In the TV-series, Team Rocket has a largely comedic role, as the trio of grunts repeatedly fail to steal Pokémon while operating increasingly flashy mecha.

The games present Team Rocket breaking and entering, murdering a mother Marowak, and chopping off the tails of Slowpoke to sell on the black market.

[6] In the long-running Pokémon anime series, a trio of Team Rocket grunts Jessie (ムサシ, Musashi), James (コジロウ, Kojirō), and Meowth (ニャース, Nyarth) are major secondary characters.

[11] In 2011, the Pokémon series was building up to an arc in which Giovanni faces off against rival organization Team Plasma, but the episodes were cancelled following the Great East Japan Earthquake.

[21] The Team Rocket trio from the anime appear in the Electric Tale of Pikachu manga adaptation, where Jessie and James are shown at the end to be married and expecting a child.

[22] Team Rocket is the central antagonist in the 2000 stageplay Pokémon Live!, in which Jessie, James, and Meowth successfully steal Ash Ketchum's Pikachu and use it to train Giovanni's Mewtwo.

Yahoo!-writer Jay Castello notes that as Pokémon fans grew up, the struggle of "twenty-somethings who couldn't quite find their place in the world or succeed at their ambitions" became increasingly relatable, and a sub-fandom dedicated to the trio sprang up.

[11] Blaustein was inspired by Meowth-focused episode "Go West, Young Meowth" to come out and transition as a transgender woman, a friend of her later metaphorically describing the character as "a human trapped in a Pokémon's body.

[27] Chris Carter of Destructoid called the English voice team for Jessie, James, and Meowth (Lillis, Stuart, and Blaustein) "some of the show's finest work.

Their complex relationship with the main cast was highlighted as an element that was a core part of the television series, acting as a contrast to Ash while viewers are also made to sympathize with them.

Although the Team Rocket trio is positioned as antagonists, they are not hesitant to help Ash Ketchum and his friends on several occasions, especially when they find themselves in difficult and dangerous situations, as often depicted in the movies.

[31] The book Japanese Influence on American's Children's Television: Transforming Saturday Morning describes them similarly, citing them as comic relief or as a tension breaker despite being the series' core antagonists.