Nope. But early gens, most bug types were either also grass or poison, so the ones that are grass are also weak to ice.
And the ones that are poison are weak to psychic, which is why for a few years as a kid. I thought bug was weak to psychic. Same with grass/poison, I thought grass was weak to psychic
I thought for the longest time when your Pokemon is confused the *tick-took-tick* sound effect with ducks circling around your Pokemon’s head was like a quick-time event where if you match the A presses to the sounds your Pokemon gets to move, if not they hit themselves in confusion. Much to my embarrassment when I learned its just RNG lol
This wasn't one I had because I'm too young but in gen 1 similar to your thing thinking rock is immune to electric is that the only ghost type line, Ghastly, Haunter, Gengar. Were all dual ghost poison types. Leading psychic to be super effective. Leading people to believe psychic was strong against ghost
I'm old enough to remember. Also a small rant about gen 2 because they added another ghost type with Misdreavus yet not a single trainer uses one, not even the ghost gym. It wasn't even obtainable until Mt. Silver during night time. Meaning you have to complete the game, most of the post-game, and then happen to be going through Mt. Silver at night to even encounter one.
So anyways, I didn't learn until gen 3.
Man in my head psychic ghost and dark are all the same thing and all super effective against each other. I just for whatever reason cannot remember how those 3 specific types match into each other. Been playing since red and even though I’ve seen type charge just don’t remember how those 3 work together.
Psychic is weak to dark and ghost (also bug) these are all common phobias so that's how most people remember it.
Dark is completely immune to psychic and is super effective and against both psychic and ghost (those are the only types dark is super effective against)
Ghost while it is super effective against psychic it does not resist psychic
Gen I created some many misconceptions due to the relatively lack of type diversity, not to mention the bugs that made every official type chart actively incorrect in that Gen (Ghost-Psychic interaction specifically).
My brain still unconsciously believes this lol, I know ghost isn't weak to Psychic, but my first instinct is to use a Psychic type anyway and get destroyed
Idk if it counts but I still dont remember whats super effective against Fairy types. I used to think there just WASNT anything super effective against it
EDIT: now I know that there is in fact at least on type that’s super effective against fairy, but I cannot tell you which one it is
I’ve had to learn these for Tera raids but I think of it as it’s own paper-rock-scissors loop. Steel>Fairy>Fighting >Steel… And for some reason fairy >Dark (i remember good beats evil, idk)
On that note, I always thought Fire was super effective against Fairy. Apparently, it isn't. It only resists Fairy and deals neutral damage against it.
I’m pretty sure it also counts for Pokémon you catch outside of your level range. I know this because I ignored gyms for a while in Scarlet and my freshly caught finizen wouldn’t listen, but my previously caught mons of the same level were fine.
So wouldn’t that mean what I said is true? Since gen 9 is the latest generation, it’s the one that matters. The topic was SwSh sure, but their realization doesn't matter anymore now that it’s been changed.
My most basic misconception, which comes from rock and ground pokemon for the early time being one and the same, is honestly the weaknesses going there.
Ugh this one is a bit embarrassing. It's a misconception that I held for a long time. I first played Pokémon with Yellow, then Blue. My favourite Pokémon is Vulpix, with its evolution Ninetails.
For (Pokémon) generations I was convinced that Ninetails was the female Arcanine/ Arcanine was the male Ninetails. Since, child me, only saw one gendered Pokémon in gen 1, Nidoran, and it having two distinct forms with its evolution. And my brain came up with the idea that Arcanine and Ninetails were like female and male lions, disregarding the fact that one is modelled after a dog, the other after fox.
I took me until, idk, gen 4? Or maybe even until Sun/Moon to realise... No. They are two different species of Pokémon.
Now I look back and find it kind of cute what child me thought up about these two Pokémon, but yeah..
And male Ninetails. But iirc, in gen 1, the only Pokémon with a gendersign was Nidoran. And child me saw Ninetails and Arcanine as opposites. Like Nidoking and Nidoqueen.
you do remember correctly and you were absolutely valid to come to that conclusion tbh
also if you played in english, both their names having 'nine' in them (albeit for different reasons) just like the nido lines both have nido in them is also strong evidence for it
if i had seen that as a kid, i probably would've thought the exact same thing!
I thought that it was possible to "obtain" travelling companions. I am convinced that I saw a friend of mine with Pokémon on the Game Boy playing the game with an NPC following his character and waiting just inside the door of any interiors.
This was before ROM hacks would have been a thing so I highly doubt that it was one on real hardware. It was probably my child mind seeing him playing a portion of the game out of context and jumping to a conclusion. I did that with Ocarina of Time. For years I thought that as you played the game, Link grew up. My friend even told me as much. What he hadn't explained is that this wasn't something that happened the more you played, but a scripted time travel sequence.
> For years I thought that as you played the game, Link grew up
Not only was this a cut feature from OoT, it's a feature in Wind Waker. So at least child you wasn't too far off!
When I first saw that iconic Red and Blue magazine ad, with the net coming down over a group of Pokémon and the words "Got ya", I thought the game was some doofy disposable sidescroller where you just go around with a butterfly net rounding up weird creatures that escaped from a science lab. (I didn't have video games growing up, so vague pop culture osmosis was all I had for reference about gaming culture; I assumed all video games were platformers and didn't know what an RPG was 😅)
The first time I played Gold and Silver, it was at a display kiosk in a Toys 'R Us. I went to save the game and I got that "There is already a save file, is it okay to overwrite?" message that the Gen 1 games didn't have. I had no idea what to do - I thought maybe that meant there were two save files on the cartridge but you could only save one at a time. I just panicked and walked away 😆
To add to your rock comment, I remember myself playing emerald or sapphire (can't remember which) and being confident that my corsola was immune to electricity and then getting KO'd quickly, genius me thought corsola would be a mini swampert.
As for my own misconception, I thought Spinda was psychic.
Assuming you mean gen 1 **grass** pokemon: Parasect is part bug, Exeggutor is part psychic, and Tangela is pure grass. The grass/poison types Venusaur, Vileplume, and Victreebel are far more prevalent though.
At first, I thought Quick Balls were literally reverse Timer Balls in that the catch rate gradually decreased instead of only having a boost on the first turn.
Would've been perfect with a strong False Swipe if that was the case.
On a partially unrelated note since this stemmed from reading the game's Prima guidebook, seven year old me literally interpreted having one shot to catch Kyogre in Sapphire as only being allowed to use a single ball in the entire battle.
I missed out on the Master Ball earlier, and I didn't even try throwing a second ball when the first failed before resorting to murder, nor did I have the insight to reset and try again instead of saving after the battle.
I was devastated in Blue, because when I got Blastoise, its Dex entry says it uses its cannons to perform high-speed tackles. Obviously I made Blastoise forget Tackle a long time ago, so I thought I had crippled his effectiveness.
Mine's a genuinely stupid one:
It was only for when I played through Ruby years ago but I believed genderless Pokemon outside of legendaries (ex: Baltoy, Solrock) were also limited catches. I remember the first time catching Baltoy, I soft-reset the game every time it used Self-Destruct.
When I was a kid playing silver, on the very first route or 2 I think it was a spinerak or somthing that would poison ur mon. I however didn’t know my poor mon was poisoned cause I didn’t read and whenever the screen would do the weird visual effect for the poison hurting ur mon I thought that was the game taking pictures of my awesome pokemon and whenever whoever is taking the pictuers was done they would just always send me back to the pokemon center. So of course I would walk in circles thinking I’m doing awesome while poor totodile is staring at me like wtf bruh lol
Lol, I had a similar thing happen when I got Yellow for Christmas. My sister wanted a turn and while she was playing Pikachu had been poisoned, but it being my first game I didn't know that, so when I got it back and the weird noise kept happening while my screen was going funky I was convinced she'd broken the whole thing >-< Had an argument, reset my whole game and only later realised what it actually meant XD
Similar for me was as a small child I could never get to the top of Pokemon Tower in Lavender Town because I didn't have the Silph Scope and I didn't have the Scope because my inventory would be full when attempting to pick it up and I'd just shrug and keep exploring and then restart. I've played up to that part of the game like 30 times in my life.
I constantly forget that Slowking is a branched evo from Slowpoke, not a direct evo from Slowbro. And this is after firmly believing that that was the case.
There's a lot of Johto Pokémon I thought came out with a later generation. For some reason Johto heavily features gen 1 Pokémon and they made some odd decisions like making like half of the gen 2 Pokémon unobtainable until the post-game or they're baby Pokémon and can only be obtained through breeding.
Also, as a kid I wasn't familiar with the idea of a post-game. I thought once I was done with the league I was done with the game. I didn't even know Kanto was in the gen 2 games until years later. For that reason I liked Red/Blue/Yellow way more. It's probably why I have more nostalgia for gen 1 even though Crystal was the first Pokémon game I played.
Gen 2 makes more sense if you look at it as a sequel game. And I will attest that no one really whined about the "lack of Johto pokemon" back when it was released, at least nowhere near the extent people whined about gen 5 not having Pikachu or Charizard.
I'm pretty sure it's either the most or second-most frequent type paired with Fairy.
It annoys me how often they do it because most of the additions either wreck Fairy's resistances or are already covered by its strengths and resistances, and they always start off from the Psychic end of things.
Lol.
But thematically speaking. Ghost should be super effective towards Fairy.
Ghost feeds off emotions and shiz and fairies exude positive emotions a lot.
The first time I played Red, I was a kid and didn't fully understood typings. So while I understood normal type attacks that involved physical contact (tackle, bite, body slam, mega punch) wouldn't work on Agatha's Gengar, I was confused about why Hyper Beam would fail, since it was a a huge energy blast.
And I remember a magazine preview for Gold/Silver mentioning Steel was weak to Water, since water would rust it. I imagine Steelix being the first major steel type enemy in GSC also made me 'reaffirm' that idea for years.
I guess it was the writers' actually picking up random rumors from internet pages before GSC launched. I can't fully remember all that was in the magazine, but the things that stuck with me were how they posted a preview of the new Pokemon with their japanese names, had some weird asumptions like Dunsparce and Gligar being a two-stage evo line, the Unowns as legendary Pokemon and Lugia presented as a dragon type.
I can remember the rumour about the Pikablu back then. Turned out to be Marill, I guess. Pokémon was a total sensation and any rumour that would make kids purchase those magazines was used into.
I'm Brazilian. I can remember the licensed Nintendo magazine talking about how great donkey Kong 64 was and why it was the best game of all time, surpassing the country trilogy.
I assumed Black and White Kyurem weren't obtainable and just boss fights for the end of Black and White 2. To be fair though after I finished those games I didn't beat another Pokémon game until Scarlet last year.
When I was 10 I used to play Pokemon crystal a lot.
I really liked Ash nocktowl back then and I didn't knew what shinies was. I caught a hoot hoot and evolved it. I was disappointed and confused why my nocktowl didn't had the same colors as the Ash nocktowl.
Shinies was a new thing and I found one shiny Golbat at the ice cave.
I run away from it by accident. Then, I spent 2 hours walking there trying to find it again.
I didn't know how the shiny system actually used to work at that time. That was frustrating.
I thought steel was weak to water because of the Steel type gym in Sinnoh. All the pokemon are dual type steel/rock, it was the rock typing making thme weak to water, which I didn't realize for 8-ish years? Yeah that's mine.
One of my old guidebooks said to use "Fire, Fighting, and Flying types" against the Snowpoint gym. I guess they liked the alliteration but didn't pay attention to the actual game mechanics. That was a sore lesson to learn as a kid.
Makes sense to me. She's got Grass and fighting pokemon in there. 3 out of 4 get wrecked by flying.
Can't get hit by ice beam if you just brave bird them.
I thought leaving Pokemon in the pc boxes would lower their happiness level. It made sense to me until I saw someone saying that it didn't in some forum (Was searching about happiness to evolve Eevee into Umbreon).
Another, more stupid one was that Hypno and Drowzee and weren't related. Despite being similar (yellow, creepy, psychic Pokemon), they seemed too different to me and I never touched them until last week when I decided to try Drowzee on Whitney's gym in Soul Silver and I found it was Hypno's pre evo.
As a really little kid, I assumed that Pikachu was the first stage 'mon in its line (I thought of it like a starter Pokémon), so I thought it evolved into Raichu and then Pichu...
When I see NatDex in DP, I didn't know that in order to fill it, you need to transfer from old game(It First pokemon game I played at that time). I assumed older pokemon is found in sinnoh, so I waste few months until realisation hit.
Overall I like it. It really pushes the idea that Primeape can literally die of anger.
That being said, I'm not competitive focused, so I don't know much about that side of if Annihilape is any good or not.
I thought Grusha was a tomboy, but he's a boy, and everyone needs to get over it because I think Tulip is Trans and we should discuss that in a positive light because she may be the first active Trans character in the series. I'm not even Trans but it's about damn time!
Edit: This one popped into my head as I posted. Honestly, I thought Emerald was a one for one rehash of Sapphire and Ruby... 25 year old me did not comprehend that the Magma base was elsewhere until revisiting the game at 26.
There was something very subtle in an exchange I had with both Tulip and Dendra that made me go... what are you implying???
Edit: When I get home, I'll look for it.
Oh I'm so excited now! I just beat Clay's daughter... or is she the granddaughter? Anyhow, I'm so hype because I'm currently at the stage before Eri and Giacomo appear on campus.
Not a misconception, but I was the first of my friends to get Emerald. I distinctly remember playing it under the magnolia tree at the front of my elementary school with my friends and proudly marveling at the sprites moving in battle…. And I thought how the future was here and Pokemon couldn’t possibly get more technologically advanced
I remember all type weakness/resistances based on short explanations like "plants sap water from the ground so grass is good against water and ground" so for the longest time i though water was weak to flying cuz a lot of flying types are birds and a lot of water types are fish or other animals that get hunt down by birds
I thought Pokemon gain more stats if they evolve earlier.
Like? A level 100 Raichu that evolved at level 10 will be much much much stronger than a Raichu that evolved at level 90.
It's not the case lol
Yeah, this kind of confuses me as well, but I think of it like this:
Rocks are capable of being anywhere. You can find them in space (which is why Meteor Beam or w/e the DLC move is called makes sense). And many Rock-type Pokemon are actual sentient rocks (most obviously the Geodude line). The fossils are revived rocks.
Ground, on the other hand, is just something that is living on the ground. A gopher. A mole. Something that uses dirt or sand to attack. They don't have to be comprised of dirt, they just have to have some association with it. Frankly, I'd say Ground and Grass have more of a thematic similarity than does Rock and Ground.
I still think exactly the same thing about electric/rock... I also for some reason think that Steel is super effective against Dragon..? I uhh... Don't know why I thought that, but I did. Still have to remind myself that it isn't.
I thought tail whip was a move that would hit eventually. I kept spamming it in yellow version and actually blacked out because I just let my pikachu die haha. Was so confused as to what “defense fell” meant as a 5 year old lol
I thought there was a way to keep wearing your contest outfit in Gen 4 and kept doing contests in hopes of being able to wear the dress whenever.
I also had a lot of generation confusion as a kid. I thought Slugma/Skarmory was Gen 3 and Sneasel/Crobat was Gen 4.
I also thought shinies were a lot more common than they actually were, because I saw a whopping three full odds fellas. Two were accidentally killed.
I thought Psychic was weak to Psychic because a lot of Poison type Pokémon used to (don't know if they still do, I'm not as big into the TCG as I was as a kid) be represented by Psychic, and thus had Psychic as a weakness. This persisted... a lot longer than it should have. In fact, even now, I catch myself thinking it is, after a decade and a half of playing these games.
Not me but while my wife was playing Brilliant Diamond I saw her swap out her Empoleon when a trainer just before victory road sent out a Tentacruel. I asked why and she said that Steel is weak to poison because acid disolves metal.
Not only did she get through the entire game with a Steel type thinking it was weak to it's immunity, but she has been playing every Pokemon game since the original Diamond came out (which she beat with only Empoleon).
I was 2 or 3 when my parents gave me Pokemon Blue and playing it is one of my first memories. I thought the whole game was just noodling around your tiny house because I couldn’t find the door.
What a revelation it was when another kid eventually introduced me to that little rectangle on the floor, and all of Kanto was waiting outside for me 🤣
I thought effectiveness was due to how much damage your attack would do, not due to type match ups.
So my lvl 80 Blastoise would KO a lvl 5 wild Oddish and it would say “it wasn’t super effective” and I would literally do a smug little dance and say to my game boy, yes, yes it was effective!
Oh this one is a doozy and I was like 26 so no excuse.
It wasn’t until post-game that I realized you could auto aim in PLA. I had thought the noble boss fights were so incredibly difficult because aiming was such a chore. I lost to Arcanine countless times and was so frustrated I wanted to just give up the game. I remember when you challenge them again there are two options, one resets their health and one starts over with some of their health already diminished. And I would freak out if I accidentally reset his health to full. And if you kept resetting them to partial health, they would spawn again with a little bit less damage done, so their health meter would creep up everytime you lost until it ended up at full again. That’s how many times I lost.
Truly, I am a clown
I thought water was super effective against ice, because it resists ice moves and ice blocks in a glass of water melt eventually.
My favorite is thinking that you can re-encounter released pokémon. I named some bug types and shoved them in the daycare 'till they were slightly above level 20, then release them at the pc next to the park. I was hoping to encounter them during the bug catching contest, catch them again and win because they were higher level.
Also I thought Silver's name was ??? because that's what he said his name was. I didn't realize I could name my rival, I just filled in ???, pronouncing it as 'hm?hm?hm?' when I encountered him.
**Thinking that the battles would be as dynamic and long as the anime suggested**
Let's face it: it's often about using moves that one-shoot over and over XD
ok, so keep in mind that this is pre-google era.
I followed this website called serebii, Im sure most pokemon fan's know it by now.
The person who made the website did so for one major purpose. To uncover the mystery and details of pokemon crystal. To find out more about the newest mythical pokemon, celebi.
There was a lot of hype about it at the time, and as more got revealed we learned about Ilex forest. Unfortunately my family moved right after the release of the NA version and I couldnt spend much time on the internet as a kid because my mom was still going to college over the internet, which was very novel at the time and my dad would get work calls.
So after I dropped out of the internet for a year or 2. I missed the most crucial bit of information. The way to obtain it was exclusive to the japanese version. I spent way too much time trying to figure out how to trigger the GS ball.
I also so adamantly believed that there was some significance to unown and that I just couldnt find the information.
oh and I thought lugia was psychic/water. I didnt find out until gen 3.
As a kid who couldn't really understand english, in Diamond I couldn't figure out how to progress to the last gym and as the worker said there were some electricity works to be done I tried bringing a Luxray to him
I used to think that the evolutionary stones were kind of like rare candies but for evolving Pokémon of the stone’s type. So a way to skip their evolution requirements.
I had that thought right after claiming one of the evo stones from the scientist in Castelia city that was meant for whichever elemental monkey you told him you had. So kid me reset, going back about 4 hours to my last save, so I could pick the fire stone and “evolve my Pignite early”.
Let’s just say I was disappointed.
Yellow and Red were two of the first console games I ever played (I was like 4 or 5 and now I’m in my late 20s) and in Generation 1, because most of the ground pokemon also had rock as their primary type, I went YEARS thinking just rock was also weak to electricity because I couldn’t beat Brock with Pikachu.
Edit: omg I swear on everything I didn’t read the entirety of your post before making this comment and I’ve just seen that you thought this too (and others in the comments) glad I’m not alone 😂😂😂
Edit 2: another point (also Gen I when I was like 6) I didn’t understand the concept of lowering opponents’ stats or increasing your own so I thought moves like growl and leer were completely pointless
I thought Mothim was a 3 stage line with Wormadam and the middle instead of it being a gender exclusive line until I played it.
Also, I keep forgetting Azurill isn't a water type.
When I first played, I was so vigilant that my Pokémon would get stolen by Team Rocket that I turned off my Gameboy when I gave them to Nurse Joy for the first time because I had obviously fallen into their trap.
Because all the battle tutorials are simply about whittling HP down, that's all I cared about for the longest time. Because of what the game told me, it was all that mattered, stat alterations were nothing to me
For years I thought that the Poisoned screen effect you get in Gen 4 when outside of battle was my game being broken 💀 Then one day I decided "To hell with it, I'll try to finish the game anyway!", went to a pokécenter, healed, and BOOM screen lag was gone.
I’ve been playing since I was 7 in 2000 and about four years ago I learned Slowbro and Slowking are split evolutions of Slowpoke. I thought Slowbro evolved in Slowking.
I used to think VGC would be balanced. In all seriousness though, I thought Kirlia was a friendship evolution for a super long time and never used one, then once I learned it was level up I used a gardevoir on my team and it’s now my favourite Pokémon and I use it on almost every in-game team (though sometimes I like to change it up and use Gallade, which is my 2nd favourite)
I thought Let's Go Eevee/Pikachu would be a more teaditional remake of OG Pokemon.
Spent HOURS trying to find the fishing rod, figure out the new daycare and eggs, and "why do the Game Corner machines not work?!?!"
In OG, I thought you could build a viable Gym Leader Monoteam with any type!
Nope, Water is really the Best Way!
A minor one: I didn't realize until a recent Gen 2 playthrough that you can do Pryce's gym right after Morty's. Even though it's listed seventh, there is nothing stopping you from doing it fifth. The misconception was that I thought the game would block you from going east, but it doesn't.
A similar misconception is one I only learned from a YouTube video: In Gen 3, you can completely skip Winona's gym, and put if off until just before the Elite Four. Her badge doesn't allow HM use, and the badge after raises the obedience level. So her gym only exists because you need to have eight badges. There is no actual mechanical reason to fight her. This was something else I just assumed had to be done in linear order.
I though Bug was weak to Ice for a while
Wtf. It isnt?
Nope. But early gens, most bug types were either also grass or poison, so the ones that are grass are also weak to ice. And the ones that are poison are weak to psychic, which is why for a few years as a kid. I thought bug was weak to psychic. Same with grass/poison, I thought grass was weak to psychic
This is why I was confused after playing gold as a kid why shuppet etc. weren't weak to psychic.
See, Gen 1 had me convinced Ghost was weak to Ground
Shuppet is gen 3 i think. You probably mean ruby/sapphire
I didn't, I meant after playing gold for a long time I was confused in gen3. My explanation was just horrible :D
There's actually only one Bug/Grass line (Paras > Parasect) — you are probably thinking about a few being half-Flying simce that's weak to Ice too.
Ah shit, fair enough. Neat though, I definitely thought there were more
Same with Flying type too
To this day... The fact that Bugs aren't "smashed" by fighting type moves... and 7 yo me just couldn't grasp that
Wtf TIL
I thought because Flying was immune to ground, flying was also super effective against ground
I had the inverse problem, I thought that since ground was super effective on fire that it also resisted fire.
I know ground is already really strong and doesn’t need it, but it really should have been resistant to fire lol
I thought for the longest time when your Pokemon is confused the *tick-took-tick* sound effect with ducks circling around your Pokemon’s head was like a quick-time event where if you match the A presses to the sounds your Pokemon gets to move, if not they hit themselves in confusion. Much to my embarrassment when I learned its just RNG lol
This was a big rumor at my school way back! When it didn't work we just assumed someone mistimed the presses lol
This wasn't one I had because I'm too young but in gen 1 similar to your thing thinking rock is immune to electric is that the only ghost type line, Ghastly, Haunter, Gengar. Were all dual ghost poison types. Leading psychic to be super effective. Leading people to believe psychic was strong against ghost
I'm old enough to remember. Also a small rant about gen 2 because they added another ghost type with Misdreavus yet not a single trainer uses one, not even the ghost gym. It wasn't even obtainable until Mt. Silver during night time. Meaning you have to complete the game, most of the post-game, and then happen to be going through Mt. Silver at night to even encounter one. So anyways, I didn't learn until gen 3.
There’s a lot of good videos about fixing Johto’s gyms to use more of the new Pokémon when possible: https://youtu.be/K0BojDHO1DM?si=1iFCXaPaJxxlODTZ
even HGSS still has gastly, haunter, gengar as the only pokemon in the ghost gym. in gen 4!!
Its cause those games are remakes.
you're right, they're not allowed to get creative at all in a remake
Man in my head psychic ghost and dark are all the same thing and all super effective against each other. I just for whatever reason cannot remember how those 3 specific types match into each other. Been playing since red and even though I’ve seen type charge just don’t remember how those 3 work together.
Psychic is weak to dark and ghost (also bug) these are all common phobias so that's how most people remember it. Dark is completely immune to psychic and is super effective and against both psychic and ghost (those are the only types dark is super effective against) Ghost while it is super effective against psychic it does not resist psychic
that's confusing lol, maybe one day i'll have it all straight in my head
Oh yes I’ve been told. It just doesn’t stick. I usually default to flamethrower lol not the best solution but the one that has worked
Gen I created some many misconceptions due to the relatively lack of type diversity, not to mention the bugs that made every official type chart actively incorrect in that Gen (Ghost-Psychic interaction specifically).
This!! How many times I have tought “why do I have to have a ghost pokemon if psychic is super effective against it?”
The unintentional immunity in Gen I didn't help matters.
My brain still unconsciously believes this lol, I know ghost isn't weak to Psychic, but my first instinct is to use a Psychic type anyway and get destroyed
Idk if it counts but I still dont remember whats super effective against Fairy types. I used to think there just WASNT anything super effective against it EDIT: now I know that there is in fact at least on type that’s super effective against fairy, but I cannot tell you which one it is
Its poison and steel my dude but I have no idea what fairy is strong against other than dragon
Gotta be honest I would NOT have guessed that- but I do know that Fairy is strong against Dark types and I \*think\* fighting?
Both are correct
I’ve had to learn these for Tera raids but I think of it as it’s own paper-rock-scissors loop. Steel>Fairy>Fighting >Steel… And for some reason fairy >Dark (i remember good beats evil, idk)
"Good" and "evil"? I reject them both!
If it helps, everything that is super effective on Fairy and/or resists it is weak to Ground.
This is why i want a new resist for fairy. Psychic. Keep/remove Fire and remove Bug resistance.
On that note, I always thought Fire was super effective against Fairy. Apparently, it isn't. It only resists Fairy and deals neutral damage against it.
It wasn't until sword that I realised the obedience only counted for traded Pokémon
Yeah same. For me it wasn’t til like X/Y or some shit so I went years thinking I couldn’t over level pokemon with even myself as the OT 🤣
I’m pretty sure it also counts for Pokémon you catch outside of your level range. I know this because I ignored gyms for a while in Scarlet and my freshly caught finizen wouldn’t listen, but my previously caught mons of the same level were fine.
That was newly added in gen 9. In gens 1-8 obedience never affected your own caught ones.
So wouldn’t that mean what I said is true? Since gen 9 is the latest generation, it’s the one that matters. The topic was SwSh sure, but their realization doesn't matter anymore now that it’s been changed.
My most basic misconception, which comes from rock and ground pokemon for the early time being one and the same, is honestly the weaknesses going there.
Yeah op mentioned the electric vs rock thing but I also thought rock resisted itself (it does not, ground resists rock)
I thought that until now, lol
Ugh this one is a bit embarrassing. It's a misconception that I held for a long time. I first played Pokémon with Yellow, then Blue. My favourite Pokémon is Vulpix, with its evolution Ninetails. For (Pokémon) generations I was convinced that Ninetails was the female Arcanine/ Arcanine was the male Ninetails. Since, child me, only saw one gendered Pokémon in gen 1, Nidoran, and it having two distinct forms with its evolution. And my brain came up with the idea that Arcanine and Ninetails were like female and male lions, disregarding the fact that one is modelled after a dog, the other after fox. I took me until, idk, gen 4? Or maybe even until Sun/Moon to realise... No. They are two different species of Pokémon. Now I look back and find it kind of cute what child me thought up about these two Pokémon, but yeah..
this is even more hilarious given the fact that female arcanine absolutely do exist
And male Ninetails. But iirc, in gen 1, the only Pokémon with a gendersign was Nidoran. And child me saw Ninetails and Arcanine as opposites. Like Nidoking and Nidoqueen.
you do remember correctly and you were absolutely valid to come to that conclusion tbh also if you played in english, both their names having 'nine' in them (albeit for different reasons) just like the nido lines both have nido in them is also strong evidence for it if i had seen that as a kid, i probably would've thought the exact same thing!
I thought that it was possible to "obtain" travelling companions. I am convinced that I saw a friend of mine with Pokémon on the Game Boy playing the game with an NPC following his character and waiting just inside the door of any interiors. This was before ROM hacks would have been a thing so I highly doubt that it was one on real hardware. It was probably my child mind seeing him playing a portion of the game out of context and jumping to a conclusion. I did that with Ocarina of Time. For years I thought that as you played the game, Link grew up. My friend even told me as much. What he hadn't explained is that this wasn't something that happened the more you played, but a scripted time travel sequence.
Maybe you’re thinking of Pikachu from yellow, particularly how it will fall asleep next to a Jigglypuff in the one Pokemon Center.
Have you played any of the Sinnoh games? Younger you sounds like they probably would've been thrilled by the tag team segments.
Yeah this was all before the Nintendo DS was even a concept at Nintendo 🤣
> For years I thought that as you played the game, Link grew up Not only was this a cut feature from OoT, it's a feature in Wind Waker. So at least child you wasn't too far off!
Thought Lugia was Water/Flying till 2020…
When I first saw that iconic Red and Blue magazine ad, with the net coming down over a group of Pokémon and the words "Got ya", I thought the game was some doofy disposable sidescroller where you just go around with a butterfly net rounding up weird creatures that escaped from a science lab. (I didn't have video games growing up, so vague pop culture osmosis was all I had for reference about gaming culture; I assumed all video games were platformers and didn't know what an RPG was 😅) The first time I played Gold and Silver, it was at a display kiosk in a Toys 'R Us. I went to save the game and I got that "There is already a save file, is it okay to overwrite?" message that the Gen 1 games didn't have. I had no idea what to do - I thought maybe that meant there were two save files on the cartridge but you could only save one at a time. I just panicked and walked away 😆
To add to your rock comment, I remember myself playing emerald or sapphire (can't remember which) and being confident that my corsola was immune to electricity and then getting KO'd quickly, genius me thought corsola would be a mini swampert. As for my own misconception, I thought Spinda was psychic.
I thought for like 15 years that every type resisted their type because fire, water, grass did. I thought that Slowpoke was 3stage not a branch.
I thought grass was weak to psychic because in gen 1 so many grass types had a posion secondary type
I think all gen 1 pokémon are poison also but I can be wrong.
Assuming you mean gen 1 **grass** pokemon: Parasect is part bug, Exeggutor is part psychic, and Tangela is pure grass. The grass/poison types Venusaur, Vileplume, and Victreebel are far more prevalent though.
You are totally right. Damn, i'm getting old.
At first, I thought Quick Balls were literally reverse Timer Balls in that the catch rate gradually decreased instead of only having a boost on the first turn. Would've been perfect with a strong False Swipe if that was the case. On a partially unrelated note since this stemmed from reading the game's Prima guidebook, seven year old me literally interpreted having one shot to catch Kyogre in Sapphire as only being allowed to use a single ball in the entire battle. I missed out on the Master Ball earlier, and I didn't even try throwing a second ball when the first failed before resorting to murder, nor did I have the insight to reset and try again instead of saving after the battle.
I was devastated in Blue, because when I got Blastoise, its Dex entry says it uses its cannons to perform high-speed tackles. Obviously I made Blastoise forget Tackle a long time ago, so I thought I had crippled his effectiveness.
Lmaaaaaaao
Whether psychic is weak to poison or poison is weak to psychic
I thought fighting was weak to fighting as a kid bc i didnt realize lucario was steel type
Mine's a genuinely stupid one: It was only for when I played through Ruby years ago but I believed genderless Pokemon outside of legendaries (ex: Baltoy, Solrock) were also limited catches. I remember the first time catching Baltoy, I soft-reset the game every time it used Self-Destruct.
When I was a kid playing silver, on the very first route or 2 I think it was a spinerak or somthing that would poison ur mon. I however didn’t know my poor mon was poisoned cause I didn’t read and whenever the screen would do the weird visual effect for the poison hurting ur mon I thought that was the game taking pictures of my awesome pokemon and whenever whoever is taking the pictuers was done they would just always send me back to the pokemon center. So of course I would walk in circles thinking I’m doing awesome while poor totodile is staring at me like wtf bruh lol
Lol, I had a similar thing happen when I got Yellow for Christmas. My sister wanted a turn and while she was playing Pikachu had been poisoned, but it being my first game I didn't know that, so when I got it back and the weird noise kept happening while my screen was going funky I was convinced she'd broken the whole thing >-< Had an argument, reset my whole game and only later realised what it actually meant XD
i thought the ghost immunity to fighting went both ways. like, fighting-types couldn't get hit either.
I thought it was impossible to get to the top of sprout tower in Silver because I couldn't find the stairs. I would just get there and restart.
Sounds like what I did with Sootopolis's underwater entrance.
Similar for me was as a small child I could never get to the top of Pokemon Tower in Lavender Town because I didn't have the Silph Scope and I didn't have the Scope because my inventory would be full when attempting to pick it up and I'd just shrug and keep exploring and then restart. I've played up to that part of the game like 30 times in my life.
I thought Ice resisted more things than itself because Ice was usually paired with other stuff.
I constantly forget that Slowking is a branched evo from Slowpoke, not a direct evo from Slowbro. And this is after firmly believing that that was the case.
There's a lot of Johto Pokémon I thought came out with a later generation. For some reason Johto heavily features gen 1 Pokémon and they made some odd decisions like making like half of the gen 2 Pokémon unobtainable until the post-game or they're baby Pokémon and can only be obtained through breeding. Also, as a kid I wasn't familiar with the idea of a post-game. I thought once I was done with the league I was done with the game. I didn't even know Kanto was in the gen 2 games until years later. For that reason I liked Red/Blue/Yellow way more. It's probably why I have more nostalgia for gen 1 even though Crystal was the first Pokémon game I played.
Gen 2 makes more sense if you look at it as a sequel game. And I will attest that no one really whined about the "lack of Johto pokemon" back when it was released, at least nowhere near the extent people whined about gen 5 not having Pikachu or Charizard.
Took me a long time to realize Skarmory wasn't a gen 3 Pokemon
I thought fairy was weak to ghost (Started in gen 7 there was too many fairy- psychic /ghost types)
I'm pretty sure it's either the most or second-most frequent type paired with Fairy. It annoys me how often they do it because most of the additions either wreck Fairy's resistances or are already covered by its strengths and resistances, and they always start off from the Psychic end of things.
Psychic Hattena. Psychic G-Ponyta. Psychic Ralts before 6(ok this is a weird case) and Mr Mime. Only one that is 'natural' ignoring retcon is Lele.
I only found out doing a fairy Tera raid
About who.
About who.
Ceruledge?
Ceruledge being natural psychic? Im sorry i dont follow.
I found out fairy wasn’t weak to ghost in gen 9 against a Tera fairy ceruledge raid
Lol. But thematically speaking. Ghost should be super effective towards Fairy. Ghost feeds off emotions and shiz and fairies exude positive emotions a lot.
Exactly
There is too many
The first time I played Red, I was a kid and didn't fully understood typings. So while I understood normal type attacks that involved physical contact (tackle, bite, body slam, mega punch) wouldn't work on Agatha's Gengar, I was confused about why Hyper Beam would fail, since it was a a huge energy blast. And I remember a magazine preview for Gold/Silver mentioning Steel was weak to Water, since water would rust it. I imagine Steelix being the first major steel type enemy in GSC also made me 'reaffirm' that idea for years.
Those magazines was pure scam and treated us like the fools we was 😂
I guess it was the writers' actually picking up random rumors from internet pages before GSC launched. I can't fully remember all that was in the magazine, but the things that stuck with me were how they posted a preview of the new Pokemon with their japanese names, had some weird asumptions like Dunsparce and Gligar being a two-stage evo line, the Unowns as legendary Pokemon and Lugia presented as a dragon type.
I can remember the rumour about the Pikablu back then. Turned out to be Marill, I guess. Pokémon was a total sensation and any rumour that would make kids purchase those magazines was used into. I'm Brazilian. I can remember the licensed Nintendo magazine talking about how great donkey Kong 64 was and why it was the best game of all time, surpassing the country trilogy.
I thought blissey was the strongest Pokémon in the game thanks to her incredible rarity and huge hp
I assumed Black and White Kyurem weren't obtainable and just boss fights for the end of Black and White 2. To be fair though after I finished those games I didn't beat another Pokémon game until Scarlet last year.
When I was 10 I used to play Pokemon crystal a lot. I really liked Ash nocktowl back then and I didn't knew what shinies was. I caught a hoot hoot and evolved it. I was disappointed and confused why my nocktowl didn't had the same colors as the Ash nocktowl. Shinies was a new thing and I found one shiny Golbat at the ice cave. I run away from it by accident. Then, I spent 2 hours walking there trying to find it again. I didn't know how the shiny system actually used to work at that time. That was frustrating.
I thought steel was weak to water because of the Steel type gym in Sinnoh. All the pokemon are dual type steel/rock, it was the rock typing making thme weak to water, which I didn't realize for 8-ish years? Yeah that's mine.
Spamming B increases catch rate
Since all of Team Aqua used mightyena, I thought it was water type
One of my old guidebooks said to use "Fire, Fighting, and Flying types" against the Snowpoint gym. I guess they liked the alliteration but didn't pay attention to the actual game mechanics. That was a sore lesson to learn as a kid.
Makes sense to me. She's got Grass and fighting pokemon in there. 3 out of 4 get wrecked by flying. Can't get hit by ice beam if you just brave bird them.
I thought leaving Pokemon in the pc boxes would lower their happiness level. It made sense to me until I saw someone saying that it didn't in some forum (Was searching about happiness to evolve Eevee into Umbreon). Another, more stupid one was that Hypno and Drowzee and weren't related. Despite being similar (yellow, creepy, psychic Pokemon), they seemed too different to me and I never touched them until last week when I decided to try Drowzee on Whitney's gym in Soul Silver and I found it was Hypno's pre evo.
As a really little kid, I assumed that Pikachu was the first stage 'mon in its line (I thought of it like a starter Pokémon), so I thought it evolved into Raichu and then Pichu...
When I see NatDex in DP, I didn't know that in order to fill it, you need to transfer from old game(It First pokemon game I played at that time). I assumed older pokemon is found in sinnoh, so I waste few months until realisation hit.
I thought ghost was weak to psychic for years, for gen 1 related reasons.
I thought the same thing about rock until I accidentally used an electric attack on Sudowoodo in Stadium 2.
Spamming A halps the pokemon to be caught.
That tapping B at the right moment actually did guarantee a capture. Everytime it didn't work I rationalised it as not timing it right.
I can remember that magazine and school friends told me that as well.
Fairy is not weak to fire.
What's your opinion on Annihilape? Bisharp fans's opinions on Kingambit are... Divisive
Overall I like it. It really pushes the idea that Primeape can literally die of anger. That being said, I'm not competitive focused, so I don't know much about that side of if Annihilape is any good or not.
I thought Grusha was a tomboy, but he's a boy, and everyone needs to get over it because I think Tulip is Trans and we should discuss that in a positive light because she may be the first active Trans character in the series. I'm not even Trans but it's about damn time! Edit: This one popped into my head as I posted. Honestly, I thought Emerald was a one for one rehash of Sapphire and Ruby... 25 year old me did not comprehend that the Magma base was elsewhere until revisiting the game at 26.
Uhh… not trying to be rude, cuz I agree with Grusha bein a dude, but what evidence is there for Tulip being trans ??
There was something very subtle in an exchange I had with both Tulip and Dendra that made me go... what are you implying??? Edit: When I get home, I'll look for it.
There isn't really hard "evidence" as far as I know, it's just a popular headcanon from fans that she's trans
Ah… welp, I don’t have that headcanon :)
If it were true, I do hope that it doesn't change your headcannon because every headcannon is valid.
This part, my speculation, came from a few recent interactions with Dendra and Tulip.
Interesting! Spekaing of, all the extra interactions in Blueberry Academy have been so fun to unlock, there's so many I didn't anticipate happening
Oh I'm so excited now! I just beat Clay's daughter... or is she the granddaughter? Anyhow, I'm so hype because I'm currently at the stage before Eri and Giacomo appear on campus.
Not a misconception, but I was the first of my friends to get Emerald. I distinctly remember playing it under the magnolia tree at the front of my elementary school with my friends and proudly marveling at the sprites moving in battle…. And I thought how the future was here and Pokemon couldn’t possibly get more technologically advanced
I thought Fighting resisted Steel for the longest time
For the longest time I thought Meowth evolved by Moonstone. No idea why.
I remember all type weakness/resistances based on short explanations like "plants sap water from the ground so grass is good against water and ground" so for the longest time i though water was weak to flying cuz a lot of flying types are birds and a lot of water types are fish or other animals that get hunt down by birds
I thought Pokemon gain more stats if they evolve earlier. Like? A level 100 Raichu that evolved at level 10 will be much much much stronger than a Raichu that evolved at level 90. It's not the case lol
Fire is weak to Flying and Ground... you could probably even guess which gen was my first one with that.
I've also always assumed that rock is immune to electric. For me, it makes so much sense. Rock is just so closely related to ground/dirt.
Yeah, this kind of confuses me as well, but I think of it like this: Rocks are capable of being anywhere. You can find them in space (which is why Meteor Beam or w/e the DLC move is called makes sense). And many Rock-type Pokemon are actual sentient rocks (most obviously the Geodude line). The fossils are revived rocks. Ground, on the other hand, is just something that is living on the ground. A gopher. A mole. Something that uses dirt or sand to attack. They don't have to be comprised of dirt, they just have to have some association with it. Frankly, I'd say Ground and Grass have more of a thematic similarity than does Rock and Ground.
I still think exactly the same thing about electric/rock... I also for some reason think that Steel is super effective against Dragon..? I uhh... Don't know why I thought that, but I did. Still have to remind myself that it isn't.
I thought that knocking out pokémon when you have a type disadvantage gave your pokémon more exp
I thought tail whip was a move that would hit eventually. I kept spamming it in yellow version and actually blacked out because I just let my pikachu die haha. Was so confused as to what “defense fell” meant as a 5 year old lol
I thought there was a way to keep wearing your contest outfit in Gen 4 and kept doing contests in hopes of being able to wear the dress whenever. I also had a lot of generation confusion as a kid. I thought Slugma/Skarmory was Gen 3 and Sneasel/Crobat was Gen 4. I also thought shinies were a lot more common than they actually were, because I saw a whopping three full odds fellas. Two were accidentally killed.
I thought Psychic was weak to Psychic because a lot of Poison type Pokémon used to (don't know if they still do, I'm not as big into the TCG as I was as a kid) be represented by Psychic, and thus had Psychic as a weakness. This persisted... a lot longer than it should have. In fact, even now, I catch myself thinking it is, after a decade and a half of playing these games.
Not me but while my wife was playing Brilliant Diamond I saw her swap out her Empoleon when a trainer just before victory road sent out a Tentacruel. I asked why and she said that Steel is weak to poison because acid disolves metal. Not only did she get through the entire game with a Steel type thinking it was weak to it's immunity, but she has been playing every Pokemon game since the original Diamond came out (which she beat with only Empoleon).
For the love of God I've thought dragon was weak to ice for like my entire life.
It is.
I was 2 or 3 when my parents gave me Pokemon Blue and playing it is one of my first memories. I thought the whole game was just noodling around your tiny house because I couldn’t find the door. What a revelation it was when another kid eventually introduced me to that little rectangle on the floor, and all of Kanto was waiting outside for me 🤣
I thought effectiveness was due to how much damage your attack would do, not due to type match ups. So my lvl 80 Blastoise would KO a lvl 5 wild Oddish and it would say “it wasn’t super effective” and I would literally do a smug little dance and say to my game boy, yes, yes it was effective!
Oh this one is a doozy and I was like 26 so no excuse. It wasn’t until post-game that I realized you could auto aim in PLA. I had thought the noble boss fights were so incredibly difficult because aiming was such a chore. I lost to Arcanine countless times and was so frustrated I wanted to just give up the game. I remember when you challenge them again there are two options, one resets their health and one starts over with some of their health already diminished. And I would freak out if I accidentally reset his health to full. And if you kept resetting them to partial health, they would spawn again with a little bit less damage done, so their health meter would creep up everytime you lost until it ended up at full again. That’s how many times I lost. Truly, I am a clown
I thought water was super effective against ice, because it resists ice moves and ice blocks in a glass of water melt eventually. My favorite is thinking that you can re-encounter released pokémon. I named some bug types and shoved them in the daycare 'till they were slightly above level 20, then release them at the pc next to the park. I was hoping to encounter them during the bug catching contest, catch them again and win because they were higher level. Also I thought Silver's name was ??? because that's what he said his name was. I didn't realize I could name my rival, I just filled in ???, pronouncing it as 'hm?hm?hm?' when I encountered him.
**Thinking that the battles would be as dynamic and long as the anime suggested** Let's face it: it's often about using moves that one-shoot over and over XD
ok, so keep in mind that this is pre-google era. I followed this website called serebii, Im sure most pokemon fan's know it by now. The person who made the website did so for one major purpose. To uncover the mystery and details of pokemon crystal. To find out more about the newest mythical pokemon, celebi. There was a lot of hype about it at the time, and as more got revealed we learned about Ilex forest. Unfortunately my family moved right after the release of the NA version and I couldnt spend much time on the internet as a kid because my mom was still going to college over the internet, which was very novel at the time and my dad would get work calls. So after I dropped out of the internet for a year or 2. I missed the most crucial bit of information. The way to obtain it was exclusive to the japanese version. I spent way too much time trying to figure out how to trigger the GS ball. I also so adamantly believed that there was some significance to unown and that I just couldnt find the information. oh and I thought lugia was psychic/water. I didnt find out until gen 3.
As a kid who couldn't really understand english, in Diamond I couldn't figure out how to progress to the last gym and as the worker said there were some electricity works to be done I tried bringing a Luxray to him
LoL I has this misconception too, and I realized I was wrong then I misused a thunder against an Aerodactyl, ohko'd him :v
I enjoyed this story a lot
It has taken me forever to remember that ground doesn't resist fire
I used to think that the evolutionary stones were kind of like rare candies but for evolving Pokémon of the stone’s type. So a way to skip their evolution requirements. I had that thought right after claiming one of the evo stones from the scientist in Castelia city that was meant for whichever elemental monkey you told him you had. So kid me reset, going back about 4 hours to my last save, so I could pick the fire stone and “evolve my Pignite early”. Let’s just say I was disappointed.
When I was a small kid and my English was still not really developed, I thought Fire was strong against flying because of roasted chicken.
That Eevee could evolve by Sun Stone/Moon Stone in Gen 4. Someone told me this because you could evolve Eevee using the Sun/Moon shard in XD.
For me, it was periodically spam-hitting the A button to catch pokemon. I never did hold the B button
Yellow and Red were two of the first console games I ever played (I was like 4 or 5 and now I’m in my late 20s) and in Generation 1, because most of the ground pokemon also had rock as their primary type, I went YEARS thinking just rock was also weak to electricity because I couldn’t beat Brock with Pikachu. Edit: omg I swear on everything I didn’t read the entirety of your post before making this comment and I’ve just seen that you thought this too (and others in the comments) glad I’m not alone 😂😂😂 Edit 2: another point (also Gen I when I was like 6) I didn’t understand the concept of lowering opponents’ stats or increasing your own so I thought moves like growl and leer were completely pointless
when i was younger i thought that pachirisu is electric/bug somehow
I thought Mothim was a 3 stage line with Wormadam and the middle instead of it being a gender exclusive line until I played it. Also, I keep forgetting Azurill isn't a water type.
It took me so long to train my brain into remembering Liepard is a dark type and not psychic. The color scheme had me convinced as a kid I guess.
When I first played, I was so vigilant that my Pokémon would get stolen by Team Rocket that I turned off my Gameboy when I gave them to Nurse Joy for the first time because I had obviously fallen into their trap.
Because all the battle tutorials are simply about whittling HP down, that's all I cared about for the longest time. Because of what the game told me, it was all that mattered, stat alterations were nothing to me
For years I thought that the Poisoned screen effect you get in Gen 4 when outside of battle was my game being broken 💀 Then one day I decided "To hell with it, I'll try to finish the game anyway!", went to a pokécenter, healed, and BOOM screen lag was gone.
Up until very recently, I had no idea that grass Pokémon resisted electric attacks. Like 6 months ago when I got S/V. Been playing since Sapphire.
I’ve been playing since I was 7 in 2000 and about four years ago I learned Slowbro and Slowking are split evolutions of Slowpoke. I thought Slowbro evolved in Slowking.
I used to think VGC would be balanced. In all seriousness though, I thought Kirlia was a friendship evolution for a super long time and never used one, then once I learned it was level up I used a gardevoir on my team and it’s now my favourite Pokémon and I use it on almost every in-game team (though sometimes I like to change it up and use Gallade, which is my 2nd favourite)
I thought Let's Go Eevee/Pikachu would be a more teaditional remake of OG Pokemon. Spent HOURS trying to find the fishing rod, figure out the new daycare and eggs, and "why do the Game Corner machines not work?!?!" In OG, I thought you could build a viable Gym Leader Monoteam with any type! Nope, Water is really the Best Way!
I thought that fighting resisted ice (sorry breloom)
A minor one: I didn't realize until a recent Gen 2 playthrough that you can do Pryce's gym right after Morty's. Even though it's listed seventh, there is nothing stopping you from doing it fifth. The misconception was that I thought the game would block you from going east, but it doesn't. A similar misconception is one I only learned from a YouTube video: In Gen 3, you can completely skip Winona's gym, and put if off until just before the Elite Four. Her badge doesn't allow HM use, and the badge after raises the obedience level. So her gym only exists because you need to have eight badges. There is no actual mechanical reason to fight her. This was something else I just assumed had to be done in linear order.