I don’t expect much from my game universes. Some initial instructions are nice, but not strictly speaking necessary if I recognize the genre. Maybe some starting gear so I’m not completely helpless right off the bat. A little backstory never hurts. But there’s one thing that I just gotta have in every world I visit, and that’s consistency.

Pokémon is one game-built universe that has virtually no consistency.

Consistency in the game world is paramount to ensuring proper immersion. As soon as the player recognizes internal inconsistencies, then the magic is ruined and immersion is lost. It’s like a perfect bubble has suddenly burst, and you’re left wondering why any of it made sense in the first place.

So is the case with Pokémon, where one moment you’re skipping carefree through this wonderful world of tiny monsters with fantastic powers, and the next you’re wondering why only a flute will wake up a sleeping Snorlax, or why Dragons are weak to ice but nothing else, or why Furfou can have different hairdos but nobody else can.

If you stop and look closely at Pokémon you realize it’s a world where almost nothing makes sense. But there are a few cases that go beyond merely questionable fact-checking and go straight to maliciously retconning.

Here’s 15 inconsistencies in the Pokémon universe that are quite simply unforgivable.

15 Pikachu Gets The Only Voice

Pikachu
via pokemon.wikia.com
Pikachu

We’re going to set aside the anime for a moment where literally every Pokémon has their own voice and just look at the Pokémon games. Specifically, Pokémon X/Y.

For most of Pokémon’s history, the sounds emitted by the little monsters which inhabit it sounded like errors on a midi music file. Eventually, when technology allowed each cartridge to contain enough data to do so, Pokémon allowed more complex noises to be generated that more accurately reflected the sound an animal would make (albeit an animal that breathes fire and teleports).

In Pokémon X/Y, Gamefreak decided to give Pikachu, everyone’s most beloved electric rat, the same sound files featured in the anime. The only problem was, it was the only Pokémon to get this special treatment, making Pikachu sound horribly out of place.

14 The Anime Is Literally Nothing Like The Game

Anime Battle
via pokemon.wikia.com
Anime Battle

Oh boy. Where do I even begin?

How about how Pokémon never seem to need to forget moves or have any maximum to the number of moves they can learn. Or how every Pokémon can learn Egg Moves without painstaking breeding for weeks on end? Or that TMs and HMs don’t exist at all, and anyone can use any move at any time for any reason?

Or how about how Pokémon can choose not to evolve in the anime, whereas I’d be super pissed with my Staryu if she decided not to become a Starmie after I threw a water stone at her? Or how Pokémon can evolve basically whenever they feel like it, even outside of leveling up?

I know you’re all saying, “But Sean, that’s a TV show, this is a game!” AND I DON’T CARE! Consistency across all media is important!

13 Exeggcute - Eggs Are Grass, Right?

Exeggcute
via parody.wikia.com
Exeggcute

Explain this thought process to me. Eggs come from chickens (well, technically a whole host of different species including fish and insects, but we’ll ignore that for now) and are officially labeled as protein in basically any food guide you can point at. Obviously, chickens come from eggs. This is all established fact.

Which brings me to Exeggcute. They are clearly eggs. One of them even has yolk coming out from what I can only assume to be a grievous injury that will shortly result in its death. And yet every generation has labeled Exeggcute as a Grass-type Pokémon.

How? Why? And why do eggs become palm trees when they evolve into Exeggutor? And why do they become psychic?

The world may never know.

12 What Do People Eat?

Magikarp Eaten
via imgur
Magikarp Eaten

This has been a question unanswered in the Pokémon universe since the very beginning: what exactly do people eat?

We know through various in-game descriptions that Pokémon will eat other Pokémon, and that vegetarians eat plant life that seems to exist in the Pokémon universe, but the diets of trainers and various other human inhabitants have never really been explained.

The animé initially begins with what appears to be regular animals also inhabiting the world of Pokémon, but very quickly moves to a solely Pokémon and human universe. Game Freak, the makers of Pokémon, have implied that humanity is mostly vegetarian in the Pokémon world (because enslaving creatures to fight for your amusement is somehow better than just outright eating the critters), but various in-game references allude to the fact that humans eat Pokémon too. Slowpoke tails are considered a delicacy in Pokémon X/Y, and Farfecht’d are known to have been hunted to near extinction.

They should really just come clean and say people eat Pokémon.

11 How Do Pokémon Governments Work?

Pokemon Government
via aminoapps.com
Pokemon Government

This one is another topic that the games rarely go into beyond some brief lore or wandering around a nameless facility supposedly owned by “the man.”

We know that there must be some form of government, since there are public services like Pokécenters and police departments, and we know there are certainly municipal governments since there are small towns and mayors mentioned all the time. But are there state governments? National ones? Is Pokémon some sort of utopian future where all nations are abolished for the discriminating abstraction that they are?

Maybe there’s a dark secret behind Pokémon, where actually the whole world is governed - nay, ruled - by an aristocracy of Pokémon elites. Or maybe it’s just Pikachu in charge. It’d make about the same amount of sense either way.

10 Lance’s Dragonite And Cheating Gym Leaders

Lance Dragonite
via empoleoncode.blogger.ca
Lance Dragonite

I never liked Lance. Dragons are fine, sure, but they’re almost like cheating, what with their resistance to nearly every damage type and vulnerability to practically nothing. But Lance took things one step further and outright cheated with his Dragonite.

First off, in HeartGold/SoulSilver he has a level 40 Dragonite when it’s impossible to have one before level 55 when Dragonair evolves. Second, he knows Barrier, a move that no Dragonite can learn, ever. He basically used a save-file editor to make his hacked Dragonite and now you have to fight him.

And he’s not the only one. His Aerodactyl had Rock Slide even though that was impossible until Gen III. Against the Totem Wishiwashi in Pokémon Sun/Moon, it can summon an allied Alomomola that knows Water Gun even though it can never learn it otherwise. Various Battle Hall trainers cheat too.

9 Pokémon Lighter Than Air And Other Strange Statistics

Wailord
via sufficientvelocity.com
Wailord

In every Pokémon game, the Pokédex provides a brief blurb that describes the Pokémon and also provides basic data like height and weight. That’s all well and good, but there are a few entries that people really should have caught before printing.

Wailord is the poster child of this issue. If you were to do the math and calculate his estimated volume divided his mass, his density is actually less than the same volume of air. This means that Wailord would actually float like a helium filled balloon (which explains the combat - more on that later).

That’s not all. You can fly around on a Pidgey that’s the size of your shoe. You can surf on a Poliwag no bigger than an ottoman. Steelix is actually not made of steel at all and is closer to the density of foam or cotton.

8 Why Do Pokémon Without Mouths Eat?

Eating
via funnyjunk.com
Eating

Magnemite. Honedge. Staryu. Porygon. These are just a few Pokémon that all have no mouths and yet somehow consume Poffins and Beans like every other Pokémon blessed with an orifice to do so.

For some, this can be ignored as it is assumed those Pokémon still require sustenance to survive, such as Staryu. For others, it makes no sense whatsoever.

Magnemite survives on electricity he leeches from humanity’s electrical grid - what use does it have for a mouth? Honedge is a ghost, a literal dead creature, so why does it need to feed (except on the souls of the living)? Porygon is made of data incarnate! What good is a tasty treat for a being such as this?!

7 Kangaskhan - The Mystery Of Immaculate Conception

Kanghaskhan
via DashHearum on YouTube
Kanghaskhan

Kangaskhan famously has a pouch with a cute little baby Kangaskhan inside of it. It’s like a kangaroo, only more terrifying.

In any case, there’s something that’s a little odd about Kangaskhan, specifically when it hatches out of its egg. Like all Pokémon, Kangaskhan is born from eggs laid by loving parents. As soon as Kangaskhan hatches though, you will see an apparently fully adult Kangaskhan complete with baby in pouch.

The only explanation for this is the baby was already in the egg along with the baby Kangaskhan… who presumably also has a baby inside the egg, inside the baby… is it just Kangaskhan all the way down?

6 Water Battles - How A Fish Fights Out Of Water

Water Fight
via Sauceddie on YouTube
Water Fight

Pokémon is a game that loves its Water-types. There are more Water-types than any other in the game (outside of Normal-types), and many of them have fantastically varied designs, from an octopus with a cannon for a mouth to a Mexican toadstool. That should bother me, but it doesn’t.

What does bother me is how there are many fish Pokémon that clearly need to be in water to do things like, I dunno, breathe, and yet whenever you battle one they’re just floating in the air in front of you despite the fact that none of them have the ability to levitate.Every battle with some doofus trainer on hot pavement should end with a fried Goldeen lunch.

5 Pokémon Technology - Fantastic Futuristic Power Used For Nothing Good

pokeball
via xxdrummerxx.deviantart.com
pokeball

Pokéballs are tiny devices that not only shrink down so you can fit hundreds of them in your bag but also contain a full-sized creature in stasis that you can bring out whenever you want. Various areas of the game feature teleportation technology (I’m looking at you, Saffron City Gym), Pokécenters that can instantly heal a Pokémon near certain death, machines that can bring ancient fossilized Pokémon to life, and honest to goodness time travel machines.

And despite this, everyone still gets around by bicycle, humanity still suffers from the same diseases as it always has, and the best entertainment around is going out into the tall grass to catch some tiny monster and make it fight somebody else’s.

4 Cubone/Marowak - It’s Like The Opposite Of Kangaskhan

cubone_and_marowak
via ninjendo.deviantart.com
cubone_and_marowak

Cubones famously wear the skull of their dead mother and uses her bones as weapons in its depressing fight for survival. Tale as old as time, yaddi yaddi yadda. This is true for every Cubone ever birthed.

So I was fully expecting my female Marowak to immediately die upon laying a Cubone egg,  having donated its skull to its offspring's defense, but it never happened. My little Cubone hatched wearing the skull of its dead mother, right beside its actual living mother, skull intact.

This isn’t to say I wanted my Marowak to horrifically die at the hands of its just birthed son, I was just… I dunno, expecting something to happen. Maybe little Cubone would steal the skull from someone else? Or I’d get another Kangaskhan? It’d make about the same amount of sense.

3 Drowzee - It’s Hard To Eat Dreams When You Don't Know How

Drowzee
via pokemon.wikia.com
Drowzee

Lemme read for you the Pokédex entry for everyone’s favorite psychic aardvark, Drowzee:

“If your nose becomes itchy while you are sleeping, it's a sure sign that one of these Pokémon is standing above your pillow and trying to eat your dream through your nostrils.”

That’s from Omega Ruby. We’re going to ignore the creepy, stalker-esque nature of this Pokémon’s eating habits and focus on the eating dreams part. There’s a move in Pokémon called Dream Eater, where a sleeping Pokémon has its dream eaten. Cool. One might expect Drowzee, a Pokémon known to eat dreams, to learn this move.

But it doesn’t. Not a single generation of Drowzees ever learn the move on their own. You have to teach them to eat dreams. Presumably, every Drowzee not owned by a trainer starves to death.

2 Silph Scope - Ghostbusting Requires Technology, Doofus!

silphscope
via millingfor53.blogspot.com
silphscope

In the first generation of Pokémon games, circa 1996, in order to see Ghost-type Pokémon you needed a special item called the Silph Scope. Ghosts were a rare and mysterious typing back then, so it made sense to need some technology just to see them. Once you could see the ghost, you could fight it, and then capture it. Ghostbusters taught us that.

After Gen I, they got rid of that and made it so Ghosts are the same as every other Pokémon, easily seen and easily fought, totally ignoring the facts taught to us by Ghostbusters.

It’s not even the fact that Pokémon completely retconned an essential part of the story - it’s the fact they brushed off Ghostbusters like it was nothing. I’m still not over that.

1 Art Inconsistencies - You Say Potato, I Say New Creative Direction

Cloyster
via bulbapedia
Cloyster

If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed that the original Pokémon look quite different from their current incarnations. Sometimes, very different.

We start with Cloyster, who in the first generation of games had his shell open vertically, but in all other generations, his shell opens horizontally. Or how about Pikachu, who seems a lot chubbier in the original generations of the game, but now has had a great time slimming down after the Atkins diet?

Nidorina used to have a snout - now she doesn’t. Jigglypuff's eyes used to be purple, and now they’re blue. Poliwhirl’s spiral used to go clockwise, and now it’s counterclockwise. Alakazam used to have a star of David on its forehead but apparently converted religion at some point to lose it.