thorton, my boy... what to even say about him? there isnt a lot TO say. hes just a guy with an utterly ridiculous hairstyle and a weird way of speaking. thats the exact kind of character i like!

he serves as the factory head in platinum and HGSS, basically the final boss of the battle facilities in the postgame, so not a lot of people ever got to see him. i was included in that group- im really bad at the battle facilities. lol.

i started to adore thorton when i was thinking to myself: i have this pokemon oc who is a scientist in johto. who can i pair him up with as a lab partner? and then i remembered thortons existence and slapped the two together. raden and thorton are besties in the lore i made the fuck up. i call them meanmachine. meanmachine for life

aarune shows up for, like, a combined 10 minutes in all of ORAS. but i love this guy, okay? hes the secret base guy, literally all he does is talk about secret bases and force the player to listen to his rambles. i like that in a man.

he has a REALLY cool design, way too cool to be so underused. we know a shocking amount about him judging by his lack of screentime- namely that he's 25 and from unova. this is because he loves running his mouth and thats literally the first thing he says when you meet him. but i still wish we knew more and that he did more... HES SO COOL MAN...

paulo is an absolute doozy. he starts off as another generic friendly rival, only to slowly come to doubt the concept of "friendship is magic!" as he keeps losing throughout the story. after he THINKS HE WATCHED HIS PUPPY GET VAPORIZED IN FRONT OF HIM (YES, THIS HAPPENS,) he has enough of friendship being the most valuble thing, steals a hoopa, and vows to become the "last evil" and stop all the other evil teams on pasio with force.

unhinged concept for a rival. paulo walked so kieran could run. he isnt particularly well written and his story was utterly sidelined for the majority of the plot, but god, its so insane i cant help but love him.

paulo, unlike the other entries on this list, is an interesting case for being obscure not because he has a small amount of screentime, but he is obscure because nobody gives a fuck about masters. even those who play masters tend not to give a fuck about the story, since its... often not great. but hey, it has paulo, so it cant be all bad.