The Team Rocket trio are no strangers to failure. In their 23 years of dastardly plots, shady schemes, and unreliable mecha, they have failed in a multitude of ways, not just at catching their prized Pokémon, Ash’s Pikachu. Thanks to the trio’s many failures, they’re not exactly seen as threats. In fact, their ineptitude can be endearing.
Among Jessie, James, and Meowth’s lowlights, there’s the time they failed to recite their own motto, the fact that they were usurped by smarter and more competent thieves in their own organization, and their failure to even be bad guys by performing good deeds.
10 They Constantly Sabotage Themselves
For all the effort Team Rocket puts into disguising themselves, they sure like to rip off those disguises and reveal their true identities to recite their motto. If they could just contain themselves a little more, they would have had a lot more success. Given their love of the spotlight, not to mention all the times their mechas have malfunctioned or their plans have backfired, it’s easy to see why the Team Rocket trio is so unsuccessful.
9 They Are Repeatedly Duped By A Magikarp Salesman
The Magikarp salesman is an unscrupulous con man who sells Pokémon and other things at ridiculous prices. Team Rocket are recurring victims of the salesman’s ploys, buying a Magikarp disguised as a Feebas, trading a Weepinbell for James’s Victreebell, and buying a machine that the man claimed could evolve Pokémon, only to end up malfunctioning and disintegrating. Team Rocket just never seems to learn when it comes to this peddler of dubious wares.
8 Meowth’s Inability To Learn Pay Day Made Him A False God
In “Meowth Rules,” Team Rocket finds themselves on a deserted island, with Meowth being mistaken for a deity by the island’s inhabitants. It is believed that when Meowth uses Pay Day, it will bring the villagers happiness and prosperity, but, due to having spent so much time learning how to talk like a human being, Meowth is unable to learn the move.
Jessie and James try to fool the islanders by throwing nickels and bottle caps to make it look like they’re coming from the sky, but Meowth, missing his friends, owns up to the charade before rejoining the team and leaving the island.
7 They Failed To Be Bad Guys By Helping Ash
In “Pokémon the Movie: 2000,” Team Rocket helped Ash and Lugia to save the world by coming to the rescue in a motorboat. And that wasn’t the only time they were the good guys. They also helped Ash stop some evil Malamar from taking over the world, and they saved some caged Pokémon that had been poached. They even spent an entire episode cheering for Pikachu. For a group that prides itself on being bad, Team Rocket does a fair amount of good.
6 They Focus On Pikachu When There Are So Many Other Pokémon
Ash’s Pikachu is special, there’s no doubt about that, but Team Rocket’s infatuation with it borders on the unhealthy. They do occasionally go after other Pokémon, but the majority of their time and energy has been spent attempting and failing to catch Pikachu. If they had spent that same amount of time and energy catching other Pokémon, they would most likely be a lot richer than catching Pikachu would make them.
5 They Failed To Recite Their Own Motto
One would think that having recited the same motto (albeit with variations) on so many occasions, Team Rocket wouldn’t have any trouble with it whatsoever. In “The Punchy Pokémon,” Jessie and James disguise themselves as a giant by having Jessie sit on James’s shoulders and wearing a large coat in order to enter a boxing competition. After they are rumbled, they begin to recite the motto but James is clearly struggling, and he barely gets through his first couple of lines before falling to his knees and whimpering.
4 They Failed To Steal Moltres’ Flame
“All Fired Up,” the 74th episode of the anime, sees the Team Rocket trio attempting to steal the flame that is supposed to symbolize the spirit of the Pokémon League. While they are able to wrestle the torch away from Ash and get away on their balloon, they manage to singe themselves by messing with it.
They manage to get hold of the torch again by disguising themselves as Pokémon League Officials before entering a mecha, but Moltres appears from the flame and blasts them off, humiliating them in front of a stadium full of people.
3 They Haven’t Caught Pikachu Despite Countless Attempts
Team Rocket could do with taking to heart Albert Einstein’s quote about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results being the definition of insanity. Their fruitless pursuit of Pikachu has long been an exercise in futility. Even after all the mechas, pitfalls, and disguises, racking up failure after failure, they have yet to learn their lesson and continue to try and catch the diminutive Electric Pokémon.
2 They Were Usurped By Butch & Cassidy
Butch and Cassidy are members of Team Rocket who are actually competent at thievery. Unlike Jessie, James, and Meowth, they are in good standing with Giovanni, to the extent that they received more funding in the form of jet packs and motorized scooters. It must have been a bitter pill to swallow when the Team Rocket trio saw Butch and Cassidy arrive on the scene in “The Breeding Center Secret.”
1 They Failed In One Of Their Most Ambitious Schemes
A lot of planning went into Operation Tempest, a scheme devised by Giovanni to kidnap Meloetta and use her voice to unseal the Reveal Glass, a mystical mirror with special powers. After successfully stealing Meloetta (and Ash and Pikachu to boot) Giovanni uses the Reveal Glass to summon Tornadus, Thundurus, and Landorus.
A battle ensues with the Pokémon of Cilan, Iris, Ridley, Cynthia, and Ash, ending with Pikachu using Electro Ball to defeat Team Rocket and free Meloetta. The Reveal Glass makes Giovanni go mad with power, but the Team Rocket trio talks him down and they retreat. A somewhat anticlimactic end to their ambitious plan.
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