Pokémon’s Typhlosion is spreading for the strangest reason, according to Game Freak leak

This article was published on October 14th. published and on October 15th. republished.

I don’t even know where to start here. Game Freak was hacked and countless files were released that unfortunately contained some personal information about its employees. But it also contains everything from unused concept art to scrapped in-universe lore, and one in particular has gone viral. More than a little.

That would be a story about Typhlosion, the gold/silver starter evolution, which I definitely learned as a kid. I also decided on Charizard beforehand. I like fire, what can I say. But now my memories might be… a little tainted.

Fans have discovered some kind of lost lore about Typhlosion that…well, here’s a quick excerpt:

“A long time ago, when the line between Pokémon and humans was unclear…”

Okay, no, I’ll stop right there. Yes, this goes where you think: a relationship between a human and a Pokémon. Such a relationship. But it’s…even stranger than you might think.

A young girl is tricked into believing he is human by a shape-shifting Bakufun (Typhlosion). After all, she apparently has a child with him and she called his wife. Eventually her father comes and kills the Bakfun, and when she returns to the village, she and her half-Pokémon child are teased by the men in the village, who eventually cover it in furry pelts. Then they run into the forest and are never seen again. Here is a particularly nightmarish passage from the time when the father is looking for his daughter:

“You broke the branch. Your father will be here soon. Now I’m going to do something bad to your father. If you kill me, you can have my eyes, my voice and my heart. Then I want you to light a fire where I was killed and let it burn. And I want you to sing this song until it burns out.”

The girl said, “Please stop. You will kill my father. Please stop. Get killed.”

“Goodbye. We will never see each other again.”

In many forms of mythology, including Japanese mythology, animals transform into humans or vice versa to display some form of trickery. Zeus, for example, often did this. In particular, Typhlosion is said to be based on the Mujina, the Japanese badger, who is often depicted in folklore as a shape-shifting yokai (demon/imposter/monster), but this is not the case complete taken out of the air. But getting something like that into the Pokémon docs at Game Freak is something.

It is unclear why this story was made or why it is included in these files. We have no idea who wrote it or if it was even close to being made into a game (there are a lot of really dark Pokémon stories, but none quite this crazy). But the text still caught on online and no one will ever look at Typhlosion the same way again. I definitely won’t.

I’ve reached out to Game Freak for comment and will update if I hear back.

Update (10/15): I thought it would be interesting to find another story about the shape-shifting Mujina that this spooky version of Typhlosion is based on. What follows is part of an adaptation of an ancient Japanese folklore myth, The Faceless Woman (via Rikumo):

“One night, late at night, he was hurrying up the Kii-no-kuni-zaka when he saw a woman sitting alone by the moat. She cried bitterly and her hands completely covered her face as she moved towards the ditch. Fearing that she was planning to drown herself, he stopped near her and offered to help her. As he approached, he saw that she was lithe and nicely dressed, and that her hair was styled like that of a young girl from a good family.

He was a kind man and compassion gripped his heart. “O-jochu (young girl),” he cried, approaching her, “O-jochu, don’t cry like that… Tell me what the problem is, and if there’s any way to help you, I will do.” .”

Suddenly the girl turned around and let her sleeve fall from her hand. Where there should have been two eyes, a mouth, and a nose, there was nothing but a featureless patch of skin, smooth as an egg. She slowly began to stroke her face with her hand in front of him.

The man screamed and ran away.”

The “egg-faced” idea persists in folklore, suggesting that the mujina was capable of transforming into a human form, although often with a featureless, smooth face. But it could also take other, more normal forms. The end of this story is that the man tries to tell someone else he finds about the woman, but then that man’s face also turns into an egg.

So it’s obviously different, but you can see similarities and notice that even the rhythm of the storytelling is the same. Both are certainly scary in their own way.

Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, And Instagram.

Get my science fiction novels Herokiller series And The Earthborn Trilogy.