Pokémon Movepool Oddities & Explanations

somewhat related to all that: Spinda got Contrary as a hidden ability and then the one (1) move that actually takes advantage of it (rather than just passively being oh hey i ignore intimidate now i guess), Superpower, was exclusive to the dream world it got the ability from in the first place

Here is the timeline of Superpower & Spinda:
BW1: Spinda is in the dreamworld (Nov 2011), and gets Superpower as a possible move
BW2: Superpower is a Move Tutor! It is not available to Spinda
XY: Superpower was not added to Spinda's learnest or egg moves
ORAS: Superpower is a Move Tutor! Assorted gen 3 pokemon also had moveset tweaks. Spinda did not get Superpower
SM: Superpower was not added to Spinda's learnset or egg moves
USUM: Superpower is a Move Tutor! It is not available to Spinda.
SWSH: Superpower is a TR! Spinda is not in the pokedex.
Isle of Armor: Spinda is still not in the pokedex

The absolute kicker here is according to the home datamine, Spinda will finally get Superpower as a TR
Spinda is still not in the pokedex.
 
Something random I noticed - the move disarming voice, a 40 bp fairy type move right? It's only effect is that it ignores accuracy checks like swift. Most pokemon learn it between 10-15, which is still late for a 40 bp move but understandable. Except Aromatisse, which learns the move at LEVEL 53. For a 40 bp move, and long after opponents are using double team or minimize. For context, Aromatisse learns Moonblast at level 31.

This was the case in gen 6 and 7, then in gen 8 it was fixed to a much more sensible level 9. But it was completely removed from Spritzee's learnset.

Jigglypuff has the same case, learning the move at level 50 in XY, but it was fixed by ORAS to be learned at 11.
 
I'm unsure if this counts as oddity but...

You know that Diglett and Dugtrio cannot learn "flying" attacks due to being literally grounded, and are even immune to Telekinesis...

But...

I'd say props GF for having thought of an animation for this, but seriously Diglett, wouldn't it be faster to just lift yourself instead of a chunk of the ground?
 
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Pikachu315111

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I've seen this before. It's interesting that they actually modeled a slab of ground that you never see because it's always clipping underneath the floor. Same thing with Mega Gengar. It doesn't look like this:

It actually looks like this:

But it's hands and lower body is just always faded into the floor. It doesn't seem like there's any "full" model of Gigantamax Gengar if you're wondering, it's just unattached head, pair of hands, and a tail.
 
Here’s another one: despite being king of the ocean and being able to summon storms and all that flavor, Kyogre cannot learn Hurricane as of Gen 7.
Could somebody confirm if it ever learnt it in past generations?

Edit: I checked myself and no it does not

Edit 2: it’s lore makes numerous mentions about it being able to summon rain; “A mythical Pokémon said to have swelled the seas with rain and tidal waves. It battled with Groudon.” (X). Rain and tidal waves are commonly seen and associated with hurricanes, although less with strong winds. Could that be a possible explanation? Is the move Hurricanes conjuring a real hurricane or simply strong winds?
 
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Though, I mean, personally my philosophy is that if you’re going to make something broken just go all out; but Game Freak rarely seems to agree with that
*looks at Zacian*

That said, I believe Hurricane is actually referring to winds. It's learned almost only by pokemon with wings or control over actual wind outside of a handful exceptions (including... Sandaconda for some reason).
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That said, Kyogre isn't in the game yet, and the datamine list has been proven to not be 100% reliable, so you never know.
 
Here’s another one: despite being king of the ocean and being able to summon storms and all that flavor, Kyogre cannot learn Hurricane as of Gen 7.
Could somebody confirm if it ever learnt it in past generations?

Edit: I checked myself and no it does not

Edit 2: it’s lore makes numerous mentions about it being able to summon rain; “A mythical Pokémon said to have swelled the seas with rain and tidal waves. It battled with Groudon.” (X). Rain and tidal waves are commonly seen and associated with hurricanes, although less with strong winds. Could that be a possible explanation? Is the move Hurricanes conjuring a real hurricane or simply strong winds?
I thought: "Oh, that's probably because summoning hurricanes is more Lugia's thing. The devs probably just want to distingish between the two". So I checked Lugia's movepool, and it doesn't get hurricane either, not naturally anyway. The only way to get Lugia with hurricane is from an event. What...

Looking through hurricane's distrubution, it definitely seems like it's more associated with just strong wind rather than an actual hurricane. There is some overlap with Pokemon like Gyarados, Pelliper and especially Kingdra?!

edit: Some of Kingdra's dex entries mention how it can create tornado's as it wakes, so I guess hurricane does make sense for it even if hurricane is supposed to just be wind.
 
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TMan87

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That said, I believe Hurricane is actually referring to winds. It's learned almost only by pokemon with wings or control over actual wind outside of a handful exceptions (including... Sandaconda for some reason).
Sandaconda can likely create sand tornadoes through spitting its sand, which could pass as hurricanes... but then why can't Hippowdon do the same? (it DOES learn Whirlwind... what would the difference between WW and Hurricane be?)
 
Sandaconda can likely create sand tornadoes through spitting its sand
To be fair, I think it's more of a reference to the fact G-max sandaconda is a literal tornado shape... If it was just due to the "sandstorm", then Tyranitar and Hippo would also learn it.

As for Whirlwind, I think the main difference with Hurricane is that Whirlwind is meant to be just a "swift gust of wind" that blows the enemy away, while Hurricane is actually meant to be able to create an air current which would lift and slap around the opponent.

So for whatever reason Hippo has a breath strong enough to blow away enemies, but wouldn't be able to do more than that.
 

Pikachu315111

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Here’s another one: despite being king of the ocean and being able to summon storms and all that flavor, Kyogre cannot learn Hurricane as of Gen 7.
Could somebody confirm if it ever learnt it in past generations?

Edit: I checked myself and no it does not

Edit 2: it’s lore makes numerous mentions about it being able to summon rain; “A mythical Pokémon said to have swelled the seas with rain and tidal waves. It battled with Groudon.” (X). Rain and tidal waves are commonly seen and associated with hurricanes, although less with strong winds. Could that be a possible explanation? Is the move Hurricanes conjuring a real hurricane or simply strong winds?
Similar case with Zapdos. Moltres and Articuno can learn Hurricane, but not Zapdos cause it already gets Thunder so in the rain it would get two increbily powerful & 100% accurate moves. This makes me wonder if, instead of Hurricane becoming accurate in the rain, they should do something else like it resets Rain's turn counter to 5 (heck, maybe have it work in all weather if they do) or maybe introduce it's own weather like "Strong Winds".

That said, I believe Hurricane is actually referring to winds. It's learned almost only by pokemon with wings or control over actual wind outside of a handful exceptions (including... Sandaconda for some reason).
Looking through hurricane's distrubution, it definitely seems like it's more associated with just strong wind rather than an actual hurricane. There is some overlap with Pokemon like Gyarados, Pelliper and especially Kingdra?!
Hurricane's Japanese name is "Windstorm".

And, as Worldie stated, Sandaconda probably gets it due to its Gigantamax making it into a dust devil.

I thought: "Oh, that's probably because summoning hurricanes is more Lugia's thing. The devs probably just want to distingish between the two". So I checked Lugia's movepool, and it doesn't get hurricane either, not naturally anyway. The only way to get Lugia with hurricane is from an event. What...
If it would be closely associated with any Pokemon it would be Tornadus. The move was introduced in Gen V. Now to be fair, Whimsicott, the Ducklett family, and Volcarona also got it, but when you got the Pokemon that's the incarnation of windstorms got to imagine it's the reason the move was made but GF thought it was generic enough to spread to other Pokemon (they'd also thought they probably had to create Signature Moves for the other two FoN and they've already made two Electric-type Signature Moves; they also probably had the Therian Formes on the backburner).

Sandaconda can likely create sand tornadoes through spitting its sand, which could pass as hurricanes... but then why can't Hippowdon do the same? (it DOES learn Whirlwind... what would the difference between WW and Hurricane be?)
As for Whirlwind, I think the main difference with Hurricane is that Whirlwind is meant to be just a "swift gust of wind" that blows the enemy away, while Hurricane is actually meant to be able to create an air current which would lift and slap around the opponent.

So for whatever reason Hippo has a breath strong enough to blow away enemies, but wouldn't be able to do more than that.
Whirlwind's Japanese name is just "Blow Away", hence why it's Normal-type as there's no original connection to wind. The translation team just based the English name off its Gen I animation:

"I fart in your general direction!"
 
Similar case with Zapdos. Moltres and Articuno can learn Hurricane, but not Zapdos cause it already gets Thunder so in the rain it would get two increbily powerful & 100% accurate moves. This makes me wonder if, instead of Hurricane becoming accurate in the rain, they should do something else like it resets Rain's turn counter to 5 (heck, maybe have it work in all weather if they do) or maybe introduce it's own weather like "Strong Winds".
There is the fact Zapdos is said to receive Hurricane this gen, which has a lot of people hyped me included. And obviously Lugia is also getting it as regular TR rather than event move
 

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