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I think Fantina and Glacia came from North-eastern Kalos, but Lt Surge's was originally from the USA and the war was Vietnam so they had to pull back the real world references once G/S was changed from sequals to R/B but as their own entries to the series, the general plot was what was left which was why it felt more substantial than R/S, to this day, his only sign of ethnicity is in his nickname the Lightening American, his size also made it hard to retcon since he towered over a group of Japanese kids (the gang) and someone who was almost an adult (Brock).
Lt Surge's War was Vietnam, this is assuming the original canon for Pokemon was that it ACTUALLY taken place in Japan's Kanto region, however non-japanese released omitted any mentioning of the region ingame to make the game appear fantasy-based to western audiences...which was instantly dropped in G/S due to it's wide cultural differences between cities such as some sort of Buddhist tower, a Geisha dancehouse, a rural town that was inhabited by ninja which even sells Manju special to its town.
There was also the Moon Landing, and the Apollo space shuttle...that was edited outside of Non-Japanese versions of FRLG due to a RL disaster involving the shuttle, though it's not a case of retconning, due to them still reusing the old real life-esque pokedex entries.
