Sitrus Berry being consumed to avoid being in Defeatist range also has synergy with Acrobatics.
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Pokémon Movepool Oddities & Explanations
- Thread starter Kurona
- Start date
TIL Slowpoke and Slowbro, including the Galarian forms, can learn Helping Hand, but Slowking cannot. This isn't a Gen 9-exclusive thing, either. Apparently, it was always like this.
Here's a TIL from me: Arboliva, a Pokemon that's essentially an olive tree, and whose whole gimmick involves setting up Grassy Terrain for passive healing, does not learn Ingrain.
Heck, for some reason, though it gets Absorb and Mega Drain, it needs to learn Giga Drain via TM. For some reason, GF decided that the Special-focused family with a slight healing gimmick, just needed to learn Seed Bomb and Petal Blizzard naturally but not Giga Drain (or Synthesis in that matter, needs to use a Mirror Herb to get that one). Not that they couldn't also add it onto its movepool, it stops learning Moves at Level 58.
Heck, for some reason, though it gets Absorb and Mega Drain, it needs to learn Giga Drain via TM. For some reason, GF decided that the Special-focused family with a slight healing gimmick, just needed to learn Seed Bomb and Petal Blizzard naturally but not Giga Drain (or Synthesis in that matter, needs to use a Mirror Herb to get that one). Not that they couldn't also add it onto its movepool, it stops learning Moves at Level 58.
From an aesthetic situation learning Seed Bomb naturally does make sense (& it does at least learn Energy Ball naturally) but yeah learning Petal Blizzard (which it wil never use) is pretty silly. Petal Dance, which it also learns naturally, covers the "petals flowing in the wind" they probably wanted to go with, and also is special type.
Hard agree on how weird it is that it doesn't learn Ingrain, though.
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
Destiny Bond is a Ghost-type move and, much like Spite or Grudge (the latter of which Bulbapedia apparently considers to be a counterpart - yeah, I guess it would be, wouldn't it?) is inferred to be some sort of curse or geas that the user lays on the foe: most Pokemon that learn Destiny Bond are, fittingly enough, Ghost, Dark, or Psychic and have those sort of powers. Vespiquen is a notable exception, but it learns a surprising amount of Ghost and Dark moves and one can assume that we're meant to imagine its legion of loyal bees devouring its foe in revenge for any affront it suffers.
I've always wondered why Qwilfish gets it, though. Anyone have any insight? It'd be one thing if it got it via breeding but it's been part of its natural moveset since FRLG.
I've always wondered why Qwilfish gets it, though. Anyone have any insight? It'd be one thing if it got it via breeding but it's been part of its natural moveset since FRLG.
Its a bit of a stretch, but going off your Vespiquen explanation, Qwilfish is a pufferfish which have the very toxic tetrodotoxin. In real life the toxin takes minutes to actually start affecting you after digestion, however I can see in Pokemon they exaggerating this. Qwilfish are able to launch their spikes, so maybe the idea is that after using Destiny Bond the Qwilfish has primed some of its most strongest toxic spikes at the target so, when it's knocked out, the spikes automatically launch and take the target down with it.
It's a similar flavor to self-destructive moves and abilities like Explosion, Self-Destruct, and Aftermath. Weezing gets it too, and it's not a Ghost type. The bigger question to me is why Delibird gets it? Does it whip out the naughty list as a last resort?
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
Yep, very good point.
Ooh I'd forgotten about Aftermath. Yes, that's quite similar too.
Weezing has a long association with ghostly elements and morbidity: it learns Pain Split and Memento too. I'd say there's a pretty strong association with Poison and Ghost because of the whole death vibe, but Weezing leans into it a little harder than most as it's literally got a skull and crossbones on its body (and similarly a lot of its general design is about killing itself to damage you). Makes sense, the thought of being gassed to death is probably scarier to a lot of people than sludge or stingers/barbs are.
Delibird... is an odder one, you're right, but I suspect that might be a pure novelty option. Like, it's probably going to die in one hit, so taking the foe down is a lol option that people might not see coming.
Someone on the dev team was a Futurama fan and wanted to reference Robot Santa.
OK so
How does Scrafty use Dragon Dance? Or Dragon Pulse for that matter? Only thing I can think of is its skin being something from a dragon
How does Scrafty use Dragon Dance? Or Dragon Pulse for that matter? Only thing I can think of is its skin being something from a dragon
It's a lizard, so it's "dragon enough" for eligibility even if they don't give it to every lizard in the series.
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
Isn't the move description something like "the user performs a mystical dance"?
So it's not inherently a dance only dragon-types can do (obviously not, since various species of other types can and do learn it) it's just a draconic dance. A subtle but important difference. Presumably it's an art only known to a select few, and Scrafty is one of those few since, as stated, it is a lizard.
Weeeeell if we go through the learners...
https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Dragon_Dance_(move)
all the Pokemon that learns it naturally are either dragons, evolve into dragons, or are Gyarados (obvious dragon reference) or ... Tropius for some reason.
Egg moves / TR/TM add a few others, still either draconid (charizard), lizardlike (onix, scrafty, tyranitar, feraligatr) or... why does Corphish/Crawdaunt learn it even o.o
TBF dinosaur has always had a pretty soft dragon association. It’s applied sparingly but like, it’s the entire reason Tyrantrum is a dragon there’s nothing else about it. So Tropius makes sense.
I think Corphish might literally just be because prawns are really old and have continued to survive and thrive for ages in terms of world history. It’s also to do with the dinosaur thing in that way. It’s why reptiles have the Dragon-Type association in the first place, not because reptiles are draconic but because reptiles are close to dinosaurs and dinosaurs are draconic in Pokémon logic.
Crawdaunt might have jsut gotten it for "hey lets give this thing a fun toy" but its dex entries do talk about its disposition and that kind of rage is pretty dragon-like. Or dragon-like-like, its basically Gyarados but a crawfish. Honestly feels like it should get Outrage too.
Barboach/Whiscash is the weirder one to me. I guess it's got the giant catfish mythology to lean back on but I dunno. Maybe it's a joke at the expense of the wiggling of barboach
Clearly someone didn't read the Movepool Oddities article! :p
(it may be because it's based off a dragon shrimp)
Sir this topic has reached 133 pages, allow my Alzheiner some rest
It should be noted that Corphish, Barboach, Tropius, and Totodile got Dragon Dance starting HGSS as an Egg Move (FUN FACT: Though it would learn it naturally by Gen IV, originally the Dratini family did not naturally learn Dragon Dance, they had to get it as an Egg Move). As noted above, for Corphish to learn it would have to be from the Horsea or Dratini (or Lapras or Totodiole) family in Water 1 (the aquatic Pokemon which aren't entirely fish or invertebrates). Looking at all the Water 1 Pokemon up to Gen 4, I not many would be able to fully take advantage of Dragon Dance's Attack & Speed increase, though the Corphish family could. And combined with the fierceness that R_N mentioned, doesn't seem that out of place. There's been odder decisions.
I've heard that before and question it. In all instance of searching up "dragon shrimp", I've only gotten results of spicy shrimp seafood dish. The species of shrimp tends to also change depending on the restaurant.
HOWEVER, I did find something relating dragons to shrimp, some Vietnamese proverbs:
Though, I should also note that the Corphish family seem mostly based on lobsters with maybe some smaller similar crustaceans like shrimp and crayfish. I can also roughly see how a lobster/shrimp body can resemble an Eastern dragon, hence the likely source of the above proverb, though I can't imagine its a common resemblance made.
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
...yes? I said it's not a move only learned by dragon-types specifically, not "anything dragon-ish". Because, as you've correctly noted, only dragon-types learn it... except for the couple of things that aren't of that type. Not seeing what you're correcting me on here?
At the end of the day, any pokemon could (in theory) learn anything because well... it's pokemon, and this whole thread is a lore explanation of how X learns Y. So let me attempt to explain them
- Rock Slide is weird to use in general you just summon a rock slide from thing air
- Crunch is possibly the easiest thing to do I mean it's a strong bite
- Earthquake is also simple as many pokemon can indeed quake the earth
- Pretty sure multiple pokemon can whip up a Sandstorm with their wings
- Rock Tomb is simple being buried by rocks
- Ancient Power... maybe Charizard is an old creature? Idk it uses Thunder Punch with those T-Rex arms (short af)
But that's just my way of seeing it I'm sure some pokemon lore nerd in this thread can make it more logical.
I'd also add that outside of Ancient Power and Rock Tomb these are just generic widely distributed moves.
Earthquake and Rock Slide are learned by a lot of pokemon with acceptable phisical attack, Crunch by most pokemon that are capable of actually biting offensively. Charizard also eventually got Belly Drum in its egg move pool, meaning at some point they did intend it to be a potent phisical attacker (and after all, Mega Charizard X exists).
Also, remember this is a gen 1 pokemon. Gen 1/2 (and to some degree, gen 3) pokemon tend to have particularly expansive movepool for the sake of it due to the fact they carry them over from before phis/special split and from the wonkiness that gen 1/2 movesets were. Plenty of weird examples like Machamp (or Nidoking) learning a bunch of high BP special moves for no apparent reason, or the various rock types arbitrarly learning Surf (mainly for gameplay purpose, to give more options for the HM).
Ya gonna link that article cause I've never heard of it.