Becoming nightmarish after over-analyzing

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HellzBunny

New member
Lately, I've been reading a lot of Nightmare Fuel articles on TvTropes which has caused me to get creeped out at things I wasn't normally creeped out by (like some pieces of video game music).

One thing that's always unsettled me, far before TVTropes, were the orignial Pokemon games.

When I was little and first had the games I thought nothing of it, but as more games came out, the old versions started to seem freaky to me. Some of the 8-bit music sounded scarier (Such as the Lavendar theme), the Pokemon sprites looked scarier and alienish, and the amount of glitches and hidden secrets in the game always put me on edge for some reason -- like Mew originally being a secret, the thought of a Pokemon being programmed in your Pokedex and everything and no one knowing for quite some time gave me a feeling of questioning paranoia. Could you imagine if Mew was never revealed? Would he have been discovered eventually? Would he have been a secret forever if they didn't continue using him for future games?

And the fact that the game is defaulted in black and white gave it more of a horror movie look.

Some of the lines in the game could also unsettle you ("Do you believe in ghosts?" "No." "Then that white hand on your shoulder must be my imagination..." as well as a line about the Pokemon Tower being haunted by spirits because of all the pokemon Team Rocket has killed), especially thinking that back when the games came out, they were your only source of information, so the backstory of Mewtwo became especially haunting and mysterious.

And that bit I read on Tropes and never noticed myself:



I know he probably just stored Raticate since most trainers store their weaker Pokemon as they progress, but over-thinking it really gives you the jibblies. Oh yeah, and reading those purposely nightmarish Pokemon death game stories (Such as "Pokemon Black", "Silver Got Lost" and that Missingno Glitch Death") make me never look at the early games the same way again.

Has anything ever freaked you guys out after over analyzing or reading a ghost story about it?
 
This is probably minor compared to your story, but I recently rewatched Beauty and the Beast.

I realized in the West Wing there was all broken furniture scattered about. Now think about it. The servants (Lumiere, Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts, Chip, etc.) were all once human but turned into animate objects via the curse, and there are many others besides them. Consider the Beast's bellowing anger. It's not a complete stretch he may have hurt or even killed some of the other animate object servants in rage before.

Now think about how Belle broke the curse, and the castle was restored and so were the animate object servants.

Yeah.
 
That actually happened in a comic book I once owned (though I can't recall if it was a prequel or set during the events of the movie), where Beast trashes a music box.

Also, on a Disney-related topic that still pertains to video games, I can't really wrap my head around the Nobodies of Kingdom Hearts. After playing 358/2 Days, there is something I find inherently unsettling about the concept of unaging people who are physically incapable of showing emotion and can only put up a facade through their memories. Worse still, they seem to only resemble people on the outside, judging by how they simply dissolve into flecks of darkness when they die.

And worse still, if you become one, there's little you can do about it. Unless you know how to return to your true form, which requires both the destruction of the Heartless that took your heart and your own destruction, you're stuck like this until someone else kills you. And if you go down before your Heartless, you simply cease to exist until someone defeats it.

Now, for the icing on the cake, this could happen to your favorite Disney characters. Given the sheer number of worlds that were consumed by Heartless in the first game, and the number of Disney movies unaccounted for, it's kind of chilling to realize there might be a Nobody of Basil of Baker Street or Maid Marian out there...
 
Just another example of why one should avoid TV Tropes. :)

There really are a lot of cartoons that start to creep you if you think about them too much though. If you think about Pokemon too much you realize it's just cockfighting and wonder why their aren't any PETA like groups opposing it in their world.

And that Raticate died by your hand. I'm sorry, but it just did, that's obviously what's implied there, that he couldn't get it healed in time.
 
I still think that there is a major difference between Pokemon battles and cockfighting. They don't result in a Pokemon dying, there is a stress of bonding with ones Pokemon in both the games and the anime and there are Pokemon Centers that can heal any physical injury they sustain in battle. As for the Cubone's mother, that was because of Team Rocket, but that was also the only time humans in the games were involved with a Pokemon's death. So, it doesn't happen nearly as often as in dog fights or cockfights.
 
What about this thing Infusions referenced, though? That the Tower is haunted by the ghosts of Pokemon that Team Rocket killed? Why are there so many Pokemon cemeteries and angry ghost Pokemon that attack you?

Anyway, even if they don't die, it still hurts. It wouldn't be legal for me to go out and organize a dogfighting ring even if I set up the rules where the dogs only occasionally die if they don't get medical treatment in time.
 
Actually, I was re-watching some of the early Pokemon anime, and in the episode where Ash has a rematch with Blaine with Charizard vs. Magmar, Magmar pulls Charizard down into the lava of the volcano and Ash has to turn away, almost about to cry. There were tons of hints (and shouts of "CHARIZARD WON'T MAKE IT") in that scene that Charizard had a serious chance of dying.

Now think about if it wasn't a fire Pokemon being dragged into the lava, imagine if it was Pikachu (Ash's original choice for the battle) who was dragged down into the lava.

Even in the first gym fight with Brock vs. Ash, Onix would have crushed Pikachu to death if Brock didn't call Onix back because he's not a murderer. And the episode with Lt. Surge, he sent all those Pokemon to the emergency room. Things like that make me think there have been various incidents where Pokemon have actually died during gym fights and possibly the Elite Four.
 
In the first battle against Blaine, Magmar was on the verge of knocking Pikachu into the lava. Ash has to forfeit the match to stop Pikachu from falling into the lava, and even then Blaine says that Ash would have had his Pokemon training license revoked if he hadn't called an end to the match (implying that Pikachu would have actually been killed had he fallen in). To make matter worse, Pikachu walked away from the match with a huge burn on his back from the Fire Blast attack. Pikachu was actually in real danger during that match.

That unnerved me as a kid, too.
 
I believe that there was only one ghost in that Pokemon tower and that was only in Red/Blue and in their remakes. I thought I mentioned before that was the only time in the games were a Pokemon died because of human involvement. There are Pokemon cemeteries in every game. I just don't think that they're killed in battles, especially since we've only heard of one death from some kind of battle.



That is a valid point about it still hurting them. But I still think that there are still plenty of differences between dogfighting and Pokemon battles. Pokemon battles rarely end in death, the Centers can completely heal any kind of physical injury, while dogs cannot.



Ah, I didn't remember that bit from his Gym match. Although, earlier in that episode, Blaine mentioned that only Fire type Pokemon could withstand the heat from the lava when it was almost about to destroy the island. And Charizard was clearly fine when it got out of the lava. I think a better example would be when Charizard was frozen during a match against a Poliwrath. I'm not sure if they thought that Charizard's life was in danger, but Ash did do everything he could to make it feel warm again.



For the battle against Brock, I doubt that he would have crushed Pikachu just because it was clear at that point that Pikachu couldn't continue the match. While I understand where you're coming from with Pokemon dying during gym matches and against the Elite Four, I still think that's a bit of a stretch. Most of the experience trainers would know when to stop if the other trainers' Pokemon was seriously injuried and Pokemon Centers have been able to heal most any physical injury. If Paul's former Chimchar could live after being hit by Leaf Storm, Focus Blast, Shadow Ball and Thunderbolt, then I think other Pokemon with more serious injuries have a good chance to live too.

Though, just to be clear, I'm not saying that it's impossible for Pokemon to die. That clearly isn't the case with the games since they have cemetaries in every generation so far and the three legendary beasts were killed when the original Bell Tower caught on fire. That was explained in both the games and the series. There have been examples were Pokemon have died or being close to it in the anime. Charmander almost died in its capture episode, although that was due to its flame nearly going out, the three clone Pokemon, along with the clone Amber, died in the during Mewtwo's origins, Latios died in the fifth movie in order to save the city and even Lucario died in the eighth movie when he gave up his aura to help restore the Tree of Beginning. Although I like to think of that last one as Lucario possibly being alive due to the ending with him walking along with Sir Aaron, who does not have his gloves on. Either that or there's chocolate in heaven.

Anyway, I'm just not sure that Pokemon would die as a result of battle due to just the way they've set it up in the games and the series. That's just me though.



Actually, I'm pretty sure that Blaine said that Ash would have been disqualified as Pokemon trainer if he foolishly continued the match. There wasn't anything about revoking his trainer license. It was probably said because he clearly had no chance to win and Blaine didn't want him to push Pikachu passed its limits. I think that the main danger in that match was really Pikachu falling into the lava, even though it did get a pretty big burn from the Fire Blast. I do remember feeling nervous for Pikachu right before the Fire Blast hit it, but I didn't think that Pikachu was going to die.
 
Think about it in real world terms, though. Even if I could invent a device that would allow the dogs in my dogfighting ring to heal instantly from the injuries from my dogfights, it would still be illegal because it's still cruelty to animals to make them fight and to make them suffer.

Pokemon is , at its core, cockfighting. Like other topics in this thread, that's just something you have to ignore and not overanalyze if you want to enjoy it.
 
That is another vaild point. I usually don't try to think of Pokemon battles in real world terms mainly because most Pokemon, in the series at least, want to battle to get stronger, most every the humans want to battle to develop their skills as trainers and there is a generally strong emphasis on forming friendship among people and Pokemon through battles. It's aspects like that in the series that make it really difficult for me to see it at the same level of forcing dogs to fight, especially since dogs don't normally want to fight unless they're provoked in some manner.



While I still don't see a strong enough connection to Pokemon to make it equal to cockfighting, I think that it's best to just ignore it in order to enjoy it.
 
Instead of compariing Pokemon to cock-fighting, I like to think of it more as boxing to the extreme. With cock/dog fighting, you're forcing two animals to become extreme aggressive (or that are already aggressive) to fight, usually to the death, for a person's own amusement.

Pokemon, in their own way, agree to battle, otherwise they would ignore their Trainer or run off.

Usually if a Pokemon is being abused to fight, someone takes notice eventually and puts a stop to it. I'm sure that's happened several times in the series, but I can't recall when. The guy with the Charmander didn't abuse it when it lost, he just abandoned it.

Back on the death thing, I suppose the Gym Leaders would be smart enough to stop the Trainer before anything fatal happened to their Pokemon, they were league-approved after all (Sabrina's actions in the anime make me question how she got approved), so Blaine most likely wouldn't have taken any other Pokemon who wasn't fire into the lava.
 
Yeah, that's a good point and a good attitude. It's fantasy, you're not really supposed to try to apply too much real world logic to things like this.
 
Extreme boxing sounds a bit more appropriate to me due to fighting to the death in cock/dog fighting that isn't there in Pokemon battles. I also agree that Pokemon are okay with fighting since they could technically just not obey their trainers and try to leave. Even with their Pokeballs, they could run far away from their trainers.

I only remember three times during the series where Pokemon being abused happened. I do count the events with Ash's Charmander since it was emotionally abused and put into physical danger, even though it didn't realized it until after its former trainer came back to reclaim it. Ash's Lapras was physical beaten by humans and Ash and Misty ran up to stop them. When Paul was pretty much physically beating his Chimchar to the point of exhaustion with most of his Pokemon and about to hit it with Thunder to wake it up, Pikachu absorbed the attack and Ash took it to a Pokemon Center.



Ah, I forgot about how the Gym Leaders are all approved by the league to give out badges. Yeah, Sabrina in the anime was creepy, but maybe they couldn't argue against her skills as a trainer or they were scared by her Psychic powers.



Thank you. I usually try not too apply too much real world logic since that can kind of ruin the fantasy experience. That and some of the logic doesn't connect with the series' universes terms of logic. That easily be applied to other shows beside Pokemon. Even though I don't agree with the cockfighting comparisons, I do see where you're coming from with them.
 
One thing that I always liked/got creeped out more from Digimon than Pokemon was that Digimon have actually died without being able to come back. Season 3 is probably the darkest of all. I remember being on the verge of crying when Leomon died, especially since those who died in Tamers never came back as a digi-egg. The D-Reaper was something you'd see out of a Miyazaki movie, Juri was a young girl with a heart of glass who ultimately got mind raped by said Reaper. Looking back on it, Tamers could've been an Evangelion Lite.

Actually, it's been years since I've last watched this, and now I have the urge to watch it again.
 
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