>>39723345Johto games didn't focus on Team Rocket much because they were the remnants of Team Rocket. Trying to get their shit together to get Giovanni to return. The future games shoehorned the villains into using whatever box legend is there. Rockets were just mafia gangsters. They weren't a threat in Johto anyways.
What Team Rocket accomplished in Johto:
-sell some slowpoke tails
-grunts harass Kimono Theater in Ecruteak City
-Lake of Rage radio test
-grunts holding the visitor gate to Lake of Rage as a toll
-Goldenrod takeover
The slowpoke tail was a side job to finance their operation. They had dealers around the region selling the tails to kids for exuberant prices and did not pan out for them in the long run. In FireRed/LeafGreen you had slowpoke tail and raticate tail as passwords, so maybe in another part of Johto they were selling Raticate tails. Maybe they were selling Raticate tails as knockoff slowpoke tails after the slowpoke deal went down because the player.
the grunts harassing the Kimono theater was just some grunt's slacking off. and the toll gate was also some grunts getting some pocket change.
The Lake of Rage radio transmission was a test and the culmination of their work from Sevii Islands. It seems that originally it was meant to evolve Magikarp into Gyarados to sell/use, but since their organization was in remnants they had to use it on a grander scale to instead get Giovanni back.
Even in the postgame in Kanto where Team Rocket was once infamous across the entire region. The one lone foreign grunt doing random acts of crime. The citizens responded with "some weird guy in all black." Team Rocket has fallen out of relevance in even their old home of Kanto in the few years they were disbanded. It's pretty sad.
