The Fan Theory That Solves Pokemon's Greatest Mystery

Anyone who's seen more than one episode of Pokemon likely has a lot of burning questions they'd love to get answered. For example: Ash, you've been at this game for nearly two decades, buddy. When are you gonna get it together and be a Master? Also, what's up with Mr. Mime? And why isn't our local hospital full of identically hot Nurse Joys, and why isn't our local police department filled with zesty, no-nonsense Officer Jennys?

Well, your world isn't one big Pokemon cloning conspiracy.

As it turns out, there is one question in the Pokemon universe that we can answer, and it's the one with the most nefarious answer of them all. The Joys and Jennys of the Pokemon universe might seem like two collections of sexy, sexy anime babes who share the same names, faces, and jobs, while all claiming to be "cousins." But the reality is much darker and considerably less sexy, sexy.

If in 1999 you convinced your parents to take you to see Pokemon: The First Movie (showing them that no part of the media was safe from the onslaught of "Pokee-mans"), you were treated to flashbacks which reveal the shady origins of an all-powerful psychic Pokemon named Mewtwo. You learn about a man named Giovanni, who wanted to take over the world like a classic James Bond villain, minus the piranha tank and adding a rad-ass orange suit. He is the Dr. Claw-esque leader of the criminal organization Team Rocket, and as the anime repeatedly shows you, his Human Resources department is truly awful.

You also learn of a man named Dr. Fuji, who had quietly begun his own mad scientist origin story. After the tragic death of his daughter, Amber, the good doctor went all Resident Evil and obsessively tried to bring her back with depressingly unsuccessful cloning experiments. His madness drove his wife away, because duh, but he continued his desperately pointless work.

Giovanni caught wind of these experiments and offered to fund them if Dr. Fuji would also work to create a genetically enhanced clone of Mew, the most powerful Legendary Pokemon ever, to be his enslaved super soldier. And when you're that deep in your own crazy, taking any amount of money from a terrorist is basically a given.

Fuji was never able to clone his daughter. He created Ambertwo along with Mewtwo, but Ambertwo, being human and thus being very dead-able, didn't survive the process. However, he was successful at cloning and even modifying Mew and other Pokemon.

OK, so where do the "cousins" come in?

The only logical explanation here is that the Joys and Jennys are either Terminators or similarly lab-created clones, because "identical cousins" isn't a thing. And since an Officer Jenny hasn't strangled Pikachu with her ultra-robot hands, that just leaves one option.

Obviously, the cloning of Mew wasn't the first time Giovanni approached the mad Dr. Fuji with an assignment. Sometime after Fuji's wife left his creepy ass, Giovanni must have conveniently swooped in and asked lonely Dr. Fuji if he wouldn't mind cloning an army of subservient, hot women in uniform. Yeah, Fuji didn't mind.

So how was Fuji able to clone the Joys, Jennys, and Pokemon, but not his daughter? Well, cloning is an artificial, unnatural process, and Pokemon have proven to be much easier to clone than humans because they are completely unnatural clone monsters to begin with. It's why Mewtwo survived while "Ambertwo" bit the dust like a punk.

Pokemon don't have "babies" like normal creatures. Two Pokemon (even two absurdly different species) can mate with each other to make an egg. But the baby in the egg isn't really a combination of the "parents," but an exact duplicate of all the others in its species.

Since he was never able to clone humans, but was eventually able to bungle his way through Pokemon cloning, we can deduce that Dr. Fuji must have created the humanoid Joys and Jennys in the lab from scratch using modified Pokemon DNA. And he likely got the DNA from Blissey (the evolution of Nurse Joy's Medical Assistant Chansey), who can take not only human form, but Nurse Joy form. So when you see a Nurse Joy standing next to a Pokemon, what you're actually seeing is two Pokemon.

They then assimilate with the human race well enough that even they think they are humans. But since they're made out of an interspecies bukkake-bucket of Pokemon DNA, they're even more artificial, and therefore even easier to clone and engineer than regular humans and other types of Pokemon. But just like other Pokemon, they all look the same and have the same name. Only skilled geneticists -- like Brock, who dreams of being a Pokemon breeder -- can tell them apart. Well, Brock and Mewtwo.

In the first Pokemon movie, we see further proof that Joy is a lab-created abomination by how Mewtwo (the super-clone of Mew) treats her. After growing tired of being a lab rat, Mewtwo murdered the shit out of Mr. Fuji and his associates. To further exact his vengeance, Mewtwo planned to wipe out the entire human race, along with regular Pokemon, which he considered inferior to the enhanced clone-Pokemon like himself.

However, there was one "human" he felt an affinity for: Joy. Mewtwo brainwashed a Nurse Joy and kidnapped her, bringing her with him to his lair so she could aid him in his goal to repopulate his new world with super clone babies. After some dumb human insulted and attacked him, Mewtwo lost his shit once again, and in the midst of his freshly stoked hatred of humans, he released the Joy he had enslaved, deciding even she was too human for his new, superior world.

Mewtwo was all set for some Death-Star-level destruction until he saw Pikachu's pouty face and his heart grew three sizes that day. He left them all in peace and erased their memories of the events. This detail is crucially important. Joy's ordeal shows that her mind is incredibly malleable. Her memories can easily be overwritten, and she can be brainwashed to follow orders. And if shit hits the fan, a psychic Pokemon can simply hit the delete button and blank-slate her ass like nothing ever happened. This is how Joy and Jenny's true master, Giovanni, uses his insidious anime clones to take over the world in plain sight.

Why would he choose these two professions to infiltrate? At some point in the beginning, humans must have been a staple in the law enforcement and healthcare industries. But remember, Giovanni has ready access to psychic Pokemon capable of Inception-ing anyone they goddamn please. Giovanni would have been able to instate his lady clones into the positions of authority they continue to hold today, and anyone who says otherwise gets mind-wiped. And since these two staples aren't run by people with powerful Pokemon, he could do it with ease. This would also provide him with extra income, since, as we've established, his other ventures aren't doing much to improve his profit margins.

Giovanni hides his covert operation in plain sight, running various police academies and nursing schools that are seemingly open to public, though they're really, really not. In a poignant flashback, we learn that Jessie, half of the Team Rocket team which constantly harasses Ash, once aspired to become a nurse herself. While applying for medical school, she was heavily dissuaded from attending by the admissions officer, but her tenacity won out and she attended nursing school, surrounded by scores of a very specific type of Pokemon: Chanseys, all being set up to evolve and turn into their Joy counterparts.

Jessie kicked ass at her studies, but her Pokemon classmates "accidentally" put her to sleep with their "Sing" powers during class, inciting the wrath of her teacher and ultimately causing her to be the only student to fail the course. This is when Giovanni first recognized Jessie's villainous potential. Remember, he's always watching.

The Joys and Jennys are tailor-made for their professions. Nobody has any reason to question their dominance in these fields, because they are perfectly suited for them. This also explains why Dr Fuji couldn't just make them look different to avoid public suspicion. It's the same genetic phenomenon that gave us different dog breeds -- dogs bred for a specific job developed a specific physical appearance based on what they were designed for. Eventually, though, the Joys and Jennys would receive a few makeovers ...

... but these changes didn't require any altering of the DNA or changes in lifestyle. They're just side effects of believing that you're a human who makes human choices.

Giovanni had also made strides to conquer other areas of the Pokemon universe with his cloning plans, but they've been small so far: Ridiculously Butch Don George and Effeminate Manservant Porter, who also follow the "We're-All-Cousins-Who-Look-Exactly-Alike" schtick.

This has obviously been going on for a little bit, so why hasn't Giovanni pulled the trigger? Why hasn't he had an Officer Jenny cap Ash while the trainer is sleeping? Where is the endgame to all of this? As it turns out, there might not be an endgame anymore.

At the end of the Mewtwo Returns movie, Mewtwo has the minds of most of Team Rocket's members erased, including Giovanni's, meaning that Giovanni probably no longer remembers why in the hell he started all of this in the first place. He doesn't know what he eventually planned to do with this whole cloning thing. All he knows is that he gets a check every quarter from the Nurse Joys' Pokemon Centers, and that funds his repetitive Team Rocket missions.

So why does it seem like the Pokemon anime lasts forever, all while going nowhere? It's because Giovanni doesn't recall his greatest scheme. He had everything set up in his plan to spread influence and eventually take over the world. Now if only he could remember what that plan was ...

Nathan is a Christian and says things like, "Good news! Your sins are forgiven!" He is also called Treegnome and is hilarious, here on his website.

Carolyn wants to thank her genius son for sending her down this rabbit hole by pointing out the clone angle. Good job, kid.

For more fan theories that will utterly rip your childhood to shreds check out 5 Fan Theories About Cartoons That Will Ruin Your Childhood and 5 Creepy Cartoon Fan Theories That Make Way Too Much Sense.

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