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. Due to the ease of which it can be found, it is one of the best-known Glitch Pokémon

In later generations, other Glitch Pokémon are referred to as "a Missingno.", despite there being little relation to the one found in Pokémon Red and Blue, except perhaps via a shared number of 000.

Biology

Physiology

Missingno.'s five sprites, four of which are from Pokémon Red and Blue, one of which is from Pokémon Yellow.

Missingno. has five different forms, each triggered by a different letter being present in the name of the player as the third, fifth, or seventh character.

The most common form Missingno. takes is a strange block of glitched pixels in a backward-L shape, similar to a Tetris piece. This form appears if G, H, J, M, S, :, ], a, b, c, m, o, p, or v is the character in the third, fifth, or seventh slot of the player's chosen name. Due to the default name of ASH, after the anime's main character, this is the most well-known Missingno. form. It is exclusive to Pokémon Red and Blue.

A second form of Missingno. takes the sprite of the Kabutops fossil found in the Pewter Museum of Science. It can appear in two ways:

1. If a lowercase "w" is present in the third, fifth, or seventh slot of the player's name and he or she performs the Old Man glitch.
2. Through the Mew glitch (method 3) with a Pokémon with a Special stat of 182.

The third form Missingno. has is of the other fossil found in the museum, of an Aerodactyl. Like the Kabutops fossil, it is obtainable:

1. Through the Old Man glitch, with a lowercase "x" in the third, fifth, or seventh slots.
2. Through method 3 of the Mew glitch, using a Pokémon with a Special stat of 183.

The fourth Missingno. uses the sprite of the ghost found in the Pokémon Tower if the player does not have a Silph Scope. In Japanese games, this form of Missingno. is named literally as "Ghost" (ゴースト), thus sharing its name with the real Pokémon Haunter. Like the previous forms, it appears:

1. With a lowercase "y" in the player's name in the third, fifth, or seventh slot during the Old Man glitch.
2. Through the Mew glitch (method 3) with a Pokémon with a Special stat of 184.

Missingno.'s fifth form appears only in Pokémon Yellow, and cannot be encountered except through the Mew glitch due to the removal of the Old Man glitch from the games. This sprite uses the palette of Pikachu, and so appears as a yellow and red glitched box. The Special stat required to encounter it with the Mew glitch is either 31, 32, 61, 62, 63, 67, 68, 69, or 86.

Gender differences

Due to its appearance being only in the Generation I games, Missingno. is not known to have a gender, as they were not specified until Generation II.

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," Pokémon Red and Blue's 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.

Behavior

Having appeared in no canon other than the games, and having no discernable Pokédex information, Missingno. has no known behavior.

Habitat

File:GlitchHabitat.png

Glitch Pokémon

Missingno., unlike most other Glitch Pokémon, has a standard habitat of the east coastline of Cinnabar Island and the Seafoam Islands, as a result of the Rare Candy cheat.

Diet

Main article: Pokémon food

Missingno.'s dietary specifications are unknown.

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. The only way to use a Missingno. at a different level in battle is to use a 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, most commonly Tyrogue (due to the common name of ASH in 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. Rarely, if a Missingno. is successfully traded, it will become the Pokémon it was said to be, and act normally (though it will retain any and all attacks). At this point, it only may be traded back into the Generation I game while the player is still in the Time Capsule (where it will again become a Missingno.), as if the player leaves, the Generation II game will detect it as a Generation II Pokémon and not allow the player to enter.

Why Missingno. appears

Missingno. appears due to an oversight in the programming of the Old Man's tutorial in Viridian City on how to catch Pokémon. When the game sets up the battle between the Old Man and a wild Weedle, it needs to change the player's name (temporarily) to "OLD MAN" so that it will display that name, rather than the player's entered name, during the battle.

Due to the limited space on a Game Boy cartridge, the programmers decided to use the space where data for wild Pokémon found in the grass is stored (which is completely blank in Viridian City; only Surfing and Fishing data is used) to save the player's name temporarily. Normally, this would cause no abnormal activity, as this data is overwritten when the player moves to a different area.

In all cities, however, this data remains blank, and so the data is never overwritten (as there is nothing new to overwrite it with), and thus, the data that was last entered (be it the player's name or the wild Pokémon data from another area) remains in place. This itself still causes no harm, however, an oversight in the programming of the tiles used to denote the shore of an island marks them as equivalent to grass. As all water routes have no real grass on them, likewise, the data is not overwritten, and so whatever data is in the slots for wild Pokémon found in the grass is used, be it the player's name or wild Pokémon found elsewhere, such as the Safari Zone.

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

In Pokémon Yellow

File:MissingnoYellow.jpg

Using the Mew glitch to encounter Missingno. in Pokémon Yellow. Note the vast difference between this and the one found in Pokémon Red and Blue.

Through the development of Pokémon Yellow, which occurred in the two years following the release of Pokémon Red and Green in Japan, the old method of finding Missingno. was disabled by blanking the data for wild Pokémon before overwriting it, and reprogramming shore tiles to act as water tiles.

Despite this, some time later, a new way was discovered to find Missingno., as well as any other Pokémon, including Mew, earning it the name of the Mew glitch. Through the third described method to this glitch, using a Pokémon with a Special stat of 31, 32, 61, 62, 63, 67, 68, 69, or 86, the Yellow Missingno. will appear.

Though a traded Missingno. from Red and Blue will become this Missingno., however, they do not have the same effects on gameplay. Yellow Missingno. is known to be far more malicious than its earlier counterpart, frequently freezing the game on an encounter, and corrupting and deleting data from saved files it is on. If caught, it will cause graphical glitches, possibly rendering the player invisible and making duplicates of the player walk all over the screen.

In Pokémon Stadium

When viewed in Pokémon Stadium, Missingno. will appear as a tiny Rhydon doll (the appearance of a substitute), while in Pokémon Stadium 2, Missingno. will show up as a Ditto, and if the game is saved via Stadium 2, will then become a Ditto permanently.

Nintendo on Missingno.

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 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

This Pokémon was unavailable prior to Generation I. Generation I Red Blue Glitch Rare Candy cheat, Mew glitch Yellow Glitch Trade from Red and Blue, Mew glitch Generation II Gold Silver None Unavailable Crystal None Unavailable Generation III Ruby Sapphire None Unavailable Emerald None Unavailable FireRed LeafGreen None Unavailable Colosseum None Unavailable XD None Unavailable Generation IV Diamond Pearl None Unavailable Platinum None Unavailable HeartGold SoulSilver None Unavailable Generation V Black White None Unavailable Black 2 White 2 None Unavailable

Base stats

Stat		Range
		At Lv. 50	At Lv. 100
HP: 33		93 - 139	176 - 269
Attack: 136		141 - 187	277 - 370
Defense: 0		5 - 51	5 - 98
Speed: 29		34 - 80	63 - 156
Special: 6		11 - 57	17 - 110
Total: 204	(210 on other generations' scale)
Minimum stats are calculated with 0 EVs and IVs of 0. Maximum stats are calculated with 63001 EVs and IVs of 15. Total on other generations' scale counts this Pokémon's Special stat as both Special Attack and Special Defense.

Learnset

By leveling up

• 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

• 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.

Trivia

File:MissingnoPokedex3.PNG

Missingno.'s Pokédex data.

• If counted among normal Pokémon, Missingno. has the highest Attack base stat of all in Pokémon Red and Blue and the ninth highest of all Pokémon as of Generation IV. Likewise, it has the lowest Defense base stat of any Pokémon, and the third lowest Speed base stat, only losing to Shuckle and Munchlax which 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 when compared to non-Glitch 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 use TM50 to learn 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", a reference to its number as 000, the missing number before 001, Bulbasaur.

External links

• Encounter in Pokémon Yellow Version

References

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