What are all the times that the anime affected competitive in any way?

Question

for example greninja became a monster in competitive just because the anime made him have a strong connection to ash to make dollars, is there anyhting else close to this?

Comments

Not often you see the anime and competitive tags together!

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How do we define "affected"? How do we determine whether something in the games was influenced by the anime?
Ash-Greninja is the only realy example I can come up with off the top of my head, most of the other stuff in the games that references the anime is pretty inconsequential to competitive, example: partner cap Pikachu.

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well wether pikachu has a hat doesn't affect who wins in any way.

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Hat-pika bst way higher than normal pika. No one uses it though so it didn’t really influence the competitive scene

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Hat Pikachu has the same BST, but had an exclusive Z-Move. It was the starter in Lets Go that had the higher stat spread.

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oh so in that case it definetly counts.

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Is your question more "What are all the times a concept from the anime was added to the games" then? Since you're not really concerned about competitive viability

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Is there anything in the games's mechanics that references the anime other than Ash-Greninja and Partner Pikachu? I think those are the only confirmed anime references ( by which I mean things that certainly would not be added to the games if not for the anime). I haven't watched the anime in ages though, so I might be forgetting something here.

Answer 1

The only confirmed cases of things being added to the games to reference the anime are Ash-Greninja in SM, Partner Cap Pikachu in SM and the starter Pikachu in LGPE. By confirmed anime references I am referring to things that would certainly not be added if not for their presence in the anime.
Ash-Greninja: Added to the games based on the anime, is great in competitive.
Partner Cap Pikachu: Has exclusive access Pikashunium-Z, which lets it an exclusive Z-Move based on Thunderbolt. Not relevant to competitive as Pikachu's stats are not good enough for it be useful. Even if Pikachu was used, it would run Light Ball instead.
Starter Pikachu in LGPE: Has higher stats than normal Pikachu and access to a few exclusive moves. Never really caught on in competitive LGPE because it couldnt keep up in terms of stats. It doesnt have a Smogon analysis and is nowhere to be seen on the LGPE OU viability rankings. Apparently it has niche in LGPE UU, but pretty no one plays those formats.
Links
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/lgpe-uu-vr-update-post-40.3659882/
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/lgpe-ou-viability-rankings-update-post-66.3656868/

Comments

There were several events that had Pokémon with movesets based on those in the anime. It might be worth checking to see if they got any exclusive moves through this.

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Victini did get Bolt Strike, Blue Flare, Fusion Bolt, Fusion Flare and Glaciate as part of a distribution based on a pokemon movie tie- in though. I'm not sure if that can be considered anime influenced since it didnt use any of those moves in the anime to my knowledge.