History NightmareFuel / PokemonGlitches

* While thankfully only accessible with a Gameshark, one little thing makes the GSC version of Glitch City even worse. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RODaDd6ytAU A black-and-white woman (resembling a ghost) will sometimes be waiting for the player there.]] Walking towards her results in her [[DisproportionateRetribution attacking]], playing the Burned Tower music when she does. Trying to battle her will only result in [[https://youtu.be/rxbvs9dxcCo?t=29 madness.]] Additionally, there's [[http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pokémon_Gold_and_Silver_beta unused text in Gold and Silver suggesting somebody's daughter going missing in the Burned Tower]].

Glitch Pokémon are Pokémon that manifest through errors in the game's programming. The stuff they do to your file is all kinds of messed up. Perception through the reality of the game can result in plenty of FridgeHorror.

* Glitch Pokémon look the way they do because the game pulls their sprite data from other types of data that aren't intended to be used as sprites. This is what gives MissingNo its weird L-block shape. Here's the catch- [[FridgeHorror they might actually look even weirder than what the game displays to us.]]

* Another Yellow glitch with a similar effect to the Yellow MissingNo. is "Female Symbol", [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin whose name is]] [[ShapedLikeItself just the symbol for "female"]] [[TheUnpronounceable and some glitched characters]]. Its encounter is just like the above scenario, except this time the EldritchAbomination screams at the player, freezes the game and kick-starts a creepy remix of what appear to be multiple different musical tracks from Lavender Town, the Team Rocket hideout, and other places in RBY with creepy/scary music. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGlTbYMbjHY Have a listen.]] Female Symbol's sprite may be one of the creepiest things in the series, as [[http://lparchive.org/Pokemon-Blue/Update%2011/25-capture_10052010_204011.png it really does look something like a dimly-lit Lovecraftian horror]] or VideoGame/{{Earthbound}}'s [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/Giygas.png final boss.]]

* Also unsettling thing found in the first generation is [[FanNickname Glitch City]], a garbled mess of pixels which, if traveled into too far, will cause the screen to freak out and the game to freeze. For a 10-year-old trainer (as in, the in-game character), finding himself in Glitch City would be horrifying by itself; however, as the player stares at it more and more, it becomes obvious that the whole place simply [[AlienGeometries should not be]]. To escape you must Fly, Dig, Teleport, or fall in battle.
** While thankfully only accessible with a Gameshark, one little thing makes the GSC version of Glitch City even worse: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RODaDd6ytAU a black-and-white woman (resembling a ghost) will sometimes be waiting for the player there.]] Walking towards her results in her [[DisproportionateRetribution attacking]], playing the Burned Tower music when she does. Trying to battle her will only result in [[https://youtu.be/rxbvs9dxcCo?t=29 madness.]] Additionally, there's [[http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pokémon_Gold_and_Silver_beta unused text in Gold and Silver suggesting somebody's daughter going missing in the Burned Tower]].
*** The madness continues with her interactions changing depending on what you have in your team or where you approach, as well as a bizarre "Quest" in glitch city where you happen to pick up a poison barb where her behavior also noticeably changes. Engaging her in battle properly requires using a gameshark to give her a valid trainer class as well as stoppign the earlygame auto-input. This reveals she has the name and team of Ace Trainer Cara from the Dragon's Den, which either debunks the possibility of this being a removed character or just raising more questions. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgY52E5qMEo all of this can be seen in this video.]]
*** Suffice it to say, being a possibly-removed character accessable by glitches that result in more distortions draws more than a few parallels to [[Undertale W.D. Gaster]] long before he was ever conceived.

** Missingno's stats imply he's almost as tall as Wailord (the biggest one), and heavier than Celesteela (the heaviest one). However, this is in the American version; in the Japanese version of Pokemon Blue, where Missingno. has a filler Pokedex entry, its height and weight are a much more reasonable 1 meter and 10 kilograms (3.2 feet and 22 pounds).

** In VideoGame/PokemonXAndY, we get a lovely crossbreed of a Bad Egg, and 'M: the Mystery Egg. Like the regular Bad Egg, Mystery Egg doesn't hatch. It was apparently laid at [[NothingIsScarier 0/0/0000.]] The Mystery Egg, like a Lv. 0 'M, corrupts the box it's in, taking all the Pokemon in there with it.
*** Even better, nobody knows what causes it. Thankfully, it seems to be an extremely rare glitch, but it's still a terrifying possibility that you may turn your game on one day only to find your Pokemon being slowly devoured by this... thing.

** All Pokemon in the party (Bar the third and sixth) become level 153 Bulbasaurs, and all six get three of their moves replaced by Explosion.
** It also changes the player's name to [=ZZDZZAZZ4ZZ=] Z [=ZIZZ9ZZ[box]ZZ=][[note]]This, along with the Level 153 Exploding Bulbasaurs, happens because the game starts writing hexadecimal number 99 in every character except multiples of three over a very large portion of RAM. 0x99 equates to the number 153, the character "Z", Bulbasaur's index number and Explosion's index number[[/note]]. This means all your Pokemon are treated as outsiders, and all your level 153 Bulbasaur will disobey you. Your party also becomes corrupted, and seeing it freezes the game, but this can be solved by depositing your first Pokemon.

** When you get past it, you can battle other trainers... [[HumanoidAbomination which happen to look just like Red, but have the same name and party as the glitch trainer seen above]]. You can battle that trainer, but it's completely {{Unwinnable}}, either through [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard Pokemon with infinite HP, having over six Pokemon in the party]], triggering another battle as soon as they are beaten (With an even more corrupted party), or by sending out a level 147 Charizard that freezes the game in the first turn.

* Another example is [[http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/X_%E3%82%A5-_x%E3%82%A5,;X ゥ- xゥ,]], a Normal-Glitch type with a purple color and a cry slightly resembling Celebi's. It has a 827 stat total on the modern scale, which is still better than Arceus! It also is much safer to use, because PokeWtrainer can cause crashes if its front sprite is displayed, whereas X ゥ- xゥ, will never cause crashes and never tries to learn any volatile glitch moves such as Super Glitch.
* There is a glitchy creature in Pokemon Red and Blue that looks like Charizard, but behaves like a horrifying glitch. Because of this, it has earned the nickname "Charizard 'M", often referred to as "The Final Boss of Pokemon". It occupies the hex slot FF, which is the domain of the "cancel" button. This means it cancels everything it comes into contact with. If you store it in the PC, all your Pokemon will disappear. If you talk to Nurse Joy, the conversation will immediately end so you can't heal your Pokemon. It's nothing short of the embodiment of nothingness. If that weren't enough, battling it results in the TMTRAINER effect, and it has [[{{Cap}} 65,535]] hit points, so there is no way that the player could actually beat it. To ''really'' drive the point home, the FF index slot is also occupied by ZZAZZ. The game can't start a Trainer battle within a Trainer battle, so it corrupts data that is ''[[UpToEleven already corrupt]]''. Worse still, if you manage to get one of these abominations[[note]]this can be done by trading another glitch Pokémon from ''Pokémon Yellow'', Q (easy to get, but also qualifies as NightmareFuel due to being Yellow's version of the glitchy cancel button and ZZAZZ)[[/note]], and if it's sent out in battle or stored in the PC, the Charizard 'M can turn your Pokémon into ''even more [[TheVirus Charizard 'Ms.]]''

** Missingno's most famous appearance that M' also takes is a bunch of pixels shaped like a backwards L. More people are scared by what a glitch Pokémon does than by what it looks like, but Missingno occasionally takes the shape of a Lavender Town ghost (Gastly and Haunter sans Silph Scope), a hollow shell of a Kabutops that hasn't been revived, or the skeleton of an Aerodactyl that hasn't been revived.

* ''Pokémon Yellow'' has its own version of [=MissingNo=], which is '''not''' as benign a glitch as the ''Pokémon Red and Blue'' counterpart. Its 'battle music' is only [[NothingIsScarier dead static]], assuming it fights you instead of [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30p2lISWECQ making a horrifying noise and crashing the game]]. It can also cause the player character to disappear with [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r75FYH2o1FM clones of him through the air,]] apparently.
* Another Yellow glitch with a similar effect to the Yellow MissingNo. is "Female Symbol", [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin whose name is]] [[ShapedLikeItself just the symbol for "female"]]. Just like the above scenario, except this time the EldritchAbomination screams at the player, freezes the game and kick-starts a creepy remix of what appear to be multiple different musical tracks from Lavender Town, the Team Rocket hideout, and other places in RBY with creepy/scary music. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGlTbYMbjHY Have a listen.]] Female Symbol's sprite may be one of the creepiest things in the series, as [[http://lparchive.org/Pokemon-Blue/Update%2011/25-capture_10052010_204011.png it really does look something like a dimly lit Lovecraftian horror]] or VideoGame/{{Earthbound}}'s [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/Giygas.png final boss.]]
* Also unsettling is the Glitch City, a garbled mess of pixels which, if traveled into too far, will cause the screen to freak out and the game to freeze. For a 10-year-old trainer (as in, the in-game character), finding himself in Glitch City would be horrifying by itself; however, as the player stares at it more and more, it becomes obvious that the whole place simply [[AlienGeometries should not be]]. To escape you must Fly, Dig, Teleport, or fall in battle.

* M':
** If it's level 0, and you send it to your PC, it destroys everything the trainer knows and loves just by existing (more specifically, by corrupting the PC and making it inaccessible).
** If it looks like a Charizard, it can [[AssimilationPlot cause other Pokémon in your party to become more of it.]] It also causes anything below it in your party to not be visible on the menu, and they won't be healed in the Pokémon Center.
** If it uses an upside down [=MissingNo.=] sprite, it can [[YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm crash the game]].[[note]]This particular 'M's index is 254. "Pokemon" with an index number of above 200 spawn trainers through the Mew or Old Man Glitches instead - with those at index 200 or above 250 causing {{Game Breaking Bug}}s. If this 'M is obtained by other methods (Such as the Remaining HP glitch), it's completely harmless outside of the fact it can learn Super Glitch several times[[/note]]

* The Glitch Pokémon named [=h POKé=]. It is harmless by itself, but what is creepy is its height and weight: a mess of garbled pixels, over 80 feet tall and 3 tons heavy.(By comparison, Wailord, the apparently largest and heaviest 'Mon known to man, is only 47 feet and 7 inches tall and 877.4 pounds heavy.) The garbled pixels are a result of the game trying to display more digits than it can display, meaning it's even bigger than that.

** It also changes the player's name to [=ZZDZZAZZ4ZZ=] Z [=ZIZZ9ZZ[box]ZZ=][[note]]Along with the Level 153 Exploding Bulbasaurs, this happens because the game starts writing hexadecimal number 99 in every character but multiples of three over a very large portion of RAM. 0x99 equals to the number 153, the character "Z", Bulbasaur's index number and Explosion's index number[[/note]]. This means all your Pokemon are treated as outsiders, and all your level 153 Bulbasaur will disobey you. Your party also becomes corrupted, and seeing it freezes the game, but this can be solved by depositing your first Pokemon.

* The Glitch Pokémon named [=h POKé=]. It is harmless by itself, but what is creepy is its height and weight: a mess of garbled pixels, over 80 feet tall and 3 tons heavy. The garbled pixels are a result of the game trying to display more digits than it can display, meaning it's even bigger than that.

* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3iVFfKjklk The ZZAZZ glitch]]. Easily the most dangerous glitch in the entire series, it happens if you try to use the Ditto Glitch with a Special stat of 200 (But only a specific roster) and 251 to 255 (Bar 253, which just freezes the game). [[EldritchAbomination The glitch trainer that comes out]] ''really'' breaks the game's reality down, to say the least. It's also NightmareFuel for the game itself as all of this happens because it gets crazy upon noticing the glitch trainer's reward money. Some of its effects include:

*** Furthermore, if your original name was not either two or five characters long, there's a great chance saving under the effects of the glitch (That don't wear out if you do that) [[LostForever will make the game think there is no saved game at all]].

* Another Yellow glitch with a similar effect to the Yellow MissingNo. is "Female Symbol", [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin whose name is]] [[ShapedLikeItself just the symbol for "female"]]. Just like the above scenario, except this time the EldritchAbomination screams at the player, freezes the game and kick-starts a creepy remix of what appear to be multiple different musical tracks from Lavender Town, the Team Rocket hideout, and other places in RBY with creepy/scary music. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGlTbYMbjHY Have a listen.]] Female Symbol's sprite may be one of the creepiest things in the series, as it really does look something like a dimly lit Lovecraftian horror or VideoGame/{{Earthbound}}'s [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/Giygas.png final boss.]]

* Many players don't ever want to surf up and down the eastern shores of Cinnabar Island or Seafoam Island in any version of Pokémon, due to the glitch "[[http://spookydoom.deviantart.com/art/Some-Things-Just-Should-Not-Be-157497842# MissingNo.]]" and its "twin" [[http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/%27M 'M]] from ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'', who look like garbled towers of pixels and have the potential to corrupt game data. Their appearance causes the battle music to slow down or drop tracks, and the text also becomes screwed up because these Pokémon have moves whose names seem to go on forever (or really weird names like "[=TM20=]"). However, these two glitch Pokémon do ''not'' corrupt save files, unlike some others.

** Missingno's stats imply he's almost as tall as Wailord (the biggest one), and heavier than Groudon (the heaviest one). However, this is in the American version; in the Japanese version of Pokemon Blue, where Missingno. has a filler Pokedex entry, its height and weight are a much more reasonable 1 meter and 10 kilograms (3.2 feet and 22 pounds).

** While thankfully only accessible with a Gameshark, one little thing makes the GSC version of Glitch City even worse: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RODaDd6ytAU a black-and-white woman (resembling a ghost) will sometimes be waiting for the player there.]] Walking towards her results in her [[DisproportionateRetribution attacking]], playing the Burned Tower music when she does. Trying to battle her will only result in [[https://youtu.be/rxbvs9dxcCo?t=29 madness.]] Additionally, there's [[http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Gold_and_Silver_beta unused text in Gold and Silver suggesting somebody's daughter going missing in the Burned Tower]].

* A few glitch Pokémon have stats high enough to make even [[{{God}} Arceus's]] pale in insignificance. An example is the terrifyingly powerful [[http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9WTrainer PokéWTrainer]]: adjusting the stats to current scales[[note]]due to the Special stat split in Generation 2[[/note]], it effectively has a '''924''' base stat total. By comparison, Arceus has 720, so even if Arceus were to [[SuperMode gain a Mega Evolution]] it would ''still'' not reach [=PokéWTrainer=]. It's not lacking in STAB moves to abuse it with either.

** In VideoGame/PokemonXAndY, we get a [[SarcasmMode lovely]] crossbreed of a Bad Egg, and 'M: the Mystery Egg. Like the regular Bad Egg, Mystery Egg doesn't hatch. It was apparently laid at [[NothingIsScarier 0/0/0000.]] The Mystery Egg, like a Lv. 0 'M, corrupts the box it's in, taking all the Pokemon in there with it.

** It's also been stated that it can even ''corrupt a cartridge's battery'' under certain circumnstances, making the game literally unplayable.

** If it uses an upside down [=MissingNo=] sprite, it can [[YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm crash the game]].

** If it uses an upside down [=MissingNo=] sprite, it can [[CannotGraspTheTrueForm crash the game]].

* M', if it's level 0, and you send it to your PC, it destroys everything the trainer knows and loves just by existing (more specifically, by corrupting the PC and making it inaccessible).

** While MissingNo has been reported to cause corruption by Nintendo, it actually doesn't harm anything important in ''Red'' and ''Blue - just Hall of Fame data. M' on the [[ProperlyParanoid other hand...]]

** Missingno's stats imply he's almost as tall as Wailord (the biggest one), and heavier than Groudon (the heaviest one). However, this is the result of a mistranslation; in the Japanese version of Pokemon Blue, where Missingno. has a filler Pokedex entry, its height and weight are a much more reasonable 1 meter and 10 kilograms (3.2 feet and 22 pounds).

----

* Many players don't ever want to surf up and down the eastern shores of Cinnabar Island or Seafoam Island in any version of Pokémon, due to the glitch "[[http://spookydoom.deviantart.com/art/Some-Things-Just-Should-Not-Be-157497842# MissingNo.]]" and its "twin" [[http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/%27M 'M]] from ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'', who on top of looking like garbled towers of pixels, had the potential to corrupt one's graphics, and, as well as an erroneous belief that they can corrupt your save. The battle music slows down or drops tracks. The text also becomes screwed up because these Pokémon have moves whose names seem to go on forever (or really weird names like "[=TM20=]").

* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3iVFfKjklk The ZZAZZ glitch.]] It gets rid of the in-battle music and replaces the cries with late-arriving, grating noises. It also changes the player's name to [=ZZDZZAZZ4ZZ=] Z [=ZIZZ9ZZ[box]ZZ=]. In addition, it makes the sprites of almost anything become garbage, and almost anything players do makes their Pokémon explode.

** While thankfully only accessible with a Gameshark, one little thing makes the GSC version of Glitch City even worse: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RODaDd6ytAU a black-and-white woman (resembling a ghost) will sometimes be waiting for the player there.]] Walking towards her results in her [[DisproportionateRetribution attacking]], playing the Burned Tower music when she does. Trying to battle her will only result in madness. Additionally, there's [[http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Gold_and_Silver_beta unused text in Gold and Silver suggesting somebody's daughter going missing in the Burned Tower]].

* There is a glitchy creature in Pokemon Red and Blue that looks like Charizard, but behaves like a horrifying glitch. Because of this, it has earned the nickname "Charizard 'M", often referred to as "The Final Boss of Pokemon". It occupies the hex slot FF, which is the domain of the "cancel" button. This means it cancels everything it comes into contact with. If you store it in the PC, all your Pokemon will disappear. If you talk to Nurse Joy, the conversation will immediately end so you can't heal your Pokemon. It's nothing short of the embodiment of nothingness. If that weren't enough, battling it results in the TMTRAINER effect, and it has [[{{Cap}} 65,535]] hit points, so there is no way that the player could actually beat it. To ''really'' drive the point home, the FF index slot is also occupied by ZZAZZ. The game can't start a Trainer battle within a Trainer battle, so it corrupts data that is ''[[UpToEleven already corrupt]]''. Worse still, if you manage to get one of these abominations[[note]]this can be done by trading another glitch Pokémon from ''Pokémon Yellow'', Q (easy to get, but also qualifies as NightmareFuel due to being Yellow's version of the glitchy cancel button and ZZAZZ)[[/note]], and if it's sent out in battle or stored in the PC, the Charizard 'M can turn your Pokémon into ''even more [[TheVirus Charizard 'Ms.]]''