History VideoGame / PokemonGo

In late May 2018 it was announced that ''VideoGame/PokemonLetsGoPikachuAndLetsGoEevee'', a UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch title that combines the catching elements of ''Pokémon GO'' with the mechanics of the main series ''Pokémon'' titles, would be released November 2018. The game is compatible with ''Pokémon GO'', allowing players to upload Pokémon they've caught in ''GO'' into ''Let's Go!'', although limited to Generation I Pokémon and their Alolan forms, and the eventually revealed Meltan and Melmetal. In May 2019, compatibility with Pokémon HOME, an early 2020 storage cloud service succesor to Pokémon Bank was announced. It would allow ''GO'' players to transfer (one-way only) Pokémon caught in ''GO'' to the service where they can be stored and later brought to the mainline games starting with ''VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield''. This functionality was enabled in mid-November 2020.

The game features a tie-in accessory, the Pokémon GO Plus, which allows players to play ''Pokémon GO'' passively by connecting to the user's smartphone and tracking steps taken, spinning Poké Stops, and attempting to catch wild Pokémon with Poké Balls even while the game is inactive. A successor, the Pokémon GO Plus[[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment +]], was released in 2023, which adds the ability to throw Great Balls and Ultra Balls at wild Pokémon and features functionality with ''Pokémon Sleep''. The Poké Ball Plus Joy-Con released with the ''Let's Go'' games also functions as a Pokémon GO Plus, in addition to its functionality as a controller/toy combination with its own game.

In late May 2018 it was announced that ''VideoGame/PokemonLetsGoPikachuAndLetsGoEevee'', a UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch title that combines the catching elements of ''Pokémon GO'' with the mechanics of the main series ''Pokémon'' titles, would be released November 2018. The game is compatible with ''Pokémon GO'', allowing players to upload Pokémon they've caught in ''GO'' into ''Let's Go!'', although limited to Generation I Pokémon and their Alolan forms, and the eventually revealed Meltan and Melmetal. In May 2019, compatibility with Pokémon HOME, an early 2020 storage cloud service succesor to Pokémon Back was announced. It would allow ''GO'' players to transfer (one-way only) Pokémon caught in ''GO'' to the service where they can be stored and later brought to the mainline games starting with ''VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield''. This functionality was enabled in mid-November 2020.

The game features a tie-in accessory, the Pokémon GO Plus, which allows players to play ''Pokémon GO'' passively by connecting to the user's smartphone and tracking steps taken, spinning Poké Stops, and attempting to catch wild Pokémon with Poké Balls even while the game is inactive. A successor, the Pokémon GO Plus[[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment +]], was released in 2023, which adds the ability to throw Great Balls and Ultra Balls at wild Pokémon and features functionality with ''Pokémon Sleep''. The Poké Ball Joy-Con released with the ''Let's Go'' games also functions as a Pokémon GO Plus, in addition to its functionality as a controller/toy combination with its own game.

The game features a tie-in accessory, the Pokémon GO Plus, which allows players to play ''Pokémon GO'' passively by connecting to the user's smartphone and tracking steps taken, spinning Poké Stops, and attempting to catch wild Pokémon with Poké Balls even while the game is inactive. A successor, the Pokémon GO Plus[[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment +]], was released in 2023, which adds the ability to throw Great Balls and Ultra Balls at wild Pokémon and features functionality with ''Pokémon Sleep''. The Poké Ball Joy-Con released with ''VideoGame/PokemonLetsGoPikachuAndEevee'' also functions as a Pokémon GO Plus, in addition to its functionality as a controller/toy combination with its own game.

The game features a tie-in accessory, the Pokémon GO Plus, which allows players to play ''Pokémon GO'' passively by connecting to the user's smartphone and tracking steps taken, spinning Poké Stops, and attempting to catch wild Pokémon with Poké Balls even while the game is inactive. A successor, the Pokémon GO Plus[[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment +]], was released in 2023, which adds the ability to throw Great Balls and Ultra Balls at wild Pokémon and features functionality with ''Pokémon Sleep''.

* [[PokemonGo/TropesIR Tropes (S-Z)]]

!!''Pokémon GO'' contains the following tropes:
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* AcceptableBreaksFromReality: Water Pokémon that should realistically exist only in oceans, lakes, and rivers can be found [[FlyingSeafoodSpecial floating in landlocked regions]].
* AchievementSystem: Medals are earned by achieving certain milestones such as traveling so many kilometers, catching so many Pokémon of various types, hatching eggs, or fighting enemy Gyms. While originally just cosmetic, certain badges now offer rewards for completing each tier.
** Earning the badges for catching certain amounts of a type of Pokémon grants a bonus to the capture rate for that specific type. For example, each tier of the Schoolkid medal adds +1 to the capture rate for Normal-type Pokémon.
** Certain other badges unlock the ability to purchase unique clothing options themed around that badge. For example, leveling up the Gym Leader badge by defending gyms unlocks three sets of clothing themed around the three team colors.
* AdaptationalBadass:
** Flareon in the main series is a relatively mediocre Pokémon due to bad stat distribution and an unfavorable movepool. In this game, Flareon is one of the strongest Pokémon commonly available, and is the favored counter to the extremely difficult-to-beat Blissey, thanks to having just the right mix of attack and defense and a resistance to Blissey's fairy-type move Dazzling Gleam.
** Glaceon suffers from weak speed stats in the core games, while having incredible Special Attack and Defense stats, leading to certain problems when the target Pokémon is faster than it. In ''Go'', due to Speed stats being downplayed or non-existent, Glaceon becomes one of the strongest easy-access Pokémon available since it has great Attack and Defense stats making up for high CP in addition to being useful on most Dragon-type opponent Pokémon, including most Legendaries, making it an exceptional (and easily accessible) mon for Level 5 Raids.
** Luxray suffers from similar problems as Glaceon in core games in addition to having mediocre stats other than attack and a bad movepool, but in this game Speed stats are downplayed or non-existent and there are limited uses for coverage, making it one of the go-by non-legendary Electric attackers in GO.
** In the main games, Exeggutor suffers from having low speed and its plethora of weaknesses. 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 fairly high CP, slightly better than Flareon. 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 [[GreenThumb Grass-type]] also gives it an advantage against the often overused Vaporeon, whose high CP puts it above all of its type disadvantages sans Zapdos, Grass-type starter Pokémon, and Leafeon.
** Rampardos. While it doesn't see much usage in non spin-off games, in this game, due to a combination of a sky-high 295 attack stat, passable bulk, and for some reason '''Rock Slide''' instead of Stone Edge[[note]]Rock Slide is strictly superior to Stone Edge as it is 2 bars and thus it is much more flexible[[/note]] alongside Smack Down, an incredibly powerful Rock Fast Move, it's one of the strongest Pokémon of the game. Its biggest weakness in the original games, its abysmal speed, is also offset in this game, making it supreme in all raid lineups against Raid Bosses weak to Rock. In fact, it is so powerful that one can more often that not tear out 50%-70% of a Tier 3 Scyther's HP by ''itself''.
** Kingler TookALevelInBadass after the 2019 Water Festival: in addition to its Alakazam-like bulk and Machamp-like attack it got Crabhammer, an extremely powerful moves that elevates its DPS to exceed Kyogre and Machamp, making it one of the best {{Glass Cannon}}s in the game and still be a reliable water type attacker.
** Regigigas in the original games is considered totally unviable because of its Slow Start ability, which cripples any of its offensive use completely. In this game, however, abilities are non-existant, and Regigigas is able to show ''why'' it's the top dog of the Regis. It gets Giga Impact, a 200 power, 1-bar normal type STAB move that hits instantly but renders it vulnerable with a massive time lag, effectively turning it into an actual MightyGlacier. While the Normal-type cannot hit for super effective damage in any way, Normal-type attacks are easily boosted by the very common Partly Cloudy weather, indicating that a high-level one can be tucked into virtually any raid lineup during Partly Cloudy as long as both of its moves are unresisted.
** There are some moves that are totally unviable in a mainline game such as Sky Attack, Frenzy Plant or Avalanche that are incredibly powerful in ''GO'', while the effectiveness of moves such as Earthquake and Psycho Boost can be significantly superior in [=PvP=] compared to [=PvE=].
** Some status moves brought from mainline games were given offensive stats due to the game's system. For example, Charm, a Fairy-type status move, becomes a Fairy-type Fast Attack in this game.
** Team GO Rocket Grunts are a HUGE step up from what would normally be par for the course in the mainline games. Sure, they use the standard Zubats and such, but they have ''double'', or sometimes even '''triple''' the stats of their normal counterparts. That's like an evil team Grunt whipping out a Pokémon that has stats that are so grossly inflated that they can take out your Mewtwo with a single Bite move in the hideout part of the game!
** In the main games, Meganium was one of the worst starter evolutions, ''period'', with a combination of awful stats and a lacking moveset making it unviable for a lot of situations. In ''GO'', however, it's one of the main picks for GO Battle League thanks to its quick charging Vine Whip, its elite/CD move Frenzy Plant (a ''requirement'', as it's otherwise crippled) and its ability to resist Psychic attacks due to its lack of Poison typing, with the Ground type charged attack Earthquake helping shed away Fire and Poison types, leaving flyers as the only danger to worry about, only surpassed by fellow starter evolution Venusaur. The fact that it can also go toe-to-toe with GBL Great League king Azumarill (provided it doesn't come with Ice Beam) doesn't hurt as well.
** Bastiodon, in the main games, is meant to be a StoneWall, but its awfulntyping gave it two crippling 4x weaknesses to the commonly used Ground and Fighting type attacks, leaving it forgotten. However, it is finally able to play its intended role in GBL Great League due to GO's battle system being more defense focused. While its weaknesses are still there, it's easier to play around them due to Pokémon having more limited movepools. Plus, once Pokémon able to exploit its weaknesses are removed, Bastiodon becomes nigh unfaintable, especially against the major Flying-types it resists.
* AdaptationalWimp:
** Due to the way attack and defense were originally calculated, the game used to heavily favor Pokémon which are relatively even in both physical and special attack while giving little-to-no weight to speed. This made dedicated special attackers and FragileSpeedster Pokémon sub-par at best. This spawns a new problem, however; it makes Pokémon with [[StoneWall high defense and low attack]] have much lower CP that one with high attack and moderate defense or {{Glass Cannon}}s. In addition to that, due to the mechanics of this game, they do not have abilities or the support/status moves to make them stand out and, as a result, they become incredibly weak or even completely unviable.
** One of the most egregious examples would be Alakazam, who in the main games is a GlassCannon known for its amazing Special Attack and Speed stats. In ''Go'', its max CP was a measly 1813, lower than ''both'' Golbat and Pidgeot.
** This is also why Jolteon was relatively weak compared to its kin, since it relies more on speed than they do. The current system, while largely ignoring Speed stats, gives [[CompositeCharacter much more weight to the stronger of a Pokémon's attack/special attack and defense/special defense stats]], creating a system much more in line with the main games.
** Xerneas is one of the most feared Pokémon in both in-game playthroughs and competitve in the main-series, but in ''Go'' it suffers from a lack of STAB Fairy fast moves, being stuck with the lackluster Tackle and Zen Headbutt, and as a result, is unviable in most situations.
** Pokémon that rely on items or abilities to become strong also get significantly shafted; The lack of Pure Power or Huge Power makes Azumarill and Medicham unviable and Marowak and Alolan Marowak do not have Thick Club and thus fall in the same way. They did later get thrown a bone with the introduction of the Great League [=PvP=] mode, which only permits Pokémon with 1500 CP or below, and where they perform very well.
** Then there's also the various moves that are otherwise really good in a mainline game sucking in [=PvE=]. For example, Earthquake, which is one of the best moves in a mainline, is being reduced to close to one of the worst moves in the game due to its slow speed and inefficiency, while others such as Psychic, Fire Blast and Close Combat suffer from similar problems and are thus outright unviable in most situations.
** On the flip side, moves with huge energy costs and slow speed become unviable for [=PvP=], some examples being Dazzling Gleam and Zen Headbutt.
** Deoxys-Attack Forme is an absolute terror of a GlassCannon in the main games, being extremely specialized in both attacking and Speed stats with a movepool that lets it outpace and destroy almost everything in one or two hits, but will fold to almost any attack if it does get hit itself. However, GO uses an endurance-focused battle system, which turns it into an outright JokeCharacter because its paper-thin defenses mean it will fold quickly before it gets any significant damage off.
* AlienSky: During events focused on the doings of the mythical Pokémon Hoopa, the sky is locked to a starfield. If the player zooms in to their character, its rings can be seen in the sky.
* AllegedlyFreeGame:
** {{Downplayed|Trope}}. 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 (mostly from mission chains) and cannot be obtained from PokéStops. In order to acquire them in any significant amount, you'll need to spend real money.
** 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.
** As of 2019-2020, this has started to be played more straight with special limited-time research events that reward early-access encounters with previously unreleased [[OlympusMons legendary and mythical Pokémon]], before they appear in EX Raids. They require tickets to be accessed - tickets that can only be purchased with money, not Pokécoins. The second of these events, ''A Drive to Investigate'', rewarded Genesect. Since Pokémon from research are obtained at a lower level than those obtained via raids, this has been the ''only'' way to obtain a Genesect at less than 1500 CP, eligible for [[PlayerVersusPlayer Great League]], making it (for the time being) the first piece of content truly only available to those who spend money.
* AmbiguousGender:
** Before the release of Generation 2 Pokémon, there was no way of identifying a Pokémon's gender, much like in the original ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue''. Even now, a Pokémon's gender is only listed on its stats screen, so unless the Pokémon is a OneGenderRace like Jynx or Tauros, experiences BizarreSexualDimorphism like Nidoran, or has more subtle gender differences like Pikachu or Venusaur, you're not going to know if that wild Pokémon is a boy or a girl until you catch it.
** Blanche of Team Mystic has no strong features to identify their gender. At most, they are wearing raised heels and a ponytail. Character designer Yusuke Kozaki (of ''VideoGame/FireEmblem'' and ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes'' fame) has stated that he thinks Blanche's gender should be open to interpretation, after seeing the fan reaction. Officially, the character was initially referred to as female, while later on, an [[https://twitter.com/PokemonGoApp/status/1158550779336318978 official tweet]] in August 2019 carefully avoided any pronouns at all, followed by an October 2019 [[https://pokemongolive.com/en/post/willowreport-loomingshadow/ blog post]] of Willow's research notes that used 'they' for Blanche.
** In contrast to other games in the series which ask, "[[MarsAndVenusGenderContrast Are you a boy or a girl?]]" the new avatar customization screen merely prompts, "Please choose your style," a change praised by many players for its gender inclusivity.
* AntiFrustrationFeatures:
** 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: the game temporarily allows you to exceed your max item limit to accommodate the item prizes.
** Similarly, egg storage is partitioned into two halves: normal storage for finding any kind of egg type, and bonus storage specifically for eggs from weekly distance bonuses or beating GO Rocket Leaders when the normal storage is completely filled. With how often eggs are given, and how the only way to get rid of excess eggs is by fully incubating them, the extra space from bonus storage is often players' only way of keeping the rare eggs from GO Rocket Leaders.
** 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.
** Golden 7km Eggs exist for this purpose. They can only be obtained from gifts sent by other players if you have space for one. They have only two varieties of Pokémon available to hatch: regional forms and babies. Given how hard getting baby Pokémon normally are, this takes a LOT of the frustration of trying to get specific ones out of the process. Some events even add more rare Pokémon into that mix.
** With none of the original five Evolutionary Stones in the game (and thus, no Fire, Water, or Thunder Stone), the original three Eevee evolutions are randomized. Fortunately, it only takes half as many Eevee candies to evolve one compared to a standard two-tiered Pokémon (25 instead of 50). There's also an EasterEgg that lets you pick the evolution you want, but this only works once for each of the Eeveelutions. After that, it's always random.
** When battling an opposing gym, you always get to use up to six Pokémon no matter how many the gym contains. Each Pokémon you defeat will decrease the opposing Pokémon's "Motivation" (happiness level and CP)[[note]]This can be counteracted by the Gym Leader's team feeding the Gym's Pokémon berries, but with certain limits[[/note]]. Through simple {{Zerg Rush}}ing, you can take down a high-level gym with Mons individually far less powerful. This prevents any one team from holding a gym with no effort on their part, though in turn this makes earning daily defender bonuses more difficult.
** The Buddy Pokémon update allows you to assign any Pokémon in your roster as a buddy that walks along with you. Doing so adds a distance counter (between 1 and 5 km, or 20 km for legendaries), which earns a candy every time you reach that goal. This makes earning candies for rare Pokémon much easier. Magikarp, Swablu, Meltan, and Wailmer in particular benefit from this, as they all require 400 candy to evolve (and Meltan can only be caught for a half hour a week and requires Pokémon to be sent to the Switch games to activate the chance) but only need to be walked 1 km per candy[[note]] Except Meltan, which needs 20 [[/note]].
*** Feebas, Happiny, Bonsly, Woobat, and Eevee benefit from this too, since not only will you be gathering candy, you'll also be fulfilling the "walk X km with your buddy" requirement needed to evolve them as a substitute for the Friendship mechanic.
*** Galarian Farfetch'd and Galarian Yamask benefit from this even more so, since Galarian Farfetch'd needs you to make 10 Excellent throws while it's your buddy and Galarian Yamask needs you to win 10 raids. While both tasks are difficult, they're comparably more doable than their requirements for evolution in [[VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield the main games.]]
** Taking down an opposing Gym gives a brief period where only the player(s) responsible can place Pokémon in the now-vacant Gym, preventing other players who did not contribute from stealing the spot.
** At the launch of the raid system at 2017 up to early 2018, raid bosses, especially legendary raid bosses such as Mewtwo and Moltres, were so far away that they're very difficult to throw at, and several have erratic movement patterns. An update made it so most Pokémon are close enough that they're hard to miss.
** The Pokémon that Ditto hides as are always ComMons, so that people would not get disappointed should they catch a very rare Pokémon only for it to be a Ditto in disguise. Also, Ditto disguises cannot be shiny and when a disguise has a shiny released, Ditto will no longer use that disguise. This was implemented after several players got very angry upon seeing their shiny Pikachu become a normal Ditto.
** Nanab Berries lessen the chance that a Pokémon will go into their jump/attack/evade animation while the player is trying to catch them, a welcome addition as the extra animations are a huge annoyance, since the Pokémon can and will do one of these actions as a Poké Ball is being thrown at them.
** Pokémon encountered as a reward for completing research tasks have a 0% flee rate, meaning that a player can use a Pinap Berry on it and take as many tries as necessary to capture it. This includes legendary Pokémon encountered as a reward for completing a seven-day Research Breakthrough. To go through an entire week of completing tasks, only to have the legendary Pokémon flee after a failed throw, would be cruel even by the standards of ClassicVideoGameScrewYous.
** The Adventure Sync function allows the player to progress walking distance-related tasks like hatching eggs or getting Candy from their Buddy while the app is inactive, so you don't need your phone out all the time, especially in areas with sparse Pokéstop distribution.
** If you encounter a shiny Pokémon as the result of winning a raid, it has a 100% catch rate, so it will not escape if you make a successful throw. Raid bosses can still flee [[UnintentionallyUnwinnable if all thrown balls are missed]] or speed lock, caused by moving too fast, occurs though.
** Acquiring any form of a previously unregistered Pokémon will register its base form as well. This counts for Shadow, Purified, Clone, Shiny and multiple-form mons such as Castform, Cherrim, Deoxys or the regional forms[[note]]Galarian Farfetch'd registers Kantonian Farfetch'd, for example[[/note]]. Shiny forms even go a step further and also register all regular and Shiny forms of the caught Pokémon's current stage, provided all Shiny forms are available in the game[[note]]Galarian Weezing hasn't had its Shiny form released for a time, so no Shiny register upon evolving Kantonian Koffing to Weezing[[/note]] and the player has seen/caught them[[note]]If the player saw only male Kantonian Raichu, only shiny Kantonian Raichu is registered, unless the player also catches an Alolan Raichu, in whose case it's also registered as well[[/note]].
** Snowy Castform can be found not just in snowy weather, but foggy weather too, allowing players access to this type of Castform even if they live in a place that doesn't snow.
** Due to the way Eevee's evolution paths were randomized, a new series of [[EncounterBait Lure Modules]] were added, including Mossy and Glacial Lure Modules, in order to allow players to obtain Leafeon and Glaceon easily. Downplayed, since [[BribingYourWayToVictory they are worth 200 Pokécoins each]], but it's easier to get one of those Eeveelutions when one of these Lures is activated in a PokéStop, either by you or another player.
** Abra normally immediately flee if they break out of a Pokéball (as in the mainline games). When Abra was made the star Pokémon of the April 2020 Community Day, however, their flee rates were brought down slightly so they wouldn't always immediately escape after one failed catch. Thus catching any (especially shinies) during the community day would be less of a hassle.
** At its release, evolving Meltan into Melmetal was a ''massive'' slog; it requires 400 Meltan Candy to evolve, and the only way to get Meltan Candy outside of external methods such as Research Tasks, Buddy system, or Trading is to catch Meltan. Catching Meltan can only be done with the use of a Mystery Box, which is first obtained by sending a Pokémon from ''GO'' to ''VideoGame/PokemonLetsGoPikachuAndLetsGoEevee''. The Box can only be activated once per week, you must transfer another Pokémon to ''Let's Go'' to enable opening the Box, and once opened it only lasts for ''30 minutes''. This entire process was eventually updated to be much less of a hassle (as the only alternative for OneHundredPercentCompletion in ''Pokémon HOME'' is trading); while the ''Let's Go'' requirements are still in place, the Box now recharges every 3 days instead of every week, and it now lasts for twice as long, making it significantly faster to get Melmetal.
** The COVID-19 pandemic and the quarantines set up to contain it intruded on the way the game can be played. In order to keep things playable under quarantine, several features were implemented, such as a guaranteed Field Research task each day, free Remote Raid Passes each week, and GO Rocket balloons that brought the fight to the player. These conveniences were well-received, and many players were sad to see some of them get slowly phased out near the end of 2020.[[note]]Due to the pandemic worsening near the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, the changes made to accommodate the lockdowns were brought back and kept for several months.[[/note]]
** In the event you win a raid or defeat a Rocket Grunt/Leader and the game or phone unexpectedly shuts down before you can catch the Pokémon, you can still go back and catch the Pokémon you were given and the main rewards earned will still be given to you, provided the raid hasn't finished yet.
** Due to the high amount of mission chains present in the game that can unlock Mythical Pokémon, newcomers are required to reach the next-to-last stage of a chain in order to unlock the next, in order to prevent them from being overwhelmed. So, in order to unlock the Celebi mission chain you must reach rung 7 of the Mew mission chain, in order to unlock Jirachi's mission chain you must reach Celebi's rung 7 and so on... Meltan is the only exception, as it just requires the Kantonian gold medal (registering 100 Pokémon from Kanto) in order to unlock its chain.
* AntiPoopSocking:
** The whole idea of the game, it seems. This may well be the first ''Pokémon'' game that actually ''encourages'' people to go outside, get fresh air, and get physical activity.[[note]]''VideoGame/{{Ingress}}'' adapted the concept of going outside to play before ''Go'' did, although it was targeted primarily at older players.[[/note]]
** The Adventure Sync function lets the player advance walking-related tasks while the app is off, encouraging them to put their phone away and take a nice long walk without worry of missing out on egg hatching or bonus candy.
** Raids and GO Rocket Leader battles are only active for a set time period each day, usually between sunrise and sundown. This discourages people from playing in the dead of night.
** For a short time after release of the weather system, the game would discourage players from going outside during "Extreme" weather conditions by removing all weather-related bonuses. While the game still warns of severe weather, there are no longer any penalties for actually playing under such conditions.
* AprilFoolsDay:
** In 2018, the icons for Pokémon were changed to the menu sprites from ''VideoGame/PokemonXAndY''.
** For 2019, an easter egg would spawn a Pikachu wearing Ash Ketchum's hat.
* ArtificialBrilliance: While the game tends to be [[ArtificialStupidity notoriously bad in picking teams against a rival gym]], when facing a Raid Boss, the AI will pick a team not only based on the Boss's types, but also what attacking moves they carry (something the player can't even know until the battle begins). This can mean if a Boss Exeggutor knows Psychic attacks, it won't suggest your Poison-types to face it, or if a Boss Magmar knows Karate Chop, it'll refrain from suggesting your Rhydon over your Vaporeon.
* ArtificialStupidity:
** The game is not very good at constructing default teams for a player to attack a gym or some ordinary raids. The game will arrange a team based on what elements would be good to attack the gym with on average but doesn't take CP or the order of the gym's mons into account. This could leave the player with a party that includes an 800 CP Ground type to attack a 2,400 CP Water type. In raids, the game sometimes prioritizes [[StoneWall Blissey]] and other [[DamagerHealerTank Tanks]] with high survivability but lackluster offense.
** There's a grace period when an enemy mon faints during a Gym or Rocket battle, wherein you can rack up damage as the computer takes its sweet time to spawn in.
** Rocket Grunts appear to have two Protect Shields just like you, but they never use them. Rocket Leaders and Giovanni use them, but always on the first two charge attacks. None of them know how to swap out Pokémon, and will send out the same ones in the same order every time. Team leaders in training battles also don't use shields or switching in lower leagues (they do so in Master League, where they would also use Legendaries), though since it's for training, they may be going easy on you.
* TheArtifact: 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 even after their spawn rates were increased during Generation IV's release (especially during favorable weather). In the main series, the starter serves as a way to acquire new Pokémon early on. In this game, their only purpose is to serve as a tutorial for the game's catching mechanics, since there are no wild battles and thus they do not aid in catching Pokémon. Nor are they particularly good for gym battles, for that matter, as there are Pokémon that are stronger and easier to acquire for that.
* ArtisticLicensePhysics: Grounded Pokémon will randomly jump to evade Poké Balls tossed at them without any buildup before taking off. This includes larger Pokémon that are too heavy or not nimble enough to lift themselves from the ground.
* AscendedFanon:
** "Weather can affect what Pokémon may appear; i.e. raining means more water-type Pokémon" Not true initially; the app didn't check weather status, only GPS location. A weather function was only added in December 2017.
** "It's possible to get X [[OlympusMons Legendary]]!". Most Legendaries (and Ultra Beasts) eventually became available by either regular Raids, EX Raids or (in the case of mythological Pokémon) dedicated mission chains.
* AscendedGlitch: For a few days, the bonus item pile for spinning Pokéstops 7 days in a row always came with one rare evolution item. This turned out to be a bug and got patched out, but due to popular demand, it was eventually brought back as a permanent feature.
* AscendedMeme:
** Spark dabbing became this in June 2019 after the game's official Twitter account [[https://twitter.com/PokemonGoApp/status/1141099129377923072 tweeted a picture of him dabbing]] to celebrate Team Instinct reaching their first Global Challenge goal.
** The egregiously memetic ComMon Bidoof got its own event in late June 2021 while introducing its shiny form. The first few days saw increased Bidoof spawns where any caught Bidoof would know the move Shadow Ball, followed by Thunderbolt and then Ice Beam. The event was topped of by the introduction of branching quests, in the form of a questline where players would choose between a set of tasks focusing on Bidoof and a set of tasks focusing on, well, Bidoof. The branches rewarded players with Bidoof and, you guessed it, Bidoof, respectively.
* AsskickingEqualsAuthority:
** Gyms are captured by beating the Pokémon other players have left behind to defend it. 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.
** Under the old Gym system, a Gym's standing Leader was determined by who has the strongest Pokémon in it. So if the strongest Pokémon present had 500 Combat Points, depositing a Pokémon with 600 would make you the new Gym Leader.
* AssistCharacter: Buddy Pokémon with a Great Buddy ranking or higher have a chance at jumping in and knocking a deflected Poké Ball back towards the wild Pokémon during an encounter.
* AugmentedReality: Players are able to encounter wild Pokémon by finding them in specific real-world locations, both urban ''and'' rural. They can then capture these Pokémon by finding them using the device's camera, though that feature is optional; disabling it presents the player with a generic grass field instead, on which they can capture the Pokémon. Furthermore, as of February 2019, players with AR-capable devices can take out any Pokémon they own and place it in the real world to photograph it.
* AwesomeButImpractical:
** 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, and doesn't enforce the distance between trainer and Pokémon as hard - meaning that you won't constantly be short-throwing balls. [[HardModePerks AR+ mode, on the other hand, has actual rewards for the increased difficulty.]]
** Gyarados. While a very powerful Pokémon overall, the sheer effort required to get one (''400'' Magikarp candies, or 101 Magikarp) makes going for other slightly weaker but far easier to obtain Water-types such as Vaporeon[[note]]only 25 Eevee candies, albeit with only a 1 in 3 chance of getting the proper evolution[[/note]] a more appealing option. Even its extended moveset falls into this category: the 2020 Community Day-exclusive Aqua Tail is of no use outside of PlayerVersusPlayer, where it's a ''requirement'' for non-coverage roles.
** Ditto's Transform ability allows it to copy the first Pokémon in a gym, including those you haven't caught. However, Transform counts as a move and you have no control over Ditto using it, so the opposing Pokémon is going to get a couple shots off which you have no way to dodge. Furthermore, it only means that, barring [[TakesOneToKillOne Ghost- or Dragon-Type opponents]], neither side will have type advantage while the opposing Pokémon may or not be stronger than Ditto.
** Using the Pokémon Go Plus accessory. While it's great to be able to catch Pokémon at a much faster speed than engaging them on your device (as well as being able to catch them without running the game), you'll find that it does a rather poor job at attempting to catch Pokémon, with many otherwise easy catches escaping and the peripheral quickly draining your stock of normal Poké Balls.
*** The Poké Ball Plus accessory is just as bad, if not worse, due to its perfectly round design making it difficult to fit in most pockets coupled with the issues to be had with the Go Plus accessory.
** While Slaking has an obscenely large CP with the stats to match it, its Quick Move is always the piddly-damage Yawn, which is only used to charge its Charged Move. Because Pokémon defending a Gym are programmed to use Quick Moves at a certain pace as opposed to how fast one's fingers can mash the screen, Slaking charges and deals damage at a much slower pace on defense and amounts to little more than a punching bag for attackers. It still gets placed often in Gyms to scare off casual players who don't know any better.
** Several Legendary Pokémon can boil down to this trope. Unless caught during their favored weather, they are usually caught at CP lower than the Pokémon you fielded to beat them, and the only way to get the candy to power them up is to either catch more of them through their Raids[[note]]a tedious task that becomes moot if the Legendary flees once all balls are drained or if the game restarts for memory reasons[[/note]], invest Rare Candy into them[[note]]which involves hoping you get more Rare Candy from the Raids you complete[[/note]] and walk them[[note]]a highly inefficient method, as nobody walks 20 km for 1 candy[[/note]]. And even if you've powered them up to outstrip your other Pokémon, they can't be used to defend Gyms.
** Outside of PlayerVersusPlayer, where a second move becomes ''essential'', getting a second charge move to cover up for deficiencies in a good Pokémon's moveset sounds great, except the price for second charge move depends on the distance required to get candies when walking with that species as a buddy - starting at 10,000 Stardust and 25 candies for anything needing 1 km, and many Pokémon may have only one viable charge move. There are a few cases where buying a second move is reasonable, but unless a player has resources to burn, it can be more sensible to spend that quantity of stardust and candy just building up a second Pokémon with a different moveset.
** Deoxys Attack Forme. It has the highest attack of any Pokémon in the game; unfortunately, only Dark Pulse is a viable charge move out of three possible, and its Defense is abysmal.
** When it doesn't become TooAwesomeToUse, Mega Evolutions can fall into this. They were introduced as a way for players to get access to legendary-like Pokémon via specific {{ComMon}}s. In order to mega-evolve a Pokémon, you need a certain amount of Mega Energy for their species, and its cost is lowered after you Mega Evolve them for the first time. The most common way to get Mega Energy for specific Pokémon is to battle mega-evolved Pokémon of the same species in raids, which means using a precious Battle Pass or a Remote Raid Pass, both which are rarely given out and must be bought with coins. Evolving Pokémon under mega evolution puts them on a time limit for how long they can stay in that form, meaning there's no point in using them unless you're absolutely sure you are going to use their mega forms right away. Pokémon under Mega Evolution can't participate in the GO League, and when it comes to using them in a raid, only one player in the party can have one active. In all, mega evolved Pokémon can be handy, but their restrictions heavily limit how much use can be gotten out of them.
* AwesomenessMeter: The game rewards the player for catching Pokémon with a little added flair, 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.
* {{Balloonacy}}: As of July 7, 2020, Team GO Rocket has begun invading via hot air balloons. The balloons randomly float down from the sky and hover near your Trainer for a bit, then fly off. Tapping on them initiates an encounter with a member of Team GO Rocket that mostly works the same as the ones found at Pokéstops: they can carry a leader if you have the Rocket Radar on you, and they can carry Giovanni if you have the Super Rocket Radar on you.
* BattleInTheRain: If it's raining outside, you can have a battle against leaders and trainers in the rain. Ditto if it's snowing too. The weather has no impact on trainer battles, but it can make the fights look cool.
* BigApplesauce: 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, [[http://comicbook.com/2016/07/16/vaporeon-appearance-sparks-pokemon-go-stampede-in-central-park/ NYC has some rare ones]].)
* BigBallOfViolence: Gyms that are under attack from rival teams will be shown having clouds and sparks spewing out from the gym.
* BonusFeatureFailure: During the end of May 2019, a surprise "Sleeping Snorlax" event was launched, flooding the overworld with Snorlax taking naps. These Snorlax, unlike "awake" Snorlax and those evolved from Munchlax, have [[UselessUsefulSpell Yawn]] as their fast attack, the same zero-damage attack intended to cripple the Slakoth line.
* BoringButPractical:
** Pokémon commonly dubbed as "early game birds/rodents/bugs" by the fandom, such as Pidgey and Weedle, have the benefit of requiring only 12 candy to evolve into its second stage, as opposed to 25 or 50 for most species. While catching and evolving such common species is boring, it's an extremely efficient source of experience, especially when combined with a Lucky Egg. As Gym defenders are worn down by damage and don't heal, it's also handy to do chip damage to help the next trainer conquer the gym.
** Hatching a Pokémon from an egg may not be as exciting as catching it in the wild, but egg-hatched Pokémon have an IV floor at the tens (meaning the worst mon may have a 10-10-10 spread) and often come with enough candies to evolve to their next stage right away, and some eggs contain species difficult or impossible to find in the wild or not native to your region. That said, hatched Pokémon are always forced to be half their progress bar[[note]][[GuideDangIt not that the game tells you this]], as it's quite inconsistent on displaying this progress bar, with 20 out of 40 being shown at two-thirds rather than the more intuitive half[[/note]] when hatched (unlike wild catches which can be at the very end of it), often requiring powering up to make them usable in combat.
** Mission-rewarded Pokémon. Like hatched Pokémon, they have a set progress and an IV floor in the tens. Unlike hatched Pokémon, their progress is set at roughly 40%[[note]]15 out of 40[[/note]] and they can be obtained after completing missions from Pokéstops, Mission Chains and Research Breakthroughs. Furthermore, some reward mons are more common and easily to obtain[[note]]such as Magikarp, obtained after catching 10 mons, or the triad Gastly-Anorith-Lileep, obtained after making three great throws[[/note]] than others[[note]]Larvitar requires three Excellent throws, and Dratini requires one very rare Dragon-type catch[[/note]]. That said, missions and their rewards change every month, and special events even have special missions rewarding event Pokémon by performing certain tasks.
** Great/Ultra league Whiscash. An evolution of a ComMon widely available, with a cheap secondary attack and perhaps one or more regular [=TMs=] in order to get the right moveset[[note]]Mud Shot + Mud Bomb / Blizzard[[/note]]. The reward is a powerful pokémon able to take down high level threats such as the ever-present Altaria.
* BornAsAnAdult:
** As in the main series, some Pokémon were introduced before their baby forms, such as Pikachu before Pichu. Before the corresponding baby form was added to the game, the adult form could hatch from an egg.
** Unlike in the main series, where Pokémon (starting from Generation IV) hatch at the lowest level, a Pokémon will hatch at a level equal to the player's level at the time they obtained the egg (maximum of 20), with their progress bar at the three-quarters mark. This can overlap with DiscOneNuke as well as PintSizedPowerhouse depending on the Pokémon species and CP.
* BossInMooksClothing: ''Very'' rarely, you'll run into a Team Rocket grunt with ''far'' more threatening dialogue that doesn't indicate what element you'll be fighting against. Fighting these grunts is like fighting the GO Rocket Leaders on crack, with rare Pokémon and 6000+ CP level Pokémon.
* BossSubtitles: Raid bosses are introduced this way when you first click on the gym that spawned them.
* BribingYourWayToVictory:
** 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 while their device is asleep, so long as it maintains a bluetooth connection. It allows Pokémon to be captured with a simple button press, use Poké Stops, and records the player's steps to aid in hatching eggs and gaining movement achievements. However, it is a PressStartToGameOver when it comes to catching Pokémon. The accessory has no way to display the power or species of the Pokémon, it defaults to your weakest Poké Ball type with no option to switch or use berries, and there's no option for trick throws, which all adds up to a greater likelihood of wasted Poké Balls.
** In the same vein as ''VideoGame/{{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.
** Normally, obtaining a Rocket Radar (the only way you can defeat Arlo, Cliff or Sierra) requires defeating six GO Rocket Grunts, grabbing the Mysterious Components they drop, and assembling them. However, they're also available in the shop for 200 Pokécoins, which is much faster and more convenient. Downplayed in that you have to find the hideout yourself, however.
** Your Buddy will normally enter an "excited" state when you perform enough activities with it, wherein you can get up to 20 Hearts with them and Candy distance is halved. However, a lot of these actions are quite tedious and most have a 30 minute cooldown until they actually count...or you could just buy a Poffin from the shop for 100 coins, which [[ImpossiblyDeliciousFood puts your Buddy into the "excited" state immediately, and fills up all your hearts for the day as well.]] Still downplayed, as feeding a Poffin to your buddy will prevent you from refilling the gauge using normal berries and the timer will naturally run out.
** Premium Battle Passes allow you to enter the premium tier of PVP where the rewards for winning multiple battles are a lot higher compared to the non premium version. The passes are rarely given out as quest rewards, but they can also be bought in the shop for 100 coins each.
* BurningWithAnger: Shadow Pokémon, unlike those from ''Colosseum'' and ''XD'', sport angry red eyes and are cloaked in purple flames.
* TheBusCameBack:
** Done with an achievement: the Ace Trainer badge was originally for training up gyms. However, with the June 2017 overhaul removing gym training, players could no longer train up gyms, making it so that the badge was impossible to earn. However, the December 2018 addition of PlayerVersusPlayer also added in the ability to train against the three team leaders, and doing that would also count towards the Ace Trainer badge (with any pre-June 2017 progress counting).
** Shadow Pokémon return in the GO Rocket update after having last appeared in ''VideoGame/PokemonXDGaleOfDarkness'' in 2005 (apart from a brief appearance in ''VideoGame/PokkenTournament'').
* ButThouMust: If you get a Pokémon through a research reward, you cannot refuse to catch it altogether and must successfully catch it before you can catch more from research or advance to the next step.
* ButtonMashing: 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.
* CallingYourAttacks: When catching wild Pokémon, they will shout their cry before they attack in an attempt to deflect your ball.
* CameraScrew:
** Poké Stops and especially gyms can obscure Pokémon that have spawned in proximity, forcing you to rotate the camera or even walk to another spot to get a proper angle.
** The camera in gyms adjusts its zoom to fit all the defenders within its field of view. This causes problems when larger-than-average Pokémon, such as Steelix or Hariyama, are among the defenders, where the other defenders appear small and thus hard to tap. This is ''especially'' prominent with Wailord, which is about as ''large as all the other defenders combined'' (excluding aforementioned larger-than-average Pokémon) - the other defenders appear tiny and clumped together next to Wailord.
** Wailord causes an even worse camera screw as an attacker during gym fights, where it [[https://imgur.com/a/ikaLH blocks most of the screen]], making it near impossible to see what's going on.
** [[WhenTreesAttack Alolan Exeggutor]] causes this almost everywhere but on the world map, being taller than the screen or, more hilariously, the viewport's top edge in certain interfaces such as the Gym Badge screen, making it appear headless.
** Catching Pokémon, especially in AR, often have smaller Pokémon seem farther away than they really are.
* CanonForeigner: During a special event, [[Anime/PokemonTheSeries Jessie and James]] invade via their unique Meowth balloons and can be battled.
* {{Cap}}:
** The level cap was 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.
*** As of November 30, 2020, the level cap can now “GO Beyond” 40, to a maximum of 50. In addition to the increasingly absurd amounts of experience, each level above 40 requires 4 difficult tasks to be performed, reflecting a mastery of some portion of the game.
** 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; however, starting in late November 2020, bonus eggs received from weekly walking distance or defeating a Team GO Rocket boss can now be guaranteed in one of three “bonus” egg slots, even if you have all 9 slots filled.
** The Friends list is limited to 400 friends, to which 50 gifts can be sent per day, and from which 20 gifts can be opened per day. The player can only hold a maximum of 10 gifts at once to encourage gifts to be sent out regularly.
** When a player's Pokémon is removed from a Gym, the player earns 1 coin for every 10 minutes that Pokémon has defended the Gym for. A maximum total of 50 coins can be earned per day this way.
** 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 580, while the final evolution Pidgeot can reach 1994, which is average as far as evolved Pokémon go. Slaking tops the chart at 4548, while legendaries typically range between 3300 and 4000. The weakest are Magikarp and Feebas, who max out at a puny 220 CP (but evolve into the mighty Gyarados and Milotic at 3281 and 2967 respectively). [[http://pokemongo.gamepress.gg/pokemon-list 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. Likewise, the lowest CP value each Pokémon can have is 10. In gyms, the lowest possible CP value is 2, allowing a CP 10 Pokémon to bottom out in motivation.
** Players have a limit of 10 berries per 30 minutes that they can feed to Pokémon in allied gyms, as well as a total of 100 beries across all Pokémon per 30 minutes. Any attempt to go beyond that will give a message that the Pokémon in question is full and not interested in eating further.
** Players can perform 100 "normal" trades + 1 special trade per day.
** There is a limit of 4,800 total catches per day and a rolling cap of 14,000 catches over a 7-day period.
** The player can store a maximum of 2,000 mega energy per mega-eligible Pokémon.
** The player cannot purchase Remote Raid Passes if they have three or more already in their inventory, although they can be obtained in other ways.
* CardCarryingVillain: Team GO Rocket's goons, and ''especially'' Arlo. Their takeover of Poké Stops has them bragging about doing it for taking the items (you know, the ones that you get for free) just for themselves and ForTheEvulz.
* ClingyMacGuffin:
** Eggs cannot be discarded; you have to walk them until they hatch to get rid of them.
** Mythical Pokémon (such as Mew) cannot be transferred, taking up permanent space in your Pokémon storage. Thankfully you can also own only one of each, preventing you from filling up your storage with untransferable Pokémon.
** Stickers also cannot be discarded; the only way to get rid of them is to attach them to gifts that you send to your friends. They don't take up your inventory space, however.
* CollectionSidequest: In addition to the regular Pokédex, there are several other indexes catered towards different types of Pokémon that become availvable once you've collected enough of that specific type:
** Shadow and Purified: Pokémon seen/obtained as Shadow Pokémon after rescuing them from Team GO Rocket, and Pokémon that were Purified afterwards.
** Perfect: Pokémon the player caught with a perfect "four-star" rating.
** 3 Stars: Pokémon the player caught with a three-star rating.
** Shiny: Pokémon seen and caught as [[PaletteSwap Shiny Pokémon]]
** Lucky: Pokémon received through trades that became Lucky Pokémon.
** Event: The total count of costumed Pokémon caught or hatched.
** Mega: Pokémon that have been [[SuperMode Mega Evolved]].
* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: Eggs have green, orange, pink, purple, or red spots to indicate that they require 2, 5, 7, 10, or 12 km respectively to hatch, and each color has their own list of Pokémon that they could possibly be. The pink-spotted eggs, likewise, only hatch into Alolan, Galarian, or baby Pokémon.
* ComMons:
** While what Pokémon that have become these has changed over time as more Pokémon have been released, as well as between different places (with some lesser common Pokémon having greater spawn rates in some areas compared to others). Several starter Pokémon and other species that fall into the "Early-game rodent/bird/bug" role will be "boosted", and appear with much greater frequency. Events will add other Pokémon to the boosted pool as well.
** In different weather conditions, the encounter rates of Pokémon with specific types will increase slightly, such as Grass, Ground, and Fire-type Pokémon appearing more commonly in clear skies and Poison, Fighting, and Fairy-type appearing more often under cloudy weather conditions.
** Each egg type (2km, 5km, the friend-exclusive "Alolan" 7km, and 10km) has different rates for which species they will hatch into.
* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: Team GO Rocket fights involve battles against Shadow Pokémon with stats 2-3 times what a human could possibly get. It's suggested that this is because [[JustifiedTrope they're literally cheating]] - they are [[CardCarryingVillain Card-Carrying Villains]] after all.
* TheComputerShallTauntYou: Team Rocket grunts and leaders drop snide quips after winning battles against the player. Inverted with the player's team leader, who follows up with a word of encouragement.
* ConsolationPrize:
** If a wild Pokémon flees, you still get 25 XP for your effort.
** Failing to defeat a Raid Boss gives you a small amount of Stardust.
** You always get some stardust after completing a [[PlayerVersusPlayer GO Battle League]] set, even if you lose all 5 matches.
* CosmeticallyDifferentSides: There is no functional difference between the three Teams, apart from names, colours and emblems.
* TheCorruption: Shadow Pokémon from ''VideoGame/PokemonColosseum'' and ''VideoGame/PokemonXDGaleOfDarkness'' were reintroduced to ''Go'' in late July 2019 with slight reworks. They are now illegal experiments headed by Team Go Rocket and used by their Grunts that increase their combat potential, [[BlessedWithSuck while suffering in constant agony as their muscles and strength grow out of control.]]
* CursedWithAwesome: If your device's GPS is low signal, inside a building, or is otherwise screwed with, your character may wander around idly even if you're not doing that in real life. Annoying for positioning yourself precisely, but great for earning free walk distance whenever you're not actively playing.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:D-G]]
* DamageSpongeBoss: Raid Pokémon function like this, due to having CP in the ten thousands granting them monstrous stats. They are designed for a group of up to 20 to take down; to attempt to defeat a high-difficulty Raid alone is a nigh-impossible task. Raid Pokémon also do not telegraph their attacks, and given the tight time limit, a common strategy is to completely ignore dodging and simply [[DeathOfAThousandCuts bash it until it goes down]]. Most Tier 4 raids can be completed with a group of at least 4 or 5, though, while [[OlympusMons Tier 5]] usually require 5 to 8 to take down.
* DamnYouMuscleMemory:
** When tags were introduced in the Pokémon options menu, it ended up taking the spot of the oft-used Appraise button directly above Transfer. Needless to say, getting used to the Appraise button being in a different place in the menu was an uphill climb for many players. In fact, the change in button placement was so poorly received that a later update actually put the Appraise button back where it was before.
** Changing phones can result in this, as you can become acclimated at the throwing Pokéballs on one phone, only to have to unlearn and relearn how to do it on a new device, especially with a different screen size.
* DeathOfAThousandCuts: Due to the way gym battles work, 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.\\
This also extends to gyms as a whole. Since the defending Pokémon's motivation goes down when defeated, it becomes easier to beat on the rematch, and any sufficiently persistent [[TheDeterminator determinator]] with enough time (and revives) can simply chip away at the gym over and over again until it's taken down, not giving members of the team defending the Gym a chance to use Berries to recover their Pokémon's CP.
* DevelopersForesight: 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 next to nothing.
* DifficultButAwesome:
** Curveballs. By spinning the Poké Ball before throwing, it will fly in an arc (usually, a diagonal one) instead of a straight line. If you land the throw, you get a "Curveball" bonus. This takes a lot of practice to get down correctly, especially on smaller devices, and different Pokémon need different aims, but mastering the technique is well worth the effort; a successful curveball carries a catch rate multiplier of 1.7. For comparison, Great Balls and Razz Berries are both 1.5, as is a "great" throw. The only things that give more of a bonus are the 1.8 from an "excellent" throw and the 2.0 of Ultra Balls. Curveballs also stack with all of these things. A curved great throw with a regular Poké Ball has a higher multiplier than just throwing an Ultra Ball.
** Double-legacy Mewtwo. The difficult part? The amount of resources you need to invest just to get this one are exorbitant: on top of catching the Mon itself (who only spawns on EX or level 5 raids during certain events) you need to harvest a ''huge'' amount of [[RareCandy rare candies]] and stardust in order to unlock the secondary charged attack[[note]]100 candies and 100.000 stardust respectively[[/note]] ''and'' invest ''two'' [[TooAwesomeToUse very rare Elite TMs]] in order to give it both Shadow Ball and Psystrike, two legacy moves only available in certain events. And on top of ''that'', you need to invest even more stardust and candies in order to max it. The awesome part? Once all investments are in place, you get one of '''THE''' best Pokémon in the game, both for the GO Battle Master League and [=PvE=], in one of those rare cases where a mon can excel in both areas with the same moveset.
*** Double-legacy ''shadow'' Mewtwo takes it even further: while you can unlock the second attack, you must wait until a GO Rocket Event in order to rid it of [[ThePowerOfHate Frustration]]. And since you get this mon after a Rocket BossBattle, unlike mission mons or other hatches, it has no IV floor, so you must also have the luck of getting a Shadow Mewtwo with good [=IVs=]. Once everything is in place? On top of all the aforementioned benefits, you get the 20% attack bonus all Shadow Pokémon have.
* DiscOneNuke:
** Downplayed. 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 Krabby with only 50-100, for example). However, CP is based on level as well as species, so they still won't be nearly as strong as those caught by a high-level trainer.
** Beedrill and Pidgeot are relatively easy to raise because Weedle and Pidgey are so abundant, due to their ComMon status. This goes for all evolvable Com Mons as well.
** Eevee: six out of Eevee's seven evolutions are considered strong enough to be viable even in high-level meta, despite being almost as common as Pidgey.
** Rhydon and Aggron count as well; Not only that these Pokémon are commonly seen in high levels, they are also quite strong and easy to evolve due to their abundance. However, despite being quite sturdy, they hit like a wet sponge, so it is ill-advised to use them at higher levels or abuse them in multiple copies.
* DittoFighter: [[TropeNamer Ditto]], of course. Ditto will automatically copy the first Pokémon it fights, taking on the Pokémon's base stats and movepool adjusted to the Ditto's level (for example, a level 20 Ditto copying a level 30 Dragonite would become a level 20 version of that Dragonite). It will retain this disguise for as long as its in battle.
* DoubleUnlock:
** Several Poké require an additional step to evolve along with the usual required candy. Evolution stones are the most common and others require more esoteric methods such as winning several raids or walking a certain distance with the active Poké as your buddy.
** Upon reaching level 40, you're given a set of four tasks to complete before you're allowed to level up. You also still have to grind for experience points as well.
** The limited timed event at the end of 2020 rwearded players with a medal and a Gyarados Hat upon reaching level 40 and completing several research tasks.
* DroughtLevelOfDoom: Low-density areas such as industrial parks and suburban neighborhoods tend to have a disproportionate number of spawn points in comparison to Poké Stops, meaning that it's easy to grind for stardust and experience points in these areas, but also easy to deplete one's supply of Poké Balls.
* DualBoss: When you see a Meowth-shaped balloon in the sky, you'd best prepare for two battles, as Jessie and James fight you one after the other. Fortunately, their Shadow Pokémon are proportionally weakened, so you don't get shafted via being pummeled by a full team of six overpowered Pokémon. Just grab your OlympusMons or [[InfinityMinusOneSword Infinity -1 Mon]] and you're good to go.
* DumbMuscle: Cliff, of GO Rocket, is ''enormous'' (easily twice the size of Arlo or Sierra, his compatriots), and ''very'' single-minded - instead of considering why he's working for a team he once despised, he signed on solely because they "saved" him, and talks a lot about brute-forcing the player.
* EarlyBirdCameo:
** On September 22, 2018, massive amounts of a never-before-seen Pokémon appeared worldwide for a brief period of time. Upon being caught, however, they would all turn out to be Ditto. Three days later, it was formally announced by Game Freak, and is called Meltan, a Steel-type Mythical Pokémon.
** Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre's {{signature move}}s, Precipice Blades and Origin Pulse, were found in the code as far as the ''Gen III'' update, which means that Niantic was planning to add Mega Evolutions (and, according to a datamine for the August 2020 update, also Primal Reversions) nearly two years before they were announced.
* EarlyGameHell: 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. Though you can get free coins by dropping Pokémon into gyms your teammates have conquered, capturing enemy gyms or participating in raids will be frustrating as most other players will likely be using Pokémon at least twice as strong as your own. Things get easier once the player grinds enough candy to fully evolve some of their Pokémon and start adding higher-CP Pokémon to their battle roster. Unlocking Pinap Berries at level 18 and Ultra Balls at level 20 further aids this process.
* EasterEgg:
** 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, "Rainer" for Vaporeon, "Sakura" for Espeon, "Tamao" for Umbreon, "Rea" for Glaceon, "Linnea" for Leafeon and "Kira" for Sylveon. The first three are the same names as the three trainers who owned each of the three original Eeveelutions from the ''Anime/{{Pokemon|TheSeries}}'' anime episode [[Recap/PokemonS1E40TheBattlingEeveeBrothers "The Battling Eevee Brothers"]], while the fourth and fifth are the names of two of the five Kimono Sisters who each owned an Eeveelution from the anime episodes "Trouble's Brewing" and "Espeon, Not Included". The latter three are based off two notable post-game trainers in [[VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon seventh-generation]] [[VideoGame/PokemonUltraSunAndMoon core-series games]]. Niantic themselves confirmed this method works.
** If you have a Pikachu as your buddy Pokémon and you walk 10km with it, it will sit on your shoulder on the profile screen. Same occurs if you have Eevee as your walking buddy.
** If you throw a Poké Ball at a Kangaskhan and it lands near the pouch, it'll land inside it next to her joey instead of capturing her.
* EggMacGuffin: When a Gym is slated to have a Raid Boss appear at it soon, an egg appears at the Gym with a timer counting down to the egg hatching. Beating whatever's within is an easy ticket to rare items, such as Golden Razz Berries and [=TMs=], and a chance for a Pokémon encounter with stronger [=IVs=].
* EncounterBait: The Incense and Lure Module items attracts Pokémon to the user and a Poké Stop respectively for 30 minutes. Pokémon drawn by Incense are exclusive to the player, while Lures work for all players.
* EndlessDaytime: Hoopa's pressence casts a permanent AlienSky in the overworld, eliminating the day/night cycle alltogether and casting eternal light upon the ground.
* EnemyMine:
** 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.
** A straighter example is Raid Battles, where any player of any alignment can work together to destroy the Raid Boss Pokémon.
** In the storyline, all three Team Leaders are attempting to hunt down and track Giovanni's Go Rocket - it's reflected during Rocket events, wherein the objective is to beat as many Rocket goons as possible.
* {{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 [[LoopholeAbuse trying to cheat with a car]] won't get you much of anything.
** The Adventure Sync feature lets the game take data from your fitness apps while it's inactive, letting you progress egg hatching. You get additional rewards for meeting certain distance milestones each week.
* ExactWords:
** A Remote Raid Pass is a raid pass that can be used to join a raid remotely. Arriving at a raid but only have a remote pass? Sorry, you have to [[ViolationOfCommonSense walk]] ''[[ViolationOfCommonSense away]]'' [[ViolationOfCommonSense from the gym]] until you're, well, ''remote'', in order to join the raid. Or buy a regular pass.
** Research tasks often have to be done exactly how they're described. If you have to spin PokéStops, you must spin them by hand rather than use the Pokémon Go Plus to collect the rewards from it.
** In tasks where you have to catch Pokémon, only catches count. Hatching, trading, or evolving do not count for these quests.
** If you're tasked to defeat Rocket grunts, they have to be grunts. Leaders don't count.
** Works in the player's favor in "Use X berries" or "Make X of Y type throws" research requests. Those do not require a successful catch - if a player happens to have such a quest when they encounter something that's difficult to catch (like if they've just cleared a Tier 5 raid), it's fairly common to complete these quests on just the one encounter after it breaks out of several successful throws. Some people even seek them out for this purpose.
* ExperienceBooster: The Lucky Egg item doubles experience gained for 30 minutes.
* FakeDifficulty:
** If the color of the target circle is very similar to the color of the Pokémon, it can be very difficult to see what you're supposed to be aiming at.
** Mons that are very far away on the screen can be tricky to catch if your screen is too small--it's extremely difficult just to throw the ball far enough, to say nothing of actually hitting the tiny target.
** Raid bosses with a sole single weakness to ground, most notably ones of pure Electric typing are of such, as ground type moves, particularly the ubiquitous Earthquake, are notorious for their extremely slow speed that they are often amounting to ScratchDamage against these raid bosses. It is further compounded when the raid boss in question has a very high defense stat such as Jolteon or Raikou, which can make the raid borderline impossible to deal with minimal players save for a select few Legendary Pokémon.
* FakeLongevity:
** Some Special Research questlines have tasks where you have to catch a Pokémon or spin a Pokéstop at least once every day for X days in a row, which just prolongs the time it takes to complete the questline without adding any challenge.
** The Ultra Hero medal requires you to defeat the Team GO Rocket boss Giovanni a set number of times. Bronze requires just one victory. For a silver medal you have to do it 5 times, and for gold 20 times. The catch? You can only battle Giovanni once a ''month''. Getting silver is bad enough at almost half a year, but gold takes ''one year and 8 months'' to earn.
* FakeUltimateMook: Slaking defending Gyms looks intimidating with its massive CP, but the way the AI handles its attacks (using moves at a set rhythm rather than as fast as possible) means that it slowly does ScratchDamage with its intentionally pathetic fast move and very occasionally unleashes a much stronger charge move. By the time it's done actual damage, the player would most likely have run through most of its health bar.
* {{Fanservice}}: The already attractive player avatars were given costume options in the form of the "Jogger" outfit--the female avatar gets a tight midriff baring top, the male gets a tight sleeveless shirt, and both of them get short shorts.
* FireIceLightning: The Teams have the Legendary birds of Kanto as their mascots -- Articuno for Team Mystic, Zapdos for Team Instinct, and Moltres for Team Valor. As with the core games, there are trios such as Magmar, Jynx, and Electabuzz also available in the game.
** In [=PvP=] Ultra League training, each team leader uses an Eeveelution corresponding on its type. Blanche uses a Glaceon, Candela uses a Flareon and Spark uses a Jolteon.
* FissionMailed:
** An unintentional example. Due to how the internet connection and servers are handled differently in certain conditions, a player may experience wild Pokémon encounters escape due to interrupted connection, only to find them caught in their own bag. Their journal also lists them being caught instead of fleeing, as a result.
** A straighter example happens during the Sleeping Snorlax event, as a Sleeping Snorlax, as opposed to being operated by the typical Catch Rate rule, is scripted to break out of two ball captures before being caught on the [[RuleOfThree third ball capture]].
* {{Flashmob}}: Many Raids, at least in highly populated areas and especially high-tier raids, almost require this. A Raid consists of a [[CoOpMultiplayer co-op]] BossBattle against a stronger-than-normal Pokémon at a random gym. While Tier 1 and Tier 2 raids can be completed alone, higher-tier raids require multiple players. Tier 5 raids in particular (which contains the rarest and strongest boss Pokémon) essentially [[EnforcedTrope enforce]] this trope, requiring at least 6 players to complete. While legendary Pokémon raids often manage to draw together enough players by themselves, it's common practice to coordinate through chat groups such as Discord and Facebook groups, sometimes bringing 20+ or even 30+ players together. In high-activity places such as Hong Kong and Singapore, cooperation is not even needed as players will automatically swarm to the raid.
** Another example is during every time that a new Pokémon wave appears, lots of people will be swarming to areas where a high rarity Pokémon spawns in hopes of registering them to their Pokédex. Out of new waves, this will still occur if any 100IV specimen spawns, especially if they are shiny eligible or have high rarity value.
* FlyingSeafoodSpecial: Goldeen, Tentacool, and many other water-type swimming Pokémon are portrayed as floating in mid-air on ground, both with AR mode on and off. Averted with Magikarp, of course, which just flops around uselessly, but justified with its evolution, Gyarados, for being part [[BlowYouAway Flying-type]].
* FreudianTrio: The teams' philosophies.
** Team Valor believes in training Pokémon using raw strength, emotions, and passion, making them [[TheMcCoy the Id]].
** Team Mystic believes in using logic and intellect in training Pokémon, making them [[TheSpock the Superego]].
** Team Instinct doesn't favor either emotions or logic, instead relying on their own instincts, making them [[TheKirk the Ego]].
* GameBreakingBug:
** The game can be very processor-intensive on low-end devices, 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, extended periods of play can cause the game to lag heavily, especially if the game has to load a large amount of map data. Given enough time, this can render the game unplayable until you reset it.
** The 0.51.0 update results in the game becoming completely unplayable at odd times (the map doesn't load, and nothing else is selectable), likely due to the changes made to the day-and-night system. Closing and reopening the app can fix this, but not always.
** When you successfully dodge an attack, your Pokémon will take the full damage, and then the game automatically adjusts this so that it takes partial damage, instead. If the undodged damage is enough to make the Pokémon faint, the game will switch it and the next Pokémon in the party in and out, not understanding which should be out and whether the first Pokémon should've fainted. A variant of the "dodge glitch" that ''can'' happen if there is only one player battling involves too much dodging and a "shadow" charged move from the raid Pokémon that comes out of nowhere. The enemy Pokémon can even seemingly regenerate HP from such an attack.
** Attempting to use a Pokémon Go Plus while the app is running in the background can be problematic as the app itself has a very high chance of closing in the background if a different app is loaded, forcing you to re-launch the game.
** The update that coincided with the ''Film/PokemonDetectivePikachu'' promotion caused the game to go completely haywire with countless apparently random bugs, errors, and glitches. While some glitches were innocuous like [[https://imgur.com/gallery/mugCxaB Pokémon looking like they had been sent through a paper shredder when in gyms]], [[InterfaceScrew the camera in the gym flying around randomly when trying to feed Berries]], or Pokémon spotaneously morphing into other Pokémon after being caught (at least when the Pokémon went from a ComMon to a more desirable mon such as Aerodactyl or Chansey), others were bad enough that many players quit playing the game until they could be fixed. Some of these worse bugs include the wrong Pokémon being transferred when transferring mons, the game suddenly being a ''lot'' more of a battery drain than usual, the random inability to get anything besides standard items like normal Poké Balls from Pokéstops, [[https://imgur.com/a/q5qOSM6 Lucky Pokémon costing MILLIONS of Stardust to power up]], and the aforementioned spontaneous morphing bug due to it also causing players to lose out on strong or even Legendary Pokémon from Raids or Research Tasks due to them morphing into less desirable mons. In the newest version, most of these were mitigated.
** Tapping on a Pokémon the moment it disappears from the map or the Pokémon despawns as the camera is panning down to it may soft-lock the game since the hud has disappeared and input has been disabled in anticipation of the encounter starting. However, since the Pokémon is not there, the encounter will never start and simply hang on the overworld, rejecting all input (or, less commonly, the game will attempt to start the encounter anyway but then freeze midway through the FadeToWhite transition), forcing a restart.
** One that can become particularly frustrating is that the game will hang during a Team GO Rocket fight if a DoubleKnockout happens. This will happen regardless of how many Pokémon either side has left, and a restart will treat it as a loss for the player. If Team GO Rocket manages to cause this by using their last Pokémon to knock out the player when the player still has reserves left, this can cause a RageQuit.
** Falinks ended up creating many oddities within the game due to their NonStandardCharacterDesign (a group of six {{waddling head}}s marching in a perfectly straight line), such as going past the UI in menu screens and [[InterfaceScrew causing the camera to become confused in gym battles]], but most critical was their raids in the Ultra Unlock Week 3 event being ''completely'' broken. The game would either crash upon trying to load the raid or the graphics would go completely nuts. Niantic was forced to cancel all Falinks raids shortly after their debut and compensated by having them spawn more often in the wild for the event they debuted in.
* GameplayAndStorySegregation:
** 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.
** The December 2017 update added "Extreme" weather alerts claiming "Pokémon seem to dislike these conditions", the effect of which reduces weather-related spawns and attack boosts. Putting aside the real-world aspect (it's intended to discourage playing outside in harsh weather), the exact opposite is true from an in-game perspective, as within the lore of the mainline Pokémon games outside of ''Go'', there are species that can withstand (and are even found in) extreme conditions. This was later removed in an update launched in January 2018, which now allow appropriate Pokémon to spawn during Extreme weather.
** Some spawn points are technically in, as opposed to next to, bodies of water. Fortunately for all of those Geodude, Rhyhorn, and other very heavy Pokémon (and the trainers that want to catch them), they do not immediately sink beyond a player's reach upon spawning there.
** The premise of the Ultra Recon Squad special research quests are that Professor Willow has gone missing and you are teaming up with them to help find him. Regardless, Willow still shows up in other aspects of the game like nothing out of the ordinary has happened.
* GenderBender: Raichu's initial character model was female, as evidenced by the fact that the tip of its tail was flat rather than pointed. Pikachu, on the other hand, used the male character model, lacking the heart-shaped tip that distinguishes the female version. Thus, any time Pikachu evolved into Raichu, it would be changing gender as well as form. This was corrected in a later update, changing Raichu's model to the male version.
* GlassCannon: Shadow Pokémon, obtained from Rocket grunts, are this if you choose not to purify them. They do 20% more damage but also ''take'' 20% more damage, making them riskier to use but devastating in the right situations. The most extreme case is Victreebel, whose Shadow form can chew through a Swampert or Whiscash, which have a double weakness to Grass, with 5 Razor Leafs (a ''fast'' attack) alone.
* GottaCatchThemAll:
** The regional Pokédex medals: Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Galar, Kalos. The tiers of these medals are earned by registering a certain number of Pokédex entries for each respective region. To reach the Platinum tier, the entire regional Pokédex of the respective medal have to be completed, including all applicable Legendary and Mythical Pokémons (151 for Kanto, 100 for Johto, and so on).
** The Unown medal, based on number of unique forms of Unown caught. The Platinum tier requires all 28 forms of Unown to be caught.
* GuideDangIt:
** The game doesn't explain the purpose of the circles that appear when you're preparing to toss a Poké Ball 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 gives an XP bonus if you do it right.
** There's no section in the game telling you anything about weaknesses and resistances. This can easily cause a bunch of players going into a legendary raid and using the default selection and time out even if there are supposedly slightly more than the minimum amount of players that can beat it. This is because that the autoselect more often than not contains inappropriate Pokémon for that specific raid boss, such as Aggron against Latios or Tyranitar with two Rock-Type moves against Giratina. Furthermore, since the game uses all of the typings up to later generations (including [[TheFairFolk the Fairy type]] introduced in Gen 6), many people who stopped caring about the Pokémon franchise before Generation 6 (which introduced the type) won't know why their Machamp or Primeape cannot beat either Clefables or Wigglytuffs[[note]]Both the Clefairy and Jigglypuff lines were recast from Normal types to Fairy types, which beat the Fighting type[[/note]].
** When you actually enter a gym battle for the first time, it can be a rather UnexpectedGameplayChange since there's really no battling before this. Battling consists of tapping on your opponent to attack with your basic movie, while a "Charge Meter" charges up to allow your Pokémon to [[LimitBreak use a more powerful move]]. Swiping allows dodging. 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 [[http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/8/12131242/pokemon-go-how-to-get-pikachu-starter-guide a way]] to get Pikachu [[MythologyGag as your starter]], but the game never tells you how.
** The game doesn't tell you that you need to flip your device sideways 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. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsgaJ1M8hfQ 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. For the Gen 2 Eeveelutions, you have to name your Eevee "Sakura" or "Tamao" for Espeon and Umbreon. For Gen 4, "Rea" gets Glaceon and "Linnea" gets Leafeon. For Gen 6, "Kira" gets Sylveon.
** 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 just as cryptic. 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 EliteTweak factor is less pronounced, though, due to the lack of [=EVs=], and the difference between a 'mon with perfect [=IVs=] and an average 'mon is about 10% additional damage in battles. Later updates added and refined the appraisal feature, letting you have a better idea of the parameters without needing the assistance of a third party program, and later the appraisal cryptic messages were replaced with a three-section bar for attack, defense and health which made a lot of third-party programs obsolete.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:H-N]]
* HandWave: [[OlympusMons Legendary Pokémon]] can't be used to defend gyms as the game states they have UndyingLoyalty to their trainer. However, they can still be transferred to the professor (just with an extra warning), making that explanation especially flimsy. The only Pokémon exempt from this rule are Meltan and Melmetal.
* HardModePerks: The AR+ mode which expands further through [[AwesomeButImpractical the regular AR mode]]. The Pokémon is hidden around after the player clicks it on map, requiring the player to tap on the moving bushes to catch it, and it adds [[StealthBasedMission a warning bubble that requires players to have some patience to avoid getting it filled]]. Successfully reaching them in slow pace gives you "Expert Handler" bonus reward with extra XP and Stardust after they're caught in time, but reaching them quickly will net you a NonStandardGameOver.
* HateSink: The Decoy Grunts' dialogue is filled with snark aimed at the player if they're discovered while searching for Giovanni.
* HelloInsertNameHere:
** As in every Pokémon game, you can nickname your Pokémon. However, unlike most Pokémon games including ''Mystery Dungeon'' spinoffs, you can rename your Pokémon at any time, resulting in users taking the concept and running wild. Due to privacy, however, nicknames do not appear when viewing other players' Pokémon in Gyms, instead showing the default species name.
** Using/abusing the appraisal function to let the team leaders say weird, obscene, etc. things, because how players nicknamed their Pokémon.
* HitboxDissonance:
** If you're riding a vehicle while playing, trying to tap a freshly-spawned Pokémon or a nearby Poké Stop 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 safety reasons, it's impossible to spin stops at all when you're going above a certain speed, even if you're within distance.
** 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.
** What counts as part of a Pokémon's hitbox when a Poké Ball 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. Some have a large target circle, but their actual hitboxes are so far away that on smaller devices you may have trouble even throwing the Poké Ball 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. For many other Pokémon, especially smaller species, part of the circle can clip through the ground and disrupt your throw if you aim too low.
** An oversight resulted in Glameow infamously debuting with a ridiculously large hitbox about three times its size that made it extremely easy to accidentally click in the overworld (and very annoying if in a large crowd of other Pokémon), and able to be caught in a Pokéball [[https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/lvobv0/exhibit_a_you_can_throw_your_ball_entirely_off/ even if you missed it by a mile]].
* HolidayMode:
** In general, holidays and other events grant various increased rewards, such as double experience, stardust, or candy, as well as special boxes in the in-game store featuring bundled discounts.
** Around Halloween, the game increases the spawn rates of "spooky" Pokémon (such as Gastly, Zubat, and Misdreavus), and doubles the amount of candy earned for any action. The 2017 version was also the debut of Sableye, Shuppet, and Duskull (and their shiny forms) as well as a Pikachu wearing a witch hat.
** For Thanksgiving, experience and Stardust earned was doubled across the board. In 2016 this was issued automatically alongside the release of Ditto, while in 2017 the rewards were unlocked as part of a Global Catch Challenge for catching 3 billion Pokémon globally, culminating in the temporary worldwide release of Farfetch'd.
** December features another special Pikachu, this one wearing a Santa hat. The 2016 event also featured the release of the game's first "baby" Pokémon (Igglybuff, Pichu, Clefa, Magby, Elekid, Togepi, and Smoochum), while 2017 marked the first appearance of the seasonal Pokémon Delibird. 2018 made Ice types (Jynx, Sneasel, Delibird, Snorunt, Spheal and Snover) spawn more often alongside [[SantaClaus Stantler]] and introduced the shiny form of Delibird.
** Valentine's Day sees an increase in the spawn rates for pink Pokémon (such as Jigglypuff, Clefairy, Slowpoke, Exeggcute, Chansey, and Porygon), and in 2018, the holiday debuted the shiny form of Luvdisc.
** Easter is celebrated with an "Eggstravaganza" event, giving out eggs with a greater variety of rare species and awarding double candy for each egg hatched. 2018 added shiny forms for the baby Pokémon Magby, Togepi, and Wynaut.
** The game celebrates the anniversary of the franchise as a whole in February and of Pokémon Go in July, with a Pikachu wearing a party hat or Ash Ketchum's hat respectively.
** 2017 featured periodic events boosting the spawn rates for a particular type of Pokémon, such as a Water Festival for Water types or Adventure Week for Rock types. In 2018, this was replaced by a monthly Community Day, where one specific Pokémon would have its spawn rate massively increased for a three-hour period, with an exclusive move and shiny form available as well.
* HologramProjectionImperfection: Players participating in a raid with a Remote Raid Pass will have their trainer avatar displayed as an occasionally flickering hologram in the lobby.
* HostileShowTakeover:
** Days after the Team Go Rocket update, the faction seized control over the official ''Pokémon GO'' Twitter for several hours. Hilarity ensued as they proceeded to post about how EvilFeelsGood and roast the playerbase.
** For Pokémon GO Fest 2020, Team GO Rocket hijacked the event on its second day, causing Grunts to appear more often at Poké Stops and guaranteeing you will see a Leader's balloon hovering above you at all times.
* {{Hypocrite}}: Arlo, of Team GO Rocket, ''constantly'' seethes at the player for being presumptuous, egotistical, entitled, et cetera. He's a spoiled brat who turned on his best friend for not getting his way and constantly speechifies about how he deserves Pokémon for his destiny.
* InsurmountableWaistHeightFence: The in-game map may be perfectly flat, but players still have to navigate obstacles found in the real world. Sometimes a nearby Pokémon might be just out of reach on the other side of a busy street, river, or private property. Just because all of those things are technically surmountable doesn't mean attempting to do so is a good idea. There is a grace radius that's more generous than ''VideoGame/{{Ingress}}'''s, in that you only have to walk within a specific distance if a stop is blocked off for any reason.
* InterfaceScrew: In [[PlayerVersusPlayer PvP]] battles, heavy snowfall makes the swipe-bubbles that has to be hit during a charge sequence harder to see, especially fast-moving, erratic ones such as Flying-type bubbles.
* InterfaceSpoiler:
** The "hatch an egg" task will have its notification pop up when one of your eggs have hatched, ruining the surprise. Likewise, when using the Poké Ball Plus, tasks related to catching Pokémon will have its notices pop up when you make a successful catch, even while the device goes through its three "shakes" gimmick.
** While not consistent, if you have a task that requires earning experience points, it will slide into view during wild Pokémon encounters if your thrown Ball is set to successfully catch the Pokémon and won't slide in if the Pokémon is set to break out.
* JoggersFindDeath: Pokémon Go players have found dead bodies while playing this game according to [[http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/09/technology/pokemon-go-dead-body/index.html CNN]], [[http://www.10news.com/news/pokemon-go-players-discover-body-at-marian-bear-memorial-park 10news]], and [[http://boston.cbslocal.com/2016/07/14/man-playing-pokemon-go-finds-dead-body-nashua-nh/ CBS]].
* JokeCharacter: While Shedinja can potentially be a LethalJokeCharacter in the main series games, it's reduced to this in ''GO''. Abilities (and therefore Wonder Guard) don't exist in this game, but Shedinja keeps its pathetically low base HP, making it effortless to defeat. Tellingly, it can't even be selected for use in trainer battles.
* JokeItem: The souvenirs gifted by Buddy Pokémon at the Ultra Buddy rating serve no practical use and are solely trinkets for collecting.
* LadyNotAppearingInThisGame: A male version that's not used for {{Fanservice}}. News stories and unofficial ads for the game have been using a cartoon depiction of [[Website/YouTube YouTuber]] [[https://www.youtube.com/user/TheJWittz 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 [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uohYSISNJIc 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.
* LethalJokeCharacter: Thanks to PVP and especially the Great League, which only allows Pokémon up to 1500CP, almost ''anything'' can become this, with certain meta-relevant Pokémon standing out. Azumarill and Medicham? Still highly powerful despite low stats and no Huge Power. Legendaries with low Attack like Registeel and Cresselia? Finally have a place to call their own. Even unevolved Pokémon like Haunter and Munchlax are heavy hitters!
** Shuckle and Smeargle are banned from the Little Jungle Cup (max 500 CP) because they would be too overpowered.
* LuckBasedMission:
** When trying to capture Pokémon, the odds of a successful capture can vary radically, especially if the Pokémon in question is of a rare species or has CP in the quadruple digits. The stronger the Pokémon, the more likely it is to break out of any ball thrown at it. 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. Even low-level mons have a chance of breaking out and running immediately on first throw.
** Obtaining a Pokémon of specific gender can be this. Unlike in main games, the gender markers don't show immediately when you try to catch a Pokémon, and some Pokémon [[AmbiguousGender don't have gender differences]], so you can't directly determine their genders until after you caught them. Also, [[GenderRarityValue the gender ratio is lifted directly from main games]], meaning certain species like starters, Eeveelutions and fossil Pokémon have only a 1 in 8 chance of being female.
** Finding Giovanni. More often than not, you'll run into a Decoy Grunt posing as Giovanni. It's up to luck on whether you'll find the real deal. Likewise, finding the specific Team Rocket GO Leaders for your quest can also be this.
** PlayedWith. The three Eevee evolutions ([[ShockAndAwe Jolteon]], [[MakingASplash Vaporeon]], and [[PlayingWithFire 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. The Generation 2, Espeon and Umbreon, are instead based on buddy walking distance and the time of day, but this can also be bypassed by naming your Eevee "Sakura" or "Tamao". The Gen 4 evolutions, Glaceon and Leafeon, require special lures to evolve, which can be bypassed with the names "Rea" and "Linnea". The Gen 6 evolution, Sylveon, requires a certain amount of hearts, which can be bypassed with the name "Kira".
** 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 RandomNumberGod doesn't smile upon you. Fortunately, Raid battles may award Technical Machines, which allow a player to switch a Pokémon's move to a new one, though this has its own level of luck if there are more than two moves available since the new move is randomly chosen. This also applies to the "XL" and "XS" tags, which can be gained or lost randomly upon evolution.
** Just caught a Mew and want to use it in battle? Good luck rolling a good moveset from an ''enormous'' move pool that has moves from every type in the game!
** Hidden Power takes this to greater heights as its type is discovered to be randomly determined as opposed to [=IVs=] in the original games.
** Catching Ditto. Ditto's Transform gimmick allows it to copy other Pokémon, and that includes wild Ditto. Thus, in order to catch Ditto, you have to hope that whatever low-tier ComMon you're trying to catch is actually a Ditto in disguise. There are a few hints that a Pokémon may be a transformed Ditto (catch and flee rates for Ditto aren't the same as the Pokémon it's copying), but absolutely no way to tell without catching them.
** Obtaining an EX Raid Pass on your own. Such passes grant access to invitation-only EX Raids and are randomly "awarded" to a subset of players who have recently raided before at the gym where the EX Raid will take place.
** Getting babies barring trading. Since an egg's content is randomized and this game lacks breeding, obtaining a baby Pokémon, let alone a specific baby, is a matter of luck.
** Lucky Pokémon and Lucky Friends. When traded, there's a low chance that both Pokémon become Lucky[[note]]Guaranteed excellent stats and half the stardust requirement to power up[[/note]]. Being Lucky Friends guarantees that, but becoming Lucky Friends is itself a LuckBasedMission - it's a random event that has a low chance of occurring upon the first interaction of the day with a Best Friend (though your individual chance of becoming Lucky Friends with someone is higher the more Best Friends you have, of course), and lasts only until after the next trade.
** Clamperl, unlike the main games, is also a random evolution, with no known way to influence whether it'll become a Huntail or a Gorebyss (not even a nickname trick like Eevee). This can be exceptionally frustrating because Clamperl is only available via research rewards or raids (and is thus much rarer than Eevee). In particular, trying to get both a shiny Huntail and a shiny Gorebyss is very much subject to the luck of not only finding multiple shiny Clamperl, but hoping that the Clamperl in question won't all evolve the same way.
* MagikarpPower:
** [[TropeNamer Magikarp]], of course, which evolves into the giant sea dragon Gyarados. Since candies now cause evolution instead of simply leveling up, this game makes evolving Magikarp a challenge by requiring ''400'' candies instead of the usual 50 for a single-evolution Pokémon. A single Magikarp gives three candies (six if a Pinap Berry is used), plus an additional one for transferring it, meaning 58 Pinaped Magikarp are needed for a single Gyarados. That said, once you manage to evolve Magikarp, it goes from having the absolute worst CP (220 max) to one of the best (3281 max), fifteen times Magikarp's original value, which is the single largest CP jump of any Pokémon in the game. Wailmer and Swablu, introduced in the Gen 3 updates, also require 400 candies to become Wailord and Altaria respectively, though they don't get such a massive spike in power.
** Chansey was uselessly weak until Gen 2 mons were added, introducing the evolved version, Blissey. Since Chansey is so rare, it's difficult to get enough candy to evolve one (unless you gathered a lot during the Valentine's Day event), but once you do... you've got a {{Ridiculously Cute|Critter}} StoneWall that can hold a gym against almost all comers. Her absurdly high HP stat at its best serves as a deterrent to attackers due to the sheer amount of time needed to whittle her down, and at its worst can cause the battle timer to run out before she falls. Though her attack is subpar, several of her moves are super effective against Fighting types, most players' go-to Blissey killer.
* MechanicallyUnusualFighter: Slaking retains its obscene base stats from the core series, but ''Pokémon GO'' lacks abilities and it therefore doesn't have its Truant ability to offset this. To balance Slaking and make it operate similarly to the main games, it instead has its fast attack set to Yawn, which does piddly damage and is there to charge up its Charge Move.
* MeleeATrois: Three factions -- Teams Instinct, Mystic, and Valor -- fight among themselves over gyms.
* MetalSlime:
** Unlike ComMons and most uncommon Pokémon, ultra-rare Pokémon such as Lapras, Snorlax, Chansey and Aerodactyl have no fixed spawn areas and can spawn in any area at any time, and do so very rarely. They are usually very hard to hit with a ball, have abysmal catch rates, and are highly prone to escaping if they keep breaking out.
** Ditto. They are very uncommon, [[HiddenInPlainSight hide disguised as]] ComMons, and break free more frequently than their true counterparts.
** [[{{Wingdinglish}} Unown]] comes in 28 forms based on English alphabet letters as well as ? and !, and has an [[AchievementSystem achievement]] dedicated to collecting all of them. This Pokémon is so rare that most players haven't even seen one on the Nearby list, let alone in a gym. It's even rarer than wild Tyranitar and [[JokeCharacter more useless than Magikarp]].
* MightyGlacier: Snorlax and Blissey are considered the two best gym defenders due to their massive health pool and high CP, and with the right moveset are difficult to dodge or counter. Expect to see one of each in most highly-contested gyms. They're closely followed by Slaking, Ferrothorn, and Dragonite, for the same reasons.
* MiniBoss: The GO Rocket update adds Team GO Rocket members to various Pokéstops, and visiting them will initiate a fight with the GO Rocket Grunt. Not all Grunts are pushovers -- some hold teams of fully-evolved Pokémon.
* MirrorMatch:
** Fighting a Pokémon as the same Pokémon in gyms.
** Ditto will transform into the first Pokémon it sees in a gym, inheriting the latter's CP.
* MysteryBox: Pokémon Eggs. Unlike those from the core game series where you usually know what species is inside as you bred them yourself, the Pokémon available inside eggs are random, selected from four different pools of species based on the egg's color. Incubators must be used to hatch them, which can only be purchased en masse from the Shop.
* Mystical108: The general theme of the Halloween event quests, ending in the player catching Spiritomb.
* MythologyGag:
** 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 [[VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver Youngster Joey and his top percentage Rattata]].
*** The medal for catching a certain number of Magikarp with the XL tag is called [[VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue "Fisherman"]], a reference to the [[VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver Fishing Guru at the Lake of Rage]] who had a SideQuest involving being shown giant Magikarp.
*** The medal for catching Ghost Pokémon is called [[VideoGame/PokemonRubyAndSapphire "Hex Maniac"]].
*** The medal for catching Steel-types is [[VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite "Depot Agent"]].
*** The medal for catching Flying-types is [[VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue "Bird Keeper"]].
** Pikachu is the only Pokémon in the game who has PokemonSpeak, just as in ''VideoGame/PokemonYellow'' and the Generation VI and VII games.
** Many items in the game are featured in the main series but have different effects; Stardust is ShopFodder in the games but is used to level up Pokémon in ''GO'', the Razz Berry is used as a Pokéblock/Poffin ingredient in the games but is used to increase capture chance/reduce flee rate here, and Pokémon candies are similar to Rare Candy/evolution stones in their ability to evolve Pokémon.
** Abra is the single most likely Pokémon to [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere 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.
** The motivation system is lifted from ''VideoGame/PokemonSuperMysteryDungeon'', but has been reworked to suit the different game mechanics.
** The Alolan Marowak Raid Battle is a HarderThanHard version of Totem Marowak Challenge in ''VideoGame/PokemonUltraSunAndUltraMoon'', despite Totem Auras not being present in this game.
** Two of the new series of Lure Modules, Mossy Lure Module and Glacial Lure Module, reference to the Moss Rock and Ice Rock in core-series games as they can be used to locate and allow anyone nearby to evolve their Eevee into Leafeon and Glaceon respectively. They're also similar to Mossy Rock and Frozen Rock in ''VideoGame/PokemonMysteryDungeon'' series.
** You can find Pikachus wearing Ash Ketchum's hat during April Fool's.
** Arlo is notably a ''lot'' more of a raging dickass than any of his Go Rocket cohorts, is the most openly insulting of all of Go Rocket towards the player, and treats his Pokémon as nothing more than tools, reflecting a long line of douchebag rivals starting from Gary Oak and beyond whose role is to talk shit, harass the player, then get utterly destroyed repeatedly.
** Every possible dialogue option for the Go Rocket Grunts is a line used by an opposing trainer in one of the earlier games. Just as an example, a Go Rocket Grunt specializing in Psychic-types will say "Are you scared of psychics that use the unseen power?", which was originally said by one of the trainers in [[VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue Sabrina's gym]], and the defeat quote of "Not enough grit!" was originally used by a Team Rocket Grunt in the first game.
** The Sinnoh Stone is made up of a [[VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl diamond and a pearl]], while the Unova Stone is colored [[VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite black and white]].
** On Pokémon Day 2020, party hat-wearing Nidorino and Gengar were featured as exclusive raid bosses. This is a reference to the first games' intro cutscene, which is a battle between Nidorino and Gengar.
* {{Nerf}}:
** To counterbalance the significantly smaller movepools every Pokémon has and the inflexibility of which moves they can use at what times,[[note]]As opposed to having four moves they can use usually whenever they want, Pokémon have one weak fast move that can be used whenever they want, and up to two stronger charged moves that can only be used occasionally at best[[/note]] types that provide immunity to another type are instead calculated as having doubled resistance to it. Players still won't want to try using Electric-type moves on a Ground-type Pokémon since it'll do ScratchDamage, but if the situation forces them to then their chance to finish off a weakened Pokémon is a lot better.
** 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 [[http://kotaku.com/pokemon-go-pisses-players-off-yet-again-by-making-pokem-1784773116 nerfed catch rates]], with even low-CP {{Com Mon}}s having high chances of breaking out of a ball and escaping, which increases as the player's level rises.
** The overhauled gym system in June 2017 produced a major nerf on gym defenders - defenders would slowly weaken over time (though this can be counteracted by feeding them berries, and they're back to normal once they leave the gym), a gym is filled when six (as opposed to the previous ten) have been placed, and finally, only one of a given species can be in a gym at any given time. This downgrades Blissey from a nightmare stacking a gym ten deep to a difficult but manageable problem that is unique in that gym.
** The October 2018 rebalance was notable for buffing several offense-oriented Pokémon but infamous for nerfing many defensive-oriented ones, most famously Blissey. Changes to the stat calculation reduced max HP for the extreme outliers as well as reduced the effect of unbalanced defense stats in the original games, both of which put a serious crimp in Blissey's effectiveness as a gym defender. Further, the effects of ElementalRockPaperScissors was enhanced in both directions - super-effective attacks are even stronger than before, but resisted attacks do even less damage. Blissey's weakened stats and lack of resistances put Blissey in danger from many more attackers. She's still by far one of the best defenders, but she's way more manageable than before.
* NewMediaAreEvil: 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. 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.
* NoFairCheating:
** If you try to travel at more than 15 mph, the game won't track your distance for egg-hatching purposes. If you travel faster than 30 mph, Pokémon spawns, Poké Stops, and the tracker are disabled until you slow down.[[note]]However, this feature is also in place to prevent people from playing and driving at the same time which developers and safety agencies obviously DO NOT want players to do.[[/note]] Despite this, if you use Incense to force wild Pokémon to spawn while driving at fast speeds, every attempt will result in a runaway.
** If you try and download the app in a country where the game is not legitimately released, there will likely be no Poké Stops 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. If Niantic figures out that you're sideloaded and are playing outside of the regions where the game is available, 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 temporary ban which causes all Pokémon to automatically run away on the first breakout, disables all Poké Stops and gyms, and prevents you from leveling up.
** Pokémon can be [[https://gameguardians.org/updates/niantic-launches-new-anti-cheat-measure-pokemon-go-called-slash-409/ slashed out]] if the user is discovered to be using third-party apps like GPS spoofing and tracking apps. Slashed-out Pokémon cannot be used in Gym battles and will not yield any candy after transfer.
** There are also several day shadow bans, which only allow common Pokémon like Pidgey and Ratatta to be seen and lock the player out of raids.
** 90 day account bans are the next level up, then account termination.
* NonStandardCharacterDesign: The game uses {{animesque}} character designs based closely on the original games than the anime but has more realistic proportions, including the size of the eyes, hairstyles and made to accomodate the 3D designs. So when Jesse and James from the anime are introduced into the game, they look like they were transplanted directly from the anime with more exaggerated eyes, hair and body designs.
* NonStandardGameOver: In AR+ mode, reaching the Pokémon too quickly (ie: instantly) will raise the warning bubble by filling it with [[TurnsRed red]], increasing the likehood of fleeing even before you try to capture it.
* NoPlotNoProblem: Unlike ''VideoGame/{{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!" The closest the game has is Special Research, where Professor Willow assigns the player tasks to help him research in studying and identifying Mythical Pokémon, and Rocket events, where players hunt down Rocket goons and beat the stuffing out of them. Even in the wake of ''VideoGame/HarryPotterWizardsUnite'' (another Niantic game), which is ''very'' heavy on story and lore, ''Go'' remains aggressively about [[ToBeAMaster being the very best, like no one ever was.]]
* NotAllowedToGrowUp: Event Pokémon with special outfits, accessories, or other visual tweaks cannot evolve under any circumstances if their evolution(s) don't also have the cosmetic available to them.
* NotCompletelyUseless: Ever since the 20% boost in power for Shadow Pokémon was introduced, purification was largely seen as a PowerupLetdown since battle-wise, the only unique trait gained is the underwhelming Return move, which is seen as too weak for raids and too slow for PVP. However, Purified Sableye is the exception, because other than Foul Play, its other two regular charged moves are underwhelming, so Return provides it a slow, but powerful move that can turn otherwise losing matchups into winning ones.
* NotTheIntendedUse: Trading randomising [=IVs=] on a traded Pokémon seems like a way to prevent just trading already perfect Pokémon away to others without any disadvantage, and ''perhaps'' a way to give a useless Pokémon a chance of having high [=IVs=] or being a Lucky Pokémon. But there's one other use, too; some Pokémon only available through raids, eggs or research, such as Cresselia and Alolan Muk, have ''just'' too high CP at their normal catch point to be used in a certain PVP League. Trading them, however, has a good chance to ''lower'' their CP to usable levels, making them useable there.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:O-P]]
* ObviousBeta: The initial release was pretty rough. There were constant crashing issues, the servers were unstable, and the app was (and in many cases still is) 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.
* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: During the 2020 GO Fest event, players were tasked with battling Giovanni while the team leaders battled the GO Team Rocket leaders offscreen. After you beat Giovanni, Professor Willow tells you that the team leaders sent the Rocket leaders packing and the battles were awesome. You never get to see the leaders fight, but Niantic would later post a video of an animated short showing the leaders [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODGy9ejVG9o battling the Rocket leaders]], which ends with a call from Giovanni telling his leaders to cut their losses and run away.
* OlympusMons: As in the core series, legendary Pokémon. Premiering at the 2017 Pokémon GO Fest event in Chicago, legendary Pokémon are the target of tier 5 raids, with a new species debuting approximately once per month. Once their visit is over, the legendary Pokémon is semi-retired so others can take their place. Mewtwo can also be caught in EX Raids, which require extremely rare EX Raid Passes. After Mewtwo was changed to be a standard special raid, Deoxys took its place in EX Raids.
* OneManArmy:
** Well, One-[[{{Pun}} Mon]] 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, one of which even has type advantage. It is eventually caught, but given the clock, it held its own against ''all'' of them for ''almost ten straight minutes''. Once they were finally released, max-level Legendary Pokémon all qualified for this trope.
** Under the old gym system, when trying to raise the prestige of an allied gym, you were 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 earned prestige for knocking out at least one, just not as much. The game gives out better rewards if your attacker is weaker than the defender, the largest bonus being awarded if the defender is twice as strong, so you could earn as much if not more prestige in one fight with a weak Pokémon as you could against the entire lineup with a strong one.
** Upon the release of raids, gyms now can spawn Pokémon with a CP rating in the tens of thousands. The highest level of raids are simply not possible for a single person to handle, and that one Pokémon with a CP of over 40,000 can easily curbstomp multiple trainers with a full team of six.
* ParrotPetPosition: Just like Ash and his Pikachu, you can have a Pikachu and certain other small Pokémon (most notably Pidgey and Spearow, in which case it's justified because they're fairly small birds, as well as Eevee) ride on your avatar's shoulder if you assign it as your buddy. This isn't automatic in Pikachu and Eevee's case, however; you have to keep it as your buddy for a while for the effect to kick in. Prior to that, it just stands beside you like the others.
* PatternCodedEggs: PlayedWith. Egg color is meaningful and the Pokémon within can be vaguely determined based on it, but multiple species can be attributed to the same egg design. The closest this comes to being PlayedStraight is with the Raid Eggs of Mega-Evolved bosses, which still use a single pattern for almost all Mega Evolutions but have a Mega Evolution symbol upon the egg itself to clearly indicate what's coming out will be Mega Evolved.
* PeninsulaOfPowerLeveling: Locations with good pedestrian accessibility and a ton of Pokéstops and/or Gyms are great places to farm up some items. These tend to be densely-populated regions with lots of landmarks, such as downtown city areas, colleges and universities, and large shopping complexes.
* PermanentlyMissableContent: Towards the end of 2020, Niantic made a medal given to players who managed to reach level 40 before the year's end as well as unique clothing items. Anyone that didn't reach level 40 before the year's end lost out on the rewards.
* PhotoMode: The game lets you take Snapshots of the various {{Mons}} along with yourself using the AugmentedReality feature. Many of the in-game tasks also require players to make use of it.
* PinataEnemy: The Team GO Rockets that occupy various Pokéstops might look intimidating and can actually devastate low level or inexperienced players, but they give at least 500 stardust when you defeat them and 100-375 more stardust when you successfully catch their Pokémon. This allows high-level, expert players to grind them for large amounts of stardust as long as they have a steady supply of potions.
* PlayEveryDay: The game has daily streak bonuses, in which your first Poké Stop visit and first catch of the day will net you an additional 500 XP, 500 additional Stardust from the Pokémon caught, and additional items from the Stop. If you maintain the streak for seven days, the seventh day will increase the bonus XP/Stardust to 2000 and the items from the Pokéstop will be greatly increased, in addition to dropping rare items needed for certain evolutions. The cycle repeats after that. Missing a day resets the cycle. This encourages players to at least visit one Poké Stop and catch at least one Pokémon daily. Visiting a gym grants a free Raid Pass every day (provided the player doesn't already have one), and the player can complete research tasks for one field research stamps per day, with a breakthrough bonus after seven days.
* PokemonSpeak: Pikachu does this, provided by Creator/IkueOtani. The rest have upgraded versions of their cries that were first heard in the Generation VI games.
* PowerLevel: Pokémon in this game have a "Combat Power" (CP) rating, which is calculated based on a series of hidden values such as experience level and stats to provide an at-a-glance summary of how strong that Pokémon is. It can be misleading sometimes, though.
* PowerUpFood:
** 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.
** Berries can be fed to Pokémon in an allied gym, increasing their motivation and temporarily boosting their CP.
** Inverted against wild Pokémon with Nanab Berries, which make the Pokémon move around less, and Razz Berries, which make it harder to break out of a ball.
* ProductPlacement: Prior to the December 2016 update, all Starbucks locations were turned into Poké Stops, with an advertisement in place of the regular location name. Since then, Niantic has signed deals with most mobile service carriers to include their locations as well.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:R-Z]]
* RandomlyGeneratedQuests: Field Research Tasks, which are given at PokéStops. These tasks range from capturing Pokémon to making good/great/excellent throws to keeping a streak by doing a certain task several times and not missing. These tasks can grant Pokéballs, berries and even Pokémon, and are randomly generated every day.
* RareCandy:
** The only way to power up your Pokémon's stats, as well as evolving them, is by feeding them candy.
** Aside from species-specific candy exclusive to Pokémon of that species, there's also a version of the TropeNamer, Rare Candy, which can be transformed into regular candy for any species.
** The December 2020 "GO Beyond" update also brought XL Candy, which is used to power up Pokémon beyond level 40. And, of course, there's [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs XL Rare Candy]].
* RareRandomDrop:
** Zigzagged with evolution items (Sun Stone, King's Rock, Metal Coat, Dragon Scale, Up-Grade and the Sinnoh and Unova Stones), needed to evolve certain Pokémon. [[PlayEveryDay Spinning at least one PokéStop a day for 7 days straight]] always awards a random evolutionary item from the first spin on the seventh day; all other times they have an ''0.15%'' estimated probability of being dispensed from a Poké Stop.
** Technical Machines, or [=TMs=] (which replace a Pokémon's attack with a random new one), are sometimes dropped by raid bosses, their rarity being greater the lower the tier; roughly 60% of Tier 4 raids drop them, while a minority of lower-tier raids do.
** The introduction of the GO Battle League made obtaining these items easier, in exchange for the player winning at least two battles out of a series of five.
* RecruitedFromTheGutter: Cliff. If you take his word for it.
* RedemptionDemotion and RedemptionPromotion: Shadow Pokémon manage to play both straight, albeit at different times. When Team GO Rocket uses Shadow Pokémon, they get a significant bump to their CP (and thus overall stats), on par with a two-star raid boss, plus they can use the standard assortment of charge moves. Should the player defeat the Rocket Grunt and catch said Shadow Pokémon, though, it gets a very rapid demotion to around level '''1''' and is stuck using Frustration, which is deliberately built to be the absolute worst charge move in the game. On top of that, it costs triple resources (stardust and candy) to power it up or give it a new move. However, purify it, and it instantly levels to 25, it can learn other charge moves (including replacing Return, which replaces Frustration but is only marginally better), it gets a +2 bonus to the IV values of all of its stats (unless it would take it over the maximum of 15), and the cost to power up or teach a new move gets a 20% decrease from normal. It might not ever reach the [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard frankly unfair]] levels of power that a Shadow Pokémon reaches in Team GO Rocket's hands, but it's much easier to max out a purified Pokémon than one caught in any other fashion.
* RedEyesTakeWarning: Shadow Pokémon are now pictured with bloodshot red eyes locked into a permanent angry expression.
* RegionalBonus: There are several Pokémon that are ''continent or country-exclusive'' which can be found in the wild or hatch from 5km. eggs. A few of them have also appeared in special events, allowing those outside the Pokémon's natural habitat a chance to catch them.
** Kantonian Farfetch'd can only be caught in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, but Galarian Farfetch'd have been released worldwide.
** [[KangaroosRepresentAustralia Kangaskhan can only be caught in Australia.]]
** Kantonian Mr. Mime can only be caught in Europe. In the same vein, Mime Jr. can only hatch from eggs obtained there. Galarian Mr. Mime have been released worldwide, in a similar fashion to Farfetch'd.
** Tauros can only be caught in North America.
** Corsola can be caught between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.
** Heracross can be caught in Southern Florida, Southern Texas, Central and South America. It is a highly useful bargaining chip for trades since it is a fan favorite Pokémon that is quite useful in battle. [[note]](The cutoff point between Tauros and Heracross is about 29 degrees latitude, which means Heracross can still be found in the far southern region of Texas, approximately from San Antonio southward, and about two-thirds of Florida, from Daytona Beach southward.)[[/note]]
** Illumise can be caught in North America and South America. Volbeat, on the other hand, can be caught in Asia, Australia and Europe. The same situation is repeated with the duos Lunatone/Solrock, Zangoose/Seviper, and Durant/Heatmor in those orders. [[note]](It was the other way around for Zangoose and Seviper at first, but they were later swapped, a change that also applied to Durant and Heatmor soon after they were added to the game. As for Lunatone/Solrock, the regions take turns in hosting them, swapping them at solstices)[[/note]]
** Relicanth can only be caught in New Zealand and surrounding islands (Fiji, Samoa, etc.). This makes it a ''very'' valuable bargaining chip in trades.
** Torkoal can only be caught in South Asia.
** Tropius can only be caught in Africa, Southern Spain, the Mediterranean Sea (Malta, Cyprus, etc.), and The Levant (Israel, Lebanon, etc.).
** Carnivine can only be caught in Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.
** Chatot can only be caught in the Southern Hemisphere.
** Pachirisu can only be caught in Russia, Alaska and Canada above about 52 degrees north.
** Shellos is an interesting case, as it's available everywhere, however Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia get the "eastern" (cyan) variation while the Americas get the "western" (pink) variation.
** Pansage can only be caught in Asia-Pacific (roughly from Assam eastward).
** Pansear can only be caught in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia.
** Panpour can only be caught in the Americas.
** Throh can be found only in North America, South America and Africa.
** Sawk can only be found in Europe, Asia and Australia.
** Basculin can be found anywhere, but red-striped ones spawn in the western hemisphere while blue-striped ones spawn in the eastern hemisphere.
** Maractus can be found in the southern U.S., Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and South America.
** Sigilyph can only be found in Egypt and Greece.
** Bouffalant can only be found in New York City and its surrounding area, including Long Island.
** Klefki is exclusive to France.
** Some of Furfrou's cuts are available to certain regions: Debutante Cut to the Americas, La Reine Cut to France, Star Cut to Asia Pacific, Kabuki Cut to Japan, Pharoah Cut to Egypt and Diamond Cut to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.[[note]]Then there's Heart Cut, which is available on certain events.[[/note]]
** Comfey is exclusive to Hawaii.
** As expected, the four Oricorio forms are available in certain regions: Pa'u in Africa, Asia, Pacific and Caribbean Islands; Pom Pom in the Americas; Sensu in Asia Pacific; and Baile in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
* RelationshipValues: There are five levels of friendship between you and your friends. Higher friendship levels means reduced Stardust costs for trades and increased attack and extra Premier Balls in raids if they participate alongside you.
* RunningGag: Part of a series-wide one, as of the second Team GO Rocket update. You know how there's inevitably someone in the games that uses full team of only Magikarp? There's a chance that a Water-focused Team GO Rocket grunt (leading off with "These waters are treacherous!") will be sporting a whole team of shadow Magikarp. Not surprisingly, even with the boost to CP that Rocket-controlled Shadow Pokémon get, it's the easiest possible Rocket fight.
* SchizophrenicDifficulty: The research quest for Mew has 8 stages, each with 3 mini-missions. The difficulty and time-expense of each part gradually increases at first, until the 5th-7th stages, where time spent and difficulty vary wildly, with some of the steps being entirely luck-based such as catching Ditto.
* ScratchDamage: In gym battles and raids, charge moves always cause damage; dodging just mitigates how much damage is taken. This is in part to prevent someone from CherryTapping a gym or raid to death with something otherwise weak, as it's impossible to fully avoid taking damage. Fast moves that aren't dodged also always cause damage, regardless of the power of the move. However, in the case of Splash and Yawn, they have 0 power, so they only do a bare minimum of damage.
* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: Like in a Safari Zone in earlier entries in the series, it is possible for ''every Pokémon'' in this game to flee, with unsuccessful encounters ending in the Pokémon escaping a Poké Ball they just broke out of. Some are more likely to escape from a destroyed Poké Ball than others, such as ComMons, those with the [[EscapeBattleTechnique Run Away]] ability, and Abra, [[MythologyGag who teleports away in the main games]]. Thus, you are likely only given one shot at acquiring a Pokémon before they flee if the RandomNumberGod is not on your side. The only Pokémon that are forced to stay and let you wail Poké Balls at them until you catch them are Research rewards and Research Breakthroughs.
** When it comes the time to catch a Raid boss, exhausting the limited supply of [[CherryTapping Premier Balls]] causes the Raid Boss to immediately teleport out, compared to the SmokeOut used by regular wild Pokémon.
* SelfImposedChallenge:
** The [[ActualPacifist "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. [[{{Fanon}} Fans]] have even picked [[VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver Lugia]] as their unofficial mascot for this type of challenge, as opposed to Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres the other teams are represented by.[[invoked]]
** 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 Poké Stops. That's [[FalseReassurance only]] 400,000 Poké Stop visits.
* SequentialBoss: Fighting Jessie and James during their events has you fighting them one after the other. Luckily, you can heal your team in between the battles.
* SmokeOut:
** The result of a wild Pokémon escaping an encounter.
** After defeating a Team Rocket member, they will disappear in a puff when you return to the overworld.
* SocializationBonus:
** Pokémon are more likely to spawn in areas with higher mobile data traffic, encouraging players to travel in groups or visit high-population areas.
** When battling Gyms, multiple players who are not of the same team as the target Gym can gang up on the same combatant, speeding through otherwise troublesome battles and saving on healing supplies. Players aligned with the same team can cooperate to maintain their Pokémon's motivation, extending their ability to defend the Gym.
** If you want a greater chance at beating higher-difficulty Raids, it pays off to know and coordinate with other players who are willing to join you, rather than hope that the missing manpower happens to be passing by. Likewise, if you plan to join raids through remote raiding, you're better off joining online social groups that focus on remote raiding so that everyone can join rather than hope someone will walk by the gym and join locally on their end.
** Friends get trade discounts, extra attack power in gym and raid battles, as well as additional Premier balls to catch raid bosses with. The amount depends on friendship level, which is increased by trading Pokémon, battling and raiding together, and sending gifts to each other.
** The aforementioned gifts contain 7 km eggs which hatch baby Pokémon, [[UndergroundMonkey Alolan forms of Kanto Pokémon]] and other special event Pokémon in addition to various standard items.
** After an overhaul to the evolution system on January 10, 2020, players can now obtain Machamp, Gengar, Golem, Alakazam, Gigalith, Conkeldurr, Escavalier and Accelgor via trade. Traded Pokémon of these species' previous evolutions[[note]]Machoke, Haunter, Graveler, Kadabra, Boldore, Gurdurr, Shelmet and Karrablast[[/note]] will reduce the candy cost to evolve from 100 or 200 to 0.
* SpecialAttack: Every Pokémon has two attacks: a basic attack that can be spammed, and a special attack that is more like a LimitBreak, needing to be charged up during a battle before it can be unleashed against an opponent. Each Pokémon can also have a second Charged Attack unlocked with extra Candy and Stardust.
* SpiritualSuccessor:
** To ''VideoGame/{{Ingress}}''. The core foundation of the game was created from ''Ingress''. All the Poké Stops 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 ''[[Videogame/PokemonGoldAndSilver 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. The game can also be considered the closest we can get to an actual game based on the Safari Zones from the main games as wild encounters are boiled down to "throw Poké Balls and hope for the best".
* TheSpook: Towards the end of September 2018's Chikorita Community Day, high server traffic led to all of the Chikorita being replaced by a flood of a mysterious, never-before-seen Pokémon. Its name and CP were listed as "???", and catching it would cause it to turn into Ditto). Naturally, both the ''GO'' playerbase and the core ''Pokémon'' fanbase went wild with speculation, and the Japanese ''GO'' Twitter seemed to imply that the appearance of this new critter was no mere accident. Three days later, it was revealed to be a Mythical Pokémon called Meltan.
* StoneWall:
** In terms of typing, Normal-types in general are treated as this by the {{metagame}}, having only one weakness but also lacking super-effective coverage for the moves they receive STAB on. Despite their lack of resistances to any type other than Ghost, the hyper-specialized nature of the ''Pokémon GO'' metagame means that opponents will always use the optimum choice anyway, which in this case are powerhouse Fighting-types like Machamp or Blaziken. As a result, they're commonly used as gym defenders but not in raid battles.
** [[RidiculouslyCuteCritter Blissey]] is an (in)famous Pokemon in the mainline games for being a damage sponge and that also perfectly describes its presence in ''GO''. Though her attack is sub-par, she has good defense and absolutely beastly stamina. Her HP is so high that she can actually ''outlast the battle timer'' when defending a gym..
** Shuckle, which boasts absurdly high defense in exchange for rock-bottom stamina and attack. Its CP is only marginally better than Magikarp. Its moves mean nothing with its terrible attack. Its only purpose is to take hits.
** Umbreon, like its main game counterpart -- its HP and Defense are very high[[note]]Among all Eeveelutions, Umbreon's HP is second only to Vaporeon, but its Defense stat is the highest, higher than Leafeon and Glaceon who were close behind[[/note]], but its Attack is cripplingly low, resulting in it being the weakest Eeveelution in terms of CP, despite its advantage over Psychic and Ghost-type Pokémon.
* SuspiciousVideogameGenerosity: Raid Battles, especially Tier 5 Legendary Raids, give you large amounts of Golden Razz Berries as rewards. Since you're locked to Premier Balls for catching Legendaries outside of special events, these elusive berries become your only chance of adjusting the odds of catching in your favor.
* TakeAThirdOption:
** 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.
* TakeThat: In celebration for the 2021 New Years Day, Slowpokes wearing 2020 glasses can be encountered, which will evolve into Slowbro and Slowking wearing updated glasses. Amusingly, these have been brought back for New Years Day 2022.
* TemporaryOnlineContent:
** The February 2017 update changed many of the possible movesets for Pokémon but didn't change any of the invalidated movesets of Pokémon already caught. That means that Pokémon with those specific movesets are now unobtainable. It's not that big a deal, however, since said movesets (with some very highly sought-after exceptions such as Shadow Claw on Gengar and Body Slam on Snorlax) aren't anything special and are inferior to some of the revised versions.
** Certain Pokémon can only be obtained during limited time:
*** While it can be encountered as an uncommon spawn at other times of the year, [[EverythingsBetterWithPenguins Delibird]] is most notably associated with Christmas and, in prior years, could only be caught during December's holiday season as well as early Janruary.
*** Pokémon with special movesets (such as Pikachu with Surf) can only be obtained during Community Day events.
*** Spiritomb can only be obtained as a Special Research encounter during the Halloween event (with a new one opening up each October).
*** Yamask can only be obtained during the Halloween event.
** Event Pokémon (unique reskins of Pokémon wearing costumes) are, naturally, event-limited.
* TimedMission:
** Gym battles have a time limit of 99 seconds for each Pokémon fought. This prevents situations where a player with an extremely weak Pokémon could, in theory, engage in CherryTapping against a much stronger one by dodging constantly. At least half of the defender's CP is sufficient, though it will be a close battle. This makes Blissey a nightmare to fight, as her HP is so high it is legitimately difficult to knock her out fast enough.
** Raids have a timer of 180 seconds for any given attempt; Legendary Raids last 300 seconds per attempt. Moreover, the raid itself is only active for about 1 hour.
** Every wild Pokémon will only remain available to catch for a certain period of time (30-60 minutes), which varies depending on the rarity of the Pokémon in question. Any number of players can catch it during this period.
*** Wild Pokémon who were drawn in by Incense last for even less time, less than a minute.
* TooAwesomeToUse:
** Elite [=TMs=] allow you to teach your mon ''any'' move it can learn or has learned. And when we say ''any'', we mean it, as it can learn normal moves, almost every Legacy move ever, and event-exclusive moves. It also allows purified Pokémon to re-learn [[ThePowerOfFriendship Return]]. And unlike regular [=TMs=], you ''choose'' the move, rather than the game randomly choosing the move for you. The only reason why it isn't a game breaker is that it's the rarest item that the game can spawn, as it's only available at the end of a season of the GO Battle League for certain ranks, or in event-exclusive packages (such as those from the Community Days). This presents a problem for GO Battle League players because certain Pokémon such as the Starters have moves that are mandatory for the metagame and only accessible through the Elite [=TMs=], but such players would only want to use them on Pokémon they are absolutely committed to due to their scarcity, creating a disincentive to experiment and try different team setups.
** Mega Evolution. Your ComMon's final evolution gets exclusive typings (depending on the mon and evolution) giving STAB to otherwise useless moves [[note]]such as Charizard getting STAB on Dragon Claw and the CD-exclusive Dragon Breath upon megaevolving into Mega Charizard X[[/note]], and legendary-like CP and stats, plus it can boost the power of mons whose type the Megas share during raids[[note]]your Mega Charizard X can boost Fire and Dragon-type mons, for example[[/note]]. However, its initial activation requires a specific amount of Mega Energy, a certain multiple of 100 depending on the Pokémon, but it only lasts for 8 hours and every subsequent time you Mega Evolve the same Pokémon, you still require 1/5 of the original amount. Theoretically, you can continually replenish Mega Energy through raids and Research Tasks, and some events offer more than enough to perform the Mega Evolution. In practice, acquiring Mega Energy is so difficult that many players are reluctant to Mega Evolve even when they have enough energy to because of how quickly it would run out and how few opportunities there are to make the most of them. Research tasks that give Mega Energy outside events are very rare and only give a paltry 10 each (and then such research quests are only available for ''some'' mons whose Mega Evolutions have been released), and Mega Raids are so unrewarding compared to Legendary Raids[[note]]significantly fewer item rewards, you only get the base form Pokémon that you can already catch, evolve, or hatch rather than the Mega Evolved Pokémon, and you have to do them multiple times before you get enough Energy to Mega Evolve once)[[/note]] that even in high-density areas, it's hard to find enough Raid partners to do them outside of dedicated groups. In addition, only regular and purified mons can evolve. Shadow Pokémon can't, and must be purified first.
* TooDumbToLive: The "be aware of your surroundings" message that shows up on the loading screen depicts a trainer absentmindedly looking at his phone while a Gyarados (and in the later versions, Gengar, Steelix, and Alolan Exeggutor) is poised to attack in front of him.
* TrailersAlwaysLie:
** The trailer shows two people trading Pokémon with each other, but trading was not actually present in the final game until two years later, albeit functioning much differently than advertised[[note]]The 'Mons transferred now have a potential of having their stats and CP changed when traded[[/note]].
** The trailer initially showed people able to catch Pokémon that were not available on initial release, such as Gen II or Legendaries.
** 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 of 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[[/note]], 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 Poké Stop 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 PokemonSpeak 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 [[PowerLevel 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 PlayerVersusPlayer battles, the first trailer even showing a three-on-three team battle. This feature was not in the final game until late 2018, which introduced proper fights between players.
** 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.
* TrappedInAnotherWorld: When featured as a Raid Boss during Go Fest 2022, instead of being announced by a Raid Egg appearing and hatching it, Nihilego spawned from Ultra Wormholes that opened at chosen gyms.
* UndesirablePrize:
** Basic Poké Balls are frequently given for spinning stops and become less desirable when higher-leveled players have access to the rarer but much more powerful Great and Ultra Balls. It's easy to amass more than 200 of them with a Bag that's been upgraded and frequent spins. There's the weekly walking bonus, where 20 Poké Balls are piled onto your current stock. That said, since the Go Plus only uses Poké Balls, they become more valuable to Plus owners as "fuel" for the device; then Great Balls become this trope.
** Most Field Research tasks include items or [[RandomEncounters random Pokémon encounters]] as a reward, with some requiring painfully hard (or time-consuming) objectives to complete. However, the items rewarded for finishing these may not be worth the effort and time. One such example is finding and winning a Raid battle for five ''regular'' Potions.
** Pink-spotted golden eggs received from gifts used to be this. Unlike regular eggs whose contents can change over time, these 7 km eggs, outside of certain events, were restricted to hatching into a grand total of ''seven'' species.[[note]]Alolan Ratatta, Sandshrew, Vulpix, Diglett, Meowth, Geodude, and Grimer.[[/note]] Additionally, Pokémon that evolve into Alolan forms in the main games (Pichu, Exeggcute, and Cubone) are excluded, leaving a rather barebones selection of Pokémon these eggs hatch into. Thankfully, you can now hatch Baby Pokémon from 7km eggs which allow you to reliably get rare babies such as Riolu or a shiny if you are lucky, turning them into a much more desirable item.
** From September to October of 2019, Flower Crown Eevee (previously released earlier that year alongside Flower Crown Pikachu before disappearing) was made available through Research Breakthrough. While previous non-Legendary-focused Breakthroughs focused on very rare or otherwise unobtainable Pokémon (with the Snorlax breakthrough noticeably granting Snorlax with the move Body Slam, a move it can no longer learn), Eevee is naturally a very easy find in the overworld- doubly so if the weather is Partly Cloudy, and these particular Flower Crown Eevee do not learn any special unreleased or legacy moves to further distinguish them from standard wild/hatched Eevee (such as the commonly-requested Last Resort). The only added benefit to these Eevee (apart from their aforementioned crown) is their increased odds of spawning as a Shiny Eevee, which is still low.
** 12km eggs, or Strange Eggs, are quite the effort to receive, requiring the player to beat one of the Team Go Rocket leaders who are no pushovers compared to the Grunts they lead. The egg can hatch into several Pokémon that are available only in the eggs in question (Sandile, Vullaby, and Pawniard) or are extremely rare otherwise (Deino). The rest of the hatches are Pokémon that have existed as either common to uncommon wild spawns (Trubbish, Corphish, Skorupi, and Qwilfish), Raid encounters (Absol), received a Community Day entirely dedicated to them (Larvitar), or were previously available in one of the lower egg tiers. For longterm players, these Pokémon are far less desirable to hatch from a Strange Egg compared to the species exclusive to them.
* UndyingLoyalty: Captured Legendary and Mythical Pokémon (excluding Meltan and Melmetal) are explained to be fiercely loyal to their trainer to the point where they will never leave their trainer's side, and thus the player cannot use them to defend Gyms no matter if there's another Pokémon in the player's party that outclasses them in typing or stats. Their only use is to fight in battles and raids.
* UnintentionallyUnwinnable:
** With the introduction of the Pokémon Home integration, it's possible to send ''any'' Pokémon to Pokémon Home, even Pokémon that the player can only receive once, such as Victini. Sending Victini to Pokémon Home as soon as the player receives it means that they can't finish the Victini Special Research, as that requires the player to take a snapshot of Victini.
** Before eggs were moved to their own tab on the Pokémon page rather than among items, it used to be theoretically possible to create a situation where you couldn't acquire any new items, by maxing out inventory space and then filling it with only incubators; incubators cannot be discarded and are only consumed after incubating a number of eggs, but you couldn't acquire any eggs because the inventory's full of incubators.
* UnskilledButStrong:
** Gym Pokémon are controlled by an AI, not the player. As a result, they don't bother with dodging, use their basic attack at a set rate regardless of the move's actual recharge time (which in almost all cases is lower), 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 to guard gyms, so their sheer power covers their incompetence.
** Rocket GO Grunts use Shadow Pokémon with dramatically increased CP. However, they never use Protect Shields, so your Charged Moves can plow through them easily.
* VictoryByEndurance: 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. Furthermore, as you defeat Pokémon and degrade the Motivation of a gym Pokémon, you can heal up and try again. So long as your potion and restore supply isn't an issue and you can reliably beat at least one each time, victory is more or less certain barring outside interferences.
* VideoGameCaringPotential:
** As of June 2018, players have the option to befriend each other in-game. If they do this, they can send gifts to each other (among other perks). Some players have gone out of their way to befriend folks who live in remote areas with very few Pokéstops or gyms so they could send items to help them out.
** The Buddy system overhaul brings several options for this, with rewards for doing so. Playing with your 'mon increases their friendliness towards you, which reduces the distance needed to find candy for them. When they become especially friendly, they start following behind you on the map, and can help you catch wild Pokémon.
* VideoGameCrueltyPotential:
** 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 its health back as opposed to spending twice as many potions to heal it to full.
** Players can attack and take over gyms that were just conquered by other players, denying them even one coin.
** Many players won't bother purifying caught Shadow Pokémon. Willow says they're struggling and in obvious pain, but despite his words, it's very likely that a purified Shadow Pokémon will be stuck with poor stats even after purification, and some players simply won't bother with Pokémon that cost an increased amount to purify when they have no chance of being confident fighters. Furthermore, after an update, mons in their Shadow state ''gain a bonus'' that turns them into {{glass cannon}}s (increasing their attack at the expense of defense/health), they can still gain a second attack, and GO Rocket Takeover events also give players the chance to replace Frustration with a better attack by using a TM. And if that isn't enough, Niantic made purification a joke since the only bonuses purified Pokémon gain are an overall slight discount in stardust/candy and the move Return... one of the worst Normal-type moves in the game (which even got a ''{{nerf}}'' in a balance update). As a result, a lot of players are not bothering purifying their mons when the pros of their Shadow formes outweigh those of their normal/Purified formes, as many Pokémon turn out to be better attackers for gyms/raids/[=PvP=] ''only'' in their Shadow forms.
** Some players will use low CP Pokémon to defend gyms and then transfer them for candy as a way to delete them from their collection once they're defeated. Since it takes about two or three defeats to fully boot out a Pokémon from a gym (assuming their CP didn't degrade), players can mooch off other players on the same team by placing weak Pokémon in the gym to earn coins and then transferring their weak Pokémon once it's knocked out. Players can also place weak Pokémon in a gym and troll opposing players by feeding the weak Pokémon berries to keep them active and deny the enemy players entry to the gym. In short, you can use a weak Pokémon to let it get beat up over and over before giving it away to the professor.
* VideoGamePerversityPotential:
** 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 [[HelloInsertNameHere whatever nickname you've given it]], which can lead to some rather humorous lines. This has been somewhat [[VideoGamePerversityPrevention curtailed]] by filters as of trading being added.
** You can take a snapshot of [[PlayboyBunny a Lopunny or Mega Lopunny]] from its rear, close-up.
* ViolationOfCommonSense:
** PokéCoins earned for defending a gym can't be collected ''while'' defending the gym - they're automatically collected along with the defending Pokémon's return when it's defeated. This means that in areas with a low gym turnover rate, one often has to beg the opposing teams for kicking out one's defender in order to collect the coins.
** [[PlayerVersusPlayer PvP, especially GO Battle League]] has this in spades:
*** In gym battles and raids, the best IV's (appraisal) are, as one would expect, the highest possible (15 each). This is also true for the Master League. For the Great and Ultra Leagues? Not so much for most relevant Pokémon. These leagues are restricted to Pokémon with a CP of not more than 1500 and 2500, respectively, and because the Defense and Stamina (HP) stats are square-rooted in the CP calculation formula, the Attack stat influences the resulting CP much more than the other stats. This means that the best Attack IV for most relevant Pokémon in Great and Ultra League are usually ''zero'' or something very low, because then you can power up that Pokémon further before it hits the CP cap than with a high Attack IV, which results in a higher total Defense and HP while not sacrificing much total Attack.
*** The stardust ConsolationPrize you get from losing all 5 matches in a set is so significant that one of the best ways to farm a lot of stardust quickly is to gather a team of 10 CP Pokémon and let your opponents [[CurbStompBattle obliterate it]].
*** There are no bigger rewards or other incentives to have a high rating on rank 7 onwards (barring some extra stardust at the end of a season, and not counting the end-of-season rewards for rank 10). And since you cannot rank down no matter how much you lose, this means it's better to stay at as ''low'' a rating as possible in order to maximize your chances of going up against weaker opposition, and consequently get more rewards. So when your rating gets sufficiently high, it's advantageous to deliberately ''lose'' several sets, in order to "tank" your rating down to something on-par with newer and weaker players.
*** When [[OlympusMons legendaries]] were a possible encounter reward for winning 4 matches in a set (2 using a [[BribingYourWayToVictory Premium Pass]]), many players were purposefully not winning any more than 3 matches in order to ''avoid'' the encounter. This is because catching them is ''mandatory'' - you can't proceed or finish the set until you've done it. Legendaries were also the most common encounter, and are ''very'' hard to catch, often requiring several attempts even when using golden Razz berries and ultra balls, so many players saw them as a punishment rather than a reward.
* VirtualPaperDoll: Players can customize the appearance of their trainer. Most clothing options require coins, however.
* VoluntaryShapeshifter: Ditto, which can become any Pokémon, copying their appearance, moveset, and base stats perfectly (its level, however, remains the same). This even applies to catching them; Ditto disguise themselves as random Pokémon, so you never know if a Pokémon is actually a transformed Ditto.
* WeakButSkilled:
** A player good at dodging can take down a gym Pokémon leagues more powerful than their own mon.
** An additional example is lots of non-evolved Pokémon often have ''superior'' moves compared to their evolved forms, such as Haunter naturally learning Shadow Claw and Lick while Gengar doesn't have these options available as of currently, instead having the inferior Hex, or Mareep learning Thunder Shock, Discharge and Thunderbolt, which is superior to all of Ampharos' electric moves.
* WizardNeedsFoodBadly: A Pokémon assigned to a gym has a "Motivation" meter that scales the Pokémon's CP and stats, making the Pokémon weaker the less motivated it is. In addition to being lowered upon defeat (kicking the Pokémon out of the gym if depleted), it declines pretty fast over time and has to be replenished by feeding the Pokémon berries.
* YourPrincessIsInAnotherCastle: The Super Rocket Radar allows the player to track down PokéStops taken over by Giovanni, the Boss of Team GO Rocket. However, when interacting with these PokéStops, occasionally the player will find not Giovanni, but a Team GO Rocket Grunt instead, acting as a decoy, who will mock the player for getting fooled.
* YourSizeMayVary: [[DavidVsGoliath Raid Bosses are absolutely gigantic for their species while in a Gym.]] After being beaten, they shrink down significantly to something more in-line with [[VideoGame/PokemonLegendsArceus an Alpha Pokémon]], but the actual Pokémon that the player gets to catch will be a standard size for their species.
* ZergRush:
** 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 six). 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. Furthermore, multiple trainers can team up against the same gym, making victory more a matter of attrition, and Pokémon in the gym lose CP as their Motivation lowers, either from losing battles or simply over time.
** The only effective way to take down a high-difficulty Raid boss is to organize a group of people and overwhelm it with sheer numbers.
* ZeroEffortBoss: One of the possible Raid bosses in Tier 1 is [[JokeCharacter Magikarp]]. Later on, others such as Feebas, Combee and Kircketot apply as well.
[[/folder]]

* NiceHat: Pikachu has access to a total of four different hats depending on which HolidayMode is active: a witch hat during Halloween, a Santa hat during Christmas, a party hat during the franchise anniversary in February, and Ash's baseball cap during the app's anniversary in July. A hat-wearing Pikachu will keep its hat when evolved into Raichu, and any Pichu hatched from an egg acquired during event will have the hat as well. They're functional, too- any hat-wearing Pikachu can learn the quick move Present.

** Regigigas in the original games is considered totally unviable because of its Slow Start ability, which cripples any of its offensive use completely. In this game, however, abilities are non-existant, and Regigigas is able to show ''why'' hes the top dog of the Regis. It gets Giga Impact, a 200 power, 1-bar normal type STAB move that hits instantly but renders it vulnerable with a massive time lag, effectively turning it into an actual MightyGlacier. While the Normal-type cannot hit for super effective damage in any way, Normal-type attacks are easily boosted by the very common Partly Cloudy weather, indicating that a high-level one can be tucked into virtually any raid lineup during Partly Cloudy as long as both of its moves are unresisted.

** As of 18 May 2019 update, Glaceon. In core games, Glaceon suffers from weak speed stats while having incredible Special Attack and Defense stats, leading to certain problems when the target Pokémon is faster than it. In ''Go'', due to Speed stats being downplayed or non-existent, Glaceon becomes one of the strongest easy-access Pokémon available since it has great Attack and Defense stats making up for high CP in addition to being useful on most Dragon-type opponent Pokémon.

** Speaking of [[PrehistoricMonster Fossil Pokémon]], while you probably won't hear about anyone seriously trying to use Rampardos in a non spin-off game, in this game it is one of the strongest Pokémon. This is because of a combination of a sky-high 295 attack stat, passable bulk, and for some reason '''Rock Slide''' instead of Stone Edge[[note]]Rock Slide is strictly superior to Stone Edge as it is 2 bars and thus it is much more flexible[[/note]] alongside Smack Down, an incredibly powerful Rock Fast Move. Its biggest weakness in the original games, its abysmal speed, is also offset in this game, making it supreme in all raid lineups against Raid Bosses weak to Rock. In fact, it is so powerful that one can more often that not tear out 50%-70% of a Tier 3 Scyther's HP by ''itself''.
** While Kingler has the stats required to become a top tier threat, boasting Alakazam-like bulk and Machamp-like attack, its moves beg to differ as they were ''extremely'' horrid, with its sole STAB charged move being the horrid Water Pulse. This changed ''drastically'', however, in the 2019 water festival update, as it gains Crabhammer, an extremely powerful moves that elevates its DPS to exceed Kyogre and Machamp, making it one of the best {{Glass Cannon}}s in the game.
** Regigigas in the original games is considered totally unviable because of its Slow Start ability, which cripples any of its offensive use completely. However, Pokémon GO ''doesn't'' attempt to nerf it unlike Slaking. It even gets Giga Impact, a 200 power, 1-bar normal type STAB move that hits instantly but renders it vulnerable with a massive time lag, effectively turning it into an actual MightyGlacier. While the Normal-type cannot hit for super effective damage in any way, Normal-type attacks are easily boosted by the very common Partly Cloudy weather, indicating that a high-level one can be tucked into virtually any raid lineup during Partly Cloudy as long as both of its moves are unresisted.

** Bastiodon is another Pokémon that benefited heavily from the mechanics changes of GBL. In the main games, it's meant to be a StoneWall, but its typing is awful in that context, giving it two crippling 4x weaknesses to the commonly used Ground and Fighting type attacks and leaving it forgotten. However, it is finally able to play its intended role in GBL Great League due to GO's battle system being more defense focused. While its weaknesses are still there, it's easier to play around them due to Pokémon having more limited movepools. Plus, once Pokémon able to exploit its weaknesses are removed, Bastiodon becomes nigh unfaintable, especially against the major Flying-types it resists.
* AdaptationalWimp: Due to the way attack and defense were originally calculated, the game used to heavily favor Pokémon which are relatively even in both physical and special attack while giving little-to-no weight to speed. This made dedicated special attackers and FragileSpeedster Pokémon sub-par at best. This spawns a new problem, however; it makes Pokémon with [[StoneWall high defense and low attack]] have much lower CP that one with high attack and moderate defense or {{Glass Cannon}}s. In addition to that, due to the mechanics of this game, they do not have abilities or the support/status moves to make them stand out and, as a result, they become incredibly weak or even completely unviable.

** One of the feared Pokémon in both in-game playthroughs and competitve in the main-series suffers from a lack of STAB Fairy fast moves, being stuck with the lackluster Tackle and Zen Headbutt, and as a result, is unviable in most situations. That Pokémon is none other than Xerneas.

** The Gen 2 update adds [[RidiculouslyCuteCritter Blissey]], which is (in)famous in the games for being a damage sponge. Though her attack is sub-par, she has good defense and absolutely beastly stamina. Her HP is so high that she can actually ''outlast the battle timer'' when defending a gym..
** Also joining the fray is Shuckle, which boasts absurdly high defense in exchange for rock-bottom stamina and attack. Its CP is only marginally better than Magikarp. Its moves mean nothing with its terrible attack. Its only purpose is to take hits.

* VideogameCaringPotential:

** The Ultra Hero medal takes this UpToEleven and far beyond. It requires you to defeat the Team GO Rocket boss Giovanni a set number of times. Bronze requires just one victory. For a silver medal you have to do it 5 times, and for gold 20 times. The catch? You can only battle Giovanni once a ''month''. Getting silver is bad enough at almost half a year, but gold takes ''one year and 8 months'' to earn.

* HopelessBossFight: Shuckle as a Tier 3 raid boss. It has like 3000CP, but its defense is the highest of any Pokémon in the game, so it is impossible to solo. A Kyogre with rain boost will only reduce it to red before it times out, but the Kyogre won't faint.

** Illumise can be caught in North America and South America. Volbeat, on the other hand, can be caught in Asia, Australia and Europe. The same situation is repeated with the duos Lunatone/Solrock, Zangoose/Seviper, and Durant/Heatmor in those orders. [[note]](It was the other way around for Zangoose and Seviper at first, but they were later swapped, a change that also applied to Durant and Heatmor soon after they were added to the game. As for Lunatone/Solrock the regions take turns in hosting them, swapping them at solstices)[[/note]]

* RegionalBonus: There are several Pokémon that are ''continent or country-exclusive'' which can be found in the wild or hatch from 5km. eggs:
** Normal Kanto version Farfetch'd can only be caught in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, but Galarian Farfetch'd have been released worldwide.

** Mr. Mime can only be caught in Europe. In the same vein, Mime Jr. can only hatch from eggs obtained there.

** Illumise can be caught in North America and South America. Volbeat, on the other hand, can be caught in Asia, Australia and Europe. The same situation is repeated with the duos Lunatone/Solrock and Zangoose/Seviper, in those orders. [[note]](It was the other way around for Zangoose and Seviper at first, but they were later swapped; as for Lunatone/Solrock the regions take turns in hosting them, swapping them at solstices)[[/note]]

** Bouffalant can only be found in New York City and its surrounding area.

** Many items in the game are featured in the main series but have different effects; Stardust is VendorTrash in the games but is used to level up Pokémon in ''GO'', the Razz Berry is used as a Pokéblock/Poffin ingredient in the games but is used to increase capture chance/reduce flee rate here, and Pokémon candies are similar to Rare Candy/evolution stones in their ability to evolve Pokémon.

* VendorTrash: 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 ComMons.

* {{Fanservice}}: The already attractive player avatars were given costume options in the form of the "Jogger" outfit--the female avatar gets a tight midriff baring top, the male gets a tight sleeveless shirt, and both of them get [[WhoWearsShortShorts short shorts]].