The Most Tragic Pokemon Stories

Despite being a kid-friendly series, Pokemon has a surprising amount of tragic characters and backstories. Today I break down the best of them all.

[JPRPokeTrainer]

Who do you think is Pokemon's most tragic character?
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[DeepWeeb]

Actually Jessie's childhood is even sadder once you consider her fondest memory comes from *eating snow to fill her stomatch when there was food scarcity*

[Jackson_DeVito]

Most tragic character: the old guy in black and white 2 on the bridge with a 999 win streak 😔

[esteban]

I'm surprised Guzma wasn't mentioned. It's heavily implied he was abused by his father because he wasn't doing good in competitions, and ran away from home to create Team Skull, who were all social outcasts. Sure, Guzma was a jerk at times, but he gave all those people a place to call home.

[SentaiYamaneko]

The Aether family's story is even sadder in the manga. Mohn ending up in the Ultra Wormhole wasn't an accident. Faba was in love with Lusamine and was jealous of him, so he shoved Mohn into the wormhole on purpose and lied to the family saying he ran out on them. They were devastated. Faba intended to 'comfort' Lusamine, but she still only saw him as a trusted friend and colleague. He was so angry that he poisoned her with Nihilego toxin so that she herself would destroy everything she'd ever cared about, as 'punishment' for rejecting him.
Gladion took off to try and find a way to fix things, refusing to ask anyone for help because he was trying to contain the disaster as well as he could. He didn't want people knowing that his mother had become a monster. But that just upset Lusamine even further; in her infected mind, he ran out on her just like Mohn did. This resulted in her abusing Lillie so badly that the poor girl had a panic attack when Burnet innocently asked her what she would like to wear when taking her clothes shopping, and being called 'beautiful' is another trigger.
Then USUM happens. Mina notices Lillie at the resistance base on Exeggutor Island. She approaches her and tells her that on her travels, she met a very sad man who was trying to find his family, but he couldn't remember them. He had a locket with a picture of them, but he couldn't recognize any of them. Mina had offered to take it off his hands and see if she could find them for him. And she'd recognized Lillie from the picture. That man was Mohn.
Realizing that he didn't abandon them, she ran off to find Lusamine and tell her the truth. Lusamine was possessed by Nihilego at the time, but Lillie was able to get through to her. Naturally, Faba's response was to try and kill Lusamine. He'd rather have her dead than sane. He failed, and he got his comeuppance in the most terrifying way possible.

[wikiuser]

Jessie's backstory explains why she and James are still in Team Rocket despite being constant failures: her mother was the favorite of Giovanni's mother, and Giovanni wants to respect his mother by keeping her favorite agent's daughter in the organization.

And adding a bit to that Mewtwo backstory you mentioned; in the Japanese version, Dr. Fuji literally states that only humans and God are able to create life.

[ditzyditz]

My favorite dark story in Pokémon has to be the one from the abandoned house in b2w2 where as you explore, you start to get bits and pieces of what happened. Eventually discovering that the ghost girl who haunts it was a unintended victim of darkrai that was trapped in an eternal nightmare, and her desperate father went to search for cresselia, only to be too late. In the end, the ghost girl gives you the lunar wing saying “I don’t need this anymore” which is how you get cresselia on a bridge later on.

[CrystalHeart]

Cyrus is pretty tragic, given his background of implied emotional abuse from his parents and never living up to their extremely high expectations of him. Things were so toxic for him, his grandfather wanted to step in and raise the kid himself, but never did, and Cyrus eventually cracked under the pressure and ended up forming his ideology that emotions were to blame and only bring pain. In Masters, Cynthia even notes that she feels an immeasurable despair coming from the guy.

With N, at least he's got found family with Alder and the Unova protagonists in Masters, and he's finally free from Ghetsis's manipulations, but I just remember in USUM when we see Ghetsis throw out N's Dragon, and I have to wonder if N died at the hands of the man he saw as a father? His team in the original BW games was built to counter N's, especially Hydreigon, and we know Ghetsis isn't above murder.

Arven will probably never know where in Area Zero his parent's body is buried.

Also, I will die on the hill of Masters being the second chance for the writers to build on the characters and tell the stories they wanted to in the mainline games but just couldn't for whatever reason (like showing how far along N has come, building on Sycamore's friendship with Lysandre, having Lusamine try to repair the damage she did to her family and acknowledge her mistakes, etc) and in this regard, _Masters is canon._

[adrianleonce]

Man, Arven was quite the surprise. At first, I was kinda meh on him due to his early attitude and giving me a quest for sandwich ingredients. Things drastically changed once Mabostiff entered his story. And then his issues with his parents just made me feel more bad for this guy. GF did an amazing job with this character and I'm glad he now has some human friends (and a dino/mecha lizard) to rely on now.

[lckyminer_]

Emmet would be also a tragic character if you think about it since he lost his twin brother into the past. That's just speculation but I do hope they could touch on that opportunity to feature Emmet's state after losing his twin brother in a future Pokémon game/Legends entry.

[NoOneAsk]

Ghetsis is somehow even worse in the Pokémon manga. In the BW2 adaptation, N tries to save Ghetsis from falling to his death and N explains that despite everything, he still loves him as a father. And what does Ghetsis do in response? He uses his cane/staff to bludgeon N unconscious. I was genuinely surprised the manga went that far.

[CloudDistrictEnjoyer]

notable mention: the old dude in XY who asks to look after a low level pokemon, and when returning, is gone and your pokemon's ball is on the ground

[BrandonJames]

Arven is the first Pokémon game character that made me cry and get really emotional. Like ugh this poor guy I want to give him a hug and eat his cooking. I hope we get more backstory on AZ cause the fact the literal king of Kalos who’s not immortal barely had any screentime or talked about whatsoever is very shocking to me.

[theblitz]

I'd toss Necrozma into this conversation. Despite not being a 'character' in the typical sense, it was betrayed by the people it gifted with light and left critically injured, permanently damaging its body. This caused it to fly into a blind rage induced by the unending pain that lead to it seeking out any light it could find to try and soothe that pain. It then gets beaten down by the Tapu and locked up in a tower for 100s of years, while the Ultra Recon Squad plans to pacify it further by catching it. Then it breaks free, and grabs hold of Lunala/Solgaleo and fuses with them, using the given light to finally return to its former form... only for that form to still cause it pain and continue to prolong its blind rage due to it missing so much of its body. It's only able to find solace after being beaten down again and joining the player character, where it can get some comfort being close to the Z Ring since it's part of Necrozma's body.

[jakequaza]

Pryce and lance in the manga are other ones. Lance’s exact backstory isn’t explicitly told to us but there is a flashback frame that suggests his dratini died due to pollution/human activity of some kind and pryce lost his two lapras just when their baby hatched so nearly destroyed the world trying to reunite them

[ladynoluck]

I think Arven and Penny’s stories are partly about how making supportive social connections in life is often more important than how those connections look. When you lack the connections you need, it’s okay to have a shitty family life and have your closest family member be the family pet. If you find in-person interactions hard, friends you connect with online/through tech are just as real as the ones you can make in person. Maybe you befriend the Pokemon that ruined your childhood and relationship with your mom/dad. Maybe you do things to help your friends and that’s not the help they wanted. Maybe you make a group of friends through harrowing adventures when you first pushed them away and lied. Basically, connections with other people are messy, and that’s okay. What’s important is finding your people.

[timmyreobed]

I've always felt bad for Absol. It basically dedicated itself to saving people by warning them of upcoming disasters, and in return it's been treated with scorn. Hydreigon got hit by this too, according to Violet. Apparently it was much less violent in the past, but because of how scary it looked, it was loathed and despised to the point where it became the nightmare that everyone was afraid of.

[ForzeblazeZX]

While Game lusamine might not ever get her husband back I’m happy that in the Anime she reunited with mohn and managed to Rejog his memories it might have been an emotional roller coaster with her finding out he had amnesia and had a supposed new daughter but it was worth it in the end to gain back the man she loved so dearly and to make her fractured family whole once more and even gain a new member to it thank you pokemon journeys

[jellsies]

YES, INGO AND EMMET NEED TO BE REUNITED. I SOB EVERY TIME I THINK ABOUT IT.

[thinandminty]

I love Looker and I wish they would keep finding places for him to appear in the games.