At first glance, Pokémon Pokopia looks like a harmless game, but behind the new title could hide a tragic backstory. When you look at the details, there could be a post-apocalyptic world behind the cozy game.
Not long now, and the latest Pokémon spin-off will be released on the Switch 2. Pokémon Pokopia is at first glance a cozy game where you must rebuild a seemingly destroyed world. You play as a Ditto disguised as a human and use various Pokémon to realize your construction projects.
But what kind of world is this? In the context of the game, fan theories often discuss whether it could be a post-apocalyptic version of the known Pokémon world. This is damn plausible, as shown by details that can also be found in games like The Last of Us.
Peace, joy, and pancakes? It resembles games like The Last of Us
When you look at individual elements of the game, the world presented in Pokopia seems a bit suspicious. The most significant feature is probably the destroyed city, which can be seen in a longer insight from Nintendo on YouTube.
A broken Pokémon Center is overgrown with plants, and in the upper trailer, you can see a broken Pokédex that must have been lying there for a while. And honestly: When would a trainer lose their Pokédex? This strongly resembles classic visual elements of the post-apocalypse.
Thinking of The Last of Us or Planet of the Apes: New Kingdom, overgrown structures of the world before the apocalypse are a sign of nature reclaiming. The human world then appears as an ancient civilization that no longer exists, contextualizing the plants and nature differently.
In Pokopia, humans are also not really a topic anymore. Ditto transforms into one, but in the aforementioned YouTube video, Professor Tangoloss explains that it has been a while since it has seen humans. However, they must have lived there; otherwise, there wouldn’t be any broken buildings.
As Game Rant reported, a leak about a Pokopia prototype surfaced in 2023. It also mentioned what happened to some cities in Kanto (the region of the first Pokémon games). Some cities were just craters, flooded, or burned – like after an apocalypse.
Thematically, it also fits that the Pokémon here are taking care of rebuilding the world. Like animals that, in a post-apocalypse, slowly begin to inhabit the cities and other areas again. Again, the comparison to The Last of Us fits. Animals from zoos or the forest ventured more and more into the abandoned cities. This made the world of The Last of Us feel so alive, even though there were undead everywhere.
Even the new
Pokémon seem suspicious
Another important element concerning the post-apocalypse theory are the displayed new
Pokémon. At the end of the YouTube showcase, new variants were shown.
On the one hand, there is a color eagle that presumably hasn’t been cleaned for a long time and is drawing on a canvas that stands on a broken tile floor. Professor Tangoloss is also present, who has a HM or TM on a tentacle and apparently knows a lot about the world. This could still somehow be explained, but the other two Pokémon are more suspicious.
The prominent mascot Pikachu has a new variant: Schlappchu. It simply looks like the ghost of a Pikachu. You first see it sleeping and then it seems to generate light with its electricity. While there are ghost Pokémon in Pokémon, the regional variants (like Alola) that change the type look different and have different details in design. Schlappchu seems to be just the ghost of a Pikachu.
Here you can see the sleeping ghost mouse:
Interestingly, in Pokémon Red and Blue, there was already the ghost of a dead Pokémon. In the Pokémon Tower in Lavender Town, players encounter the ghost of a Knogga, which probably died while protecting its young. One can assume that something happened to the Pikachu.
Another interesting Pokémon is the Snorlax that is seen at the end. It is completely overgrown with moss and is called Mooslaxo. Considering the sleeping nature of Snorlax, it’s like the overgrown buildings: Apparently, no one has woken it up, and the plants have simply spread out.
Could a post-apocalypse be thematized in the game? That is probably quite unlikely. Since it is a spin-off and gameplay-wise oriented towards cozy games, one can assume that the parallels to a post-apocalypse will likely only be hinted at or visually represented.
Games like Pokémon Colosseum have already shown a different world in the past, one that with its western setting looks almost like Fallout, but even there, the background of the world was never really thematized. If you want to play other games until the release on March 5, we have a ranking for you: The 7 best Pokémon games if you don’t want to be a normal trainer
