Pokémon / Cowboy Be Bop At His Computer

The Pokémon franchise tends to attract fact check failures, thanks in no small part to its weird names and abundance of creatures, plus another bad case of Adaptation Displacement.

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General/cross-media examples

An embarrassing number of publications, including Time Magazine, can't get the word Pokémon right, opting for mutations like Pokey-man or Pokeman. Or pluralizing it as "Pokémons", when the word is still just Pokémon. The official pronunciation is "Pok-AY-mon", but even some fans pronounce it as "Pok-EE-mon" or "Pok-UH-mon". This quote from The Simpsons lampshades this:
Bill Cosby: Pokeymahn?!? Pokeymahn with the pokey and the mahn and the thing where the guy comes out of the thing and he hfurehjgsfhydq agh agh agh!!!
People sometimes assume that Pikachu's name is Pokémon. The September 1998 issue of Disney Adventures has a news blurb about the franchise (prior to its U.S. debut) that describes it as this: "He's yellow, he's fluffy, and in Japan he's bigger than big. Pokémon the "pocket monster" is about to hit the U.S. ... he's one bad ball of fluff!" Aside from the fact that the writer misnamed Pikachu as the actual race of creatures in the franchise, this gaffe is made even more unbelievable because the back page in the very same issue shows an ad with multiple Pokémon, including Pikachu. Also, Pikachu is obviously, clearly very short furred, certainly not a ball of fluff.
In this video, a preacher warns us that the whole point of Pokémon is to control spirits from the Dark Realm.
This video also claming the franchise is Satanic has way too many errors:
- For starters, the pastor makes the always-aggrivating mistake of saying the franchise originated as a cartoon.
- He says the series originated in 1995, when in reality it debuted a year later.
- The pastor says Poliwhirl's original name is Hypno. Poliwhirl's original Japanese name is Nyorozo, and its original dub name was going to be "Aquanaut". Hypno (Sleeper in Japan) is a completely different creature.
- The pastor points to Gengar when he explains which creature Haunter is.
- He then ties it to Magic: The Gathering because the TCG is distributed by Wizards of the Coast in the West, when in reality the two franchises have nothing to do with each other; Wizards is solely responsible for Western distribution and localization.
- The pastor goes on and on about the Energy cards in the TCG, claiming they are present in the entire franchise and give the Pokémon their attacks via occult ability.
The Italian Mickey Mouse Magazine somehow managed to use French names for some Pokémon. As a result, you could read about Psyduck and Golem in a page, and about Ronflex and Sulfura^noteSnorlax and Moltres in the other one. We don't get how they could get mixed up, since English names are the ones regularly used in the Italian releases.
The blue mouse Pokémon Marill was revealed before it had been named, somehow leading to the nickname "Pikablu". The name appeared in countless publications and even on the Topps trading cards. PoJo's Pokémon Magazine continued to use the name even after Pokémon Gold and Silver had been localized. This error became so prevalent that the mistake took on a life of its own and spun further rumors.
An Italian electronic encyclopedia claims that Pokémon are "64 horrid bug-dinosaur hybrids". Even the number is off and always has been, since the first generation alone had 151. Getting mixed up with the Nintendo 64, perhaps?
According to the first year of Guinness Book of World Records: Gamer's Edition, Pokémon was made by Sony.
- They've also mislabeled screenshots from spin-offs as main series ones, and have referred to Pokémon: The Power of Us by its literally translated Japanese name (Everyone's Story).
- In the 2013 edition, not only did they call Blue "Gary" (confusing him with his anime counterpart), they also said that he's Oak's son, when he's Oak's grandson.
On a New England newspaper running an article about Pokémon, a picture of Oshawott was labelled as Pikachu. You know, the most iconic character.
And then there's the infamous practice of referring to Red and Blue by their anime counterparts' names, Ash and Gary, which became a Fandom-Enraging Misconception.
- Some took this even further by misidentifying any Pokémon game protagonist as Ash. The unofficial UK magazine Pokémon World usually misidentified the Gold & Silver protagonist as Ash. Another UK magazine, Beckett Pokémon Collector, once even referred to Todd Snap, the protagonist of Pokémon Snap, as Ash.
- In fact, when Pokémon Gold and Silver came out and first officially referred to the Gen 1 protagonist and rival as Red and Blue, an Italian magazine claimed that those names were an error made by the foreign translators and that in the Japanese versions the two characters have the same names as the ones from the anime (Satoshi and Shigeru), with other magazines copypasting the claim. This was allegedly the plan at one point in development, but the Japanese release refers to them as Red and Green (the rival having switched names in localization because Pokémon Green never released overseas).
An Italian toy commercial for new Pokémon figures has the narrator say "Litten fights against Popplio!" when showing the Litten and Rowlet figures.
"Pikachu, a character from the popular children's television show 'Pokeman' (...)"
An article on the Oregon Daily Emerald criticizing anime for destroying American society says that Pokémon started as trading card games. In reality, while it has a card game, the series began life as a pair of Game Boy games created by Game Freak, with the card game coming just a few months after the video games were released in both Japan and the rest of the world. The same mistake was made for Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh!, which respectively started as a line of virtual pets and a manga issue.
In the MAD skit "PokéHarmony", a female Hitmonchan was shown. Hitmonchan can only be male.
Brazilian evangelist Josue Yrion, who we've mentioned on the main page, is commonly known in the Spanish-speaking world for his extremely uninformed rants. To give an example, he claimed Pokémon was a Satanic game and brought a deck of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards to prove it, narrating a piece of completely improvised Satanic lore for each card he pulled. He also brought a children's book by Mitsuru Nakamura and claimed it was a Pokémon Satanic text. See to believe.
The Mexican magazine Teleguia made a small Pokémon special for Children's Day. And although it wasn't as bad as other examples, the whole thing read like it was written by a parent who kinda knows about Pokémon because their kids like it. The names, although recognizable, were spelled badly, and it made some strange claims like saying that the Pokémon Eevee (misspelled as "Ivy") evolved by eating rocks. Eevee can evolve by interacting with rocks, or alternatively by being leveled up near them (among various evolution methods, some of which are non-rock-related), but it does not eat the rocks.
One of the questions of the Dutch game show Get the Picture was: "To what species do Pikachu, Alakazam and Simsalabim belong?'' "Simsala" is Alakazam's German name, but while playground rumors may have claimed otherwise, there is no such Pokémon as "Simsalabim." Additionally, "Pokémon" is not a species; it's a category to which the various Pokémon belong. Saying it's a species is not unlike saying that "mammal" is a species.
A description for the first Advanced Generation episode claimed that Ash and Pikachu arrived in the "city of Hoenn". Thing is, Hoenn is a geographical region, not a city; this would be akin to saying "the city of Colorado" or "the city of England".
The back cover blurb for the hard-to-find 2009 triple-pack release of the first three movies (with the later two on a flipper) states Pokémon are "tiny creatures that can fit in your pocket". That may be correct for most Bug-types, but they are actually creatures of varying sizes. Then again, what's the purpose of Poké Balls?
This article on ugly-designed Pokémon states it originated as a cartoon (a common error possibly caused by mixing up the Red/Green release date with the US one), among other things.
- The same article states Jynx's color redesign (a image of the black Jynx is used) was caused by "nagging and objection". It's most likely from viewers thinking the design was racist.
Also, a very common error made by media after Pokémon GO was released is to refer at the franchise as a whole as "Pokémon Go", implying that the smartphone game is a Continuity Reboot. That is obviously not true.
- Some people assume that Pokémon consists only of GO and not anything else beforehand - one of those was a reporter at the British newspaper the Metro, whose report about the Rio 2016 Olympic Closing Ceremony stated that no Pokémon appeared in the video during the Tokyo 2020 presentation^note as it was made before the release of GO.
Many Pokémon-based bootleg games do not only include actual Pokémon as allies or enemies, but also include sprites blatantly ripped from other games as in-game monsters, or "original" (do not steal) Fakemon.
- The infamous intro of SNES/Genesis game Pocket Monster includes Ash Ketchum throwing a Poké Ball. This is somewhat uncanny as Pikachu is the playable character, and Ash's Pikachu is known for refusing to enter Ash's Poké Ball.
- There's also a Sega Genesis bootleg rhythm game called Pokémon Crazy Drummer that has nothing to do with Pokémon despite the title and having a Pikachu's face that appears in-game.
Facts Verse's video 10 Pokémon That Actually Exist In Real Life is full of this. Amongst the errors are:
- Calling Pokémon "he" and "she" as if they're not species.
- Spelling "Drowzee" as "Drowsy".
- Pikachu being based on the Pika (or as the video calls it, a "Pika mouse"). This was a common fan theory but has since been debunked. Despite its name, Pikachu are based on mice, with some parts taken inspiration from squirrels.
- Mentioning that you need thousands of Magikarp for it to evolve.^note
- Pronouncing "Caterpie" as "Cat-er-py", not "Cat-er-pee".
- Calling Victreebel "the Victreebel". It's also said that they have a "normal Happiness level", using a long-outdated fan name for the Friendship mechanic. Victreebel does in fact have the standard base friendship, so the claim itself isn't inaccurate aside from the terminology.
- Bulbasaur is described as being frog-based. This is only partially true as it's a Cartoon Creature that takes inspiration from several things.
YouTuber Tokyosaurus has an episode called "Pokémon Reveals Red GROWN UP?", which is about an anime character, Dia, who wears a hat inspired by Red's. However, Sun and Moon already showed what Red's young adult design looks like. The anime character also has the wrong hair colour and his hat isn't identical to Red's either.
Scholastic's Game On! 2016 states that Milotic is a Mythical Pokémon that evolves from a non-Mythical Pokémon (Feebas), despite it not being Mythical (or Legendary for that matter) at all.
CBR.com's list of the 10 cutest Pokémon from Generation II includes a picture of Munchlax, a Pokémon from Generation IV.
This article calls Raichu "Mousechu".

Game examples

Another self-appointed cultural watchdog did press and television appearances warning parents that "Pokey-Man" was a tool of evil, and one piece of evidence that she offered up came from a strategy guide telling children how they could "catch a Mew by cheating with a GameShark." That sure sounds like a plot by Ol' Gooseberry himself to convince innocent, apple-cheeked youngsters that cheating is okay, right? Well, you can simmer down, Moral Guardians, because the aforementioned GameShark was in fact a third-party hardware device for hacking game software that was not created or endorsed by Nintendo (the likes of which they've attempted to shut down in the past) and was in no way exclusive to "Pokey-Man." In short: if your kids owned or asked for the device, chances are they'd already worked out the concept of cheating all on their own.
A Cracked article listing 9 insensitive depictions of 9/11 in media noted Pokémon Black and White's Route 4 and desert ruins roughly correlating to Ground Zero (upon lining up Unova with New York) as #5. So far, so good... then it proceeds to claim that the desert was formed by a falling meteorite containing the legendary Pokémon Kyurem. Kyurem did crash-land in a meteorite, but the geographical anomaly formed in the process was the Giant Chasm, which is nowhere near Route 4. Less egregiously, the article gives Kyurem's height as 9'11" — its actual height is the admittedly extremely close 9'10", although Pokémon sizes are first conceived in metric units and then converted to imperial for the English release.
Then there's this◊ hilarious bit of reporting on PokéPark Wii. You know it's bad when they identify Pokémon as "anime heroes" and "TV stars", ignoring their long history in gaming that predates the anime. Then it proceeds to misidentify most of the Pokémon on the page! Mew is now Shinx, the Fire-type Charmander is mistaken for the Grass-type Treecko, simply because they're both reptiles, and Chikorita is called "Croagun", which is a typo of the completely different Pokémon Croagunk. They got Piplup right as it was during the Generation 4 era and Piplup was the main Pokémon of one of the main characters in the anime at the time.
The ESRB rating synopsis for Pokémon Y refers to Electrode as an attack. Strangely, it's corrected to Electro Ball on the X synopsis, but the error remains in the Y one.
An issue of GamePro contained a mostly informative article about the glitch Pokémon Missingno.... with a picture of Togepi. It was captioned "Missingno. is one Pokémon you don't want to catch". Part of the reason for the glitch's fame is that it can duplicate the sixth item in the player's bag, leading to unnaturally large supplies of rare and useful items.^note
A very painful one comes from VG24/7, where they manage to call Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire remakes of Pokémon Red and Blue, as seen here◊. Ouch.
- According to the Italian news site TgCom24, "Pokémon Omega and Ruby" are remakes of "Pokémon Omega and Sapphire".
- And, according to the Italian newspaper Il Giornale, the release date of these games was December 10, 2014 for most of the world and December 12 in Europe. The dates were actually November 21 and November 28.
Italian magazine Pokémon World (later Pokémon Mania) had so many errors that it isn't even funny:
- First, during the whole Generation 3 period, they randomly decided that the official Italian translations for the names of items and moves suck because they're not literal, blatantly saying that in their opinion that their word-for-word translations are better. Basically, they screwed up kids for months, since their obsession with incorrect translations made it impossible for many people to find the Sea Incense and DeepSeaTooth/DeepSeaScale.
  - The last chapter of the "Complete Ruby/Sapphire Pokédex" had some layout issues, and two paragraphs were retained from the part before that one. As a result, Beldum had the description of Spheal and, most importantly, the "how to get" paragraph in Rayquaza's card was retained from the Luvdisc one, saying that you could get Rayquaza by fishing in the Ever Grande City waterfall. Many people still point at that bit to say that Pokémon World was a horrible magazine.
- They often confused the Pokédex with the Pokénav, merging them into a single item with a map functionality that allows people to see not only where Latias and Latios are, but also makes it possible to know the exact tiles in Route 121 where Feebas is found. Such a function doesn't exist, but they were totally certain it did.
- Once, in the pages where they reviewed Pokémon fansites, they reviewed a site filled with spelling errors. For three months, the magazine staff thought that Brock's name was actually spelled "Brok", after reading it written like that in that site.
- Their strategy guide of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness said once that Primal Dialga is only in Time, while Darkness features Primal Palkia. There is no Primal Palkia in either game. Palkia does appear near the end of the post-game story, but not in any "primal" form.
- In the merchandising pages, they once described a Delibird plush as being "an albino Noctowl in a Santa costume".
- At least twice they mentioned on the cover "Pokémon LeafGreen and GoldRed".
- The British publication wasn't safe either. In the Wi-Fi battle section, it claimed that their Starly managed to wipe out the opponent's Salamence at full HP with Ice Shard. Not only can Starly not learn that move without glitches, but considering the conditions of the field at the time (no Stealth Rock, Starly had no boosts etc.), Salamence would have lost around one-third of its HP:
  -1 252+ Atk Starly Ice Shard vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Salamence: 92-112 (27.7 - 33.7%) — 0.2% chance to 3HKO
- On the competitive battling section, the Italian magazine once opined (around Platinum's release) that Smogon shouldn't place Garchomp in the "Uber" tier because he has a glaring weakness to Ice (takes x4 damage from Ice-type attacks). According to them, "You either remove Garchomp or place Tyranitar and Metagross in the Uber tier too". Not only are there other Uber-tier Pokémon with double weaknesses, but Metagross does not have a double weakness at all.
This trainwreck of a Vine Report article has numerous errors:
- The Nintendo 3DS is called the "Pokémon 3DS".
- The names of Pokémon types aren't capitalized when they should be.
- It refers to Hoopa as a "psychic or mythical" Pokémon. It is both a Psychic-type and a Mythical Pokémon, but it isn't a pure Psychic-type, as it is also half-Ghost, and the report states its Mythical status as if it were its type.
- It claims that Hoopa's alternate form "will feature a Focus Sash with four powerful and well-loved attacks". The Focus Sash is a held item that's completely separate from Hoopa's set of attacks. Hoopa Unbound is also called an evolution of Hoopa, rather than a form change. Every Pokémon fan knows that Mythical Pokémon never evolve (although Meltan/Melmetal later broke that rule). Oh, and it says that the "first version" of the Generation VI games was released in November 2014, which was Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire's release date, not X and Y's (October 2013).
- The Hoopa movie (which isn't even referred to as a movie, the article just says it "premieres this summer") is referred to by its translated Japanese title, Archdjinni of the Rings, rather than its English title, Hoopa and the Clash of Ages.
An article on the Retro Gaming magazine about Pokémon's 20th anniversary had a box talking about the various spinoffs from the franchise, with a tidbit in each paragraph mentioning how many sequels that spinoff had. Most of it is correct, asides from a dubious claim that Pokémon Dash got two sequels.^note
Not even IGN is immune to Pokémon-related examples of this trope, as, in this article about Pokémon Sun and Moon, they mention how Rotom (the Ghost/Electric-type Pokémon) was introduced in Pokémon X and Y, when Rotom has actually been around since Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. They later corrected this.
Malaysian radio station BFM 89.9 was doing a report on how Pokémon GO seemed to have reversed Nintendo's financial (mis)fortune on July 12, 2016. How many things did they get wrong? For starters, they claim the purpose of the app was to go around catching Pikachu on the smartphone, completely ignoring the fact that there are more Pokémon than just Pikachu^note. However, more egregiously, they claimed that Nintendo was well known for the Xbox. Their Twitter feed became flooded with corrections in record time and they apologized for the error just minutes after the story aired. The biggest kicker is that the station is owned by local conglomerate Media Prima, which also owns NTV7 and TV9, both of which air the anime (and are well known for screwing the anime over).
Another error-filled report came from Italy, where a gossip magazine made an article about the game with a brief presentation of some Pokémon, with not only weird descriptions (Squirtle is "A turtle that can swim", Bulbasaur is "A reptilian", Pidgeotto "Is called pigeon but is actually a hawk"), but got two pictures wrong ("Pidgeotto" and "Mewtwo" were actually Pidgey and Mew).
A certain news station reporting on Pokémon GO in 2016 not only featured a banner depicting Pokémon that were not in the game yet, but also inexplicably and most noticeably has Callie, who is one of the Squid Sisters from Splatoon (and most definitely not a Pokémon), among them.
YouTube personality TheJWittz made a video about people mistakenly using his avatar as if it were an official Pokémon GO mascot, including on online ads, banner pages, a Peruvian newspaper, and a German street ad. This mistake was probably made as his avatar resembles Ash Ketchum in his mid-twenties, which is the predominant player demographic.
This article on why Pokémon Sun and Moon will be even better than Pokémon GO. It's a pretty nice idea, considering how Pokémon Go had overshadowed the main series Pokémon games for a while, and this could serve as a way to bring new fans into the main series games. However, it makes some absolutely egregious errors. For starters, it states that the games "started as a cartoon", which is why they have a cartoony art style, despite the fact that the Pokémon anime is based on the games. It then states that in previous games, players had to go to two different buildings—the Pokémon Marts and Pokémon Centers—to both heal Pokémon and get supplies, and that Sun and Moon are the first games to combine the two. In fact, the two buildings have been combined since 2010's Generation V. The end of the article then states that Team Rocket has been replaced by Team Skull, as if Team Rocket was in all the previous generations before Sun and Moon. Team Rocket in the games was only present in Generations I and II and their remakes in Generations III and IV, respectively, and after that they were replaced by Teams Magma and Aqua, starting the concept of a new evil team for each region, with Team Skull being the evil team for Alola.
This article about "6 Ways Modern Gaming Has Ruined the Fun" complains about in-store event Pokémon distributions. Distribution-only Pokémon have existed since the beginning of the series, and the practice of distributing them at stores is actually more convenient than distributing them via contests, which is how it was generally done with the first two generations.
Years later, Mickey Mouse Magazine said that the Super Contests are the main objective of the game in Diamond and Pearl. And the whole defeating Gym Leaders and the Pokémon League? According to them, if you didn't participate in at least one Super Contest you can't even leave Twinleaf Town. Even though no such Contests are even held in that town. That, guys, is what happens when you fail at reading the press release about the game.
Cracked's "The 6 Most Baffling Video Game Spinoffs" article states that Pokémon Channel is about watching television with Pikachu, which is true. However, the article claims there is literally nothing else to do in the game, which is not true.
A popular joke following the announcement of Pokémon Sword and Shield was that the game's third version would be called "Pokémon Gun", lightly poking fun at the games' titles being based on weapons. At least one Spanish newspaper didn't realize that Pokémon Gun was just a joke and reported on it as the title of an actual third game.
According to CNN, Pokémon Sword and Shield are "adaptations" of "old favorites" - ignoring that the series has actually never officially stopped.
In a Sword and Shield game guide from an issue of Australian kids magazine K-Zone, the image of Gigantamax Pikachu used is actually a cropped section from promotional artwork◊ from Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!. Despite the actual design already being revealed by the time it was out, the odd appearance of Pikachu in the image was most likely mistaken for that despite being from a year earlier.
In a Pokémon Detective Pikachu tie-in special of UK game magazine 110% Gaming, they seems to be under the impression that Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! are a single game as opposed to two separate but similar games^note, and it's pretty clear they haven't really played the games due to utilizing promo art as actual game screenshots in said issue.
Even SpongeBob SquarePants tries to cash in on the GO trend with this video from the official YouTube channel, titled "If SpongeBob Was Like a Pokémon Game."^note The video came out in July 2020, long after GO had died down. It starts with Patrick playing "SpongeBob GO" on a Game Boy-like device, even though the rest of the video is more like a traditional Pokémon game. It's in the style of a generic "8-bit" game with SpongeBob's sprite teleporting around with no animation, having nothing to even do with Pokémon in this sense. The battles are loosely structured as in the main-series games, but include weird details like Trainers having levels or being able to use items to instantly defeat the opposing enemy... and the Trainer, for some reason. Overall, it feels like it was made by someone who played Pokémon once back in The '90s and tried making a parody from what they recalled about the games.
This Gamerant.com article claims that since Pokémon Sword and Shield's Crown Tundra has unprecedented regional variants of legendary Pokémon, we may get regional variants of the Legendary Beasts "based on different Eeveelutions, like Umbreon and Espeon." The idea that the Legendary Beasts are reincarnated Eeveelutions is just a fan theory, not established canon like the article implies.
An article showcasing a fan theory about Pewter City Gym from Red and Blue mistakenly identified it as "Pew City Gym", and misspelled Onix as "Onyx".
One article discussing an alleged leak related to Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl (claiming it would have the Dynamax feature from Pokémon Sword and Shield, ultimately proven false in the final game) misidentified the previous remakes in the series, Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, as "Alpha Ruby and Omega Sapphire". It also referred to the Dynamax and Gigantamax mechanics as "D-Max and G-Max"; the only time either term is ever used in Sword and Shield is when the latter is used in the names of the exclusive moves of Gigantamax Pokémon (although the Gigantamax mechanic is commonly called “G-Max” by fans.)

Anime examples

According to TV Guide and the Comcast information guides, the plot of Pokémon: The First Movie has Ash and friends battling Mewtwo and the scientist that created it — despite the fact that Mewtwo killed said scientist within the first few minutes of the film.
Some information guides describe Lucario and the Mystery of Mew with, "The Pokémon must rescue Pikachu from the clutches of evil Mew." Mew is portrayed as playful, not malicious, in all of its appearances including this one, and a later part of the movie has them trying to save Mew.
Descriptions of Pokémon: Zoroark: Master of Illusions that accompanied the movie's release in Italy described Zorua and Zoroark as coming from space, with one instance claiming that Zorua "was separated from his mom in an astral accident". This is not the case at all. One version of the blurb even claims that Zoroark is a Generation 3 Pokémon, implying that whoever wrote it somehow confused it with Deoxys.
When Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl started airing, K2's website stated that Dawn got a case of crush at first sight for Ash. Ship Tease aside, we won't get a traveling companion with a canonical crush on Ash until Serena.
Disney Adventures made the mistake of labeling Tracey as Brock in a blurb for the second movie.
- Also in regards to the second movie: A Pokémon-centric magazine ran an article summarizing the second movie, and even though they clearly knew Brock wasn't going to be in it (at least not the main plot), they somehow did not mention Tracey alongside Ash and Misty throughout the entire article. To be fair, though, the only thing Tracey did that had an impact was when he stopped Ash at one point.
An early VHS promo for the show listed Sabrina as one of Ash's companions.
In the Magazyn Plus's (the magazine for Cyfra+'s subscribers) Polish information guide◊ of Diamond and Pearl season, they described Ash as a Pokémon; fortunately, this was the only thing that they screwed up.
In this Kids' WB promo, a clip of Staryu was displayed when Starmie was mentioned and Lou Bega states that Misty had a Vulpix. Vulpix was Brock's Pokémon at the time. This misconception was most likely developed from the episode where Misty borrows Vulpix in order to compete in a tournament.
Certain episode descriptions from certain cable providers erroneously use the characters' Japanese names instead of their dub names.
A common summary for Pokémon 4Ever is "In this film, we meet the new Pokémon, Celebi, who has the power to travel through time. Vicious, the future descendant of James and Jessie of Team Rocket, travels back in time to wreak havoc, and it's up to young Ash, Pikachu and friends to stop him. Along the way, Ash continues to mature into the unstoppable Pokémon trainer he will become in the future." The villain is actually called the Iron-Masked Marauder in English (Vicious is his Japanese name), and nothing in the film suggests that he is from the future or related to James or Jessie. Jessie and James aren't even confirmed to be anything but platonic.
A Robot Chicken episode featured Ash's Pikachu going inside of its Poké Ball. This is what happens when you know very little about what you're parodying.
A press description used by multiple Italian magazines for the release of the 13th season of the anime, Sinnoh League Victors, mentions that during the season Ash has to fight the last Sinnoh Gym Leaders, mentioning them as Roark, Gardenia and Whitney. The problem is that not only were these three Gym Leaders already defeated by Ash (the only Gym Leader he actually fights in the season is Volkner), but most importantly Whitney is a Johto Gym Leader, not a Sinnoh one.
Pokémon 3:
- When Pokémon 3 was released, many people thought the Unown's name were "Unknown" as if no one knew their name. This is in part because the in-film text uses "Unknown".^note
- A summary for the film says that "Ash, Pikachu, Brock, and Misty must rescue a little girl and her mother from mystical forces". The mother is actually Ash's mother Delia, not Molly's. Molly simply thinks that Delia is her mother.
It is sometimes thought by viewers that the 30 Tauros from the Orange Islands arc are wild Pokémon that just happen to be together. The official Visual Companion even calls them a "stampede"! Actually, that was a Dub-Induced Plot Hole caused by the episode where Ash is seen catching multiple Tauros being left undubbed due to realistic gun usage.
This article states Emolga had appeared in the anime before the release of Pokémon Black and White, but as Emolga first appeared in the anime during the Best Wishes series (that episode, where Iris caught a Emolga is mentioned), the article is thus incorrect.
The French Canadian version of the first few seasons of the anime was based on the French version, with the names of the Pokémon redubbed to their English names, since, at the time, the only versions of the game in Canada were the English ones, so people would not know the French names. Even then, some names were forgotten, leading to certain Pokémon using their French names.
An Australian issue of Disney Adventures mentions that the anime's 10th season will feature a new girl whose name is "Hikari". Despite the obvious usage of her Japanese name, Advanced Battle had just finished airing and Battle Frontier would air in mid-2007 on Network Ten, meaning they were a season too early.
Australian children's magazine K-Zone infamously came under backfire with the Pokémon community in 2008 when they wrote an article about various plot points from the DP anime, but accidentally included ones from episodes that hadn’t aired in Japan yet (but corresponded to the dub’s second season). The article also featured direct translations of Japanese names of one-off characters and items, causing some controversy around a “lava badge”^noteA mistranslation of the Fen Badge. Funnily enough, the article might’ve went a bit far as Network Ten had just finished the first DP season (and it was already on repeats) and wouldn’t air the second one until a year later, after it finished in America.
Several 4Kids-based promos and products, including the 2.B.A. Master soundtrack and Pokémon Live, erroneously assume that Team Rocket's boss, Giovanni, always wanted Ash's Pikachu. In the show proper, Jessie and James were never directly ordered to capture Pikachu. They decided to chase him on their own after seeing his above-average power first-hand. Giovanni didn't even know who Ash was until Best Wishes.
The companion book World of Sinnoh has a blurb on the back that says "Follow in Ash's footsteps as he battles for ribbons and badges!" Dawn is the one who collects ribbons, not Ash.
- It also consistently misspells Jessie's name as "Jesse", and one page referred to Weavile as "Weevil", even though the correct pronunciation is "WEE-vyle" not "WEE-vill".
There's a meme treating Donphan's appearance in Pokémon: The First Movie as if it's the first time for Pokémon fans to witness a Gen 2 Pokémon. Except not only was Misty's Togepi her Signature Mon by that point, The First Movie was accompanied by Pikachu's Vacation which featured Marill and Snubbull.
Kids' WB! ran a promo week called "Week of the Dragon" featuring episodes of Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Jackie Chan Adventures that centered around dragons. However, some Charizard-centric episodes, such as "Charizard's Burning Ambitions" aired during that promotion, even though Charizard is a Fire and Flying-type, not a Dragon-type.

Examples found in official books and strategy guides

Versus Books Strategy Guides:
- The guide for Pokémon Red and Blue is considered a snark magnet by people even moderately good at the games, because of how badly underrated many of the Pokémon were, but the greatest example of research failure is the claim that several Pokémon which do not learn any moves of their type through leveling up would have just been better off being Normal-type, so that they are unaffected by Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors ^note. The writers ignored the defensive benefits of those Pokémon's typings, and four of the Pokémon they mentioned can learn moves of their type by TM ^note. More minor mistakes are saying that Pidgey can learn Egg Bomb^note and that Seadra has a much higher speed than it really does, leading them to overrate it. They also say that catching Missingno. or 'M can ruin one's game, but to be fair, everybody said that until hackers studied the glitch in detail.
- Learning nothing, the Versus Books guide for Pokémon Yellow was even worse. Item names were combined together, points on the map didn't correspond to the text, there were at least two instances of the illustration of the wrong Pokémon used, and any areas not required to reach the end were completely skipped and never mentioned. Also, Pidgey's rarity is listed as "Only One," even though anyone playing the game would encounter far too many right from the start. Overall, it gave the impression that the guide's author considered playing the game a chore and just wanted to get to the end to get it over with, then wrote up the guide to get his check as quickly as possible. They would later disavow this version and just reprint the first guide with information from Yellow added, but still kept all of the original errors.
- Their guide for Pokémon Gold and Silver explained multiple times that Slowbro evolves into Slowking (which is a common Fandom-Enraging Misconception) when in reality Slowking is an alternate evolution for Slowpoke. Unfamiliar readers would be rather confused as to why their Slowbro's not evolving once traded with a King's Rock. In fact, this error has also made its way to other books but thankfully most listings on Slowpoke's evolutions are correct nowadays.
- A section of the berry list for Future Press's strategy guide for Pokémon Platinum (on page 502) claims that the purpose of every defensive berry in the game is to weaken Fire-type moves. This is the effect of just the Occa Berry.
During the release of Red and Blue, Nintendo Power had a mini-magazine called Pokémon Power stapled in that contained a walkthrough in six installments, in addition to a comic made of screenshots from the anime, fan art and more. While the information was largely accurate, a single sentence in the final installment had kids erasing their game data over false pretenses. In the last issue they briefly touched on the post-game, saying that after defeating the League, you could complete your Pokédex by trading and hunting down the Legendaries, or you could start a new game to do things like pick a different starter. The article concludes with, "You'll even be able to keep all your current Pokémon!", clearly implying a New Game Plus. When irate readers began writing in pointing out that this is not true and starting a new game erases all of your current Pokémon, rather than apologize, Nintendo Power huffily replied that what they clearly meant by that statement was that after you start a new game, you can re-obtain all of the species you caught in your previous playthrough.
BradyGames's guide to Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire rarely checks for gameplay differences that depend from things like the two different versions or the three starter choices and is mostly written assuming that the player is playing Ruby and chose Mudkip as their starter, as May/Brendan's team is always stated to feature Wailmer and Numel (which happens only if the player chose Mudkip and so the rival gets Treecko; in other cases the team features Shroomish and either Wailmer or Numel depending on which starter they actually got) and both Team Magma and Aqua members are stated to use the Numel line most of the times (Team Aqua members use the Carvanha line instead).
Prima's guide to Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen makes some errors in type effectiveness: the blurb about Koga states that Poison-types are weak to Rock and Fire-types (they both do neutral damage, although Rock does resist Poison), the one about the fight with Giovanni at Silph Co. states that his Nidoqueen "is easily cooked with a fairly well-powered-up Electric Pokémon" (Nidoqueen, being part Ground-type, is actually immune to Electric-type attacks) and the section about Lance recommends using Electric-types against Dragonair (Dragon-types actually resist Electric). It also claims that Pineco can be found in FireRed in the Cave of Origin, a location only in Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald which doesn't contain Pineco. Presumably they meant Altering Cave, but Pineco can only appear there through a Dummied Out event.
In the Official Guide to Legendary and Mythical Pokémon, Deoxys is stated to have been formerly Mythical and is currently Legendary, which is confusing as Deoxys is still Mythical (while it was made freely available in-game in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, this did not cause it to officially lose its Mythical status). This is corrected in the second edition, however Moltres is stated to be a Mythical.
When the Ultimate Handbook (2008) was released, many people pointed out errors in heights, moves and other info. A year later, an "Updated Edition" was released which fixed most (but not all) of these errors. Some of these, like "Hammer Armor" (an unique error from Groudon's moveset) continue to appears in later handbooks. In categories terms, more recent editions suffer from a related error, being that Mega Lopunny and Mega Audino's categories are incorrect ("Caring Pokémon" and "Light Pokémon" respectively).
In the Deluxe Essential Handbook, any Pokémon who appeared in the Pokémon X and Y Pokédex are listed with the "Kalos (section)/original region" prefix, which seems fine until you realize many past Pokémon who appeared in regional Pokédexes before that do not list the past regions they were featured in. Continues in the Super Deluxe Essential Handbook with those from the Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon Pokédex, except with the decision to write new entries based on Gen 7's in-game entries (if you look at the older gen 1-3 entries, it's presumed that they were using the Pokémon's entries from Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire since those are the ones that are used on the official website).
- In the Super Extra Deluxe Essential Handbook, the same is done with Pokémon Sword and Shield's Pokédex (excluding those added in the Expansion Pass), and further new entires are added. However, official artwork is excluded for Gigantamax Pokémon and their heights are left unspecified.
Due to a unspecified region of origin, Cosplay Pikachu are thought to have originated from Kanto in recent books, most notably in the Visual Companion Second Edition^note and the Super Deluxe Essential Handbook^note.
The Pokémon Visual Companion/Guide:
- When listing every Pokémon Ash caught in the series, it states that Ash accidentally caught a Pidgey that stayed with him until it evolved into a Pidgeot. There are two obvious errors here: not only was it already a Pidgeotto when Ash caught it, but it wasn't accidental at all. The book was updated four times during the years (in 2013, in 2016, in 2020 and in 2022), but this error is the only one that wasn't fixed between the updates.
- Additionally, the listing of Ash's Pokémon is missing Lapras (and earlier versions also missed Muk and Primeape), Wigglytuff is missing from Harley's and the 2013 update-onward states that James's Amoonguss was evolved from a Foongus and Cilan's Pokémon listing is missing Stunfisk and ignores that his Dwebble evolved into Crustle. Despite not being an “official” member of Misty’s team and solely appearing in a “side-story” episode set in Kanto, her Luvdisc tends to be categorised as part of her Kanto team.
- All versions tend to exclude information regarding the Battle Frontier arc, with the exception of Pokémon caught during it. This isn’t a major loss, since most of them reappeared during the Diamond & Pearl arc and evolved during it, and are correctly identified as being caught in Kanto.
- In every release of the book featuring the Kalos region, the list of Pokémon capable of Mega Evolution is missing Sceptile and Swampert.
- The 2020 update has its issues: not only the Alola addendum is not complete as it's missing the Ultra Legends season, but the Kalos part is still missing the latter half of the XYZ season. Also, the updated section listing Ash's Pokémon states that his Rowlet evolved in Decidueye (not only did it stay a Rowlet for the entire series and in Journeys, but it's also holding an Everstone, meaning it can't evolve) and his Lycanroc is in Midday Form when it's actually in Dusk Form.
  - It also has a Galar section, which teases there will be an anime based on Pokémon Sword and Shield, however the anime series after Sun & Moon is in fact Pokémon Journeys: The Series, which does contain episodes set in Galar but primarily takes place in Kanto with the premise of Ash and his new partner Goh traveling through all the different regions. This theme continued with the Journeys-era licensed books, which solely adapted episodes set in Galar.
- The 2022 updated version removes the Galar teaser from the last edition and replaces it with a new section detailing the entirety of Pokémon Journeys and early episodes of Master Journeys. Outside of it, most of the errors are still there (including the fact that the Kalos and Alola sections still don't mention their respective Pokémon League arcs) and a new one was added: the updated version of Ash's Pokémon list not only claims that he caught an already evolved Sirfetch'd when he actually caught a Galarian Farfetch'd who later evolved, but also claims that it was caught as a wild Gigantamax Pokémon, which is impossible as there's no such thing as a Gigantamax Sirfetch'd.
The Hall of Fame anime book from 2004 claims Unown is a Legendary Pokémon and that Sunkern is 0'01" rather than 1'00" and evolves via experience rather than a Sun Stone, among other errors.
The Topps Trading Cards reference a quote from the anime where James describes a strong stench, claiming he was referring to his Weezing (a double-whammy, as his Koffing had't even evolved into Weezing yet at that point). In the actual episode the quote comes from he was actually referring to Erika's Gloom.
The Official Pokémon Handbooks written by Maria S. Barbo were rife with errors. Many were minor, but some were glaring.
- Much like the Topps Trading Cards (mentioned directly above), the scene in "Pokémon Scent-sation!" where James describes Erika's Gloom's odour is misquoted; in the handbook, it is claimed that James was referring to his Koffing.
- The page for Meowth claims that it is the only Pokémon capable of communicating with humans. Not only are several Pokémon able to communicate with humans telepathically, but Team Rocket's Meowth isn't even the only one shown to be capable of speech - the series has also featured talking Gastly and Slowking, among others.
- Pikachu's page claims that Pikachu as a species hates being inside Poké Balls. This is only known to apply to Ash's Pikachu.
- Misty is mistakenly identified as the gym leader of Celadon City and Erika is identified as Cerulean City's gym leader. It's the other way around.
- In the first edition and in early prints of the second edition, Hitmonlee is claimed to evolve into Hitmonchan. At the time, neither Pokémon was part of an evolutionary line. This would be corrected in future prints.
- Pikachu's evolution method into Raichu is listed as "normal," which would signify a level-up evolution. In actuality, Pikachu requires a Thunder Stone to evolve.
- Mew's page claims that it doesn't learn any moves by level-up. It actually learns five moves that way in Generation I: Pound, Transform, Mega Punch, Metronome, and Psychic.
- In the Deluxe Collector's Edition, it is said that Sabrina was taught how to smile by "a very goofy Gengar." It was actually a Haunter.
- In the Deluxe Collector's Edition, Ash's profile claims that he owns both Lapras and Pidgeot… even though he released his Pidgeot before obtaining Lapras, and his other former team members (e.g. Butterfree) had their own section.

Miscellaneous examples

Issues of the now-defunct SCRYE magazine had a list of Japanese Pokémon cards that had yet to be released in America, and helpfully included descriptions of the cards for those who couldn't read Japanese. In one issue, they included a picture of the Here Comes Team Rocket!◊ card, with the description "Two girls and a Meowth stare at you". Granted, James DOES dress like a girl pretty often...
In this video, where JonTron references the creepypasta Pokémon Creepy Black, he manages to give not one, but two wrong descriptions. More specifically, he said that it was "the one where Pokémon die instead of faint" and "the one with the version of Lavender Town that made those Japanese kids get mysteriously ill". Creepy Black is actually about having the ability to "Curse" your opponents (Pokémon and trainers) and make them mysteriously disappear. Lavender Town Syndrome is an unrelated creepypasta regarding Lavender Town's background music in the original Japanese releases of the official games, and some other unrelated creepypastas involve Pokémon dying instead of fainting. However, knowing Jon, it was probably intentional. In the same video he mentions Moemon as if it was a bootleg. It's a Game Mod though, not even meant to be sold on sketchy stores — although Pokémon hacks being sold in sketchy stores does happen (especially in Asia).
One magazine that covers the games mentions Mega-Evolution in the secton about X and Y. Except that it mentions Mega Delphox, who never had an offical Mega-Evolution. The image that was next to the info box showed a fan-made Mega Delphox from Pokemon Pets, a MMORPG.

Cowboy Be Bop At His Computer / Pokémon

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