Franchise: Pokémon

There's a theory that Wobbuffet's blue body is a decoy, and that the black tail is the actual Pokemon. Many believe this due to the fact that Wobbuffet can take such a beating and not be affected. Multiple Pokedex entries also say that Wobbuffet is very protective of its tail. The Pokedex entry in Pokemon Silver claims "To keep its pitch-black tail hidden, it lives quietly in the darkness." In Pokemon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum, the Pokedex entries claim "It desperately tries to keep its black tail hidden. It is said to be proof the tail hides a secret." On top of all of that, the tail does possess a pair of eyes, which further supports this theory.

In the first 3 generations of the Pokémon games, the player can use the HM "Cut" to remove patches of tall grass to avoid wild Pokémon. In Pokémon Emerald, the ability Hyper Cutter enhances this feature of Cut, causing it to clear a larger area of tall grass around the user. However, neither of these features were carried forward to the fourth or subsequent generations of Pokémon games.

Of all Pokemon, Larvesta takes the longest to go through a single evolutionary stage, evolving at Level 59.

Arbok's hood pattern differs in each of the main regions of the Pokemon universe.

It's possible to get a legitimate Celebi without the use of a Gameshark code or any third-party software in Pokemon Gold, Silver, and Crystal.

If you visit a real life Pokemon Center in Japan on your birthday, you can download a special Pokemon for visiting.

Vullaby is able to use Fly, even though in its Pokemon Black Pokedex entry says "Its wings are too tiny to fly."

Satoshi Tajiri decided to make Pokemon faint instead of die to make sure children don't associate losing with death.

Game Freak employees are found in every main entry to the Pokemon series with their canonical base of operations being the Celadon Condominiums.

Despite being called the "Licking Pokemon", and the line "It leaves a tingling sensation when it licks enemies" appearing in its Pokedex entries in Pokemon Red & Blue, Lickitung couldn't learn Lick until Generation II.

In a Q&A with Game Informer in 2019, producer Junichi Masuda revealed that programmer Koji Nishino was given the nickname "Kabi" after Nintendo's Kirby ("カービィ" or "Kabi" in Japanese) because of his big appetite. Nishino's behavior and appetite would serve as a direct inspiration for the design of the Pokémon Snorlax, including Snorlax's habit of constantly eating and sleeping, as well as its Japanese name "Kabigon", which was derived from Nishino's nickname. This means that by association, Snorlax's name is technically derived from Kirby.

When Pokémon Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver and Crystal were released on the 3DS Virtual Console in Europe, they were given a PEGI 12+ rating due to the playable casinos in Celadon City and Goldenrod City.

Daniel Espinosa, the director of the Superhero film Morbius, said he was unexpectedly inspired by the Pokémon franchise for the depiction and look of the title character's superpowers.

"I have a daughter who is six years old, and she was really getting into Pokémon, [...] And you know, I’ve watched Pokémon over the years. But I really adore how they use light and colors to express those powers. [...] When you watch Morbius he always has this trail of purple in the comic books and that normally is just lines that are made with a pencil, [...] But I thought maybe if we can take that kind of Pokémon-esque idea and translate that over to the psychedelic experience, I could create a new version of how to express powers."

All three games in the Pokémon Stadium series contain the Game Boy Tower, a feature that allows the player to play the mainline Pokémon games from Generations I and II on the Nintendo 64 through a Transfer Pak. This is achieved through running a modified, emulated version of the Super Game Boy 2 BIOS within the data for the Pokémon Stadium games. Through the use of hacks, it is possible to make the Game Boy Tower run other Game Boy and Game Boy Color games as if on a Super Game Boy 2, complete with custom borders and palettes for titles that support such features. However, saving is disabled due to the Pokémon Stadium games not being equipped to run these cartridges in the normal course of play.

Foongus' Pokemon Scarlet PokéDex entry states that there is an in-universe theory that the "creator of the modern day Poké Ball" was inspired by the Pokémon's appearance when designing the device.

In Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, Roaring Moon's Violet Dex entry as well as the occult magazine's description of the Paradox Pokémon both imply that there is a deep connection between Roaring Moon and Mega Salamance. Considering that Roaring Moon, like all past Paradox Pokémon, is a prehistoric version of an existing Pokémon, in this case Salamance, this could mean that there is also a connection between Mega Evolution and Pokémon prehistory.

Pokémon Pocket Manga, the first manga based on the franchise in 1996, is known for featuring vulgar humor that doesn't match the kid-friendly nature of the franchise, such as a Clefairy urinating or Pikachu defecating.

One of the most infamous examples has Clefairy telling Red to use Poké Balls to catch a Pokémon. Instead, Red mistakenly drops his drawers and grabs his own "balls" (testicles).

As such, the manga has been of the very few to not be officially translated to English.

In October 2024, Game Freak suffered a security breach when one terabyte of internal data including over 2,600 employee records were leaked to the public, an event that Pokémon fans referred to as the "Teraleak". The initially released contents of the leak included old builds and sprites for past Pokémon games, codenames for new games, the codename "Ounce" for the Nintendo Switch successor, concepts for a sequel to the Detective Pikachu film, details on the then-unreleased Pokémon Legends: Z-A, the codename "Gaia" for the next Pokémon generation, and details regarding a pitched Pokémon MMO codenamed "Rodeo".

The most widely publicized contents of the leak were scrapped early drafts for the Sinnoh myths from the Generation IV games that were loosely inspired by folklore from different countries. These generated controversy for inserting several Pokémon into violent and sexually deviant scenarios, such as Typhlosion in the Canadian indigenous myth of the Bear Mother, and Octillery and Ursaring in a twist on the Japanese erotic woodblock art The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, of which the latter story seems to have been partially reworked into Veilstone's Myth in the final games. Game Freak would later address the leaks, stating that they had originally been breached in August of that year seemingly through a phishing attack. This statement did not acknowledge any of the leaked development material, but apologized to employees that had been put at risk by the incident.

From 2014 to 2016, The Game Awards featured a "Best Fan Creation" category. The 2014 winner was "Twitch Plays Pokémon" (a social experiment featuring a crowdsourced attempt to play through various Pokémon games), and the 2015 winner was "Portal Stories: Mel" (a modification of Portal 2). During 2016, however, two of the nominees for the category were removed prior to the show's airing: AM2R (an unofficial remake of Metroid II: Return of Samus) and Pokémon Uranium (a fan-made video game based on the Pokémon series). During a stream prior to the event, host Geoff Keighley explained that this was due to the fangames not being legally cleared by Nintendo, who owned the rights to the games they were based on. Additionally, "Best Fan Creation" would end up being the only category to not have its winner (Enderal: The Shards of Order, a conversion mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim) announced during the ceremony itself.

According to the consumer marketing director at The Pokemon Company JC Smith, one of the big hurdles that Game Freak and other Pokemon devs have to endure is the balance between massive fan demand and the developers' own specific vision for each game.


Smith also revealed that the company does listen to fan demands of wanting a grander and more sophisticated game in the series, but he also revealed that Game Freak very much strives to make future games extremely accessible at their cores as well.