Pokémon Design Misconceptions

DHR-107

Robot from the Future
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I got surprised by Delibird's bag being its actual tail when someone pointed it out in another thread I think. Woah.

Also Mankey's back sprite in RBYG was a total mess. I actually thought it was standing on its head. Another thing is that it looked like a Mew.
Mankeys front sprite is worse... I didn't realise for ages that it had arms at all. It had ears. MASSIVE ears
 
Also...


I always thought Litwick here had a weird little smile. It never really bothered me, until my sister pointed out that it looked like a nose. I looked for some more reference pictures of Litwick, and lo and behold...





It's actually an upper lip. But I still can't see it as anything other than a smile in Sugimori's artwork, so w/e.

Also, this isn't really a misconception, but I still see Lampent's flame inside his head as a mouth. Please tell me I'm not the only one...
 

Geodude6

Look at my shiny CT!
Squishyfrog said:
-snip-

Also, this isn't really a misconception, but I still see Lampent's flame inside his head as a mouth. Please tell me I'm not the only one...
Nope, not me. My sister thought so though (same sister that thought Haxorus was a Fighting type)
 
About Armaldo :


I thought during a long time that its eyes are the red thing in the middle of its head instead of the white things outside.
Never knew that until this topic. Looking back I really should have made the connection seeing as I never made the same mistake with Anorith. I always thought they were ears, or some sort of head fins similar to the ones on the side of its back! Man, it looks a lot sillier when you realize those are eyes...

I used to think that Lenora's badge was a cigarette at first xD Only after I played Black through the second time I realised it was meant to represent the spine of a book.
OH so that's what it is. I never thought it was a cigarette, I just thought it had a lot of random lines going through a rectangle. Makes a lot more sense now.



I never realized that was a hat and not white anime hair with a headband for years. Doesn't help that the RS artwork has his hair virtually completely covered by the hat and I always play as May.
Same here for the longest time. I still see it as hair when I'm looking at it. I know it's a hat but for the love of god I can't SEE it as a hat.

This next misconception I feel a lot of people have, I would really like to stress:



He does not have Compound eyes! He has normal eyes. He's actually glaring at you become you think he has a big bug eyes. That giant red thing is a membrane that stops sand from getting into his eyes (kinda like the Sandile-family). He's basically wearing goggles. All his sprites are incredibly deceptive though, so I see where the misconception comes from if you've never seen any Flygon artwork (plus he evolves from a Bug type).

He is never getting [the ability] Compoundeyes. Sorry.
Oh wow, never noticed that until you pointed it out. Just assumed bug eyes and moved on. Pretty obvious in the official artwork when you actually look though.

lol

I just found something out today:



Look down.. down.. further. Until you find lilligant's feet. It has 3 of them!? I never knew that, and I have used lilligant on 3 runs of black! It should have 2! It is a freakin' plant lady, but ladies have 2 feet (I think) so it would make sense for lilligant to as well!

But then again this is pokemon...
Holy crap, never noticed that either! I didn't even realize its feet were visible at all, I just flat out never looked for them. That's kind of freaky looking.

Anyone else think it looks like Rhyperior is giving the Nazi salute?
Totally what I thought when I first saw that sprite too :P

Most the backsprites in RBY were disgusting looking.



I don't even know how that's a Venusaur.
Pretty sure I refer to it looking like a bowl of salad in my Blue Scramble updates :P.

Also...


I always thought Litwick here had a weird little smile. It never really bothered me, until my sister pointed out that it looked like a nose. I looked for some more reference pictures of Litwick, and lo and behold...





It's actually an upper lip. But I still can't see it as anything other than a smile in Sugimori's artwork, so w/e.

Also, this isn't really a misconception, but I still see Lampent's flame inside his head as a mouth. Please tell me I'm not the only one...
Damn, I always assumed that was a smile too! I can see it as a nose too but never thought it was an upper lip.
 


Looking back at its sprite when I first saw Emboar, I thought he always had a big flame in its mouth as his source of flame, like this:



Then it turns out to be a beard....which is not as awesome as I first thought. (Still cool in a different way but as a beard it makes it look more...comical to me)
 
Oh god, this thread. I can't say I ever had it that bad, but I know people who do .I have a friend who still can't get it down that Golurk isn't ice type just because it's blueish, and like 90% of my friends had their minds blown when they realized Cradilly had "fake eyes" and not goofy yellow teeth. I thought it was obvious looking at Lileep, but I liked them both, so I paid attention.

The Ditto/deer head thing though, props on that. I saw it, and it Princess Mononoke'd the heck out of me.
 
i pronounced manaphy "muh-NAH-fi" with the emphasis on the second-to-last syllable for a while, until I watched the english Temple of the Sea movie. Also, all of Manaphy's sprites make it look like he has some sort of weird slicked back Jesse-esque pseudo mohawk going on with his antennae. Just look at it:
And every other part of his body is repositioned in the other games, except for the positions of his antennae. 'Du fuck, bruh?
 

when i was younger i could never make out what this thing was supposed to be on that little gameboy screen
 
But back in the Ruby/Sapphire days, I also always thought Masquerain's wings were its eyes...now I realize how retarded I was. It's basically exactly the same as Surskit but with huge wings and a red face
HOLY MOLY. I literally thought Masquerain's real eyes where teeth and it had no eyes until the moment I read this post.

Edit: Omg, Masquerain is so cuuuute now! Also, is it just me or does there seem to be a disproportionate representation from Gen 3 here?

As for my own misconceptions, I only realized Watchog's stripes resemble a safety jacket a couple of days ago.
 
Before I caught my first Luxray/Luxio/Shinx, I used to assume it was Normal/Electric. Boy, was I confused when my Machamp's Dynamicpunch did regular damage vs Volkner's Luxray :s

Then I caught one for myself and saw that it was Pure Electric -_-'
 

Codraroll

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Speaking of Dynamicpunch, that move bugged me for many years.

I was 10 or so when I first got a Pokémon game (Crystal). And as I'm not a native English speaker, I had a little trouble understanding the text in the games, never mind pronouncing stuff. So for the longest time, I thought that awesome practically-made-for-Feraligatr-move you got from Chuch was named Dynamitpunch rather than DynamicPunch. Its move animation didn't really help either.

I might have figured it out earlier than I did, if I hadn't deposited my Feraligatr at the Day Care shortly afterwards. The Day Care couple happily replaced DynamicPunch with Slash. As the TM is single-use, and no Pokémon learned the move naturally in Gen. II, I didn't see it spelled out again for many years. After all, all my friends also referred to it as "Dynamitpunch". Even when I put the move on my Machoke in Sapphire, I thought the C was a misspelling. I didn't realize my mistake before I looked it up on the Net. Until then, I didn't know how to spell dynamite in English. In Norwegian it's spelled "dynamitt", and ten-year-olds struggle a bit with double consonants.

I still sometimes find myself wishing for it to be renamed Dynamite Punch. It fits the move animation perfectly, it doesn't clash with the Japanese name (Exploding Punch), and it makes a damn lot more sense than calling an explosion-causing punch "Dynamic".
 

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