Fun Facts

Yay, random Pokémon-related facts you may or may not already know!

  1. "HO-OH" can be read backwards and forwards, flipped horizontally or vertically or rotated 180 degrees without changing. No real five-lettered word in the English language is this flexible.
  2. Girafarig was the only Normal type that had a second type that's not Flying - until Bibarel came along in D/P, a Normal/Water type. Normal is always Type 1 for the Pokémon that have it at all.
  3. On the opposite end of the spectrum, not only is there no pure Flying type, but there is no Pokémon that has Flying as its Type 1 either. (Arceus technically does when it is holding a Sky Plate, but that's only because it has the ability to change its type, so it does not precisely count any more than type changes induced by Color Change/Conversion/Conversion2.)
  4. The only possible starter triangles (i.e. three types that are weak to one another in a rock-paper-scissors fashion and the same with resistances in reverse) other than the traditional Fire/Water/Grass are Rock/Fighting/Flying, Fire/Rock/Steel and Grass/Poison/Ground. (Before you send me an error report about it, NO, DARK/PSYCHIC/FIGHTING IS NOT A TYPE TRIANGLE. See the FAQ entry on the subject for details.) We are not likely to get such starter triangles, however; Fire, Water and Grass are both traditional and make sense as representatives of three elements while the other triangles are pretty much out-of-the-blue incidental relations that happen to emerge from the type chart.
  5. As a matter of fact, were they ever to introduce four starters in a "type square" with the current type chart, the only possibilities would be Fire/Bug/Grass/Water, Fire/Grass/Ground/Rock and Rock/Flying/Grass/Ground. And for type pentagons, they'd have the possibilities of Fire/Bug/Grass/Ground/Rock and Bug/Grass/Ground/Rock/Flying. Incidentally I found this out by creating a script that figures it out for me, so yes, I'm quite sure those are the only possibilities unless I overlooked some weaknesses/resistances when initially putting them into the script.
  6. The only possible type combination without a weakness is Dark/Ghost (technically, using Foresight will negate Ghost's immunities and thus make Fighting super effective, but under normal circumstances it has no weakness). The only one-weakness type combos possible are pure Normal (weak to Fighting), pure Electric (weak to Ground), Normal/Ghost (weak to Dark), Water/Ground (doubly weak to Grass), Water/Dragon (weak to Dragon), Poison/Dark (weak to Ground), Psychic/Dark (doubly weak to Bug) and Bug/Steel (doubly weak to Fire); interestingly, we have abilities that provide functional immunities to both Ground (Levitate) and Fire (Flash Fire), making Electric, Poison/Dark and Bug/Steel Pokémon with no weaknesses theoretically possible (although Poison/Dark is also subject to the same loophole as Dark/Ghost, namely its weakness to Psychic under Miracle Eye, and the ability Mold Breaker will negate both abilities, as well as the move Gravity negating Levitate).
  7. The older haircut brother in G/S/C gives your Pokémon 5 happiness points at the max, while his younger brother can give them 10 points max. However, because the older brother is much likelier to do his job well, his average is slightly higher than the younger brother's if you don't restart until the Pokémon "looks delighted!".
  8. Fans aren't the only people who revamp old sprites to become new. The poses of many Gold, Silver and Crystal sprites show signs of having been heavily inspired by the Red/Green and Red/Blue sprites - usually Silver from Red/Green and Gold from Red/Blue, but sometimes the other way around and in a few cases even from Yellow. If you don't believe me, you can see some of the examples - and those are nowhere near all, just some of the clearest. Many of the FireRed/LeafGreen sprites are posed similarly to the original Green sprites, too.
  9. In Red and Blue, Lickitung couldn't learn Lick.
  10. The only Pokémon that have actually had their typing changed between generations are Magnemite and Magneton, who went from pure Electric to Electric/Steel when G/S/C came out. This is of course as excusable as you can get, since it is only adding a type that did not previously exist.
  11. None of the Pokémon that were added into old evolution chains in the second and third generation evolve through a method that is possible to replicate in the older games (they use items that didn't exist at the time such as Gloom into Bellossom, need to be traded while holding an item such as Onix into Steelix, or evolve by happiness which can not be measured in the older games except for Pikachu in Yellow, such as Eevee into Espeon and Umbreon). Clearly they want to keep things somewhat consistent. Admittedly it was broken a couple of times in the fourth generation: Lickitung evolves by levelling up when it knows Rollout (which it could learn by Move Tutor before) and Piloswine evolves by levelling up when it knows Ancientpower (which it could learn by breeding).
  12. Slaking's total stats are equal to those of Groudon and Kyogre. This includes a very respectable base Speed of 100 (the same as for example Charizard), interestingly enough. Isn't it supposed to be so lazy it can only attack every other turn?
  13. Pseudo-legendaries (Dragonite, Tyranitar, etc.) have higher total stats than the legendary trios (Articuno/Zapdos/Moltres, Raikou/Entei/Suicune, etc.).
  14. Magikarp can only learn Splash, Tackle, Flail and Bounce (via Platinum Move Tutor), but its seeming counterpart Feebas can learn quite a few TM/HM, Move Tutor and breeding moves, giving it a distinct advantage which one might not notice at first glance.
  15. It is a common misconception that Rock Pokémon are immune to electricity, but in fact Electric attacks deal neutral damage to Rock-types.
  16. Dragon and Ghost are weak to themselves. One has got to wonder how the Pokémon can survive, being vulnerable to their own element...
  17. In Red, Blue and Yellow, there was, however, only one Dragon move, Dragon Rage, which deals set damage so in fact, Dragon's weakness to Dragon never actually came into account.
  18. Azurill is a Normal-type unlike its Water-type evolutions, and has a higher chance of being female (75% as opposed to Marill and Azumarill's 50%). The gender thing also means that some Azurill will in fact change sex when they evolve.
  19. The most powerful unevolved Pokémon stat-wise ("unevolved" here meaning a Pokémon that is not the last stage in its evolutionary line) in the second and third generations was Scyther, with 500 total base stats. Scyther is also the only Pokémon (aside from the very special case of Shedinja) that does not get an actual statistical gain when it evolves: 40 points are simply taken off Speed and split between Attack and Defense.
  20. However, the fourth generation brought Porygon-Z, which led to Porygon2 (515 total base stats) stealing that title. Porygon's evolution line is incidentally also noteworthy in that Porygon2 is both smaller and lighter than its pre-evolution. Porygon-Z is then the biggest but intermediate in weight. Obviously, the upgrade from Porygon to Porygon2 represents the trend in technology to go from bigger and clunkier to smaller and lighter.
  21. The final-form Pokémon with the lowest total base stats is Shedinja - obviously, this is due to having a base HP of 1, and it has the ability Wonder Guard to make up for this. The next Pokémon above it are Smeargle and Ditto, respectively, both of which also have very unique abilities. After them, Luvdisc and Delibird are tied - and while Delibird at least has a signature move, Luvdisc doesn't seem to have any redeeming features at all. Poor thing.
  22. Because Gold, Silver and Crystal were linkable with Red, Blue and Yellow, the Pokémon in G/S/C used the same Individual Value for both Special Attack and Special Defense, which in R/B/Y was the Special IV. This is one of the reasons G/S/C weren't linkable with the Advanced generation; in the Advance games, Pokémon have one IV for each of them and their values go from 0 to 31 instead of 0 to 15.
  23. Nidorina and Nidoqueen can't breed, but Nidoran female can. (Is it just me, or is that kind of disturbing? o_O;;)
  24. While it may feel like almost all types resist themselves when you don't give it any thought, Normal, Fighting, Ground, Flying, Bug, Rock, Ghost and Dragon are all neutral or super effective versus themselves. This is nearly half of the types.
  25. Bellossom is a strange Pokémon in many ways. It is smaller and lighter than its pre-evolved form, similar to Porygon. It also loses a type (Poison) without getting a new type as a replacement, and in Gold, Silver and Crystal, it even lost the ability to learn the Sludge Bomb TM which it previously had as a Gloom. As if that weren't enough, it has also gone through some of the most drastic color changes of any Pokémon. In the G/S/C games, it had a green body and a pink petal skirt and flowers. In the G/S/C Sugimori art, on the other hand, it had a dark blue body, red flowers and alternately green and yellow petals in its 'skirt'. Finally, in both the sprites and Sugimori art of the third and fourth generations, it has the flowers and skirt of the G/S/C Sugimori art, but the body is light green.
  26. Bellossom is not the only Pokémon to have gone through color changes. For example, Bulbasaur originally had a blue body but is now green; in Gold and Silver Spinarak was dark purple but is now green and yellow while the shiny form is dark blue/purple; and Jumpluff was all blue in Gold and Silver while the Sugimori art as well as the games from Crystal onwards have shown the cotton puffs on its arms as yellow.
  27. Speaking of Jumpluff's cotton puffs, their shadows are square-shaped in Pokémon Colosseum.
  28. At least one species of Pokémon evolves at every level from 20 to 40 except 29 and 39.
  29. Only two Pokémon (Pikachu and Eevee) evolve with the Thunderstone despite the stone having been around since the first generation and being a very logical method of evolution for Electric-types in general. It is a mystery why subsequent generations have not introduced new Pokémon that evolve with the Thunderstone (or Fire Stone, for that matter).
  30. Ground Pokémon are immune to Electric attacks, but not to the Static ability. Steel Pokémon, likewise, are immune to Poison attacks, but can nonetheless be poisoned through the Poison Point ability or Beedrill's signature move Twineedle (which is a Bug attack, but can poison).
  31. Many people think that Waterfall was a new move in G/S/C, but it existed in R/B/Y - it was just learned only by Goldeen and Seaking, Pokémon that nobody uses, cares about or trains to level 39 (when Seaking learned Waterfall).
  32. Karate Chop and Gust were Normal-type moves in R/B/Y, despite being very obvious candidates for Fighting and Flying, respectively.
  33. In R/B/Y like the later games, a dual-type Pokémon being attacked by a move that is super effective on one of its types and not very effective on the other will take normal damage; however, the games display an "It's super effective!" or "It's not very effective..." message anyway. (See the Experimentation section for a full explanation.)
  34. If, on the other hand, one of the defending Pokémon's types is weak to the move and the other is immune (in R/B/Y), you will not get the normal immunity message, which is "It doesn't affect [defendant]!"; you will instead always be told that "[attacker]'s attack missed!" This happens for example if you use Ground attacks on Zubat or Golbat (Poison/Flying).
  35. The items Elixer and Max Elixer from R/B/Y and G/S/C were updated to the correct spelling, "Elixir", in the Advanced Generation. Mr. Mime's name was also updated to have a space after the period, which it didn't have before.
  36. There is no such item as "Paralyz Heal". It's called "Parlyz Heal", with only one a in "Parlyz". Well, at least I didn't notice this for six years of playing the Pokémon games (and yes, this is the way it has always been and still is - I checked both Yellow and Diamond).

Page last modified February 04 2009 at 18:36 GMT

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