I have a confession to make: I didn’t actually get through the original Pokémon Red until I was 15. I’d always get to Lavender town, and the creepy music and the ghosts and poor Pokémon would always just freak me out until I had to turn off my GameBoy. It’d be years before I’d eventually work up the nerve to power through and beat that game.
And can you blame me? Pokémon is scary. It’s right up there with Silent Hill and Dead Space in terms of fright factor as far as I’m concerned.
Don’t believe me? Clearly you’ve never sat down to actually read any of these Pokédex entries. Drifloon is a Pokémon that will literally carry children away. Yamask used to be a person until it died and was resurrected as a Pokémon. The mask it carries used to be its former face, and it can occasionally be seen weeping for its former life. Parasect used to be a living bug-type Pokémon until the mushroom on its back grew and took over its brain, hence the vacant, pupil-less eyes. That’s all utterly terrifying.
But there’s way more than mere Pokédex entries to freak you the heck out of wanting to become the Pokémon League champion. The world of Pokémon is a terrifying place, both in game and out.
Here are some of the more unsettling secrets to be found in Pokémon.
15 Buy It Or Die
Let’s start with an easy one - a simple death threat from the developers to you. If you somehow managed to get your greasy paws on an emulated or pirated version of Pokémon FireRed or LeafGreen, then the attendant outside the Seagallop ferry has a message for you. Speaking to him outside of either Vermillion or Sevii Islands will cause him to say, “By the way: If you like this game, buy it or die.”
That’s quite the anti-piracy message.
It’s hard to replicate this message nowadays as the message was only included in very early ROMs (that is, completely digital versions of the game) from Nintendo. Today’s ROMs emulate the real thing so perfectly that the message was removed.
14 You Can’t Save Everyone
In Anistar City in Pokémon X & Y there’s an old man who’s very clearly depressed since his wife recently died. He asks the player if he could spare a Pokémon to cheer him up, specifying it has to be level 5 or under. It’s basically the same as giving the guy a puppy - something for him to take care of so he can keep on living.
It didn’t work. After you defeat the Elite Four and return to the home where the old man was in Anistar City, you discover he’s no longer there and instead find a single Pokéball in the middle of the floor. Attached to the Pokéball is a small thank you note saying whatever Pokémon you gave him kept him “smiling until the very end.”
13 Pokémon And People Did What?
There’s a lot of regional variations between Pokémon games as each translation brings its own challenges. Sometimes things are slightly rewritten for the country the game will be sold in. The original Japanese games are thus highly prized for being as true to the developer’s vision as can be.
That said, Pokémon Diamond & Pearl had some unsettling revelations about the relationship between Pokémon and people. If you go to the Canalave Library and read some of the Sinnoh Folk Stories you’ll find a tale that describes how humans and Pokémon once married each other, and there used to be no difference between the two.
Things get even creepier if you think about what could have happened to cause Pokémon to become the enslaved fighters they are today.
12 There’s A Reasons They Never Speak
In Pokémon X & Y there were originally plans to include a Pokémon translator device in the game that would allow you to actually hear what your Pokémon was trying to say. It was cut from the final game, and for good reason.
You might think that being able to speak to your Pokémon would only strengthen the magical bond between trainer and trainee, but the truth is that Pokémon are enslaved and being able to understand them would only serve to highlight how truly abominable the world of Pokémon really is. You’d constantly be hearing your Pidgeot begging to be let go, or for the sweet release of death.
Needless to say, Nintendo decided to cut that little item from the final product to keep Pokémon’s sterling image unscathed.
11 On An Island Far Away
Even though Mew was included in the original Pokémon Red & Blue, he wasn’t supposed to be obtainable outside of special events produced by Nintendo. You’d only be able to capture Mew yourself after Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire came out by traveling to Faraway Island, but Red & Blue did mention Mew’s homeland if you knew where to look.
In the ruined Pokémon Mansion on Cinnabar Island are the old journals of Dr. Fuji. In them, he describes capturing Mew in the jungles of Southern Guyana. The documents later describe how Mew gave birth to MewTwo and how it used its immense power to escape.
Faraway Island doesn’t sound like any location in Guyana I’ve ever heard, but there’s another tidbit. On the island in Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire there’s a signpost with the last bit of Dr. Fuji’s signature, ジ (ji). This confirms that Faraway Island and Guyana are the same place.
10 Why Is That Man On The Roof?
There were many glitches in Pokémon Red & Blue. One such glitched allowed you to Surf to Cinnabar Island before you should have been able to, which would result in the door being locked to Cinnabar Gym. It also produced a weird bug which made a mysterious old man appear on the roof of the gym. He couldn’t be interacted with in any way, and when you returned later to actually battle in the gym, he disappears.
What was he doing up there? Was he waiting for you to arrive? Was he watching for you? And if so, why does he leave once you get there? He’s not the gym leader, since Blaine has a totally different sprite, and he’s not one of his disciples since they too have different sprites. Who is that man?
We may never know. Or will we?
9 Fishing In Unusual Places
Remember when I mentioned that Pokémon Red & Blue had a lot of weird bugs? Well, one of the more disturbing (or hilarious, depending on your perspective) bugs was how you could fish inside any of the large Pokémon statues found in gyms.
That’s right. You can just whip out your fishing rod, dip it inside the statue, and occasionally get a bite. The chances are the same as if you dropped your lure in a pond or lake, and you had the same odds to capture any Water type found in the area.
Why is this creepy? Well, it’s a little weird to be able to fish inside a stone statue. Does your fishing rod have some sort of magic power to summon Pokémon from a stone effigy of itself? That’s some voodoo material right there.
8 Buried Alive
In it’s nearly 6-year development cycle, Pokémon Red & Blue went through a ton of revisions. One of those revisions concerned how the player got through the Pokémon Tower in Lavender town. The final version saw the player defeat a ghostly version of Marowak to put the various Pokémon to rest, but some of the early builds of the game were far more sinister.
Rather than a Marowak at the top of the tower, you’d fight a ghoul simply called “Buried Alive”. After greeting the player with the super creepy dialog of, "I'm trapped, and I'm lonely, so very lonely, won't you join me?" he’d attack the player with two “white hands”, a Muk and a Gengar. Scariest of all, if you lost the fight the game would be over, but rather than the normal Game Over screen you’d see an image of the player character being devoured by the ghoul.
So far this is mostly the thing of legend, but if true it’d be super terrifying.
7 Apparitions In The Elevator
We head to modern times (relatively speaking) for this spooky secret. In Pokémon X & Y, something terrifying happens if you go into the elevator of a certain building in Lumiose City. After arriving at the top floor the screen will fade to black and suddenly a Hex Maniac will appear behind you. Then she’ll float around you before saying, “No, you’re not the one…” Then the screen fades to black and she disappears.
She appears again in Pokémon X & Y 2, but this time at Hotel Richissime. She’s standing in the corner, and if you talk to her she says, “Don't talk to me ... if you do ... I won't hear the elevator …” What could she be waiting for?
A clue is given behind the Lumiose City train schedule board. A note on the back of the sign reads, “"I'm going to go for help. Meet me in the usual place.” Was she murdered before help could arrive, and she’s not seeking her killer for ghostly revenge?
6 In Ultra Space, No One Can Hear You Scream
Things get even weirder if you head to Pokémon Sun & Moon, where one of the NPC’s may have had a fateful encounter with an Ultra Beast that left him with amnesia.
Once you reach Poké Pelago you meet Mohn, a big blonde guy with a straw hat and a friendly disposition. He explains how your boxed Pokémon (that’s the ones you catch and store away in the computer) can come to Poké Pelago to play and be fed beans to train them up. There’s very little explanation of who he is and how he got there, that is, until much later.
After beating the game you can return to Aether Paradise to get the full lowdown: Mohn used to be a professor who performed experiments with Ultra Space. During one such experiment he vanished through an Ultra Wormhole, never to be seen again. Until you find him on the Poké Pelago, that is.
Did he hit his head? Get replaced by a doppelganger? Or is he just a ghost? We may never know.
5 No Number Can Contain Its Multitudes
MissingNo is perhaps the most famous glitch ever found in Pokémon Red & Blue. It was created when a number of Pokémon found in the development versions were cut from the final product, but can still be accessed through various (and often complicated) actions of the player. That’s why the name of this Pokémon is called “MissingNo” - its name is missing since it was deleted.
There are also multiple versions of MissingNo. Most of us remember the block-like, staticy creature from various memes, but creepier versions actually used the sprites for Kabutops and Aerodactyl fossils, making it appear like you were fighting a skeleton. Yet another version appeared as the ghosts seen in Lavender Town before the player uses the Silph Scope.
4 Gender Is A Fluid Concept
Azurill is a fantastic ‘mon. Not only does it evolve into a Fairy Water-type - and gain a ton of HP to boot - it also is the first transgender Pokémon.
Before Generation VI, Azurill had a one in three chance to evolve from a female Azurill to a male Marill. The reason for this is that the gender ratios for wild Pokémon actually played a role in what the evolution turned into. For most Pokémon, the gender ration remained the same from one evolution to the next, so if there was a 50/50 male-female Pokémon at one evolutionary stage it also had a 50/50 male-female evolved form. Azurill has a 75% female, 25% male ratio while Marill has the usual 50/50. So when Azurill evolved it sometimes transitioned from female to male.
Pokémon was a very forward-thinking game.
3 He’s Back
At the end of Mahalo Trail in the demo version of Pokémon Sun & Moon, there is a man. A Mysterious Old Man. Nobody knows who he is or where he came from, or what he wants. You can even go up and ask him, and he’ll only reply: “I’m the mysterious old man.” That’s it. You can go back and talk to him as many times as you like, but he’ll never tell you who he is or what he’s about.
The funny part is he’ll have a ton of dialog options for each time you return to speak to him. He’ll even mention how you must be really into his shiny bald head since you keep coming back to say hi, but at no point does he reveal anything.
My theory: he’s the same old, bald man from Cinnabar Island in Pokémon Red & Blue. It’d be just like Pokémon to play the long con with us.
2 A Town Of Death
Lavender Town has already been the place of nightmares for any Pokémon fan (yours truly included) but there’s another legendary tale to the town that is truly horrifying.
Shortly after the release of Pokémon Red & Green in 1996, a string of suicides hit Japanese children. It was said that the kids were all between 7 and 12-years-old, and that they all either hung themselves or jumped from great heights after arriving in Lavender Town. The explanation was that the high pitch tones only audible to young children were causing them to go insane.
Or at least, that’s how the legend goes. I haven’t had the Poké Balls to go back to Lavender town in quite awhile, and even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to hear those high-pitched tones.
1 A Pokémon Through Time
This one is almost impossible to replicate unless you’ve kept all your own GameBoys and Pokémon games. If you manage it, you’re awarded something that few will ever achieve.
If you manage to transfer a Pokémon all the way from the GameBoy Advance (Pokémon FireRed & LeafGreen) all the way to Pokémon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire, you can talk to the Game Director for a prize. He’ll be so astounded that he’ll award you the Time Traveller Award, a certificate of appreciation directly from the developers.
The unsettling part? You’re definitely reminding yourself just how old you are, since FireRed was released way back in 2004. Ugh.