Video Game / Pokémon Go

Pokémon GO is an Augmented Reality Pokémon game for mobile devices made as a collaboration between Niantic Labs (creators of Ingress), Nintendo, and The Pokémon Company. It allows players to journey to real-world locations to find and catch wild Pokémon, as well as battle other trainers and participate in large group events. The game was planned to be released alongside the Pokémon Go Plus, which uses a Bluetooth connection to notify users when a Pokémon is nearby, but these plans fell through as numerous server stress issues surfaced. It was released on July 6th 2016 for iOS and Android devices.

No relation to the fanfic of the same name. Or to Square Enix Montreal's Hitman GO, Lara Croft GO, and Deus Ex GO; which are also mobile spinoffs to console game series (though SE Montreal has cracked jokes about the similarity). Not to be mistaken for a racing game.

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Pokémon GO contains the following tropes:

• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: In spite of dose of reality players got, water Pokémon that should realistically exist in oceans can be found around lakes and rivers in landlocked regions (Which are freshwater).
• Achievement System: Medals earned by traveling so many kilometers, catching so many Pokémon of various types, hatching eggs, fighting enemy Gyms, and other methods.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Flareon in the main series is a relatively mediocre Pokémon due to bad stat distribution and an unfavorable move pool. In this game, Flareon is just shy of Gyarados in terms of potential max CP, making it and Vaporeon two of the best Pokémon in the game, though Flareon suffers from a type disadvantage to Vaporeon. Ironically, it's Jolteon who appears to suffer from Badass Decay in this installment, being only slightly better than a Pidgeot.
  • In the main games, Exeggutor's low speed coupled with its plethora of weaknesses makes it a poor competitive battler. In Go, however, its weaknesses are abated while its entire moveset benefits from same-type attack bonus and all hit for decent power. It also has higher max CP than Vaporeon. This high CP coupled with being a single-evolution Pokémon makes it relatively easy to turn a weak Exeggcute into an extremely powerful Exeggutor (Exeggcute are somewhat rare, but not impossible to farm). Being a Grass-type also gives it a major advantage against the often overused Vaporeon.
• Adaptational Wimp: Numerous Pokémon have not made the transition to Go very well. One of the most egregious examples would be Alakazam, who in the main games is known for its amazing Special Attack and Speed stats. In Go, its max CP is a measly 1813, lower than both Golbat and Pidgeot.
• Allegedly Free Game: Downplayed. The game is free to play, starts you off with a decent assortment of items, awards items for each level up, and provides a random assortment of three to eight (though rarely more than five) items every time you visit a Pokéstop. Additionally, the game rewards you for capturing and defending Gyms for your team with gold coins, which can be used to purchase additional items. It is entirely possible to play the game to its fullest extent and be a competitive player without spending any real money. However, there are a few exceptions. Items which make the game easier (Lures, Incense, Lucky Eggs, Incubators, Bag Expansions, etc.) are rarely handed out as rewards in-game and cannot be obtained from Pokéstops. To acquire them in any significant amount, you'll need to spend real money. Also, if you live in an area with fewer Gyms and Pokéstops, you'll find it more difficult to replenish the supply of even your basic items, which may require you to spend money to keep playing.
• Ambiguously Brown: Candela of Team Valor has brown skin, standard animesque features, and no further details about what race she could be.
• Ambiguous Gender:
  • Like the old games, gender on the actual Pokémon is not really easily clarified. Jynx, Kangaskhan, Hitmonlee, Hitmonchan and the Nidoran line are obviously the exceptions, but other than them, none of the Pokémon have obvious gender markers—which can get confusing for people used to the sexual dimorphism of the later games.
  • Blanche of Team Mystic has no strong features to identify her gender. At most, she is wearing raised heels and a ponytail. Character designer Yusuke Kozaki has stated that he thinks it should be open to interpretation after seeing the fan reaction. Meanwhile Niantic considers the character to be a woman.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • There is an item cap (350 to start, although it can be upgraded) and once you've hit the maximum you won't be able to collect any more. However, if you level up you don't lose out on the item windfall that you get, the game temporarily increasing your max item limit to accommodate the item prizes. Also, while you won't be able to collect any more items from Pokéstops once your inventory is maxed out, you can still check them for the experience boost.
  • Speaking of Pokéstops, you can find them at just about any real life "landmarks." Everything from parks to churches to local government buildings tend to be eligible to become Pokéstops. (If you live in a place that doesn't have many Pokéstops, you can submit potential locations to Niantic on their website to get some.) The Pokéstops hand out a random assortment of items and/or Pokémon Eggs every time you visit, keeping you well stocked up, and have a short cooldown time of about five minutes so you can use them frequently.
  • Despite what some people would have you believe, there is no limit on the number of players that can catch a particular iteration of a Pokémon once. If a rare/powerful Pokémon disappears after other people catch it, it's because it timed out and de-spawned. This helps prevent hostility among players and potentially reckless behavior trying to snag it first.
  • With no evolutionary stones in this game, the Eevee evolutions are almost completely randomized. Fortunately, Eevees are not that rare and can be pretty reliably found even at low levels, and it only takes half as many Eevee candies to evolve one compared to a standard two-tiered Pokémon (25 instead of 50). It's still annoying if you don't get the evolution you want, but it's not too difficult to try again. There's also an Easter Egg that lets you pick the evolution you want.
  • Gym battles are restricted until the player reaches level 5, but reaching this is pretty easy to do. The game provides XP bonuses for every new Pokémon recorded, so catching roughly 20 unique Pokémon will cover the necessary experience. This can be done in a day depending on where you are, and can be balanced out with other captures.
  • One of the items the player starts with is a limitless-use egg incubator, ensuring that they will always be able to incubate at least one egg. Additional incubators (which have a three-use limit) allow the player to hatch multiple eggs at once.
  • Played Straight when it comes to taking a gym and Averted when it comes to holding a gym. When battling an opposing gym, you always get to use up to six Pokémon no matter how many the gym contains. As long as you are able to defeat at least one opposing Pokémon each time you battle, you will decrease the gym's "prestige" by a little. Through simple Zerg Rushing, you can take down a high-level gym with Mons individually far less powerful. Obviously, this creates an Aversion for those trying to hold a gym. No matter how strong of a Pokémon you leave to defend it, and even if you and some of your buddies leave multiple strong Pokémon, you are unlikely to hold the gym for very long, particularly in high-traffic areas.
• Anti-Poop Socking: The whole idea of the game, it seems. This may well be the first video game that actually encourages kids to go outside, get fresh air, and get physical activity.^note Ingress adapted the concept of going outside to play before Go did, although it was targeted primarily at older players. On a meta level, this trope subverts itself just by how long your device's battery can last. The game requires an active data connection (cellular or wireless), using GPS location, the app has to constantly be on for it to work, and the (optional) AR mode requires using the camera, all of which come together to drain battery life very quickly.
• Area 51: There's actually a ton of Pokémon lurking around the place's outskirts, as some hikers discovered when they decided to look for them there. Quite a few gyms too. (Which makes sense; a gym located in the middle of nowhere likely wouldn't be defeated, as it wouldn't be challenged very often.)
• Art Evolution: The Pokémon use the same models and animations as Pokémon X and Y, but the game uses different shaders to make them look nice in a realistic environment.
• Art Shift: The character designs are not drawn by Ken Sugimori, the series' main artist, but by Yusuke Kozaki — illustrator for fellow Nintendo games Fire Emblem Awakening and Fire Emblem Fates. As such, the human characters are more realistic and mature-looking than those drawn in the main games' typical anime style.
• The Artifact: Like in the main series, you start out with a choice of one of three starter Pokémon — Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle, with Pikachu being a hidden fourth option — each of which have a fairly low encounter rate. However, aside from serving as a quick tutorial on how the game's catching mechanics work, there is no practical purpose to being given a starter since wild Pokémon can't be battled, only caught by throwing Pokéballs, the starter doesn't aid in catching them.
• Asskicking Equals Authority:
  • The trainer/team defending a given Gym does so by beating the current Gym Leader. Once they've won, the player can then deposit one of their own Pokémon there and use them to try and defend the location from other teams. Members of the same team can then come and reinforce the Gym, adding more Mons for the other teams to fight.
  • Similarly, a Gym's standing Leader is determined by who has the strongest Pokémon in it. So if the strongest Pokémon present has 500 Combat Points, depositing a Pokémon with 600 would make you the new Gym Leader.
• Augmented Reality: Players are able to encounter wild Pokémon by finding them in specific locations, both urban and rural. They can then capture these Pokémon by finding them using the device's camera (if that feature is disabled, it's a generic field).
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • AR Mode, while great for pictures and such, makes it harder to catch Pokémon because you have to hold your device steady in a certain position in addition to throwing the ball. If it's turned off, Pokémon stay centered on the screen regardless of your position.
  • Gyarados. While a very powerful Pokémon overall (it has the 12th highest CP potential in the game, in fact), the sheer effort required to get one (400 Magikarp candies, or 101 Magikarps), the availability of two stronger and easier-to-acquire Water-types (Lapras, which can be hatched directly from an egg, and Vaporeon, which can be evolved easily from the common Eevee) and a stark lack of actual Water-type moves (with only Hydro Pump as a charge move) put it into this category.
  • By putting a spin on your Pokéball, you can throw a 'Curveball', complete with a neat little flashing effect as the ball is thrown. As the name implies, however, this generally tosses your ball at an arc which can make it more difficult to land, and worse, you can sometimes throw a curveball without even meaning to, meaning your ball will fly off into the abyss. In the end, all landing a curveball even does is net you a measly 10 extra experience points on capture and a slightly improved chance to capture, while a straight but accurate throw into the colored circle is worth the same amount of exp at the least and makes a successful capture even more likely.
  • There are a variety of primary attack moves your Pokémon can have, but the most damaging ones are often the most impractical. Bubble is the most powerful primary attack in the game, doing 25 damage to its nearest competitor's 15. It also takes almost twice as long to charge (2.5 seconds), so its overall DPS is inferior to far weaker moves like the 6 damage Water Gun (.5 seconds). This only applies when attacking a gym, as a Pokémon defending a gym will attack at a consistent rate regardless of the actual speed of its moveset.
• Awesomeness Meter: The game rewards the player for catching Pokémon with a little added flare, granting an experience bonus and increasing the chance of a successful capture. Landing the ball within the colored circle is deemed a 'Nice', 'Great', or 'Excellent' throw depending on the size of the circle, which is worth 10, 50, and 100 points, respectively. Throwing a curveball is an additional 10 exp bonus, which is accomplished by either spinning the ball before throwing it or throwing at a sufficient angle.
• Big Applesauce: The climax of the trailer, where thousands of players are participating in a contest to catch Mewtwo, takes place in Times Square at night. (And it seems that, indeed, NYC has some rare ones.)
• Boring but Practical: Pidgey and its evolutions are one of the most common Pokémon the player can find, but Pidgey has the benefit of requiring only half as much candy to evolve into its second stage. Coupled with the large amount the player can catch, it's very easy to use them as a farm for experience/candy/Stardust and create Pidgeot with decent stats.
• Born as an Adult:
  • Downplayed in that some Pokémon hatched out start at their second stage, not first. This is because the game currently only uses Pokémon from the first generation, disregarding "Baby" Pokémon added in Generation II. The Pokémon subject to this are Pikachu, Clefairy, Jigglypuff, Hitmonlee, Hitmonchan, Jynx, Electabuzz, and Magmar.
  • Unlike in the main series, where Pokémon (starting from Generation IV) hatch at the lowest level, a Pokémon will hatch already having some investment in their CP consistent with the player's level at the time they obtained the egg.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory:
  • If you have money to pay for coins, you can buy Lucky Eggs to double your XP gain. Used properly, you can average about 30,000 exp per egg. About $40 will get you to level 30, provided you save up your candies and mass-evolve Pokémon while the egg is active. Earning that amount of gold through defender bonuses would take months.
  • The Plus wrist accessory, which sells at 35 USD, allows the player to use some of the functions of the app, so long as it maintains a bluetooth connection. It allows Pokémon to be captured with a simple button press, use Pokéstops, and records the player's steps to aid in hatching eggs and gaining movement achievements.
  • In the same vein as Ingress, having access to better transport (like having one's own car as compared to settling with public transport) allows one to visit more places and catch a greater variety of Pokémon, and in certain cases, catch certain region-exclusive species.
• Button Mashing: What the combat system effectively boils down to. Formerly weak attacks in the main games like Water Gun become some of the strongest moves in the game due to its fast animation speed leading to greater DPS.
• Cap:
  • The level cap is 40, though the amount of experience required to get there is pretty ridiculous. Getting to level 10 requires 45,000 exp. Getting to 20 requires another 165,000. Getting to 30 requires a whopping 1,790,000. And the final stretch to 40 requires 18 million, or 90% of the total experience required for every level.
  • The player can only carry 350 items, 250 Pokémon, and nine eggs at any given time. Bag and storage upgrades increase the item and Pokémon limit, respectively, by 50 with each purchase. The egg limit cannot be increased.
  • Pokémon Gyms cap at level 10, allowing up to 10 different Pokémon to defend the gym. This translates to a cap of 50,000 Prestige Points, although this cap can be fudged by grinding the gym to the maximum level and then adding defending Pokémon after, which gives a 2,000 Prestige Point per Pokémon bonus on top of that maximum^note This means in the unlikely event someone takes a gym and personally grinds it to the max, and then 9 additional Pokémon get added to the gym thereafter, the actual cap for prestige can hit 68,000 points.
  • All Pokémon have a maximum potential CP value, which varies depending on the Pokémon. Unevolved or common Pokémon have low maximum CP, while evolved or rare Pokémon have higher potential. For example, a basic Pidgey maxes out at ~680, while the final evolution Pidgeot can reach ~2100, which is average as far as evolved Pokémon go. Dragonite tops the chart as the strongest non-legendary Pokémon (ranked second behind Mewtwo) at 3500, and the weakest is Magikarp, who maxes out at a puny 263 CP (Gyarados, on the other hand, is 12th overall). The three legendary birds are all in the top ten (Articuno: 2978, Zapdos: 3114, Moltres: 3240). Mew ranks third at 3299, with Mewtwo at the top with 4144. A full list can be seen here. However, while these values represent the maximum, the player can only reach a percentage of that maximum based on their current level, and the Pokémon's IVs determine whether it can reach that maximum or end up slightly below it.
• Clingy MacGuffin: Eggs cannot be discarded; you have to hatch them to get rid of them, which you do by walking. This is problematic for a number of reasons. First, you can only carry nine eggs, and there's no option to purchase additional egg space. Furthermore, you only have one incubator which never breaks, with a few limited-use incubators as level-up rewards. This means you need to spend gold on more incubators if you want to hatch more than one at a time. Coupled with the fact that Pokéstops will reward eggs on a fairly regular basis, it is all too easy to end up having a full set of eggs. It's even worse if the Random Number God doesn't like you and you get few if any 10km eggs (which have all the good, rare 'mons); have fun walking several miles hatching Zubats, Pidgeys, Tentacools and other Com Mons, and the occasional Pikachu, until the Random Number God changes his mind.
• Com Mons:
  • The spawn rate for Weedle, Pidgey, and Rattata are much higher than for other Pokémon, with a 50% discount for their first evolution as a bonus. That being said, the player's level, environment and location affects encounter diversity, so common Pokémon in one area might be rare in another.
  • Despite having the same evolution discounts, Caterpies are less common than Weedles.
  • Zubats and Spearows are extremely common, though there's no such discount to their evolutions.
  • Near areas with large bodies of water, Magikarp becomes this. This is because Magikarp's evolution requires eight times the standard amount of candy.
• Cosmetically Different Sides: There is no functional difference between the three Teams, apart from names, colours, and emblems. In a meta example, many of the trash-talking memes the Teams put out on Social Media are literally just recycled for each Team, with the logo of one or both of their rivals edited in.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Due to the way gym battles works, the player's Pokémon can theoretically win against one far stronger so long as you can dodge every attack. One slip and your Pokémon is down, of course.
• Death World: With rules applying from Real Life, there are certain areas that users could stumble into extreme danger by looking for a Pokémon Gym, Pokéstop, or rare Pokémon, especially during late hours. There was even a Pokémon Gym on the North Korean side of the DMZ, though it was removed within days of the game's launch. Defied after an update which displays the message "Do not enter dangerous areas while playing Pokémon GO."
• Developers' Foresight:
  • STAB (same-type attack bonus) is implemented in the battle system, though it only gives a 25% damage boost rather than 50%.
  • The game doesn't record distance unless you're travelling under 15 mph, so riding in a car won't accumulate much distance. This is not to say there's no point at all — there are frequent stops in a city, after all — but highway travel will earn nothing.
  • Similarly, sticking the device on something that goes in a circle won't work very well, because the game calculates movement distance based on a straight line between location updates.
• Disc One Nuke:
  • It's possible for low-level players to catch evolved Pokémon with CP several times higher than that of their average encounters (a Kingler with ~300 CP vs Krabbies with only 50-100, for example). Downplayed, as the only use for high CP Pokémon is gym battles, and those are measured in the thousands.
  • Beedrill and Pidgeot are relatively easy to raise because Weedle and Pidgey are so abundant, due to their Com Mon status.
  • Zubats, also being a Com Mon, can be evolved into the more powerful Golbat with minimal trouble.
• Early Game Hell: Once you get past the first ten levels, making your way to level 20 is much more difficult, especially if you don't use real money for experience-boosting Lucky Eggs. Gyms are typically protected by Pokémon at least twice as strong as your own, which makes taking out even one a war of attrition which will cost Revives and Potions. The same goes for upgrading the prestige of a gym to add one of your own defenders, unless you happen upon a gym with a free slot. Even if you do knock out a gym and take it for yourself, you almost certainly won't hold it for an entire day, and will be very lucky if you can take a second gym before someone takes back the first. You can still get the defender bonus, but that means earning a single Lucky Egg will take eight days. Additionally, the player only has access to regular and Great Pokéballs at this stage of the game, which cannot reliably catch a Pokémon past 300 CP, forcing the player to use berries and/or more Pokéballs. Thus, acquiring gym-capable Pokémon requires using Stardust and candies, the former a quickly-exhausted resource and the latter important for quick evolution grinding (unless the Pokémon has no evolution). If you're in an area with plenty of Pokéstops, these issues are at least mitigated somewhat, but those in rural areas will have even more problems.
• Easter Egg:
  • When you first start the game and are given the opportunity to catch one of the three Kanto starters. If you continuously walk away from them, they will eventually respawn with a Pikachu as a fourth starter option, as a nod to Pokémon Yellow.
  • There's a way to guarantee the Eevee evolution you want; nickname your Eevee "Sparky" for Jolteon, "Pyro" for Flareon, or "Rainer" for Vaporeon. These are the same names as the three trainers who owned each of the three original Eeveelutions from the Pokémon anime episode "The Battling Eevee Brothers". Niantic themselves confirmed this method works.
• Encounter Bait: The Incense and Lure Module items attracts Pokémon to the user and a Pokéstop respectively for 30 minutes. In addition, Pokémon drawn by Incense are exclusive to the player, while Lures work for all players.
• Enemy Mine: Players from two different teams can work together to topple a gym held by the third team. However, only one team can hold the gym after it reverts to neutral, so they'll probably end up fighting each other for control over it afterward.
• Exergaming: Some of the game's features, such as hatching eggs and even gaining experience, are tied to how far you walk. Eggs hatch after walking anywhere from 2 to 10 kilometers, and there are medals for walking certain distances. The game stops counting distance when you go over about 15mph, though, so trying to cheat with a car won't get you much of anything.
• Experience Booster: The Lucky Egg item doubles experience gained for 30 minutes.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: The Teams have the Legendary birds of Kanto as their mascots — Articuno for Team Mystic, Zapdos for Team Instinct, and Moltres for Team Valor.
• Fragile Speedster: Pokémon with an XS tagged to either their height or weight (or both) attack faster than Pokémon without those tags but have lower HP as a tradeoff.
• Freudian Trio: The teams' philosophies.
  • Team Valor believes in training Pokémon using raw strength, emotions, and passion, making them the Id.
  • Team Mystic believes in using logic and intellect in training Pokémon, making them the Superego.
  • Team Instinct doesn't favor either emotions or logic, instead relying on their own instincts, making them the Ego.
• Game-Breaking Bug: As the game is brand new with a massive amount of players over what was expected, the "known bugs" section of the company website basically reads "we know, we're sorry, we're working on it."
  • The game may bug out upon getting a Pokémon into a PokéBall, freezing it in place and forcing a restart. Though, the game actually does accommodate for this: If the catch from the landed Ball would have been successful, rebooting the app will show the Pokémon in your inventory, but if it wasn't, you will have to try again. Fixed in later versions in that the game will eventually jump to the Pokemon either being captured or escaping capture if this glitch happens.
  • This same type of freeze can also happen in a gym battle when your opponent is down to one hit point. Luckily this nulls the fight instead of counting as a loss.
  • There's also the chance that the game will freeze if you fail to catch a Pokémon and immediately open your item menu when it flees (such as if you're trying to quickly use a Razz Berry), forcing a restart. Luckily this glitch was resolved in an update which removes the ability to open the item menu immediately after the Pokémon breaks free, and waits until the Random Number God decides if the Pokémon will stay or flee before letting the player continue.
  • If your reception is poor, there's a chance that a Pokémon will appear, but when you tap on it and wait for the game to transition to the wild encounter, the Pokémon just disappears from view without giving you a chance to catch it.
  • A bug with the tracker can cause all Pokémon to appear the maximum distance away regardless of actual distance to the player, making it almost impossible to accurately tell where they are. Unlike the other bugs, which just interrupt gameplay, this one persists even if you reset the game and can't be fixed by the player. Niantic eventually just removed the tracker entirely.
  • Pokéstops may occasionally fail to give you items, but still register as being used and require you to wait for them to become available again.
  • The game can be very processing intensive on phones, as it simultaneously puts a good deal of pressure on the graphics while using the GPS, with the option of using the camera and gyroscope in the AR Mode. As a result, the game can start to lag very heavily, to the point where responses are so slow to load it makes the game unplayable until you reset.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Because of the game's algorithm for spawning, more Pokémon will spawn in areas with more people playing the game. This means that crowded cities will have a greater volume of Pokémon than rural areas, and areas where there is no cell reception like caves and mountains won't have any.
• Guide Dang It:
  • The game doesn't explain the purpose of the circles that appear when you're preparing to toss a Pokéball at a wild Pokémon, specifically the colored circle inside the white target circle, which shrinks as you hold the ball. The color of the circle determines how likely you are to catch the Pokémon. Green usually works on the first try, while yellow, orange, and red represent an increasing likelihood that the Pokémon will break free. You're more likely to catch the Pokémon if the colored circle is smaller when the ball hits, and if the ball hits within that circle. This is deemed a "Nice", "Great", or "Excellent" throw depending on the size of the circle and earns a small XP bonus. You can also spin the ball using your finger to throw a curveball, which also gives an XP bonus if you do it right.
  • When you actually enter a gym battle for the first time, it can be a rather Unexpected Gameplay Change since there's really no battling before this. First you very well may have to swing your device around to find the actual arena, and battling consists of tapping on your opponent to attack with your basic movie, while a "Special Meter" charges up to allow your Pokémon to use a more powerful move. None of this is explained to you upon your first battle, neither is there any sort of training mode to try out your Pokémon's moves before challenging a gym.
  • There is a way to get Pikachu as your starter, but the game never tells you how.
  • The game doesn't tell you that you need to flip your device upside-down to reap the benefits of battery saver.
  • Players discovered a 100% sure-fire way to evolve your Eevee into whatever you want it to be. You have to name them "Sparky", "Pyro", or "Rainer" to get a Jolteon, Flareon, and Vaporeon, respectively. Also, make sure you exit the app and relaunch after changing the name to ensure that it went through to the server.
  • Incense works by generating Pokémon at your location, at a rate of one every five minutes (so about five overall). However, you can double or even triple that amount if you jog at least 200 meters between spawns, which ups the spawn rate to about one per minute.
  • Remember IVs from the main games? Surprise, they're present in this game, and a lot more cryptic this time, since battle stats are all summed up in CP. Pokémon have three hidden stats — Attack, Defense, and Stamina — which all factor into a function that determines its final CP as well as its HP. And just like in the main games, you have no control over whether that high CP 'mon you're catching has good stats or not. The Elite Tweak factor is less pronounced, though, due to the lack of EVs, and the difference over getting a 'mon with perfect IVs is about 10% additional damage in battles. Appraisal of your Pokémon since the 0.35.0 update now drops more hints on the strength of your stats.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: As in every Pokemon game, you can nickname your Pokemon, resulting in users taking the concept and running wild.
• Hitbox Dissonance:
  • If you're driving (obviously, not a recommended way to play) or riding a vehicle while playing, trying to tap a freshly-spawned Pokémon or a nearby Pokéstop can be hit or miss, since the app will cause your character to jump forward in bursts as it tries to keep your location updated.
  • For vehicle users, using a Pokéstop while the vehicle is in motion can be difficult if you're moving faster than 30 mph. The Pokéstop usually won't work if you try to load it before the app decides it's actually available, and even then the app may decide you've moved out of range before you can manage to spin the circle and get your items.
  • While it's rare, it's possible for Pokémon to spawn directly on top of one another. Often tapping the Pokémon that appears front-and-center will instead start a capture sequence with the Pokémon behind or under it (usually a Com Mon).
  • What counts as part of a Pokémon's hitbox when a Pokéball is tossed differs between species; the wings of a Zubat register hits, but not, say, the fins of a Goldeen.
  • The capture circle and the hitbox of the Pokémon can be vastly different. For example, Pidgeot has a target circle as large as any Com Mon, but its actual hitbox is so far away that on smaller devices you may have trouble even throwing the Pokéball far enough to land a hit. On others, the hitbox can be be larger than the circle, making it difficult to land an accurate throw.
• Hufflepuff House: Team Instinct is often portrayed this way as it is the smallest of the three teams.
• Lady Not-Appearing-in-This-Game: A male version that's not used for Fanservice. News stories and unofficial ads for the game have been using a cartoon depiction of YouTuber TheJWittz, specifically the image that he typically uses in his thumbnails. He's not actually in the game, although he does play it, and has made a video discussing this.
• LARP: Short version: Basically, you take your iOS or Android device outside, and it spawns virtual Pokémon, which you can actually see through the camera on the device, and then capture, train, and battle, creating a facsimile of Pokémon training. The game is designed to encourage outdoor activity, especially exploration.
• Lightning Bruiser: Vaporeon. It has the highest HP and CP potential out of the "Eevee-lutions", in addition to being one of the strongest overall Pokémon (the others being much harder to obtain). With the lightning-quick moves Water Gun and Aqua Tail, it has the second highest DPS output in the entire game behind only Mewtwo. It can even take down similarly-leveled Electric-types, leaving rare bulky Grass-types with high DPS as its only real weakness. It's the staple of most competitive Gym-battler lineups for a very good reason. A patch toned down Vaporeon's moveset, alleviating this problem to a degree, but Vaporeon is still one of the most powerful and easy-to-get Pokémon.
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • When trying to capture Pokémon, the odds of a successful capture can vary radically, especially if the Pokémon in question has CP in the tripe digits. If it's above that threshold, there's a decent chance that it will escape and flee after one or two failures. These odds can vary based on the species in question. The player can improve their odds by using Razz berries and higher-rank balls, successfully landing their ball inside the colored circle, and throwing a curveball.
  • Played With. The three Eevee evolutions (Jolteon, Vaporeon, and Flareon) are normally completely random with each evolution, so the only obvious way to get the one you want is to either keep evolving Eevees or catch one of the evolved forms in the wild. What the game doesn't advertise is that naming your Eevee "Sparky", "Pyro", or "Rainer" guarantees it will evolve into Jolteon, Flareon, or Vaporeon, respectively, so it's only luck-based if you don't know the trick to bypass it.
  • When evolving a Pokémon, you have no control over what moves it will end up with. You can evolve something with a great moveset into something much more powerful, only to have it be rendered useless by a lousy moveset if the Random Number God doesn't smile upon you. This also applies to the "XL" and "XS" tags, which can be gained or lost randomly upon evolution.
• Magikarp Power: Magikarp, of course, which evolves into the giant sea dragon Gyarados. Since candies now cause evolution instead of battling, this game makes evolving Magikarp a challenge by requiring 400 candies instead of the usual 50 for a single-evolution Pokémon. In other words, you need to catch 101 Magikarps at the least (three candies for each and 100 for transferring all but one) just to make one Gyarados. Hope you live near a lake or the sea. That said, once you manage to evolve Magikarp, it goes from having the absolute worst CP (263 max) to 12th overall (2689 max), a boost of 1000% percent from Magikarp's original value, which is the single largest CP jump of any Pokémon in the game.
• Mêlée à Trois: Three factions — Teams Instinct, Mystic, and Valor — fight among themselves over gyms.
• Mighty Glacier:
  • Pokémon with an XL tagged to either their height or weight (or both) attack slower than Pokémon without those tags but have higher HP as a tradeoff.
  • Snorlax is considered one of the best Gym defenders due to its massive health pool and high CP (Dragonite is the only non-legendary with better CP) and with the right moveset is difficult to dodge or counter.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The medals for catching Pokémon of a certain type are all references to the Trainer Classes that used them in the main games.
    • The medal for catching a certain number of Rattata is called "Youngster", a reference to Youngster Joey and his top percentage Rattata.
    • The medal for catching a certain number of Magikarp with the XL tag is called "Fisherman", a reference to the Fishing Guru at the Lake of Rage who had a Side Quest involving being shown giant Magikarp.
    • The medal for catching Ghost Pokémon is called "Hex Maniac".
    • The medal for catching Steel-types is "Depot Agent".
    • The medal for catching Flying-types is "Bird Keeper".
  • Pikachu is the only Pokémon in the game who has Pokémon Speak, just as in Pokémon Yellow and the Generation VI games.
  • Many items in the game are featured in the main series but have different effects; Stardust for instance is just an item that sells for a lot of money in the main games but in GO it is used to power-up Pokémon, the Razz Berry similarly is a berry that is just used as an ingredient for cooking Pokéblocks/Poffins, although in GO it is used for bait to keep Pokémon from running away.
  • Abra is the single most likely Pokémon to flee if it breaks out of its capture ball, a direct reference to the fact that in the main games Abra's only move was Teleport, which it would use to immediately flee from battle if not caught (or incapacitated) during the first turn.
• Nerf:
  • The 0.31.0 update nerfed the base damage of numerous attacks (in particular, the formerly dominant Water Gun from 10 to 6, helping to bring Vaporeon into check) and buffed many others by up to 50 points in some cases (like Hyper Beam).
  • The same update nerfed catch rates, with even low-CP Com Mons having high chances of breaking out of a ball and escaping, which increases as the player's level rises.
• New Media Are Evil: Within days of the introduction of Pokémon Go, news outlets passed along a number of stories relating to it, including people being robbed while playing the game, a woman stumbling on a dead body, and people playing in inappropriate areas such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In most cases the problems encountered stemmed either from a lack of common sense while playing or were risks one would take by simply going outside. This is to say nothing of the various churches that have literally branded Pokémon as "digital demons" and asked how long it will be before said demons start telling players to murder one another for their Pokémon.
• Ninja Looter: Defeating a gym doesn't automatically claim it for your team — it reverts the gym to neutral first. This means that someone standing by can wait for the gym to become neutral after a battle then claim it for their team first before the winner can get to it.
• No Fair Cheating:
  • If you try to travel at more than 15 mph, the game won't track your distance for egg-hatching purposes.
  • If you try and download the app in a country where the game is not legitimately released, there will likely be no Pokéstops or wild Pokémon spawning since they aren't programmed to appear there. This doesn't stop some impatient players from doing it anyway, in hopes Pokémon will somehow appear anyway or to give themselves an early advantage whenever the game is actually released in their region. However, several Canadian players also found that if Niantic eventually figures out that you're sideloaded and are playing outside of the regions where the game is available and are still persistently trying despite the absolute absence of Pokémon in your area, they'll eventually tempban your account until the game becomes officially available in your country.
  • Don't even think of trying to use a GPS Spoofing app to trick the app into thinking you're somewhere else. If Niantic figures it out, they'll issue a ban which causes all Pokémon to automatically run away, disables all Pokéstops and gyms, and prevents you from leveling up.
• No Plot? No Problem!: Unlike Ingress with its extensive, ongoing lore and its use of real-world Kayfabe events as storytelling, this game doesn't really have much of a plot beyond "Congrats, you're a trainer, now go catch Pokémon and join one of these three teams!"
• Obvious Beta: The initial release is pretty unstable. There are constant crashing issues, it's pretty unoptimized, the servers need some stabilization, and it's a massive battery and data hog. The initial release was even versioned as 0.29.0, which is a number typical of a beta build.
• One-Man Army:
  • Well, One Pokémon Army. The trailer has Mewtwo, a single Pokémon, going toe-to-toe with the Pokémon of hundreds of trainers, and for quite awhile Mewtwo is kicking ass. On the long list of Pokémon Mewtwo had to fight off were Dragonair, Charizard, Pidgeot, Gengar and Gyarados; all powerful Pokémon in their own right. It is eventually caught, but given the clock, it held its own against all of them for almost ten straight minutes. If these events are indeed held, Legendary Pokémon may all qualify for this trope.
  • When trying to raise the prestige of an allied gym, you are only allowed to use one Pokémon to defeat all the Pokémon at that gym, regardless of whether it has one or nine. The one you chose therefore has to be strong enough to fight all of them consecutively without being knocked out. You earn prestige for knocking out at least one, just not as much.
• Pokémon Speak: Pikachu does this, provided by Ikue Otani. The rest have upgraded versions of their cries that were first heard in the Generation VI games.
• Power-Up Food: The Candies that are received when capturing or transferring/releasing Pokémon can be used alongside Stardust to enhance the Combat Points of a Pokémon of their corresponding evolutionary line or evolve them.
• Reality Ensues:
  • Many people used to the games that allowed you to go through all sorts of ecosystems in the world within the span of a few hours learn the hard way that they are stuck with the same Com Mons found within walking distance of their home — or that climbing mountains or going into caves tends to cut off your reception.
  • The game has become a hindrance to many stores and businesses around the United States. Some businesses are needing to remind their employees to capture Pokémon only during their break times. Police departments are also sending out friendly reminders to keep alert when walking around and to just stay safe in general. On the other hand, a number of stores have found that having Pokéstops draws in more customers; a few have even requested them. There are even businesses such as McDonald's that pay for sponsored Pokéstops to draw in customers.
  • Private property also does not exist in the games...but of course, it does in Real Life. Police departments have gotten calls for "suspicious activity" and "trespassing." This includes places such as memorials, cemeteries, houses of worship, sacred sites, and so forth, which (understandably) upsets people.
  • Even in the games that had seasons, trainers never experienced the effects of hot or cold. Since the game launched in July, which is the hottest month of the year in many countries in the Northern hemisphere, players began to experience the effects of walking around in temperatures of well over 35° Celsius (95° Fahrenheit). This also gets worse with the weather effects like rain - in the games they don't do much, but in Real Life, well...
  • Even a day into the game's launch, there have already been reports of individuals snatching player's devices or setting up a lure at a PokéStation to commit armed robbery. Team Rocket (and the rest of their ilk) aren't the only criminals players need to watch out for now...
  • Given the obesity epidemic in North America, the first week after the game's release was rife with reports of people complaining about sore muscles, sunburns, and other minor injuries related to sedentary lifestyles.
  • Some people have found themselves in dangerous situations, or even used the game to lure people into dangerous situations.
  • Perhaps not surprisingly, numerous injuries have been reported as a result of players paying more attention to the game than to where they're going, ranging from car wrecks (as both drivers and pedestrians) to falling off cliffs.
  • Unlike, say, a Game Boy or Nintendo DS, smart devices aren't exactly optimized for resource-intensive games; in light of that, the game eating through its system's battery life far faster than a typical Pokémon game would is unsurprising. Additionally, the lack of standardised hardware and software means the game is more prone to bugs and crashing than games developed for a dedicated platform like the DS.
• Regional Bonus: An interesting subversion of this trope, there are several Pokémon that are continent exclusive in the wild! Wild Tauros can only be encountered in North America, Farfetch'd can only be found in Asia, Mr. Mime in Europe, and Kangaskhan in Australia. However, it still seems possible to randomly obtain these Pokémon from eggs regardless of where you are.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: Like in a Safari Zone, it is possible for every Pokémon in this game to flee, with encounters ending in the Pokémon escaping a Pokéball they just broke out of. Some are more likely to escape from a destroyed Pokéball than others, meaning some Pokémon (and eventually, many of them) only give you one chance to acquire them before fleeing on the spot.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • The "Team Harmony" Challenge, for players who don't want to get mixed up picking between Teams Valor, Instinct, and Mystic and would prefer to try and ease tension between the three groups. By doing this players lock themselves out of ever battling at the gyms, so the only way they play is to catch and raise Pokémon. Fans have even picked Lugia as their unofficial mascot for this type of challenge, as opposed to Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres the other teams are represented by.
  • The ultimate challenge is to reach level 40 without ever catching a single Pokémon, but rather leveling up only from the 50 XP earned from Pokéstops. That's only 400,000 Pokéstop visits.
• Simple Yet Awesome: Eevee and its evolutions. While not quite common enough to be a Com Mon, you'll likely encounter several per day and they evolve with a mere 25 candies (compared to 50 for most other one-tier evolutions). The evolved forms get a massive CP boost (Jolteon is a bit of a letdown, though), are decent battlers, quite good at defending gyms, and easy to power up thanks to the abundance of Eevee to obtain candy, putting them in a category above Boring but Practical. And now that an Easter Egg has been uncovered which allows you to control how your Eevee evolves, they've entered "Awesome" territory.
• Skewed Priorities: In Needville, Texas, a player slashed the tires of an ambulance because the Pokéstops were removed from the fire and police departments. The Fire Department poked on Facebook to point out that emergency services and saving lives should take higher priority.
• Smoke Out: If you take too long to capture a wild Pokémon or sometimes when it breaks out of the ball you enclose it in, they'll use this to escape.
• Special Attack: Every Pokémon has two attacks: a basic attack that can be spammed, and a special attack that is more like a Limit Break, being charged up during a battle before it can be unleashed against an opponent.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • To Ingress. The core foundation of the game was created from Ingress. All the Pokéstops and gyms are all the established hotspots and contested portals from Ingress, with no difference at all. Pokémon Go has you join either Team Valor (red), Team Mystic (blue), and Team Instinct (yellow) to fight over Gym ownership, just like Ingress had fighting between the Enlightened and the Resistance.
  • To a lesser extent the game also shares some fundamentals with the Pokéwalker from Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, in that both are rather simple Pokémon games that encourage the player to walk around to get the most out of them.
• Stupid Crooks: A crook like this got caught because of this game; seems he was looking for a gym which happened to be at a police station... where the cops were looking for him, and had a warrant. Read the amusing story here.
• Take a Third Option:
  • Or fourth option, rather. You're given a choice of three starters when you first start the game (Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle). If you walk away instead of picking one, the game will spawn Pikachu as a fourth choice.
  • Once you click on a gym after you reach level 5, you're forced to choose between Valor, Mystic, and Instinct. It is entirely possible to never pick a team, if you're willing to lock yourself out of those features of the game, by never clicking on a gym.
• Timed Mission:
  • The trailer shows players battling Mewtwo, with a timer counting down. The context suggests timed missions to capture rare Pokémon are a part of gameplay. It also seemed that every participant gained a Mewtwo as a result of successfully catching the one at the event.
  • In the game itself, every wild Pokémon will only remain available to catch for a certain period of time, which varies depending on the rarity of the Pokémon in question. Any number of players can catch it during this period.
  • Gym battles have a time limit of 99 seconds for each Pokémon fought. This forces players to be within a certain threshold of the defending Pokémon's CP, in order to do enough damage to defeat at least one. At least half of the defender's CP is sufficient, though it will be a close battle.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Due to the immersive nature of this game, it can inspire this in real life. Please pay attention to your surroundings while playing this game, and under no circumstances play while in control of a moving vehicle.
  • The "be aware of your surroundings" message that shows up on the loading screen depicts a trainer absentmindedly looking at their phone while a Gyarados is poised to attack in front of them.
  • Niantic took further steps to alleviate this problem by adding a warning pop-up each time the game loads, informing the player not to do unsafe or illegal things like play while driving or trespass onto private property. On top of that, a second pop-up was added that triggers whenever the game detects that the player is travelling above 15 mph, informing them that the game shouldn't be played while driving, which repeats every five minutes until the player slows down. The button to clear it specifies that the player is a passenger, not the driver.
• Trailers Always Lie:
  • The trailer shows two people trading Pokémon with each other, but trading is not actually present in the final game. However, whether as a response to the backlash against this or not, it has been confirmed that trading will be implemented in a later update.
  • The trailer shows a much more comprehensive tracking system for nearby Pokémon, indicating both direction and exact distance to encounter them. The actual system has gone through a couple versions, neither matching what was advertised. The first gave no direction and only indicated distance through a four-tiered system^note three footprints means they are pretty far away, two means kind of close, one means almost able to be encountered, and no footsteps means the Pokémon is pretty much right on top of you, which was eventually removed entirely. The second, replacing the first not long after its removal, is a dual style "Sightings" system which either identifies the nearest Pokéstop to the Pokémon or uses a tall grass graphic to indicate that it's relatively close.
  • The augmented reality in the trailer was leagues above the actual gameplay. The AR system in the game just superimposes the Pokémon over the camera display, not taking into account any obstacles or even draw distance. The trailer, on the other hand, looks more like a game made for a VR headset.
  • The first trailer shows Pikachu using its cry from Generations I to V. In the game proper, it's the only Pokémon that does Pokémon Speak like in the main series games starting from Generation VI.
  • In the trailers, Pokémon were identified with levels like in the main series, instead of Combat Points like in the actual game.
  • Both trailers (the initial one and the second trailer showing gameplay much closer to the game's actual capabilities) show Player Versus Player battles, the first trailer even showing a three on three team battle. This feature is not in the final game and the only way to battle other players is to do so at gym locations, where you're actually only fighting an AI of the player's Pokémon.
  • The trailers show people being able to find Pokémon just about anywhere. While this is not technically false, it does assume the player is in an area with a high volume of cellular activity, which affects how many Pokémon will spawn in a given area. As many people in rural and suburban areas have discovered, spawn rates in low activity areas are significantly reduced.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Gym Pokémon are controlled by an AI, not the player. As a result, they don't bother with dodging, mostly spam their basic attack, and will use their special attack as soon as the meter is charged even if it would be less effective than the basic attack. (For example, if their special attack is a different type which your Pokémon resists.) To counter this, players will usually place Pokémon with extremely high CP (1-2 thousand on average) to guard gyms, so their sheer power covers their incompetence.
• Vendor Trash: While there is no actual shop for Pokémon, players can "sell" them by means of transferring them to Professor Willow to receive one candy of that Pokémon's type. You'll end up doing this a lot to farm candies, especially for Com Mons.
• Victory by Endurance: As long as you have the last Pokémon standing in a gym battle, you win. Made easier by the fact that you always get to use six Pokémon, while the gym could have as few as one. That one Pokémon could defeat your first five, but if you defeat it with your sixth, you win.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Sometimes it's just easier to not swap out your Pokémon if it's hurt, or even lead with a Pokémon that only had a sliver of health left and force it to faint, since you can then use a Revive on it and automatically gain half it's health back as opposed to spending twice as many potions to heal it to full.
• Video Game Perversity Potential: In the 0.35 update, a new feature was added where you can have a Pokémon appraised by a team leader. They will comment on the Pokémon's stats, and if they're of an unusual size, they will comment on that as well. However, they will refer to the Pokémon by whatever nickname you've given it, leading to lines like this◊.
• Weak, but Skilled: A player good at dodging can take down a gym Pokémon leagues more powerful than their own mon.
• Zerg Rush: When fighting a gym held by an opposing team, you get to use six Pokémon regardless of the total currently at the gym (which can be up to ten, depending on level). This makes it quite easy to overwhelm a Pokémon individually stronger than anything you have by chipping away at them with a rush of weaker ones. Even if you can't beat the entire lineup, winning against at least one degrades the prestige of the gym. If the prestige is degraded enough, the gym is downgraded by one level and the weakest defending Pokémon is removed from the lineup (assuming the gym has as many defenders as it does levels). Defeating the entire lineup reduces the gym's prestige by 2,000. Once its prestige reaches zero, it is rendered neutral, allowing you to place your own defender and claim it for your team. Furthermore, multiple trainers can team up against the same gym, making victory more a matter of attrition. Presumably, this is meant to make sure that gyms cannot be held indefinitely with no effort on the part of the defending team.

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