Headscratchers / Pokémon Generations

• Arcanine burning a hole to get inside was pretty cool to see, but what exactly would it accomplish? It would be too hot to immediately go through the newly created entry.
  • A way to break through walls that can't be punched through perhaps?
  • Or perhaps it was less about getting inside, and more about making sure any Team Rocket grunts inside couldn't get out that way- Hard to use a corridor that's filled with molten metal, after all.
• What was the point of both Arcanine and Machamp busting through the walls when Magnemite just scrambled the electronic lock?
  • Attacking from multiple angles and locations is a common tactic.
    • For that matter, so it going through walls. Doors are usually covered by the enemy.
  • To not set off any alarms?
• So wait... Literally no one knew that the identity of the Viridian gym leader is Giovanni? Did he forge his name when registering to be a gym leader or something?
  • "Oh, the Crime Lord is named Smith huh? And the Gym Leader is named Smith too.....weird how that goes."
  • Is it that hard to believe? He's got tons of money, power, and influence. It's all about giving the right people enough to keep them quiet ("Got a sick relative and high medical payments? Here, I'll cover them in full, as long as you..." etc.), or making them fear him more than they fear the authorities. Also, it's easy to miss, but in the games, the Kanto League only got started very recently by the time that Red set out on his adventure. There's an email in Oak's lab, from the League, announcing that they are "finally ready to take on all comers." That's probably also why there is no Champion when Blue battles the Elite Four (in the games, after beating Lance, he tells us that we/Red would have been crowned the Champion right then and there if not for Blue having just beaten him moments earlier). So Giovanni probably hasn't been a Gym Leader for very long, either - Blue and Red are likely among the first to even battle him as a Gym Leader.
  • (Original poster) Except the third short shows this detail has been retconned out of existence; Agatha says something along the lines of "It's been a while since a trainer has collected all 8 gym badges". Obviously, there has been another trainer who has who gone through all the gyms and won, including Giovanni's, and quite some time ago too, if "a while" is any indication. Then again, it's always possible that the previous gym leader stepped down; but still, I would understand if they didn't know the Rocket Boss's name or what he looked like, but the police clearly know both. The league at least would have profiles on their leaders, this isn't like Pokemon Go, not just anybody can be a gym leader and I can imagine there has to be a bunch of paperwork involved. Or am I thinking too deeply into this?
  • If you remember in the games, the Kanto Elite Four are also the Johto league's Elite Four. Agatha could be referencing Johto trainers that have beaten them. Also, Giovanni was never really around his gym, which looks pretty plain and barren. He could have been just running it as a side project/hobby with a pseudonym and have an underling occasionally act as the leader when audited by the league or whatever. There are plenty of real life examples of businesses with legit paperwork, but were actually money laundering schemes for crime rings. Plus, it's not like everyone in Viridian is going around talking about their famous gym and its glorious leader Giovanni, so it's kind of implied that the gym is just kind of a strange quiet afterthought in town. But yeah, in the end it is just a promo fanservice short for an all ages video game.
  • It might just be me, but I don't recall anyone knowing the name of the Viridian leader. Since he was a rich and powerful criminal leader, he most likely used a fake name for the official documents, and just didn't tell his name to the opponents he defeated, and since only Red had previous encounter with him, none of them realized who he was. Agatha's line might as well say that no one won eight badges since Giovanni took over, him being too strong for any opponent. Even if the police had known Giovanni's name and appearance from the beginning, they didn't know the Viridian gym leader's (also, in the game it was implied that the gym was used as a cover and a place to go back and rest a bit, so he likely got it before team Rocket became big).
• So you're telling me, Looker washed up on the shores of Hoenn, got amnesia, was immediately summoned afterwards to conduct an investigation on Team Rocket in Kanto, spent some three years in Johto looking for Giovanni, and was then immediately called to Sinnoh to investigate Galactic there. Not only does this make generation III and I existing at the same time on the timeline impossible, there's no cool down time in between. Is... Is Looker the only Interpol agent there is? Are there many Lookers running around? Plotholes! Plotholes everywhere!
  • It is implied the Hoenn and Johto games take place a brief while (like, a few months) before the Kanto and Sinnoh ones, respectively. Also, running multiple investigations simultaneously really isn't impossible, and considering this is a world where psychic critters can be found around every corner, recovering from amnesia quickly couldn't have been THAT impossible.
  • There are a few possible options: either Looker washed up in Hoenn with amnesia after investigating Team Rocket in Kanto, then spent some time recovering during the three year gap between Kanto/Hoenn and Johto/Sinnoh; or this is an alternate universe to the events of Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, since the possibility of alternate universes in the Pokémon world was discussed by Zinnia during the Delta Episode and implied to be the reason why the previous generations do not feature mega evolution (however this option is probably unlikely since Primal Groudon/Kyogre are on the poster artwork). Alternatively, the official timeline we've been given of the games simply shows their placement in relation to each other (e.g. Kanto and Hoenn being three years before Johto and Sinnoh), meaning the events of the Kanto and Hoenn games could be a few weeks apart from each other while still being considered timeline-wise as happening 'at the same time'; the beginning of Diamond and Pearl is a good example of this, since the broadcast about the Red Gyarados—an event that happens about halfway through the Gen 2 protagonist's journey—is being shown before Dawn/Lucas even obtain their Pokémon, hence the trainers of each game don't start and end their journeys at the exact same time. So, Looker may have had a few weeks between investigating Giovanni and somehow ending up in Hoenn with amnesia.
  • It's also entirely possible that Team Rocket caught on to Looker's investigation and took some mob-like street justice to the cop, giving him amnesia and dumping him in the ocean near Hoenn. Cue Brendan/May finding him at the Battle Resort, while still allowing "The Legacy" to take place three years later.
  • Regarding Looker's amnesia, certain plot elements introduced in Sun and Moon's postgame suggest that there's two Lookers. The Looker with amnesia is the Looker from the original, non-Mega Evolution, timeline, having been displaced into the Mega Evo timeline. The Looker who we follow in Generations is the one native to the Mega Evo timeline, who never had amnesia to begin with.
• What was the source of Courtney’s vision in “The Vision”? Was that Rayquaza telepathically trying to communicate with anyone in Team Magma to urge them to stop Maxie or was it something else?