Unfortunate Character Design / Pokémon

With over 1,000 monsters and counting in addition to oodles of human characters, it shouldn't be surprising that a number of the franchise's characters have designs or design elements that can come off as questionable.

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Human Designs

• Pokémon Black and White - Gym Leader Lenora from is a dark-skinned woman with a hairband, and an apron (which was removed in the American dubs of the anime to avoid controversy), leading to her resembling the Mammy stereotype.
• Pokémon X and Y - Many Team Flare grunts have hair that's probably supposed to evoke soft-serve ice cream, but some of them look rather unfortunately scatological.
• Pokémon Sword and Shield - Sordward's hair is supposed to resemble a sword, but when it sways in the wind and flops sadly after losing a battle, you can't help but see a phallic resemblance.

Pokémon Designs

• A number of more anthropomorphic designs have unfortunately-placed feather/fur tufts sticking from their crotches. Some more infamous examples include Beartic, Reshiram, Hisuian Decidueye, and Blaziken.
• Metapod is supposed to be a butterfly chrysalis, but its overall slim shape and the points near its head just make it look phallic instead. Two of its very few moves being Harden and String Shot does not help its case, nor did the early episode where Ash and Samurai had a competition to see whose Metapod could stay hard the longest.
• Nidoqueen's chest coloring looks like a bra, though this could be intentional due to Secondary Sexual Characteristics. Its Japanese (it was edited for international release) Pokémon Stadium animation, which has it grabbing its chest and jiggling it, only added to the issue.
• Team Rocket's Meowth from the anime is an unfortunately similar case to Hello Kitty, being designed with only three fingers. This isn't much of a problem with the typical Meowths in the games, but in the anime, he ends up having to use his middle finger as as index finger. So whenever he points up, he unintentionally appears to be flipping the bird. This gesture also resembles a simple drawing of a dick and balls.
• Kadabra has a weird, um, segment connecting its tail to its underside.
• One of Golem's attack animations in Pokémon Stadium and its sequel is to roll over onto its back, leaving its legs pointing forward at its opponent. It uses this animation when it's commanded to use Mud-Slap, an attack which involves spraying brown gunk at the enemy and— yeah...
• Most infamously, Cloyster looks a bit like a vagina with horns stuck on it, complete with a giant horn on top of its head, right where a clitoris would be. This, however, may be intentional (or the developers realized after the fact), because in HeartGold and SoulSilver, there is a Young Couple Trainer duo who use Cloyster and... Onix. Coincidence?
• Jynx's original black-skinned, large-lipped design was so controversial that Game Freak actually had to redesign it to have purple skin. Just compare its original look◊ to its new one.◊
  • There's also the pattern on its dress that combined with its breasts looks like a penis and testicles.
• Magmar and Castform have two bulges on their head and bottom, respectively. This is compounded by the fact that the former's Japanese name is Boober, which is supposed to be a reference to the booby birds, but can easily be misinterpreted as something else.
• Mewtwo has a similar issue to Kadabra in that its tail seems to be connected to its crotch, but it's worsened by the fact that it's a much deeper purple than the rest of Mewtwo's body.
• Mew has suffered this twice throughout the Nintendo DS era of Pokémon:
  • Pokémon fans had a lot of humorous reactions to the Mew DS stylus which has the stylus protruding from Mew's crotch. Even worse, the red color resembles certain erect animal penises, and tip of the stylus is white and translucent.
  • Mew's animated sprite in the Generation V games was based off of its sprites in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, which wasn't well-received by fans due to the sprite looking somewhat weird. However, its animated form◊ makes it worse, with Mew's tail (which is somewhat thicker at the tip) seemingly gesturing into its butt.
• Espeon's official artwork◊ makes it look like it has a prominent butt, complete with hole, because of the way the tail is drawn connecting to the body.
• Feraligatr's Gen III back sprite◊ cuts off right below its back ridges, which makes them look like butt cheeks.
• The entire Torchic line suffers from this one way or the other:
  • Male Torchic have tiny black spots on their rear ends in an... unfortunate location. Interestingly, this actually may be a deliberate stealth reference to some methods of chick sexing involving squeezing them to look for a small pimple-like bump to identify males.
  • Combusken's body shape resembles a penis.◊ Humorously, it doubles as a Visual Pun for English-speaking players, since chickens are also called cocks.
  • As mentioned above, Blaziken has a tuft of feathers on its crotch, though it arguably has it the worst out of all the mons with crotch tufts. Thanks to an unfortunate 3D model, Blaziken's looks particularly phallic in Pokkén Tournament, and some of the animations in that game happen to include close-ups of the strangely-shaped "tuft of feathers", which really does not help. Nor does the fact Blaziken is based on cockfighting (cock as in chicken).
• Nuzleaf also has a somewhat phallic look to it, and its legs being slightly larger than its torso and slightly bulbous in order to resemble pants doesn't help. It also has nipples, for some reason.
• The Nosepass line is based on the Moai of Easter Island, but their giant noses make them resemble an antisemitic caricature. Probopass has it even worse, since it has a mustache made of magnetic filings that somewhat resembles a stereotypical Jewish 'stache, as well as a cap that resembles a kippah.
• Lileep and Cradily's petals unfortunately bear a striking resemblance to penises. The fact that they are both Rock-type doesn't help.
• Metagross gains a large spike on its front when it Mega Evolves, and it led to sex jokes almost immediately after its reveal.
• Registeel's sprite in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl has its right arm raised in a Nazi salute. For the European release (as well as all versions of Platinum and HeartGold and SoulSilver), it was lowered.
• Male Bidoof have two extra spheres under the tail that have made them the subject of a lot of "male bidoof have testicles!" jokes.
  • This could be intentional, since they are based on beavers. In medieval times, people had some very strange ideas about beaver testicles (which actually weren't their testicles at all, but rather scent glands).
• Back when the FurAffinity boards allowed people to publicly report potential site violations, a perfectly innocent and accurate drawing of a Floatzel◊ was reported for not being marked as mature content, presumably because the raindrop shaped marking on its chest looks like a penis.
• Ambipom is a monkey that has hands on its tails, likely intended as a reference to monkeys with prehensile tails. The hands somehow ended up designed in such a way that they resemble cow udders with big red teats. Some people see the fingers as phallic instead. It should be no surprise that a lot of people think the design is gross.
• A large chunk of Lopunny's... shall we say, reputation comes from the fact that it has large, poofy tufts of fur on its wrists. In its official art and most of its sprites and default model, it's holding its hands up to its chest. This makes Lopunny looks like it has a huge rack.
• An emote of Bonsly Flipping Helpless, taken from the picture in its TCG card, was removed from Twitch for showing "sexual content" which most likely stemmed from it having a hole unfortunately placed on its bottom like most plant pots, and the way the picture displayed its rear a lot more prominently than other artworks of the Pokemon.
• Palkia, a giant pink dragon with a long neck and circular shoulders, looks quite phallic, especially when you factor in its Breath Weapon moves like Hydro Pump.
• A Pokémon Diamond and Pearl prototype sprite leak has revealed a bizarre looking scrapped legendary (which would eventually be replaced with Giratina). It has what looks like possibly two horns/whiskers on its chin that have been divided so poorly in the sprite art that it makes it look like it has a elongated, vertical mouth. People have also likened these horns to a scrotum, and the feathers (or fur?) on its head are shaped in such a way it kind of makes it look like it has the head of an old bald man. It also has five legs, and only one wing for some reason. Many of the sprites in this leak are poor quality rough drafts or early designs of canon Pokémon that were cleaned up or replaced for the final game, so had this legendary been retained for the final game, they also would have replaced this sprite with a better looking sprite, and most likely also altered the design. See the deleted legendary here.
• Many people have commented on how Oshawott's seashell◊ resembles a penis.
• Due to how it is rendered in the 3D Pokémon games, the Dream Mist that comes out of Musharna's nose looks like a flailing intestine to some.
• Some people have noticed how Keldeo's official artwork◊ makes it look like it has a butthole.
• The head of Furfrou's La Reine trim looks like a breast with a prominent blue nipple to some.
• Hawlucha has a layer of feathers which resemble a camel toe.
• Complete Forme Zygarde has a white hexagon on each knee and foot, and two green hexagons beneath each white. Good luck getting that out of your head.
  • 10% Forme Zygarde doesn't have it much better; it has a green hexagon placed right on its rear end, looking very much like a big anus that it shows off to the player when sent out. Even worse, it sometimes glows white, drawing more attention to it.
• Incineroar in Pokémon Sun and Moon is designed as a muscular bipedal cat with a wrestler motif with fire around its waist acting like a wrestler's belt. If it uses Flamethrower or a similar move, it shoots fire from its crotch. Fans also had a field day with the fact that Incineroar can use the Bug-type Z-Move Savage Spinout, which involves shooting a large quantity of white thread at the target. Guess where it comes from when Incineroar uses the attack.
• Also from Pokémon Sun and Moon, Yungoos and Gumshoos drew comparisons to Donald Trump, who was at the time in the midst of his successful 2016 presidential bid, due to the fact that their hair tufts strongly resembled Trump's distinctive hairdo and their facial expressions resembled this infamous photo of him.
• Galarian Weezing from Pokémon Sword and Shield has a design that invokes both Industrial Revolution-era factories and the business tycoons that profited off of them and the pollution they caused. Unfortunately, Weezing's rounded body in conjunction with the height and placement of the smokestacks makes it resemble a pair of bongs. This is only worsened by the light green smoke that surrounds it, as well as the fact that its Secret Art is Strange Steam, a mind-numbing mist that has a decent chance to cause Confusion.
• Clobbopus's mouth is on its underside, much like a real life octopus's. The problem arises when it uses a special attack in-game, where it flips over onto its back to shoot something from its mouth, which can easily be mistaken as a gaping butthole.
• Each of Falinks' spiked, rounded shields look like a pair of breasts when they cover the front.
• Snom's round, nubby mandibles have been compared by some players to butt cheeks or breasts. Pinchurchin has a similar problem with its mouth.
• From a certain angle, notably from behind in a double battle, Dracovish can look a little... phallic, to say the least. Additionally, what's meant to be the beginning of the Fossilized Drake's tail looks like a prominent crotch, especially since it has a big red circle in the middle of it.
• Pokémon Legends: Arceus: On Hisuian Decidueye's 3D model, the way some of its feathers are layered make it look like there's a hole in its body. This wouldn't be a problem in and of itself if the feathers (and hole) in question weren't positioned over its crotch area.
• Thanks to the leaf marking on its face and its reddish-pink eyes, Sprigatito from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet looks like it has a marijuana motif, almost as if it's getting high on its own supply. This led to lots of stoner jokes, namely that Sprigatito would evolve into a Grass/Fire cat that's perpetually baked. While Meowscarada is, in fact, Grass/Dark, it doesn't exactly lose the general motif.
• Crocalor, Fuecoco's first evolution, happens to bear an unfortunate resemblance to an unfavorable caricature of a Mexican. This is due to its sombrero-like nest, markings that resemble a pair of overalls, portly build, and vacant expression.
• The Diglett lookalike Wiglett's white, elongated body spawned penis and semen jokes almost immediately after its reveal. Its evolution Wugtrio doesn't have it much better; if anything, it's even worse since its body is a fleshy pink.
• Grafaiai's elongated middle finger (which is accurate to real-life aye-ayes) makes it look like it's constantly flipping the bird at everyone (and is often drawn as such in many fanarts).
• When viewed from behind, the tightly-curled end of Kingambit's hair looks like a turd to some detractors. Additionally, when it uses moves like Kowtow Cleave, it shows an oddly well-defined posterior. Finally, the red badges on its body resemble nipples, which are more prominent on its shiny form.
• Gholdengo◊, with its yellow-colored body and four dangling tufts of "hair", looks like a giant string cheese snack to some.
• Violet mascot Miraidon has a pair of bulbous, exhaust pipe-like legs that, when combined with its long body, make it look particularly phallic to some.
• Hydrapple's main syrpent has an apple in one of its horns, designed to give it a bit of Fashionable Asymmetry. However, its official artwork◊ (which is also the basis for its HOME render) obscures the second horn, making it resemble the maligned "man-bun" hairstyle to some.

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