Pokémon fans can’t figure out when Pikachu rose to fame in the game’s lore

The word association between Pokémon and its most popular creature Pikachu has grown so strong that it’s difficult for fans to separate the two. It almost feels like nearly every piece of Pokémon IP has some Pikachu imagery somewhere, but it hasn’t always been that way.

In a post to Reddit this week, players looked to figure out exactly when it was that the games specifically started to mention Pikachu in its own rarified air, and many of them had a difficult time pinpointing exactly when and why the electrically charged mouse became what it is today.

From a lore perspective, the original poster of the thread suggested that the explosion of Pikachu’s popularity in the Pokémon video game universe appears to start somewhere around the seventh generation with the introduction of Mimikyu, an extremely small ghost type Pokémon that disguises itself as a Pikachu.

In an attempt to explain the rise of popularity for Pikachu in the game, the player notes that the massive success of the trainer Red, who is effectively the video game version of Ash Ketchum from the popular anime series, likely contributed. As many people know, Red’s first-ever Pokémon was a Pikachu, and that particular yellow ball of electricity became especially powerful despite never evolving.

While there’s no surefire way to know exactly how Pikachu became so massively popular as a Pokémon in the game’s lore, the general consensus in this particular discussion seemed to be that Red being the most notable trainer in the game’s series likely spurred on the Pokémon’s fame. As for exactly what the turning point was in Pikachu’s stardom, there’s no real telling, but the existence of a Pokémon that is trying to replicate Pikachu certainly suggests that Pikachu had definitely made it big by that point.