"Patterns" in Pokémon generations

[Cuddly]

It probably wasn't to begin with*, but there's no way Game Freak isn't aware of it by now (even if they might pretend otherwise) so they probably are leaning into it at least a little.

A big issue here is that GameFreak didn’t even know about the Ditto is a failed Mew clone theory despite making a lot more sense and was much more popular.
You should also consider the internals of GameFreak and TPCi.
Besides Pokemon being designed by different people, including entire lines being designed by different people, you also have to consider the marketing of Pokemon as well.
Having it so there can only be 12 Fire Starters and all those Fire Starters have predictable designs is not a good marketing strategy. The Chinese Zodiac would definitely be prevented by executives who understand how bad of an idea it is.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

Game Freak whenever someone tells them about a popular fan theory are like that gif of a pizza deliverer walking into a room on fire.

Jokes aside, I said this in the Scarlet and Violet thread, but now I want Did You Know Gaming or someone to tell Game Freak about the zodiac theory.

 

[KalosianPorygon]

Let's try to rerail the train that is this thread.

• Until Gen IV, there's always a Flying-type Legendary Pokémon (Mythicals don't count)
• Until Gen V, there's always a Psychic-type Legendary Pokémon (Mythicals don't count)
• On the flip side, every Generation after the third has a Dragon-type Legendary.
• Before Gen VIII IV, no new Legendary Pokémon is part of a previously existing group (unless Lugia being the legendary birds' master counts) Thanks XenonHero126 for reminding me of Regigigas!

 

[Dusk Mage Necrozma]

Before Gen VIII, no new Legendary Pokémon is part of a previously existing group (unless Lugia being the legendary birds' master counts)

I agree that Lugia doesn’t count but does Regigigas count?

 

[KalosianPorygon]

I agree that Lugia doesn’t count but does Regigigas count?

...
No joking, I forgot it.
In the garbage bin goes my reputation.

 

[MegaFlareon]

So far, all odd-numbered generations have introduced pure Poison-type Pokémon while even-numbered generations have not.

 

[Hugin]

So I figured I'd go through and check all of this with gen IX.
(quotes trimmed so I don't spam people's notifications)

• Every odd-numbered generation adds a new mushroom Pokémon.
• Cross-generation evolutions are only added in even-numbered generations (exceptions exist for pre-evolutions, however).

Brute Bonnet and Toedscruel
Broken, IX added a bunch of cross-gen evos.

I'm just pointing out, Fire-type starters are based on the Chinese Zodiac hasn't been broken until we see the final stage of Fuecoco.
All Water-type starters are based on air-breathing animals.

Probably dead(technically dragons are closely related to horses in Chinese myth, so you could argue that Charizard is the Horse and Skeledirge is the dragon, but I'll leave that alone for now)
Still true, and I personally think this will always remain true. They don't want the anime protag to have a fish.

Another one is that every gen since Gen 3 has had at least one Electric pikaclone, with Hoenn having two () and Alola arguably having three with one non-electric one ()

Still true, with Pawmi.

• On the flip side, every Generation after the third has a Dragon-type Legendary.

Yep, 2 of them.

So far, all odd-numbered generations have introduced pure Poison-type Pokémon while even-numbered generations have not.

Finally broken, though there's so many pure-poison Teras and Starmobiles that I had to double-check.

Reading back through the thread, there's been a lot of these broken in gens 7/8/9. They're really mixing up the rules recently, which I think is good for the series.

 

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

Until Generation IV:
- The generation's pseudo-legendary will always be placed next to or among the generation's legendary Pokémon in the National Pokedex listing

Until Generation VI:
- The pseudo-legendary will always be dual-typed

More trends with the pseudos that have been broken as of late:

Until Generation VIII:
- The base form of a pseudo-legendary line will always have a base stat total of 300

Until Generation IX:
- A pseudo-legendary's evolutionary family will have a constant, uniform, catch rate across each stage

 

[Coronis]

More trends with the pseudos that have been broken as of late:

Until Generation IX:
- A pseudo-legendary's evolutionary family will have a constant, uniform, catch rate across each stage

Weird one to break. All of them besides Metagross (which is unique for a number of reasons - only available in its original gen as a one off Gift, only gen with 2 Pseudos) have a base 45 catch rate until now. Frigibax follows that as expected, then Arctibax has 25, and finally Baxcalibur at 10. I guess Arctibax kinda makes sense? Them trying to make it more of a challenge than Frigibax and with Pokemon being easier to to find and spawn now. But Baxcalibur is only available in Tera Raids which have a 100% catch rate anyway… very weird all around.

 

[Hugin]

More trends with the pseudos that have been broken as of late:

Until Generation VIII:
- The base form of a pseudo-legendary line will always have a base stat total of 300

Until Generation IX:
- A pseudo-legendary's evolutionary family will have a constant, uniform, catch rate across each stage

Dreepy in particular is just weird. The only pseudolegends with a highly restricted learnset are Dreepy and Beldum. Beldum evolves at lvl 20(the lowest of the pseudos), while Dreepy evolves at lvl 50, tied with Deino for the highest. And Beldum's moveset was Take Down only originally, which at least is interesting thematically/mechanically. Dreepy just...doesn't learn anything except via TM and all it's TM moves are awful.

Dreepy also is the only one with 270 BST. Frigibax is 320, and all others are 300. It's like they wanted it to be exceptionally weak(which sure, fine), but as someone who did a Pseudo-only run, they're all exceptionally weak in their initial forms. Unoptimized BST 300 and evolving at lvl 30 is already painful, making it evolve at lvl 50 just guarantees it's impossible to use Dreepy in-game at all. Which...why? Yeah, Dragapult is busted, it's a pseudo-legend, they're busted by design. It's no more busted than Garchomp or Salamence, so why did they make it miserable to train?

 

[bdt2002]

Here's a few extremely niché patterns I've noticed over the years:

• From Generations 1 through 7, every odd-numbered generation introduced a Ghost-Type Elite Four member. Coincidentally, all four of them are female. Generation 9 also had a female Ghost-Type specialist, but she wasn't an Elite Four member.

• All of Lance (GSC/HGSS), Steven (RS/ORAS), Cynthia (DPP), and Alder (BW) have either Hyper Beam or Giga Impact on their strongest Pokémon's moveset during their respective Champion battles. I think it would have been fitting for Blue/Green (FRLG) to do this as well but with the new starter-exclusive versions of the technique, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't.

• To date, every single "psuedo-legendary Pokémon" has been used by a Champion or Elite Four member in their home region. This does actually include Tyranitar as well, who is used by Lance in his Pokémon Stadium 2 team composition, and was also used by Blue/Green in his FRLG Champion rematch team.

• The Unova, Kalos, Alola, and Galar regions all alternated in a pattern of being based off of locations from the United States and from Europe, respectively. This pattern could have potentially continued if Paldea was the main region for Generation 10 instead.

• Every new main series Pokémon game from 2014 to 2021 was released on the third Friday of November, this trend continuing for Scarlet & Violet but being excluded for DLC releases and Pokémon Legends: Arceus. This notably contains every new game directed by Shigeru Ohmori, those being ORAS, SM, SwSh, and SV, and suggests a possible release date of November 21, 2025 for a Generation 10 game assuming he's the one directing it.

 

[Noah3475]

• To date, every single "psuedo-legendary Pokémon" has been used by a Champion or Elite Four member in their home region. This does actually include Tyranitar as well, who is used by Lance in his Pokémon Stadium 2 team composition, and was also used by Blue/Green in his FRLG Champion rematch team.

Do you remember who uses Kommo-o in Alola? I have played Pokémon Moon and Pokémon Ultra Moon, and the closest I recall to your above claim is that Kommo-o is used by potential Title Defense opponent Ryuki. In addition, Hydreigon only counts if Pokémon Black 2 Version and Pokémon White 2 Version are considered, as N was the unofficial Champion of Unova when the player battles him, not Ghetsis.

 

[bdt2002]

Do you remember who uses Kommo-o in Alola? I have played Pokémon Moon and Pokémon Ultra Moon, and the closest I recall to your above claim is that Kommo-o is used by potential Title Defense opponent Ryuki. In addition, Hydreigon only counts if Pokémon Black 2 Version and Pokémon White 2 Version are considered, as N was the unofficial Champion of Unova when the player battles him, not Ghetsis.

I'm counting both of these examples for this since Alola doesn't have a true Champion character, and because Iris is the Champion in B2W2.

 

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

Weird one to break. All of them besides Metagross (which is unique for a number of reasons - only available in its original gen as a one off Gift, only gen with 2 Pseudos) have a base 45 catch rate until now. Frigibax follows that as expected, then Arctibax has 25, and finally Baxcalibur at 10. I guess Arctibax kinda makes sense? Them trying to make it more of a challenge than Frigibax and with Pokemon being easier to to find and spawn now. But Baxcalibur is only available in Tera Raids which have a 100% catch rate anyway… very weird all around.

Generally if a Pokemon line's catch rate isn't uniform across the line, it goes down with each stage even if the evolved forms aren't available to catch in the wild. I can't say what they were thinking with the Frigibax line but since Arctibax has a lower catch rate at 25, Baxcalibur naturally had to go even lower and the most appropriate catch rate to them was 10.

Giving Baxcalibur a catch rate in general was necessary as a failsafe in case someone hacks a Baxcalibur to be caught in the wild, for instance, as is the case with all Pokemon in any game.

Uniform catch rates were generally assigned to the other pseudos, the starter lines, fossils, and Eevee.

Dreepy in particular is just weird. The only pseudolegends with a highly restricted learnset are Dreepy and Beldum. Beldum evolves at lvl 20(the lowest of the pseudos), while Dreepy evolves at lvl 50, tied with Deino for the highest. And Beldum's moveset was Take Down only originally, which at least is interesting thematically/mechanically. Dreepy just...doesn't learn anything except via TM and all it's TM moves are awful.

Dreepy also is the only one with 270 BST. Frigibax is 320, and all others are 300. It's like they wanted it to be exceptionally weak(which sure, fine), but as someone who did a Pseudo-only run, they're all exceptionally weak in their initial forms. Unoptimized BST 300 and evolving at lvl 30 is already painful, making it evolve at lvl 50 just guarantees it's impossible to use Dreepy in-game at all. Which...why? Yeah, Dragapult is busted, it's a pseudo-legend, they're busted by design. It's no more busted than Garchomp or Salamence, so why did they make it miserable to train?

Evolutionary levels tend to be scaled to the point+level you encounter them in the wild in their debut game. Dreepy in wild encounters was found at Level 50-52 in SwSh in the Lake of Outrage, which made its high evolution level irrelevant back then as Dreepy would evolve immediately in one level anyway after being caught, or in 3 star raids which offer it in the high 30s, enabling 10-ish levels with a caught Dreepy before it evolved, based on the philosophy of "they want you to spend 10-15 levels with each stage before they evolve".

It's a case in general of non-dynamic evolution levels, which Gen 5's roster infamously suffers from with its later mons: it's sort of workable for their debut game, but not future compatible in the slightest when said mon is made available early, which Dreepy is evidently now suffering from in SV where it can be found much earlier than it was in SwSh. Dreepy does get it worse than most however because its low BST and non-existent movepool make it essentially "unusable until it evolves".

Pseudos in general tended to be scaled to what level they were found originally in their debut game. Beldum got it lucky because it was a Level 5 gift originally, and low evolution levels means it's very future compatible (aside from that stupidly bad catch rate) and can evolve quickly.

 

[bdt2002]

Pseudos in general tended to be scaled to what level they were found originally in their debut game. Beldum got it lucky because it was a Level 5 gift originally, and low evolution levels means it's very future compatible (aside from that stupidly bad catch rate) and can evolve quickly.

I don’t know if this is true or not, but I remember reading somewhere that Beldum and its evolutions were purposely given a low catch rate because of a couple factors. My best guess is that the Shadow Metagross in Pokémon Colloseum had something to do with this, but another theory suggests Game Freak purposely didn’t want people to inject Beldum into the game as a wild encounter in the Gen 3 games, ultimately hoping to discourage cheaters with the lowest possible catch rate and Beldum’s sole level-up move doing recoil damage on top of that.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

I don’t know if this is true or not, but I remember reading somewhere that Beldum and its evolutions were purposely given a low catch rate because of a couple factors. My best guess is that the Shadow Metagross in Pokémon Colloseum had something to do with this, but another theory suggests Game Freak purposely didn’t want people to inject Beldum into the game as a wild encounter in the Gen 3 games, ultimately hoping to discourage cheaters with the lowest possible catch rate and Beldum’s sole level-up move doing recoil damage on top of that.

If you could inject Beldum into the game as a wild encounter, you'd probably be quite capable of filling your bag with dozens of Master Balls or granting every Pokeball a 100% success rate, too.

Also it's possible for a Pokemon's capture rate to differ between games (which is in fact the case for multiple species in Colosseum/XD) so I doubt that Beldum was given a low rate solely for the reason that Metagross is snaggable in Colosseum.

The most likely explanation is that they simply floated the idea of it being a wild encounter at one point and wanted it to be tough to catch, and then didn't bother tweaking the catch rate when it was made a gift species. Lots of Pokemon have redundant mechanics of this sort - there's a bunch of Pokemon in the Gen II games who have a preset chance of fleeing from battle when encountered in the wild who didn't end up being legitimate wild encounters, for example. If there'd been a fourth Gen II game where Moltres or Umbreon or Porygon existed as a wild encounter, there's no guarantee that they'd have still had a flee rate just because they're coded to in GSC.

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

Here's a pattern which has been true for all generations so far. Every new generation has introduced a Pokémon with the National Dex number that is 3 of the same digits in a row, with the digits being the number of the generation in question. Or how I am supposed to explain it properly. Basically, the following:

Gen 1 introduced Pokémon #111
Gen 2 introduced Pokémon #222

And so on all the way to Gen 9. But this will be broken in Gen 10, because what would the next number be? 1010 is already taken by Iron Leaves in Gen 9. 1111 could possibly work, but then it will be broken by Gen 11 since the next number would be 2222, which is too high. And 101010 is way too high as well.

 

[Zowayix]

Here's a pattern which has been true for all generations so far. Every new generation has introduced a Pokémon with the National Dex number that is 3 of the same digits in a row, with the digits being the number of the generation in question. Or how I am supposed to explain it properly. Basically, the following:

Gen 1 introduced Pokémon #111
Gen 2 introduced Pokémon #222

And so on all the way to Gen 9. But this will be broken in Gen 10, because what would the next number be? 1010 is already taken by Iron Leaves in Gen 9. 1111 could possibly work, but then it will be broken by Gen 11 since the next number would be 2222, which is too high. And 101010 is way too high as well.

Huh? If it just goes up by 111 each time then the next number in the pattern is 1110.

 

[Axiemeister]

Huh? If it just goes up by 111 each time then the next number in the pattern is 1110.

which still contains "10" in it in some fashion, which means this "pattern" only stops showing the gen number in... gen 28 (with mon #3108!!), ostensibly around 2079. zapdos, landorus-t and toxapex will still be OU by then i am pretty sure

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

Huh? If it just goes up by 111 each time then the next number in the pattern is 1110.

which still contains "10" in it in some fashion, which means this "pattern" only stops showing the gen number in... gen 28 (with mon #3108!!), ostensibly around 2079. zapdos, landorus-t and toxapex will still be OU by then i am pretty sure

Good points, I didn't think of this. I guess that if this pattern continues and there's a new 111th Pokémon every generation, #1110 will be in Gen 10, then #1221 in Gen 11. While the latter doesn't contain 11, it does feature two 1 digits, just not in a row. But the future will show how things are going to turn out.

 

[CPU]

I don’t know if this is true or not, but I remember reading somewhere that Beldum and its evolutions were purposely given a low catch rate because of a couple factors. My best guess is that the Shadow Metagross in Pokémon Colloseum had something to do with this, but another theory suggests Game Freak purposely didn’t want people to inject Beldum into the game as a wild encounter in the Gen 3 games, ultimately hoping to discourage cheaters with the lowest possible catch rate and Beldum’s sole level-up move doing recoil damage on top of that.

Beldum was a wild swarm encounter in DPPt on the Sandstorm postgame route.

With the permanent sandstorm chip damage and it only knowing Take Down.

 

[Esserise]

Beldum was a wild swarm encounter in DPPt on the Sandstorm postgame route.

With the permanent sandstorm chip damage and it only knowing Take Down.

Sandstorm damage shouldn’t matter since Beldum is part Steel

 

[CPU]

Sandstorm damage shouldn’t matter since Beldum is part Steel

It mostly just makes it more annoying for the player, but it doesnt affect Beldum directly, yeah.

 

[bwburke94]

Yep. You'd likely want a Ghost out to avoid being hit by Take Down, and no Ghosts were immune to Sandstorm damage at the time.

 

[Karxrida]

A funny one with pseudos is that all of the lines feature the color blue pretty heavily in at least one stage until Gen VI. The Goomy line broke the trend, and we wouldn't get it again until recently with the Frigibax line. (The Dreepy line leans more green I think?) I doubt that was an intentional decision, but blue is the best color so we take those.

Also, the pseudos all share the 1.25 mil total EXP value at level 100.