You’re wandering through the tall grass in Kanto. A Pidgey flaps by. You check your Pokedex, and it tells you it's the "Tiny Bird Pokemon." Simple enough, right? But then things get weird. In the early days of the franchise, the line between "Pokemon" and "real animals" wasn't just blurry—it basically didn't exist. We’ve all seen the fan theories about people eating Farfetch'd, but the truth is actually much more literal and, honestly, kinda confusing if you look back at the original source material.
Real animals in Pokemon aren't just a glitch or a collective fever dream. They were baked into the DNA of the series before it became the multi-billion-dollar behemoth that strictly separates "creatures" from "pocket monsters."
The Ghost of the Biological World
If you fire up a copy of Pokemon Red or Blue, the references to actual, non-powered animals are everywhere. It’s not just flavor text. It’s built into the very core of how these creatures were classified. Take Pikachu. Everyone knows it’s an Electric-type. But its official Pokedex entry calls it the "Mouse Pokemon." For that description to make any sense to a kid in Pallet Town, they have to know what a regular mouse is.
Otherwise, what are they comparing it to?
This isn't just limited to the Pokedex. In the anime’s early episodes—specifically "Battle Aboard the St. Anne"—we see actual, literal fish swimming in tanks. They aren't Magikarp. They aren't Finneon (who didn't exist yet anyway). They are just... fish. Gastly’s Pokedex entry in the Gen 1 games mentions it can topple an Indian Elephant. Not a Copperajah. An Indian Elephant.
It feels like the developers at Game Freak were still figuring out if this was a fantasy world or just our world with some extra monsters in it.
Why the Elephant matters
The mention of the Indian Elephant is arguably the most famous example of real animals in Pokemon. It’s a specific, real-world geographical reference. Think about how jarring that is. If India exists in the Pokemon world, does that mean the British Empire happened? Did the industrial revolution occur with steam engines or did they just use a bunch of Torkoals?
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Raichu’s Pokedex entry from the same era claims its shocks can knock out an Indian Elephant. It’s a recurring benchmark for power. By the time Pokemon Legends: Arceus and Pokemon Scarlet and Violet rolled around, the writers finally started scrubbing these references. Now, the Pokedex usually refers to "large Copperajah" instead. They're retroactively fixing the lore to pretend those real-world animals never existed, but the original cartridges remember.
Seeing "Normal" Animals on Screen
The anime was the biggest offender. Early on, the creators were clearly using real animals to fill out the ecosystem because drawing 150 unique monsters wasn't enough to make a world feel alive.
- In the episode "Ash Catches a Pokémon," we see a real bird eating a worm. Not a Caterpie. A worm.
- During "The Water Flowers of Cerulean City," there are actual jellyfish in the gym’s aquarium that are distinctly not Tentacool.
- There's even a scene where a real mongoose is mentioned as a natural predator for snakes, which explains why Yusung's Zangoose and Seviper have such a deep-seated rivalry, though they eventually replaced the "mongoose" concept with an actual Pokemon.
It's bizarre. It feels like a "Forbidden Knowledge" situation. You’ve probably played these games for twenty years and just tuned it out, but once you notice the regular honeybees buzzing around in the background of early promotional art, you can't un-see it.
The "Biological Displacement" Theory
Experts and long-time lore historians often debate why these animals disappeared. The most widely accepted idea is "biological displacement." Basically, Pokemon are an invasive species. If a Rattata can breathe fire or shoot electricity and a regular rat can just... chew on wires, the Rattata is going to win that evolutionary race every single time.
In the early games, we were seeing the tail end of the transition. The regular animals were still clinging on in corners of the world that hadn't been completely overrun by creatures that can manipulate the weather or teleport. By the time we get to the Galar or Paldea regions, the takeover is complete. The Pokemon are the animals now.
The weird case of the "Delicious" Farfetch'd
We have to talk about the food. This is where the presence of real animals in Pokemon gets dark. Early Pokedex entries for Farfetch'd explicitly state that it's delicious, especially when cooked with its own leek. It also notes that it's nearly extinct because people ate so many of them.
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This implies two things. First, humans in this world are definitely carnivores. Second, they weren't just eating "meat" from a grocery store; they were hunting Pokemon. But if real cows (Miltank didn't exist until Gen 2) and real chickens weren't around, what were they eating? The presence of real-world fish in the St. Anne episode suggests that "normal" meat was the standard, and eating a Pokemon was a specific, perhaps slightly taboo choice.
Geographic inconsistencies
The Pokemon world wasn't always a series of isolated islands like Kanto or Johto. The early writing treated it as a literal extension of Earth.
- Lt. Surge is "The Lightning American."
- Parasect’s spores are used as medicine in "China."
- Silph Co. has branches in "Tibet."
When you include real countries, you naturally include the fauna of those countries. If America exists, bald eagles exist. If Tibet exists, yaks exist. The shift toward making the Pokemon world its own distinct planet with its own geography (the "Poke-Earth") was a slow process that took nearly a decade to finalize.
What this means for the "Multiverse"
Kinda makes you wonder about the timeline, doesn't it? Since Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, we know the Pokemon world operates on a multiverse theory. There are timelines with Mega Evolution and timelines without it.
The most logical explanation for the "disappearing" real animals in Pokemon is that the early games took place in a universe much closer to our own. As the series progressed and the brand became more defined, the "canon" shifted to a universe where Pokemon were the only biological life forms besides humans.
It wasn't a retcon; it was a shift in reality.
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Actionable Insights for Lore Hunters
If you want to find these remnants of the "Real World" yourself, you don't need a PhD in Poke-biology. You just need to know where to look.
Check the Japanese Red/Green Pokedex: The original Japanese text is often much more explicit about real-world animals than the localized English versions. Many references were "sanitized" for Western audiences who the localizers thought would be confused by the mix.
Watch the "Indigo League" carefully: Don't just look at the main characters. Look at the backgrounds in the first 20 episodes. You’ll find real butterflies, real fish, and even mentions of real-world pets like dogs and cats that aren't Growlithe or Meowth.
Look at the "Pokemon TCG" Southern Islands set: Some of the older card art features tiny, non-Pokemon creatures hidden in the foliage. These are fossils of a design philosophy that no longer exists.
The reality is that Pokemon started as a "bug collecting" simulator. Satoshi Tajiri wanted to recreate the feeling of catching real insects in the woods behind his house. In that context, having real animals around made sense. It grounded the world. Now, the world is grounded by its own internal logic, leaving those early real-world cameos as nothing more than fascinating trivia for those of us who remember when an Indian Elephant was the scariest thing a Raichu could face.
To truly understand the history of the franchise, stop treating the Pokedex as an infallible Bible and start treating it as a historical document. The errors and real-world references aren't mistakes—they're a roadmap of how a small RPG about bugs turned into a completely separate reality.
Next Steps for Enthusiasts:
- Hunt down a physical copy of the Pokemon Red/Blue player's guide from 1998. The flavor text in those guides contains even more references to "normal" biology that never made it into the digital games.
- Compare the Pokedex entries of Raichu and Gastly across every generation. Trace the exact moment "Indian Elephant" was replaced by "Copperajah" or "large targets." It's a perfect case study in how corporate lore is rewritten over time.
- Re-watch the first Pokemon movie, Mewtwo Strikes Back. In the original Japanese version, the scientific explanations for cloning are much more grounded in real-world genetics than the "magic/science" blend used in later films.
The "real" world is still there, buried under layers of updates and remakes. You just have to be willing to dig.