The Unreliable Narration
The Pokédex. It is the quintessential companion, the digital encyclopedia that defines a trainer’s journey in Pokémon World. It is presented as the definitive, scientific authority on every Pokémon species. Yet, for decades, its entries have been a wellspring of cognitive dissonance—a repository of contradictory data, biological impossibilities, and outright ghost stories. This has led fans to a radical conclusion: the Pokédex is not an authority. It is a collection of rumors, and it is lying to you.
The Foundational Conspiracy: The Pokédex is Written by Children
Professor Oak’s Confession & The Ten-Year-Old Scientist
The most pervasive and foundational theory posits that the Pokédex is not the work of trained researchers, but of the ten-year-old trainers sent into the world to “complete” it. The evidence is right in the opening monologue of Red & Blue. Professor Oak explicitly states: “To make a complete guide on all the Pokémon in the world… That was my dream! But, I’m too old! I can’t do it! So, I want you two to fulfill my dream for me!” .
The implication is seismic. The Pokédex is not filled with peer-reviewed data. It is a crowdsourced, unsupervised nature journal written by a child who has, minutes prior, captured a creature and is now extrapolating its entire biology, history, and behavior based on a single encounter . This explains the wild inconsistencies, the hyperbole, and the entries that read like campfire legends. A ten-year-old encountering a Banette would absolutely conclude it is a “cursed plushie seeking revenge.” A ten-year-old would absolutely write that Magcargo’s body temperature is 18,000°F without any means of measurement .
This reframes the entire Pokémon League system. The Gym Challenge is not merely a sport; it is a rite of passage and a mandatory field research internship. Each badge is a progress report. The Champion is not just a powerful trainer, but the valedictorian of this bizarre, continent-wide educational program .
The “PokeTumblr” Hypothesis
An extension of this theory, born from fan forums, argues that the Pokédex functions less like a scientific database and more like “PokeTumblr”—an early-stage Wikipedia where anyone can edit or assert anything as fact without sources . Some entries are based on genuine observation. Others are based on rumors, myths, and “just friggen loopy” assumptions . This lack of editorial oversight explains why the Pokédex can simultaneously claim Latios can “outspeed a jet” while Purugly, a fat cat, has a higher in-game Speed stat . The entries are not lies; they are unverified testimonials.
The Cara Liss Conspiracy: The Pokédex Entries Were Made Up on the Spot
The Galar Fossil Hoax
If the “written by kids” theory explains the older entries, the Galar fossils provide forensic proof that the Pokédex is still being actively fabricated. The four hybrid fossil Pokémon—Dracovish, Arctovish, Dracozolt, and Arctozolt—are created by Cara Liss, a researcher who mismatches the front half of one extinct species with the back half of another .
In the anime, Ash and Goh visit Cara Liss. She attempts to revive Arctovish and Dracozolt. The fossils get mixed up. She accidentally creates Dracovish and Arctozolt instead. Her reaction is the key: she is not disturbed. She is not curious about the discrepancy. She simply makes up new theories on the spot to align with the creatures she has accidentally created .
The conspiracy is direct: Cara Liss wrote the Pokédex entries for these Pokémon. She did not discover ancient life. She created chimeric abominations and then fabricated a natural history to legitimize her Frankensteinian experiments . The Pokédex claims these creatures once existed. The anime proves they never did. The Pokédex is not recording facts; it is validating a forgery.
The Paradox Conspiracy: The Pokédex as a Paranormal Magazine
The Scarlet & Violet Red Flag
The Scarlet & Violet games escalated this suspicion into a deliberate narrative theme. The Pokédex entries for Paradox Pokémon from the opposite version are framed with a bizarre, skeptical qualifier. In Pokémon Scarlet, the Violet-exclusive “Iron” Paradoxes are described as creatures “very similar to” beings “covered exclusively by a paranormal magazine,” with no actual proof of existence or reliability .
Consider these examples:
- Iron Moth is described in Scarlet as a UFO sent to spy on humanity.
- Scream Tail is claimed to have existed one billion years ago—a figure that predates the known fossil record of the Pokémon world (dated to 300 million years ago) by 700 million years .
These are not scientific descriptions. They are conspiracy theories recorded as fact. Arven himself states that “nothing adds up” about the time machine and its creations . The theory argues that this is not a coincidence or a writing oversight. It is a deliberate red flag planted by the developers to signal to the player that the Pokédex is, at best, an unreliable narrator, and at worst, an active participant in a cover-up. The “paranormal magazine” is not a source; it is a mirror. The Pokédex is the magazine .
The Kadabra Problem: When the Pokédex Contradicts Itself
The Boy Who Became a Pokémon
Perhaps the single most destabilizing entry in the entire Pokédex belongs to Kadabra. The Pokémon Red/Blue entry states, verbatim: “It happened one morning – a boy with extrasensory powers awoke in bed transformed into Kadabra” .
This entry is a paradox engine. If a human boy transformed into a Kadabra, then:
- Kadabra is not a distinct species; it is a transient state of a human.
- Abra and Alakazam are therefore also stages of this human transformation.
- The species reproduces via breeding, yet one of its members was once a child.
Theories attempting to resolve this have ranged from the literal (the Pokémon world has a chronic, undocumented metamorphic disease) to the metaphysical (the entry is a corrupted memory from the distant past). However, within the “unreliable narrator” framework, a simpler answer emerges: the entry is a ghost story. It is not a scientific observation. It is a campfire tale about a missing child that some ten-year-old trainer overheard, believed, and entered into their Pokédex as fact . The entry’s persistence across generations is not evidence of its truth; it is evidence of academic inertia.
The Parasect Problem: The Pokédex Describes a Murder in Progress
The Cordyceps Chronicle
The Paras line presents a different kind of unreliability: the Pokédex is not lying, but it is reporting a tragedy as a static fact. The Red/Blue entry for Parasect states that it is a “host-parasite pair in which the parasite mushroom has taken over the host bug” .
The theory, popularized in the wake of The Last of Us, argues that the Pokédex is describing an active, ongoing biological takeover. The mushroom on Paras’s back is not a symbiotic partner; it is a cordyceps-like fungus that is slowly consuming its host. By the time it evolves into Parasect, the process is complete. The host is dead. The creature walking around is the fungus, puppeteering a corpse .
The conspiracy is that the Pokédex, by presenting this as a neutral biological fact, is normalizing a horror. It is not documenting a species; it is documenting a parasitic extinction event in slow motion.
The Cubone-Kangaskhan Conspiracy: The Pokédex is Misidentifying Orphans
The Skull and the Pouch
Perhaps the most emotionally charged theory linking multiple Pokédex entries is the longstanding speculation that Cubone is not a distinct species, but an orphaned Baby Kangaskhan .
The evidence is circumstantial but compelling:
- A Baby Kangaskhan, removed from its mother’s pouch and depicted without its mother, bears a striking resemblance to the description of a Cubone without its skull.
- Cubone‘s Pokédex entry states it wears the skull of its deceased mother. Kangaskhan is a maternal species that carries its young in a pouch.
- The logistical impossibility of every Cubone having a deceased mother (how does the species reproduce?) vanishes if Cubone is not a species at all, but a tragic developmental detour caused by maternal death .
The theory posits a grim mechanism: a Baby Kangaskhan that loses its mother before maturity does not grow into a Kangaskhan. Deprived of the nurturing pouch environment and the maternal bond, it develops differently—smaller, scrappier, more defensive. It fashions a helmet from the only remains it has. The Pokédex, encountering this orphaned creature, did not recognize it as a Kangaskhan. It classified it as a new species, and the error has propagated through generations of Pokédex data ever since .
The conspiracy, then, is not that the Pokédex is lying. It is that the Pokédex is cataloguing grief and calling it taxonomy.
The Gengar-Clefable Conspiracy: The Pokédex is Describing Metaphysics
The Shadow and the Source
Another enduring theory connects two visually disparate but geometrically identical species: Gengar and Clefable .
The theory posits that Gengar is not a distinct spectral entity, but the living shadow of a Clefairy or Clefable. Clefairy, associated with the moon and possessing unique supernatural properties, may have the latent ability to cast off its own shadow, which then animates as an independent, mischievous, and resentful being. This explains their identical body shape, their contrasting color schemes (pink vs. purple), and their shared association with lunar energy.
The Pokédex, lacking a framework for metaphysical reproduction, simply lists Gengar as a “Ghost Pokémon.” It does not record the source. It does not record the separation. It records the echo and calls it an original .
The Ditto-Mew-MissingNo Trinity: The Pokédex is Recording Failed Experiments
The Cinnabar Lab Leak
The Pokédex entry for Porygon states it is “programming code from a computer.” . This establishes a clear precedent: man-made Pokémon exist, and the Pokédex documents them without disclosing their origin.
The theory extends this to Ditto and MissingNo. Ditto is primarily found in the Pokémon Mansion on Cinnabar Island—the same location where Mewtwo was created . Its color, its weight, and its transformative ability all mirror Mew. The theory argues that Ditto is not a natural species; it is a failed Mew clone, a mass-produced, unstable byproduct of the same experiments that created Mewtwo. The Pokédex, lacking records of this classified project, lists Ditto as a normal Pokémon. It is not .
Similarly, MissingNo., the infamous glitch Pokémon, is theorized to be another such failed attempt—a corrupted data fragment of the cloning process, accidentally given form through the game’s code. The Pokédex cannot acknowledge it, because the Pokédex is part of the same system that created it .
The Cubone-Magikarp Paradox: The Pokédex’s Logical Impossibilities
The Species Description Problem
A final, meta-theoretical thread binds these conspiracies together. Many Pokédex entries describe events that cannot be true for an entire species .
Cubone’s entry describes the death of its mother. Yet it is a species description. This implies every Cubone’s mother has died. This is logistically impossible for a breeding population. The Kangaskhan theory resolves this. The Kadabra entry describes a singular transformation event. Yet it is a species description. This implies every Kadabra was once a boy. This is also impossible.
The conspiracy, at its highest level, is that the Pokédex fundamentally misunderstands its own purpose. It is attempting to write species-wide generalizations from individual case studies. It is a database that does not understand the difference between anecdote and data. It is an encyclopedia written by amateurs, for amateurs, and its authority is an illusion maintained by the collective suspension of disbelief of every trainer who has ever relied on it.
See also: Fan Theories in Pokémon World, What is Fan Theory and Conspiracy Theory in Games and Anime
The Ultimate Theory: The Pokédex is the World’s Oldest and Least Reliable Travel Blog
Synthesizing all threads, the grand conspiracy emerges:
The Pokédex is not a scientific instrument. It is a tradition.
For generations, the Pokémon League has sent children into the wilderness with a device and a directive: “Go see the world and write down what you find.” These children, untrained in biology, geology, or historiography, have filled millions of pages with observations, exaggerations, misunderstandings, and folklore. They have confused parasites for symbionts, orphans for distinct species, shadows for independent entities, and experimental failures for natural life.
Professor Oak’s dream was not to complete a scientific compendium. It was to collect every mistake, every ghost story, every misidentified orphan, and every campfire tale that ten-year-olds have been recording for centuries, and to bind them together into a single, authoritative-sounding device.
The Pokédex is not a lie. It is a living archive of human error, and every generation of trainers, by dutifully filling its pages, only adds to the noise.
The truth of the Pokémon world is not written in the Pokédex. It is buried beneath it, waiting for someone to question the source.
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