>>20722352It is possible they looked at Lucario and thought "hey this guy looks marketable, let's push the hell out of him." But I don't think that's the case. Lucario was designed and revealed really early on in Gen 4's development, long before D/P was even officially announced. Even then it got so much exposure that a lot of people thought it was a legendary. To me that indicates that GF wanted a mascot for gen 4, and designed Lucario to fulfill that role. In the end, it's all speculation though.
Zoroark failed because GF didn't push it as hard as Lucario. Yes, it got a movie, but unlike Lucario there was no smash game to advertise it, you couldn't get it in-game without an event until BW2, and competitively it was pretty shitty.
As for the Pikachu thing iirc it was a stroke of luck. Anime needed a mascot and Pikachu was popular so they went with that.
