History Characters / PokemonGenerationIFamilies

* TookALevelInBadass: For a while Gengar was unable to take advantage of its typing because Poison and Ghost-type moves are physical. Then Generation IV came and Shadow Ball and Sludge Bomb became special moves. OhCrap.[[hottip:*:At 90 power boosted to 135, Sludge Bomb is the strongest attack Gengar has access to short of Hyper Beam. The only problem is that Poison isn't really a good offensive type.]]

* TookALevelInBadass: For a while Gengar was unable to take advantage of its typing because Poison and Ghost-type moves are physical. Then Generation IV came and Shadow Ball and Sludge Bomb became special moves. OhCrap.[[hottip:8:At 90 power boosted to 135, Sludge Bomb is the strongest attack Gengar has access to short of Hyper Beam. The only problem is that Poison isn't really a good offensive type.]]

* TookALevelInBadass: For a while Gengar was unable to take advantage of its typing because Poison and Ghost-type moves are physical. Then Generation IV came and Shadow Ball and Sludge Bomb became special moves. OhCrap.

* NoGender: Though one Mew is described as giving birth, implying that it's either truly asexual/hermaphroditic (reproducing asexually) or female. [[{{LarynxDissonance}} And it's voiced by]] KoichiYamadera [[{{LarynxDissonance}} in the anime]] (though his performance does sound convincingly like a small, cute pink creature).

* MissedMomentOfAwesome: Sheer Force is an amazing ability in general, but Kingler only has one or two physical moves that benefit from it.

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Cloyster bears a striking resemblance to [[CountryMatters a certain organ]] present in roughly half of the human population. The Internet has ''not'' failed to notice this. The designers are almost certainly aware of this, as both Cloyster and Onix, the other rather Freudian Pokémon, showed up in a double battle in HGSS. Under the ownership of one of the romantic couples you can fight... yeah.

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: the shape of Magmar's forehead didn't go unnoticed. And its Japanese name is "Boober", as listed above.

* [=~Everything's Better With Dinosaurs~=]: In name only.

* [=~Everything's Prettier With Butterflies~=]: Butterfree

* [=~Everything's Worse With Bees~=]: Beedrill

* [=~Everything's Prettier With Butterflies~=]

* [=~Everything's Better With Platypi~=]

* [=~Everything's Better With Monkeys~=]

* [=~Everything's Precious With Puppies~=]

* [=~Everything's Better With Spinning~=][=/=]SpinToDeflectStuff: Hitmontop.

* [=~Everything's Better With Spinning~=]: Starmie has another star attached to its back that is constantly spinning, which it uses to propel itself along. They also learn moves such as Rapid Spin.

* [=~Everything's Better With Spinning~=]: Elekid spin their arms around to charge up electricity.

* AscendedFanon: The fan nickname "Eeveelution", used in ''[=~Pokémon Ranger~=]''.

* [=~Everything's Squishier With Cephalopods~=]

* BossInMookClothing: ''[=~Pokémon Black And White~=]'' has a location where there is a very small chance of fishing up one. Wild Dragonite Appeared!

** And now it's fallen to UnderUsed. How the mighty have fallen...

* HollywoodThin: Despite weighing almost 300 pounds, Mewtwo's art and sprites have portrayed it as being as thinner and thinner over each generation.
** Justified, however, in that it is a quite tall (and large) creature with a quite voluminous tail and lower body.

** Subverted in the fact that even in the 3 generations were it didn't have special stab it was still one of the top tier pokemon in competitive circles Like Smogon.

* InstantAwesomeJustAddDragons[=/=]OurDragonsAreDifferent: Charizard, oddly not a Dragon type (it is in the Dragon egg group, learns many moves of the type and is often treated as a dragon in-universe, though). Chalk this one up to competitive balance[[hottip:*:making Charizard a Dragon would get rid of its weakness to Water, thus breaking the Rock-Paper-Scissors starter type trio [[{{Irony}} which was later broken anyway by Empoleon]]]] and EarlyInstallmentWeirdness[[hottip:*:at the time, the Dragon type was intended to be an [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity Plus One Type]] exclusive to the Dratini line]].

* InstantAwesomeJustAddDragons[=/=]OurDragonsAreDifferent: And oddly not a Dragon type (it is in the Dragon egg group, learns many moves of the type and is often treated as a dragon in-universe, though). Chalk this one up to competitive balance[[hottip:*:making Charizard a Dragon would get rid of its weakness to Water, thus breaking the Rock-Paper-Scissors starter type trio [[{{Irony}} which was later broken anyway by Empoleon]]]] and EarlyInstallmentWeirdness[[hottip:*:at the time, the Dragon type was intended to be an [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity Plus One Type]] exclusive to the Dratini line]].

* InstantAwesomeJustAddDragons[=/=]OurDragonsAreDifferent: Not Dragon-types per-se, but they do belong to the Dragon Egg Group, and Charizard is based on the familiar, fire-breathing European dragon. Charizard is even featured as one of four elemental dragons in the first ''[=~Pokémon Ranger~=]''[[hottip:*:although it's mainly because, until Generation V's Reshiram, there was no dragon to represent the element of fire]], and it's on Lance's otherwise all-Dragon teams (except for Gyarados and Aerodactyl) in ''HGSS''[[hottip:*:and in the original ''PokemonGoldAndSilver'', although there were very few Dragon-types back then]]. The lack of Dragon typing is because the games don't allow triple-typed Pokémon, and also allegedly because the Dragon type itself was created after Charizard was conceived.
** And also because Dragon resists Grass, Fire, and Water. Making Charizard a Dragon would take away Blastoise's biggest advantage over it.

* [[PoisonousPerson Poisonous Pokémon]]: By far the best example in the series. If a Grimer slides along some grass, expect the soil to be so contaminated that not even weeds will grow there. Muk's toxicity is more extreme than that; one drop of its essence can turn a pristine lake into a stagnant swamp in minutes, and touching it causes immediate illness (and, in some cases, death).

Another previously extinct Pokémon and its evolution, they have seen a revival in the modern day thanks to fossil restoring technology. Since the fossil that allows Kabuto's restoration is exclusive from the one which allows the restoration of Omanyte, and they have many overall similarities, they are often considered Foils to each other... [[SarcasmMode in case you couldn't tell]].

** They weren't as rare in Gen I either, as in addition to appearing in the Safari Zone, they could also appear in the Cerulean Cave at an abnormally common rate (5% or 10% chance, depending on what floor you're on and the game). This was fixed in Fire Red/Leaf Green, where the only place to get a Chansey in that game (and indeed that entire gen) was the Safari Zone.

* BeTheBall

** LightningBruiser: Its Dream World ability doubles its speed under Sandstorm.

* RidiculouslyCuteCritter: Sandshrew.
* RollingAttack

In Gen I, when you defeated the Karate King in the Fighting Dojo, you were given a choice between two fighting Pokémon: Hitmonlee, who specializes in kicking attacks and Hitmonchan, who specializes in punching attacks. Both these Pokémon seemed to be related but didn't evolve into one another. That changed with Gen II when they introduced Tyrouge, a fighting type that [[MasterOfNone didn't seem to specialize in anything]] -- yet. It needed to be trained in a certain stat to evolve into Hitmonlee (higher attack), Hitmonchan (higher defense) or the new third member, Hitmontop, who specializes in spinning on it's head (its attack and defense are even).

* OvershadowedByAwesome: All 7 Eeveelutions suffer from some of this, due to their awkward movepools and stat distribution. Vaporeon suffers the least from that, while Flareon's lack of a movepool has became a RunningGag for the fandom.

* StrongButUnskilled: The evolutionary line has enough HP to make them broken (Blissey's HP can go the highest out of any stat of any pokemon!) but their attack and defense is SEVERELY lacking.

* SingleSpecimenSpecies: Yeah, I don't think the scientists at Cinnabar'll be making any more of [[GoneHorriblyRight these]].

* AWorldwidePunomenon: Ninetales looks like a case of RougeAnglesOfSatin until you realize it's supposedly 9 people fused. I suppose that if they were separated, they would have quite the stories to ''tale'' about being being transformed into nine ''tails''.