Hello, Internet! Welcome to Game Theory, the show that's like Team Rocket:
always ruining things for people who are just trying to have fun
Oh, and real quick, before we get started on today's episode,
as I've been seeing more comments about this a lot,
there's a new Game Theory video uploaded at least every weekend
With all the changes that are happening to YouTube,
it seems like more people haven't been getting notifications
so either ring the bell to make sure that you get those notifications,
or just check in on the channel every Sunday,
because I've been cranking out videos all the time
and then usually every other week Austin does a science video,
and then I'll pop in with the occasional MattChat in the middle of a week,
but for the most part, if you're looking for Game Theory,
It's every Saturday or Sunday, and I do mean every Saturday or Sunday
Now then, with all that business out of the way,
for today's video, I have one question for you:
Are you ready for a ghost story?
Because, for a series all about happy-go-lucky
romps alongside your favorite sapient ice cream cone,
Pokémon has some really scary themes,
themes that most of us just gloss over in our quest to be the best like no one ever was
I mean, sure, by this point, we're all familiar with
the hauntings of Lavender Town and creepy Pokédex entries,
but those are just scratching the surface of the horrific tragedies that hide inside these games
The world of Pokémon has a shocking number of ghosts
and I'm not talking about Gengars and Gastlies,
I'm talking about real children dying
Throughout the series, we see repeated instances of ghost girls,
out-of-nowhere moments where you're walking along, hunting for your next shiny Magikarp,
when the next thing you know, the girl you were standing next to fades away,
or just straight up pulls a Batman and disappears
and it's always a ghost girl for some reason, I don't know why
Apparently Game Freak thinks that it's really creepy for a ghost girl to come up and say
"You're not the one"
Joke's on you, Game Freak
Growing up, that kind of rejection happened to me all the time
and those girls weren't even dead
While you're playing the game, these are the moments that make you stop and go, "Huh? That was weird"
before immediately seeing a Berry and continuing on your merry way
As a result, the stories behind these ghost girls have remained largely a mystery,
little bits of lore that are just waiting to be unearthed by the trainers who are willing to postpone their next gym badge,
and instead explore off the beaten path
So today, I want to start piecing together these mysteries, starting with the OG; the original ghost,
the Marvelous Bridge girl from Pokémon Black and White
Think back to Generation 5 of Pokémon, a trip back to the Unova region
In that game, when you visit the Marvelous Bridge that connects Nimbasa City to either Black City or White Forest,
you'll catch sight of a girl who vanishes like a ghost if you get too close
and no, that was not just a sprite glitch,
the NPC standing next to her immediately reacts, saying:
"Huh... Wha... D-did she just disappear?"
If you explored the area near where she appears, and ahead to the Bridge's eastern gate,
You'll find an old lady who'll tell you that a young girl used to play around the area with an Abra
before the bridge was built, and that was it
At the time of this game's release, those were really all the clues that we ever got
as to who she was and why she was there just an odd little Easter egg of your casual run-of-the-mill bridge ghost
But the ghost girl would soon become part of a much larger
mystery while every other trainer moved on with their lives in the years following
Black and Whites release
More and more clues started to leak out as to who this character might be and to truly solve the mystery of the Marvelous Bridge
Ghost we'll actually need to visit three separate games black and white the sequels Black 2 and White 2 and the previous
generation of games Diamond and Pearl all to uncover what really
Happened to this girl and why in Black 2 and White 2 a new area becomes
accessible The Strange House
But strange is putting it lightly in addition to being full of ghost Pokemon when you explore the house the environment will constantly change
Furniture will be rearranged objects will shake it's very clear that this place is being haunted by something or someone
Someone turns out to be a girl who when you speak to her says this: "An everlasting
dark dream an endless dream of darkness, Dad? Mom? Abra?
Where are you?" Let's see a girl in a haunted house calling out to her parents and her pokemon Abra
Yeah, that sounds like it might be our girl her dialog then continues: "In the dark dream. I heard my dad's voice.
Forget about the Lunar Wing, Stay here with me."
and finally, "Oh,
the Lunar Wing. I
can't take it now, but it'll be okay. Please return the wing to the Pokemon
I was waiting on the bridge so I could return it myself." A bridge you say? seems to me like this is our smoking gun
connecting the disappearing girl on the Marvelous Bridge in Black and White to the girl haunting the strange house in Black and White 2. After
exploring the house
the girl gives you a Key Item, the Lunar Wing and sends you back to the Marvelous Bridge where you can now encounter and
hopefully catch the legendary Pokemon Cresselia
Now all of that seems fairly straightforward the girl vanishes and the story seems to be resolved
But it's just scratching the surface of what actually happened to her.
You see this ghost girl's entire tragic backstory was laid out for us by the developers and we've just been
overlooking it for the better part of the last decade you see by this point
we all expect games like Dark Souls and FNAF to not wear their stories on their sleeves to instead hide the lore in nooks and
crannies item descriptions and secret Easter eggs, but to solve the case of pokemons ghost girl
we're gonna have to do a similar sort of investigation scattered throughout the strange house or bookshelves each one referencing some random fact about
Pokemon or their moves
But when you actually stop and really read these entries and think about why they were put here
Inside this haunted house you start to get a sense of the real story that
Developers are trying to tell us they all have to do with Pokemon possessing sleep-related
Abilities first, there's an entry about drowsy quote. There are Pokemon cold drowsy
They put others to sleep and eat their dreams eating nightmares can upset their stomach
Next there's an entry about his evolution. Hypno again, each one carries a pendulum that it can swing to make people drowsy
It's been said that a hypno once hypnotized a child and took it away end quote
We then learn about the move Dream Eater with this move a Pokemon attacks while the target is asleep and eats its dream it restores
HP equal to half the damage inflicted on the target with all this dream and nightmare talk
Is it a coincidence then that the girls first piece of dialogue inside the house is an everlasting
Dark dream an endless dream of darkness taking all that information into consideration
It seems like what the devs are trying to tell us is that the girl was trapped in an endless
Nightmare and her parents were stuck on the outside
Researching every possible way to wake her up. That's why the books are scattered around the house
The parents were researching her condition the bulk of their search was spent looking into Pokemon with abilities that could possibly heal her drowsy
eating dreams and Hypno's hypnosis
Unfortunately, it didn't work
Drowsy probably tried to eat the dream, but because it was such an intense nightmare
He couldn't do it the solution to their problem. Wasn't that?
straightforward we know this through two additional books on the shelves that help us complete the puzzle the first
Directly mentions the shadow Pokemon Darkrai to protect itself
It drives people and Pokemon away with terrible nightmares, and the next entry is about
Cresselia its wings shine like the crescent moon and keep nightmares away
So it would seem that the girl's inescapable nightmares were caused by the legendary Pokemon Darkrai
The girl is put into this
Endless dark sleep and despite the family trying to get Drowsy to eat her free
The intense nature of Darkrai's bad dreams are impenetrable
that's why we also learn about Cresselia as
Cresselia's lunar wing is the only real counter to Darkrai's nightmares
Not only does the item description hint at this
We've actually seen it rescue a similar child in the past
If you rewind back to the previous
generation of games
Diamond and Pearl we meet Eldridge a sailor who lives in Canalave city
Eventually, we learned that his son is caught in a horrible nightmare a nightmare that also appears to have been caused by Darkrai
He doesn't say too much about the incident except for one line
Our dark is watching me. Even though he never says the full name. Darkrai is the only
pokemon whose name starts with the letters DA
RK and the only way to rescue him is by using you guessed it: the Lunar Wing
there's one other book in the strange house that were given access to one that specifically calls out the ability forwarn
quote a pokemon with this ability is alerted to one of the opposing pokemons moves high power moves will be
Recognized first it's worth noting that drowsy and hypno are two of only six
Pokemon who are able to learn this move, so it's definitely tied into this story
But how well this seems to be the last of the missing pieces and it tells us the order of events the parents bring in
Either a drowsy or hypno to use for warned or as it translates into the original Japanese
prophetic dream and that move tells them what happened to the girl what move a
Pokemon had performed on her to trap her in this never-ending
darkness this in turn is how the father of our ghost girl knew to look into Darkrai's nightmares and ultimately
Crecelius lunar wing as the cure the girls second dialogue says in the dark dream
I heard my dad's voice forget about the lunar ring. Stay here with me
it
Might be tempting for us to assume that the second part of the sentence is the girl telling us what her dad said after all
She starts by saying that she heard her dad's voice
but if we dig deeper
it's clear that she isn't quoting her father at all throughout pokemon black and white when a character's
Dialogue includes them quoting a different character. We actually see quotation marks
For example when the player battles Shauntal of the Elite Four for a second time, she'll talk about Volkner
saying
"do you know thunderbolt?" was his first greeting to me note the single quote marks around the words that Volkner said because she's
quoting him
So when the girl says forget about the Lunar Wing stay here with me
She isn't repeating the words her father said there are no quotation marks
This is instead the girl crying out to her father
Her father went out in search of the Lunar Wing, but the girl didn't want him to go
She wanted him to stay by her side
But she couldn't let him know that because she was trapped in this dark nightmare and viewed in this light
This story takes an even more tragic turn
Maybe she knew that it was already too late
And she just wanted her father to be there in her final moments where maybe she was just scared and her father's
Comforting presence was the one thing that enabled her to persevere through the everlasting dark dream
So here we have the final and complete and tragic story of the ghost girl
We have a young girl just like Eldridge's son before who one day is stricken with inescapable nightmares
The parents don't know what to do using drowsies Dream Eater ability to try and make the nightmares go away
But when that doesn't work, they use a hypno with forwarn to see what exactly is going on. Thanks to that move
they learned that it was the legendary Darkrai that did this to her and that the only way to counter a
Pokemon that strong was with the power of another legendary Cresselia's Lunar Wing
The father goes out in search of the item that'll save his daughter's life
Unable to hear her begging him to stay by the time her father finally does return though
it's too late the girls already passed on unable to wake from her nightmares and her father leaves the Lunar Wing in the room as
a memento of the girl that he lost forever the parents leave the house and many years later the house becomes
Overrun with ghost Pokemon and the marvelous bridge was built where the ghost girl wanders to this day
Trying to return the unused
Lunar Wing to the pokemon that it belonged to and that is the sad and tragic story of Pokemon's
First-ever ghost girl who just simply started off as a randomly
Disappearing NPC there is admittedly one big question here that I think remains on address
We know that the girl was plagued by Darkrai's nightmares
And we know that her parents were unable to break the spell in time
But why would Darkrai do this to her in the first place?
Darkrai's pokedex entry indicates that it's not a malicious Pokemon that it doesn't intentionally prey on the weak
It uses its nightmares as a defense mechanism. So why would Darkrai afflict this young girl who presumably posed
no threat to it? I'm not a hundred percent sure. It doesn't seem like the evidence
Is there eldritch his son-in diamond and pearl was also afflicted so maybe Darkrai just misses sometimes?
in the movie The Rise of Darkrai
It turns out that a girl's grandmother had met and befriended Darkrai whose nightmares ended up helping them save the world
It turns out that the nightmare told me just what I needed to do. The nightmares were prophecies that ultimately helped avoid an apocalypse
So maybe that's the case. I'm not entirely sure there doesn't really seem to be enough evidence there to make a judgment call
This is all just speculation. Honestly, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments
Help me finish up this theory. But there you have it theorists, man
Pokemon is not afraid to go there and our legacy on game theory making sure to cover all the games with all the dead kids
Continues on speaking of FNAF and PetScop theories coming up over the next two weeks again
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