MissingNo.

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Missingno. けつばん Ketsuban

Missingno.'s normal form

Types Category  Bird  Normal  N/A Hexadecimal identifier Exp. at Lv. 100 Unknown Unknown Pokédex National #000 Johto #— Hoenn #— Sinnoh #— Unova (BW) #— Unova (B2W2) #— Games found in Unknown Special stat for Mew glitch Time Capsule exploit Pokémon N/A N/A Height Weight ?.? m ?.? kg Hybrid of Catch rate N/A 3 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) is a dual-type Bird/Normal Glitch Pokémon. Because it is the most easy to access, it is the best-known of all the Glitch Pokémon.

Some other Glitch Pokémon, even in later generations, have been referred to by people as a "Missingno."; however, these aren't related to the Red/Blue Missingno. in any way, except possibly by way of sharing its designated number of 000.

Biology

Physiology

Missingno.'s five sprites, four of which are in the Red and Blue Versions, one of which is in the Yellow Version.

Missingno. has five well-known forms. For its alternate forms, a specific letter must be present in the player's name as the third, fifth or seventh character. The specific letters are put in the description of each form.

Its most common appearance is its normal form, a box of pixels in a backwards 'L' shape that is similar to the shape of a Tetris piece. This form will appear if G, H, J, M, S, :, ], a, b, c, m, o, p, v are in the third, fifth, or seventh slot of the player's name, making it the most common form due to the default name of ASH. This form is exclusive to the Red and Blue Versions.

A second form shares the sprite of the Kabutops fossil found in the Pewter Museum. It appears in two ways:

1. If a lowercase 'w' is present in the player's name in the third, fifth, or seventh slot while performing the Old Man Glitch
2. If a player does method #3 of the Mew glitch with a Pokémon which has a special stat of 182

Missingno. also has a skeletal form, with the sprite of the Aerodactyl fossil found in Pewter City's museum. It is obtainable in two ways:

1. If a lowercase 'x' is found in the player's name in the third, fifth, or seventh slot while performing the Old Man Glitch
2. If a player does method #3 of the Mew glitch with a Pokémon which has a special stat of 183

Its fourth form displays the sprite of the Ghosts found in Pokémon Tower before obtaining the Silph Scope. In the Japanese versions, this Missingno. was named "Ghost." It appears in only two ways:

1. If a lowercase 'y' is found in the player's name in the third, fifth or seventh slot while performing the Old Man Glitch
2. If a player does method #3 of the Mew glitch with a Pokémon which has a special stat of 184

Missingno. also has a fifth form, which is exclusive to the Yellow version (see section below).

Gender differences

Missingno.'s only appearances were in Generation I games, where genders were not yet specified. As a result, Missingno. has no known gender.

Special abilities

Missingno. is notable as being one of the few non-Flying-type Pokémon who can learn Sky Attack.

Missingno.'s appearance in-battle allows what is commonly known as the "Rare Candy cheat," the Red and Blue versions' infamous item duplication bug. It is commonly used to duplicate valuable and hard-to-obtain items, such as the Rare Candy (hence the name of the cheat). However, the duplication bug can affect any item in the game, not just Rare Candies. It even affects Key Items, making it nearly impossible to deposit them in the PC. However, this does allow players to revive a large number of Aerodactyl and Omanyte/Kabuto.

Encountering Missingno. has been known to interfere with the save game data in various ways, such as adversely affecting the Hall of Fame saved data and (if its stats are viewed) messing with some graphics until the stats of a normal Pokémon are viewed. However, neither of these do any significant damage.

Trading Missingno.

Missingno. can be traded into the Pokémon Yellow Version, but cannot be traded into Pokémon Gold and Silver, the sequels to Red, Blue, and Yellow. In Pokémon Yellow, Missingno. levels down to level 1 and stays there, in essence, permanently. After gaining any experience points, Missingno. reverts to level one, so the only way it can be used in battle at a different level is during a linked battle.

When it is traded, Missingno. appears as one of many different Pokémon from the Gold/Silver perspective, and when the player tries to trade Missingno. a message appears that says "Your <name> appears abnormal" and the trade automatically cancels. However, there are rare cases of it successfully being traded and turning into to the Pokémon that it was said to be. If it does, and is attempted to be traded back a Generation I game while the players are still in the Time Capsule, it will turn back into a Missingno.

Why Missingno. appears

Missingno. is the Glitch Pokémon that appears after viewing the Old Man's tutorial in Viridian City on how to catch Pokémon, then immediately Flying to Cinnabar Island and Surfing along the right hand side of the island until one is encountered, without visiting any other areas.

Whenever the game "sets up" the planned battle against the Old Man's Weedle, it needs to change the player's character name to "OLD MAN" so that it will display "OLD MAN" instead of the name the player has entered.

The programmers decided to use the area of data where wild Pokémon information is as a temporary storage area for the player's name, due to the lack of memory on a Game Boy. Normally this wouldn't cause any abnormal activity, as the correct data for the wild Pokémon available is written to this area in memory whenever the player travels to an area where it is possible to catch wild Pokémon, such as walking in tall grass or using a fishing rod.

Along Cinnabar Island's coast, however, there is no data indicating which wild Pokémon are catchable, and the same is true for both Viridian City and Cinnabar Island itself, at least by movement in long grass. The game uses whatever data was already in the corresponding area of data when determining which wild Pokémon encountered and their levels—now the player's name. Normally this space in memory would hold the data of the last area visited where wild Pokémon were catchable in grass and their level data (this same glitch allows players to exit the Safari Zone and Fly immediately to Cinnabar Island to be able to catch and fight Safari Zone Pokémon in the same way as they would in other areas, as Fuchsia City also has no wild Pokémon data for long grass), however, since in both Viridian City and Cinnabar Island the data is empty for Pokémon obtainable in the grass, the active data is never overwritten, leading to Missingno.'s. availability, among other things.

The name of the player has six hexadecimal values in it. The game needs only three "slots" of wild Pokémon data to store this.

The wild Pokémon the player encounters along the coast are determined by the third, fifth, and seventh characters of the player's name, while the levels are determined by the second, fourth, and sixth characters, respectively. By knowing which letters and symbols match which species and levels, through use of certain calculators and charts [1], it is possible to set the player name at the start of the game so as to find specific Pokémon at specific levels.

Missingno. in Pokémon Yellow

When Pokémon Yellow was released, the method used to obtain the Missingno. and M glitches were disabled and removed from the game by Nintendo and Game Freak.

However, some time after Yellow was released, a new code was discovered that allowed the capture of any Pokémon, including Mew and Missingno (see [2] for details). Doing method #3 of the Mew glitch using a Pokémon with a special stat of 31, 32, 61, 62, 63, 67, 68, 69, or 86 will cause a Yellow version Missingno. to appear.

The Yellow Missingno. is not the same Pokémon as the Red/Blue Missingno., even though they both share the same name and become one another when traded. The Yellow version Missingno. is known to be more malicious than the Red/Blue Missingno., and frequently causes the game to freeze when it is found. It is recommended that the game not be saved after capturing it, because it can corrupt or delete the data. If it is caught, it will cause graphical glitches, such as rendering the player invisible, and causing multiple duplicates of the player to walk all over the screen. The Red/Blue version Missingno. does not do this.

Another way of capturing a Yellow version Missingno. is to trade a Missingno. from the Red/Blue versions. Until the discovery of the Mew glitch, the only way to obtain a Yellow version Missingno. was to trade a Missingno. from the Red/Blue versions.

Missingno. in Pokémon Stadium

When a Missingno. or other Glitch Pokémon is viewed in Pokémon Stadium, it will appear as a baby Rhydon (the image used in the substitute attack). When viewed in Pokémon Stadium 2, Missingno. will show up as a Ditto, and if the game is then saved from Stadium 2, the Pokémon will be a Ditto permanently.

Nintendo on Missingno.

Nintendo has an official description of Missingno. listed in their Customer Service troubleshooting section^[1]:

"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 Flight Safari Zone Pokémon trick [or Viridian Old Man trick]. To fix the scrambled graphics, try releasing the MissingNO Pokémon."

Game data

Pokédex entries

If Missingno. is caught, it will not appear in the Pokédex (unless caught via the Mew Glitch BEFORE passing through Rock Tunnel or getting it as a starter by using a cheat device, and even then, the entry is blank). This is because the bit of data that tells the game that Missingno. is captured is the same as the data for battling a Cubone, and there are unavoidable trainers in Rock Tunnel who use Cubone. Because of this, there is no official Pokédex description for Missingno. If Missingno.'s Pokédex data is viewed, it will consist of a very long string of glitchy sounds, much like .4 or h Poké's entries. However, unlike their entries, Missingno.'s does not lock up the game.

Game locations

Base stats

Since Missingno. does not exist in any game that uses the Special Attack and Special Defense stats, only its Special stat is listed.

Type effectiveness

Template:RBY Type effectiveness

Learnset

By leveling up

Template:Movelistglitch Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Movelist/note

• This movepool only applies to Missingno. in its normal form. The movepools of the other three forms vary based on the last Pokémon the player used in battle before encountering the Missingno.

By TM/HM

Template:Movelistglitch Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Mlentry1 Template:Movelist/note

• The TM/HM compatiblilites of the other three forms vary based on the last Pokémon species' data the game loaded. In this way, a skilled player can teach their ghost or skeleton form Missingno. any TM or HM in Red and Blue.

By breeding

Missingno. has no known gender and cannot be transfered to any game where genders exist. As a result, Missingno. cannot breed.

By tutoring

None.

Evolution

Template:Evobox/0formes4

Trivia

• Missingno. has the highest Attack base stat of all Pokémon in Pokémon Red and Blue and the ninth highest out of all Pokémon. Likewise, it has the lowest Defense base stat of any Pokémon, and the third lowest Speed base stat, only losing to Shuckle and Munchlax whom each have a base Speed of 5 each.
  • Missingno.'s base Defense is the lowest of any base stat at all, surpassing even Shedinja's notorious base 1 HP.
• At 3,507.2 lbs, Missingno. is much heavier than any regular Pokémon, its weight surpassing even Groudon's. In comparison, 'M's weight is 880.6 lbs, meaning that Missingno. is about four times heavier than 'M. Missingno. is about half the weight of h POKé, the heaviest known Pokémon of any kind.
• Missingno.'s height is 10'0". In comparison, 'M is more than twice as tall, at a height of 23'0". This makes Missingno. the 19th tallest Pokémon.
• Missingno.'s cry is the game's equivalent of a "blank" cry: a Nidoran♂'s voice with a pitch of 0 and no echo. However, a few Missingno. have different cries.
• Before the truth about why Missingno. exists was known, many fans speculated that it was a removed legendary Pokémon (given its extremely low catch rate, one can see the reasoning behind this).
• In its normal form, it shares the exact same movepool as 'M, with two exceptions; it doesn't learn Pound, and it can learn the TM for Substitute.
• If Missingno.'s Pokédex data is somehow accessed, it will consist of a very long string of glitched sounds. It will reveal that Missingno.'s Pokédex classification is "???", and it has a blank entry. Unlike .4's or h POKé's Pokédex data, however, it will not lock up the game. Also when it's accessed when Missingno is first caught, Missingno will turn into a Rhydon.
• A rumor claims that the player must have five or less Pokémon with him or her if he or she actually tries to catch Missingno., otherwise, his or her game may malfunction when he or she tries to withdraw it from Bill's PC. (If, of course, a player has six Pokémon at the time Missingno. is caught, Missingno. will be sent to Bill's PC, just like any other Pokémon.) This rumor will only hold true, however, if the Pokémon in question is level 0. It is, though, impossible to encounter a Missingno. at level 0, so it is possible to extract Missingno. from Bill's PC without game malfunction. The rumor most likely started due to the common nature of level 0 'M, which would indeed produce this effect.
• As mentioned before, if the Elite Four is defeated and the Hall of Fame option appears in the PC, seeing Missingno. will cause very distorted characters, glitched names and completely different Pokémon to show up instead of the player's Pokémon who have beaten the Elite Four. The Hall of Fame is the only extremely noticeable change after seeing Missingno.
• Though Missingno. cannot usually be traded into Generation II, it will appear to be a G/S/C Pokémon such as Remoraid or Stantler on the trade screen for Gold/Silver/Crystal, depending on its index number. If successfully traded to a Generation II game, it will turn into the Pokémon that the Generation II game called it.
• Rumors are still plentiful that capturing Missingno. can cause permanent damage to your game, possibly even erasing the save files, when in fact, the Hall of Fame glitching is the only permanent side effect (and even then, it does not negatively impact or otherwise impede gameplay), rendering Missingno. perfectly safe to capture and train.
• As Missingno. is caught at a level higher than 100, it is possible to increase its level even higher by using Rare Candies. The maximum level it reaches is 255, and if another Rare Candy is used, it will revert to level 0.
  • If a Missingno. with a level higher than 100 gains any amount of experience, it will revert permanently to level 100. In fact, this will happen with any Pokémon over level 100.

Name origin

Missingno.'s English and Japanese names are both derived from "Missing Number" which owes to the fact that its designated number is 000 (and its number being "missing").

External links

• Encounter in Pokémon Yellow Version

References

This glitch Pokémon article is part of Project GlitchDex, a Bulbapedia project that aims to write comprehensive articles on glitches in the Pokémon games.