These five Pokémon are based on strange real-life animals

Meet the weird inspirations for your favorite Pokémon

Pokémon come in all shapes and sizes, but most of them have some form of real-life inspiration they are based on, be it an object, a plant, or a living and breathing animal. These inspirations range from the cute and adorable to the straight-up weird – life is sometimes stranger than fiction and there are lots of creatures out there that might as well have sprung out of some Eldritch horror setting.

We’d like to highlight some of these cool pairs and the stories behind their origins, so get ready to meet five of the weirdest real-life animals that were made into Pokémon.

5 Pokémon with strange origin stories

Charmander

Charmander is based on a salamander, which the Pokémon’s name already hints at – not a great revelation in and of itself. The reason behind this pairing is rather interesting, however.

Salamanders are an amphibian species, which means that the pendulum of their existence always swings between water and land – they need to keep themselves moist, but they do like hanging out on land. That often leads them to choose places like damp logs to have a nap in, which in the past wasn’t such a great idea, because humans would use those logs to make a fire – we, after all, are not amphibians anymore and like to keep ourselves warm and dry.

The unfortunate salamanders, which slept inside those logs, would then run out of the fire, their bodies set alight. This led to a widespread belief that salamanders were actually born from the fire – many fantasy settings today still feature salamanders as fire-breathing creatures because of that.

Nincada, Ninjask, and Shedinja

Shedinja is one of the stranger evolutions to perform: You need to evolve a Nincada into a Ninjask while a space in your party remains empty and all of a sudden a Shedinja will show up. The reason behind this mechanism is that this Pokémon family is based on the cicada.

This type of bug lives underground, from where it emerges in swarms during the summer. They dig through the ground and up nearby trees, bursting out of their shells to fly off with their newly formed wings. Kids in Japan will often collect their shells, which are usually well-preserved.

Shedinja represents the empty shell left behind from the evolution process of Nincada into Ninjask, making the Pokémon’s Ghost-typing a perfect fit.

Poliwag, Poliwhirl, and Poliwrath

This family is obviously based on tadpoles and frogs – glass frogs, to be a bit more specific. As you could infer from the name, members of this species are transparent and you can see all their lovely organs from the outside.

That’s what the signature swirl of the Pokémon family you know and love is all about. Can you guess what exactly it symbolizes?

Yeah, it’s their guts. That playful black swirl you see on the Poli-family’s tummies represents their intestines – or, to be more precise again, the stinky content of said intestines. If you feel brave, you can check out some videos of actual glass tadpoles and follow their bowel movements from start to finish. Ah, the beauty of nature.

Drowzee

Drowzee is based on the cute and adorable tapir, which is quite obvious from the long snout and is additionally represented by the two-tone body. Why the Psychic-typing, though?

It all leads to platypuses. Stick with us for a bit, okay? When the platypus was first discovered, it bamboozled scientists. They thought it was all a practical joke with someone sewing together a beaver, a duck, and an otter. There is a similar story about tapirs, which made the animal out to be a mythical creature formed of body parts of several different species.

For a while, the tapir had the status of a supernatural creature and was ascribed certain abilities. If a tapir came upon a sleeping human, it was said, it would eat that person’s dreams – a legend that still goes strong in Japan today, leading to Drowzee being sleepy and having moves like Hypnosis and Dream Eater.

Slowpoke and Slowbro

The origins of Slowpoke and Slowbro are manifold, and many stories have been told about their real-life inspirations over the years. There is our old friend, the salamander, but there is also the hippo, jaguar, or fishing cat, which lures fish into attack range by dipping its tail into the water.

None of these, however, hit the mark. As with all things in life, it goes back to food – in this case, a tasty delicacy from Asia: geoducks. They are a sort of mollusc that resembles a slimy tail poking out from a clam, which best represents the lore about Slowpoke tails being tasty and overpriced.

Sometimes this entire cycle also works backwards: Meet the real-life species that were named after Pokémon.