Pokemon fact finders

[VisionofMilotic]

The name of this forum is Pokemon Trivia, so we could afford a fresh trivia-based game! In Pokemon Fact Finders players offer little bits of info about the Pokemon Universe, it could be the inspiration behind a particular pokemon, a .blooper noticed in the anime, a unique mechanic in one game, a concept that was scrapped, it might even be a detail about a member of the creative team like a developer or voice actor, anything pokemon related you think is cool.

We start by revealing something, the next poster responds to tell us if they knew it or not, and then shares something else, and on and on it can go.

I have one for you, remember N from Pokemon Black and White? He has a distinctive, rapid way of speaking, and did you know that he will always talk at a faster rate than the player-even if you set your text speed to the fastest setting, he will speak at a special speed that is still higher than you and the other npcs.

 

[ReKoil]

In HGSS if you attempt to release a Pokémon that is the only Pokémon in your party or PC that knows Surf, Waterfall, Rock Climb or Fly, it will immediately return.


Actually learned this earlier on today when I was watching a video where someone set free a Pokemon and it came back to them. Had never seen that before so I looked it up xD

 

[Fact Checking Gardevoir]

Contrarily to a rumor who reached my ears, and after fact-checking it, I can tell you that no, raising an Electrode to Level 55 does not make them evolve into Charizard! ^^

 

[Phanshaw345]

Did you know that the mythical Pokemon Victini was originally supposed to be in the 4th generation?

 

[Fact Checking Gardevoir]

Did you know the 100 Pokémon of Heart and Gold, along with the Dark and Steel types, were already there for the first generation and originally planned to be in the first games, but weren't due to the games not having enough room for them ?

 

[zeostar]

I feel like I've heard of similar stuff, but maybe not that fact exactly.

Did you know that Krabby has a higher attack stat than Infernape?

 

[Delta Crowned Sword]

Among one of the most intriguing fact which surprised me when I knew it for first time, was that the Furret has more height than Charizard !!

 

[ReKoil]

Due to it's heavily gimped HP stat, Shedinja has a lower stat total than it's previous stage Nincada.

 

[VisionofMilotic]

I didn't know that, but that makes sense! Ha,

The highest level pokemon you can encounter in the wild for Pokemon Platinum is magikarp. In the resort area there is a pond where you can fish up magikarp, and they can be anywhere between level 1-100 with the super rod, that trumps a legendary battle, even Arceus is just level 80.

 

[ReKoil]

I actually encountered something that had me puzzled... from Bulbapedia:
"In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, Pokémon originating from the following sources can never initially have marks:
-Pokémon caught in static encounters, such as Legendary Pokémon, Gimmighoul, etc.
-Pokémon caught in fixed symbol encounters, such as wild Tera Pokémon, etc.
-Pokémon caught during Tera Raid Battles
-Pokémon hatched from Eggs "

Afaik Pokemon hatched from eggs can't have Marks... and yet...

Spoiler:

The starter for my Ice types only playthrough ended up with one!

I looked up the specific mark on bulbapedia:
"Itemfinder Mark - the Treasure Hunter - A mark for a Pokémon that likes to pick things up.
Chance to be granted to the lead Pokémon in the player's party when an item is picked up."

So apparently Scarlet/Violet added Marks that can be earned by a Pokemon randomly during specific things, and they don't need to be generated with them. I legit did not know this. I saw that Mark on my Sandslash and got really heckin confused lol

 

[VisionofMilotic]

That's a really cool fact I also didn't know.

Am I the only one who missed that Snorlax is a walking caricature of Game Freak's beloved game developer Kōji Nishino, the man who had a hand in virtually all pokemon games from gen 1 to 9? I can actually see the eyes after taking a closer look! Mr Nishino is said to love cute designs, and is a foodie. Once he is said to have eaten everything there was in the whole office space, leaving the workforce with empty refrigerators!

The Japanese name for Snorlax, Kabigon is taken from Nishino's nickname, Kābī. There are changing stories about why he got that pen name though. Some say it is a reference to Kirby (Kābī in Japanese) sucking up objects and enemies in it's path, while others say it's because kābī is the word for mold, a reference to a time when Nishino got so hungry he devoured even expired and moldy food.

 

[Citra La Magicienne]

I did NOT know that but I love that fact so much. Thank you for the pictures too. I love that this guy just had a Pokemon made after him and just was like "Awesome. I love it." and kept going.

Some beta/unused bits because I think they're interesting, and small enough on their own that putting them together is fine, I think:

Red & Blue- Mew was added in the leftover ROM space after any built-in debugging tools were removed, meaning any attached glitches couldn't be fixed before releasing the game!

Crystal - Pokemon Crystal had some old documents that apparently had it being listed as Pocket Monsters X! Stolen in 2013...

Diamond & Pearl - There's data for an unused version of a roaming Darkrai, which can be enabled using cheat devices but is otherwise unused!

Black & White - The Unova region was apparently originally called the Alleos region, seen in some early early promotional material!

X & Y - Light of Ruin is an unused 140-base-power Fairy type move that has 1/2 recoil damage- it's the signature move of Eternal Floette, which has never been properly released! Thousand Waves and Thousand Arrows were also present and unused, but were later made available to Zygarde in Sun and Moon.

Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire - This applies to X & Y too, but I thought it was still interesting enough. Due to a quirk in the Friend Safari, the Flabebe family cannot be caught with their hidden ability Symbiosis if they are the Orange or White flower variants!

Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon - Silvally is supposed to be able to learn all three Pledge variants. However, a bug prevents it from learning both Water and Fire Pledge, but mysteriously leaves Grass alone!

Sword & Shield - Despite removing them from gameplay, data for forms and mechanics of Mega Evolutions, Primal Reversion, Ash-Greninja, and Ultra Necrozma are all still in the game!

 

[VisionofMilotic]

I knew about Light of Ruin Eternal Floette, but everything else was news to me. What a diligent fact finding mission!

Did you know that caterpie was once banned from competitive play? It was during VGC 2018. The reason this fragile, early route bug with 2 moves was banned was because one of those moves was string shot. There was a glitch discovered after Ultra Sun and Moon launch, where string shot, and a handful of other moves such as Curse, Power Trick and Forest Curse, could cause the game to freeze in the middle of the battle, and under tournament rules a screen freeze is treated as tie, so if a player was going to lose they could use pokemon with these moves to deliberately crash the game, and not be defeated, so there had to be some changes.

 

[icycatelf]

It's pretty obvious that Meowth is based on the maneki-neko ("lucky cat"), but it's also based on bakeneko, as evidenced by its Japanese category. Bakeneko are monster cats from Japanese folklore, often depicted standing upright, with huge eyes and the ability to imitate human speech.

 

[VisionofMilotic]

I love this! While I knew about Maneki-neko, I didn't know about bakeneko. This kind of thought into origins of pokemon is what keeps me always coming back to this franchise :D

Today I learned Lugia was not originally Silver's box art legendary or even a pokemon that had been conceived of when Gold and Silver was going to release in 1997. It doesn't appear in the game's development until summer 1999, after the game was delayed, and it was not the idea of Game Freak. Every other pokemon of the generation was made by Game Freak designers, but this one was an exception. Lugia actually came from the minds behind the anime, specifically it was Takeshi Shudo, the writer for the first 5 years of the TV show and the first 3 Pokemon movies, who developed of Lugia as a character for the 2nd pokemon movie, and it was later inserted into the games.It was the only pokemon he ever developed, and an epic one to give us at that. I can't imagine Johto without Lugia.

 

[RadEmpoleon]

In gens 3-5, there is a 25% chance a female Azurill will evolve into a male Marill. This is because they have different gender ratios (Azurill 25% male / 75% female, and Marill 50% male / 50% female). This was corrected in gen 6 and onwards, but we still love the transmasc representation!

 

[icycatelf]

Currently a one-off instance in the TCG, Gym Heroes Exeggcute (#43) depicts the Pokémon with only 5 eggs.

 

[RadEmpoleon]

Hippopotas and Hippowdon only have official Sugimori art for their male forms, despite the drastic color difference between their male and female forms.

 

[icycatelf]

More theory than stated fact, but there's a good chance that Mega Victreebel is based on Japanese water balloon yo-yos (full credit to aquabluu at DeviantArt for pointing out the resemblance).

This wouldn't be a completely random design choice, seeing as Bellsprout may draw inspiration from not only pitcher plants but also bellflowers (as evidenced by it being depicted among what appear to be spotted bellflowers on Erika's Bellsprout LV.12 and Violet City—home of Sprout Tower—being named after the Chinese bellflower in Japanese). Another name for the Chinese bellflower is balloon flower.

- - -

As for proper Pokéfact, "Scaribou" was proposed as an English name for Stantler.

 

[RadEmpoleon]

That's a good comparison, especially that picture of the water balloon that's a similar color to Mega Victreebel. I appreciate the design more.

In the Japanese version of Diamond and Pearl, a glitch allows players to manually use Surf on the door in Elite Four Aaron's room to enter the "black void" area of the map called the "Mystery Zone", in order to access the event-exclusive areas for Shaymin and Darkrai. This was fixed in the international releases of Diamond and Pearl