EPIC MICKEY CROSSOVER THREAD THING!!!
Hey guys, I don't know if this will hit an audience at ALL, but apparently I've been gone for so long because I was just hyperfixating off screen... sorry for the long wait! it WILL happen again 😭😭😭
So apparently I blorbomaxxed SO HARD I made a crossover between Epic Mickey and Game Freak, where instead of forgotten Disney meta, it's forgotten Game Freak meta....
let me explain 😭😭😭 this will make sense in a minute 😔✊
Now this isn't really that off the rails when you think about it, Pikachu has been called the "Mickey Mouse" of Game Freak for YEARS now and honestly they're kind of right, but today I'm going to challenge that notion... but first!-
all characters above; Red (Pokemon), Quinty (Quinty/Mendel Palace), Pulseman (Pulseman), Bazaru (Bazaru de Gozaru no Game de Gozaru) Jerry (Jerry Boy/SmartBall), Jill (Drill Dozer), Misaki Hayama (Click Medic), Jin (Bushi Seiryuuden: Futari no Yuusha), Tembo (Tembo the Elephant), Protag (Girl) (Pocket Card Jockey), Reika (Giga Wrecker), Tempo (HarmoKnight), Axe (Little Town Hero), Unnamed MC (PandoLand) and Emma (Beast of Reincarnation) respectively.
Did you know? Game Freak has other franchises BESIDES pokemon, it's a shame you haven't heard of the others 🤷♀️
sounds like perfect material for an Epic Mickey crossover right? that game is all about the forgotten after all ;)
so yea, if this reached the right audience then we should all know the basic premise of Epic Mickey, and if we somehow don't, here's a brief summary lol
In the game, Mickey barges into Yen Sid's workshop where he keeps Wasteland, a home for forgotten Disney characters like Oswald. Mickey messes around with the paintbrush, trying to make something in his image, before accidentally making the blot, spilling thinner all over Wasteland. This causes the Thinner Disaster, and even though Mickey escapes and has a prosperous life for many years, the Blot come back to haunt him, dragging him into Wasteland to deal with his lack of responsibility. Mickey grabs the paintbrush along the way before he's thrown into Wasteland to deal with the bitter residents and to fix what he has caused.
PERFECT PLOT FOR SOME CROSSOVER MATERIAL AMMIRITE ⁉️
ignore the fact that this is built like a DeviantART template, but we shall address who's who!
... and yes, we're going to address the giant ink blot in the room
idk WHO was going to be the blot while making this crossover (in the original Epic Mickey, this was originally meant to be a version of The Shadow Blot, but the EM!Blot is VASTLY different from that character so they're not really the same) , so BIG thanks to some random person I talked to that made me think of the idea that the blot should invoke Missingno!
I mean, EM!Blot wrecking the entirety of Wasteland kinda reminded me of the act of corporations swallowing anything that doesn't stick, which my brain decided to connect to Missingno (which according to glitchmon research, it is either a scrapped Pokémon dex slot or the code screaming back at you) so uhhh despite being an afterthought I think this works a little bit too well... idk buh 😭
Now, I actually have DEEP reasonings on why Red is Mickey and NOT Pikachu.
ik Pikachu works better from a superficial standpoint, both Pikachu and Mickey are marketable "rats" for their corporations. HOWEVER, what Pikachu DON'T have is personality.
Now, I just KNOW I'm about to hear y'all say "but kitty- you literally stan a character with ZERO personality!"
First of all... Red technically DOES have a personality, it just so happens that his "personality" is a stoic champion who's there for hype moments and aura. ALSO supplemental Gen 1 material has him with the "cheerful/reckless noob" archetype, and SECOND of all, Pikachu is less of a "character" and more of a "species".
ik the anime has conditioned us all to Ash's Pikachu to the point where we consider Pikachu a character in its own right, but we gotta face the music 😔
Pikachu technically doesn't have a set personality just because it's a species where personality can differ from one to another.
Therefore, having Red in place of Mickey could lead to stronger characterization— also the whole "cheerful recklessness" that Gen 1 Red had, somewhat fits with Mickey's mischievous personality in his early days. Epic Mickey was, in a sense a return to form, so having that same sensibility for Red feels fitting.
SECOND of all... Red has the Walt and Mickey "partners" thing going on. kinda...
Now, you guys are probably questioning what the "partners" dynamic has to do with this, and where I'm even getting this information from... BASICALLY... yk how Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse are kind of like "alter egos" or whatever and it's kind of hinted that they walked with each other "Once Upon A Dream" or something????
Red TECHNICALLY has that kinda thing going on with his "Walt", Satoshi Tajiri, as seen here.
yeah.... those two things AND the fact that Red and Mickey kind of superficially share a color scheme SOLD me on this assignment, I have no regrets :D (this is also why Satoshi Tajiri is Walt according to that placement in the corner, now you know)
Carton = Oswald. I don't really have a big fancy justification for this one, so what I'm about to say is essentially just hammering in how PERFECT this is. (YES I KNOW HIS NAME IS "BON-BON" IN ENGLISH BUT MENDEL PALACE IS A BOTCHED LOCALIZATION!! PLEASE STOP 😭😭😭 I'M GOING TO REFER TO THEM BY THE JAPANESE NAMES LIKE GAME FREAK INTENDED!!! OKAY?!?!! 😭😭😭)
He's literally the protag of Game Freak's first ever game. Only for THEM TO TAKE EVERYTHING FROM HIM. HIS VOICE. HIS FREEDOM. HIS LEGACY. And you know what they did? Game Freak decided that if they brought him into this world, they COULD take him out of it.... and they can make and replace him with another one that looks just like HIM.... LIKE that RED-wearing CHILD!!!
okay... if we're being somewhat serious now, it makes all the sense in the world. Oswald is Disney's first character. (we are not addressing Julius the Cat, this isn't about him 😭) Just like how Carton is Game Freak's first protagonist. It's perfect. There's ALL the angst potential of one brother being favored over the other. Yet- DOES IT HELP THAT ONE BROTHER IS ESSENTIALLY THE LEADER OF THE WORLD'S NUMBER ONE FRANCHISE?!?!?!! I DON'T THINK SO~!
That ALONE makes this a good assignment. uhhhh onto the rest apparently
Quinty = Ortensia. I already stated that I know that Quinty and Carton are siblings in that image and that there's going to be plot rewrites (regardless) so there's no shipping or anything, but THINK about this character assignment for a minute...
In the game Quinty, there's a basic plot. Carton has been giving all his attention to Jenny, his girlfriend. His sister Quinty is envious of the attention, so she steals her away. And that's how the game starts.
In Epic Red, Quinty has been reduced to nothing more than a statue because of the Thinner Disaster, she is essentially "dead". Carton is now bitter and envious of Red's golden child status. Instead of the character of attention being Jenny, it's RED.
It's the EXACT inversion AND subversion to Quinty's plot! It brings everything FULL CIRCLE!!!!
yea so that's my reasoning for her
Gus = Pulseman. this was kind of an afterthought, we needed a third one so we have this guy 🤷♀️
Doc. Waruyama = The Mad Doctor. there's no deep explanation for this one. they are both Mad Scientists that work with technology. (Animatronics, C-Life/A.I.) it works PERFECTLY.
Ken Sugimori = Yen Sid. I thought it made sense for Sugimori to be Wasteland's maker just BECAUSE he's one the ONLY Game Freak employees that actually ACKNOWLEDGES the other Game Freak titles. He's also an artist, it makes too much sense.
Satoshi Tajiri = Walt Disney. I already explained that Satoshi Tajiri and Red are basically the Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse "Partners" dynamic all over again, so yea
As for the other Game Freak characters? I think they'll just inhabit the Wasteland and they can fill in roles for NPCs, or characters like Clarabelle Cow and Pete and whatnot
I think that's enough musings about the characters, WHAT ABOUT THE-
(here's Disney's Wasteland because I have genuinely NO ideas for Game Freak's Wasteland… yea)
It's surprising that I got SO FAR into this crossover WITHOUT thinking about what the Wasteland itself is even going to look like???
so I just have other surrounding things that for some reason I decided to flesh out, hope y'all enjoy my two ideas
for some reason before I came up with ANY of the more important locations, I decided that the film reels from Epic Mickey are going to be based off of the different Game Freak games because that's a nice little touch :D
Maybe in Epic Red they are like TVs instead of animation reels
and maybe the lore reason on why people can hop in the TVs is because of the eureka technology from pulseman or something....
maybe Wasteland is some sort of hub world or something for all the properties that have their own separate universes....
kind of like how Disneyland seems to be for the extended Disney universe, which is what the original Wasteland was based off of....
anyways- you guys know about the Mickeyjunk mountain???
imagine this but its pokemon merchandise... like it works SO WELL???
the THOUGHT of Red having to traverse this mountain of his own franchise's pollution, AND it's constructed by Carton OUT OF PURE SPITE???
IT'S LIKE A STRANGE PARALLEL TO MOUNT SILVER ENCOUNTER WITH RED!!!! WHAT?!?!?!?
i'm not really good at constructing fantasy locations so *snap snap* feel free to chime in fellow fantasy worldbuilders! this is all I got! 😭
the Fridge Logic was bound to hit eventually
This might give you some context but like
yk how it's kinda unclear on what Walt Disney is to the Disney characters?
The characters get weirdly sentimental when they see his face or hear his name, Mickey ESPECIALLY, Walt and Mickey are described as "partners" in Disneyland, Epic Mickey paints him as a father figure to Mickey and Oswald, and scrapped elements in Epic Mickey 2 had him be a strange inner conscience guide, while the NPCs would call him the "great one".
for my Walt stand-in (Tajiri), I was playing around with him being a bit of a narrative haunter, since Walt is kind of framed as such in the first Epic Mickey game
(I'm still questioning what they were setting up by this in the grand scheme of things, also this is kind of WILD for a Disney product??? huh??)
I actually didn't know about the scrapped Epic Mickey 2 subtext until fairly recently, but I accidentally brought it back because I really liked how this was done in the game Napple Tale with the "character" Illusia...
Napple Tale is an entire tangent on its own so I'm just going to describe things vaguely and there might be a slight spoiler here so keep that in mind....
Just like Illusia from Napple Tale, if Tajiri was the Walt of this world, and Walt is Wasteland's "Illusia"...
In Napple Tale, Illusia is essentially a myth, some take it very seriously while others think it's just a ridiculous story. Later on, a character named Pierrot appears and he starts associating Porch with this myth, which is essentially a bogus claim (especially because her last name is Arisa and NOT Illusia) (but maybe he's right considering a specific spoiler of the game?)
Also strange parallel but Pierrot's strange musings on how nothing is ever "complete" how this guy just wants to exist as a whole or whatever, it makes sense for the themes of the game but this is strangely relevant to the Wastelanders as well??? Think about it!!!
anyways I think it would be really funny if the characters just called Red the "game freak" with the same weight as some sort of slur, and people start associating him with their freaking Tajiri creator myth where they all scream about he's the "allmighty game freak" or whatever so there's at least ONE person who's all like "I KNOW WHO YOU ARE RED TAJIRI" and Red is SUPER confused, does it really help that Tajiri and Red kinda superficially look-alike??
idk how "on the nose" I want this kind of thing to be, but the best part is that the residents probably have a strained relationship with game freak considering they were FORGOTTEN by them so it makes the parallels even worse 😭😭😭😭😭
There's also some background information that adds even MORE fridge logic to my brain, but one of these is the "Red fingerprint theory", it's essentially a headcanon that turned into Ascended Fridge Horror... if we're putting the whole Game Freak myth in mind, then these guys kind of have ALL the RIGHT to assume their myth is real??? and the corporation itself is intervening?!?!?!?!?
because.... if Epic Mickey kind of has some subtext between Mickey the character and Mickey the corporate mascot (via the blot I think), then having that with Red is arguably MORE messed up, he is a literal CHILD and we are already messing with his sense of "innocence" and "morality"...THEY SENT A CHILD TO DO THE WORK OF A MAN!!!!!
The fact that Red could also represent the corporation (Game Freak) also kind of messes me up, it's like they are using him to cause their problems and then "fix" them all, very much having your cake and eating it too...
Not only are we messing with his morality, but putting the weight of a corporation AND A CREATOR MYTH?!?!?!!!!???
WE ARE ESSENTIALLY CRACKING RED UNDER IRREVERSIBLE PRESSURE!!!!!
AS IF HIM MURDERING HIS BROTHERIN WASN'T ENOUGH!!!!
(and nobody realizes this because they see an adventure with a kid and a paintbrush...)
as for Red fingerprint theory? I think the fingerprint thing is so subtle when the player realizes it for the first time they can just chalk it up to an Easter egg, until somebody points it out at least sometime during the plot or gameplay...
It's literally so funny that I WEAPONIZED Satoshi Tajiri's real world IRRELEVANTNESS in the company history/press and turning it into a genuine plot point.... It's making him seem like a pink diamond level narrative haunter... and you know she's regarded for being morally complex
but he doesn't even have an excuse! unlike Rose, he's just straight up being neglectful and forgot??
I don't think there's even much of a copyright dispute like with Walt and Oswald!
The guy isn't even dead so he doesn't even have an excuse in-lore!!
It's not like he can just shake it off and be all like "sorry fellas I forgot yall existed" beause that's kinda insensitive to the Wastelanders, essentially stuck inside Game Freak purgatory...
Everything was taken from Carton in Epic Red and his lack of fame is just the cherry on top..
The audacity to even give him a Tajiri dummy (Red) to rage at....
Although the complexity of the story makes you question if it's even Red's fault...
is Red just as trapped as the rest of them?
I think this is the exact kind of question that they were trying to get across with Epic Mickey but... you can debate on how well that worked, like this is the levels of complexity that they were trying to have in Epic Mickey's story, but one could wonder how well that got across besides your shower thoughts...
And it's actually SO HILARIOUS ON HOW CONFUSED RED IS WHENEVER THE TAJIRI MYTH STUFF IS MENTIONED BECAUSE?????
RED TECHNICALLY MET HIM??!?!
For context, in the Pokemon games, the game freak offices exist in-universe... in Generation 1, this office includes an NPC who's labeled a "game designer"... guess who's the only one labeled as "Game Design" in Gen 1's credits... it's Tajiri....
and he's the one who gives you Pokedex certificate thing
it was even confirmed to be him in some Pokémon where's Waldo book of all things???
(although... you can technically question if this is the "real" Tajiri but like this is still hilarious 😭😭😭)
They're all screaming about some dude like he's a all-powerful deity meanwhile he's just a tired guy in an office 😭😭😭😭
they never SEEN his like meta doppelganger Easter egg in the Pokémon games NOR have they even seen the irl dude!!! maybe...
Carton is probably the only one who vividly remembers his face or smth so that we get some sort of parallel to that one scene where Oswald stares at the Walt statue and goes "I knew he liked you more" from earlier 😭😭😭😭
MISC CHARACTERIZATION THINGS
I think it would be so funny if Red was all like "that sure was an Epic Red, ammirite Carton?"
and Carton is all like: *strangles him* PEOPLE LITERALLY DIED RED 😭😭😭
this is NOT original in the slightest though it's actually based on this thing I found on the EM Subreddit
" yay everything's back to normal :D " - Red
okay this is FRYING me so you guys get another characterization thing (yes it's original)
Random characterization thing uhh
Red: so... is your helmet part of your body or does it come off? *PULLS ON PULSEMAN'S HEAD*
Carton: RED CAN YOU STOP BEING SO RACIALLY INSENSITIVE 😭😭😭 STOP HARASSING PULSY WITH YOUR UNCULTURED AHH 😭😭
Pulseman: if you call me "pulsy" again I'm going to electrocute you 😭😭
Pulseman: carton's right, I don't just harass YOU by taking YOUR stupid hat off assuming that it could be part of your BODY RED. 😭😭
Red: please I'm so sorry 😭😭😭
imagine he just gives into the intrusive thoughts and just slaps his stupid hat off and Red hatless is like 🥺🥺😭😭😭😭😭
Red: *cries while clutching hat for dear life because his "brothers" were mean to him*
Pulseman: all this over a hat bro
Carton: can you stop being insensitive to my bro
Pulseman: okay NOW he's your BRO??? DIDN'T HE KILL YOUR SISTER
Carton: true. BUT WE CAN'T JUST PSYCHOLOGICALLY TORTURE HIM BRO THAT'S TOO FAR 😭😭😭😭 WE DON'T HAVE ANY SAY ON WHO GETS TO SUFFER OR NOT 😭😭😭
Other characterization thing
Pulseman: oh yea Red these are the portals, *points at television with game freak game on it* my dad made these for the easy access to Wasteland, he's not the same anymore though...
Pulseman: yea my dad is actually dr waruyama, he wasn't always that way, though.
Red: you have a dad??? and he's THAT guy??? AND HE'S A TERRORIST???
Pulseman: yeah... he's the leader of the Galaxy Gang, and I have a evil brother apparently
(canonizes toshiyama is waruyama theory, yes that was debated in the pulseman fandom that consisted of like 3 members for a while because it was confirmed in the Wii localized version but not the Japanese original)
(it's fine because Epic Mickey is known for being a slight hodgepodge of canon, notably having Ortensia in the middle between a canon character and an OC for a little bit, so it's not like this is out of nowhere or anything)
thanks for reading this whole long thread, this took way longer than expected
hope y'all enjoyed Epic Red!
