In the world of Pokemon, there are many interesting and evil enemy teams for us to face. Each group is different in terms of how evil it is and how well it works.
It’s not surprising that criminal activities thrive in the Pokemon world, with its small, isolated towns and worrying lack of father figures. There seems to be at least one evil team in every area that is trying to steal Pokemon from other trainers or destroy the world with too much power.
But even though their outfits look like they came from Party City and most of their names sound like those of little league softball teams, Pokemon bad guys are the real thing. These Pokemon bad guys are a colorful and interesting bunch. They range from small-time thugs to large, aggressive companies. Here is a list of all the bad Pokemon teams, ranked from worst to best in terms of how evil they are and how well they work.
Team Yell
Team Yell in Pokemon Sword and Shield doesn’t believe in bad things or plan bad things. In fact, their main goal is to support Marnie, who is your foe. They aren’t bad people or thieves. On the contrary, they are just a group of gym coaches from the Spikemuth Gym led by Marnie’s brother, Piers.
This is an interesting change, but it doesn’t change much about how safe this team is. In fact, they help you win the game in the end. So, even though they look like a bad team, they are just a bunch of Poke-hooligans.
Team Star
Like Team Yell, Team Star doesn’t really want to do anything bad or take over the world. In fact, they might be the most understandable bad team in any Pokemon game because, at the end of the day, they’re just unruly students fighting for what they believe in. Other bad teams usually only have one leader, but Team Star has a bunch of interesting and memorable ones.
There are three different plots in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. One of them is about fighting and finding out the truth about where Team Star came from. Even though their history is surprisingly sad, they aren’t nearly as bad as other bad teams that have been in the series.
Team Snagem
Team Snagem is just a group of thieves in Pokemon Colosseum and Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness. They steal Pokemon for Team Cipher. Most bad teams only show up in one game, but even though Team Snagem is in two GameCube games, they aren’t as memorable as other teams.
Team Snagem isn’t the first group of thieves to steal Pokemon, but they are the only ones who turn the Pokemon they steal into Shadow Pokemon by closing their hearts. Wes, the main character of Pokemon Colosseum and a former member of Team Snagem, has to take them back and clean them up.
Team Break
Team Break in Pokemon Masters EX is about as simple as it gets for an enemy team. Not only is their outfit just a mask, but their only real goal is to steal Pokemon and destroy the Pokemon Masters League.
The only thing that makes them interesting is that the masks seem to take over the person who is wearing them. This means that the trainers in masks might not be able to control what the animals do. But we still don’t know who is really in charge and what their real goal is.
Team Skull
Team Skull used to be a group of trainers who threatened one of the Kahunas in Alola. Now, they are a sad mix of the worst people in society who live in Shady House, Po Town, and complain about how bad their lives are. Team Skull is led by the charming and skilled Guzma and Plumeria, but their lack of drive and extreme poverty keep them from reaching their goals.
All they can do is bother people who live there and sometimes steal things. “So, what? I’m not as good as a Pokemon? I already have problems with my self-worth, man!” If you like The Offspring, you’ll probably like Team Skull.
Miss Fortune Sisters
In Pokemon Legends: Arceus, the Miss Fortune Sisters used to be part of the Diamond Clan, the Pearl Clan, and the Galaxy Team, but they turned into thieves. Surprisingly, they have had a lot of success, stealing from the Ginkgo Guild more than once.
What’s interesting about them is that they aren’t obviously bad people; they’re just done with their organizations. They have to stay alive, so they might as well get even with the people who hurt them. Even though they are easy to fight, this makes them more likeable than most bad teams.
Team Aqua
Team Aqua is a group of old sailors who want to flood Hoenn to make it a better place for water-type Pokémon to live. After they failed to flood Mt. Chimney with a stolen meteorite, they used a Red Orb on a stolen submarine to wake up Kyogre, the famous water Pokemon of Hoenn.
Team Aqua, like every other villain with too much pride, can’t control the wild force they let loose, so it’s up to you to stop it from killing the world. Team Aqua is not a very bad group. But it is fair to say that they are mistaken and extreme.
Team Magma
Team Magma is the opposite of Team Aqua. They are a group of scientists who want to make Hoenn bigger so that there is more room for Pokemon to live. After trying to make a volcano erupt with a stolen asteroid and failing, they use a Blue Orb to wake up Groudon.
A lot of the time, Team Magma and Team Aqua say the same things, but that’s kind of the point. Either of these teams would make sense if you switched places with them.
The Aether Foundation
When you meet the Aether Foundation for the first time in Sun and Moon, they seem like a good group whose goal is to heal and protect Pokemon. This seems like a good idea, and for some of the workers, it is. However, when their boss, Lusamine, is set on studying the Ultra Beasts, everything goes off the rails.
Lusamine wants to find and protect the super Beasts, so she asks Faba and other members of the Aether Foundation to go through the super wormhole, even though it will cost all of Alola and freeze Pokemon to keep them safe. Even though the Aether Foundation has big goals, a small group led by a woman who is obsessed with saving Pokemon in all the wrong ways brings it down in a big way.
Team Flare
Team Flare from X and Y is a bunch of goofballs wearing zoot suits in Cheetos colors. Most people won’t be scared by this, but their plans are so stupid that they will be. These Nazi fashionistas, led by Lysandre, want to use the power of Xerneas or Yveltal to turn on an old weapon that will kill all living things and make the world a better place.
The scariest thing about Team Flare is that their crazy plan doesn’t make any sense. Even though the anime tries to explain Lysandre’s reasoning, X and Y doesn’t even try. It sounds more like a story from an end-of-the-world movie than a Pokemon game, but the darker tones really add to the tension and make Team Flare a worthy opponent.
Cipher
What if the Pokemon series had the sleazy tones of a Hollywood cyberpunk movie? The result would be Pokemon Colosseum, which would be about Team Cipher at its center. Cipher is a cruel group that made the Snagem Machine to steal Pokemon from trainers while they were in fight.
Cipher focuses on making computer software, and they figured out how to close Pokemon’s hearts on purpose, changing them into Shadow Pokemon. They want to use these biological weapons with no souls to help them take over Orre. They are a very strong enemy and one of the hardest things to beat in any Pokemon game.
Macro Cosmos
Macro Cosmos is a business company in the Sword and Shield series. It does a little bit of everything, from trains to banks to energy. The second part is what’s important. Their leader, Chairman Rose, is constantly worried about an energy problem that is said to happen 1000 years from now.
Rose tries to stop this by calling on Eternatus to make a second Darkest Day. And hundreds of workers who will do anything Chairman Rose says will help him do this. It just goes to show that money and blind dedication are the most dangerous things you can have.
Team Plasma
Team Plasma from Black and White is like a mix of PETA and a terrorist group. They are hard-core armed Pokemon activists on an all-consuming mission to free Pokemon. They bow down to Ghetsis, a dangerous manipulator who looks more like a high fantasy shaman than the leader of a bunch of bad guys in a children’s game.
Team Plasma is the first team in the series to directly talk about how Pokemon are treated, which has been a problem for a long time. Throughout Geometry Dash Subzero, this concern drives Team Plasma’s ideology, and in the end, it causes a split in the organization that shows beautifully how reality and idealism, policy and action, and purpose and message don’t always match up. Team Plasma is the most gray of all the bad teams.
Team Rocket
This is made up of classic thieves led by Giovanni who are not afraid to get dirty. They are accused of stealing priceless fossils and artifacts, holding important corporate leaders hostage, running illegal gambling rings, making clones of mythical Pokemon, and hurting people who stand in the way of their relentless pursuit of profit.
Team Rocket isn’t made up of bad scientists, crazy dreamers, or lost utopians. They are sly members of a group that takes advantage of the weak, innocent, and defenseless. And this is just about how they look most of the time. Team Rainbow Rocket is still around in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, and Team Go Rocket is still around in Pokemon Go. Even though their goals aren’t as big as those of other groups, they are by far the most persistent and successful.
Team Galactic
Team Galactic is a group of people with weird hairstyles and space-age jumpsuits. Who live in the Sinnoh area. Team Galactic’s headquarters in Veilstone City are a fake energy business where hellish experiments are done to try to figure out how to make the universe again.
When they started out in the time of the Hisui, they were a more helpful group with the same goal: to start a new life in a new world. This makes them seem even more evil now. But over time, this has been twisted and mangled into the terrible trio of Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum. It just shows that you either die as a good person or live long enough to become a bad person.