All that said, here we go…
1. Hot Skitty on Wailord Action – Since their introduction in Gen 3, it’s been discovered that Skitty, a cute and tiny little cat-thing, can breed with Wailord, a house-sized whale based on one of the largest real-world mammals on the planet. For whatever reason, the game developers decided to put them in the same egg group. So, throw these two lovebirds into the day care center together and watch as they ignore the world telling them who they can or can’t love, because love is an emotion that defies logic and physics.
2. Pretty much the entire Gen 1 battle system – I’m willing to chalk a lot of this up to the limitations of the hardware. For example, in the original games, critical hits used to be based off speed rather than a formula for each Pokémon (Venusaur with Razor Leaf would always get a critical hit – talk about unfair!). But, some things they seriously should’ve considered a bit more. Psychic types in Gen 1 was only weak against Bug-type attacks and Ghost-type attacks, because what better way to stop a super-powerful telekinetic creature than with a really big butterfly or licking them with a slimy tongue? Makes perfect sense. Even worse, the only attacks that could really take advantage of these weaknesses were Leech Life, Twineedle, and Lick – all horrible attacks. Then there was Dragonite – the only Dragon type in the original 151, aside from its pre-evolutions. The first pseudo-legendary. Professional badass. With only one Dragon-type attack. That does the same amount of damage every time, regardless of STAB or super-effective hits. Dragon Rage, minus the rage. Just the dragon. Yep.
3. Battling on Water – Using Surf and battling on the water was always really cool – at least to me. But, the logic behind it was always kind of ignored. What are they battling on? I guess you could say they’re floating in the water, but what about Graveler? Or Onix? Wouldn’t they sink? And what about Diglett and Dugtrio? Would it immediately go to the bottom of the ocean just so it can keep its mysterious body under the ground? Not every Pokémon can swim and fight perfectly. Some get hurt just by being touched with water. I mean, Charmander freaking dies when its tail is extinguished. Brutal.
4. Who could learn Fly – This one’s been noticed before, but bears repeating. You could teach Pidgey Fly. You could teach Rufflet Fly. Their evolutions I could understand, but come on. Both of them are the size of my goddamn shoe. Yet you can’t teach Scyther Fly, or Butterfree. For heaven's sake, Hoothoot could learn Fly and its wings are the size of mozzarella sticks.
5. Using Cut on tall grass – This one has since been taken out, but I remember in some of the earlier games you’d be able to use cut on tall grass to avoid wild Pokémon battles. It was exactly like cutting grass in The Legend of Zelda, only instead of finding someone’s lost money and taking it for yourself, you’re presumably decapitating all of the wild animals that called that grass their home. On top of that, it was a very slow and irritating process (since you had to go into your party and select Cut, and then it’d only cut down the one in front of you). It’s no surprise they took it out. It’s easier to just run or bike through and pray to Arceus that some annoying rat doesn't ambush you.
6. Lance was a goddamn cheat – Lance was such a badass in the original games, since he was a Master Dragon trainer with only one Dragon Pokémon. To prevent him from pretty much using a team of nothing but Dragonite and basically crushing all of our dreams, he was given a couple other sort-of-but-not-really dragon-esque Pokemon, like Gyarados, Aerodactyl, and Charizard (in Gold and Silver). Despite this more-rounded team, he was still a damn cheat. His Aerodactyl in Blue and Red knew Rock Slide despite the fact that (back then) it had no way of learning it. So it’d have an impossible, powerful move that it’d get a STAB from and had a 30% chance of causing us to flinch. Then there was the fact that all of his Dragonite in Gold and Silver shouldn’t have been Dragonite yet, since Dragonair doesn’t evolve until level 55. His first two are level 47, and his last is level 50. There is probably some way around this (it’s possible to find a level 7 Pidgeotto in Viridian Forest in Yellow version), it was still really annoying.
7. Pervert in Celadon City/Underage gambling – These were both in Celadon City, so I’m putting them as the same entry. In the original games, there was an old guy poking his head through the window of the Celadon Gym, and when you talked to him he’d exclaim “This gym is great, it’s full of women!” before going back to voyeuristically peeping at underage girls just trying to follow their dreams and become Pokémon trainers.
Then, there’s the famous underage gambling situation in the Game Corner. I’m not mad at them or anything for including it, because frankly I loved it. But, but come on. It was a slot machine. Sure, you weren’t betting real money or anything, but I remember sitting at that machine for half an hour straight going “Just one more, just one more.” Combine this with the unexplained fact that people just wander the streets of every town or city and that there are nowhere near enough buildings to house them all (there might be, if some buildings actually had doors), and it’s painfully obvious that people have bet away their lives and homes on the unrestricted gambling found in the Pokémon world.
8. Ghosts are real, and some were once human – Alright, this is something we’ve all known but never really thought about. In the Pokémon universe, ghosts are real. Dead things don’t stay dead. Each Ghost type is the spirit of something, usually (but not always, which I’ll go into in a second) another Pokémon. There’s the pretty famous theory that Gengar is Clefable’s shadow, and there’s the ghost of the Marowak from Pokémon Tower in Lavender Town. The afterlife is real, and there’s pretty conclusive evidence.
Then there’s Yamask. This poor bastard’s Pokédex entry says that it was once human, and the mask is a replica of its human face and that it looks at it and cries because it remembers being human. Seriously, think about this for a second: You die, and come back as a monster, forced to hold onto a hollowed-out reminder of the person you used to be. You can’t move on to whatever afterlife there is for whatever reason, so you spend your nights remembering the life you lost and the loved ones you’ll never get to see again, crying over your dead-eyed mask. Then some snot-nosed ten-year-old comes along, turns you into pure energy so that you’d fit in their Pokéball, and only lets you out to beat the shit out of (or get the shit beaten out of you) other monsters just for the sport of it. This shit should be its own circle of Hell.
9. Most of these creatures can’t exist – Due to natural selection most of them would die, and the remainder would rule the entire planet with a Steel/Dragon/Fire/everything fist. Look at Piloswine’s Pokédex entries: pretty consistently, they talk about how it can’t see anything so it just blindly charges everything and everywhere. How could it stop itself from charging off a cliff? Or into ice-water? Or holes it can’t climb out of? All it’d take is a single drunken weekend and a group of rednecks would be able to eradicate the entire species.
Then there’s the other end of the spectrum. Some of these Pokémon are literal gods. Arceus created the universe, Palkia and Dialga created Space and Time, respectively, and Mew is basically Jesus. Hydreigon flies through the skies and literally sees anything that moves as an enemy. With its power, I’m sure it would be able to destroy entire cities alone, let alone if they group up. Darmanitan’s internal fire is 2500 degrees Fahrenheit, and can destroy a dump truck with one punch. Think what it could do to a car, or a person.
Sure, the excuse could be made that the Pokédex entries are written by a child, which would explain contradictions between generations (“Magikarp can’t jump more than seven feet!” “Magikarp can use Splash to jump mountains!”), but there’s got to be some truth to it, and I’m sure some scientists confirm what the kids put in. Professors Oak, Elm, Birch, Rowan, Juniper, and Sycamore probably knew better than to put the entire success of their world-changing Pokédex solely in the hands of a ten-year-old that doesn’t have much of a formal education.
Like I said, this isn’t an exhaustive list. There are a few others that I may cover down the line (I’m thinking of doing a Pokémon creepypasta article), so be sure to read and check back soon!
- Azathoth
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