Bulbapedia Disputed Pokemon, or real animals?

[El Squibbonator]

So, the wiki has a page on it titled "Disputed Pokemon" which covers creatures that have appeared in various incarnations of the franchise that may or may not be Pokemon themselves. For example, in the Pokemon: Pocket Monsters manga, there are a number of creatures that resemble no known Pokemon, and in the third movie a book of Legendary Pokemon is shown containing an illustration of a winged humanoid with butterfly-like wings.

So here's where it gets complicated. In PS022 VS Victreebel, the bodies of some unidentified rat-like and bird-like creatures can be seen when Red is captured by the Victreebel horde. I added these to the list of "disputed Pokemon", but they were soon removed, with the justification being that they were meant to be real animals rather than Pokemon. However, I think they should stay, for two reasons. One reason is that the "disputed Pokemon" page already includes some creatures that could easily pass for real animals--for example, a statue of a shark-like creature being attacked by a Kabutops. The unidentified birds and rodents from PS022 are no different.

The other reason is that they are never identified in the text as real-life animals, nor are they immediately recognizable as such. On the rare occasions when animals are shown in the franchise, they are usually visually distinct from Pokemon (for example, the mongoose illusion created by the Gastly in EP020 and the fish that occasionally appear in Meowth's fantasies). The creatures in PS022 are not like that, only being visible as silhouettes and as visually-indistinct images. In other words, they read just as easily as unidentified Pokemon as they do as real animals.

 

[BlisseyandtheAquaJets]

He's got a point.

It seems strange to apply this selectively...

Maybe move the shark to Real Animals?

Or merge the articles?

I do think that there is a PokéDex precedent, though, regarding the small vermin...

 

[Daenerys]

On the subject of disputed Pokemon, I have to wonder why that page even exists at all? I mean stuff like the whale in the Electric Tale of Pikachu manga or some of those unknown creatures in jars from Brock's collection in the Pocket Monsters manga are obviously not any known Pokemon and are just creatures created solely for those manga, and even that giant fish/shark thing from the Fossil Fools episode is clearly meant to be a real-world fish of some kind and not an actual Pokemon. The same applies to several other entries like the MechaMew2 from the play, the TCG creature silhouette and so many others.

The term 'disputed' implies that there's some serious debate between fans as to whether or not a lot of the creatures on that page are actual Pokemon, yet I have to wonder why anyone with common sense would think that the whale and many of those other creatures are actual Pokemon in the first place. Like, what's there to debate about under these circumstances?

 

[El Squibbonator]

I think non-Pokemon creatures that appear in characters' fantasies, such as the various times Meowth has dreamed about seafood, don't really count, since they aren't actually shown to exist within the Pokemon universe. I also have my reservations about including instances of characters eating meat on the list. From a "Doylist" (that is, out-of-universe) perspective, the fact that the characters are occasionally shown eating meat might not be meant to literally imply that such things exist in the Pokemon world. It might simply be that the animators were told to draw the characters eating, and that was what they drew.

It's sort of like the Starbucks cup in Game of Thrones. The cup wasn't put in that scene to imply that Starbucks exists in Westeros, but it's there nonetheless and you can either come up with an in-story justification for it or accept that it was an oversight on the part of the producers. Likewise, when characters in the Pokemon anime are seen chowing down on some steak or cheeseburgers, I tend not to take it at face value.