I wanna be the very best
And now that song is in your head.
Pointless trivia time about Pokémon.
Everyone knows this already, but the title of the show is an abbreviation for Pocket Monsters. In Japanese, it's common practice to shorten an English-borrowed phrase into something easier to pronounce, such as shortening "paasonaru konpyutaa" (personal computer) to "pasokon", or "sutaatingu menbaa" (starting member) to "sutamen". Shortening "Poketto Monsutaa" to "Pokemon" was just following this trend. The "Pokémon" title (with an accent added over the e to stop people pronouncing it "poke-mon") was used outside of Japan to avoid conflicting with another work called Monster in my Pocket.
Pikachu's name comes from the Japanese onomatopoeia words "pikapika", the sound of sparkling, and "chuchu", the sound of a mouse squeaking.
The Pokémon names Gastly and Ninetales are often misspelled as Ghastly and Ninetails. Similarly, Weepinbell is often erroneously written as Weepingbell.
Ditto and Mew both have the same base stats, the same colour scheme, both are the only Pokémon who learn Transform naturally and Ditto can often be found in the same cave as Mewtwo. This suggests that Ditto was actually a failed attempt at cloning Mew.
Originally, Ash was supposed to have a Clefairy as his main Pokémon in the anime, but it was changed to Pikachu because the producers thought Pikachu was cuter and more marketable.
Clefable and Gengar were two of the first Pokémon created. Gengar looks very similar to Clefairy, and is identified as the Shadow Pokémon. Clefable was originally Normal type (until Generation VI, when it became Fairy type), which meant it was immune to Ghost attacks, and inversely as a Ghost Pokémon Gengar was immune to Normal type attacks. This indicates that Gengar is actually Clefable's shadow counterpart, as you can't usually hurt your shadow and your shadow can't usually hurt you.
Psychic is weak to Dark, Bug and Ghost because they represent basic fears, and fear can manipulate the mind.
Psychic types were very overpowered in the first generation. They could only be harmed by one type - due to a programming error, Psychic types were actually immune to Ghost type moves, rather than weak to them like they were supposed to be, which meant the only type they were weak to was Bug, which consisted of (at the time) four moves: Leech Life, Pin Missile, String Shot and Twineedle, three of which did below-average damage and one of which was a stat-decreasing move. In addition, many powerful Bug-types (i.e. the ones most likely to do some damage against Psychics) were also half Poison type, and Poison was weak to Psychic. This lead to the introduction of two new types - Dark, which was immune to Psychic and super effective against it, and Steel, which was resistant to Psychic, as well as fixing the error and making Psychic actually weak to Ghost in future generations.
Similarly, the Fairy type was introduced in Generation VI to create a new weakness for Dragon type Pokémon, as previously the only thing that was super effective against Dragon was... Dragon.
Parodies often misuse the phrases "It's not very effective..." and "It's super effective!" These messages are displayed in game when a move used has a type advantage over the target Pokémon (or vice versa), and would not be seen when using a Normal type move or a non-damaging move.
Lucario's name actually comes from the mythical element orichalcum, written in Japanese phonetics, reversed and then shortened. O-ri-ka-ru-ku-mu > mu-ku-ru-ka-ri-o > ru-ka-ri-o > Lucario.
In the English dub of the movie Lucario and the Mystery of Mew, Lucario's voice actor is also the voice of Goku from the Ocean dub of Dragon Ball Z. Both characters are also able to shoot energy blasts from their hands, and both become more powerful the more damage they take. (In Dragon Ball Z canon, a Saiyan - of which Goku is one - receives an increase in power after recovering from the brink of death. Though it isn't really shown in Pokémon, in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Lucario's attack power increases the higher his damage percentage becomes.)
There is a rumour that in the Japanese version of the first movie, known as Gekijōban Pocket Monster: Mewtwo no Gyakushū (Pocket Monsters the Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back!) in Japan and Pokémon: The First Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back in English, Mew's lines towards the end of the movie were much harsher than in the dub, with it saying clones were inferior and should perish. In reality, though the dialogue was different, it wasn't radically so. All Mew said in the original was that the originals would always win against the clones.
Speaking of rumours, the first generation gave rise to a LOT of rumours, mostly revolving around ways to obtain Mew, which was not catchable in the first generation games and could only be obtained by going to special real-world events. A working glitch to obtain Mew WAS discovered, five years after the game's release, but many false ways of doing so had sprang up in the meantime. One method, which the developers actually acknowledged, revolved around the truck in Vermilion City which was normally inaccessible (since it could only be reached by Surfing around the S.S. Anne, which leaves after the player completes all the events on it, and the HM that teaches Surf is not obtained until long after the S.S. Anne events). Since the truck was so hard to reach, players suspected there must be something special concerning it, and rumours started that there was a Mew hiding under it. The truck was eventually revealed to be just cosmetic (it was, in terms of how the game's programming treated it, the same as a rock or a wall), but the persistent rumours led to the developers putting a Lava Cookie at the end of the truck's pier in Generation III and onwards. In Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, an NPC writes a song that includes the line "There's no Pokémon under a truck, maybe you'll just find a Muk" as a further nod to the rumours.
Pointless trivia time about Pokémon.
Everyone knows this already, but the title of the show is an abbreviation for Pocket Monsters. In Japanese, it's common practice to shorten an English-borrowed phrase into something easier to pronounce, such as shortening "paasonaru konpyutaa" (personal computer) to "pasokon", or "sutaatingu menbaa" (starting member) to "sutamen". Shortening "Poketto Monsutaa" to "Pokemon" was just following this trend. The "Pokémon" title (with an accent added over the e to stop people pronouncing it "poke-mon") was used outside of Japan to avoid conflicting with another work called Monster in my Pocket.
Pikachu's name comes from the Japanese onomatopoeia words "pikapika", the sound of sparkling, and "chuchu", the sound of a mouse squeaking.
The Pokémon names Gastly and Ninetales are often misspelled as Ghastly and Ninetails. Similarly, Weepinbell is often erroneously written as Weepingbell.
Ditto and Mew both have the same base stats, the same colour scheme, both are the only Pokémon who learn Transform naturally and Ditto can often be found in the same cave as Mewtwo. This suggests that Ditto was actually a failed attempt at cloning Mew.
Originally, Ash was supposed to have a Clefairy as his main Pokémon in the anime, but it was changed to Pikachu because the producers thought Pikachu was cuter and more marketable.
Clefable and Gengar were two of the first Pokémon created. Gengar looks very similar to Clefairy, and is identified as the Shadow Pokémon. Clefable was originally Normal type (until Generation VI, when it became Fairy type), which meant it was immune to Ghost attacks, and inversely as a Ghost Pokémon Gengar was immune to Normal type attacks. This indicates that Gengar is actually Clefable's shadow counterpart, as you can't usually hurt your shadow and your shadow can't usually hurt you.
Psychic is weak to Dark, Bug and Ghost because they represent basic fears, and fear can manipulate the mind.
Psychic types were very overpowered in the first generation. They could only be harmed by one type - due to a programming error, Psychic types were actually immune to Ghost type moves, rather than weak to them like they were supposed to be, which meant the only type they were weak to was Bug, which consisted of (at the time) four moves: Leech Life, Pin Missile, String Shot and Twineedle, three of which did below-average damage and one of which was a stat-decreasing move. In addition, many powerful Bug-types (i.e. the ones most likely to do some damage against Psychics) were also half Poison type, and Poison was weak to Psychic. This lead to the introduction of two new types - Dark, which was immune to Psychic and super effective against it, and Steel, which was resistant to Psychic, as well as fixing the error and making Psychic actually weak to Ghost in future generations.
Similarly, the Fairy type was introduced in Generation VI to create a new weakness for Dragon type Pokémon, as previously the only thing that was super effective against Dragon was... Dragon.
Parodies often misuse the phrases "It's not very effective..." and "It's super effective!" These messages are displayed in game when a move used has a type advantage over the target Pokémon (or vice versa), and would not be seen when using a Normal type move or a non-damaging move.
Lucario's name actually comes from the mythical element orichalcum, written in Japanese phonetics, reversed and then shortened. O-ri-ka-ru-ku-mu > mu-ku-ru-ka-ri-o > ru-ka-ri-o > Lucario.
In the English dub of the movie Lucario and the Mystery of Mew, Lucario's voice actor is also the voice of Goku from the Ocean dub of Dragon Ball Z. Both characters are also able to shoot energy blasts from their hands, and both become more powerful the more damage they take. (In Dragon Ball Z canon, a Saiyan - of which Goku is one - receives an increase in power after recovering from the brink of death. Though it isn't really shown in Pokémon, in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Lucario's attack power increases the higher his damage percentage becomes.)
There is a rumour that in the Japanese version of the first movie, known as Gekijōban Pocket Monster: Mewtwo no Gyakushū (Pocket Monsters the Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back!) in Japan and Pokémon: The First Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back in English, Mew's lines towards the end of the movie were much harsher than in the dub, with it saying clones were inferior and should perish. In reality, though the dialogue was different, it wasn't radically so. All Mew said in the original was that the originals would always win against the clones.
Speaking of rumours, the first generation gave rise to a LOT of rumours, mostly revolving around ways to obtain Mew, which was not catchable in the first generation games and could only be obtained by going to special real-world events. A working glitch to obtain Mew WAS discovered, five years after the game's release, but many false ways of doing so had sprang up in the meantime. One method, which the developers actually acknowledged, revolved around the truck in Vermilion City which was normally inaccessible (since it could only be reached by Surfing around the S.S. Anne, which leaves after the player completes all the events on it, and the HM that teaches Surf is not obtained until long after the S.S. Anne events). Since the truck was so hard to reach, players suspected there must be something special concerning it, and rumours started that there was a Mew hiding under it. The truck was eventually revealed to be just cosmetic (it was, in terms of how the game's programming treated it, the same as a rock or a wall), but the persistent rumours led to the developers putting a Lava Cookie at the end of the truck's pier in Generation III and onwards. In Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, an NPC writes a song that includes the line "There's no Pokémon under a truck, maybe you'll just find a Muk" as a further nod to the rumours.
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