Franchise: Pokémon

Contrary to popular belief, the name "Pikachu" is not derived from the pika (a rodent-like lagomorph found in Japan that gains a yellow tinge in the winter), but rather a Japanese onomatopoeia for an electric spark. It should be noted that pikas are known as "nakiusagi" in Japan.

Prior to what would become the film "Pokémon 3: The Movie" as we know it, Takeshi Shudo, a writer for the Pokémon series from Kanto to Johto, considered writing a unique concept for the third film for half a year. He wanted to feature the fossilized remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex as the main threat, rampaging throughout Kanto without a specific end goal in sight.

Since Shudo created the Pokémon Lugia for "Pokémon: The Movie 2000", he figured that his concept for the third film would work. However, it was rejected because a "story where a bunch of minerals gain consciousness and comes to life won't be a hit". Shudo said he smiled at the appropriate people and said he'd think of another story, but afterward went home and drowned his sorrows in alcohol. It's believed that a copy of the script was later auctioned off for 1 billion yen (about 8 million US dollars) to someone in their 30s going by the name Suu (スー). Unfortunately the conclusion of his script was never explained, as Shudo passed away on October 29, 2010 before finishing his blog posts on this scrapped concept.

Although referred to as an electric mouse, Pikachu's design is actually based on a squirrel. According to former Game Freak designer Atsuko Nishida, she was fond of squirrels at the time of Red & Green's development, so she based Pikachu on squirrels. From its red cheeks used to store electricity based on squirrels storing food in its cheeks, to its lightning bolt-shaped tail more closely resembling a bushy squirrel tail rather than the tail of a mouse.

According to Tsunekazu Ishihara, the president of The Pokémon Company, Nintendo of America didn’t like the original Japanese designs for Pokémon as they thought they looked “too cute”, so they made their own redesigns.

In particular, Pikachu was apparently redesigned to resemble a tiger with big breasts. When Ishihara asked how it was meant to be Pikachu, the American designers responded that because it has Pikachu’s tail, then that makes it Pikachu.

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.

Early in the Pokémon franchise's life, the Poliwhirl line recieved a major push in marketing, comparable to that of series mascot Pikachu.

Mascot costumes were made of Poliwhirl for promotional events, the Pokémon Adventures manga featured Poliwhirl as one of Red's Pokémon, Poliwag was placed closely to Pikachu on the box art of Pokémon Snap, food and toy lines would near-consistently feature a member of the Poliwhirl line alongside Pikachu even when the pool of Pokémon was as limited as 3 or 4 (with exceptions primarily being ones that also lacked Pikachu), and, most famously, Poliwhirl appeared on the center of the cover of TIME Magazine's issue adressing the popularity of Pokémon.

This could be related to Poliwag being Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri's favourite of the original 151 Kanto species.

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.

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.