Pokemon mysteries/oddities that have baffled you

[Knight of Time]

Hi guys,

Has anyone here ever experienced any oddities in the world of Pokemon, or wanted to discuss any mysteries that have been baffling to them for some time? Well, that was the reason I wanted to make this topic. First, an oddity:

While playing Pokemon Fire Red earlier today, I hatched a female Azurill and eventually evolved her into a Marill...however, upon evolution I was surprised to see the Marill was male! Now, if anyone is wondering how this happens, it may sound confusing, but it's rather simple. Azurill has only a 25% chance of being male, while Marill has a 50% chance to be either male or female, meaning that one of every three female Azurill will evolve into a male Marill (whether or not that happens depends on the hidden personality value).

Second, there is one mystery that has been on my mind for a while. How come none of the Flying types introduced before Arceus (holding a Sky Plate) and Tornadus were pure Flying types? IIRC, wasn't Chatot originally going to be a pure Flying type before Nintendo decided to make it a Normal/Flying type? This is one mystery I sure wish someone could shed some light on, please.

[Jeff]

It was only mentioned that Chatot was a Flying-type, which led to the fandom jumping to the conclusion that since they said it was a Flying-type, it must be pure Flying. I remember saying back then that it would most likely be Normal/Flying like every other plain old Flying-type.

As for why it's the way it is, here's my theory. It's not just that there aren't any Flying types, if you look at the order of types (for example Graveler is Rock/Ground, while Rhyhorn is Ground/Rock), you'll notice that no Pokemon has Flying as its first type, except for Tornadus. Maybe in the beginning, they wanted Flying to be a purely secondary type, like an early version of an ability, so it was always tacked on as the second type. In the case of a Pokemon that was just plain old Flying, they made it a Normal-type with Flying added on. I guess in the 5th generation, they finally decided to make an exception for legendaries.

[Lady Vulpix]

Gender bending is weird indeed. I'd heard about it before.

As for why they waited so long to make a pure Flying type and even then only made legendaries, I don't know. Perhaps they felt no other Pokemon matched the profile. They should make a Pokemon that's made of air.

[Oslo]

My own theory about the whole Flying thing:

As Missingno. demonstrates, Bird was possibly intended to be a type at an early point but was scrapped. I imagine that basic birds like like Pidgey or Spearow were supposed to be Bird/Flying in the nascent stages of programming. Pokemon like Zubat, Charizard, etc. would have been Flying but not Bird (as they are now) and perhaps even Pokemon like Doduo and Farfetch'd would have been Bird but not Flying. As I imagine it, the programmers decided having both Bird and Flying was redundant (and would lead to confusion, as Pokemon like Moltres fit both the Bird/Flying mold as well as being a third type, ie. Fire) so they canned the Bird type. Pokemon that would have been Bird/Flying had the Bird slot changed to Normal rather than being reprogrammed as a monotype and Pokemon that may have been pure Bird also were given Normal/Flying. For whatever reason.

I just made this up the other day while I was on the bus and I 100% it to be stupid/nonsensical/wrong.

[DarkestLight]

Originally Posted by Lady Vulpix

They should make a Pokemon that's made of air.

What about made up of gases, which air is ?

[DarkestLight]

Why in the world do they do that anyway?

"They" referring to the Rock/Ground vs Ground/Rock business

[Rossymore]

Originally Posted by DarkestLight

What about made up of gases, which air is ?

So...Gastly.

There are quite a few oddities in the Gen I games, that's for sure. The Mew Glitch is pretty cool, being the only way to obtain Mew in Gen I/II, but why was it implemented in to begin with and with such secrecy?

[Lady Vulpix]

Air is made of gases, but Gastly is not made of air.

And yes, I've always wondered why they made Mew so hard to obtain.

And Zorua/Zoroark... They're not even legendaries. What's the point of making them unobtainable?

[Knight of Time]

Originally Posted by Lady Vulpix

And Zorua/Zoroark... They're not even legendaries. What's the point of making them unobtainable?

They're not unobtainable, but the method of obtaining them is a bit complicated:

http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Relocator

[Rossymore]

Technically, they're unobtainable if you only have the Gen V games, but being the first Gen V Pokemon revealed, they were given similar treatment to Riolu and Lucario, which were only obtainable through an Egg.
The Zoroark event is kinda cool, though.

[Blademaster]

Speaking of Gastly...

Gastly and Haunter are made of gases and they weigh less than a pound each. Makes sense, right?

Well, then they evolve into Gengar. Which is made of either the same stuff or some sort of shadow matter... almost NINETY pounds of it?!

How fucking dense is a Gengar's body?!

[Perfect Chaos]

Originally Posted by Blademaster

Speaking of Gastly...

Gastly and Haunter are made of gases and they weigh less than a pound each. Makes sense, right?

Well, then they evolve into Gengar. Which is made of either the same stuff or some sort of shadow matter... almost NINETY pounds of it?!

How fucking dense is a Gengar's body?!

Gengar gets legs, unlike Gastly and Haunter. All 89.1 pounds of it.

Talk about Thunder Thighs much...

[Shadow Wolf]

Originally Posted by Perfect Chaos

Gengar gets legs, unlike Gastly and Haunter. All 89.1 pounds of it.

Talk about Thunder Thighs much...

Hahahahaha, this definitely made me laugh.

Hmm... oddities... I think Shedinja comes to mind. I mean, it is a hollow shell, and yet it had a hard body. It doesn't move, but it floats in the air and it can use physical attacks. Oh, and of someone looks at the back of the shell, its spirit is stolen. If this is true, then how can players summon the pokemon (I mean, you're looking at the back of this pokemon when you summon it in the game, right?)?

[Lady Vulpix]

Pokedex entries are all messed up. They're like labels on wine bottles, someone drank a bottle of wine (or worse) and then wrote them.

If they were true, then how can you explain the possibility of breeding a Cubone and keeping both the mother and the child?

[Blademaster]

Originally Posted by Lady Vulpix

If they were true, then how can you explain the possibility of breeding a Cubone and keeping both the mother and the child?

My theory is that the Cubone family's 'skulls' differ depending on whether they are wild or in captivity. This is my hypothesis:

The Cubone evolutionary line has a parasitic relationship with a certain sort of fungal growth that accumulates around the outer sinus tissues. This fungus, which is white in color, starts off as a soft film around the facial orifices, but it gradually grows thicker and harder with age, often soon covering the creature's entire head from the snout back, over and around the scalp, and down to the nape of the neck. Thought it doesn't seem to harm its host very much, the fungus leeches from the Pokemon's body and will significantly shorten its lifespan. It also defends itself by entrenching deeply within the creature's dermis and cannot be extracted from the Cubone without severely harming it or killing it outright.

When held in captivity, regular medications can combat the fungus's negative effects without removing it, allowing the Cubone/Marowak to keep its 'helmet' for protective purposes as well as lengthen its lifespan. Wild members of the family, however, have no means of combating the fungus except evolution. And even this isn't foolproof: A Marowak is very protective of its nest and young, and will often exhaust itself trying to protect and feed the eggs/hatchlings. Typically, the mother succumbs and dies after laying the eggs, and the father scarcely lasts more than a few years after its young hatch. The infants instinctively know of the fungus, and they combat it by suffocating it: They take the skull of their dead parent and slip it over their own head, forcibly halting the growth of the parasite. If the child lives long enough to evolve, the skull fuses to the resulting Marowak's head. It isn't unusual for skeletal specimens of Cubone and Marowak to thus have two 'layers' separating the creature's internal skull and the external bone 'mask' it dons, and often such specimens can have more than two layers. The most on record is 8 layers, from a specimen discovered along the eastern shore of Kanto's Cerulean Cave. The specimen was young and likely died when its own protective helmet made it simply too heavy and slow to move. The skull in question is now on display at the Pewter Museum of Science in Pewter City, Kanto.






And now, if you'll all excuse me, I'm going to go cry myself to sleep for having written that.

[Pokemaster Ash]

A lot of Dex entries are messed up. Why? I don't know...

On a less disturbing and depressing note, I've always found it weird that Nidorina and Nidoqueen are unable to breed while Nidorino and Nidoking are. Was that some weird glitch from Gen 2 that stuck or what?

Also I've been curious as to why some things have genders (like Nosepass, Spiritomb, Castform, and other weird things like them) and why most Legendaries don't. Things like Castform and Spiritomb just seem more undefined like Magneton or Metagross. In the meantime, even if they still would be unable to breed (which also makes no sense to me, but I know why they can't in-game), I'm sure some people wouldn't mind knowing if their Articuno or Suicune were girls or if their Lugia or Rayquaza were guys.

Also I wonder why there is no consistency in technology. There have been some great items that we've seen in Pokémon over the years that only appear once or twice (at least so far). The biggest example of a useful thing hardly used: the Vs.Seeker. A fun item introduced in Gen 3 that allowed you to rematch any trainer on an outdoor route (would have been nice if they could have tinkered with it to work anywhere, save maybe in Gyms), not just select ones whose teams may not have worked well for either EXP or EV training. Unfortunately this little trinket has only seen in Kanto and Sinnoh, and apparently lost to the former by Gen 4. Also we've seen the advents of the PokéGear, PokéNav, Pokétch, and C-Gear, all of which had their useful qualities (except the Nav, which was basically a scaled down version of the PokéGear). However apparently no one shares their technology between Silph, Devon, etc. since the things that made each device good are nowhere to be found in the others. Trust me, I'd have loved to have had some of the Pokétch apps on the PokéGear, and I'm sure some of what either had to offer probably would complete the C-Gear (though I've heard it has some impressive tricks of its own). There was also the Berry Pots from HG/SS, which would have probably helped a lot to be present in B/W but also ignored.

[Lady Vulpix]

Doesn't Landorus have a gender? Which only makes the genderless legendary thing even weirder.

I think it's also weird that you can't breed two Dittos to get a Ditto, while they can breed with just about everything else. What's up with that?

There is an official explanation for the absence of Berry Pots in B/W: the land in Unova is not suitable for growing berries. I think they just did it to get people to use the Dream World.

[Knight of Time]

Originally Posted by Lady Vulpix

Doesn't Landorus have a gender?

Landorus is male only, just like Tornadus and Thundurus.

[Pokemaster Ash]

Well, the soil in Kanto and Johto isn't able to grow berries either (at least, not in Gen 4). The Berry Pots are planters with (presumably) imported soil in them. Why Unova doesn't have them, I don't know...

And I meant the majority of Legendaries (the Birds, Beasts, Lugia & Ho-oh, Mewtwo, Mew, etc.). I know there are a few rare ones that do have a gender (like Cresselia, Heatran, Latios & Latias, I think Meloetta, didn't know Landorus, Tornadus, and Thundrus did). Just seemed odd to me that some rare ones did, most didn't when they probably could. Of course, Mewtwo would likely be male-only, not sure about Arceus. Deoxys and the Regis probably would still be genderless, though.

And yeah, kinda funny that Ditto + Ditto gets you nothing. The irony...

[Lady Vulpix]

Indeed.

The sexual organs of birds cannot be seen from the outside. Perhaps the Pokedex's scanner cannot penetrate the skin of the legendary birds to find out what their gender is?

Another weird thing: Kangaskhan. In the anime, the babies are just young Kangaskhan, and you can see some adults with empty pouches. However, in the game, every Kangaskhan has a baby, even newborn ones. And the baby doesn't count as a separate Pokemon. It's as if the baby were a part of the Kangaskhan's body. Either that or the sprites are messed up.

[Knight of Time]

Yeah, Kangaskhan is a Pokemon that definitely is mysterious. For one thing, if the parent is always female, would that necessarily mean that the baby is always female? I don't, because with the fact that Kangashkan are based on kangaroos, there should have been a male counterpart to Kangaskhan that lacks the baby and pouch...would that even be possible?

[Lady Vulpix]

If male Kangaskhan exist, they can't be found in the games. But that is the case with all female only/male only species.

In any case, I'm less disturbed by the thought of the baby being always female than the baby being an extra limb or something like that.

[DarkestLight]

I've been saying that for years. The hell is my male Kanga at, and my prevo to Kanga >.> Taking forever to get to it.

[Lady Vulpix]

Well... 'M could be considered a pre-evolution of Kangaskhan... too bad it's a glitch.

Another thing: how come moves like Dig or Dive can be used anywhere, even inside a building?

[Pokemaster Ash]

Well, if we wonder how Dig and Dive work anywhere, how about the fact that moves like Magnitude, Earthquake, Surf, Eruption, and some of the other either powerful and/or wide-range attacks do massive property damage when used? (and yet, there apparently was a subversion of this in B/W with the protagonist's room....in the obligatory Tackle fight between starters)