In-Game Humour

The Pokémon games have never taken themselves too seriously, and one of the things I love about them is talking to the people in the game and see them deliver some unforgettable lines of in-game humour. This section is dedicated to pointing them out to other people so that they may laugh as well.

Some of them may be in many games, but I just put them under whichever one I first encountered it in.

PG-13 alert! Some of the humor is surprisingly adult-oriented. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it.

Red, Blue and Yellow (+ FR/LG)

"I like shorts! They're comfy and easy to wear!"

'Nuff said. That Youngster is and will be hilarious forever.

Coooooooooffeeeeeeeeeee

Can't forget the old man who stops you on your way to Viridian forest because he hasn't had his coffee until you deliver Oak's Parcel. How the hell did he end up lying in the middle of the street? I mean, even if he hasn't had his coffee, that's pretty drastic. Maybe he was trying to quit the coffee-drinking and was hit with serious withdrawal symptoms in the middle of the street that paralyzed him or something? Either way, he is seriously addicted.

Pikapika (Yellow only)

Most of the things Pikachu does in Yellow are mildly humourous:

If you talk to Pikachu just after it's learned Thunderbolt or Thunder, it will test the attack on you. Ash much?
If you talk to Pikachu just after catching a Pokémon, it will say "Pi Pikachu!" and attempt to give you a V sign with its paw.
If you talk to the Jigglypuff in the Pewter city Pokémon Center, Pikachu will fall asleep and you'll have to wake it up.
The first time you step into the Pokémon Fan Club in Vermilion City, Pikachu will experience love at first sight when it eyes the Clefairy that one of the people has and will give you a brief sneak peek at how much Pikachu will love you after a while of playing.
If Pikachu is particularly mad at you, it may turn its back to you.
If you talk to Pikachu just after healing it when it has fainted, it will give you a scolding "Pikaaa..." and look like it's all your fault.

The Infamous Truck

I'm sure Game Freak have been snickering behind our backs at all the desperate attempts to make the easter egg truck by the S.S. Anne (which you can get to by either never going on the ship and trading for a Pokémon with Cut or by getting Cut and then losing a battle to get off the ship) seem to serve some purpose. This is more fandom humour than in-game humour, but all the persistent rumours of Mew and Pikablu hiding under that truck were certainly made possible by a random decision of the developers.

Chansey Dance! (FR/LG only)

On Seven Island, there is this wonderful little house with a guy who wants you to "Do the Chansey Dance!", which consists of taking a couple of steps in place and turning in a circle while some silly music magically starts playing while you do it. And doing this dance magically heals your Pokémon to full health! One has to wonder why there isn't just an option called "CHANSEY DANCE" on the menu instead of all those pesky Pokémon Centers. Maybe the dance only works inside that guy's house.

Big Heracross! (FR/LG only)

On Six Island, after you Surf up from the right side of the island and get on the next island, there is a house in which there is a woman who likes Heracross disturbingly much. Her dialogue, exact quote: "Hera, hera, HERACROSS! Big and shiny, it's the bug boss! Love it, need it, HERACROSS!" And, guess what, she wants to see big ones. With big horns that are *cough* not phallic in any way.

When you actually bring her a Heracross... exact quote: "Eeeeek! That's a HERACROSS! Please, please, may I measure how big it is?" And then she measures it: "Eeeek, it's 61.6 inches! I've never seen anything like this! You deserve a reward!" Then she will give you your reward (I got a Nest Ball; I'm not sure if that's what you always get) and then, just to make things even more disturbing, she says, "I want to see a much, much bigger HERACROSS than that one. Oh, how I adore them, big HERACROSS!"

Damn, Freud would have a field day with this woman.

I've never lost! (FR/LG only)

There is a Gamer on Route 11, east of Vermilion City (Gamer Dirk, to be precise; he's in the bottom right corner of the route), who, when you challenge him for the first time, tells you, "Fwahaha! I've never lost!" Naturally, you then defeat him. If you use the VS Seeker to rebattle him, however, his introduction will be "Fwahaha! I've never lost! ...And if I did, I've forgotten all about it!" Got a snicker out of me.

Still More Shorts (FR/LG only)

If you go to the Pokémon Trainer Fan Club in Saffron City after beating the Elite Four, there is a Youngster there who will be your fan and asks you for an autograph when you talk to him, suggesting you autograph his shorts. XD

Also there, in the back room, is a woman who says, "Master KOGA is so dignified... He is so my type. Why can't the others see the dignity he simply oozes?" Oozing dignity. Hmm. Interesting image...

Goldeen need log? (FR/LG only)

The passwords to the Rocket Headquarters on Five Island are "GOLDEEN need log" and "Yes, nah, CHANSEY". Obviously, those are some of the most utterly random-looking passwords in the world... until you realize that they're Pokémon palindromes. I didn't notice that until someone pointed it out to me. o_O Either way they're amusingly ridiculous.

Gold, Silver and Crystal

Dropped my balls...

There's a Juggler somewhere who tells you upon defeat, "Oops! Dropped my balls!"

Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald

Barboach... and Shroomish?

Remember the two guys in Sootopolis who want to see big Barboach and Shroomish? I mean, my reaction when I talked to them was, "Well, okay, Barboach, keeping to the whole 'measuring big fish' thing... but why the heck Shroomish of all things?"

Now look carefully at the shape of Barboach and the shape of Shroomish, and figure out why somebody would want big ones.

Yeah.

I can just picture this conversation happening in the Game Freak staff's group chat:

GameFreak: Okay, let's make somebody like the Magikarp dude who will measure your big fish Pokémon.
GameFreak: Something like Barboach.
StaffMember: ...
SomeGuy: ...
StaffMember: A guy who wants to see big Barboach.
SomeGuy: You dirty bastard.
GameFreak: Wh-
GameFreak: DAMN.
StaffMember: What would Freud say about that?
GameFreak: That was so not intentional.
SomeGuy: Then he also has a straight brother who wants to see big Shroomish.
GameFreak: Oh, dear.
StaffMember: Guys. Let's do it.
GameFreak: ...are you insane?
GameFreak: The parents would murder us.
StaffMember: Come on. Nobody will notice.
SomeGuy: Heh, that actually would be fun...
GameFreak: No way, dude.
SomeGuy: Honestly, it would be hilarious.
StaffMember: And if somebody notices we can just say it was a coincidence. *whistle*
GameFreak: When you get sued, tell them I told you not to.
SomeGuy: We will.

...okay, maybe it was just a coincidence, but if it was it's a pretty damn hilarious one. It's so sexual you can hardly believe it would be in the Pokémon games, but how else can you explain Shroomish?

"I collect official POKÉMON EMERALD licensed merchandise."

The trendy phrases you can set in Dewford Town are nothing but one humongous piece of self-satire. You talk to some guy and tell him a random thing (a possible selection is the name of the game you're playing; if you're feeling a little more dirty-minded, you can always try the popular ADULT TOYS) is "in", and the moment you do so everybody in town is harping on about it - all the way until you tell them something else is "in", at which time they will immediately ditch everything having to do with the previous thing. This serves no purpose in the game or storyline (after all, the trendy phrases themselves don't define the Feebas tiles, and they could have made any event they felt like reset them), but draws a clear parallel with Pokémon itself, which after all is a prime example of something that suddenly became "in" and gained ridiculous popularity ("From this day on, our lives will revolve around POKÉMON EMERALD!") before it was replaced by whatever "in" thing came next ("POKÉMON EMERALD" is, like, so last week!")

Yes Town?

In the Pokémon games, it is never possible to answer questions with anything but YES or NO, and R/S/E parodied this by putting a guy in Pacifidlog Town (the house on the left of the Pokémon Center) who asks you "Where did you come from?" And lo and behold, your answer possibilities are still the perfectly nonsensical YES and NO. If you answer YES, he will reply "Yes? YES TOWN? I've never heard of a place like that." If you answer NO, he will say, rightly, "No? That doesn't make any sense. You have to come from somewhere. Oh! Wait! You're not going to say you were born at the bottom of the sea?" The poor guy will never find out where you really came from, since you are forever doomed to be unable to answer his question.

"You should rest again..."

Both R/S/E (near the desert) and D/P (near Stark Mountain) have contained a creepy old lady in whose house you can rest to heal your Pokémon. However, the moment you wake up, she will not just say, "Good luck," or, "Go on now, child," or whatever other sensible thing she might say to send you off: she will tell you that you still look tired and should rest your Pokémon again. If you are just mashing the A button, you will be stuck in an infinite loop of healing from here on, because to escape from this lady it is necessary to actually select NO (and she will still try to convince you to stay). (Elsewhere in the game it is possible to get into an infinite loop if you keep selecting NO, but this is the only place where this happens with YES.) I think everybody who has played Pokémon has managed to accidentally heal their Pokémon at least three times in a row the first time they came across this lady. Obviously, she parodies the hospitality of old ladies and the general concept of the random person in a house you can talk to and who lets you rest there - exactly what are their intentions by wanting you to sleep at their house? Hmm...

The Name Rater

The Name Rater is really just one big joke. No matter what you name your Pokémon, he will say it's a better name than before, and even the lamest of your friends' nicknames he will praise like there's no tomorrow - but the main joke is that when you go to him with a Pokémon and nickname it the exact same thing it was called before, he will say that "It looks just the same as before, but yet it is vastly superior!" I don't know which games he does this in, but at least he does in R/S/E.

Battle Tower Phrases

We all know about the sheer weirdness of the phrases said by the trainers in the Battle Tower in R/S/E, such as "I AM HUNGRY POUND MY BELLY DRUM". This is clearly just the game developers being silly, as they could have just created actual phrases rather than used words from that awfully limited vocabulary the games have.

Shooooorts... (Emerald only)

Emerald referenced the infamous Shorts youngster with this hilarious Match Call phonecall from Youngster Calvin (courtesy of the awesome Larissa, who unlike me had the sense to copy this down):

Yay! This is Calvin!
What's up?
I might be imagining this, but when I win battles, my shorts seem to feel, like, better. Materially.
What do I mean by that?
It's kind of hard to explain, but...
How would I say this now...
My shorts feel silkier!
And when I battled you, [trainer name], my shorts felt icky and coarse.
... ... ... ... ... ...
You didn't really believe that?
Ehehehe, that's all! Bye now!

There are no words.

Fooootpriiiiints...

In the beginning of R/S/E, when you get to Oldale Town, the route west to Petalburg City is blocked by a man who claims to be sketching the footprints of a rare Pokémon. When you've battled your rival in the north, you'll be able to get past him. If you talk to him, he will tell you that... it turns out they were only his own footprints. Whut? Seriously, it's not hard to recognize the prints of sneakers from Pokémon footprints. o_O So he's not a very good footprint nerd, is he?

Diamond and Pearl

My Pokémon Is Fight!

There is a hilarious painter west of Hearthome City who, after you battle him, tells you that the battle will become a "masterpiece painting" titled... wait for it... "My Pokémon Is Fight"! The initial reaction one would have is probably "What the hell?", but it seems to be parodying the book "My Tank Is Fight!" by Zack Parsons of SomethingAwful fame. However, I thought the grammar was a lot like the Battle Tower phrases in R/S/E, too.

Even the Gym guide becomes tired of his job sometimes...

If you talk to the Gym guide (the guy standing by the statue near the entrance to the Gym) in Hearthome City after beating Fantina, he will congratulate you as they always do - but finishes it off with a grudging "...you do realize I say that to everyone, right?", implying that in reality he's not all that impressed. A fresh breath from all the other Gym guides who do nothing but tell you how wonderful you are.

Hardcore cosplaying, eh?

One of the junior trainers in Volkner's Gym is wearing a Pikachu suit so that he looks like a Pikachu when you talk to him. When you do so, he will, hilariously, say, "Look at the way I'm dressed. Can't you see that I'm hardcore?"

I'm sure in his own little world it is extremely hardcore to wear a Pikachu costume, but in mine it seems more... silly.

A guard you can't bribe...

We all remember those thirsty Saffron City guards who needed to be bribed with a drink. Diamond and Pearl inserted a reference to this in the gatehouse east of Canalave City, where there is a guard standing who will say, when you talk to him, "Boy... I sure am thirsty..." However, bringing a drink with you when you talk to him will not make him spontaneously smell it in your bag and demand to have some, and he does not stop you on the way in or out at any point. It's just a reference.

No sex!

In the Team Galactic headquarters in Veilstone, there is a room in which there are two beds and a sign on the wall between them that says, hilariously, "Team Galactic Nap Room: Ensure the bed is unoccupied before getting into it!" Lonepichu of the Pokémon Tower Forums said it best: "I wonder how many times they walked in on Mars and Saturn before they decided to put that up." Okay, so that's the dirty interpretation, but really, if they've been having problems with people getting into beds that somebody else is already in, Team Galactic is either even more profoundly stupid than we thought, or getting into bed with another person was very much intentional. As dubious as it can be to underestimate the stupidity of any Team, I feel more inclined to assume the latter.

Galactic Nerds?

Team Galactic's members occasionally use internet slang - the receptionist in the Galactic Headquarters in Veilstone, for example, will say, "Cosmic energy for the win!", and I'm fairly sure some Grunt said he had been "pwned" (or "owned") sometime after being beaten. This almost exclusively happens in Team Galactic, however...

The Other Nerd

The Youngster at the west entrance of Oreburgh City stops you when you first come there and shows you the Gym, apparently because otherwise everyone will think you're a "noob". Team Galactic member in the making, apparently.

The Other Other Nerd

Ace Trainer Caesar in Byron's Gym will also call you a "noob".

...okay, this is TOO suggestive

When you first meet your mom in the Hearthome City Contest Hall, Fantina will tell you that she is a Contest Judge and then, disturbingly, tell you to "come join us for a different kind of fun". Um. o.O (Yes, this is reading too much into something perfectly innocent. I know. But this is too good to resist.)

Great massages... wink

The woman in Veilstone who massages your Pokémon will ask, "Which one needs a little love?" when asking which Pokémon she should massage, and when you pick one, she says, "Giggle... OK, let's get started. OK, sweetie, just relax..." As if giggling like that when you give her your Pokémon and calling it "sweetie" weren't enough, if you actually refuse to let her massage your Pokémon, she will say, "Oh! Hey, I'm not doing anything shady..." which, of course, can only arouse suspicions.

And what's more, if you talk to her after she's already massaged your Pokémon and ask her how you massage Pokémon, she will get all awkward about it: "Tehehe... It's a secret, of course!" Just what is this woman doing to your Pokémon? o_O

Obligatory Shorts Reference

Youngster Ezekiel in the Battle Tower introduces himself with, "I gotta say it, shorts are the best! They remain comfy and easy to wear!" On defeat, he says, "I'll never stop wearing shorts. Not for anybody!"

He even recites the "comfy and easy to wear" phrase. Mweeheehee.

Miniskirts!

In addition to that, there are two Lasses in the unlinked Mix Battle and Double Battle in the Battle Tower who say "I make it my policy to always wear miniskirts!" and "I love my miniskirt!" So the shorts Youngsters do have female equivalents...

I'm sure you're a homophobe!

In the Veilstone City Department Store, on the top floor, there are two men standing side by side. If you talk to the one on the left, he will say, "Two buff guys standing side by side. That's all. What? What's the problem?"

He seems awfully afraid you're going to read something into this...

Uh, there so are rare Pokémon in my trophy garden!

The rich guy who owns the trophy garden below Hearthome City parodizes eccentric rich people. When he is bragging about the elusive Pokémon prancing around his garden and somebody points out that he's lying, he doesn't pretend he misspoke or otherwise try to correct his mistake: instead he just sends his servant out to import some of those rare Pokémon (probably wasting inordinate sums of money in the process) and put them in the garden to essentially retcon his statement to be true. I always found it amusing.

Too Much Information?

The woman in the Berry Master's house (is she his wife? If she is, that's a bit disturbing in itself, since she's a lot younger than him...) who sells you Mulch for your Berries tells you when you buy some Mulch that she created it by mixing high-grade soil with Pokémon "um... you know..." Uh. Thanks for telling me that just as you're handing it to me. I wonder what she makes the Pokémon whose dung she uses for "Gooey Mulch" eat...

"Every day, I brush my Pokémon a hundred strokes. Then, I do me."

That's exactly what "PKMN Breeder Kahlil" says to you if you speak to him outside of battle. As his introduction before battle, he tells you, "I brushed my party a lot. So we'd be ready for a rematch!" His Pokémon are a Pichu, a Pikachu and a Happiny. And yes, this is a male. Seriously, gay much?

Evil Dawn?

Well, at least if you play as a male, Dawn will tell you when Professor Rowan has told you to keep your starter Pokémon that if you weren't kind to Pokémon, she'd "have" to do something she apparently can't even say. So uh, what? Is she going to beat you up? o_O Brutally murder you? Eat your soul? Seriously, what is it that she does to people who aren't kind to Pokémon that's so terrible she can't even talk about it?