Memes / Smogon

"Delicious". -Orthworm, probably.

Smogon is widely considered to be the premier competitive Pokémon website. As such, it is no surprise that the site is rife with various jokes and memes.

Sitewide Memes

• After a Pokémon Online moderator named Somalia lost to a Jellicent with Energy Ball and thus proceeded to use his moderator privileges to systematically rageban all members of the Smogon PO server and subsequently was banned, Energy Ball Jellicent has become a regular sight. Discussion thread here.
• VILOPLUMES WITH SUBSTITUTES ^ExplanationFrom a random Pokemon Online's user profile discovered by Smogonites, in which the user in question asked opponents (in ALL CAPS, mind you) to not use Vileplume or the move Substitute, and then said VILOPLUMES WITH SUBSTITUTES were even worse. For those unfamiliar with competitive play, Substitute is a common move, and Vileplume is badly outclassed at its job.
  • wanna? lose ^ExplanationAnother Pokemon Online user profile. Note that this was the entirety of their message.
• think about bissey ^ExplanationSomeone posts a log of a bad competitive match with no explanation other than the thread title.
• Pimpoleon, King of the (BAN ME PLEASE) Cup.
• Edgar Clause. ^ExplanationA certain battle request◊ by an obvious scrub has led to various competitive battlers jokingly asking for battles with the "Edgar Clause".
• Focus Miss ^ExplanationThe move Focus Blast is necessary on some competitive sets, due to it being the strongest specially-based Fighting-type attack appearing in most movepools… but its accuracy, at 70%, is far lower than is typically acceptable for competitive play, since it has the same chance to miss as Scald has to burn. Despite it being a useful move otherwise, Focus Blast is infamous for missing at inopportune times, costing the user the game, or at least considerable momentum, and is the cause of many a Rage Quit. The move has attracted a sizeable Hatedom as a result of this.
  • Stone Miss ^ExplanationStone Edge is essentially the Rock-typed physical coverage equivalent of Focus Blast, and is hated just as much, if not even more, despite actually having higher accuracy at 80% (though its power is also somewhat lower (100 rather than 120)).
  • Fire Miss ^ExplanationSimilar to the above, only with the move Fire Blast. Especially since Fire Blast comes up not infrequently on movesets in Randoms play, forcing crossed fingers as to whether it will even hit or not.
  • FUCKING BLIND BIRD ^ExplanationMoltres is a very powerful Pokémon in Smogon's RU tier, but gets a bad rep for a similar reason to Focus Blast and Stone Edge: both Fire Blast and Hurricane have infuriatingly low accuracy and cause Moltres to miss at the worst times, especially during important matches. This bad reputation earned Moltres the nickname mentioned in the meme name (It should be noted that rain will grant Hurricane perfect accuracy, but Moltres is otherwise badly hindered by rain, since rain weakens Fire-type moves and strengthens Water-type moves). This nickname has also been given to Tornadus's Therian form due to relying on moves like Focus Blast, Hurricane, and Bleakwind Storm, all of which are prone to missing.
  • Blind Washing Machine^ExplanationSimilar to Moltres, Rotom-Wash is one of the most infamous High-Tier Scrappies in competitive... that often has to rely on moves that have a stupidly high chance to miss, such as Hydro Pump, Will-O-Wisp, and Thunder Wave. Regardless of whether you're running an offensive or defensive set, it often feels like you have to cross your fingers every time Wash Rotom attacks.
• i have a bad team ^ExplanationThe username of a player who trolled Smogon's tiering system into near-oblivion, to the point that Smogon had to rework the whole thing specifically to prevent her method from ever working again. Sometimes also referred to as "Sticky Barb Emboar", after one of her especially notorious item choices. Here is an explanation of how it was done.
• The Mighty Metang ^ExplanationAn instance similar what happened above with the user i have a bad team, except in this instance the Pokémon moved was a single Metang. The nickname of the Metang used by this player was THE MIGHTY METANG, hence the name of the meme.
  • This was also the name given to Metang's RU analysis, when a user called Molk played a huge number of RU matches with a team containing Metang, causing it to be Kicked Upstairs from NU despite being totally useless in RU. The writer of the analysis clearly thought so, anyway.
• brake stupid tree ^ExplanationThe most notorious case of Rouge Angles of Satin in a warstory completely littered with it.
• Are smogon ruining the metagame? ^ExplanationA thread made by a random person instantly gets the community to Self Deprecate itself with multiple responses of "yes" and the thread being added to Smogon's Greatest Hits before being moved to Trou Du Cul.
• The Weather Wars ^ExplanationGen V's Dream World gave Politoed and Ninetales the abilities Drizzle and Drought, respectively, making permanent Rain/Sun possible outside of the Uber tier for the first time. Between this and the number of Pokémon who can abuse the buffs weather gives to certain types/moves, the metagame became dominated mostly by teams built to abuse their weather of choice. The "War" part came from the fact that two opposing weather teams need to constantly switch in their Weather-Control Machine to keep their weather up; the war is "won" when one side's weather inducer has been knocked out or cannot switch in without fainting, leaving the other team's weather in play. This became a very controversial subject in discussions of the metagame, and the resulting uproar was likely a key factor in weather-inducing Abilities getting nerfed to only have their weather last for as long as weather from the respective move from Gen VI onwards.
• [DEBUG] natural immunity.[DEBUG] natural immunity.[DEBUG] natural immunity.[DEBUG] natural immunity.[DEBUG] natural immunity.[DEBUG] natural immunity. ^ExplanationDuring a Custom Game battle on Pokémon Showdown (Smogon's simulator), this pops up every turn in large quantities.
• Use Numel ^ExplanationWhen the Swag Play tactic was being discussed, some users brought up this Pokemon, by virtue of it being immune both to confusion (through its hidden ability, Own Tempo, which it loses upon evolving to Camerupt) and Thunder Wave (but not paralysis in general), and therefore, theoretically, a hard counter to this strategy. The catch? Numel is a terrible Pokémon in every other way.
• Aegislash THE CRUMBLER ^ExplanationIn Aegislash's XY Analysis preview, one of the sets listed was a Choice Band set, to which a mod retorted the usefulness of by saying "Being able to click Shadow Ball and see everything crumble is even better believe me." The name spread to other website to describe Mixed Aegislash with maxed out offensive stats and a Life Orb that would hit as hard as possible. The official analysis set for Mixed Aegislash set was even later named The Crumbler.
• Free/Unban x, y counters it ^ExplanationA sarcastic retort to players who think something shouldn't be banned or should be unbanned because a counter exists to it, even though most counters to Game Breakers tend to be useless outside of countering them. One of the most common versions of this is "Free Kyogre, Gastrodon counters it," since Kyogre is infamous for being able to kill almost anything in the game in two hits with Water Spout (even things that resist it, like Ferrothorn, or Eviolite Chansey, the most Specially Defensive Pokémon in existence). The only reason Gastrodon is a "counter" is because it's immune to Water Spout thanks to Storm Drain, but can't really do anything back to it.
• Elephant of Lame/Average Tusk^ExplanationA name for Donphan, a Pokémon that is completely outclassed at what it's designed to do by a crap ton of other options, but was OU in Generation V solely due to the number of bad players using it. It became especially hated when it was discovered that people were using it more than legitimately good Mons like Keldeo, Terrakion, and KYUREM-B. The former nickname originates from the OU Viability Thread where players were forced to rank it due to it being OU, but gave it the lowest possible ranking and removed it a couple times because the analysis writers refused to make a write-up for it (non-OU Pokémon can still make the list if they are deemed viable enough by the analyses writers and/or forum moderators). Amusingly enough, Donphan's Ancient Paradox form Great Tusk proved to be excellent in Overused, leading to jokes about how Donphan was overshadowed by its grandfather — leading to this meme's resurgence in the form of the latter nickname, obviously a riff of Great Tusk.
• BAN DRUDDIGON ^ExplanationThere's an inside joke in the RU playerbase and several other areas of the site that Druddigon is the most broken Pokémon in existence. One user in particular, TROP, has such an immense personal hatred for Druddigon that he's well known on sites such as GameFAQs as "the guy who hates Druddigon".
  • 100 Reasons Why Druddigon Should Be Banned ^ExplanationA list of "reasons" why Druddigon should be banned.
• RU Pride ^ExplanationDuring Generation 5, a user by the name of tsunami would ask people on IRC for 5 random Pokémon (nicknamed after the people who suggested them) to make up a team he would battle with live for the chat. The random teams were eventually dubbed "RU Pride" for only using Pokémon tiered RU or lower, even in UU or OU matches.
  • Mightyena ^ExplanationThe last Pokémon on the team was always a Mightyena nicknamed after tsunami. It was discovered to be legitimately dangerous since it could solo unprepared teams after a Moxie boost.
  • "Fuck misclick" ^Explanation tsunami would say this occasionally to fake out his opponent when sending out Mightyena or during 50/50 situations. It actually worked.
• 4drag2mag^ExplanationA team composed of 4 Dragon-types and 2 Magnet Pull users. The Magnet Pull users (usually Magnezone and Magneton) would trap and eliminate Steel-types so the Dragons could spam Outrage without being walled and pretty much assure victory. It was at its peak in Gens IV and V but died down when Fairies were introduced in Gen VI. A mutation, "DragMag", refers to any team with a Dragon-type and offensive Steel-type regardless if they're following the original strategy or not.
• Flyspam/Birdspam^ExplanationA team of Talonflame with Mega Pinsir or Staraptor (or both) as partners. One member would soften up the checks/counters of the others to the point that they were too weak to do their job walling, letting the other members sweep without resistance. The name comes from the fact that they're all Flying-types and their go-to move is Brave Bird (Talonflame and Staraptor) or Aerialate boosted Return (Mega Pinsir).
• SNEAKY PEBBLES ^ExplanationA Fan Nickname of Stealth Rock, popular among those who view it as a severely overused move. Nicknames for Stealth Rock are common, but this seems to be the most popular.
• Smogonites not knowing what counters are ^ExplanationGenerated by people who can't stand their favorite Pokémon getting kicked to Ubers and who still insist there ARE counters for them, so don't ban them.
  • Smogon-haters can't tell what's broken ^ExplanationThe counterpart joke, used to maintain that Smogon rears Pokémon's otherwise chaotic metagame into something actually playable.
• OH MY GOD KILL ^ExplanationA guy who decided his random battle foe did not deserve to beat him, so he stopped playing and ranted for several hours at his opponent (a normal battle takes about 5-10 minutes). Even though he lost by timer, he still claimed endlessly that nobody had won because he had an Arcanine standing on the field, despite the fact that the enemy outnumbered him in surviving mons and was going to OHKO him that turn with Mega Aerodactyl.
• Funbro◊^ExplanationA rather infamous build using Slowbro that gained a lot of popularity at the start of Gen 6. It was discovered that Slowbro holding Leppa Berry coupled with the moves Slack Off and Recycle could potentially infinitely stall out an opposing Pokémon until they were forced to run out of moves and then struggle to death. Naturally, this also became a magnet for griefing. The real breaking point for the Community that finally led to the build getting banned was that people started using the move Heal Pulse to heal the opponent (and Block to prevent them from switching out), which could result in a battle that would literally never end unless one player forfeits; this caused Smogon to adopt the Endless Battle Clause.
• (BAN ME PLEASE)^ExplanationThe censor Smogon Forums uses to filter out certain slurs, such as the N-word. Many forumites have taken to using this as a Gag Censor.
• "Unfortunate" doesn't begin to describe my series./"i fucking had you"^ExplanationIn 2019, competitive Showdown! player Lavos played in the Smogon Classic V tournament against fellow player McMeghan. Despite running three different checks against McMeghan's Gyarados (Breloom, Thunder Punch Jirachi, and Heatran), Lavos was met with some of the most abysmal luck to ever befall a competitive Pokémon player, with McMeghan connecting a 20% flinch chance from Waterfall against all three mons, costing Lavos the game. Lavos, who was also suffering from competitive pressure and preexisting stress from the community, proceeded to Rage Quit from competitive Pokémon and posted a lengthy, three-paragraph rant lashing out at the community before getting banned. The rant subsequently became famous and was turned into one of Smogon's most infamous copypastas.
• Gay Slowbro/Homophobic Ferrothorn ^ExplanationA post on /r/Stunfisk depicts a fake "Theorymons" post (A post that gives an idea for a change to a Pokémon or new Pokémon/move/ability/item altogether that promotes discussion on how such a change would affect the metagame) where Slowbro comes out as gay and dating Exeggutor, with most Pokémon in OU being accepting while Ferrothorn ends up being a Heteronormative Crusader. This became a Running Gag on the subreddit, with developments to the "story" and many spinoffs such as Azumarill coming out as a trans boy and Nidoqueen and Nidoking getting a divorce.
  • The way I see it, Kyogre is surrounded. What's under the ocean? That's right, more earth. ^ExplanationThe top comment of the post, a Non Sequitur that the author later explains was a comment intended for another post from another subreddit. The comment became just as popular, now being referenced whenever the Gay Slowbro post or Kyogre in general is talked about on the subreddit.
• Ice Punch Dusknoir beats Lando-T ^ExplanationA post on r/pokemon regarding the sub's persistent vitriol against Smogon amidst the Generation IX OU ban wave lead by Flutter Mane and Houndstone lead to a user smugly claiming that he beat an "OU pro" on Showdown by landing a crit Ice Punch with Dusknoir (a mon with virtually zero competitive viability since its introduction in Gen IV) against a Therian Forme Landorus (one of the best staple mons in OU meta), conveniently ignoring details such as ladder placement, opponent skill, and the fact that it would have not been a One-Hit KO had the user not rolled the 4.1% chance to Critical Hit. The post quickly became an in-joke on r/Stunfisk as a rather succinct example of how poorly informed the average Pokémon player is about how competitive balance works in Pokémon and their continued attempts to insist that any mon is good in competitive by cherry-picking fringe case fights against low-ranked players as "proof".
  • Ice Punch Dusknoir is canon ^ExplanationOne of the static overworld Tera Pokemon in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet's DLC is a Tera Ice Dusclops with Ice Punch, adding fuel to the jokes about how "good" its evolution is with the move. The epilogue built on this further and spawned even more jokes, as its Nemona fight has some of the highest levels ever for an NPC and one of the Pokémon she can have on that team is a Dusknoir with Ice Punch.
• Smogon loves stall.^ExplanationStall, a controversial play style that involves using defensive pokémon to wall attackers and either force them to struggle to death or wear them down with status and entry hazards. Due to Smogon bans typically revolving around offensive threats and rarely, if ever, around defensive threats like Toxapex (since it's far easier to determine if an offensive mon is overpowered), many have used this once-stock phrase to joke that these bans are purely to make stall a more viable strategy, and mock the casual players who unironically believe the sentiment. This is often combined with claims that Smogon is controlled by Big Stall, a secret cabal of stall-loving users.
• 252+ SpA Choice Specs Beads of Ruin Tera Fire Chi-Yu Overheat in Sun: Guaranteed OHKO. ^Explanation Chi-Yu's damage output due to Beads of Ruin gives it the highest overall special attack in the game, and can be put even higher when wearing Choice Specs, Terastallized into a Fire type, and in Sun, allowing its Overheat to OHKO most Pokémon, including bulky resists and the best special wall, Blissey. The sheer damage output is used in jokes due to how outrageously high it is, such as in this example◊ or this one◊.
• so just fuck democracy right?^ExplanationAn infamous rant by a redditor named rvrchasethesehoes complaining about Espathra getting banned from OU became a popular copypasta similar to the Lavos rant.
• "CAN YOU GUYS NOT READ?!"^ExplanationComes from a rant posted by a troll trying to make Eevee and Absol work in competitive play, in tiers far above where each of them is actually viable. The rant as a whole became a meme due to its length and odd phrasing, but the title is what it's known by.
• Unfortunately, with this gen's UU resembling last gen's OU ^ExplanationA popular line from from competitive Pokémon YouTube channel False Swipe Gaming, usually said by narrator Kellen when prefacing a huge Power Creep jump that renders the currently-discussed mon no longer viable in OU.
  • This gen's UU is this gen's OU ^ExplanationA derivative line used to describe the competitive environment of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, which saw such a drastic spike in power creep thanks to the new mons and a metagame so volatile that mons were constantly shifting tiers for several months, including several mons hitting UU that would later be banned from OU, HOME releasing several new threats that pushed practically half of the previous OU meta threats down to UU, and meta changes resulting in former OU staples like Garchomp and Heatran being forced down to UU, among other things.
• UU hoarding spinners.^ExplanationIn SV UU, several Pokémon with hazard removal, such as Forretress, Toedscruel, and Tsareena, were stuck in UU despite having no niche there, causing UU to have a disproportionate amount of Pokémon with Rapid Spin. Coupled with the reduced distribution of Defog, this sharply reduced hazard removal options for lower tiers. UU has become infamous for keeping every Pokémon with Rapid Spin in the tier regardless of their actual viability, forcing the lowest tiers to use NFEs like Fletchinder and Quaxwell just to keep hazards off the field, which led to memes like this one◊. With Toedscruel and Tsareena dropping from UU in June of 2023 and Forretress following suit a couple of months later, this is largely no longer the case, though hazard removal options in the lower tiers remain strained. When Iron Treads, UU's best form of removal, rose back to OU in February of 2023, many people saw it as karma for UU hoarding spinners previously in the generation.
• Cocaine Bear.^ExplanationA popular nickname for Ursaluna, who quickly became infamous following the HOME update for Scarlet and Violet due to the obscene damage output its STAB Facade could achieve thanks to Guts, Swords Dance, and Terastalization. After Ursaluna ultimately ended up underperforming, this nickname went to Bloodmoon Ursaluna, who got banned to Ubers with a majority of over 90%, instead.
  • Five Turns At Trick Room.^ExplanationJokes comparing Ursaluna to Freddy Fazbear are also very common, with the phrase "Five Turns At Trick Room" being popular in memes due to Ursaluna's widespread usage on Trick Room teams.
• Tera Electric Air Balloon Shedinja ^ExplanationWhen Terastalization was first revealed, many people immediately brought up the idea of giving Shedinja the ability to Terastalize into the Electric type, whose only weakness is Ground, alongside an Air Balloon, an item that gives the holder an immunity to Ground types, leaving it with no weaknesses. Since Shedinja's ability, Wonder Guard, protects it from any types not super effective to it, this would give it an immunity to nearly everything. The concept was shared around by both people who thought it would be unstoppable, and people who think it would be a mere gimmick set with plenty of counters. When Gen 9 content was released, people got a taste of this set, and found it was every bit as much of a Game-Breaker as people entailed it to be, if not moreso since Cyclizar's Shed Tail gave it a Substitute, blocking status moves and giving it a complete immunity to everything short of sandstorm and Mold Breaker.
• Duraludon, God of Little Cup... for five minutes.^ExplanationThe August 2023 Pokemon Direct revealed an evolution for Duraludon, thus making it eligible for the Little Cup format (which consists of unevolved Pokemon obtainable at level 5). Cue jokes about Duraludon getting insta-banned from the format due to being far stronger than anything deliberately designed to be a first-stage Pokemon; Duraludon has a higher base stat total (535) than every fully-evolved starter with the exception of Swampert who it ties with, an amazing typing in Steel/Dragon, and the ability to use Eviolite to boost its superb Defense stat even further. Sure enough, Duraladon would get banned from Little Cup shortly before the new Pokemon from Indigo Disk were added, though an official Little Cup Tournamant that legalized Duraludon was hosted to allow players to basically see what would have happened if it was allowed. The Doubles Little Cup format on the other hand did allow it in due to the logic that it wouldn't be as overcentralizing as it would be in singles. They weren't entirely wrong but it was still far too much for the format to handle and Duraludon was quickly banned from there as well.
  • "You're fighting children?" "We are at the same evolution stage, Jerry."^ExplanationPokémon Scarlet and Violet gave an evolution to a few Pokémon that didn't (more notably Dunsparce and Duraludon), making them eligible for the Little Cup format. However, since they were intended to be fully evolved, those Pokémon are far too strong for the format to handle. Cue jokes about adults fighting children.
• Eight Fucking Ground Types ^ExplanationA card◊ based on the Eight Fucking Bears meme but with Gliscor, Landorus-T, Garchomp, Ting-Lu, Great Tusk, Iron Treads, Ursaluna and Clodsire over the bears and Heatran (who has a double weakness to Ground) responding with "holy shit".
• Puns on Pokémon names combined with "It's over" ^ExplanationIn the Stunfisk subreddit, several puns similar to the "It's Joever" meme started popping up, usually to lament a pokémon's drop in viability. This was most commonly done for Garchomp, as Garchomp was hanging onto SV OU by a thread, prompting many to claim "It's Garchover".
• Landorus-Tusk ^ExplanationGreat-Tusk is a very strong, bulky Ground type with good utility moves and a good defensive profile, causing it to be #1 in usage for a while, to the point where it was on over 50% of teams. This has resulted in comparisons to Landorus-Therian, a similarly strong and bulky Ground type with good utility options, that was ranked #1 in usage throughout the previous two Generations, which has lead to people making a fused version of the two of them, called Landorus-Tusk◊. Smogon's official Twitter account is in on the joke, putting Landorus-Tusk in the background behind Great Tusk whenever new OU usage stats are released.
• Regieleki is an Ice type ^ExplanationRegieleki has a lot of things going for it, but it has two major flaws in a mono-Electric typing and a shallow movepool, giving it a very rough time against Ground types. Gen IX's Terastalization mechanic fixes this issue by not only allowing it to change its typing but also use Tera Blast, and since players are likely to try and swap a Ground type into Regieleki in an attempt to beat it, Tera Ice is an extremely favorable option for Regieleki since it loses the defensive weakness of Electric while gaining the offensive presence of Ice. This was so common that it lead to the Running Gag that Regieleki was actually just an Ice type. A related meme states that Regice is the second best Ice-type Regi.
• The Porygon-Z Theorem ^ExplanationA theorem in the vein of False Swipe Gaming's "Rampardos Theorem", which states that any hypothetical change to the metagame, whether it be the addition of a new Pokémon, move, item, or something else, will make Porygon-Z broken. The joke arose from r/stunfisk's Theorymon Thursday posts, where posters regularly have ideas for new moves and the like that would make Porygon-Z overpowered.
• Arceus-Steel (Arceus-Flying) ^ExplanationA famous Showdown screenshot of someone using Earthquake against a Flying-type Arceus (who is immune to it) nicknamed to seem like it was instead a Steel-type (which would have similar colors). When playing Ubers and Ubers Underused, expect to run into at least one of these or a Fire-type Arceus named Arceus-Fighting, respectively.
• Beat the UU allegations^ExplanationThough the phenomenon had happened before, in the SV metagame it became common for Pokemon residing in OU to eventually drop so much out of favor they hanged on by a thread on the tier and were close to dropping to UU but didn't for months as their usage kept them up. Most notably were Iron Treads, Ceruledge and Garchomp with their initial goodwill vanishing as the meta stabilized with the coming DLCs; as such any time a Pokemon ended up on the cutoff line but didn't drop for a prolonged amount of time the players would joke that they kept "beating" the allegations of them being UU material until the time came when the Pokemon finally dropped to the tier.
• Iron Mugulis^ExplanationA meme from Jimothy Cool's YouTube channel, depicting a Future Pokémon shaped like a mug with incredibly broken stats, as a play on Iron Jugulis's weird-sounding name and underwhelming stats compared to Hydreigon. Similar memes include Paradox Pokémon with names like Iron Fellow (the "future form" of Spoink) and Old Money (the "past form" of Gholdengo).
• What if paradox Pokémon had hidden abilities?^ExplanationThis meme began when a reddit user created a Theorymon post assigning theoretical hidden abilities to all the paradox Pokémon. This included some hilariously broken choices like Huge Power, an ability that DOUBLES a Pokémon's attack stat, as well as a few underwhelming abilities that wouldn't be used over their existing one. People began posting satirical parodies of this post. A lot of satirical parodies. So many satirical parodies that others began making parodies of other parodies. The meme mutated faster than a virus, and it got so bad that the moderators of the subreddit banned the topic from Theorymon and Stinkposts.
• C-rank: Arceus-Bug, Crocalor, Cutiefly, Darkrai, Dialga-Origin... ^ExplanationUbers UU, originally known as UUbers, is a newly proposed metagame as of late 2023, consisting of the Pokémon that are banned from OU but don't see much usage in Ubers. (It took until gen 9 to have enough Ubers for this purpose.) Two Pokémon that see quite a lot of use in the main Ubers tier are Skeledirge, as possibly the best Unaware user around, and Ribombee, as the clear best Sticky Web setter in the game. Since they have clear niches in Ubers, they aren't allowed in Ubers UU, so some people have taken to running their far weaker pre-evolutions Crocalor and Cutiefly to fill those niches instead. This being Ubers, that means they get listed alongside all the extremely powerful legendary Pokémon in the tier, and because they can actually fill those niches reasonably well, the Viability Rankings thread at one point listed these two not-fully-evolved Pokémon as being equally viable to popular Legendaries like Arceus, Dialga (admittedly, the worst forms of Arceus and Dialga that get thoroughly overshadowed by their other versions) and Darkrai (outclassed by Chi-Yu as a Dark-type special attacker and unable to threaten the top mon of the tier Magearna). Cutiefly is especially funny because it's a tiny insect with a base stat total of 304, easily in the bottom 20% of Pokémon overall. Listed next to Arceus, literally every stat or number about Cutiefly other than its Speed is less than half of what Arceus has. The meme died down when Galvantula, a Sticky Web setter superior to Cutiefly in literally every way, fell to Ubers UU.
• Why the fuck is Terrakion in PU^ExplanationWhen Terrakion was introduced to Gen IX, it was released alongside its Future Paradox form, Iron Boulder, who considered its superior in every way in OU. A combination of Smogon's tiering system and stiff competition from Pokemon like Great Tusk or the aforementioned Iron Boulder caused Terrakion to have so little usage in the tier that it dropped to PU, below even Pokemon like Meganium. While it was obviously kicked out of the tier almost instantly, it's not uncommon for the uninitiated (or even the initiated) to express shock that such a powerful Pokemon fell so cartoonishly far. It's often used as an example of the severity of Generation IX's Power Creep as well.
• Gallade as a rain setter in UU^ExplanationA set concept in /r/Stunfisk, turned into a running joke for being a well-thought-out set to make a mon do something it's not good at.
• Zekrom Kick ^ExplanationA Theorymon Post suggesting buffs to Reshiram and Zekrom by giving them new moves became popular due to the simplicity of the 4 new moves' (Zekrom Punch, Zekrom Kick, Reshiram Pulse, and Reshiram Beam) names, with Zekrom Kick in particular being the most popular, being treated as it pulling Zekrom out of the hole to being a strong Uber.
• "I don't know if the [Pokémon] is [common set] or [other common set] until I watch inside the box" (something else entirely) "Shut up"^note This meme branching off the Schrödinger's Cat meme took off to widespread popularity in the competitive battling scene, being repurposed and redrawn for all kinds of Pokémon that force opponents to make wild guesses as to what sort of moveset it's using, such as Kingambit.
• Mushroom Pokemon working at McDonald's ^Explanation Following the controversial ban on Sleep moves, including Spore, memes about the mushroom-based Pokemon such as Amoonguss working at McDonald's due to losing their niche became popular.

Create-a-Pokémon-related Memes

• Colossoil, one of the CAP Pokémon in the form of a well-over-eight-feet-tall brown narwhal with an ability called Rebound, is said to be good at basketball.
• Gub Nogard ^ExplanationOne of the proposed names for Miasmaw, which is literally "Dragon Bug" backwards. The name became a bit of an in-joke during and even after Miasmaw's process.
• Drip Camel^ExplanationSaharaja is often referred to as such due to its fancy, sultan-like outfit and as a reference to this meme.
• Malaconda's entire existence.^ExplanationMalaconda was created to make BW OU's sun teams more flexible, especially when it came to answering the dominant Eon duo. However, due to being built around an already-niche playstyle and having a poor typing (Grass/Dark) outside of checking the Eon Duo (and even then it could get nailed by Hidden Power Fire), Malaconda struggled even during its debut generation. After Pokémon X and Y nerfed weather abilities by making them last only 5 to 8 turns, Sun as a playstyle was essentially dead in the ground, as was any hope for Malaconda being viable. Because of its fundamentally flawed competitive concept, Malaconda can't be properly buffed outside of a drastic overhaul, making it the butt of many jokes in the CAP community.
• Aurumoth is property of bugmaniacbob.^ExplanationThe topic leader for Aurumoth's process, bugmaniacbob, was known for being quite... eccentric and obsessed with Bug-types. He infamously rigged the voting process to create what was basically his dream Game-Breaker Bug-type pseudo, despite the Pokémon being supposed to embody risk vs. reward. This forced CAP to completely overhaul the process so that Topic Leaders couldn't pick and choose what options made it to the polls, and Aurumoth was Nerfed in subsequent generations as a result. In turn, BMB became an in-joke among CAP fans, even being referenced on Aurumoth's April Fools' Day backsprite◊.

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