For a series with little by way of story, it's impressive how many iconic non-player characters Pokémon has spawned. There is of course Professor Oak, who sets the player on their path to be a master trainer in the original games, as well as Brock and Misty, gym leaders who grew to be fan favorites in the anime series. And who can forget Blue a.k.a. Gary, the rapscallion first rival in Generation One? These are just a few of the endearing NPCs who have left a mark on both the series and popular culture across the series' nine generations of games. (There's also Hop, from Generation Eight, who is very annoying.) However, my favorite NPC is also, in my opinion, the most helpful: Bill, the Pokémon Maniac from Red, Blue, and Yellow.
When the player first meets Bill at his house at the Cerulean Cape, near the second gym, he is not human. Bill, a Pokémon obsessive who is also something of a mad scientist, has seen a Pokémon teleportation experiment of his backfire, which has physically combined him with one. The player helps get Bill fixed up, and it's all cute and silly. What is not silly is what Bill does for the player, giving them access to the Pokémon storage system, afterwards known as "Bill's PC."
For a series whose stated goal is to "catch 'em all," a storage system is a necessity, and it's not like Pokémon wouldn't have one even if Bill didn't exist. "Branding" it as his invention, though, provides some extra lore in a series that has more fan-written context than is actually in the game, especially early on. (Case in point: I stumbled across a conspiracy that Bill is actually evil. It's not true, but people love to make up lore where the games provide little. It's not as good as the conspiracy theory that Pokémon are a result of an infection, but it's something.) Bill is also delightfully utilitarian: While his personality does shine through in his initial meeting and Pokémon combination mishap, he's mostly just there to give the player tools to either make the experience smoother or, in one instance, advance the plot.
See, Bill also gives the player a ticket to the S.S. Anne, a ship docked in Vermilion City, where Lt. Surge and his electric-type minions await at the game's third gym. Again, this is just a functional bit of help: If the Pokémon developers want you to go to this ship, where there are many trainers to help level up the brand new Diglett you should have grabbed in a cave by Vermilion City, then they will find a way to get you there. But having an established, friendly face like Bill hand over the ticket makes for a more engaging logistical solution.
Bill appears in later games, and he might be more helpful to me specifically in one case: In Generation Two, Bill is the source of my absolute favorite Pokémon, giving the player Eevee. It makes sense there, too. If Bill is obsessed with Pokémon, then he'd surely be obsessed with the Pokémon that has the most interesting evolutionary tree of them all. (As of now, Eevee can evolve into eight different forms, all of different types; even though the internet has threatened to ruin Vaporeon [warning: that link includes a scarring copypasta], that one is still my favorite, followed by the psychic-type Espeon.) In the Gen Two games, we also learn some family lore, as his father is introduced as the Move Tutor, an NPC who can teach such iconic moves as Flamethrower, Ice Beam, and Thunderbolt. He's also a degenerate gambler, for what it's worth.
Past the Gold-Silver-Crystal generation, Bill's appearances mostly dry up, but his presence remains in the mechanics of storage, a system that has evolved to allow players to pass Pokémon across game generations. In Generation Four, a friend of Bill's named Bebe also gives the player Eevee, and she mentions that she improved upon Bill's initial storage system. His Pokémon mishap gets a mention in Generation Seven, when a character states that they read about Bill accidentally combining himself with a 'mon. Bill even shows up in the trading card game, as a card that allows the player to draw two more cards. Bill might not be a series mainstay as it's moved from the Game Boy all the way to the Switch 2 with this year's upcoming Pokémon Legends: Z-A, but he has more of a claim to fame than most of his fellow NPCs.
Is it important to know additionally that Bill's younger sister can't wink? Or that he has a legion of fans who will randomly mention him throughout the game, such as the trainer who, after the player defeats him, randomly says that "Bill has lots of Pokémon! He collects rare ones, too!"? Not really, but it does help make the world of the Kanto region feel a bit more personal and alive. (I do like knowing that his first Pokémon was Abra, a psychic-type that evolves into the hilariously overpowered Alakazam. Bill knows ball.)
In replaying the Pokémon games over the years, as my gaming habits have evolved since the first time I played Blue at age nine, I've always felt that the series could use more NPCs with this much flavor, this much personality. Sometimes, Pokémon games can feel a bit dead when it comes to their human characters, given that most of them have three or four lines total. Sure, Pokémon is about the Pokémon first and foremost, but touches like Bill's eccentric introduction and the consistent aid he offers deepen the experience in a way the series doesn't take advantage of often enough. And if in the process of fleshing Bill out, we learn that he's lactose-intolerant, then all the better.
