
- Free-Range Children: Deconstructed. Rusty is a good (if a tad exaggerated) example of why sending children out on their own without knowing hardly anything about taking care of animals is a terrible idea. Not to mention, because he pretty much straight-up abandoned his home, Rusty lives like a homeless person as he claims that he sleeps in the woods and eats out of the trash.
- Freudian Excuse: Rusty comes from Beige Town, which is so insignificant that it isn't even on the map, while living with work obsessed parents who don't have much respect for Pokémon trainers that they regard as glorified pet owners, and in particular a father who regards Pokémon as monsters. It's also established he has no friends. Rusty's lack of understanding the world around him, much less the thoughts and feelings of everyone around him, make more sense upon realizing how small and controlled his life was.
- Genius Ditz: He does come up with the genuinely clever idea of healing his dad after he got in a car crash when Team Rocket burned down the only hospital by putting him in a Poké Ball and taking him to a Pokémon Center.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: He occasionally swears but replaces a swear word with Pokémon names, for example; "God Diglett!" or "Son of a Bisharp!".
- Hated by All: By the end of the series, absolutely no one in the Kanto region likes him and blames him for all of their problems (which is actually true).
- Heel Realization: During the finale, when Peanut Butter threatens all of mankind, Rusty finally comes to the realization that everything that happened was all his fault and actually experiences empathy for the first time.
- Hidden Depths:
- As noted in No Social Skills, he never really grew up without friends, and given the relative isolation of Beige Town compared to everywhere else, it's likely his issues come from being raised with little interaction outside his family.
- He's an exceptionally talented chef. While he will accept compliments on his cooking, he became annoyed when the prisoners tried to encourage him into opening a restaurant or deli. He expresses hatred of cold cuts and earlier when he accepted the compliment on his cooking, he noted that he would've stayed home if he wanted to "serve bad meat to worse men." As such, this implies that his disdain for remaining at the deli comes from a belief of a lack of fulfillment there (likely cheap ingredients and rude customers).
This actually explains the ending when you realize what he does.
- High Hopes, Zero Talent: Aims at being a Pokémon master, but knows absolutely nothing about Pokémon in general.
- Hypocrite: Rusty gleefully tells his Pokémon that they're basically his slaves and has no problem forcing them into tiny balls and do what he says forever. In the final episode, he's chained by the leg inside the deli and has to work there forever. He expresses a dislike of being in enclosed spaces and take orders and questions what he did to deserve it.
- Improbable Infant Survival: He gets hurt a lot throughout the series, but never are they enough to kill him.
- Insufferable Imbecile: Not only is he an idiot to the point of being a danger to himself and others, he's also an egotistical, self-centered prick.
- Iron Butt Monkey: Gets smacked by his Beedrill, mauled by a kid's Eevee, beaten up by Battle Bart, and electrocuted by a police officer, but none of the injuries he got last very long.
- It's All About Me: He shows little to no care for anyone other than himself.
- Jerkass: Not only does he lack intelligence; he lacks common decency as well.
- Lack of Empathy: He is incapable of understanding the feelings and thoughts of others, human or Pokémon, and is more or less in his own little delusional world of being "the very best Pokémon trainer." He could hardly care less what happens to the Pokémon he owns and hasn't been home in months (essentially abandoning his parents and putting them in debt since he purchased a million-dollar bicycle using his dad's credit card).
- Laser-Guided Karma: The original timeline Rusty ends up having to spend the rest of his life working at the deli, with Pikachu as his boss. Meanwhile, the "good" Rusty who became a deli owner gets to go on adventures with a newly reformed Peanut Butter forever.
- Lethally Stupid: How bad is his stupidity? Well...
- He doesn't understand how HM moves work and tries Strength, Flash, Fly, and Surf to get around a tree that you use Cut on, but, predictably, none of them do the job. He finally refers to Red's Twitter and, ignoring the obvious clue to use Cut, lights the tree on fire. This causes a massive wildfire that levels the forest and a nearby town.
- He puts a Grimer into a bath and tries to wash it off in hopes of there being a legendary bird underneath. It gets Grimer washed down the drain and killed.
- He plugs in a Tentacool, thinking its tentacles are wires and thus thinking it's an Electric-type. This gets the Tentacool electrocuted.
- He stuffs sixteen Bidoofs in one Poké Ball simply because he "ran out." They die as a horrible mass of Bidoofs.
- He tries to teach Zubat how to use Surf and doesn't realize that Surf and Zubat are incompatible. This leads to Zubat drowning.
- Despite causing the Bidocalypse and being sent back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, he opts to play out everything exactly the same way, enslavement to Peanut Butter and all.
- Literal-Minded: He takes the phrase "Gotta catch 'em all" all too literally, as in, he captures every single Pokémon he sees. Case in point, he captures a number of Zubats and puts all his captured Bidoofs in one Poké Ball because he ran out of Poké Balls.
- Meaningful Name: The word "rusty" can mean lack of knowledge or skill at something, which describes his knowledge and skill with Pokémon in general, lacking.
- Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Without even realizing it, he's caused a massive wildfire on Route 17, trained a Beedrill to be a cruel hate-filled boss of Team Rocket, and caused a demigod Bidoof to enslave humanity.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When he's sent back in time in order to stop himself from becoming a Pokémon trainer, he ends up staying in the past and repeats the exact same mistakes he was sent back to fix.
- Nerd Glasses: Official art reveals that he wears these, though unlike most examples he's not very smart.
- No Social Skills: The Celadon Mall episode hints that Rusty never had any friends, and he thinks that he would "catch" them.
- Obliviously Evil: Rusty is convinced he's some kind of hero and is completely unaware of just how destructive his actions are.
- Pet the Dog: Rusty uses a Poké Ball to catch his father after a car crash injures him, then has him healed at a nearby Pokécenter.
- Prophet Eyes: Subverted. He appears to have those, but they're actually glasses.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons:
- He's able to easily capture a Snorlax because he thinks it's weak to cars, ignoring the fact that the Snorlax was too injured to fight back because Rusty's dad crashed their car on it.
- He summons a Cubone (an under-leveled one) against Blaine's Growlithe. Blaine praises him for finally getting the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors mechanic of Pokémon (Ground types being strong against Fire-Types). Rusty then corrects him because Cubone is a "bone type" and dogs (like Growlithe) obviously have a weakness for bones.
- Selective Obliviousness: He fails to recognize, even when surrounded by the ghosts of Pokémon of his he's gotten killed, that he's a terrible trainer with no skill or right to be allowed anywhere near another form of life. To him, they all missed him.
- Small Name, Big Ego: He's very self-centered and doesn't seem to care about anything besides being the world's greatest Pokémon trainer. He doesn't quite comprehend how he's not capable of anything but being the worst.
- The Sociopath: As the series went on, he's show that he's not only stupid, but also self-centered, uncaring for his Pokemon, and has felt generally no empathy whatsoever.
- Supreme Chef: He's actually a genuinely good cook and it's implied he'd be well-suited to working at a restaurant or the deli. However, he refuses to do so to chase his dream.
- Too Dumb to Live: Many times has put him in situations where he could have easily gotten killed, but somehow made it out okay.
- Ungrateful Bastard: As he is surrounded by the ghosts of his dead Pokémon who want revenge for his stupidity killing them, the ghost of his grandfather Crispin comes to his aid. While Crispin tries to convince the ghosts to forgive him, Rusty catches his grandfather's ghost in a Pokéball and happily declares he'll never use it.
- Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Lots of bad things happen to Rusty, but it's really hard to feel bad for him given what a clueless, insufferable prick he is.
- Villain Protagonist: Rusty is responsible for all the misery that befalls every other character in the series, be it human or Pokémon. While originally portrayed as just abnormally stupid, later episodes depict Rusty as a borderline sociopath, with the final episode suggesting that he never felt empathy at any point in his life.
Rusty's Pokémon
"Pikachu"
Click here to see his Beedrill form (spoilers)
Rusty's first Pokémon which, despite its nickname, is actually a Kakuna. Constantly abused by Rusty, it evolved into a blood-thirsty psychotic Beedrill who would eventually become the new boss of Team Rocket.
- Ax-Crazy: A member of Team Rocket openly calls him the most sociopathic, cruel, hate-filled Pokémon they've ever seen.
- The Bad Guy Wins: By the end of the series, Rusty is forced as a slave to work at his dad's deli, with Pikachu being his boss.
- Big Bad: For season 3 after he takes over Team Rocket, he drives certain events, including the kidnapping of Pokémon that includes Julian's perfect Cleffaye Valentine, and calling in all debts, including Battle Bart's.
- Demoted to Dragon: After "Peanut Butter" enslaves the humans, he is now watching over human slaves as they make a rock statue of Peanut Butter. Considering he gets to whip Rusty, it's not a bad life.
- Disney Death: Was thought to have been killed after Red showed up and destroyed the truck he was riding in.
- A Dog Named "Cat": A Kakuna (later Beedrill) that's named Pikachu. It was named after Red's famous Pikachu.
- Foreshadowing: His ghost doesn't appear at Lavender Tower with the rest of Rusty's Pokémon, hinting he's not dead.
- Freudian Excuse: His issues are explained by Rusty's terrible training, including chucking rocks at him in the hopes one of them was a Sun Stone (which don't evolve Kakunas).
- Fully-Dressed Cartoon Animal: As the boss of Team Rocket, he wears a suit and tie.
- Intelligible Unintelligible: After becoming a Beedrill, he "speaks" by buzzing (with subtitles translating what he's saying), yet everybody seems to understand him just fine.
- Karma Houdini: Became a crueler mob boss than Giovanni, frequently tortured people, worked as a slave master during Peanut Butter's reign of terror, and is made Rusty's boss in the deli, where he continues to whip his former trainer. All with no punishment whatsoever.
- Man of Wealth and Taste: After taking over Team Rocket, he put on a suit and tie.
- The Sociopath: Surprisingly cruel and sadistic for a Pokémon.
- Wicked Wasps: Upon evolving into what's based on the Asian Giant Hornet, he proves himself to be immensely vicious.
- Worth It: Even though he knows he's in for trouble when caught by the police in the last episode of season 3, his expression as he watches Rusty get arrested and electrocuted by cops seems to say that he's fine with it.
"Burbasaur"
A shiny Bulbasaur which is, unfortunately, defective, as it is missing a bulb on its back.
- Body Horror: Everyone but Rusty and Peanut Butter find it difficult to look at. This isn't a Informed Deformity either - there's a large gash where his bulb should be.
- Bury Your Disabled: Its kidneys shut down mid-battle.
- Delicate and Sickly: It is extremely sickly and deformed due to a birth defect.
- Long Bus Trip: Introduced in the third episode, "Team Rocket," but doesn't appear again until episode 17, "The Elite Four."
- What Happened to the Mouse?: It's fate at the end of the series is never established. One can only hope it finds medical help.
"Pikachu Two"
When Rusty thought Pikachu the Beedrill died from a truck accident, he caught a Bidoof to be his replacement.
- Slasher Smile: He does this when he watches Rusty get beaten to a pulp by Battlebart.
- Kill It with Fire: Rusty accidentally burns Pikachu Two to death while helping Battlebart commit insurance fraud.
- Replacement Goldfish: To Rusty's Beedrill named "Pikachu", despite him claiming Pikachu can never be replaced.
Perfect Bidoof / "Peanut Butter" (SPOILERS)
"I live only to slake your bloodthirst, Father."
The result of Julian and Rusty's attempt to make a perfect Pokémon. They stopped halfway when Team Rocket busted into the Day-Care Center and killed all the Pokémon used for breeding, but little did they know that they succeeded.
- Affably Evil: Despite causing all manner of horror and carnage in his short life, Peanut Butter seems to genuinely care for Rusty (at least until Rusty causes him to have a Face–Heel Turn), treats his fellow Pokémon well and only acts maliciously for specific reasons (like murdering all of the trainers in Kanto with Pokémon badges to obtain them for Rusty).
- Ascended Extra: Only has a brief appearance in The Stinger of the "How To Breed the Perfect Pokémon" episode, but then becomes the Big Bad of Season 4.
- Big Bad: For Season 4, helping Rusty escape from prison and live out his dream only for him to decide to enslave the humans after Rusty makes him forget Compassion and learn Thirst for Vengeance.
- Crippling Overspecialization: He's so powerful that actually battling a Pokémon is beyond his ability. It's either nothing or horrible death when you're up against Peanut Butter.
- Exact Words: Peanut Butter shows the Elite 4 a big sack fully of bloody badges and then states "Behold. All the badges in Kanto from any trainers who held them". The thing is that his words are vague enough to interpret this two different ways. Either he took the badges from any gym leader that held them (it's been established in canon that there are more than just the 8 gyms from the video games) or Worse he literally took the badges from every trainer that had badges. The blood should tell you how he took them.
- Fluffy the Terrible: He's a monstrous, unnatural, reality warping abomination that Rusty nicknames "Peanut Butter".
- Forced Transformation: He is capable of transforming people into Bidoofs. He demonstrates this on Professor Tree.
- Heel–Face Turn: After eating the sandwich by "Good Rusty", he turns good and undoes all the damage his apocalypse has caused.
- Invincible Villain: Everything opposing him fails (often horrifically) and he's only stopped because he chooses to undergo a Heel–Face Turn and undo the damage he caused.
- Leitmotif: He's almost always accompanied by the Sealed Chamber
theme. - Offscreen Villainy:
- Peanut Butter murdered all the trainers in Kanto who held any badge so Rusty could challenge the Elite Four.
- When he started his world conquest, Red organized all the elite Pokémon trainers to fight him. Peanut Butter killed them all.
- Pet the Dog: Despite Peanut butter acting like an amoral Übermensch, he does do some kind things in the series:
- He frees Rusty from jail and helps him get the badges he needs to fight the Elite Four and despite slaughtering innocent people for them, he makes Rusty close his eyes the whole time to spare him the horror.
- Offers to take over the fight against Agatha from Rusty's seriously ill Bulbasaur, telling it to rest and calling it "brother".
- Physical God: The attempts to create the perfect Bidoof made him a humanoid, reality-warping, talking abomination of nature.
- Reality Warper: Seems to be able to teleport, manipulate matter and energy at will, and also making other Bidoofs emerge from Agatha's skull through her eyes and mouth.
- Super Power Lottery: Peanut Butter is the biggest winner in the Pokémon world. He's super intelligent, can speak in human language, telekinetically levitate himself or others, can teleport, and (if Agatha's demise is any indication) warp reality. He's also shiny.
- Tastes Like Friendship: When Good Rusty gives him a sandwich, he immediately has a Heel–Face Turn and undoes the entire Bidocalypse.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
- Peanut Butter and Rusty only needed eight badges to challenge the elite four. Instead Peanut Butter gives them "All the badges in Kanto, from any trainers who held them!". Said badges were covered in blood, with obvious implications that the trainers were killed for them. Then during the battle with Agatha he kills her, even though he only needed to defeat her Pokémon to win the fight. It only gets worse from here.
- He also threatens to kill Rusty by ripping his skin off his body and turning it into a belt.
- Voice of the Legion: He has a slight but noticeable echo in his voice.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: He helps Rusty achieve his dream of being a Pokémon master through atrocious acts, such as murdering all the trainers in Kanto with Pokemon badges to get Rusty to the Elite Four and brutally murdering Agatha so that Rusty would win his battle against her.
Groups and Organizations
Team Rocket
Crooks on their off-time
The greatest criminal enterprise in Kanto - and even they are put off by Rusty's actions!- Adaptational Villainy: In addition to stealing Pokémon, Team Rocket is also shown peddling drugs, engaging in extortion, physical assault, murder, and burning down homes and businesses as intimidation. They even get into a massive shoot-out with the police at Viridian Gym.
- Affably Evil: For a criminal organization centered around stealing Pokémon, they're shown to be pretty upbeat people.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: After stealing an Eevee, one Team Rocket member claims they're gonna sell it to a place that makes shampoo. note
- Combat Pragmatist: When challenged to a Pokémon battle, they'll pull out a gun and murder the trainer.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Two of its members are disgusted by how Rusty treats his Pokémon, one of them even calling him a "dumb monster". That said, when other members learn of Rusty's treatment of his Pokémon, they gladly let him join.
- Pet the Dog: When two of their members see how terribly Rusty treats his Beedrill, they rescue it and promise to treat it better.
- You Monster!:
- One of them outright calls Rusty this when they saw for themselves that he just throws away injured Pokémon and has no idea how Pokémon Centers work.Female Team Rocket Grunt: You. Are a dumb. Monster!
- Subverted the second time they meet Rusty. They declare that a black-hearted trainer like him always has a place at Team Rocket.
- One of them outright calls Rusty this when they saw for themselves that he just throws away injured Pokémon and has no idea how Pokémon Centers work.
The Elite Four
The highest branch of government in Kanto, the Elite Four consist of Agatha, Lance, Bruno, and Lorelei.
- Mood Whiplash: During her "fight", Agatha starts by lightheartedly joking about her ghost Pokémon being spooky. Cue Rusty choosing Burbasaur.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: After seeing Peanut Butter cause smaller Bidoof's to emerge from Agatha's mouth and eyes, the rest of them wisely decide to forfeit the champion's title to the oblivious Rusty and his "scary, magical, murder Bidoof".
Other Pokémon Trainers
Red
Red leaves a little reminder.
The true legendary Pokémon trainer of Kanto and the hero that Rusty looks up to.- The Ace: Red is one of the best Pokémon trainers in the world with several powerful, high level Pokémon under his control. In Pokémon Ralphie, it's revealed that Red is in charge of a multi-million dollar company.
- Back from the Dead: Most likely, seeing as Peanut Butter undid all of the Bidocalypse after his Heel–Face Turn, which would likely have included Red's death.
- Calling Card: After killing a member of Team Rocket, he leaves behind a picture of himself with the words "Don't do Drugs!" written on it.
- Drugs Are Bad: Seems to think so.
- Good Is Not Soft: Has no qualms about ordering his Pokémon to brutally murder members of Team Rocket.
- Informed Attribute: Rusty says Pikachu is Red's favorite Pokémon. However, no Pikachu is ever seen in the series, much less under his command.
- Kick The Son Of A Bitch: Red brutally murders a member of Team Rocket, after that member praised Rusty for killing a child.
- Killed Offscreen: Peanut Butter apparently killed Red and most of his resistance members. All of this is explained to Rusty via an Info Dump.
- The Worf Effect: He attempted to lead a resistance against Peanut Butter, only for him and most of his allies to get killed.
Julian the EV Trainer
- The Chew Toy: His top-tier Pokémon are frequently stolen or killed, and the series ends with him losing his Cleffaye Valentine for good after finally reuniting with it. Since he's a huge jerk, it's all played for laughs.
- The Jailbait Wait: After Team Rocket steals "Cleffaye Valentine", he sobs that he was going to marry her... when she came of age of course.
- Jerkass: He's not exactly a very friendly person.
- Jerkass Has a Point: His lack of friendliness and respect towards Rusty is understandable, given how stupid and conceited Rusty is.
- Never My Fault: Although he's among those who call out Rusty, he doesn't at all acknowledge his role in the existence of Peanut Butter, since it was his Ditto that bred with one of Rusty's Bidoofs.
- Take That!!: Serves as this to both real-life competitive Pokemon players who only care about breeding and training the strongest, top-tier Pokémon and people who are legitimately attracted to them as well.
Blaine
Gym Leader of Cinnabar Island.
- Cool Old Guy: He's more polite to Rusty than most would be, despite Rusty calling him an old idiot at one point, and even calls a water taxi for him at the end.
- Ignored Expert: Granted, the advice he was giving Rusty was common knowledge, Pokémon types and how even children figured out how it's basic rock-paper-scissors. Given this is Rusty, who clearly doesn't listen and even thinks "bone-type" is a thing, everything he says is just treated with disrespect and idiocy.
- Nice Guy: Takes pity on Rusty breaking down in tears over losing to him by giving him a shell and claiming it's a "Participation Badge".
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Had he left Rusty alone, he would've given up trying to be Pokémon master and return home. Had he offered to help Rusty with more advice on how Pokémon actually work, Rusty might've actually improved. By giving him a "badge", he made Rusty's delusions continue and lead to the much worse events happening.
Battle Bart
Also known as "Battleblart". He used to run the Battlehaus until he had to have it burned down in order to pay off Team Rocket.
- Insurance Fraud: He gets Rusty to burn down the Battlehaus in order to pay off his debt to Team Rocket.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Beats the everloving shit out of Rusty during the "Battle Battle," much to the joy of "Pikachu 2."
- Speech Impediment: He frequently says words almost as if he's slurring them out loud. For example, he says the word "battle" as "blartle".
- What the Hell, Hero?: He is the one who calls out Rusty for everything he has done.
Other Pokémon
Dialga
The legendary Pokémon of time. He is used to "build" a Time Machine—which is just it in a pool of water—in order to send Rusty back in time to the day where he started his Pokémon journey.
- Electrified Bathtub: Professor Tree uses a Magnemite to make the "time machine" work. It presumably kills Dialga.
- Our Time Machine Is Different: Dialga is just sitting in a pool of water and is electrocuted via dropping a Magnemite in the water. It works, though.
Cleffaye Valentine
A Cleffa that Julian the EV trainer breeds. After getting kidnapped by Team Rocket, she eventually reunited with her breeder during the Bidofcalypse, only to be taken away by Perfect Bidoof at the series' end.
- The Jailbait Wait: Julian planned to marry her when she came of age.
- Running Gag: She keeps getting kidnapped, to Julian's dismay.
- Shout-Out: She is named after Faye Valentine (from Cowboy Bebop).
Misc. Characters
Rusty's Parents
Rusty's mother and father, who want him to get a "real" job.
- Education Mama: Both of them want Rusty to drop his dreams of Pokémon master so he can study and get a job.
- Fantastic Racism: Rusty's father considers Pokémon to be "monsters".
- Fantasy-Forbidding Father: They want Rusty to work in their deli before he can go to College and get a "real job" as they see trainers as being just "pet owners".
- Good Parents: They worked their lives off and try to make Rusty go on the right path to a "real job".
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Rusty's mother never appears again after the first episode, save for the penultimate episode, and even then, it's the same scene from the first episode. Rusty's father never appears again after Rusty took him to a Pokémon Center to be healed after the crash. How they react to their son unintentionally causing widespread death and destruction, along with putting them in debt for a million dollars when he bought his bike, is never shown.
Prof. Tree
- Genius Ditz: He "invents" a time machine using Dialga. That is to say, he stuck Dialga and Rusty in a pool of water and electrocuted them. It worked, but probably killed Dialga.
- In Vino Veritas: Done with pot instead of liquor. Professor Tree admits to knowing nothing about Pokémon and just spends his time growing pot, then immediately lampshades that he shouldn't have told Rusty this and blames being stoned for his inappropriate honesty.
- Meaningful Name: A pothead named Professor Tree. It's also a play on the Floral Theme Naming of Pokémon Professors, who are all named after different species of trees.
- The Stoner: He admits he knows little, if anything, about Pokémon. He took the job because it was the easiest grant to apply for and uses his monthly paycheck for pot. He ordered a bicycle full of illegal drugs and was seen in a smoke-laced Herb Shop toward the end of the series. He also comments that he was high when Rusty went to him and picked up "Pikachu" the Kakuna, which Tree thought was a paperweight.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He's an idiot stoner who should not in any way be allowed to be a Pokémon professor, and it's his being high at the time that led to Rusty deciding to take a Kakuna he thought was a paperweight as his starter that led to many a people and Pokémon dead.
Deli Worker (SPOILERS)
Good/Deli Rusty
The Rusty that ended up staying home and working at the deli after being convinced by the main Rusty, only for the present-day Rusty to repeat the exact same journey himself.- Accidental Hero: He saves the day thanks to the extensively delicious sandwich he brought to the Resistance, only for it to be eaten by Perfect Bidoof.
- For Want Of A Nail: This version of Rusty lived a life identical to his previous counterpart right up until the first few seconds of the first episode. Rather than become a Pokemon trainer, he stays behind and works at the deli, albeit by his other self telling him that he will become a great trainer by doing so. and he's technically not wrong given that he helps Perfect Bidoof do a Heel–Face Turn.
- Good Counterpart: This Rusty isn't as Lethally Stupid as regular Rusty and seems content on not being a Pokémon master.
- Irony: By remaining at the deli like his parents wanted him to, he would end up getting what he wanted (albeit namely by the circumstances created by his negative self in the first place).
- Nice Guy: He's a lot nicer than his future counterpart.
- Supreme Chef: Is every bit as good a cook as his future counterpart, only he doesn't mind doing it. Even creating a sandwich good enough to make the perfect Bidoof see the error of his ways.
- Walking Spoiler: It might be difficult to explain the ending without bringing "Good" Rusty up, given how he's the one who accidentally fixes everything and only appears in the last two episodes.
