Humans do not typically seek Tapu Lele for its own sake, but for its fabled ability to find whatever their heart desires. There is no pokemon too rare for it to locate, no extant powerup or ancient artifact which can long elude its sight; Tapu Lele can even fulfill the simple desire for gold beyond its trainer's wildest dreams. On Akala Island, in the Ruins of Life, a thousand quests collapse into one.

Tapu Lele, for its part, resents the constant noise outside its home from trainers who do not value it for itself. It is a powerful and wrathful guardian deity in its own right, and more than one trainer to capture and fail to value it saw their wishes twisted like those made to a Jirachi, or fell prey to a seemingly unrelated curse. Its haunting laughter, it is said, drives its former trainers mad.

Yet Tapu Lele is also said to be second to only Xerneas as a healer, and when it defeats a trainer it respects (although no one has yet determined how to win said respect), it will heal not only their pokemon, but their own injuries and maladies. Indeed, tales abound on Akala Island of trainers' bedridden parents and grandparents mysteriously waking up cured and living for decades longer. Those few to fight Tapu Lele together with a trainer have likened the experience to an opponent allowed to use eight pokemon, and noticed the warm way it laughed as it healed.

In this modern, connected age, a variation of Tapu Lele's name has become popular internet slang for laughter. Sometimes it is used sardonically in the face of tragedy, other times earnestly in response to comedy, and comparatively rarely by Alolans, religious scholars, and others who can even identify the original "Top Lel".