We Are All Pokemon Trainers / Tropes 0 To E

0 to E|F to O|P to Z

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#-A

• A Birthday, Not a Break:
  • DS and Mezzo's 20th and 16th birthdays, respectively, occur during the time they're stuck in the mindscapes.
  • PEFeDOS during the PMD-R arc is awakened after 600 years and begins her sadistic testing once again on Tagg's 21st birthday.
  • It repeats the next year with Tagg ending up in Ransei 600 years in the past due to concentrated April Fools shenanigans on his 22nd birthday. Herbert, also in the same situation, has his 16th birthday the next day.
  • Straw gets attacked by Shadow Crewe on his 18th birthday, which was purposely invoked by Aelia For the Evulz.
  • Sarah gets accidentally kidnapped, and subsequently held captive for several days, on her 17th Birthday alongside Ren's Treeko by an Illusion grunt.
  • In a mild version of this, Ren has received bad and/or unsettling news for his birthday four years running.
• Aborted Arc:
  • This happens in general when players leave without tying up all their character's loose ends.
  • The Warriors sub-arc in Holon, due to the player responsible for managing it losing motivation.
  • Miniarcs in general that end up going slower than the main RP can become this, if players become disinterested in it before its completion.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Tagg theorizes that the creation trio might do this when interacting with mortals, considering their eldritch natures, which is proven to be true when he visits the Temporal World during the Ranger-2 Arc and Dialga appears to him as a vaguely draconic-shaped mass covered in seemingly infinite diamonds.
• A God Am I: Downplayed. Eon being a Latios is a species that are considered minor deities IRP, but he appears to have delusions of being on the same tier of power as legends like Groudon and Dialga, and demands that people worship him.
• Absurd Altitude: During the Unown meeting in the interim between the first Sinnoh Arc and the Unova Arc, the group gets teleported into space, being saved from dying due to the Unown's power. They end up seeing the planet in its entirety before being teleported to the Sinjoh Ruins.
• Accidental Truth: During his stint as The Ghost Lord, Umbra creates a rumor that the one who unites all of Ransei will unlock the ability to use and master all parts of the Auric Spectrum to throw everyone else off the tracks of his real plan. 600 years later, Umbra is shocked to meet Vierr, who can do exactly that - though very much minus the master part.
• Achievements in Ignorance: For a long time, Daisy's Zoroark, Blacky, was able to use the abilities of the Pokémon he transformed into, even though said transformation is really just an illusion. Blacky seems to have caught on to this as his Illusion ability now works the way it's supposed to work.
• Adaptation Expansion: The RP is mainly based on the universe of the main series games + spinoffs, but it also takes elements from the anime, manga, and even the TCG in the form of the Holon region, certain moves, and the existence of Delta Pokémon.
• Aerith and Bob: Both relatively normal and plain unusual names are common. Ex. Mezzopiano Morendo and Jeff Firelight
• All Love Is Unrequited:
  • Nudi the Gastrodon falls in love with Bonnie the Weavile, who unfortunately for him doesn't reciprocate.
  • Same thing with Hikari and Des
  • And Jacob and Sakura.
  • Bishop and Seth.
  • Elise is heavily implied to have a crush on Straw.
  • Meddler/Rebecca has a crush on Crewe, whose feelings for Meddler/Rebecca are purely platonic.
• The Alleged Car: Tracer owns an old van that seems to operate mainly on the power of hope and prayer going by how rundown it is.
• Almost Kiss: At one point while trying to figure out her feelings for Wolf, DS almost kisses Wolf while he's asleep.
• All There in the Manual: Plot points are often discussed in the chat room, Discussion Thread, and Spoiler Text. This includes many cases of Word of God.
• Alliteration & Adventurers: Caverns & Charizards is the WAAPTverse equivalent of D&D.
• An Ass-Kicking Christmas:
  • The fight against Noir and Nihilist Soul takes place on Christmas Eve of 2011.
  • Darkest Night (An Arkham series based miniarc) also takes place on Christmas Eve.
• And I Must Scream:
  • Cyrus' fate after the AU has ended. And to think Giratina finds it funny.
  • Ever being hypnotized into "silence", rendering them practically unable to do anything as it would make noise until the mind control wears off.
  • Palkia's dialogue after being restored from her petrification makes it clear that she was conscious the whole time. She doesn't seem too bothered by it, though, apart from having found being a statue to be really boring/
• And Then What?: This trope is more or less what led Jane, Tagg, and Anom to become researchers. All three just didn't feel like doing nothing but battling for the rest of their lives with no purpose besides that.
• Angel Unaware: Some of the legendaries can take the form of normal Pokémon or even humans to observe and deal with mortals. Ho-oh for instance has a tendency to masquerade as a Pidgey.
• Animalistic Abomination:
  • ♨č▒⢫╠␣☣ł₤舸▟, or the Glitch Nidorino, is a representation of the fear of death that merely takes the appearance of the first being it encounters in the material world, in this case being Vinollo the Nidorino. Luckily unlike most other Glitches it's friendly if its mission isn't to literally beat the fear of death into you.
  • The Invisible Shiny Bulbasaur that glitched up Kanto is another Glitch Pokémon.
  • OLD MAN's familiar Weedle Prime is a divine being taking the form of a Weedle.
• Animorphism:
  • Upon entering one of the PMD universes, humans get forcibly transformed into Pokémon.
  • A human wearing a human to Pokémon armband will get turned into the Pokémon they relate to most.
  • Weremons tend to have involuntary transformations, but due to their enchanted Stones Crewe and other weremons can switch forms at will.
• Appropriated Appelation: The in-universe fan-term "J-Team", after Jane, ends up getting adopted by the group as their official name.
• Arc Welding: It's heavily implied - and speculated on by both Umbra and Tagg during the Hoenn-2 Arc - that the Demon Mutagen used to create the monsters in the Okamiquest sidearc of the Conquest Arc had some connection to the creation of FEV in the ''Fallout sidearc in PMD due to the latter having very similar, if inferior, effects to the former, though the exact connection has never been revealed.
• Arc Words: A veritable multitude, as many characters have individual ones. For example:
  • Pi: Take the mask, swear the oath, become something more.
  • Dune: "Criminal". Always capitalized.
  • Tagg: "Destiny is never left to chance."
  • Kaito, Diane, and Rose all use variations of "I can't afford (X) again" during the Iron-Mobius saga.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Sakura and Lyuri's last name, Riese was made because it looked Japanese. It does happen to be a German last name, though.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Palkia, who went from just being another legendary to a main character in later arcs.
  • Many Pokémon start out as just another member of the trainer's team, but then become more iconic, like Ammy.
  • On the human side of things, Hikari qualifies due to initially being just a NPC, but she started appearing often and even participates in some of the stuff the main cast does.
• Ascended Fanboy: A lot of J-Team members were originally fans of the group before joining.
• Atop a Mountain of Corpses:
  • Red does the G rated version of this with 500 of Lanius' caught goons in this post.
  • It happens again with Flonne and Anja in this post.
• Attack Animal: Cipher has a habit of using their mons like this on people.
• Attack Of The 50 Foot...:
  • Cowboy: When 'M possesed Clay.
  • Hydreigon: This is what Scolipede sics on the Trainers and Napoleon's forces after the attack on N's Castle.
  • Tortilla: This rampaged around Dewford Island with little explanation, then was recreated by XANADOS in Lumiose City.
  • Espeon: April Fools Day 2013 turned DS into this.
• Awesome Backpack: Most of the trainers pre-Unova have Hammerspace backpacks as a gift from Palkia that double as a Bag of Holding. Sometimes, they use them as tents or sleeping bags.

B-C

• Badass Crew:
  • The main group, aka the J-Team, regularly coming up on top versus a number of dangerous opponents and containing some of the most skilled trainers in the RP's universe.
  • The PEFE Founders, particularly during their takedown of Pokefutures Inc when the four of them plus their mons went up against their security forces at their main HQ in Anglea.
  • The Extras, a group of vigilantes fighting off Cipher with minimal resources.
• Badass Family: As found out in the Conquest Arc, several of the J-Team members are related to each other, not counting those who are already siblings.
• Badass on Paper: Given how battles can be tackled from various angles besides strength or smarts, some Pokémon can end up becoming this. You wouldn't believe Dintel faced Lelouch and raised La Résistance to stop his invasion of Hoenn until you actually read it through.
• Bag of Spilling: Tagg's Xatu takes his Unova badges shortly before the Unova-2 arc, forcing him to refight the Gym Leaders in order to get his badges back.
• Bash Brothers: Gamer and Tagg from Sinnoh to Unova-1 tend to fight side by side.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind:
  • The mindscape miniarc is chock full of these as the trainers take on their dark sides.
  • When Zeal's RedEyes aspect attempts to use Jirachi to take control of time, Jacob ends up entering his mindscape to try and stop him.
• Beware the Silly Ones: The J-Team as a whole is made up of some very quirky characters. Together they've beaten things ranging from crime syndicates to reality-warping Glitches.
• Big Bad:
  • Missingno, also called The Anomaly and He Who Must Not Be Numbered.
  • 'M in the Unova arc.
  • Ardos in the Ranger Regions.
  • Napoleon in the Alternate Timeline.
    • DAMN IT, NAPOLEON!!!
  • Annoski during the Keystone arc.
  • The Master and PEFeDOS during PMD-R.
  • AU!Alduin in RtAU.
  • The Ghost Lord in Conquest.
  • Cipher for Unova-2, Holon, and Orre.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Scolipede and Artemis in the AU.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies:
  • Anom's entire team at the beginning is comprised of large Bug-types until he branches out following the end of the AU arc..
  • Ammy also happens to be a Bug-type specialist.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Jane and her horde of Legendaries in the third arc against Missingno.

• Tagg and a bunch of the other trainers teleporting down to Kanto to help Tracer and his Pokemon fight off a massive murder of Murkrow and their Honchkrow bosses.
• Unite and Reshiram when they go first help with the evacuation of Goldenrod City, then stop an army at Rt. 32.
• DS, the Lake Trio, and Palkia show up to help during the final battle of the AU arc against Cyrus, Primal Dialga, and Shadow Celebi.
• Lyuri shows up when Duke has to fight Omega the Infernape and Titan all on his own, allowing him to Mega Evolve and turn the tides.

• Big Labyrinthine Building: PEFE HQ is so big that its dome takes up a good portion of the island it's on, stretches underground for at least a mile, and has Pokémon that are pretty much no different from wild mons elsewhere inside.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Cain-Davis family, of which Herbert and Psyche are probably the two most prominent members. Nearly every member of the extended family that's been shown onscreen is either evil, highly traumatised, just kind of a jerk, or some mixture of the three. The few decent ones almost always seem to end up dead or broken.
• Big "WHAT?!": When Cresselia reveals that she is Darkrai's daughter, the group reacts with a "WHAT?".
• Bilingual Dialogue: Human and Pokémon characters talking to one another count as this most of the time, with the humans speaking either English or other languages and the mons speaking Monese.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • The fates of some of the J-Team members that survived the Draconic Uprising in PMD-B match this. The PEFE Founders for instance end up dying of old age unable to change things back, but they do end up laying the seeds to create a timeline fork and manage to raise families of their own.
  • The Fallout miniarc ends much like the original game, with the Super Mutants being defeated, but the Vault Dweller being cast out.
  • Wolf-B ends up saving AU!DS' life through sending a message through the Adamant Orb... at the cost of his own life.
  • The Orre arc ends with Cipher crushed (at least in Orre), but most of the Admins manage to escape justice (though not defeat), a lot of the J-Team members are left with issues, and Siren/Taylor ends up getting killed shortly after undergoing a Heel-Face Turn. On the other hand, Psyche does manage to conquer her own psychological issues...briefly.
• Black Site: PEFE HQ, which is located on an island in the middle of the ocean where all sorts of science is performed, has no defined location, and has Psychic types and PEFEgons that prevent it from being found except by PEFE employees and those they bring with them. As a result only the most trusted are allowed to visit, though luckily the organization is fairly benign. Beforehand it was the property of Pokefutures Inc., who used it to perform unethical experiments, some of which were fought during the PEFExp miniarc.
• Bland-Name Product: For example, Twitter is Chatter, Kingdom Hearts is Empire Souls, Etc. Sometimes overlaps with Hold Your Hippogriffs. A more complete listing is available on the wiki.
• Blood Transfusion Plot: When Tagg is critically injured by a glancing beam attack from a Guzzlord in the Ultra Ruin, upon getting teleported to the Ultra Ruins he ends up getting a blood transfusion from his counterpart from the AU, who has become the liaison between that universe's PEFE and the Ultra Megalopolis in the eight year interim between the AU and Entralink Arcs.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Unlike the canon series, the RP isn't exactly afraid to show the results of extreme violence when it does happen, though it never really goes into Gorn.
• Boarding Party:
  • During the AU arc, a bunch of the J-Team's mons board one of Lanius' slave ships and manage to rescue the slaves aboard.
  • A very well-organized one occurs in AU!Goldenrod when the Pokémon there have to try and counter the initial Draconic offensive, including Ariados-silk cable anchors and feline mons effortlessly climbing them up to the airships above the city.
• Boss Rush:
  • XANADOS makes copies of the Giant Tortilla, Annoski, Einroth, Edge, Gyru, Toxicroak, Fade, and Jane for the J-Team members in Xanadu to fight.
  • At the climax of Re: Glitch, the J-Team was forced to fight Glitch facsimiles of Constantin, Shadow Heatran, Penumbra, Sister Grimm, the Seven Jerk Dragons, Annoski, Lanius, and 'M, in that order, before fighting the main Glitch.
• Brick Joke:
  • When DS first meets Chase the Pidove, he mentions that his wing was injured by a Purrloin. DS eventually catches said Purrloin.
  • DS has Brain Bleach in her backpack. This is referenced and used many times.
  • Chase meets the flock of Pidove that left him behind in Nuvema town after joining the group.
  • Briar Rose learns how to bring objects from the Dream World back with her to the real world, and intends to use this information to bring back some berries she had planted in the Dream World. Next time DS sends Briar Rose out of her ball, she has the berries with her.
• Brief Accent Imitation:
  • Jane donned a Southern Accent near the beginning. It went away after a while, though it still slips through on occasion.
  • Colton also adopts an overtly stereotypical Castelian accent from time to time, implied to sound like a New Yorker. He keeps it under wraps most of the time, though.
• Broad Strokes: Since WAAPT evolved from a Forum Game with no real continuity into an RP, the defeats of Missingno and 'M are considered canon, but not necessarily everything that happened in the interim.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl:
  • Herbert and Carol fit this trope to a T.
  • Pi and Joseph fit this as well. Of course, this is Brooding Boy, Gentle Other Boy.
  • Pentigan and Amaterasu.

• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Zig-zagged. Most regular animals don't exist, and sometimes an animal is mentioned and the trainers won't know what that is. Other times, they refer to certain Pokémon as the animal they are based off of.
• Call-Back: When Kai tells Alice about the Treasures of Ruin, the latter compares them to the Auric Artifacts in terms of their potentially corrupting effects.
• Cassandra Truth: Jane's mother doesn't believe that she's friends with Palkia.
• Central Theme:
  • An overarching one is the differences and similarities between humans and Pokémon. Both are shown in many instances to be similar to one another in both positive and negative aspects.
  • By arc:
    • The Oblivia arc centers around The Power of Trust, as Anom and Wolf keeping their body swap secret puts a wedge between group members.
    • The AU Arc desconstructs Expendable Alternate Universe, as the case is made that despite its fabrication, the titular alternate universe is just as worthy of existence as the original universe.
    • The Mindscape miniarc during the Hoenn Arc deals with Inner demons, as those stuck in a coma face the darkest aspects of themselves.
    • Infinity Keystone deals with the effects of racism and imperialism on one's psyche, as well as going alone.
    • PMD-R has two. One is that civilization continues on, the other is focusing on the past vs looking towards the future.
    • PEFE Exploration deals with the light and dark sides of science, as the J-Teamers stuck in a powerless PEFE HQ deal with the immoral Pokefutures experiments left behind.
    • The Conquest Arc has war, and its effects on the populace. Also, what happens when several expansionist powers happen to share the same region.
    • The Holon Arc has a similar theme to PEFExp, but deals even more directly with the dark side of science in the form of the multityping experiments and presence of Delta Pokémon.
    • The Orre Arc deals with revenge and the consequences thereof, as well as dealing with the consequences of your actions in general.
    • Kalos and Ranger-2 deal with recovery and the difficulties thereof.
  • A common theme in stories involving Tagg and his mons is that of the past coming back to haunt you.
  • You might've done bad things in the past, but there's always still the choice to be a better person, if you make it so, as shown with the J-Team recruiting a few of their old enemies.
• Cerebus Rollercoaster: Depending on the arc WAAPT's tone can shift from mostly silly to dead serious.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Compared to most of the other arcs, the AU arc takes a hard right on the Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness.
• Character-Magnetic Team: The main group attracts new people no matter where they go. It's justified in universe due to people with Attributes tending to attract one another.
• Chastity Couple: Many of the human couples in the RP do not partake in any sex or even the hint of sex, either due to asexuality or simply feeling uncomfortable with doing it at the current time.
• Child Soldiers:
  • Lanius' forces are mostly made up of mons in the equivalent of human adolescence.
  • On the heroes side, a lot of AU!Silent's Nidos would also count.
• Celestial Bureaucracy: Arceus is normally buried under mounds of paperwork, limiting his direct involvement in the world at large save for the felling of major threats.
• Chekhov's Gun: These have been discovered and fired off so often that it's hard to list them all. Some examples include:
  • The Adamant Orb that mysteriously appears in Tagg's backpack during the Sinnoh arc being used to summon Dialga to help kill 'M during the Unova Arc.
  • The mural in Mt. Layuda depicting Dialga turning on the other legendaries foreshadowing the AU arc.
• Chess with Death: The Spirit Games that get run by the afterlife allow the occasional shot at resurrection for those who win.
• Chill of Undeath: Ice-type sub-elements are particularly common amongst Aura Vampires.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: In the early arcs some of the trainer's Pokémon have vanished with no explanation.
• City Noir: Black City, with some elements of the Wretched Hive due to being crime ridden and ruled by greed.
• Clip Its Wings: A common strategy for dealing with flying Pokémon in the RP is to freeze their wings, causing the mon in question to crash into the ground.

• Combat Tentacles: One Obscura power is the ability to create tentacle constructs.
• Coming-Out Story: Most of the LGBT characters in the J-Team are perfectly open about it, but Celeste and Sarah both struggled to admit to being trans.
• Compelling Voice: Hearts of Gold have the ability to manipulate others using their super empathy, signified in the RP by the use of gold colored text.
• The Confidant: Nadia the Salamence's Salamence plushie, Toothless, who helps her cope with her inability to fly. Goes on the way to become a Companion Cube.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Our heroes regularly end up blasting or beating their way past veritable hordes of Pokemon, but can be given a fair amount of trouble when fighting one on one.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The events of the games are often referenced, especially by characters who were there to witness the events.
  • The in-universe J-Team vs Capcom game Boss Rushes are big ones to characters that have long since departed.
  • When explaining to Dune, Deziree, Lyuri, and Duke about Mew, Tagg references the time during the Hoenn Arc when Gamer ended up striking Mew after everyone learned about her part in Crewe turning into a human after originally being a Sneasel.
  • After the strangeness of the last couple April Fools, people start treating them with wariness.
  • Tagg tends to like visiting the spots of previous events for old time's sake.
  • During the Hoenn-2 arc, numerous hotels still deny J-Team members service due to what happened four years ago when their Pokémon ended up trashing hotels.
• Convection, Schmonvection:
  • Inverted and averted at the same time; it is very cold in Snowpoint Temple, and everyone reacts to it.
  • Played straight when Tagg and Gamer go through the gauntlet of a Pokemon-themed version of Super Mario Bros., due to Palkia having a hangover, and go through a lava level without issue. Both Tagg and Musashi the Samurott lampshade it.
  • Definitely averted with Heat Shield, which kills things through sheer heat and goes so hot that Water-type moves will simply evaporate.
  • Averted in a volcano module in PEFE, the group needing a Safeguard to be protected from the heat and Tagg mentioning the trope by name.
• Cool Airship:
  • The Alakagross civilization had quite a few, which the dragons in the AU base their airships on.
    • Team Locke has their own Alakgross airship, the SATWHUL, which was acquired during a foray to the AU.
  • Team Glacier has an airship piloted by Shadow.
  • The J-Team in general acquires an abandoned damaged Illusion Project airship and makes it their own, christened the Stormchaser, which becomes even cooler once it's upgraded at PEFE HQ with a host of weaponry, and can even skim the edge of space.
    • Thanks to the combined wishes of the J-Team^note and some divine influence from Ur, Tagg's Victini, and Uxie, the Stormchaser becomes fully sapient and gains numerous new abilities.
  • Silas has the Oblivion Wing, an Ace Custom airship built by Team Asimov and customized by Silas. It's fully capable of space travel and serves as the base of operations for the Aurabolts.
  • Team Umbra (specifically, Ammy) has the Ark of Yamato, an airship formerly created by the Moon Tribe of Lati@s.
  • Isbrand owns the Shadow Rout, an airship stolen from the Mobius Society and modified with technology based on the Glitch-powered armaments of the Hyulians.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: The judgments handed out by the Cubone tribe during Tangent, Tagg, Tracer, and their Pokemon's "Trial by Bonemerang". Examples include having to give all the kids in the tribe a ride (Tagg's Garchomp) and being unable to use Yache Berries for a month. (Gaia, Tagg's Torterra.)
• Cosmic Flaw:
  • Glitch Pokémon as a whole, while not necessarily malevolent, are living flaws in the universe capable of warping it around them.
  • When the Mobius Society interrupts a ritual led by Sol and Ton, as part of their plan to fuse all universes which kickstarts the Entralink Arc, a crack is left in the sky as a result of the multiversal disturbance, and beings from all over the multiverse start showing up.
• Country Matters: Kyrie is rather fond of the "c word", especially in regards to Paula.
• Creator Cameo: In order to convey the correct amount of surprise in this post, Jacob's author makes a gif of himself doing Jacob's expressions.
• Crapsack World: The Lillifuture is an offshoot timeline of the OU (With a roughly 20 year time lag) formed from several events, but chief among them the murder of Tagg and Sol by Constantin in particular, and a terrible place where the world has slid into decline as a result of the J-Team's disbandment, Interpol has turned increasingly fascist to combat threats created by the J-Team's absence, and virtually rules the world.
• Creepy Doll: The Shadow plushie, which keeps showing up no matter how Forte and the real Shadow try to get rid of it.
• Cultural Posturing:
  • "Civilized" mons in general within the PMD-B universe tend to look down on "ferals", those mons who decided to continue living as their ancestors did, considering them little more than beasts.
  • Cubone from different regions tend to do this to one another, such as members of the Sinnoh and Kanto tribes considering each other savages due to the presence or lack thereof of Trial by Bonemerang.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Tons, mostly delivered by the heroes. Some examples include:
  • Pretty much every time the group goes up against the local Grunts or Peons.
  • Nudi's first battle with Sonny, Tracer's Honchkrow, with him on the receiving end.
  • Rex has hinted that his battles against Clair and Blue were this for him, with him on the receiving end.
  • 49 losing to Winona.
  • Pallad alone against Lance's entire team, in his favor.
  • Shadow!Duke against Herbert AND his entire team is a particularly brutal one.
• Cute and Psycho:
  • Fool has some violent tendencies as a result of her upbringing in a Simipour troop, though they've abated due to being more used to the modern world.
  • Kyrie is quite cute outwardly, and is childishly enthusiastic about a number of things, especially music. She is also mentally ill and incredibly violent.
• Cute Critters Act Childlike: A lot of the more adorable mons are like this.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: They did in the case of the main opponents Tagg and some of the others faced off against during the PEFExp miniarc, cybernetic Pokémon that had been lobotomized into fighting machines by Pokefutures.

D-E

• Darker and Edgier:
  • WAAPT's main and sideplots can deal with heavier than expected subjects for a Pokémon fan work such as (Non-fantastic) racism, the legacy of imperialism, and gender identity, and some villains like Cipher are far more explicitly playing for keeps.
  • The alternate timeline is much darker than the OU, with first Napoleon cutting a bloody swath across Unova and the Seven Jerk Dragons in RtAU attempting what amounts to PG-rated genocide on the human race by turning them into Pokémon and attempting to stamp out as many traces of humanity as possible.
  • Tagg's solo adventures tend to have a darker undercurrent than the main RP since he tends to fight groups like the Unity and Cipher who are far more ruthless than run of the mill villains.
  • The Conquest Arc is also fairly dark in some aspects due to the Black-and-Gray Morality involved.
  • The Orre arc was the darkest arc the RP has seen since the AU, with quite a few deaths, a mass killing, trauma for nearly everyone involved, and the full ruthlessness of Cipher falling upon the heads of a J-Team unprepared to handle it.
• Deader than Dead:
  • Missingno and 'M end up being destroyed in every verse due to the OU J-Team defeating them.
  • What happens to Napoleon in the AU after the souls of the Midori Room mons maul his soul, tearing it to shreds. Though Snowball does end up using said shreds to create Icelus the Mareep, Napoleon himself is gone.
• Death Is Cheap: When Gamer's Serperior was killed by David, he came back to life as a Duskull. Also, Daisy's Charizard is killed by a madman behind the madness in Canalave City. It then re-appears the next day as a Gastly.
• Death World:
  • Quest Island, which is filled with dangerous Pokémon like Tyranitar and Skarmory, as well as having a easily awakened volcano. The Cubone tribe patrols in other regions are done by Marowak, and infant and child mortality is at a very high rate.
  • Other examples include post-Distortion Sinnoh in the AU, and both the AU and OT Giant Chasm.
• Demonic Possession:
  • Assumed to be done by Missingno in an attack on Canalave in the original Sinnoh Arc. Turns out it was just a Gastly, though. Prior to the first PMD Arc, though, the real Missingno pulls this on Palkia.
  • It also happened a lot during the Unova arc. The victims included Steven Stone, Iris, Clay, Alder, and Jane.
• Department of Redundancy Department: "Emergency Exit: Only To Be Used In Emergencies".
• Depending on the Writer: The characterizations between the various legendary Pokémon and other NPCs may vary depending on who is currently writing for them.
• Destructive Savior: The J-Team causes mass property damage in its battle against evil, until getting banned from hotels in Hoenn forces them to be a bit more tactful.
• Deus ex Machina:
  • Justified and Invoked in the first and second Arc.
  • Happens again in the third, but this time is only Hand Waved. Dialga shows up with its legs tied together by Regirock, who had gone out to get adamantium for Regice.
  • Satella, Eve's Cleffa, bails her and her friends out from a Manectric attack by using Metronome to teleport them all away, though it resulted in them getting lost. Turns into a Diabolus ex Machina when the same thing happens when they're reunited with some members of the team and ends up making them get lost for a few more days.
• Die, Chair, Die!: Palkia makes a comeback after Missingno's first defeat in order to punch the living daylights out of a bunch of pillars.
• Discovering Your Own Dead Body: When Tagg visits the PMD-B timeline he comes across the skeleton of his multiversal counterpart, entombed for around 532 years after he died of old age. He chooses not to attempt attaining his memories because he figures it might be too traumatic.
• Disney Death:
  • Happens to Cynthia near the end of the PMD arc, and to Jane, Wolf and Pentigan during the battle against 'M and Team Plasma at the Pokémon League.
  • DS is seemingly killed by Primal Dialga in a flashback, but unbeknownst to everyone, Dialga was able to resist Cyrus' orders and instead sent DS to the dimension in which the legendaries had been imprisoned.
  • Straw has experienced this enough times that he is pretty much unfazed by it.
• Die or Fly: Auric and Obscuric abilities tend to be learned very quickly by those stuck in life and death situations. For instance, Tagg learns Detect through managing to avoid getting squished flat by a Conkeldurr during the Battle of Scolemis' Castle.
• Doorstopper: As of June 4, 2015 the main RP thread is about 18,281 pages and counting, and text-only versions of single forum pages on the main thread alone can be in the range of 5-8 pages. A conservative estimate of the amount of printed pages would be about 129,000 pages and counting.
• Don't Go in the Woods: Tagg lives nearby an area known as the Sea of Trees, which happens to be based on the infamous Japanese forest Aokigahara, and possesses a similar reputation of being a popular site for suicides. It's home to hostile Ghost types and the souls of those who have died in the forest.
• Dragged Off to Hell:
  • Umbra had the ability to banish people to the Distortion World back when he was the Ghost Lord of Spectra.
  • Tagg gets rid of the Sinnoh Family of Blood branch by having Groudon take them... somewhere else.
• The Dragonslayer: Inka somehow gets this fame after curbstomping Lance's haxxest Dragonites (you know the ones) in Backstory. However, by the time of the Draconic Uprising in the AU timeline, she is forced to live up to the title.
• The Dreaded: A number of the Trainers, including Luke, Tracer, and Tagg, gain this status during the AU arc after curb stomping their way past hordes of Scolemis grunts.
• Dramedy: WAAPT's overall tone is mostly humorous, though it can take some dark turns.
• Dream Land: The Pokemon Dream World, a collective unconsciousness made from every Pokémon there ever was.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: A common occurrence is characters dreaming of future events, which gets lampshaded by DS..
• Dressing as the Enemy:
  • The trainers dress as Cipher Peons in order to infiltrate the Altru Tower in Almia.
  • Tagg and the Vault Dweller end up dressing as Unity members in PMD-B Angela in order to infiltrate the Cathedral.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Upon finding a treasure room which turns out to be Larva and Metentis' summer house, Brudy are abruptly eaten by Larva the Cofagrigus after Metentis the Dusclops tells her she can't have any servants.
• Dying Declaration of Love: Mira to Artemis in the AU arc, after the former is fatally injured after receiving a stab wound by Napoleon meant for the latter.
• Dysfunction Junction: A lot of the trainers have serious issues of some kind. Some examples include:
  • Tagg, who has social issues, PTSD as a result of his experiences during the AU arc if not long before, and has admitted to DS that he only really feels comfortable In Harm's Way. He also has a consistent issue with needing to be needed that causes him to eschew help.
  • Lyuri, whose parents died in a cave-in thanks to an Earthquake caused by Riku the Sandslash and were separated for several years. And then Orre happened. In the AU Lyuri is the last member of her family since Sakura ended up dying too, leaving her a Broken Bird. This does not apply to her sister, Sakura, though, as even though she shares the backstory, she doesn't have any lasting issues other than feeling guilt over the death of her parents.
  • Herbert/Lucius Cain, whose father is a former Team Galactic commander who was still a better parent to him than his mother, who acted as if he didn't exist.
  • Jacob, who was orphaned when his parents were murdered and had his girlfriend killed by a Scizor. He also happens to be a bit unstable.
  • The Amarin family, consisting of Alli, a girl who seems relatively normal, but hides the trauma of losing her mother when she was just eight years old; Kai, her elder sister who saw the aforementioned death firsthand as well as almost dying the same way themselves six years later, along with having accidentally murdered a Cipher Peon in a fit of rage despite having promised to never kill anyone ever, resulting in full-blown PTSD (which is only amplified by her empathic powers); and Ivy/Ellen, the dead mother in question who comes back as an amnesiac Delta Golett and only regained her memory by witnessing the aforementioned attempted murder of her son.
  • Wolf, who was 'M's thrall for nearly ten years prior to the beginning of the RP, though he's managed to get past that.
  • Psyche, whose father was abusive and disowned her after she got mauled by Scrafty, leading to her Cynicism Catalyst.
  • Alyssa, another PTSD victim whose parents were killed by a fire, leaving her orphaned and lost in the wilderness with no social skills, along with leaving her with a haunting phobia of fire.
  • Crewe, who apart from being actually a Sneasel in human form, has a lot of issues regarding so many of her mons leaving or dying on her as well as possible PTSD from both that and getting shadowed and nearly killing Straw in Orre.
  • Milagros, who got attacked by his family's Weaviles so much to the point he has Situational Sociability.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The earliest arcs (Sinnoh through Unova) are far different from the RP today, due to it being originally a forum game with no real continuity that evolved into an RP. Word of God says that was due to Missingno and 'M's mere existence making the world of WAAPT a far stranger place than it is in future arcs in-universe.
• Earn Your Happy Ending:
  • The AU arc. Its plot reaches numerous dark and overwhelming moments before its ultimate (and satisfying) resolution.
  • Sakura lost her parents and had her sister go missing, she spent a good four years looking for her and feeling very guilty about everything that happened, she eventually finds her, they're in good terms with each other, and she even gets a boyfriend soon after, while she does occasionally have more problems, they're either minor ones or don't take as much time to be solved.
• Earth Is a Battlefield: Not a single region on the planet manages to escape war during the Draconic Uprising in the AU.
• Earth All Along:
  • The second PMD timeline, PMD-B, is eventually revealed to be a recursively alternate future of the AU.
  • The Star Wars-esque galaxy the Glitchstuck Wars subarc takes place in is revealed to be the distant past of the normal WAAPT world galaxy.
• Easily Forgiven:
  • The only members of the J-Team that seem particularly bothered about Umbra's past as an Evil Overlord are Herbert/Lucius and Sakura. It helps that it took place 600 years ago and Umbra clearly isn't the same person he was back then.
  • In the case of Tagg slaughtering dozens of Cipher Peons in retaliation for Cipher's actions during the arc proper and partially due to being the survivor of a Cipher hit years earlier, it's zigzagged. While the bulk of the J-Team more or less understands if not outright forgives the action due to Cipher's own crimes in general and to them in particular, Herbert/Lucius, Mezzo, and Sarah/Kai make it clear that they don't forgive Tagg and it takes years both in-and-out of universe for things to be resolved.
  • Save for Lucius until post-Kalos, the J-Team mostly forgives Lyuri for her crimes as Alexia as she was being coerced.
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • The Anomaly aka Missingno and 'M, biological supercomputers whose mere presence warps reality.
  • The imprisoned being found in the deepest recesses of the Blacklight Caverns in the Orre Badlands in Dune's backstory, which he only barely escaped from, at the cost of his mind being scarred and incapable of being touched by any kind of telepathy. Known as the "Criminal", due to the runes in hundreds of languages stating the word around its prison.
  • "The Duke" and "The Prince", two possessing spirit things, the first in Pi's head, the second in the head of the villain Mortimer.
• Eldritch Location:
  • The Distortion World, like in Platinum.
  • The dimension where the heroes took on Missingno for the first and last times.
  • Glitch City, 'M's home dimension, is a city made entirely of glitch matter.
  • The Temporal World, Dialga's home dimension, where all time takes place at once. On one visit, Tagg's party spots their future selves looking at them from far higher up.

• Electric Love: When Tagg and Channah kiss for the first time, the former has an involuntary release of his Aura powers that gives them both a tingling effect.
• Elseworld: Many, but the two most often seen are the AU created from Cyrus' time tampering, and the Another!Verse (Based on The World Ends With You's Another Day mode), a Lighter and Softer version of WAAPT.
• Enemy Within:
  • The boss of each trainer's mindscape during the Mindscape Miniarc tends to be their inner dark side.
  • The first portion of the Pokésona arc has the Contractors taking on their Shadows, the parts of themselves they prefer to deny.
• Ensemble Cast: While certain individual characters can gain more prominence than others depending on the arc, the RP lacks a defined main character apart from the J-Team itself as a group.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • All three of the Scolemis generals have these moments to show exactly what kinds of mons they are while attacking various rebel cells. Lanius brutually slaughters anyone in his path while committing war crimes, Rommel is ruthless yet honorable, and Lelouch is sneaky and uses his geas to make the rebels do as he says.
  • Minty, Rex's Sewaddle, goes from Bit Character to Ascended Extra this way when they manage to save themselves from being Shahinne's meal.

• Even the Girls Want Her: When Gamer is temporarily Gender Bent in the 2nd April Fools day event, he/she is flirted with from everything, from an Ash Creature to a Weeping Angel.
• Evil Is Bigger: Upon a census of the villains up to the Ranger-2 Arc, it was discovered that on average they were at least three inches taller than the average J-Team member.
• Excited Title! Two-Part Episode Name!: Some of the J-Team show episodes have a format like this. Examples include "Assault! Storming The Sky Fortress!" and "Splash! Attack of the 50 Foot Vaporeon!"
• Expendable Alternate Universe: Lelouch during the AU Arc takes this view when he finds out its true nature as a creation of Cyrus, and tries to have Primal Dialga destroy it so that he can have his sister back.
• Exploiting the Fourth Wall: There are a few Pokémon aware that it is a story, and use it to break WAAPT's already very fragile fourth wall for their own purposes:
  • Anom's Volcarona is meta aware and uses that ability to avoid getting Ret-Gone when Cyrus resets the timeline during the AU Arc.
  • Gino, Lina's Salamence, uses the ability for multiversal travel, and in one case to free Team Umbra from a void between worlds during Glitchstuck Wars.
• Expose the Villain, Get His Job: PEFE's backstory. After its founders exposed the crimes of Pokefutures, they were given control of the company's remaining assets. This was in part an attempt by the Angelan Government to prevent a recession, as the prior company had taken full control of the region's economy.
• Eyes Never Lie: Des can interpret what somebody's been through just by looking in someone's eyes.