MissingNo is one of the most famous glitches in video game history. It’s wide fame/infamy can thank a few factors, namely that it was reliably occurring, did not require excessive technical skill to initiate, and proliferated at a time when lore around it couldn't be fact checked via the internet. Glitches are errors in video games, but as gaming content creation carves out a niche for exploring beyond a game’s intended boundaries, game designers more commonly incorporate acknowledgement of them. Could MissingNo receive this same treatment? Would it be possible to integrate this accident into the official canon of Pokémon? The answer is yes. But, doing so would require preexisting lore-sensitivity given Pokémon’s opinionated fanbase. Let’s identify Pokémons history and trajectory in order to determine how MissingNo could most effectively rise from glitch to retroactively canonical.
A bit of background on the glitch- Pokémon was so successful because it had way more content than the average game in 1995. That content was thanks to prodigious file formatting, but that file formatting came with certain rules. For instance, even though 151 Pokémon were created for the original game, the game technically had ‘slots’ to fit 104 more. But they never intended to - those empty files were purely to optimize storage across game data like Items, Moves, Locations, and so on. So when players input a certain sequence of parameters, the game can be forced to pull from data it shouldn't. MissingNo is one of those extra 104 slots- it’s a ‘missing number’.
Even though there is virtually no information for these empty slots to offer, because the game is pulling from a list of what it thinks is Pokémon, the event makes it look like the glitch of MissingNo is itself a Pokémon. The game spits out misread files to make up for the Sprite data it lacks, giving a stereotypically ‘glitched out’ look.
Like any wild Pokémon battle, the player has the option to catch it. Catching MissingNo has the effect of exponentially duplicating whatever item is in the Bag’s sixth slot, making the utility of the glitch almost as worthwhile as the novelty of witnessing it. But it’s not all beneficial exploitive mechanics- if a player deposits the mysterious creature into the storage of their in-game PC, information like the Hall of Fame data can be corrupted. However, this glitch was able to be so popular because it has a marginal chance of breaking a game beyond playability.
So that’s the origin of MissingNo, the real-world reason that event can occur so reliably in Pokémon’s first generation of games. Let’s expand upon these real world references while tying them into in-world lore in order to cohesively transition this mythological mistake into a satisfying fan service.
To solve this ‘problem’, let’s name it. What’s keeping MissingNo from being officialized? For one, it does not appear in the Pokedex of its original generation, making it literally unofficial. Two, it is aesthetically discordant with the rest of the sprite designs. And three, redefining an obvious mistake risks the attempt being perceived as making excuses. Knowing these specific challenges will inform how suggestions are prioritized.
Ghost
Let’s start with the easiest way MissingNo could be canonized- through the Ghost Type. One of Pokémon's 18 elemental typings, Ghost is useful as its magical insinuations can wave away ‘how’ a creature came to be. Beyond that, there is an official in-game event that is similar to this glitch- the ghosts of Lavender Town’s haunted Tower. When this tower is entered during a typical playthrough, the player is met with wild encounters of unidentifiable ghosts. These creatures cannot be fought or captured. It is only when the player acquires the Key Item known as the Silph Scope that they are able to even identify these specters. ‘Identify’ has some interesting connotations here. It specifically comes from the Pokedex, the in-game device that the player has been tasked to use in recording information on all 150 species of Pokémon, upon which the Pokedex is considered “completed”. Once a wild Pokémon has been encountered, basic information like its name and the location spotted is added to the Pokedex, but only when the Pokémon is caught is a Pokémon’s data fully entered. These Unidentifiable Ghosts are unique encounters in that they bypass the Pokedex’s ability to identify any information at all, at least not yet.
All this is to say that if somehow a Player in 2001 encountered MissingNo unintentionally, the pre existing mechanic of unidentifiable (missing) creatures connecting the two not entirely unreasonable. The failure of real-world game data is almost indistinguishable from the failure of the in-game Pokedex, totally blurring the two, and suggesting to players that a similar solution could be used to better understand this ‘creature.’ What’s more, MissingNo can even be encountered as the Sprite of the Unidentifiable Ghost. That’s significant. It can also be found as the sprites of Kabutops’ and Aerodactyl’s fossilized forms, so decidedly still macabre by being skeletal. And just stepping back, a glitch, as a remnant of something unintentional that proves Intelligent Design, is a the concept itself feels altogether un-dead. All the ghostly DNA is there to work with if MissingNo were to be explained as some sort of Ghost / Ghost Type, but before we commit to anything in this mode let’s touch upon some other potential routes the concept could take.
Castaway
The signature location players visit in order to activate the MissingNo encounter is the coast of Cinnabar Island. Mechanically, this is due to an oversight regarding Cinnabar Island and Route 20 to the east. The tiles between them were coded to allow wild encounters in early development. This was before the actual Pokémon were coded in, so a tile with wild encounters was basically temporarily set to ‘all’. But, when spawn rates were coded into the final version, it was decided the island itself wouldn't have any tiles for wild encounters, and because the coast tiles were considered part of the Island, they didn’t update them. The game will pull from any of the game’s 255 Pokémon slots, it could be any random legitimate Pokémon that spawns just as it can randomly spawn from the ‘missing numbers’. This means that even non-water types can pop up on this tile that was intended for aquatic or at least amphibious life. So, perhaps MissingNo’s origin could be seafaring, or perhaps it is more specifically washed ashore.
Across Route 20 lies the Seafoam Islands, a chain of land masses that are protected by a series of special Current tiles, which can redirect where the player travels. So if the player character can be sucked up and shot out by the Pokémon planet’s sea’s, surely there’s potential for an NPC to be similarly cast away from its native land.
Sailing the seas isn’t even limited to Water Type Pokémon. Many Pokémon, like Snorlax and Tauros, can learn the move Surf. Surf is more than a verb here. It’s a move, a quantifiable damage dealing technique. But even beyond the in-world technicality of a highly accurate attack with solid damage, Surf is one of six HMs, a dated technology that allowed Pokémon to accomplish overworld tasks and only be forgotten with the assistance of an expert.
Generation 1 ended with Pokémon Yellow, the ‘director’s cut’ of Green, Blue, and Red. This game featured color, and showed it off with cinematics of the mascot character Pikachu participating in adorable achievements like floating via balloons tied to his waist and surfing via surfboard. While Pikachu was never depicted ferrying a player to locations across the sea, just seeing Pikachu uniquely surf indicates Pokémon can attempt Technical Moves beyond what is known to be achievable for their species. Yellow’s title screen animations have since been legitimized in following title releases.. First, Generation 6’s Aloloa region, based on Hawaii, introduced the regional form of Alolan Raichu, who uses his newfound psychic powers and big flat tail to surf on land, sea, and sky alike. These factors mean that Generation 1 featured Pokémon who could not use the move Surf still surviving being at sea though they are likely at the mercy of currents, but also that these surf-capable creatures have already had a repeated tradition of later legitimization. MissingNo could be a castaway. It could be the first of its kind with the ability to survive the oceanic journey that brought it to Cinnabar’s shore.
So we’ve identified the potential of Ghosts, and now the potential of a creature washed ashore. Next, let’s look at concepts that are altogether unnatural.
Man Made
In Generation 1, we know of 7 man made Pokémon - Grimer, Muk, Voltorb, Electrode, Ditto, Porygon, and Mewtwo. Significantly, 5 out of 7 listed can be found on Cinnabar Island at the Pokémon Mansion (which functions as a laboratory). That’s because like the legendary Mewtwo, they too were subject to the facility’s testing. Many fans have pointed out this is likely the origin of Ditto and why it’s found here- it’s an unsuccessful prior attempt at cloning Mew. Given that the glitch can manifest in MissingNo’s movepool being a copy of your own Pokémon’s moves, its ability to copy moves could suggest it is related to Ditto. The idea of a hidden experiment, specifically one having to do with Mew, seems inextricably linked due to the fact that the MissingNo glitch can also be used to spawn Mew. This means we could easily picture some pitiful creature, even less distinguishable than Ditto, could have been thrown into the sea by an ashamed experimenter. If Ditto is a Normal Type that can shape-shift, and Porygon is a Normal Type that can enter cyberspace, who’s to say something in between couldn’t be an amalgamation of virtual energy in an unstable, binary form? We can infer that MissingNo is tied to the in-game virtual world given the fact that it can corrupt a player’s Storage PC upon being deposited. Accidents with this technology canonically occur ingame where Bill, the famous inventor of this PC storage technology, accidentally switches bodies with a Nidorino.
Infamously, in the first season of Pokémon Anime Series, the main characters physically entered cyber space, able to navigate this digital storage realm to fight on the front lines of cyber crime. The versatility of a world with both ghosts and virtual reality was exciting for 1997, but the controversy over this episode had major consequences for the direction of the brand. The animated sequences in the episode featured flashing red lights, sending approximately 685 viewers to the hospital with epileptic episodes, through thankfully no fatalities. This negligence on behalf of the show led to a blacklisting of the Pokemon Porygon across the show, games, and virtually all Pokemon media. This also reduced the presence of digital themes. This thematic deadzone was cleverly filled by Rotom, a darling Ghost and Electric type Pokemon with the ability to possess a wide range of technologies. It’s worth noting that Rotom seems to remain ‘facing’ the physical world when possessing an appliance, whereas Porygon wholly entered a cyber dimension, so viewers are still yet to be acquainted with what that space could have meant.
Legitimate abominations from this technology are known to the player. It is by no means out of the question that a human of this world could have created MissingNo in an attempt to bridge their regular and virtual worlds.
Not a Pokémon at All
While the wonderful world of Pokémon is indeed filled with wonderful Pokémon, not everything in it is a Pokémon. So while it is encountered as a wild Pokémon, it’s worth considering the potential outside of these creatures’ conventions. Noting its aforementioned relation to the PC Storage, perhaps this is a fragment of technology, a literal glitch in this world’s matrix, their own global-warming-style cosmic consequence of reaching too close to the sun in terms of sciences. Events like this can be seen in Hisui’s Space-time Distortions, rifts that spew out creatures ripped from other points in time and space. These Distortions are caused by people like Volo and Cyrus forcing Giratina (the Pokémon Pantheon’s Hades) to rend its fabrics. In these special events, a signature animation of green, blue, red oval shapes take over the sky. Sound familiar? Those ovals are pixels. The sky has become an RGB color model, like the kind used in screens. In this case, the sky of the Pokémon world is subtly acknowledged to be the screen of the Gameboy it’s being played on. In Alola, we know the Ultra Space Wormholes are the source of Ultra Beasts, Pokémon-like creatures that use Beast Balls to capture. It’s also likely that Galar’s Eternatus is closer to an Ultra Beast than a Pokémon. Given these factors, MissingNo could be a special event, like an interdimensional portal. (A doorway between worlds could connect to the alleged appearance of MissingNo in Generation 6, where players insisted that through a doorway they would see its iconic silhouette.) Or, it could be another dimension’s version of a Pokémon- functionally similar but categorically separate.
As previously mentioned, Bill, an in-game inventor, accidentally switches bodies with a Nidorino. Could it be possible that MissingNo was once a human too? The glitch is most reliably activated by interacting with a character named Old Man. That’s because when this tutorial occurs, Old Man ‘takes over’ as the player character, and the information temporarily stored with him is unintentionally carried to Cinnabar Island. With MissingNo caught and added to why the player can incorrectly be spawned into battle facing backwards, almost forcing the viewer to second guess who is ‘encountering’ who. And to seal its personhood potential- MissingNo populates as a human NPC in the Menu screen.
If MissingNo isn’t a whole ‘person’ in and of itself, maybe it’s just a person’s name. MissingNo’s appearance does pull from Character name data, afterall. It thinks name data is compressed Sprite data. That’s exactly why it looks the way it does. Generation 2 added the Pokémon named Unown, profoundly weak creatures with the unique gimmick of 28 forms to represent characters of the English alphabet. In Generation 4, GameFreak introduced Stickers. These Stickers could be added to a Pokeball, allowing for a customized animation whenever that Pokeball was opened. Catching Unown in Generation 5 came with an added bonus of a Sticker to represent it, allowing players to spell out all sorts of delightful phrases. Given the real world explanation of MissingNo misreading Character Name data, the preexistence of sentient letters (Unown), and the preexistence of their extrapolations through Stickers, MissingNo could be a literal word incarnate.
Less than a word, MissingNo could be a disease. There are two known ‘infections’ in the core games- Pokerus and Deoxys. Deoxys is a virus from outer space. According to NASA, Deoxys only became a fully fledged Pokémon after being mutated by the radiation of a laser beam. Pokerus is a special feature that doubles Effort Values through battles, effectively supercharging growth temporarily. It was meant to motivate trading Pokémon between friends. It works by receiving one Pokémon with it from a trade (or in the wild, rarely) and once it’s added to a PC, it will begin to infect all other Pokémon stored with it. Players then must choose who to spend time training before the infection fades. Given that MissingNo can affect Hall of Fame data when deposited into a PC Storage System, we could connect this thread to Pokerus shared ability to affect PCs. And with Deoxys’ ascension to Pokémon-sentience, we’re afforded flexibility through ‘mutations’.
To review, we have identified that MissingNo could be retconned into the main series games by defining it as a Ghost Type, something Washed Ashore, Man Made, or Not a Pokémon at all. Now that we’ve fleshed out our options, let’s address some factors that should be avoided.
Regarding Merchandising
As the most profitable franchise in history, Pokémon needs to consider how legitimizing MissingNo could be monetized. Much of Pokémon’s official merchandise is in the form of ‘Plushies’, stuffed animals of their creatures. While the company has succeeded in making the most vicious monsters cuddly, it’s hard to picture its classic form becoming a toy that a personality could be projected onto. MissingNo might work for printed materials. It’s two dimensional and repeatable, so perhaps its best fit for patterned prints.
Regarding Hypocrisy
MissingNo is banned from being imported to modern games. Even if a Generation 1 game is ‘emulated’ on a modern system, safeguards have been placed to block the creature from being sent along to another game. But it’s very interesting that when the game was ‘ported’ to Switch, the glitches were not removed. In this way MissingNo has almost already been legitimized. Regardless, its present ban means it could be read as a policy reversal to claim it’s now legit. If this glitch should be read as canonical, Gamefreak could lose creative control. Any other one of their glitches would be subject to fervent speculation and claims of its explanation. Should those fan-theories catch on, GameFreak could land in a no win situation of feeling forced to capitulate to the theories of fans.
Regarding Fans
Speaking of Fan Theories, there is no lack of unofficial proposals to work with. Many of those unofficial explanations have serious supporters. Pulling from a pre existing fan theory would run several risks. One- it muddies the water of Intellectual Property. And, two- if a fan of the franchise sees that Gamefreak has legitimized a theory they themselves had spent years arguing against, they could feel betrayed.
Regarding Legacy
MissingNo can’t just be brought into an upcoming Generation out of celebrating the past. It needs to function in the games series’ future.
Suggested Implementation
Subtly. MissingNo’s implementation would be conceptually colossal regardless of its execution. Fans will project endless analysis, so suggestions of explanations (instead of outright explanations) could ride a happy medium of both satiating curiosity and plausible deniability. Some questions can be left unanswered, starting a thread where future Generations could again revisit MissingNo.
MissingNo from Generation 1 should not receive retroactive Pokémon status. It’s not suited for merch, it would be going back on decades of denial, and it would never match what the fan community has built it up to be.
MissingNo should be a love letter to the fans, literally and conceptually. Working with preexisting canon, MissingNo is best explained in its original form as something like a Regional Variant of Unown. In this implementation, we would understand Unown’s early interactions in Bill’s finicky PC Storage Systems reconfigured their DNA (much like Deoxys’ mutation) into a language it could read- binary. Code. As Unown debuted in Generation 2, it could be justified that any Johtonian Pokémon would fail to register in a Player’s Pokedex, regardless of its glitchiness. But as Deoxys went from an intergalactic virus to a Pokémon, perhaps the Pokémon Unown could change into something other than a Pokémon.
While multiple Generations visit Kanto, only Generation 1 has MissingNo. Kanto was featured in Generation 2 thanks to the prodigious file formatting skills of Satoru Iwata. This upgrade to Pokémon’s real-world storage could function to explain why MissingNo was triaged in-game. Or, it could have accomplished whatever its mission was between the 1st and 2nd Generations. This could explain the most major difference to Kanto’s map- the destruction of Cinnabar Island. We’re told that a volcano rose up to desert the landscape. All that remains is a Pokémon Center. Perhaps MissingNo tore the fabrics of time and space so thoroughly, the earth’s molten core was breached and brought that eruption. MissingNo had scanned Cinnabar, and when it was caught and again put into a PC, took some of the landscape with it in order to create its own realm. We could understand that MissingNo couldn’t be a doorway then, as there was no future planned yet, sitting right between real-world and in-game qualifiers.
The love letter aspect should be connecting ‘old’ Pokémon fans to MissingNo itself. When it’s presented, they should be primed to see themselves as it (perhaps it comes out of a reflective screen). It would define a sentiment of assuring people who grew up with the first games would never be forgotten, but also that they don’t have to explain themselves. They don’t have to waste energy trying to make today’s 10 year olds appreciate that a colorless, 8 bit style could be truly, artistically beautiful. They can know that a game studio they’ve adored for decades consciously built in a place for them, where the experiences they struggle to fully explain don't have to be explained- the shift in aesthetics wouldn’t be explaining itself either.
Functionally, MissingNo’s iconic silhouette could appear to act as a doorway to the past. Going through it could offer a handful of experiences. An ideal version of it would be a pocket dimension that holds a replica of Cinnabar Island. On this replica, perhaps Generation 1 Pokémon could be randomly generated as a way of making them available if they didn't fit narratively. We could picture this event as stepping into a crack of a Kantonian PC Storage from the past, thus allowing players to feel like they’re retrieving the Pokémon they had to leave behind in obsolete game devices. If technology allowed, it would be significant were these Pokémon to be pulled from actual game cartridges still in a long term fan’s possession. MissingNo would take on a new definition. It's acting to ‘fill in’ missing data. It’s a cipher key. It’s a translational space, rewriting code to convert two dimensional sprites into fully rendered animations.
‘Shoutouts’ to Genwunners could include switching to black and white, in reference to a time before Pokémon used color. This field of whiteness is ideal for leaving much to the imagination. Additionally, movement could be limited to a lateral and horizontal tile system, making new players appreciate innovations as trite as diagonal movement. Working with the idea that this experience is facilitated by mutated Unown, they could circumvent exposition by writing out tutorial tips, or employing their Psychic Type to telepathically communicate.
In order to circumvent the expectation that other glitches from the Pokémon games would get this same attention, this event should be designed to encapsulate all glitches from the Pokémon franchise. MissingNo would become a catch all term for ‘glitches redefined as tears in the in-game reality’.
There’s a spectrum of energy that could be devoted to this feature. A minimal implementation could be that choosing to interact with MissingNo ‘reskins’ the overworld to an 8bit inspired aesthetic. A maximal implementation could be offering a way to take Pokémon of any generation into a playable Generation 1.
The ultimate conclusion of this essay is that MissingNo should be utilized to facilitate a version of Mystery Gifts- it should be an in-game method to roll out features that don’t fit narratively otherwise. Ideally, this function would be rolled out parallel to a technology that allows original Gameboy and Gameboy Color cartridges to be read and used by a modern device.
While its appearance might make young generations bemoan the constant appeasement of ‘genwunners’, this tenderness for obsolescence would eventually lead them to realize that they too are invited when they are ready. After all, MissingNo appearing in one of ‘their’ Generations means that when we move even further along, they can go back to in the same way in a renewed exploration.
It’s all Unown.
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