Pokémon Head-Canon: Typing

Remember how back in the day, the dragon master Lance had three dragon-type Pokemon and two non-dragons? You know how people have always wondered how people have questioned how Goomy is a dragon-type but Charizard still isn’t? There are many examples throughout the 1000+ Pokemon roster whose thing doesn’t seem to make sense. Memes about them consistently spread across social media. 

I don’t remember when this head-canon started but a lightbulb went off when one of those Pokemon type memes came across my feed: Typing as little to do with appearance; it’s about the Pokemon’s characteristics and interactions with the elements. 

If that doesn’t make sense, let me break down what I mean. In the world of Pokemon, it’s not like each creature comes with a label of their type. And as we know, obviously not every Pokemon type is determined by appearance and/or real world animal comparisons. However, what we know objectively is that there have been many Pokemon researchers across various regions and over the course of AT LEAST 10-15 years (that’s just the main series games). We also know that old man Oak has been studying Pokemon his whole life. That’s decades of research. 

I’m postulating that before the first Pokédex was invented to assess Pokemon, researchers used a Pokémon’s environmental adaptations and reactions to categorize their types. If they discovered that a Pokemon was resistant to electricity but susceptible to water, ice, and grass moves, the Pokemon would be categorized as a ground-type.

Example A: Researchers observed that Charizard was weak to water and super weak against rock, that would indicate that it wasn’t a dragon-type but flying-type instead. 

Example B: Lucario is weak to psychic types, indicating fighting type characteristics. That much was obvious to researchers. However, it was not immediately clear why it was weak to fire-type moves and other fighting types. The conclusion: Steel type, even though there’s no prominent steel features on Lucario. 

Example C: Noctowl is known to have some extra sensory abilities. However, it’s not greatly affected by dark-type moves and it’s completely unaffected by ghost-types. Conclusion? Normal and flying. 

As technology improved and the first Pokedex was invented, I expect it was able to analyze new Pokemon and determine their type electronically. What do you think? Is this a plausible head-canon or can you disprove it? I doubt we’ll ever know for sure (which is what makes it head-canon instead of fan theory I suppose).