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MissingNo. けつばん Ketsuban

The five forms of MissingNo. (from top to bottom, left to right: Red and Blue Normal, Ghost, Aerodactyl, Kabutops, Yellow Normal)

Type Category  Bird  Normal  Red/Blue  Normal  999  Yellow ??? Pokémon Hexadecimal identifier Exp. at Lv. 100 1F, 20, 32, 34, 38, 3D, 3E, 3F, 43, 44, 45, 4F, 50, 51, 56, 57, 5E, 5F, 73, 79, 7A, 7F, 86, 87, 89, 8C, 92, 9C, 9F, A0, A1, A2, AC, AE, AF, B5, B6, B7, B8 345420 16136684 Varies Pokédex National #000 Johto #— Hoenn #— Sinnoh #— Unova (BW) #— Unova (B2W2) #— Games found in Red, Blue, and Yellow Special stat for Mew glitch Time Capsule exploit Pokémon 31, 32, 50, 52, 56, 61, 62, 63, 67, 68, 69, 79, 80, 81, 86, 87, 94, 95, 115, 121, 122, 127, 134, 135, 137, 140, 146, 156, 159, 160, 161, 162, 172, 174, 175, 181, 182, 183, 184 Scizor, Shuckle, Heracross, Sneasel, Teddiursa, Ursaring, Slugma, Magcargo, Swinub, Piloswine, Corsola, Remoraid, Octillery, Delibird, Mantine, Skarmory, Houndour, Houndoom, Kingdra, Phanpy, Donphan, Porygon2, Stantler, Smeargle, Tyrogue, Hitmontop, Smoochum, Elekid, Magby, Miltank, Blissey, Raikou, Entei, Suicune, Larvitar, Pupitar*, Tyranitar*, Lugia*, Ho-Oh Height Weight 3'3"RGB 10'0"RBY 22.0RGB lbs. 3507.2RBY lbs. Hybrid of Catch rate N/A 29 RB, 0 Y Gender ratio Unknown Egg Groups Egg cycles Unknown Unknown EV yield HP ? Atk ? Def ? Sp.Atk ? Sp.Def ? Speed ? Exp. ?

MissingNo. (Japanese: けつばん Ketsuban, lit. "missing number"), as it is displayed in-game due to the ten-character limit in Western Generation I games, is a dual-type Bird/Normal glitch Pokémon in Pokémon Red and Blue, and a dual-type Normal/randomly named glitch type (which often has '9' in it) glitch Pokémon in Pokémon Yellow. It is arguably the best known glitch Pokémon, closely followed by 'M (00), and it is the easiest glitch Pokémon to find in the localizations. It has five distinct forms, but the most frequent forms (the Red/Blue and Yellow normal forms) share 36 index numbers each.

In later generations, other glitch Pokémon are sometimes referred to as "a MissingNo.", such as ??????????, ?, and -----. Despite this, the name "MissingNo." is a misnomer in this case; they have little relation to the one found in Pokémon Red and Blue or Yellow.

MissingNo.'s cry is generally the game's equivalent of a "blank" cry: a Nidoran♂ (base 00)'s cry with a pitch of 0 and no echo. This is because the cries of these Pokémon are undefined in the data structure. A few MissingNo. have different cries (specifically 0x43, 0x45, 0x4F, 0x51, 0x5E, 0x5F, 0x7F, and 0xB5). The fact that these cries are valid and not garbage data (i.e. unrelated data read in the wrong way, as is the case with most of MissingNo.'s properties) supports the view that MissingNo. may have originally been a Pokémon that was deleted from the games. (See this section for further details).

The Pokédex entries of MissingNo. and all glitch Pokémon with a Pokédex number of 0 will only appear upon capture if the player has not encountered Cubone, but as with all glitch Pokédex entries, they normally remain inaccessible through the actual Pokédex. An exception to this rule is in Red and Green, where MissingNo. can be "registered" in the Pokédex if the player enables the 'seen' flag for #152 through select glitches and memory corruption. If MissingNo.'s Pokédex data is viewed, Rhydon's cry will be heard, followed by MissingNo.'s (blank) entry and a series of glitchy sounds.

No MissingNo. can evolve or learn any moves through leveling up.

If the RB MissingNo. is traded to Generation II, it will hold a Carbos.

Forms

Red and Blue normal form

MissingNo.'s Red and Blue normal form is a dual-type Bird/Normal glitch Pokémon. It has a sprite that is a strange block of glitched pixels in a backward-L shape. Due to the larger number of characters that can be used to make it appear, it is the most common form. Normal form is exclusive to Pokémon Red and Blue.

• This form appears through the old man glitch if the character in the third, fifth, or seventh slot of the player's name is the end-name marker, G, H, J, M, S, T, :, ], a, b, c, m, o, p, or v.
• This form appears through the Mew glitch with a Special stat of 31, 32, 50, 52, 56, 61, 62, 63, 67, 68, 69, 79, 80, 81, 86, 87, 94, 95, 115, 121, 122, 127, 134, 135, 137, 140, 146, 156, 159, 160, 161, 162, 172, 174, 175 or 181.
• This form can be obtained through the Time Capsule exploit if the traded Pokémon is Scizor, Shuckle, Heracross, Sneasel, Teddiursa, Ursaring, Slugma, Magcargo, Swinub, Piloswine, Corsola, Remoraid, Octillery, Delibird, Mantine, Skarmory, Houndour, Houndoom, Kingdra, Phanpy, Donphan, Porygon2, Stantler, Smeargle, Tyrogue, Hitmontop, Smoochum, Elekid, Magby, Miltank, Blissey, Raikou, Entei, Suicune, Larvitar, or Ho-Oh.

Yellow normal form

MissingNo.'s Yellow normal form is a dual-type Normal and randomly named glitch type (often containing '9') glitch Pokémon. This form uses the palette of Pikachu, and so appears as yellow and red glitched boxes. They also cause glitches that MissingNo. in Red and Blue do not. If caught, they will cause graphical glitches, possibly rendering the player invisible and making duplicates of the player, and all other on-screen characters walk in random locations on the screen after battle. These forms do not appear through the old man glitch, as it was removed in Yellow. It is likely that the game will freeze or get stuck when attempting to battle Yellow MissingNo.'s normal form due to an invalid sprite pointer; 0x0600. This is also what causes the walking characters effect.

• This form appears through the Mew glitch with a Special stat of 31, 32, 56, 61, 62, 63, 67, 68, 69, 86, 87, 94, 95, 115, 121, 122, 127, 134, 135, 137, 140, 146, 156, 159, 160, 161, 162, 172, 174, 175 or 181.
• This form can be obtained through the Time Capsule exploit if the traded Pokémon is Scizor, Shuckle, Heracross, Sneasel, Teddiursa, Ursaring, Slugma, Magcargo, Swinub, Piloswine, Corsola, Remoraid, Octillery, Delibird, Mantine, Skarmory, Houndour, Houndoom, Kingdra, Phanpy, Donphan, Porygon2, Stantler, Smeargle, Tyrogue, Hitmontop, Smoochum, Elekid, Magby, Miltank, Blissey, Raikou, Entei, Suicune, Larvitar, or Ho-Oh.
• Encountering this MissingNo. form is not safe, as it usually causes the game to freeze or get stuck.

Fossil and ghost MissingNo.

The Fossil and ghost MissingNo. (otherwise known as 'special MissingNo.') are three unique forms of MissingNo. that share their sprites with the Kabutops Fossil and Aerodactyl Fossil from the Pewter Museum of Science, as well as the ghosts of Pokémon Tower. This is because the game actually uses their index numbers to get their front sprites. These Pokémon have no constant base stats, experience types or starting moves; instead they take this data from the last Pokémon in the party other than another special MissingNo. If an enemy Trainer sends out a special MissingNo. the aforementioned data is taken from the previous Pokémon they sent out (the user's Pokémon in battle does not count here).

The Fossil and ghost MissingNo. exist in Yellow and have the same sprites as in Red and Blue. They also work the same way. Since the sprites are valid, these MissingNo. can be encountered instead of Yellow's normal MissingNo. and will never freeze the game on the opponent's side.

Kabutops Fossil form

MissingNo.'s Kabutops Fossil form uses the sprite of the Kabutops Fossil found in the Pewter Museum of Science. It is index number 182 (hex:B6).

• This form appears through the old man glitch if w is the character in the third, fifth, or seventh slot of the player's chosen name.
• This form appears through the Mew glitch with a Special stat of 182.
• This form can be obtained through the Time Capsule exploit if the traded Pokémon is Pupitar.

Aerodactyl Fossil form

MissingNo.'s Aerodactyl Fossil form uses the sprite of the Aerodactyl Fossil found in the Pewter Museum of Science. It is index number 183 (hex:B7).

• This form appears through the old man glitch if x is the character in the third, fifth, or seventh slot of the player's chosen name.
• This form appears through the Mew glitch with a Special stat of 183.
• This form can be obtained through the Time Capsule exploit if the traded Pokémon is Tyranitar.

Ghost form

MissingNo.'s Ghost form uses the sprite of the ghosts found in Pokémon Tower if the player does not have the Silph Scope. It is index number 184 (hex:B8)

In the Japanese versions, this form is not actually a MissingNo. In these versions, rather than being named 'けつばん' (ketsuban) it is named "Ghost" (Japanese: ゴースト). This is unused, because all Pokémon Tower ghosts including the deceased Marowak use the hiragana ゆうれい ('yuurei') instead, which can mean the same thing but may specifically refer to the Japanese interpretation of ghosts in folklore.

• This form appears through the old man glitch if y is the character in the third, fifth, or seventh slot of the player's chosen name.
• This form appears through the Mew glitch with a Special stat of 184.
• This form appears through evolving .^P_K^M_N^RB or Z ゥ^Y at level 224.
• This form can be obtained through the Time Capsule exploit if the traded Pokémon is Lugia.

Glitches caused

Examples of corrupted Hall of Fame entries

Example of multiple walking players on the screen

MissingNo.'s appearance in-battle allows the item duplication glitch, which increases the number of items in the 6th Bag slot by 128 unless the number of items in the slot already exceeds 128.

Encountering MissingNo. has been known to interfere with the save game data in various ways, such as adversely affecting the Hall of Fame data. The Hall of Fame is corrupted because of its proximity to a buffer used to store decompressed sprite data, which is too small to properly hold MissingNo.'s garbage sprite data.

When a Trainer battles with MissingNo. in their party, both the Trainer sprite and their Pokémon's sprites will be scrambled, and all other sprites will be reversed. Viewing the stats screen of a non-glitch Pokémon will remove the effects.

In Pokémon Yellow, capturing MissingNo. will commonly cause multiple player sprites, and sometimes other NPC's, to walk around the screen. If the NPC is aligned to the grid, it is possible to talk to them. Doing so may display text from the area, or may cause glitch text. Collision with those NPC's is buggy, but the game does handle it.

In Pokémon Yellow, if MissingNo. is captured at a level above 1, it will instantly downlevel to 1 upon gaining any experience, and will stay on level 1 unless given Rare Candy. After this happens, MissingNo. will have seemingly infinite health, and, when damaged, the third digit of its health would, instead of going down through numbers, scroll through letters, numbers, and glitch symbols, and its HP bar will wrap across the screen.

In Pokémon Yellow, when MissingNo. is encountered, if the game doesn't crash, it will sometimes play a very long cry before the text "A wild MISSINGNO appeared!" is displayed.

Trading MissingNo.

MissingNo. can be traded from Red and Blue into Pokémon Yellow, but cannot be traded forward through the Time Capsule into Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal. In Yellow, MissingNo. levels down to level 1 if it gains any experience, and cannot grow any higher due to a glitched experience type. In Yellow, the only way to keep using a MissingNo. at a different level in battle is to use a Game Link Cable to battle between two games.

In the trade center, MissingNo., due to its index number, appears as many different Generation II Pokémon from the perspective of Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal. (The full list of the Generation II Pokémon MissingNo. can appear as is documented on the List of Pokémon by index number (Generation I).) If the player tries to trade MissingNo., a message will appear stating "Your <name> appears abnormal." and the trade will automatically be cancelled.

In the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console versions, if the player has MissingNo. in Box 1 when they attempts to transfer it to Pokémon Bank via Poké Transporter, one of the following error messages will appear. All Pokémon in Box 1 that are recognized as valid by Poké Transporter will be transported, but glitch Pokémon (such as MissingNo.) will not.

Attention!
There is at least one Pokémon in the Box that cannot be sent.

A problem has been detected with one of the Pokémon. Sorry. The problematic Pokémon cannot be sent.

Any Pokémon that could not be transported have been removed from the Transport Box.

In Pokémon Stadium

MissingNo. as a substitute doll in Pokémon Stadium

When viewed in Pokémon Stadium, MissingNo. will appear as a substitute doll (as will various other glitch Pokémon), while in Pokémon Stadium 2, MissingNo. (and other glitch Pokémon) will show up as a Ditto with Transform. If the game is saved via Stadium 2, it will then become a Ditto permanently.

MissingNo. as deleted Pokémon

The name "MissingNo." is used for the invalid Pokémon with index numbers in between valid Pokémon and is a shortened form of "missing number", derived from its Japanese name, けつばん (Ketsuban). The fact that Rhydon, the Pokémon with index number 01 was the first Pokémon ever made^[1][2] led to speculation that the index numbers of Pokémon in Generation I represent the order that they were programmed into the game, with MissingNo. being deleted entries.

Supporting this theory was the fact that of the 39 MissingNo., nine of them have unique cries that do not consist of all 00 values.^[3] These cries are located in a table in between real Pokémon cries, suggesting that they were not garbage data (unrelated data interpreted in the wrong way, as is the case with most of MissingNo.'s properties).

The cry values are as follows:

(Video of the cries)

These theories were finally confirmed in 2020, with the Nintendo data leak of that year. Among the game material leaked was the source code for the Japanese version of Pokémon Blue, which contained many internal development assets, such as map sources, moveset lists, cry data, and the back sprites for every Pokémon in the game in Generation I order, including previously-unseen sprites occupying the same index numbers populated by MissingNo. in the released games.^[4] Some of these sprites match the design and index number of Pokémon previously only shown on Satoshi Tajiri's biographical manga, while most of the others correspond to Pokémon that had never been seen before.

Official Nintendo statement

Nintendo has an official description of MissingNo. listed in their Customer Service troubleshooting section:

"MissingNO is a programming quirk, and not a real part of the game. When you get this, your game can perform strangely, and the graphics will often become scrambled. The MissingNO Pokémon is most often found after you perform the Fight Safari Zone Pokémon trick.

To fix the scrambled graphics, try releasing the MissingNo Pokémon. If the problem persists, the only solution is to re-start your game. This means erasing your current game and starting a brand new one."^[5]

Nintendo's statement is incorrect on the method for fixing graphical issues; releasing MissingNo. does not fix the graphics and the player certainly does not need to erase their game to perform any fixes. The correct way to fix the graphics is to simply view the Pokédex data or stat page of any non-glitch Pokémon (or any hybrid glitch Pokémon). The statement may have been deliberately worded to discourage players from performing the Item duplication glitch.

The title of the statement also refers to MissingNo. as "Pokémon 000" in reference to its Pokédex number.

Game data

Pokédex entry

In Red/Blue

MissingNo.'s Pokédex data in Japanese Blue

MissingNo.'s Pokédex data in Pokémon Red and Blue

In Yellow

MissingNo.'s Pokédex data in Pokémon Yellow

Game locations

Base stats

In Red/Blue

For the 36 normal MissingNo.:

In Yellow

For the 36 normal MissingNo.:

Type effectiveness

In Red/Blue

In Yellow

Learnset

By leveling up

Normal Red and Blue form

Kabutops Fossil, Aerodactyl Fossil and Ghost forms

The starting moves of the Kabutops Fossil, Aerodactyl Fossil and Ghost forms are the same as the Pokémon whose data was accessed last.

Normal Yellow form

By TM/HM

Normal Red and Blue form

Generation I Other generations: None
TM		Move	Type	Power	Accuracy	PP
	TM01	Mega Punch	Normal	80	85%	20
	TM02	Razor Wind	Normal	80	75%	10
	TM03	Swords Dance	Normal	—	—%	30
	TM05	Mega Kick	Normal	120	75%	5
	TM06	Toxic	Poison	—	85%	10
	TM09	Take Down	Normal	90	85%	20
	TM10	Double-Edge	Normal	100	100%	15
	TM11	BubbleBeam	Water	65	100%	20
	TM13	Ice Beam	Ice	95	100%	10
	TM14	Blizzard	Ice	120	90%	5
	TM17	Submission	Fighting	80	80%	25
	TM19	Seismic Toss	Fighting	—	100%	20
	TM20	Rage	Normal	20	100%	20
	TM25	Thunder	Electric	120	70%	10
	TM26	Earthquake	Ground	100	100%	10
	TM27	Fissure	Ground	—	30%	5
	TM29	Psychic	Psychic	90	100%	10
	TM30	Teleport	Psychic	—	—%	20
	TM43	Sky Attack	Flying	140	90%	5
	TM44	Rest	Psychic	—	—%	10
	TM45	Thunder Wave	Electric	—	100%	20
	TM49	Tri Attack	Normal	80	100%	10
	TM50	Substitute	Normal	—	—%	10
	HM01	Cut	Normal	50	95%	30
	HM02	Fly	Flying	70	95%	15
Bold indicates a move that gets STAB when used by MissingNo. Italic indicates a move that gets STAB only when used by an evolution of MissingNo.

Kabutops Fossil, Aerodactyl Fossil and Ghost forms

The TM/HM learnset of the Kabutops Fossil, Aerodactyl Fossil and Ghost forms are the same as the Pokémon at the bottom of the party other than another MissingNo. of one of these three kinds.

Normal Yellow form

Evolution

36 index numbers RB MissingNo.  Bird  Normal

↔

36 index numbers Yellow MissingNo.  Normal  999