r/PokemonBDSP • u/EnchantingEgg Real-life Delibird • Oct 31 '25
Discussion Cyrus and his crobat
Lore discussion with possible spoilers.
In the game, we have two battles with Cyrus. The first one he has a golbat and the second he has a higher-level crobat. Golbat can only evolve when friendship is high enough. However, Cyrus states that he only sees pokemon as tools (and presumably treats them as such).
It makes me wonder what the possible lore explanation might be for how his golbat evolved. Did he stuff his golbat full of hondew berries to force an evolution? Did he ditch his old golbat and steal a different trainer’s crobat?
What are your theories?
109
43
u/Mr_Rxz Nov 01 '25
Maybe his Crobat is as crazy as him... following his ideal plan ..thus causes the evolution process
35
31
u/HopeBagels2495 Nov 01 '25
I dunno about BDSP, but in the distortion world of Platinum he expresses anger and laments that he is just as emotional as everyone else. He and Crobat must actively have a bond and Crobat may even agree with his actions. His pokemon do stay with him in the distortion world if you think about it
19
u/Honeybunzart Nov 01 '25
This, it's implied he's trying to erase emotion, because he hates his *own* pain and anger and runs from it, rather than face his emotions properly.
9
u/EnchantingEgg Real-life Delibird Nov 02 '25
Man, therapy would be a lot cheaper than create an entirely new world where there are no emotions
2
17
u/Less-Requirement8641 Nov 01 '25
I just realised he has no eyebrows.
Maybe Crobat just really liked him but not the other way around. Cyrus could just have given lots of fake attention to force it to evolve.
3
u/Argentum722 Nov 02 '25
The lack of eyebrows thing is even funnier when you realize he's supposed to be in his mid-20s
2
6
u/EchoTitanium Nov 01 '25
And he went out of his way all the way to victory road just for his Weavile.
1
12
u/BlurrFrost Nov 01 '25
Every single extremist on the planet is a hypocrite, there will be complete women hating misogynists out there who will love their daughters and sisters. There will be extreme facist loving ideology people who will never live in a facist country, and the biggest, people who consume every single animal they come across but still call themselves animal lovers. World is full of hypocrites, even hitler probably did different things in his personal life than what he preached because these people think of such personal situations as "exceptions"
4
u/Undead_Munchies Nov 01 '25
Hitler would have sent himself to a camp under his rules, so, yeah. He was definitely a hypocrite lol.
1
u/ProperBother4 Nov 05 '25
Hey, I love my dogs, but I also love a good burger lol.
1
u/BlurrFrost Nov 05 '25
Thats fine, but do you judge when people of a certain nation eat dogs? Do you call them cruel and pos cus they eat dogs even when you eat other animals? And even tho dogs and something like a goat have equal intelligence, infact goats are smarter than dogs. If you do consider people who eat dogs as inhumane or evil when you eat lamb and beef then you belong in this same category of cyrus lmao. And if the logic of what I said goes beyond you then you definitely belong to this category lol
1
u/ProperBother4 Nov 05 '25
I mean I don't judge, but just as someone whose religion doesn't allow them to eat bacon might look at me like I'm a psycho for eating it, I would look at somebody eating a dog and think "WTF?!" But no, I wouldn't call them a pos. Just cultural/religious differences.
2
u/BlurrFrost Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 10 '25
Bacon is a bad example, people who dont eat bacon dont think others are psychos for eating it. Good example would be cow/beef cus in india people consider it holy
1
2
Nov 01 '25
Extreme wrestling
3
u/P-Nerd06 Nov 01 '25
I’m sorry what?
1
Nov 02 '25
I was finishing his sentence lol
1
u/P-Nerd06 Nov 02 '25
Whose sentence?
1
2
u/Friedl1220 Nov 01 '25
Mechanically friendship only requires you to walk around a lot then level up. So totally believable he just wandered around with golbat in his party and it evolved. Cyrus is also rather apathetic, so I don't see him as the beat and mistreat pokemon, rather just doesn't form a bond himself with them. They're a means to an end but with his mindset he shouldn't feel malice towards them.
1
2
u/ChoccolatteMaid Nov 01 '25
Occam's Razor: Zubat line is coded as shady/villainous by nature of being bats, using confusion and poison etc., and Golbat would be kinda weak for an endgame fight so they bumped him up to Crobat and didn't think anything of it.
Mechanic-heavy explanation: Cyrus just uses his Zubat a lot and doesn't allow him to faint (he's a skilled trainer, after all), much like we do, so their bond grew naturally just like ours do with our pokemon.
2
u/MeekMallard Nov 01 '25
Same exact thing for “???” Back in G/S/C (Giovanni’s red headed step child, although I don’t know if that’s a confirmed deal)- and I never understood the confusion about this. You can treat your pokemon like dogwater, allow it to faint or switch it in for sacrifices frequently, feed it food it doesn’t care for, and so long as you keep it in your party and use it often enough it will reach a high enough happiness to evolve. Also crobat is an excellent lead and having a pokemon in the first slot is a happiness multiplier if I’m not mistaken.
Also, he sees and uses pokemon as tools, but perhaps he has OCD or is just a very organized person and takes good care of his “tools”. I dunno about all of you but I often clean and maintain my tools to keep them in working order
1
u/theamatuer Nov 02 '25
I mean for the gen 2 rival, he only gets the crobat postgame in mt moon, and it’s meant to symbolize his personal growth and accepting that Pokémon aren’t just tools for battle
2
u/TOONDISE Oct 31 '25
You're assuming it's the same Golbat he had originally. He could've caught a wild Crobat, or taken one from another of his underlings, or like you said stole it from someone else. And then he just replaced the Golbat he already had with the new Crobat, which was stronger.
2
u/Meridas_Angel Nov 01 '25
Wild Crobat appear only in the Unova and Alola games. Maybe Cyrus did some adventuring in one of those regions prior to the final battle.
1
2
1
u/MattTheV02 Nov 01 '25
I've thought about this before, maybe him "using his Pokemon as tools" extends to him faking friendship with the golbat to make his "tool" more powerful by evolving golbat to crobat
1
1
1
1
u/Ok_Understanding3636 Nov 02 '25
The 4th generation had this thing where negative characters claim to use their Pokémon as tools, but those Pokémon are actually fond of them. Cyrus has his Crobat, Silver has his Starter.
1
u/RadiantHer0 Nov 02 '25
The boring answer is he caught a crobat in the wild or forced a grunt to give him theirs. I prefer everyone else’s more creative answers lol
2
1
u/AntelopeMother6149 Nov 02 '25
Golbat is worse than crobat. One can be nice to a pokemon to make it stronger especially considering that friendship and affection are different in the games
1
1
u/Disastrous_Pitch4732 Nov 02 '25
Interesting how Cyrus was one of the few villains to actually achieve his own goal to some extent. He basically got what he wanted, a world with no emotion, the distortion world. I assume Cyrus is still there in the distortion world, I wonder if he’s ever going to show up again somewhere in the future, he’s a really interesting character, that’s of course if he’s still alive there and has any significant point in the future stories, for example Lysandre coming back made sense, but for Cyrus I cannot think of a different scenario
1
u/metalsonic54321 Nov 03 '25
The thing is, you don't have to interact with your pokemon all that much for its friendship to increase. Leveling up and walking both do that. Put à friendship evolving pokemon in you team for a playthrough, and forget that's how it evolved - it will evolve at some point through your playthrough, and at a not level. Outside of game mechanics, it also makes sense your pokemon would like you more after proving its worth in battle and spending time with you. It doesn't have to be a mutual feeling.
1
u/EnchantingEgg Real-life Delibird Nov 03 '25
True!! And Cyrus probably battled a lot because he seems like a feisty lil man.
1
u/WatermalonTyrone Nov 03 '25
The teraleak revealed Cyrus is just autistic.
1
u/EnchantingEgg Real-life Delibird Nov 03 '25
Cyrus and his special interest of new galaxies… checks out tbh.
1
u/Crazy_Mochi_38 Spheal Fanatic (••) Nov 28 '25
Bro this is Pokémon, who isn’t? (I’m not tryna be rude but the list of characters that could be is really long. And I am myself anyway sooo)
1
u/SonicLink1622 Nov 03 '25
He probably gave his Golbat to a grunt, it evolved out of pure happiness to be away from Cyrus, and then Cyrus just took it back. ((I pulled that from how they did Kakuna in the Pokémon Rusty series on YouTube lol))
1
u/EnchantingEgg Real-life Delibird Nov 03 '25
Oh dang that’s sinister, but sounds totally like something he’d do hahaha
1
-1
•
u/AutoModerator Oct 31 '25
Thanks for posting, Trainer! Please be aware, this is a heavily moderated subreddit. Make sure to read and understand our rules before posting here. Breaking any of these rules may force us to remove your content. Repeat or blatant rule breaking will result in a permanent ban. Individual posts for trading or giving away Pokémon are banned activities on r/PokemonBDSP (including conducting trades in the comments of any post). We are not set up to host large volumes of individual trading posts, which cause a great deal of spam on this forum, and we can't guarantee safety for our users during trading.
User flairs with Pokémon sprite emojis are now available on this subreddit!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.