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This really puts the ‘Monster’ in ‘Pocket Monsters!’

Pokémon is full of weird and wonderful creatures, ranging from the cuddly to the creepy, but there are a few that stand head and shoulders above the rest:


Pokémon
Adorable Abomination
  • Mew is a feline Badass Adorable who possesses on its genes the DNA of every Pokémon, including legendaries, mythicals and presumably the Ultra Beasts too. This has led fans to believe that Mew is either A. Arceus' template for creating other mons B. Arceus' genetic codex C. The Pokémon of which every other mon has evolved from.

Angelic Abomination

  • Arceus itself, who, despite being widely thought as the Pokémon equivalent of God (who has His own extensive entry) is actually closer to Azathoth, considering it created the universe "with its 1000 arms" then went to sleep for a few billion years. Pokémon Legends: Arceus also suggests that the physical form we see in the games is just a tiny shard of Arceus's being, and that it is far more than that.

Animalistic Abomination

Botanical Abomination

Digital Abomination

  • The Porygon line is a very odd one. In its debut generation, Porygon was stated to be the first artificial mon ever created (although that was retconned later). The line looks like digital models for bird creatures, but they're actually solid digital code that can change their typing by modifying themselves, or completely become ones and zeroes again to travel through Cyberspace. They're also The Needless, meaning they don’t require nourishment or rest, and Porygon2 is stated to have a Starfish Language that only others of its kind can understand. Oh, and both can potentially travel through space, (and it's even implied that time travel is inside their capabilities too).
    • If Porygon and Porygon2 are uncanny in their own right, Porygon-Z is a perfect example of a Digital Abomination. It evolves to this new weird form by holding a Dubious Disc, a not so subtle allegory for Internet piracy, and a flaw in this extra-official update has turned it into a glitching mess of a mon that is constantly twitching and phasing in and out of existence. And while Porygon and Porygon2 are both theoretically able to travel to space but can't properly do so, Porygon-Z is a Dimension Traveller who can teleport from one dimension to another. Fittingly, while the Hisui entries for Porygon and its evolved form express curiosity and perplexion, Porygon-Z's expressess fear.
    A curious item induced this evolution. The Pokémon's offensive capabilities have greatly increased, but the strangeness of its behavior has magnified in equal measure. This worries me.
  • Missingno. and its glitchy ilk are popularly thought of as this by the fandom. They fracture reality by their very presence (music, graphics, and save data are twisted), possess bizarre dimensions ('M is 23 feet tall, and Missingno. itself is more than three thousand pounds), and if exposed long enough, the protagonist's mind shatters entirely (the game crashes). As essentially junk data given form, to the player character they might as well be Primordial Chaos.
    • The glitch Pokémon whose name is only represented as a female symbol gets a special mention. It has an endless cry that actually sounds like a bizarre twisted song, its base stats are second only to Arceus, it looks like Giygas, and finally, it weighs 3 tons and is 80 feet tall. This Pokémon is so eldritch that if sent to battle, even the battle menu will be covered by a black glitch screen.
    • In a way, the Generation 1 glitch pokemon are the truest eldritch abominations in the franchise, and possibly in all of gaming. Many of them have unpronouncible names, and their appearance is usually completely incoherent. Say what you will about every other pokemon and most other creatures ever added to a game, but they were at least designed by a game designer to serve a narrative purpose. The glitch pokemon, meanwhile, are things genuinely not meant to exist, only attainable if you break outside the intended confines of reality, and who can actually damage the functions of the game itself.
    • The Bad Egg, which you can get by cheating. They can turn other Pokémon into Bad Eggs. They're actually playable. And when they hatch... all you see is an egg, and then the game freezes. Did the player Go Mad from the Revelation?! This theory suggest they're actually Arceus Eggs!! who has his own entry above.

Draconic Abomination

  • Dialga and Palkia, Arceus' first creations, are Space and Time personified as dragons (indeed, time started flowing with Dialga's creation), and their dominion over them is absolute. Their battle in Pokémon: The Rise of Darkrai had so much power being thrown around that each of their attacks were damaging reality.
    • Their Origin forms are even more powerful than their modern ones and appear like kirins with draconic and knightly influences, and are deliberately designed to be reminiscent of Arceus.
  • Giratina, another one of Arceus' "children" is the Anthropomorphic Personification for antimatter, looks like a chimera of a dragon, a centipede, a coral snake and a tarantula, is able to completely counteract both Dialga and Palkia, lives in the Distortion World (A dimension where time and space do not work like they should) and can travel to different universes and warp reality. There's a good reason why people compare it to Yog-Sothoth.
    • Its Origin form looks like a demonic snake and ups the insectoid traits to make it look like a Cosmic Flaw.
  • Reshiram and Zekrom used to be a single entity that were split in two by the fight between the two founders of Unova. Their fight for ideals vs. truth destroyed the whole region. Not only do they operate under heavy Blue-and-Orange Morality, since it's even been suggested that they're respectively the Abstract Apotheosis for truth and ideals, but their legends even subtly imply that they're alien. Reshiram looks like a feathered dinosaur with an angel motif, while Zekrom looks vaguely inorganic. By the way, Zekrom's electric powers are so great that it caused adjacent electric type mons to malfunction.
  • Pokémon Sword and Shield introduces us to a monster that may top the Ultra Beasts and Necrozma in terms of wrongness, Eternatus, the source of the Dynamax phenomenon and one of the most terrifyingly powerful Pokémon in the series. For one thing, it's gigantic: its normal form alone is already longer than previous record-holder Wailord, and its Gigantamax (or rather, Eternamax) form is an astounding 328 feet, dwarfing any other creature in the game. In terms of design, its base form resembles a skeletal dragon composed of what looks like crystals; as for its Eternamax form, it most closely resembles a serpentine UFO with an immense claw reaching down to attack the player. And then there's its role in the story: the entity fell to Earth inside a meteorite 20,000 years ago, and the mere action of it awakening triggered a phenomenon called the Darkest Day, where the sky turned black and Pokémon began to grow to massive sizes; it took the combined efforts of Zacian and Zamazenta to defeat it, and even then they could only contain it (mostly) inside the meteorite it originally landed in. In the present day, Chairman Rose semi-accidentally releases the thing in an attempt to solve Galar's future energy crisis, bringing about another Darkest Day and nearly destroying the entire region in the process. Bonus points for being one of the most classically Lovecraftian Pokémon in the series; it's not evil or malevolent, it's just something that absolutely, positively does not belong in this world, and is utterly ignorant of and apathetic towards the damage its presence causes.

Genetic Abomination

  • Mewtwo is a human made case: A being made of Mew's DNA (Ergo, the DNA of hundreds of mons) who can channel enough psychic power to defeat legendaries and was for a long time seen as the most powerful legendary ever. Its Mega-Evolved forms are so powerful that they even upstage Arceus Itself. And if the Berserker Gene from Pokémon Gold and Silver really is derived from Mewtwo, that means mere strands of its DNA are enough to drive any Pokémon completely insane.

Humanoid Abomination

  • While Gardevoir is generally depicted as being a gentle and motherly Pokémon, there is something about them that seems quite... off. For starters they are in the Amorphous egg group, meaning it was considered to more in common with Tynamo and Mismagius than Human-like mons like Hariyama or Gothitelle. Of course, it was later added to the Human-Like egg group,They also hold such psionic powers that they are able to casually bend the laws of gravity to move themselves and can see into the future. Furthermore, their reality bending abilities are so great that they can distort dimensions and create small black holes through sheer will. It seems the resident Self-Fanservice mon is actually a Humanoid Abomination holding enough power to end planet Earth as we know it! Of course, this may make her even more attractive to some...
  • Deoxys is an extraterrestrial being which was born from the mutation of an alien virus. It can change its form and power at will, it appears as nothing short of a Starfish Alien, and its motives and nature are completely and utterly incomprehensible by humans. It somehow takes control of a meteor to travel to the Hoenn region for... whatever reason. Cozmo suspects it's not inherently malevolent, but that's all that can be said.

Undead Abomination

Others

  • The adorable Pikachu imitator known as Mimikyu is clearly lovecraftian, as its true form underneath its Pikachu cloak is so horrifying that seeing it can cause death from fright. Unlike some ghost types, it is unclear if it was ever alive in a different form. In the anime, Meowth of Team Rocket temporarily died as a result of seeing it, twice. When you get a glimpse at it, you only see a shadow with glowing eyes.
  • Unown. While a Joke Character individually, they become a powerful reality-warping Hive Mind in large enough groups. They live in another dimension, but often appear in inexplicable ancient ruins, and their very presence messes with your in-game radio, creating incredibly creepy radio transmissions. Oh, and Arceus uses them to make a new Dialga, Palkia, or Giratina in HeartGold/SoulSilver.
    • Their Eldritch status is played up for all it's worth in the third Pokémon movie, Spell of the Unown. Unlike most of the other Pokémon seen in the series, which at least follow some sense of logic, the Unown seem to be... well, unknowable. Their motivations for doing what they do throughout the movie are all a big mystery from beginning to end, and that’s assuming they even have motivations for what they do. These are beings that have reality warping powers nearing that of Arceus itself, but unlike Arceus, they don’t appear to possess anything even resembling humanity, or even sapience.
    • Unown's resemblance to written language, and the fact Arceus was able to create another Dialga/Palkia for you from Unown, seems to imply that Unown are the underlying source code that writes reality itself.
    • It’s possible that the Unown are the metaphorical “1,000 arms” of Arceus, as mentioned above.
  • Darkrai is the living embodiment of nightmares and able to induce nightmares on hapless victims. Interestingly, the event where you can find Cresselia (Darkrai's "good dreams" counterpart) involves interacting with an NPC named Mr. Eldritch, whose son has fallen victims to Darkrai's endless nightmares. Its morality is also subject to flip-flops; in the mainline games it is depicted as a good-natured monster with a severe case of Power Incontinence, and as such it lives under self-imposed exile to avoid wreaking havoc. In the Mystery Dungeon: Explorers games, it is a textbook sociopath and an Omnicidal Maniac that wants to plunge the world into an eternal nightmare. Its Pokepark Wii self is instead somewhere in between.
  • Hoopa is easily one of the most Eldritch Pokémon in existence. Its Confined form looks like a cute and mischievous little imp that has rings that can be used as portals. Problem is, that's the ''confined'' form. Hoopa Unbound is a six meter tall humanoid djinn with six floating arms and a black hole on its stomach. Now it has multiple rings that can use to bend dimensions and travel to other realms, and the anime shows it can summon legendaries through it. Same anime also shows Hoopa Unbound giving a smackdown to Reshiram, Zekrom and Regigigas, and it could only be stopped by an alliance between some of the most powerful legendary Pokémon.
  • The Ultra Beasts from Pokémon Sun and Moon, a group of mysterious and extremely dangerous beings who are a threat to humans and Pokémon alike. To signify that they simply don't belong in the world of the games, they look bizarre and abstract in comparison to everything else and, quite distressingly, several of them seem to lack a face. To make matters worse, on the official website, they are not classified as Pokémon, despite the fact that this takes place in a world where every previous entry is considered a Pokémon. It turns out they are Pokémon, but they come from different universes, which explains their bizarre characteristics. They can be caught, battled with, and befriended in Pokémon Refresh like any other. Another Pokémon "family" that's thought to also be Ultra Beasts are Cosmog and kin, since they can also create the same kind of wormholes to other worlds, and they also share the Ultra Beasts' trait of all of their base stats being prime numbers. In an example of Gameplay and Story Integration, normal PokéBalls have great difficulty with recognizing them as Pokémon at all, making it almost impossible to catch them without using the specially made Beast Balls, which, in turn, nearly can't catch normal Pokémon.
    • Symbiont (Nihilego) is a giant shape-shifting, emotionless jellyfish monster made of a glass like material whose movements resemble those of a young girl. It produces venom that can cause insanity in people touched by it, which is what happened to the Big Bad of Sun and Moon, Lusamine. During the final battle, Lusamine fuses with a Nihilego, turning them into an even more eldritch form. And strangely, despite its jellyfish-like appearance, it is a Rock/Poison type and can't even learn any Water-type moves. Its native environment is an Eldritch Location that resembles the dark depths of the ocean, except that it isn't underwater.
    • Absorption (Buzzwole) and Beauty (Pheromosa) resemble sexy humanoid insects, the former resembling a hilariously muscular and masculine mosquito, and the latter a skeletal and feminine cockroach. These happen to be the least eldritch of the Ultra Beasts, since they at least resemble familiar animals, but they still are very weird in the context of Pokémon because their design seems to be in a different art style than most Pokémon and because sexy humanoid insects are a very bizarre and rarely seen creature design even by the standards of most other works that have a lot of weird monsters. Absorption's native environment is a jungle with impossibly large, vaguely humanoid trees. Beauty's native environment is a desert with strange crystal rocks.
    • Lighting (Xurkitree) appears to be a living mass of electrical cables arranged in a vaguely humanoid shape, or possibly a Christmas tree. Unlike other Animate Inanimate Object Pokémon, it isn't cute, having a spiky head with no face. And as the Ultra remakes reveal, the ones you fight and catch are implied to be mere babies, with the fully grown ones being the size of skyscrapers (making them theoretically among the largest Pokémon to exist), as its home world appears to be entirely covered in Xurkitree of varying sizes.
    • Blaster (Celesteela) looks like a cross between a woman and a spacecraft, with giant rockets for arms that are not visibly connected to its body. It also is said to have plant-like biology, even though it looks almost nothing like a plant. When you catch it, it turns out to be a Steel/Flying type, but it learns a lot of Grass-type moves and almost no Flying-type moves. Its native environment is an alien world covered in craters. On top of that, we learn that apparently Celesteela grow out of the ground like bamboo.
    • Blade (Kartana) looks like a tiny swordsman made out of paper. Despite its small size, it is absurdly sharp. As in, sharp enough to cut through anything from solid gold to solid stone and beyond. Its behavior is also worth mention: it lives to slice whatever it can. As shown in the anime, Kartana's speech is actually backwards English and always the same phrase jumbled up. "Once again, I cut a worthless object." It goes around Alola repeating these words after slicing up whatever durable objects it finds and giving Furfrou brilliant haircuts. Its home dimension is a forest with a zen-garden attended by trainers who seem to revere the samurai Ultra Beast.
    • Glutton (Guzzlord), which provides the page image, is a demonic and draconic Cephalothorax with an enormous mouth and two tongues that also have mouths on them and another mouth in the back of its main mouth, and also a smaller head on top of its head with No Mouth. Like a black hole, it is a Big Eater and an Extreme Omnivore, and the entirety of the matter it consumes is converted to energy so it never poops. In the Ultra remakes, the player can find them in an alternate dimension that appears to be a post-apocalyptic version of Hau'oli City where the planet has mostly been evacuated. The only person you meet there says Guzzlord has been around since long before they were born, implying they're native to that universe, and that they tried bringing them to other worlds when they were evacuating Earth, but their massive appetites made it impossible.
    • Adhesive (Poipole) is a small alien creature with a large insectoid head with three horns on a tiny reptilian body. It evolves into Stinger (Naganadel), which resembles a cross between a dragon and a wasp with three giant syringes for stingers, and houses its brain within its "abdomen" (instead of its head) which said stingers are directly connected to.
    • Assembly (Stakataka) looks like a walking brick tower with an eye on each brick. Each brick is actually a separate lifeform, all 150 of them.
    • Burst (Blacephalon) resembles a Monster Clown with a mouthless spherical head that isn't connected to its body and that it is able to throw and detonate like a grenade and regenerate at the cost of half its health.
    • The creators of Pokémon said in an interview that they intentionally broke the regular rules of designing Pokémon when they were designing the Ultra Beasts. They have also said Ultra Beasts are based on the concept of invasive species. Invasive species are not evil, but they are extremely destructive simply because they are in an place where they are not supposed to be and just doing what is natural for them to be doing.
  • The humble Staryu and Starmie may qualify. They appear to be ordinary starfish, but it is implied that they may be alien beings of some sort.note  Despite not being object pokemon or legendary pokemon, they are genderless(Meaning they can't breathe with anyone but Ditto.) Their origin is unknown, and they are constantly broadcasting strange radio waves to parts unknown. Their mere presence is known to cause headaches in those who get near, and being psychic types, they have various powers relating to the mind.
  • Necrozma is an alien being made out of black crystals that constantly fires lasers by focusing light through its body. Evidence suggests that it may be an Ultra Beast that arrived in the distant past, unlike the others, who only began appearing recently. It's also described as being an extremely vicious Pokémon that attacks its opponents without mercy. In Pokémon Sun and Moon, it can be randomly encountered at Ten Carat Hill: Farthest Hollow after the player has captured all of the Ultra Beasts, without any clues or foreshadowing aside from a cryptic hint from Looker, making it also a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere. It also becomes the very first Pokémon to be the main villain of a main series Pokémon game (not counting the post-game). It wants to steal the world's light, bringing about The Night That Never Ends, which it already has done to the alternate world of the Ultra Megalopolis, so that it can regain its true form, Ultra Necrozma,. It is also revealed that Necrozma is the source of Z-Crystals and Totem Pokémon.
  • The Pokémon movies have had a tendency to upgrade regular if strong mons into much more weird creatures.
    • It was Spell of the Unown that solidified Unown as a Hive Mind metafictional group of entities.
    • Pokemon The Movie 2000 depicts the Legendary Birds Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres, who in the games are quite strong but nothing to marvel about, into avian servants of Lugia whose elemental powers can cause massive amounts of destruction and control the weather like Groudon or Kyogre.
    • Pokémon 4Ever turns Celebi into one of these, strangely enough. Ironically, this is the same movie that gave Celebi its Memetic Loser status.
  • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity has the Bittercold, a non-sentient crystalline entity that embodies the negative feelings of all the Pokémon in the world and feeds upon said feelings to strengthen itself (which is a bit of a problem considering the game's setting). Pokémon suffocate simply from being near it and it ends up growing powerful enough to threaten the world's very existence.
  • Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon has Dark Matter, which, like the Bittercold, is an embodiment of negative emotions. It is able to possess Pokémon, create shapeshifting minions called Void Shadows, and steal the life force of Pokémon, turning them to stone. Unlike the Bittercold, it is sapient and plans to steal all of the world's life force, then hurl it into the sun.
  • The Japanese version of Pokémon Heroes had this unnamed monster that Latios and Latias fought against in the backstory.

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