History EarlyInstallmentWeirdness / Pokemon

** The series is prone to [[AdaptationPersonalityChange changing characterizations]], however Kanto featured the most dramatic ones. Due to the lack of notable villainous [=NPCs=] beside nameless grunts and Giovanni, the entirety of the Elite Four and several gym leaders were given AdaptationalVillainy, although they all later had {{Heel Face Turn}}s with the sole exception of [[EvilOldFolks Agatha]]. Johto continued this trend somewhat, with Will and Karen, the two new characters introduced to join Gen II's Elite Four, being members of Neo Team Rocket, and [[spoiler:Pryce, a gym leader in Johto]] being its leader. Later generations would have more notable NPCs they could draw from without as dramatically changing their characterizations as much.

** The series is prone to [[AdaptationPersonalityChange changing characterizations]], however Kanto still featured dramatic ones. Due to the lack of notable villainous [=NPCs=] beside nameless grunts and Giovanni, the entirety of the Elite Four and several gym leaders were given AdaptationalVillainy, although they all later had {{Heel Face Turn}}s with the sole exception of [[EvilOldFolks Agatha]].

** The first gym battle in the manga is Red vs Brock. Red wins by having his Pikachu use an electric-type move on Brock's Onix to one-hit KO it. This is despite Onix having a type-advantage over Pikachu. Future gym battles stick closer to the game's mechanics aside from Red's Pikachu knocking out Giovanni's team with Thunderbolt though that's vaguely justified by Pika's Thunderbholt having supercharged inside his Poké Ball.
** In an early chapter Red is nearly eaten by Pokémon. Amongst the prey, what look like small animals can be seen. This is the only time real world animals are shown in the manga.

** Rhyhorn are unsuitable as house pets, but their evolution Rhydon are easier to raise. ''VideoGame/PokemonXAndY'' would later feature a Rhyhorn as a pet who lives around the protagonist's house, though never in it, but downplaying the difficulty by hinting it to be the result of their size, as it is otherwise a friendly creature. The anime's version of ''X and Y'''s female protagonist, Serena, also learns that ''all'' Rhyhorn can be quite gentle and affectionate, rather than the rowdy creatures she assumed them to be at first.

** Rhyhorn are unsuitable as house pets, but their evolution Rhydon are easier to raise.

* Similar to the Cynthia example above, Red also had his team roster change but his change was the opposite of Cynthia. Originally in [[VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver Gen II]], Red had an Espeon on his team as a resident Psychic type making his team very diverse. However, in the [[VideoGame/PokemonHeartgoldAndSoulsilver Gen II remakes]] his Espeon was replaced with a Lapras[[note]]It still his team teaming as Lapras is a "gift" Pokemon in the Kanto games. Additionally its part Ice type also protects it from hail.[[/note]], but since Red already had a water type in the form of Blastoise, this ended up removing the type diversity that his team originally had. This change has been retained for all of Red's subsequent appearances, with the sole exception being his appearance in ''VideoGame/PokemonLetsGoPikachuAndLetsGoEevee'' where he once again has a diverse team due to his Blastoise being replaced by the Fighting-type Machamp.

** Champion Cynthia has a Gastrodon on her team, which is notably mismatched when compared to the other five Pokémon on her team: Garchomp is a psuedo-legendary (and thus ''very'' powerful), Spiritomb are extremely rare and can only be found in Odd Keystones, Lucario is also very rare and powerful, Roserade is only obtainable through using a rare evolutionary stone, and Milotic is notoriously difficult to evolve from Feebas (its Beauty stat needs to be maxed for it to evolve). On the other hand, Gastrodon are fairly ordinary and can be obtained easily in the wild on multiple routes. Not helping is its redundant typing that overlaps with the aforementioned Garchomp and Milotic on a trainer who is [[MasterOfAll consistently distinguished for her team diversity]] in all her other appearances in the series. Her Gastrodon was later replaced by the considerably stronger and rarer Togekiss in ''VideoGame/PokemonPlatinum''. Cynthia would reappear in later games with a wide variety of powerful Pokémon each time, but her Gastrodon never returned outside of the remakes, where she once again replaces it with Togekiss when you get to re-battle her.

* The Exp. Share item had a lot of changes between the generations. The original Exp. Share, Exp. All, would be given to the player as a reward for registering 50 Mons in the Pokédex, and would divide experience between all Pokémon. [[ScrappyMechanic With an individual message for each Mon each time.]] From Generation II to Generation V, the EXP Share would be a held item that would divide up EXP between the Pokémon that fought and the Pokémon who held the item. Starting with Generation VI, it went back to its original functionality (which has been indirectly enhanced by the fact that multiple Mons earning experience from the same source would each be awarded the full amount) but it does it silently and is given out early on as part of the plot, and is forced upon the player automatically from the start in Gen VIII.

** In the [=RBG=] arc, characters would frequently nickname their Pokémon. This was quickly dropped in later arcs, and this would only come up every so often.

* Similar to the Cynthia example above, Red also had his team roster change but his change was the opposite of Cynthia. Originally in [[VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver Gen II]], Red had an Espeon on his team as a resident Psychic type making his team very diverse. However, in the [[VideoGame/PokemonHeartgoldAndSoulsilver Gen II remakes]] his Espeon was replaced with a Lapras, but since Red already had a water type in the form of Blastoise, this ended up removing the type diversity that his team originally had. This change has been retained for all of Red's subsequent appearances, with the sole exception being his appearance in ''VideoGame/PokemonLetsGoPikachuAndLetsGoEevee'' where he once again has a diverse team due to his Blastoise being replaced by the Fighting-type Machamp.

* The first generation only has 15 types; Dark and Steel were added in ''Gold and Silver'', and Fairy type was added in ''X and Y''.[[note]]The [[NonElemental ???-type]] was also added in Gen II but was cut in Generation V.[[/note]] This made Psychic very over-powered (especially with the mistake that made Psychic Pokémon immune to Ghost, although it wouldn't have made much of a difference), Fighting quite weak (partly due to Psychic's dominance), and Fire having few type advantages. This also means that Bite was originally Normal-type, and Magnemite and Magneton were only Electric-type.

* The first two generations allowed ''trading'' with each other, not just transferring. But it was impossible to transfer Pokémon from them to later games until their UsefulNotes/VirtualConsole releases (which are compatible with ''[[VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon Sun, Moon]]'', ''[[VideoGame/PokemonUltraSunAndUltraMoon Ultra Sun, and Ultra Moon]]''), mostly due to the stats working VERY differently until Gen III,[[note]]When Pokémon are transferred from the 8-bit games to Generation VII, stats are completely recalculated to account for this and other features introduced in Generation III and later are added from scratch[[/note]] and the fact that games for the original UsefulNotes/GameBoy and the UsefulNotes/GameBoyColor cannot link with UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance games. This resulted in some weird kludges in ''[[VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver Gold and Silver]]'' to ensure compatibility with newly introduced features:

* Some Pokémon, notably [[http://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/3/3b/Spr_1g_092.png Gastly]], [[http://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/4/45/Spr_1b_091.png Cloyster]], and [[http://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/e/e9/Spr_1b_109.png Koffing]] looked rather OffModel in ''Red'' and ''Blue Versions''. Even the Pokémon who were portrayed accurately had a lot of weird spriting, with some surreal proportions on the Pokémon (such as [[http://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/b/ba/Spr_1b_025.png Pikachu]] or [[http://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/9/9c/Spr_1b_076.png Golem]]) compared to Game Freak's artwork or the anime. ''Yellow'' completely revamped the sprite-work to make the Pokémon look less bizarre... but messed up some of the colours when the international releases converted the game into a UsefulNotes/GameBoyColor-enhanced game (the Japanese version was designed solely for the original UsefulNotes/GameBoy and Super Game Boy), making some purple Pokémon an ugly green-yellow colour.

* Similar to the Cynthia example above, Red also had his team roster change but his change was the opposite of Cynthia. Originally in [[VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver Gen II]], Red had an Espeon on his team as a resident Psychic type making his team very diverse. However, in the [[VideoGame/PokemonHeartgoldAndSoulsilver Gen II remakes]] his Espeon was replaced with a Lapras, but since Red already had a water type in the form of Blastoise, this ended up removing the type diversity that his team originally had. This change has been retained for all of Red's subsequent appearances, with the sole exception being his appearance in VideoGame/PokemonLetsGoPikachuAndLetsGoEevee where he once again has a diverse team due to his Blastoise being replaced by the fighting-type Machamp.
* ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon'' introduced regional variants, but unlike subsequent games, they're all based on Generation 1 Pokémon and none of them have regional evolutions with separate names and [=PokéDex=] numbers.

* Similar to the Cynthia example above, Red also had his team roster change but his change was the opposite of Cynthia. Originally in [[VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver Gen II]], Red had an Espeon on his team as a resident Psychic type making his team very diverse. However, in the [[VideoGame/PokemonHeartgoldAndSoulsilver Gen II remakes]], his Espeon was replaced with a Lapras, but since Red already had a water type in the form of Blastoise, this ended up removing the type diversity that his team originally had. This change has been retained for all of Red's subsequent appearances, with the sole exception being his appearance in VideoGame/PokemonLetsGoPikachuAndLetsGoEevee where he once again has a diverse team due to his Blastoise being replaced by the fighting-type Machamp.

* Similar to the Cynthia example above, Red also had his team roster change but his change was the opposite of Cynthia. Originally in [[VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver Gen II]], Red had an Espeon on his team as a resident Psychic type making his team very diverse. However, in the [[VideoGame/PokemonHeartgoldAndSoulsilver Gen II remakes]], his Espeon was replaced with a Lapras, but since Red already had a water type in the form of Blastoise, this ended up removing the type diversity that his team originally had. This change has been retained for all of Red's appearances since then.[[note]] The sole exception, in the mainline games, being his appearance in VideoGame/PokemonLetsGoPikachuAndLetsGoEevee where he once again has a diverse team due to his Blastoise being replaced by the fighting-type Machamp.[[/note]]

** Champion Cynthia has a Gastrodon on her team, which is notably mismatched when compared to the other five Pokémon on her team: Garchomp is a psuedo-legendary (and thus ''very'' powerful), Spiritomb are extremely rare and can only be found in Odd Keystones, Lucario is also very rare and powerful, Roserade is only obtainable through using a rare evolutionary stone, and Milotic is notoriously difficult to evolve from Feebas (its Beauty stat needs to be maxed for it to evolve). On the other hand, Gastrodon are fairly ordinary and can be obtained easily in the wild on multiple routes. Not helping is its redundant typing that overlaps with the aforementioned Garchomp and Milotic on a trainer who is [[MasterOfAll consistently distinguished for her team diversity]] in all her other appearances in the series. Her Gastrodon was later replaced by the considerably stronger and rarer Togekiss in ''VideoGame/PokemonPlatinum''. Cynthia would reappear in later games with a wide variety of powerful Pokémon each time, but her Gastrodon never returned outside of the remakes, where she once again replaces it with Togekiss when you get to re-battle her at Stark Mountain.