The BBS Magazine

Pokémon has reached its 6th generation, and with 22 mainstream games alone, there’s a wide variety of characters. We’ve gotten really cool NPC’s, like Lance and Cynthia. We’ve been introduced to truly kind NPC’s, like Roark or Lanette. We’ve seen some really interesting recurring characters, like Bill and Red. But, of course, as far as characters go, we’ve also seen some really annoying ones.

Being annoying is not always a bad thing. After all, there are annoying people in real life, too, so it can add a layer of realism. Some of the annoying characters in Pokémon are annoying in this way, intentionally and for a good reason, and we love them for it. Who didn’t love beating Silver time after time, as he continued to be a total jerk? So, this list is not about those characters.

This list is dedicated to those NPC’s who drive us nuts, and not in a good way. They shake us away from the game, make us irritated, make us dread the next time we may have to interact with them in the game. In some ways, their presence – or at least their behavior – almost takes away from the experience. But hey, at least it makes for good stories later!

Here’s my top list of 10 Most Annoying NPCs in the world of Pokémon.

It says a lot about Barry’s character that he has no Pokédex because he rushes out of Rowan’s lab before he can receive one. Barry is nothing if not impatient, a feature that could have made him interesting, but is so exaggerated it simply falls flat. He’s always in a hurry, and most of the times you see him, he runs into view and then actually straight up crashes into you. No time for slowing down! It’s more effective to stop if you crash into something. Right?

His impatience shtick gets old really fast, and after a while it doesn’t even work as comic relief. He tells you he’s going to fine you millions if you make him wait. He bumps into you, time after time. He dashes out while NPC’s are in the middle of talking. At some point, he imparts this gem on the player: “Next stop, the Eterna Gym Badge! Ten seconds before I dash! Nine… Bah! Who’s got time to count?!”

Barry is really more a concentration of mannerisms than a character. Every encounter with him is more or less identical: if he doesn’t crash into you, he’s waiting for you somewhere, and complaining about how slow you are. He says something cocky about his team or his skills as a trainer, and challenges you to a battle. After he loses, he says “Waaah!”, complains, and promises to win next time. No matter how many times you beat him, he still thinks he’s better than you. Nothing can crush his arrogance. Even after you’ve beaten the E4 several times, and naturally have wiped the floor with Barry’s team more than you can count, he still acts surprised every time you beat him.

But then, he’s generally not the brightest. Where many rivals, especially in later games, get annoying because they’re always giving you advice and being general know-it-alls, despite always losing to you, Barry does the opposite. His advice is almost always bad or otherwise useless.There’s something that can be said in his defense, though. After RSE, Barry returns to the roots of Pokémon rivals in that he keeps taunting the player and generally challenging them. This makes beating him more of a joy than some of the other rivals, who are hugely passive about their role. So, thanks to that, Barry becomes the least annoying entry on this list.

9. Breeders (B2W2)

On the Seaside Cycling Road, on route 110 of Hoenn, there lies a horror hidden in plain sight. In the ranks of annoying NPC’s, he scores relatively low, but only because you will only ever talk to him once, and even that one time is not mandated by the plot. So, here’s a guy who you only ever talk to once, in a single game. How can he be so high up on the list?

The player’s mom from Johto is a sweet lady, doing what she can to help out her adventuring child. Her primary way of helping the player is saving your money for you. Whenever you win battles, a part of your winnings is automatically sent to her for safekeeping. It’s a very sensible thing to do, and many players have likely opted to let her keep that money for them. It’s nice, too. Maybe this way the player’s mom can feel more included, and she doesn’t have to be so lonely, all alone back at home… So, everyone wins, right?

Except she doesn’t keep the money for you like she promised. At regular intervals – far too often for comfort – she calls her child to inform them that she has squandered their money on yet another item. Sometimes these items are useful to you, like potions or a focus sash. But there are precisely nine useful things she can buy, each of them only once. The rest of the stuff she gets are decorations in GSC, which, while technically a waste of money, can be nice because much of it is difficult to get otherwise. And who can say no to a giant Snorlax doll? In HGSS, though, she buys you berries. Again and again she calls you, having spent your hard-earned money on some more useless berries, and then apologizes for spending that money. The apologies mean nothing if you don’t change your behavior, Mom!

The worst part is that if you tell her to stop saving your money, she will keep pressuring you into saving money again every single time you talk to her. If you let her save it, she tells you to trust her, and then repeatedly breaks your trust by buying more useless stuff. You really just can’t win with her.

3. The Magikarp Fisherman (Every single game) 

Fishermen are a trainer type that appears in every single game. They are found close to water, usually after you’ve received your own fishing rod, and they use nothing but Pokémon that are catchable by fishing. Magikarp, being so abundant in all bodies of water throughout the Pokémon world, are a common member of their teams. That’s not the problem. No, that seems rather natural, since you really can catch a Magikarp by fishing nearly anywhere in the world.

The problem are those fishermen who choose to use nothing but Magikarp in their entire team. Yeah, sorry, but when your team of six only knows one move between them, and that move doesn’t do anything, it’s probably time to take a closer look at your life choices and see where you went wrong.There’s at least one of these nutjobs in every single main series Pokémon game. Their team, varying from full six to a team of three, is literally nothing but Magikarp all the way through. There’s no way these people can win a single battle they participate in, and yet they insist on challenging random strangers anyway. Battles against them are annoying and repetitive, and with all the “Fisherman Nutjob is about to send in a Magikarp!”, it can take a while, too.

Interestingly, in games where rematches are an option, the Magikarp Fisherman is often one of the rematch options. In HGSS, one of the three Magikarp Fishermen – yes, there’s three of these trainers in these games – can be fought up to four times, each time with an additional Magikarp in his team. That’s a lot of Magikarp to battle.

But wait, that’s not the worst of it! While many Magikarp Fishermen are low-level opponents, with their Magikarp at levels 5-15, some of them get even crazier. A handful of Magikarp Fishermen, and a number of other, supposedly saner fishing folk, have Magikarp over level 20 in their team. That means that their Magikarp could already have evolved, but they have expressly stopped it from doing so. One of these trainers is Fisherman Raymond, found at Lake of Rage, who has four level 22 Magikarp in his team. Here, however, the stupidity prize goes to Unova: on Route 13, a Fisherman called Mick has a team of six level 60 Magikarp. For 40 levels, these poor creatures have been trying to evolve and finally be able to stand their ground in battles… but their trainer has prevented them from doing so. Sheesh, talk about a Magikarp obsession! To make it just that much worse – or more annoying, anyhow – all these Magikarp, who should, of course, know Tackle, only ever use Splash. Anyone with even the slightest experience of Pokémon can tell you that Tackle actually does damage, which Splash notably doesn’t do. Clearly no-one ever told the Magikarp Fishermen. Or, maybe they know, they just take great joy in watching our frustration grow as they cycle through their splashing fishies.

The annoyance level of this NPC reaches third place on this list because they appear in every game – no matter which game you pick up, you will never escape the frustration that is the Magikarp Fisherman.

2. Youngster Joey (Johto)

Youngster Joey is a strange NPC. You meet him very early on in GSC and HGSS, and initially he seems nothing more than he appears: the game’s first trainer battle with a low-level Rattata. However, whereas most players forget the names of even the high-level, end-game trainers, Youngster Joey is remembered by all, and even makes an appearance in Pokémon Adventures. How come a newbie trainer has attained such fame?

For Joey, the reason is undeniably his attachment and devotion to his Rattata. Rattata is the only Pokémon in his team, and he seems to prefer it that way. In fact, if you make the mistake of giving him your number, he will call you incessantly to brag about his Rattata. It’s very nearly the only thing he ever talks about. His Rattata is simply the coolest, sharpest, awesomest Pokémon. In fact, it’s like his Rattata is in the top percentage of Rattata!

Joey is also one of the trainers you can fight again, four times in GSC and three in HGSS. During these rematches, his Rattata actually evolves. From the second battle onwards (or third in the case of GSC), it’s actually a Raticate. This is not reflected in his calls in any way – he still calls you about his awesome Rattata all the time. So, did he not notice his Pokémon evolved? Or is he in denial about it? It almost makes you wonder if he would have stopped the evolution if he knew how, like the Magikarp Fishermen.

Youngster Joey calls the player so many times during the game – possibly owing to the fact that you meet him so early on, so he has more time to harass you – that he and his obsession with his Rattata have become an easily recognizeable meme. In many ways, it’s quite funny. But it’s also incredibly annoying. Joey calls you, then calls you some more, and then keeps calling you. You know, just in case you missed that his Rattata is special. And even though his Rattata actually is in the top percentage of Rattata – it has nearly perfect IV’s all across the board – it doesn’t really excuse Youngster Joey’s irritating behavior.

1. Whitney (Johto) 

When you first talk to Whitney, she might come off as a little bit annoying. Nearly all of her sentences end in exclamation marks, which makes reading her dialogue just a tad irritating, but nothing too bad. She also reveals that she’s hardly someone who lives life her own way: “Everyone was into Pokémon, so I got into it too!” But hey, not everyone needs to be original. It’s fine to just go with the flow sometimes.

With her pink hair and childish manners, Whitney hardly seems very threatening. Her gym is not only pink and other assorted colors of the pastel variety, but its obstacles are also built into the shape of a Clefairy, forgoing the puzzle element other gyms have. She herself seems like she’s going to be something like her gym: cute, friendly, not very challenging. Something like that.

Yet nearly all who have challenged her agree that the battle against her is one of the most aggravating gym battles in the entire series. The frustration caused by this battle is a combination of multiple factors, which is probably why players’ opinions are so uniform on the matter. The primary reason, however, is easy to separate: Whitney’s Miltank.Whitney only has two Pokémon in the first place, yet fighting her is ridiculously difficult and the battle will often take a very long time. This is all thanks to her Miltank, whose high health and buff stats make it a tough one to wear down. While you work on causing any damage, Whitney’s Miltank will use Rollout or Stomp with often devastating effects – or, if you’re particularly unlucky, and your Pokémon is male, it can use Attract and take down your chances of actually doing any damage in the first place. If you do get some hits in and manage to carve out a chunk of Miltank’s HP, it will simply use Milk Drink and heal itself right back. Hardly anything is going to have super effective moves against it at this point in the game, and if you wanted to use a Ghost-type to avoid being damaged by Miltank’s Normal-type moves, think again! Miltank also comes equipped with Scrappy, a fact some players had to learn the hard way (been there, done that).

Oh no! Not again!

But this is not a list of most annoying battles in Pokémon. One could argue that it’s not Whitney’s fault her Pokémon is tough to beat. It’s her job, as the Normal-type gym leader, to give trainers a real challenge. So, she’s just doing her job here! And boy does she do it well-

Yeah, no. At the end of this stupidly difficult and tedious battle, Whitney doesn’t acknowledge your skill and present you with the Plain Badge you clearly earned with your effort. Nope! Instead, she delivers this undying, poetic piece of wisdom:

“…Waaaaaaah! You’re mean! You shouldn’t be so serious! You…you child, you!”

So, let’s recap here: you come and challenge the gym leader, whose job is to battle trainers and then give them a badge if they win, and who just so happens to, um… Speak like this! All the time! …Totally! Then, you beat her, and she cries, call you names, and neglects to give you the badge. Even if you talk to her again, she won’t give you the badge. You have to try to leave first, and then talk to her for the badge. And, unlike with Clair, where you’re rewarded with a super rare Pokémon and a nice TM, Whitney gives you precisely jack squat for inconveniencing you.

Now, in HGSS she does also present you with the TM Attract, but this act of kindness is countered by the fact you have to actually go find her in the Radio Tower, dawdling about, before she’ll turn up at the gym for you to fight.

So! Between her overabundance of exclamation marks, aggravating gym battle, and whiny ways, Whitney, the Incredibly Pretty Gym Leader Who Refuses to Do Her Freaking Job, wins the number one spot on this list.

Written by An-chan
Edited by Bay Alexison, bobandbill,Hoenn, Richard Fightmaster and Slayr231