12 Strange Pokemon Facts That Are Actually True

Pokemon has been around long enough that the franchise has layers of weird lore most fans never dig into. Some of the strangest facts sound like playground rumors but check out against official sources, and a few are dark enough that you wonder how they ended up in a children’s game. This list pulls 12 of the most surprising, runs each one through Wikipedia, Bulbapedia, the official Pokedex, or Game Freak interviews, and explains where the fact came from and why it matters.

If you like this kind of thing, our 20 facts that sound fake but are true with sources follows the same rule: no claim without a citation. We also have a guide to 50 Wikipedia rabbit holes if you want more falling-down-the-wiki-stairs energy after this.

On this page

• How We Verified These Pokemon Facts
• Fact 1: Mew Was Added as a Secret Prank
• Fact 2: The Porygon Episode Sent 685 Children to Hospitals
• Fact 3: Clefairy Was Almost the Pokemon Mascot
• Fact 4: Wobbuffet’s Blue Body Is a Decoy
• Fact 5: There Were Originally 190 Pokemon Planned
• Fact 6: Magikarp Is Based on a Real Chinese Legend
• Fact 7: Cubone Wears Its Mother’s Skull
• Fact 8: Ho-Oh Appeared Before Gold and Silver Existed
• Fact 9: Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan Are Named After Real Fighters
• Fact 10: Slowbro Can De-Evolve
• Fact 11: Splash Is a Translation Mistake
• Fact 12: Pokemon Is Short for Pocket Monsters
• More Pokemon Rabbit Holes
• Sources

How We Verified These Pokemon Facts

Three rules before any fact made the list. It had to be traceable to a primary source, meaning Wikipedia, Bulbapedia, an official Pokedex entry, a Game Freak developer interview, or datamined game code. It had to be genuinely surprising, not “did you know Pokemon is from Japan.” And it had to avoid the trap of “fan theory presented as canon,” which is where most Pokemon fact lists die. Several popular “facts” you see floating around did not make this list because they are unverified, including the rumor that Ditto is a failed Mew clone (no official source has confirmed it) and the claim that the Porygon episode killed children (it sent children to hospitals, but no fatalities were ever reported, despite what some listicles claim).

Where a fact is sourced from a fan datamine (Helix Chamber’s 2018 internal data dump, for example), we say so, because datamines are real evidence but not the same as an official statement from Game Freak. If you want to dig deeper into any of these, the sources section at the bottom links to every primary source we used.

Fact 1: Mew Was Added as a Secret Prank

Mew, the 151st Pokemon, was not supposed to be in the original Red and Green versions at all. Game Freak programmer Shigeki Morimoto sneaked Mew into the game’s code at the very last minute as a prank on his colleagues. Nintendo did not know about it. Players were never supposed to find it.

According to Wikipedia’s Mew entry, Morimoto programmed Mew into the game secretly as a prank among the staff just prior to its release in Japan in 1996. The slot was empty in the debug version, and he filled it in after the rest of the game was already locked. The result was the most famous secret in video game history. Players discovered Mew through glitches and rumors, and the legend of a hidden 151st Pokemon became the marketing engine that pushed the franchise into the stratosphere. CBR has reported that Nintendo executives later admitted Mew’s secret inclusion accidentally accelerated the franchise’s success, because it created a word-of-mouth mystery no advertising campaign could have bought.

The kicker is that Morimoto’s prank almost got the team in trouble. Once the secret got out, Game Freak had to figure out how to officially distribute Mew, which led to the Nintendo Space World 1997 giveaway event where 100,000 attendees received the Pokemon via link cable. That event is now considered one of the first major promotional distribution events in Pokemon history.

If you liked the secret-code energy of Mew and want famous game glitches that became legend, including MissingNo, see our list of weirdest bugs in video game history.

Fact 2: The Porygon Episode Sent 685 Children to Hospitals

On December 16, 1997, the Pokemon anime aired episode 38, “Denno Senshi Porygon” (Computer Warrior Porygon) in Japan. The episode featured a sequence with rapidly flashing red and blue lights at about 12 cycles per second. That frequency is exactly the range that triggers photosensitive epileptic seizures.

Wikipedia’s entry on the episode confirms that during the sole broadcast, multiple scenes with flashing lights induced photosensitive epileptic seizures in children across the country. Around 685 children were taken to hospitals, though most recovered quickly. The incident became known in Japan as “Pokemon Shock.” Kotaku’s write-up remains one of the clearest English-language summaries of the broadcast and its aftermath.

The fallout was immediate. TV Tokyo pulled the anime from the air for four months. The episode has never been re-broadcast anywhere in the world, and Porygon and its evolutions have essentially been banned from the anime ever since, even though Pikachu was the one who actually caused the flashes in the scene (Pikachu used Thunderbolt on a virus projectile). The Japan Broadcasting Corporation and other Japanese broadcasters adopted new, strict rules on flashing images in children’s programming as a direct result.

A few important corrections to the rumors you will see online. No child died, despite what some listicles claim. The seizures were real, but the hospitalization count includes children who experienced nausea and dizziness without full seizures, which is why the number looks higher than typical epilepsy statistics. And Porygon was not pulled from the games, only from the anime, which is why you can still catch one in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet today.

If you liked the Porygon incident, see our Pokemon animation errors list for 12 sourced anime goofs and dub mistakes from the same production era, or our Pokemon episodes never aired in English guide for every major skip, ban, and pull with legal watch notes.

Fact 3: Clefairy Was Almost the Pokemon Mascot

Pikachu was not always going to be the face of Pokemon. According to multiple sources, including ScreenRant’s coverage of Pokemon mascot history, the original plan was for Ash’s first Pokemon in the anime to be a Clefairy. Clefairy was the main character’s starter in the first Pokemon manga, and Game Freak had been using Clefairy in promotional artwork as a candidate for the series mascot.

The switch to Pikachu happened late in development of the anime, reportedly because the team realized Pikachu appealed more evenly to both boys and girls. Clefairy was seen as slightly too feminine to anchor a franchise aimed broadly at kids. Pikachu’s yellow color was also more visible in early color promotions and easier to merchandise.

There is some debate about how official the “Clefairy was the original mascot” framing actually is. Bulbagarden forum historians have pointed out that Game Freak used several Pokemon in early promotional material, including Poliwhirl, who was Pokemon creator Satoshi Tajiri’s favorite Pokemon and appeared on the cover of CoroCoro Comic. So a more accurate version of the fact is: Clefairy was the leading candidate to be Ash’s starter in the anime, but Pikachu was chosen before the anime launched, and the rest is history.

Either way, you can see the leftover Clefairy DNA in early Pokemon merchandise and manga. If Pikachu had not been chosen, Pokemon as a $100 billion franchise would look completely different today.

Fact 4: Wobbuffet’s Blue Body Is a Decoy

Wobbuffet looks like a blue punching bag with a face. According to the official Pokedex entries in multiple games, that blue body is not actually the real Pokemon. The real Wobbuffet is the small black tail with eyes on it.

Here is the Pokedex entry from Pokemon Sapphire: “Wobbuffet does nothing but endure tackles. However, it will not endure an attack on its tail. When that happens, the Pokemon will try to take the foe with it.” Pokemon Crystal’s entry adds that the tail “is the actual Pokemon” and that the blue body is a decoy it uses to absorb hits.

This is one of those facts that sounds like a fan theory but is canon. Multiple Pokedex entries across multiple generations repeat the same point, and the anime leans into it with Wobbuffet’s habit of crying out when its tail is touched. The implication, which the games never quite spell out, is that the blue body is essentially a balloon filled with psychic energy, and the little black tail is the actual organism that controls it. If you ever wondered why Wobbuffet’s move set is all counterattacks, now you know: the body is a punching bag by design.

Wobbuffet was designed by Game Freak’s Ken Sugimori and introduced in Generation 2 (Gold and Silver). The Japanese name, Sonans, is a pun on the phrase “so that’s how it is,” which fits the patient, enduring personality.

Fact 5: There Were Originally 190 Pokemon Planned

The original Pokemon Red and Green were supposed to have 190 Pokemon, not 151. In 2018, a group of dataminers called Helix Chamber extracted internal data from a debug build of Pokemon Red and Green and found 190 slots in the Pokemon index. The 151 that shipped in the final game were there, plus 39 empty slots holding data that matched Generation 2 Pokemon. The data included index numbers, base stats, and in some cases partial sprite data, suggesting Game Freak had designed 190 Pokemon but cut 39 due to Game Boy cartridge space limits.

Helix Chamber’s analysis was widely discussed in the Pokemon fan community in late 2018. Smogon University forums hosted a long thread where fans tried to identify which Generation 2 Pokemon had been cut from Generation 1. Some of the popular theories: Ho-Oh and Lugia were likely planned for Gen 1, given Ho-Oh’s appearance in the anime’s first episode (see Fact 8). Several baby Pokemon like Pichu and Igglybuff were likely cut too, since their design language fits naturally with Gen 1 Pokemon.

Game Freak has never officially confirmed the 190 number, but the datamine is widely considered legitimate because Helix Chamber has a strong track record and the data was extracted from a real, verified debug cartridge. The 39-cut theory also explains why Generation 2 felt so connected to Generation 1, because many of those Pokemon had been designed in the late 1990s alongside the originals.

Fact 6: Magikarp Is Based on a Real Chinese Legend

Magikarp, the famously useless fish Pokemon that evolves into the dragon-like Gyarados, is based on an actual Chinese myth called the Dragon Gate legend. According to Wikipedia’s entry on Dragon Gate mythology, the legend says that a carp which can swim upstream and then leap the falls of the Yellow River at Dragon Gate (Longmen) will be transformed into a dragon.

The myth dates back over 2,000 years and is one of the most enduring stories in Chinese folklore. It is a metaphor for perseverance and success through hard work, which is exactly what Magikarp’s evolution storyline communicates. Magikarp starts as a weak fish that can do nothing but Splash, and after grinding enough experience, it becomes Gyarados, a terrifying water-and-flying dragon.

This is not a coincidence. Game Freak has confirmed in interviews that Magikarp and Gyarados were specifically designed to reference the Dragon Gate legend. The Japanese name for Magikarp, Koiking, also references koi, the real fish from the legend. And the move Splash is the visual representation of the carp trying to leap upstream, which is why the move does no damage. It is a fish flopping on the ground, not attacking anything.

If you want more sourced strange-but-true trivia after this, our facts that sound fake but are true list uses the same citation style. Prefer a quiet grind night at home? Our things to do when bored at home guide has plenty of offline options while Magikarp levels up.

Fact 7: Cubone Wears Its Mother’s Skull

Cubone is one of the darkest Pokemon designs ever shipped. According to the official Pokedex entry on Pokemon.com: “This Pokemon wears the skull of its deceased mother. Sometimes Cubone’s dreams make it cry, but each tear Cubone sheds makes it stronger.”

That is not a fan interpretation. That is the literal, official Pokedex text. Cubone is a small Pokemon that, at birth, takes the skull of its dead mother and wears it as a helmet. The bone club it carries is also sourced from its mother’s remains, according to multiple Pokedex entries.

The lore gets darker when you remember how breeding works in Pokemon. Every time you breed a Cubone in the game, you get a new Cubone wearing a skull, which means there is always a dead Marowak involved. The games do not show this on-screen, but the implication is unavoidable.

Bulbapedia notes that in the second episode of Pokemon Origins, a mother Marowak is shown protecting her child Cubone from Team Rocket. Even though the Marowak is alive in that scene, the Cubone is still wearing a skull, which is either an animation oversight or a hint that the skull is not always literally the mother’s. The Pokedex entries are consistent across generations though, and the “mother’s skull” framing is still the canon.

This is the kind of detail that makes you realize Pokemon lore is much weirder than the cute marketing suggests. If you want more weird-but-true facts in this format, see our 20 facts that sound fake but are true with sources.

Fact 8: Ho-Oh Appeared Before Gold and Silver Existed

In the very first episode of the Pokemon anime, “Pokemon, I Choose You!”, which aired in Japan on April 1, 1997, Ash sees a mysterious golden bird fly over a rainbow. The bird was Ho-Oh. The catch: Pokemon Gold and Silver, where Ho-Oh would officially debut, did not come out in Japan until November 21, 1999.

That means Ho-Oh appeared in the anime more than two and a half years before it appeared in any game. According to Bulbapedia’s Ho-Oh anime page, Ho-Oh made its debut in the anime in that first episode, where Ash saw it flying across the sky. Ash’s Pokedex could not identify it, because the Pokemon did not officially exist yet.

The reason this happened ties back to Fact 5. Game Freak had originally planned 190 Pokemon for Generation 1, and Ho-Oh was one of the 39 that got cut. The anime team, working from internal Game Freak documents, knew Ho-Oh was a planned Pokemon and included it as a teaser. When the cuts happened, Ho-Oh was saved for Generation 2, but the anime episode had already aired.

This is one of the few documented cases where an anime previewed a Pokemon before the games confirmed its existence. Ho-Oh’s appearance in episode 1 is now considered an early Easter egg and one of the most famous foreshadowing moments in anime history. If you want more like this, our 50 Wikipedia rabbit holes list includes several other franchise-deep-cut stories.

Fact 9: Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan Are Named After Real Fighters

Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan, the two fighting-type Pokemon from Generation 1, are named after real martial artists. In English, Hitmonlee is named after Bruce Lee, and Hitmonchan is named after Jackie Chan. The naming convention is more obvious when you look at the original Japanese names.

In Japanese, Hitmonlee is called Sawamular, named after Tadashi Sawamura, a Japanese kickboxer who was famous in the 1960s and 1970s. Hitmonchan is called Ebiwalar, named after Hiroyuki Ebihara, a Japanese boxing world champion. The English localization swapped these out for the more internationally recognizable Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, which is why the English names feel slightly disconnected from the design inspiration.

The pattern continued with later fighting-type Pokemon. Tyrogue, the pre-evolution of both, evolves into Hitmonlee when its attack stat is higher, Hitmonchan when its defense stat is higher, and Hitmontop when its stats are balanced. In Generation 2, Hitmontop was added, and its Japanese name Kapoerer references capoeira. Game Freak has continued the trend with most fighting-type Pokemon, who are usually named after real martial artists or fighting styles.

This is one of those facts that makes the games richer once you know it. The Hitmon family is not just three kickboxing Pokemon, it is a small museum of martial arts history.

Fact 10: Slowbro Can De-Evolve

In Pokemon lore, Slowbro is the evolved form of Slowpoke, with a Shellder clamped onto Slowpoke’s tail. According to multiple Pokedex entries, including the Pokemon Stadium entry, if the Shellder ever lets go, Slowbro reverts to being a Slowpoke. This makes Slowbro one of the only Pokemon in the franchise that can de-evolve.

The mechanic has never been implemented in the games, because evolution in Pokemon is a one-way street in the code. But the lore is explicit. The Pokemon Red and Blue Pokedex entry reads: “When a Slowpoke went hunting in the sea, its tail was bitten by a Shellder. It evolved into Slowbro.” The Shellder, in lore, is what triggers and sustains the evolution. Without it, Slowbro is just a Slowpoke with no Shellder.

This is part of a broader pattern in Pokemon lore where evolution is sometimes treated as a symbiotic state rather than a permanent transformation. Another example is Magneton, which is three Magnemite joined together. In the games, you cannot unjoin them, but the lore implies they could separate. These symbiotic evolutions have inspired dozens of fan theories over the years about what other Pokemon might be able to de-evolve if the lore was strictly followed.

If you want more Pokemon weirdness without the deep dive, our riddles and brain teasers has a few lateral-thinking puzzles in the same energy, and our cool websites to cure your boredom list points to more browser rabbit holes.

Fact 11: Splash Is a Translation Mistake

The move Splash, which Magikarp famously uses to do absolutely nothing, is a translation error. In Japanese, the move is called Haneru, which means “hop” or “bound.” It has nothing to do with water. The move was originally about a fish flopping around on land, which is what Magikarp does when it is not in water.

When the game was localized for English, the translators apparently interpreted “Haneru” in the context of a fish Pokemon and rendered it as “Splash.” That decision stuck, and now the English version of Pokemon has a move called Splash that every English-speaking fan associates with water, even though the move has nothing to do with splashing and everything to do with a fish flopping on the ground.

This is one of those small localization quirks that becomes invisible once you have played the game for years. The move works the same in both languages (it does no damage), but the name change reframes what the move is depicting. In Japanese, Magikarp using Haneru is a sad fish out of water, which fits the Dragon Gate legend inspiration. In English, Magikarp using Splash sounds like a cute water trick, which is much less tragic.

Pokemon localization is full of small choices like this. For another example, the Pokemon Arcanine was originally going to be a legendary in early concept art, but the design team decided to keep it as a regular Pokemon. That leftover legendary energy is why Arcanine appears on the legendary beast card in the Pokemon Trading Card Game and why its Pokedex entry calls it a “legendary Pokemon” in some games.

Fact 12: Pokemon Is Short for Pocket Monsters

The word “Pokemon” is not a made-up word. It is a romanized contraction of the Japanese phrase Poketto Monsuta, which means “Pocket Monsters.” The contraction follows a common Japanese pattern of shortening English loanwords, similar to how “personal computer” becomes “pasokon” in Japanese.

The franchise was originally called Pocket Monsters when it launched in Japan in 1996. The name was shortened to “Pokemon” partly for marketing reasons and partly because of a trademark conflict: another company had already registered “Pocket Monsters” in some markets, so Game Freak and Nintendo needed a distinct brand name. Pokemon, the contraction, sidestepped the issue.

The “mon” suffix has since become a genre shorthand. Games like Digimon (Digital Monsters), Monster Hunter, and Temtem all trade on the same naming pattern, though none of them have reached Pokemon’s level of cultural penetration. The Pokemon Company, which manages the brand, was formed in 1998 as a joint venture between Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures Inc. to handle the explosion of merchandising that followed the original games.

For a franchise that started as a debug prank and a kid’s bug-catching hobby, it has done okay. Pokemon is now the highest-grossing media franchise of all time, with estimated lifetime revenue of over $100 billion across games, anime, merchandise, and licensing.

More Pokemon Rabbit Holes

If you read this whole list and want more, here are a few directions to go.

• Bulbapedia is the most thorough Pokemon wiki on the internet, with documentation of every Pokedex entry, every episode, every manga chapter, and every datamine.
• Helix Chamber’s 2018 internal data dump of Pokemon Red and Green is worth reading in full if you want to know more about the cut 39 Pokemon. Their site has the original analysis with screenshots of the debug build.
• The Pokemon anime episode “Electric Soldier Porygon” is not available on any official streaming service, but detailed write-ups of the incident exist on Wikipedia and Kotaku. Do not watch any “found footage” uploads on YouTube claiming to be the episode. Most are edited or fake.
• If you want stranger-but-true facts in this same format, our 20 facts that sound fake but are true with sources and 9 weird laws around the world follow the same sourcing rules.
• For something more interactive, our riddles and brain teasers has a few lateral-thinking puzzles in the same energy.
• Going to play on a weak laptop afterward? Our free PC games that run on a potato list covers low-spec installs that still work on integrated graphics.
• For verified game glitches beyond Pokemon, including MissingNo in more detail and the WoW Corrupted Blood plague, read our weirdest bugs in video game history roundup.
• For leftovers found by reading ROM and game files rather than triggering glitches in play, see bizarre things found in video game code, including the unused Bird type in Red and Blue.
• For cancelled game content beyond cut Pokemon, see our lost video games you’ll never get to play list.

Sources

• Mew (Pokemon), Wikipedia
• How Mew Was Secretly Programmed Into Pokemon Red and Blue, CBR
• Denno Senshi Porygon, Wikipedia
• The Banned Pokemon Episode That Gave Children Seizures, Kotaku
• Why Pokemon’s Original Mascot Got Replaced, ScreenRant
• Bulbagarden forums on Clefairy mascot history
• Wobbuffet, official Pokedex entries via Pokemon.com
• A History of Pokemon through the Internal List, Helix Chamber
• There Were 190 Pokemon, Smogon University forums
• Dragon Gate (mythology), Wikipedia
• Cubone, official Pokedex via Pokemon.com
• Cubone (Pokemon), Bulbapedia
• Ho-Oh (anime), Bulbapedia