http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/top10/2499.html
Some of these are simple enough to solve, but it's still a good read.
Some of these are simple enough to solve, but it's still a good read.
- Spoiler:
- #10: Diglett has feet?
Credits to LeoAlphaOmega7 for the suggestion.
We'll open up this list by getting out the only species-specific idea on this list. Diglett is a mole Pokemon that pretty much looks like a brown lump in the ground. They are able to dig at astonishly high speeds through the ground, much like their evolution Dugtrio; speeds so fast that, for example, they are well known for causing earthquakes. In fact, that's where this entry takes it root in - Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red/Blue Rescue Team, where it is blamed for causing the earthquakes.
After having saved it from Skarmory's wrath, you'll meet it in front of your rescue team base, where Diglett claims that his "feet feel like they're floating on air". This statement greatly confuses everyone - your in-game character, your partner, and, yes, even you.
After all, Diglett has been around since the first games, around ten years prior to the release of Red/Blue Rescue Team. The idea that it has feet has rarely, if ever, been mentioned outside of this scene. This mostly revolves around the fact that Diglett, and Dugtrio for that matter, never actually seem to come out of the ground ever, being pretty much the only Pokemon, more or less, to not have a true full-body sprite, like you'd get in the Pokedex 3D application for the Nintendo 3DS.
#9: Why let such young people go on such journeys?
Okay, a question of ethics and, mostly, common sense. In pretty much every region of the anime, Ash Ketchum has started his journey at the age of ten (yep, thirteen years of anime is less than one year for him). It is occasionally mentioned in the games about ten-year-olds also going on such journeys, and there are even younger people (the Youngster and Lass trainer classes) on these long journeys.
During the anime, it mentioned that one eight-badge trek across Kanto takes Ash almost a year. That is quite a long time to be away from home in the wilderness, right? People under ten, trekking the woods filled with violent Pokemon ready for some dinner, or cities filled with shady peoples. Not to mention the whole legendary Pokemon conflict you seem to get involved with in each of the mainstream games.
There is a lot of danger out there, obviously. Sure, it may be that going out into the world at such a young age is that society's standard; it was like that a few hundred years ago in our own world. But I don't see the reasoning behind letting it happen. There is always the constant threat of death to you and your Pokemon. Additionally, I feel it worth noting how some areas are particularly filled with Haunters, which have the ability to kill you by licking you.
Honestly, I don't get it. Maybe the parents want their kids to die?
#8: Dark- and Steel-Typed Pokemon
In the original Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow/Green games, you had fifteen types, excluding glitch types: Normal, Fire, Water, Grass, Ice, Fighting, Ground, Electric, Bug, Ghost, Rock, Flying, Dragon, Poison, and Psychic. All 151 legit Pokemon had a combination of those types, and the whole system was akin to how it is today, minus two types.
When Pokemon Gold and Silver came along, Nintendo came along adding two new types, Dark and Steel. Dark was used to add a few new varied Pokemon to the roster: namely, Sneasel, Tyranitar, and Umbreon; it wasn't added for any of the #001 - #151 set. Steel was used on a few Pokemon from the first generation (Magnemite, Magneton), as well as add to the second (Steelix, Scizor, Forretress). Nintendo put the types in as being discovered in the two years between the generations.
This also makes no sense. After all, imagine it like Benjamin Franklin "discovering" electricity; he didn't discover it, he just found lightning was electricity. Likewise, "discovering" Dark and Steel types doesn't remove the fact that they should still be used for type advantage calculations in the first game. And, for that matter, how did it take them this long to discover the types? The Dark type is omittable, given that there aren't any Dark types in the Kanto region games, but there are two Steel-types. Magnemite and Magneton are quite obviously made of some type of metal; I don't why they wouldn't notice that much, or how they resist many types of moves
#7: Genderless Species and All-One-Gender Species
For this entry, note that genders were defined in Pokemon Gold and Silver, as was the ability of Pokemon to lay Eggs, though the large number of species that fit one of these conditions has increased dramatically over the years.
I'll just group these together, given their similarities. We'll begin with the former. There are a fair number of Pokemon, namely legendaries, that are not given a defined gender - male or female, we don't know. However, these Pokemon are still able to proliferate in some odd way. After all, imagine it like this - two rocks making baby rocks. The rocks are not alive, so you really can't say that they have a gender, and they also aren't alive in the first place. A characteristic of living things is that they are able to reproduce within their own species, if enough of members of the species exist.
So, what does that make Pokemon like Magnemite or Dialga? Neither of them have a gender, and are unable to lay Eggs; are they not alive? Are they just moving ... stuff? Is their "reproduction" (with the former example) just building another one and infusing life into it? No one can really know, but I have thought of an idea that would satisfy some of the more animalian Pokemon paradoxes: hemaphroditism. Pokemon such as Ditto really come to mind with this ideal, but it doesn't solve everything (Voltorb and legendaries).
What about Pokemon species that are all of one gender, though? You pretty much end up with a similar paradox - you need a male and a female Pokemon to make an Egg. However, there are some Pokemon (Happiny chain, Hitmonlee, Hitmonchan, and Kangaskhan to name a few) that are either always female or always male. These are Pokemon that probably would have died out long ago; so why haven't they? This also helps to suggest cross-Poke-species breeding, an often-used moethod for learning Egg Moves, though it still doesn't help the cases of the ones that really have no gender, or those that don't lay Eggs.
In short, reproductively, there are a fair few species that should've died out long ago, unless the whole series takes place at the same time. Some could be saved through hemaphroditism or cross-breeding, but both are fairly unlikely to apply for everyone.
#6: Mew's Live Birth to Mewtwo
Okay, as we all probably know, Pokemon reproduce like many birds - through Eggs. Pokemon are technically able to be grouped into one lone species rather than 649 (at the time of writing), given that a species is a group of organisms that can breed together to produce fertile offspring. In general, that pretty much means all Pokemon, save for an uncertain few, are of the same species. All of them lay Eggs, understood?
There is but one exception to this rule. Mew. In the games of Pokemon R/B and the Kanto anime, Mew was found in South American jungles by Kanto scientists. Strangely enough, they decided to impregnate Mew. Pokemon aren't likely to have the same reproductive organs as mammals, so that already makes little sense. Some time later, Mew does give live birth to the genetically-modified Mewtwo. Mewtwo proceeded to destroy the Kanto scientists' lab and fled; in the video games, to Cerulean Cave.
My point here is that Pokemon aren't really designed to give live birth and probably aren't able to. No matter how many thousands of times you breed Pokemon together, you will always get an Egg. Pokemon obviously aren't designed to give live birth, and so, how they impregnated Mew, is a mystery to us all.
#5: Where is the Pokemon World located?
Okay, a question few people really think about. Most people would attribute the answer to this game begin fictional, and just non-existent, despite its references to the real world. The remaining group would probably also toss up the multiverse theory, which effectively says that there is at least one universe very much like the Pokemon world. But people never really think too deeply about the references to the real world.
Pokemon Red and Blue are full of references, most of which I'll cover soon. The anime is also known for a few references - the Vikings is probably a big one. In the video games, there are some notes that reveal a few things. In the Pewter City Museum, you can find a reference to the moon landing with the exact date - sometime in 1963 I believe, which also references our AD/BC year system.
In the Pokemon Mansion of Celadon, you can also find various entries referencing trips to South America, a real-life continent, from Kanto. Kanto is a region in Japan composed of plains; research also seems to suggest that Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh are based upon areas in Japan, whereas Unova is moreso based on New York, supposedly, though I don't really see it. There are too many references to the real world to ignore it, plot-wise.
Yeah, yeah, I know that it couldn't be in the real world. The point is that, plot-wise, does the game actually take place on our planet? It is a question no longer with a definite answer of "no"; it is somewhat more possible that it is, indeed, on our planet.
#4: Learning from TMs/HMs
This is a question that has been hinted at since the old days, and more recently becoming apparent with the ideas of pictures of items in the games. TM and HM stand for "Technical Machine" and "Hidden Machine", respectively, with each being able to reach Pokemon various moves. Until Pokemon Black/White, TMs were only used once, and HMs usable whenever; now, they can be used as desired, and there currently are 101 of them. However, how does a machine teach a Pokemon to shoot Thunderbolts or use Hyper Beam or use Rest?
No one really could have answered that question, even in the old days. Given the technological advances of the world, to a point, it may be one of those machines that beams stuff into your brain. Then again, it could be like one of those motivational tapes you listen to so you can quit smoking or whatever, though the instantaneous learning of the moves is a bit far-fetched. Once the pictures of items came around in Generation III, it got more confusing.
Circular disks are used to mark TMs and HMs in all of the games. Circular discs, or, more likely, CDs. How can that, for one, be a machine? Secondly, how does that even work to teach a Pokemon a move, and then subsequentially delete an unwanted move from the Pokemon's moveset? That is a hard question to answer.
#3: How does a Pokedex get its data if the Pokemon has yet to be found?
Perhaps the big joke of the series since Red and Blue would be that, given Professor Oak's tendency to be forgetful. Anyways, in all of the games, you are sent out to document all of the Pokemon of the game. Some of these Pokemon are undeniably unknown to the human population, and have never had any potential of having anything added to the Pokedex - for example, Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina are in dimensions away from our own, Genesect was built in secret, and the fusions of Kyurem in Black/White 2 couldn't have been documented for pretty obvious reasons.
In the anime, the Pokedex is shown as instantaneously scanning a Pokemon and achieving data - height, weight, habits, and, as of the Diamond/Pearl anime, movesets. This makes it obvious that the Pokemon is already registered in the Pokedex, since, if the Pokemon were never in the Pokedex, you would not be able to get the slightest bit of data.
That pretty much concludes this entry. You are not able to obtain data about something if that something is thought not to exist in the Pokedex's parameters. And, even if you were able to get the data, that would have made your whole journey for Pokedex completion pointless - after all, if you have data on previously unheard-of Pokemon, you probably have all 649 Pokemon in the Pokedex.
#2: Evolution
A big thing of Pokemon is evolution. Individually, it would be insane nowadays to try and catch all 649 individual Pokemon; evolution makes it a little easier by making it more like 400 Pokemon. But how fast is happens is a pretty oddball idea, as well as just what it is.
Imagine it like this. You're playing a game and want to quickly level up a low-level Pokemon, such as an old starter. You blaze through the Elite Four and, at the end, your Pokemon, caught maybe two hours ago on a previous game, has leveled up enough to evolve. And evolution in Pokemon is different than in real life - it is a physical changing of the Pokemon's form, rather than the Pokemon's offspring. Pokemon will become stronger, larger, and, generally, be a lot harder to beat.
The concept of Pokemon evolution is just odd, since it is usually offspring that has evolved in our world, through natural selection. The speed with which Pokemon evolve is also odd - I have caught a Pokemon and had it evolve in less than an hour, versus the millions of years for real life. Then, even crazier, is how you manually cancel it. It has benefits in letting you learn certain moves earlier, but the very concept of stopping evolution, short of genetic engineering in real life, is unreal.
#1: Communication
One of the strangest things in Pokemon I could never understand is how trainers and Pokemon communicate to each other. Let's begin with the trainer to the Pokemon. That, in a sense, can be possible - after all, we train dogs to obey our commands. However, what if you bring in a Pokemon from a foreign region - how does it still manage to obey you without command, even though it shouldn't be able to understand this new language? Pokemon-to-trainer communication is more common in the anime, and even stranger. It is nearly impossible to understand a Pokemon without it using its body language, as it so often does in the anime, yet some people understand them fully.
And what about between two Pokemon? That's even stranger. We can understand how animals of the same species communicate with one another - wolves are a nice example of this. However, Pokemon pretty much just say their name in the anime and side-games. How can they understand each other as well as they seem to do in the Pokemon-only episodes or certain movies? It just seems to make no sense to me; imagine speaking Japanese to a native Russian, and you'll probably just get a blank stare. Of course, all Pokemon are debatedly of the same species (interbreeding is allowed to make fertile offspring), so that may have some hold onto this, though I strongly doubt it. Truly the greatest mystery of the Pokemon world, existing ever since the start.
Last edited by The Freedom Fighter on September 27th 2012, 11:53 am; edited 1 time in total
