The vast majority of Pokémon are brilliant. From Gengar to Tyranitar, to Blastoise and beyond, Game Freak’s widely lauded catch-’em-up has some of the most inspired designs in video game history. With over 900 ‘mons and counting though, it’s only natural that the roster also includes some pure stinkers.
We’re talking about ice cream with two heads, sentient gears, and great big piles of actual sludge. Boomers will be furious to learn that there are literal snowflakes in Pokémon, too — snowflakes who ensnare their prey using chains made of ice crystals. Try telling them they can “just buy a house.”
If we had to make a guess, we’d estimate that around 10% of Pokémon are plain bad. After much deliberation though, we’ve settled on the fact that exactly 25 Pokémon are even worse than that. They are, in the nicest way possible, some of the most pointless, hideous, or frankly stupid creatures in the history of human imagination.
Here are the 25 worst Pokémon of all time, ranked from least terrible to utterly irredeemable.
And no, the keys aren’t on it.
25
Stunfisk
Looking at Stunfisk makes us uncomfortable. While it’s evidently based on some kind of flatfish, it’s significantly more unnerving than a standard flounder or sole. Just look at that smile — horrifying.
It’s rumored that Stunfisk was the result of one of the artists at Game Freak wanting to create the “flattest Pokémon ever,” which is a bit of a strange design brief. Looking at it now, it’s safe to say they succeeded.
Fun fact: That same artist was also the genius behind the keys.
24
Spidops
Early-game bug Pokémon are never great, but they usually evolve into something charming. Spidops is anything but charming.
It’s clearly supposed to be a spider, yet I can’t help thinking about Octodad every time I look at it. Its face is uncanny and upsetting to look at. Plus the colors on the front of its body make it look like it’s wearing an apron, an inherently uncool item of clothing.
23
Throh
Humanoid Pokémon shouldn’t be a thing. It’s fine for bipedal ‘mons like Alakazam to have some kind of vaguely human shape, but when it’s as discernible as it is with Throh, it’s just… weird.
Put plainly, there is no good reason for this Pokémon to exist. Also where do they get their outfits from? When they’re not training, do they spend their downtime making them? Bit odd to think of this lad sat at a loom.
Also, Throh is called “Throh” because it likes to throw things. Yep.
22
Sawk
Sawk is bad for similar reasons to Throh, although its slimmer body is somehow even more uncanny. A downright awful Pokémon.
21
Watchog
Patrat could have easily earned a spot on this list, but it’s unfortunately outshone by its evolved form.
Every time we see Watchog we feel a bit ill. Its eyes are everything good about Luxray’s eyes except somehow 100 times worse in every way. Its face is not cute — it’s weird. And worst of all, it stands with the kind of unflinchingly straight posture that actually makes you feel a bit queasy. It just looks… wrong. It’s all wrong.
20
Wormadam
It’s been 16 years since Wormadam was introduced to the world of Pokémon and we still have absolutely no idea what it’s supposed to be. It looks… unhygienic, to say the least. If we saw it walking down the road, we would slowly but surely back away and pretend we didn’t — it’s best not to dwell too long on unpleasant thoughts.
Wormadam is so intensely bad and boring that we’ve never even bothered to learn about its various forms or how they occur. In fact, it wasn’t until we bumped into one too many Burmy in Pokémon Legends: Arceus that we noticed it had alternate appearances in the first place. All three are so bad that deciding which one is the worst feels like a waste of time — they’re equally terrible. Moving on.
19
Lickilicky
This, dear reader, is a truly reprehensible Pokémon. As if Lickitung wasn’t disgusting enough, it evolves into an even bigger Pokémon with an even worse tongue.
Any trainer who uses Lickitung or Lickilicky is extremely sus. You can’t trust them. You shouldn’t go anywhere near them. You need to instantly forget you ever met them the second your encounter is over. Otherwise, this tongue will live in your brain rent free, ruining every moment of joy from now until the end of eternity.
18
Garbodor
Obviously we had to include the Pokémon that’s just a big pile of trash. Our hot take is that Trubbish, the Pokémon who evolves into Garbodor, is actually amazing. Like the rest of us, it just becomes progressively more garbage as it gets older.
Just imagine how bad this lad would smell. You’re sitting in your living room, chilling out while listening to music. You smell it before you see it — a nasal assault determined to inflict sensory damage. Your nose scrunches up, develops sentience, and detaches itself from your face before growing legs and running away, never to be seen again. Garbodor sits there, expressionless, and, with a slight twitch to the left, rips the loudest fart in recorded history. Repugnant.
17
Espathra
I’d generally consider myself biased in favor of bird Pokémon, so you know how seriously awful Espathra is when I say it’s the ugliest bird Pokémon I’ve ever seen.
Flittle has a lot of cute potential and could’ve been Gen 9’s Gardevoir or Hatterene, but instead, it evolves into this ugly ostrich. Everything looks weird on it. The top feathers look like balloons, the bowl cut is ridiculous, and the pastel colors on its body do not mesh at all.
16
Vanilluxe
Before we hurl insults at an ice cream cone, let it be known that our hatred for Vanilluxe is not so basic as to be rooted firmly in the “an ice cream Pokémon is obviously stupid” rhetoric. Vanillite, the first form of Vanilluxe, is actually alright. It’s just this guy we don’t like.
If you ignore the ice cream aspect — which is difficult given that this Pokémon is literally an ice cream, but bear with us — Vanilluxe is still awful. Its faces are deeply unsettling and it provides the worst possible argument for symmetry being an aesthetically pleasing concept. Looking at it makes us sad.
We don’t like being sad, so we’re going to stop looking at it now. Thanks.
15
Cryogonal
It’s a snowflake, except totally frozen. Apparently it lures its prey to places no human has ever ventured in chains made of ice crystals.
There is nothing good about this Pokémon. It is both moronic and malicious. The only way it would be valuable would be if it were real and it appeared every time somebody online called you a snowflake, freeing us of that crude, irritating, and intent-contorted word forevermore. Alas, it is a fake monster from a children’s game, and the person with Naruto as their profile picture is going to continue calling you an SJW despite thinking it stands for Satanic Jesus Worshipper.
14
Binacle
The first time we saw Geodude, we thought, “A rock with arms — how creative.” It’s the kind of thing you’d expect Game Freak would only attempt once. Unfortunately, your ground-floor expectations are far too high.
Binacle is also a rock with arms, except the arms also have faces and protrude from its mineral body vertically instead of horizontally. It has claws for hair and is always furious. It’s one of the most stupid-looking things we have ever seen — and it still doesn’t even make the top ten when it comes to the worst Pokémon of all time.
13
Pidove
We’ll be honest: we hate pigeons. They are disease-carrying vermin who move as if they’re either possessed or dead. It’s no surprise we think Pidove is Pokémon’s worst ever avian effort.
On one hand, it’s boring. Not a froggish dinosaur with a bulb on its back or an enormous tortoise with shoulder cannons — just a regular pigeon, thanks. On the other hand, it’s just plain horrible. Its eyes are genuinely harrowing — it’s as if it can see into your soul but has neither the interest or intelligence to make any sense of it. All it wants to do is peck. Pidove’s main goal in life is to peck at your crumbling soul.
12
Frillish
Horrifying. Bloodcurdling. Distressing in the most violent way possible. We don’t even want to write a blurb for this one. A spectral jellyfish who abducts people and Pokémon to… imprison them? Torture them? Eat them?
No thanks. We’re good. The evil jellyfish can ruin somebody else’s day.
11
Kricketune
Look at that gloriously ridiculous moron. Its moustache grows straight out of its nostrils and it has a finger that is far too long. Nothing about this Pokémon makes sense except for the fact it is nonsense.
Kricketune is so stupid that we don’t even hate it — despite being lower on this list, we actually detest ‘mons like Lickilicky and Pidove way more. We prefer to just forget Kricketune exists so that every so often we can involuntarily come across it and laugh at how silly it is.
It’s an objectively awful Pokémon that is somehow made better by how bad it is. We can’t explain it. Coming in at 11th place on our list of the worst Pokémon ever created, Kricketune is a phenomenon unto itself.
10
Heatmor
This Pokémon is just… stupid. It’s really, really stupid. We still can’t understand what led to its existence.
On one hand, sure, using an anteater as source material is probably better than ‘do another fish’ or ‘I know, how about a bird?’ Making that anteater a Fire-type is also cool, at least conceptually. The problem is that the end result looks like bad fanart drawn by a four-year-old. It looks absolutely nothing like a Pokémon — what is that pattern? Rubbish, that’s what.
9
Gholdengo
So you spend all of Scarlet and Violet gathering Gimmighoul coins. Grinding day after day until you have 999 and can finally make it evolve, and what do you get? This ugly piece of trash.
Gholdengo is such a letdown. While being all gold makes sense thematically, it doesn’t make for a good design, and it doesn’t help that it looks like the mascot of a failed 90s sneaker brand. It’s ridiculous.
8
Spewpa
Everything about this Pokémon sucks — even it’s name is literally Spew-pa. We have no idea what it is, but we can guarantee it isn’t clean, cute, or cuddly.
While we admittedly feel a bit bad for being this mean about a creature with eyes as pathetic as Spewpa’s, it can’t be helped. You don’t get a pass just because you’re useless. To be completely honest, we don’t even know what you’re supposed to be. It’s as if one of the artists drew a pair of eyes, spilled some paint, and accidentally implemented the result into the game. It genuinely looks like more effort went into MissingNo.
7
Palpitoad
First of all: what the hell? Tympole is cute and Seismitoad is pretty cool, but Palpitoad exists as a strange bridge between those two states that is just… awful. It’s kind of like most of us — we’re cute as babies, go through a phase of looking extremely weird, and eventually look in the mirror one day before exclaiming, “Hang on — have I been going out in public dressed like this?”
Just look at the growths on its head. They’re like the terrible hats people used to wear as teenagers, all of which have since been burned. The memories, however… the memories remain.
6
Swirlix
Disgusting. Game Freak really said ‘Let’s make a Pokémon as sweet as sugar’ and came out with this monstrosity. It makes us feel as if we’ve inhaled ten kilos of pure aspartame in one go, which is to say extremely, almost incurably ill. Just terrible, really.
5
Woobat
People often complain about Zubat, but that’s mostly just because of how prevalent it was in Gen 1 caves. In general, Zubat is pretty great — particularly when you consider that Crobat, one of the best Pokémon of all time, is its final form.
Woobat though? This guy is woefully bad. A ball of fluff with a pig nose and one tooth? Sounds interesting in theory, but looks ridiculous in execution. 10/10 would not catch.
4
Swoobat
What’s worse than Woobat? Its evolved form, obviously. Hideous.
Do you know what’s even more hideous?
3
Bruxish
Genuinely disgusting in the most visually oppressive way possible, Bruxish earns the bronze medal for worst Pokémon of all time thanks to its teeth, shape, and general vibe. The first time we saw this Pokémon we thought it was a meme — as it turns out, it is very much real and very much bad.
2
Gumshoos
In second place, we have one of the worst sights a human can see: Gumshoos, who was unfortunate enough to be created with a name almost as dreadful as its appearance.
It’s pretty weird to see a Gen 7 Pokémon break the top three. Alola introduced tons of excellent ‘mons, boasting what is arguably one of the strongest lineups of new designs in Pokémon history. Gumshoos was probably added just to bring the average down — if every new Pokémon is great, you’ll have immense pressure on you to produce the goods next time, too. Thanks to Gumshoos, pretty much anything Game Freak did with Sword & Shield would have been seen as an improvement on at least one aspect of the previous generation.
But that’s enough on Gumshoos — it’s time to move on to what is officially the worst Pokémon ever conceived of.
1
Paras
Here we are, folks — the single most awful Pokémon of all time: Paras. It might seem sacrilegious to say this about a ‘mon from Pokémon’s beloved first generation, but there has never been anything good about Paras — ever.
It looks terrible. It has woeful stats. It appears far too often for how awful it is. It’s just bad in every single way.
Yes, this was almost entirely influenced by how annoying Paras is in Pokémon Legends: Arceus — our point still stands. Paras bad.
Written by Cian Maher and Ryan Woodrow on behalf of GLHF.
