‘WTF Game Freak’: The Typhlosion allegations and meme, explained

The Typhlosion meme spawned from a tale that was allegedly part of a massive Game Freak leak containing unpublished Pokémon lore. One of these stories involved a Typhlosion—the final evolution of the Fire Type Generation II starter—who disguised himself as a human and got up to some eyebrow-raising shenanigans.

It remains unclear whether some of the more shocking Pokémon folklore came from Game Freak or whether some other freaks are trolling us, so take it all with a grain of salt. Regardless, there’s no stopping the memes about Typhlosion that are currently spreading across social media.

Meme basics:

• Meme Creator: Twitter user @GireumNewTown
• Meme Type: Fan art / News reactions
• First Appearance: October 13, 2024
• Origin Source: Game Freak (allegedly)

What is the Typhlosion meme about?

All those references and pieces of fan art about Typhlosion, a giant fire badger from Pokémon Gold/Silver, come from a document that hackers obtained and leaked to the public from publisher Game Freak. This included several unreleased folklore tales that appear to be written to resemble the vibes of real-world myths.

You know how a lot of old myths from various cultures could get weird? Like when a horse impregnated Loki, or all that stuff Zeus got up to? Buckle up.

The story that started the Typhlosion memes depicted one of these Pokémon disguising himself as a man, kidnapping a human described as a “girl,” and putting some kind of spell on her to make her forget her family and sleep a lot. Eventually, she woke up with a child in her arms, and the Typhlosion called her his wife.

And that’s why you might have seen drawings of a Typhlosion appearing to deal with allegations that he sexually assaulted a minor.

Origin and spread

The Game Freak leak happened on October 13, 2024, as a result of hackers stealing massive amounts of data from the company and releasing it to the public. Documents revealed never-before-seen Pokémon, details about upcoming games and TV shows, and code sources for old games, as well as weird lore that didn’t make it past quality control.

On the day of the leak, Twitter user @GireumNewTown posted the text of the proposed Pokémon myth. At least two other stories also spread involving interspecies relations between magical creatures and humans.

In the same vein as memes as the Vaporeon copypasta, the pocket monsters in these stories have become the subject of jokes and incorporated into a running gag about being horny for Pokémon. The trend has exploded over the past few days and shows no sign of slowing down.

Cultural context

While some people have genuine concerns about what’s going on with Game Freak employees, others believe that these stories were written to resemble real-world myths. The running theme of these stories appears to be an attempt to explain that humans and Pokémon have a close historical relationship.

The intro to the Typhlosion tale reads: “Long ago, when the boundary between Pokémon and humans was unclear…” At the very end, it claims that Typhlosions are all half-human.

This and the other strange tales show humans getting closer to Pokémon and learning to get along with them, often as a result of a lot of deadly violence as well as the birth of human-Pokémon hybrids. This is not unlike many Japanese myths, as well as the wild examples of Greek and Norse folklore.

People’s concept of consent back in the day when these kinds of stories first appeared was, well, different than it is today. But there’s also a clear reason why this leaked lore didn’t make it into the official canon.

Unfortunately, humans as a whole still are not great on the topic of sexual violence, and some people are being rather cavalier about it in their jokes, so tread carefully.

Typhlosion meme examples

More Pokémon memes:

• The Shocked Pikachu aka Surprised Pikachu meme, explained
• The angry Jigglypuff in ‘Detective Pikachu’ is already a meme
• Pokémon Home is here—and so are the memes
• The ‘tweet like Pokemon are real’ meme is spreading like wildfire

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