Fun Facts

Some random Pokémon-related facts you may or may not already know.

A couple of notes. First, there is no copyright on factual information, so you are free to talk about these individual facts elsewhere without crediting me; however, don't just copy and paste my list, or large chunks of my list, everywhere as if you were the one who put it together and did the write-up. That's called plagiarism.

Secondly, no, I do not want you to e-mail me more fun facts to put here. This page will obviously never have every conceivable interesting fact about Pokémon on it, so it's not as if I "missed" something if your favorite fact isn't here. This is just random stuff I've discovered that I find interesting; I'll add to it when something catches my attention. In fact, if you e-mail me additions, it makes me less inclined to put them up, because if I did put them up I could neither honestly credit you (again, there is no copyright on facts, and what if I knew that fact already?) nor not do so (I'd feel like I was ripping you off somehow if I didn't). If you just want to discuss cool Pokémon facts with me, awesome, but this page is not open for submissions. Make your own fun facts lists by all means, though!

Random Trivia

Fun facts that do not fit anywhere else.

"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. (Well, Ho-oh is technically five characters, not letters, if you want to be pedantic. But it counts for all relevant purposes.)
At least one species of Pokémon evolves at every level from 14 to 45.
Platinum randomly changed the names of at least six trainers around Sinnoh. Many of them retained the same Pokémon or mostly the same as Diamond and Pearl, while others who kept the same name had their teams completely renewed, so the implication doesn't seem to be that they're different trainers. Some trainers also randomly switched places with other trainers on the same route.

First-Generation Fun

Some things a lot of people don't realize about the first-generation games.

In Red, Blue and Yellow, there was only one Dragon move, Dragon Rage, which deals set damage (40 HP), so Dragon's weakness to Dragon never actually came into account despite being written into the type chart in the instruction booklet. Raise your hand if you painstakingly raised a Gyarados to use against Lance's dragons.
Somewhat similarly, while the R/B/Y type chart also truthfully tells you that Ghost is only weak to itself, the only Ghost attack that deals variable damage is Lick, which has a base damage of 20 - meaning that being super-effective only lets it deal about as much damage as a neutral Ember or Thundershock.
Speaking of the R/B/Y type chart and the Ghost type, a lot of people missed the fact that in the original games, Psychic was immune to Ghost, not weak to it. This misunderstanding was propagated by the anime, which had a special subplot revolving around getting Ash a Haunter to beat Sabrina, when a Haunter would have been a horrible choice (not only should Ghost attacks not affect her Pokémon at all, but being partly Poison-type, Haunter would be weak to Psychic attacks).
In the first-generation games, attacks using a special damage formula, such as Seismic Toss, Sonicboom, Dragon Rage, etc., ignored the type chart completely, including immunities.
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 a random-looking "It's super effective!" or "It's not very effective..." message anyway, depending on the order in which the type relations are coded into the game. (See the Experimentation section for a full explanation.)
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).
It was also possible in rare cases for an attack to deal zero damage even without an immunity being involved. This was only possible if the attack was not very effective against both of the target's types and was slated to deal only 2 or 3 damage before the type modifier was applied. In these cases, the attack will always show up as a miss, similar to the above.
Karate Chop and Gust, some of the most obvious and basic Fighting- and Flying-type moves, were Normal-type in R/B/Y.
Many people think that Waterfall was a new move in G/S/C, when it gained prominence as a new HM, 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). Except me.
In Red and Blue, Lickitung couldn't learn Lick.

Types

The type chart and its various oddities.

It is a common misconception, propagated by the Pokémon anime, that Rock Pokémon are immune to electricity, but Electric attacks are neutral against Rock-types. Likewise, many think that Rock Pokémon are resistant to Rock attacks, which are also neutral. Finally, Rock Pokémon are not weak to Ice attacks; that's neutral too. All of these misconceptions stem from the Rock-type's frequent combination with Ground, which is immune to Electric, resistant to Rock and weak to Ice.
Every Pokémon type has been combined with at least thirteen other types, plus existing as a standalone. The least-combined type is Normal, which is missing four combinations (with Ice, Bug, Rock and Steel); after it come Ice (missing combos with Normal and Poison), Fairy (missing Fire and Ground), Bug (missing Normal and Dragon) and Rock (missing Normal and Ghost); then Fire (missing Fairy), Poison (missing Ice), Ground (missing Fairy), Ghost (missing Rock), Dragon (missing Bug) and Steel (missing Normal). This means only nine possible type combinations have yet to appear in an official Pokémon game as of the ninth generation - at this rate it may not take a lot of generations to fill out the chart!
All the other types (Water, Electric, Grass, Fighting, Flying, Psychic and Dark) have been combined with every other type at least once as of the ninth generation!
Looking only at primary types, Fairy has only been Type 1 for five combos - pure Fairy, Fairy/Fighting, Fairy/Flying, Fairy/Psychic and Fairy/Steel. Despite being one of the most-combined types, Flying is the second-least used as a primary type - up until the fifth generation, Flying only existed as a secondary type (barring Arceus holding a Sky Plate), and even today the only Pokémon with Flying as their primary type are Tornadus (pure Flying), the Noibat family (Flying/Dragon), the Rookidee family (pure Flying and then Flying/Steel for Corviknight), Cramorant (Flying/Water), Bombirdier (Flying/Dark), and Flamigo (Flying/Fighting). On the other end of the spectrum, Water, Electric and Rock have been the primary type in sixteen different combos so far, followed by Bug with fifteen.
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 does not qualify. 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.
As a matter of fact, were they ever to introduce four starters in a "type square" with the current type chart - as long as we only consider the weaknesses/resistances of the "adjacent" types - 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, Bug/Grass/Ground/Rock/Flying and (as of the sixth generation) Fire/Steel/Fairy/Fighting/Rock. With the sixth-generation type chart, in fact, there exists at least one valid type polygon for each possible number of sides between three and nine inclusive, but none beyond that.
As of the sixth generation, it is impossible for a simple two-type combination to have no weaknesses. There are several combinations with only one weakness, however: pure Normal (weak to Fighting), pure Electric (weak to Ground), Normal/Ghost (weak to Dark), Water/Ground (doubly weak to Grass), Poison/Dark (weak to Ground), Bug/Steel (doubly weak to Fire), and Ghost/Dark (weak to Fairy). Since there exist various abilities that provide functional immunities to certain types, Pokémon that normally have no weaknesses are therefore possible: Electric or Poison/Dark Pokémon with Levitate or Earth Eater, Bug/Steel Pokémon with Flash Fire or Well-Baked Body, and Water/Ground Pokémon with Sap Sipper. (The only such Pokémon that currently exist are the Tynamo family.) However, since then abilities are at play, they can be bypassed by any Pokémon that has one of the Mold Breaker, Turboblaze or Teravolt abilities, any method of changing another Pokémon's ability such as Skill Swap or Entrainment, as well as some more specific methods such as Gravity and Smack Down negating Levitate.
In fact, as of the sixth generation, to have a Pokémon with no weakness thanks to its types alone, the way that Dark/Ghost worked prior to the sixth generation, it would need four types: either Water/Ground/Flying/Steel or Water/Bug/Dragon/Steel.
However, even if you allow a Pokémon to have any number of types, it is impossible to have a type combination that resists or is immune to every type. The closest you can get are these monster combinations of 10+ types each, which are weak to Water but resist every other type: Normal/Fire/Water/Electric/Fighting/Ground/Flying/Psychic/Steel/Fairy, Fire/Water/Electric/Fighting/Poison/Ground/Flying/Dark/Steel/Fairy, Normal/Fire/Water/Electric/Fighting/Poison/Ground/Flying/Ghost/Dark/Steel, Normal/Fire/Water/Electric/Fighting/Poison/Ground/Flying/Psychic/Dark/Steel/Fairy, Normal/Fire/Water/Electric/Fighting/Poison/Ground/Flying/Ghost/Dark/Steel/Fairy, and Normal/Fire/Water/Electric/Fighting/Poison/Ground/Flying/Psychic/Ghost/Dark/Steel/Fairy.
Ground Pokémon are immune to Electric attacks, but not to the Static ability. In the second generation, Steel Pokémon were similarly immune to Poison attacks but could still be poisoned through Beedrill's signature move Twineedle (which is a Bug attack, but can inflict poisoning).

The Generation Gap

The Pokémon games and what changes and remains the same between generations.

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. (Some of those are a bit of a stretch, but others are plainly just revamps of the older ones.) Many of the FireRed/LeafGreen sprites are posed similarly to the original Green sprites, too.
None of the Pokémon that were added into old evolution chains in the second, third or sixth generations evolve through a method that is possible to replicate in the older games (that is, they use new items or game mechanics). Clearly they want to keep things somewhat consistent. This rule was broken a couple of times in the fourth generation, however: 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) - and in the eighth generation, some evolutions were just plain retconned into methods that would have been possible in earlier generations.
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 (and all subsequent games), Pokémon have separate IVs for Special Attack and Special Defense and the values of all IVs range from 0 to 31 instead of 0 to 15.
Between the second and third generations, all level 100 max stats (ignoring natures) rose by one. This is because the IV factor in the stat formula used to be twice the IV when the IV ranged from 0 to 15, so this meant it could be up to 30, but is now just the IV itself while it ranges from 0 to 31.
Two generations have boldly fixed spelling mistakes from earlier generations: the third fixed the "Elixer" and "Max Elixer" items to be called Elixir and Max Elixir and added a space after the period in Mr. Mime's name, and the sixth fixed "Faint Attack" to be called Feint Attack, as well as adding spaces to various attack names that didn't have them before due to the twelve-character limit and changing "Parlyz Heal" to be called Paralyze Heal.
When Shedinja was introduced in the third generation, one merely needed to raise a Nincada to level 20 and have an empty slot in the party to obtain one. However, it was frequently reported as requiring an empty Pokéball in the bag as well, and although this was fiction made up by fans who seemed to find it more logical, that rumour found itself into Diamond and Pearl and all later games: now one must have a regular Poké Ball in one's bag in order to get a Shedinja.
The ninth-generation games introduced only fifty moves, less than any generation before - and it didn't introduce a single Flying-type move.

Species, Stats and Moves

Particular Pokémon species, their stats and the moves they learn.

Magikarp can only learn Splash, Tackle, Flail and Bounce (via Platinum Move Tutor), but its apparent 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.
Pseudo-legendaries (Dragonite, Tyranitar, etc.) have higher total base stats than the legendary trios (Articuno/Zapdos/Moltres, Raikou/Entei/Suicune, etc.).
Azurill is a Normal/Fairy-type unlike its Water/Fairy-type evolutions and has a higher chance of being female (75% as opposed to Marill and Azumarill's 50%). Until the sixth generation, this meant one third of female Azurill would change sex when they evolved.
Nidorina and Nidoqueen can't breed, but Nidoran female can. This may be because Nidoran female eggs can hatch into both male and female Nidoran; perhaps Game Freak felt it would be awkward for Nidorina and Nidoqueen eggs to do the same, when they're classed as wholly different species.
The only Pokémon whose stats are not improved overall when it evolves is Scyther: Scyther, Scizor and Kleavor all have a base stat total of 500, but upon evolution the stats are redistributed slightly. This may be because 500 is already quite a good base stat total - Scyther had the highest base stat total of all unevolved Pokémon (i.e. Pokémon with at least one further evolutionary stage) in the second and third generations, only outclassed by Porygon2 (base stat total 515) when it gained an evolution in the fourth generation.
Speaking of the Porygon line, Porygon2 is unusually both smaller and lighter than its pre-evolution. This makes sense - Porygon is a manmade, virtual Pokémon, and technology generally evolves from large, clunky and unwieldy to small, sleek and light.
Slaking's base stat total equals that of Groudon and Kyogre, to make up for its hindering ability. This includes a quite respectable base Speed of 100 (the same as, for example, Charizard), odd as that seems given its apparent laziness.
On the other side of the spectrum, the final-form Pokémon with the lowest total base stats is Wishiwashi's Solo form - obviously, this is because it enters battle in its School form and only turns into the Solo form when its health drops below 25%. The next is Shedinja, thanks to its base HP of one - though of course has the unique Wonder Guard ability to make up for it. The next Pokémon above it are Smeargle and Ditto, respectively, both of which are also uniquely flexible as a counter to their poor stats. 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.
Bellossom is a unique Pokémon in many ways. It is smaller and lighter than its pre-evolved form, similar to Porygon2. It also loses a type (Poison) without getting a new type as a replacement, unlike every other evolution, 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'; and in both the sprites and Sugimori art of the subsequent generations, it has the flowers and skirt of the G/S/C Sugimori art while the body is light green.
Bellossom is not the only Pokémon to have gone through significant color changes. For example, Bulbasaur originally had a blue body in its Sugimori art but is now closer to 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.
Speaking of which, the shadows of Jumpluff's cotton puffs are square-shaped in Pokémon Colosseum.

Bugs and Oversights

Some amusing less-well-known bugs and other mistakes in the Pokémon games.

In Red, Blue and Yellow, there is a school in Viridian where you can read about status effects on the blackboard. The description of burns there states that the condition reduces "power and speed", while the description of paralysis only says that it may stop the Pokémon from attacking. This is incorrect - burns only reduce Attack, while paralysis drops Speed in addition to sometimes preventing the Pokémon from moving. It's quite possible that at some earlier stage of development burns were meant to drop both stats and paralysis neither, but they were later rebalanced into their current form, without changing the in-game explanation text.
In the first three generations of Pokémon games, some of the badges give your Pokémon an in-battle boost to certain stats. In R/B/Y, the boost is 12.5%, with the Boulderbadge boosting Attack, the Thunderbadge boosting Defense, the Soulbadge boosting Speed, and the Volcanobadge boosting Special. However, Lt. Surge will tell you the Thunderbadge boosts Speed, and Koga will tell you the Soulbadge boosts Defense. This may hint that originally the badges were meant to be obtained in a different order: perhaps, rather than being blocked by a Cuttable tree, Lt. Surge's gym was originally inaccessible until the player had Surf, requiring the trainer to go to Fuchsia and get Koga's badge first. The fact the Thunderbadge allows the player to use Fly, a move they can't get until much later in the game, also supports this theory.
In the first-generation games, a couple of separate bugs in stat modification lead to some delightfully odd behaviour. First, the aforementioned badge boosts will be reapplied whenever your Pokémon's stats are modified by moves that modify stat stages, such as Tail Whip or Swords Dance; while the stat being modified is recalculated correctly, your other stats will get incorrectly boosted by 12.5%, even if they've already been boosted, and this can stack until the stats reach the maximum of 999. Second, when a Pokémon raises its Attack while burned, or its Speed while paralyzed, the drop the status applies will be negated. Third, when a Pokémon is burned or paralyzed, the stat drop is reapplied whenever its opponent uses a move that modifies stats, whether it's one that raises its own stats (like Harden) or one that drops the opponent's stats (like Growl). This can also stack until the stat has dropped to the minimum of 1.
The move Focus Energy and the item Dire Hit are meant to quadruple the critical hit ratio, but in R/B/Y, they quarter it instead.
The second-generation games had several weird bugs in the capture formula. First, extremely wonky things will happen if a Pokémon's maximum HP is greater than 341, including the game freezing if the maximum HP is exactly 342 or 683; luckily, this is not the case for any legitimate encounters in the game. Secondly, some of the balls are coded incorrectly: the Fast Ball only affects Grimer, Tangela and Magnemite rather than all Pokémon that can run; the Love Ball is effective against Pokémon of same species and same gender rather than opposite genders as intended; and the Moon Ball, which was meant to be effective against Pokémon that evolve with a Moon Stone, is in fact effective against Pokémon that evolve with a Burn Heal, which of course is no Pokémon at all. Thirdly, the lesser status effects - poison, paralysis, and burns - don't actually make Pokémon any easier to catch in G/S/C, thanks to a programming oversight.
The AI in Gold, Silver and Crystal can switch out on the last turn of a Perish Song, even if it has been trapped, while the player can't. While it's easy to take this as cheating, it's actually a hilarious accident: the AI wants to switch on the last turn of Perish Song, but when it checks whether it can, it actually checks whether the player's Pokémon is trapped, not whether its Pokémon is trapped. Thus, if your Pokémon is trapped it will fail to switch out even though it can, while if it is trapped, it'll switch even though it shouldn't be able to.

Page last modified March 9 2023 at 22:30 UTC

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