Fun Facts

Yay, 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.

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 fun fact about Pokémon on it, so it's not as if I "missed" something if your favorite interesting thing about Pokémon 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. What's worse is that when you e-mail me facts, it actually 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 and you reminding me of it just made me decide I wanted to put it up?) nor not do so (I'd feel like I was ripping you off somehow if I didn't). So please don't e-mail me more fun facts; all it will lead to is ruling those facts out as possible candidates for this page in the future. Or at least until I've forgotten you ever mentioned it to me.

Random Trivia

Fun facts that do not fit anywhere else.

  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. The older haircut brother in G/S/C gives your Pokémon 5 happiness points at the maximum, 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!".
  3. In Red and Blue, Lickitung couldn't learn Lick.
  4. Nidorina and Nidoqueen can't breed, but Nidoran female can. (Is it just me, or is that kind of disturbing? o_O;;)
  5. At least one species of Pokémon evolves at every level from 20 to 40 except 29 and 39.
  6. 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).
  7. 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).
  8. Platinum randomly changed the names of at least six random 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 have also randomly switched places with other trainers on the same route.

Types

The type chart and its various oddities.

  1. 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.
  2. Somewhat similarly, while the R/B/Y type chart also faithfully tells you that Ghost is only weak to itself, the only Ghost attack that deals variable damage is Lick, which had a base damage of 20, making it rather unimpressive as a super effective attack.
  3. 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.
  4. In the first generation games, attacks that deal set damage, such as Seismic Toss, Sonicboom, Dragon Rage, etc., ignored the type chart completely - including immunities. Imagine my surprise when trying to get my Gastly to use Night Shade on a Rattata in Gold and it didn't work.
  5. 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.)
  6. 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).
  7. 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.
  8. Normal is also always Type 1 for the Pokémon that have it at all.
  9. 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.)
  10. 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.
  11. 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 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.
  12. 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). Meanwhile, 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).
  13. 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; they're 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.
  14. Ground Pokémon are immune to Electric attacks, but not to the Static ability. Steel Pokémon, likewise, are immune to Poison attacks, but could nonetheless be poisoned through the Poison Point ability or Beedrill's signature move Twineedle (which is a Bug attack, but can poison) until the fourth generation. (Ground-types remain able to be paralyzed by Static, however.)
  15. Karate Chop and Gust were Normal-type moves in R/B/Y, despite being very obvious candidates for Fighting and Flying, respectively.

The Generation Gap

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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. None of the Pokémon that were added into old evolution chains in the second and third generations 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).
  4. 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 separate IVs for Special Attack and Special Defense and the values of all IVs range from 0 to 31 instead of 0 to 15.
  5. 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 was then changed to just the IV itself while the IV range was changed to 0-31.
  6. 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).
  7. 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.
  8. The only actual change in an evolution method (barring temporary ones caused by problematic circumstances like the lack of actual day and night in R/S/E and XD) was when the requirements for Shedinja were changed between the third and fourth generation. Originally, to get a Shedinja one merely needed to raise a Nincada to level 20 and have an empty slot in the party. 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, this found itself into Diamond and Pearl: now one must have a regular Poké Ball in one's bag in order to get a Shedinja.

Species, Stats and Moves

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

  1. 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.
  2. Pseudo-legendaries (Dragonite, Tyranitar, etc.) have higher total base stats than the legendary trios (Articuno/Zapdos/Moltres, Raikou/Entei/Suicune, etc.).
  3. 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 female Azurill will in fact change sex when they evolve.
  4. 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 a base stat total of 500. 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.
  5. However, the fourth generation brought Porygon-Z, which led to Porygon2 (base stat total 515) 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.
  6. Slaking's total stats are equal to those of Groudon and Kyogre, to make up for its hindering ability. This includes a very respectable base Speed of 100 (the same as for example Charizard), interestingly enough.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. As if that weren't strange enough, the shadows of Jumpluff's cotton puffs are square-shaped in Pokémon Colosseum.

Page last modified September 12 2009 at 19:35 GMT

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