MissingNo.
Missingno. (Japanese: けつばん, Ketsuban), or MissingNo., referred to as MissingNO on Nintendo's GameBoy - Specific Game Pak Troubleshooting page refers to the names of 39 Pokémon with index numbers in between existing, valid (non-glitch) Pokémon and the glitch Pokémon within those index numbers (full list of index numbers). Its species is the "???" Pokémon.
Missingno. and 'M (00) are the most well known Pokémon glitches in the English Pokémon glitch community, likely because they can easily be found with the Old Man Trick; and they will increase the quantity of the player's sixth item by 128 when encountered on the opponent's side, unless they are already have 128 there, due to its invalid family 000 (see Glitch Pokédex flags).
The Old Man Trick is sometimes referred to as the "Missingno. glitch", but this is misleading because Missingno. is not the only Pokémon or glitch Pokémon that can be found with the glitch.
The Old Man Trick is not present in Yellow or certain foreign language versions such as Pokémon Red/Green, so Missingno. cannot be obtained that way in those versions.
Upon catching Missingno., its Pokédex entry will be shown if the player has seen Cubone, and this will activate the Rhydon glitch, otherwise the Pokédex entry will not be shown and the Missingno. will not be turned into a Rhydon.
English Missingno. have invalid mini-sprites that vary based on location.
Obtainining Missingno.
Below are the possible methods of obtaining Missingno. in different versions.
Note that additionally, Missingno. can be seen and can duplicate items using the Cable Club escape glitch in all versions.
Pokémon Red/Blue (English)
- Old Man Trick:- if the character in the third, fifth, or seventh slot of the player's name is the end-name marker, G, H, J, M, S, T, :, ], a, b, c, m, o, p, or v.
- Ditto Trick/Trainer-Fly variation:- with one of the following Special stats (if the value is greater than 255, take a modulo 256): 31, 32, 50, 52, 56, 61, 62, 63, 67, 68, 69, 79, 80, 81, 86, 87, 94, 95, 115, 121, 122, 127, 134, 135, 137, 140, 146, 156, 159, 160, 161, 162, 172, 174, 175 or 181.
- Large byte shift glitch:- with one of the remaining HP values (if the value is greater than 255, take a modulo 256): 31, 32, 50, 52, 56, 61, 62, 63, 67, 68, 69, 79, 80, 81, 86, 87, 94, 95, 115, 121, 122, 127, 134, 135, 137, 140, 146, 156, 159, 160, 161, 162, 172, 174, 175 or 181.
- Johto guard glitch:- with Scizor, Shuckle, Heracross, Sneasel, Teddiursa, Ursaring, Slugma, Magcargo, Swinub, Piloswine, Corsola, Remoraid, Octillery, Delibird, Mantine, Skarmory, Houndour, Houndoom, Kingdra, Phanpy, Donphan, Porygon2, Stantler, Smeargle, Tyrogue, Hitmontop, Smoochum, Elekid, Magby, Miltank, Blissey, Raikou, Entei, Suicune, Larvitar, or Ho-Oh.
- Arbitrary code execution with 8F.
Pokémon Red/Blue (Spanish)
- Old Man Trick, provided the player uses the walk through walls glitch to walk on the coast rather than surf on it.
- Ditto Trick/Trainer-Fly variation (with the aforementioned Special stats)
- Extended Surf glitch
The large byte shift glitch and Johto guard glitch are unconfirmed for these versions.
Pokémon Red, Green, Blue (Japanese)
- Ditto Trick/Trainer-Fly variation (with the aforementioned Special stats)
- Fossil conversion glitch (with a current experience modulo 256 of 31, 32, 50, 52, 56, 61, 62, 63, 67, 68, 69, 79, 80, 81, 86, 87, 94, 95, 115, 121, 122, 127, 134, 135, 137, 140, 146, 156, 159, 160, 161, 162, 172, 174, 175 or 181.
- Arbitrary code execution with 5かい.
Pokémon Yellow (Japanese)
- Ditto Trick/Trainer-Fly variation (with the aforementioned Special stats)
Data
All Missingno. are Pokédex number 000. and have data telling them not to evolve or learn any level up moves, unlike 'M (00) which evolves into Kangaskhan at level 0 or Clefairy at level 128, and learns Pound at level 136. Missingno. typically have 'blank' cries; i.e. a Nidoran♂ (base 00)'s cry with a pitch of 0 and no echo, but nine Missingno. have unique cries that were actually programmed into the game (see this section).
There are five 'forms' of Missingno. in the English games. The first form is the 'regular' form, which there are 36 of. The second form is Pokémon Yellow's equivalent of the Red/Blue regular form.
All 36 'regular' and 'regular Yellow' Missingno. use an invalid sprite. The other three forms are Missingno.'s 'special' forms, which use the Kabutops fossil sprite from Pewter Museum (hex: B6 form), the Aerodactyl fossil sprite from Pewter Museum (hex:B7 form), and the Ghost Missingno. sprite from ghosts in the Pokémon Tower (hex:B8 form), respectively.
In English Red/Blue, all 'regular' Missingno. share the same sprite, but this is not true in other versions such as the Spanish version where the sprite may be random.
'Regular' Red/Blue Missingno. data
All 36 regular Red/Blue Missingno. are dual typed Bird/Normal Pokémon.
Their data is derived from Biker rosters; because the game uses extrapolation to work out the 'base' data for Pokédex number 000. For this reason, a lot of 'M (00)'s data is the same, because it shares the same Pokédex number (or 'family').
See this page for more information.
Starting moves
All 36 regular Red/Blue Missingno. have the following starting moves:
Water Gun, Water Gun and Sky Attack.
Learnset
All Missingno. can learn no moves other than its starting moves, moves through TM/HM or through the Johto guard glitch.
Base stats
All have the following base stats:
- Base HP of 33.
- Base Attack of 136.
- Base Defense of 0.
- Base Speed of 29.
- Base Special of 6.
TM/HM learnpool
- TM01 - Mega Punch
- TM02 - Razor Wind
- TM03 - Swords Dance
- TM05 - Mega Kick
- TM06 - Toxic
- TM09 - Take Down
- TM10 - Double-Edge
- TM11 - Bubblebeam
- TM13 - Ice Beam
- TM14 - Blizzard
- TM17 - Submission
- TM19 - Seismic Toss
- TM20 - Rage
- TM25 - Thunder
- TM26 - Earthquake
- TM27 - Fissure
- TM29 - Psychic
- TM30 - Teleport
- TM43 - Sky Attack
- TM44 - Rest
- TM45 - Thunder Wave
- TM49 - Tri Attack
- TM50 - Substitute
- HM01 - Cut
- HM02 - Fly
Miscellaneous data
Red/Blue regular Missingno. has a catch rate of 29.
Its experience group is hex:1A. For this group, Missingno. has a total experience of 345420 at level 100. Encountering this Missingno. on the opponent's side or sending it out in battle will corrupt the Hall of Fame.
Due to an invalid Pokédex flag (#000, but essentially #256), Missingno. (and 'M (00)) will increase the player's sixth item quantity by 128 if they do not have at least 128 items in that position.
'Regular' Yellow Missingno. data
'Regular' Yellow Missingno.'s random front sprite commonly freezes the game, but when it doesn't, it causes a multiple walking characters effect after exiting battle. Regular Yellow Missingno. is a dual-typed Normal/randomly named glitch type (which commonly has 9s in it).
Starting moves
- Pay Day.
- Bind.
- Water Gun.
Miscellaneous data
Yellow Missingno.'s catch rate is 0, but this does not mean it is impossible to catch it. Yellow Missingno. needs an extremely large amount of experience to reach level 100 (16,136,684) but needs less to reach level 255 (13,582,671)
'Special' Missingno. data
'Special' Missingno. take the appearance of either a Kabutops Fossil (hex:B6), an Aerodactyl Fossil (hex:B7) or Pokémon Tower Ghost (hex: B8) on the opponent's side, but they have no valid back sprite.
The starting moves, TM/HM learnpool, base stats and experience needed to level up for these Pokémon is based on the last Pokémon in the party except for another Missingno. of the same kind. For a Trainer with an opposing special Missingno., this data is taken from the last Pokémon they sent out.
A special Missingno. will only corrupt the Hall of Fame if the player sends it out in battle.
Japanese Missingno. data
The Japanese Pokémon games have at least 6 forms of Missingno.; which are the previously mentioned 'special' (Kabutops Fossil, Aerodactyl Fossil, Ghost) Missingno. as well as Red/Green Missingno., Japanese Blue Missingno. and Japanese Yellow (Pocket Monsters Pikachu) Missingno.
Red/Green Missingno. and Japanese Yellow Missingno. can freeze the game on the opponent's side, while Japanese Blue Missingno. appears to be stable.
In Pocket Monsters Blue, Missingno. was given the placeholder Pokédex entry "コメント さくせいちゅう" (meaning 'comment to be written') and became the ??? species. This was not translated, resulting in a glitched Pokédex entry in the localized Pokémon Red and Blue and the corruption of Missingno.'s original height and weight (1.0 m (3.3 ft) and 10.0 kg (22.1 lb), respectively), showing instead a height of 10.0 ft (3.1 m) and a weight of 3507.2 lb (1590.8 kg).
Deleted Pokémon theory
It is a common misconception that Missingno. is an error handler for invalid Pokémon in general; but this is not the case, all glitch Pokémon with index numbers past the last valid Pokémon Victreebel; hex: BE (counting 0 as 256) have invalid names.
The name "Missingno." therefore, may be referring to a placeholder Pokémon name, in case Game Freak wanted to add more Pokémon into the game.
The list of Pokémon by index number is not in Pokédex order, and they arguably represent the order that they were programmed into the final game, because according to [an interview (translation), Rhydon (index number 01), was the first Pokémon created.
In this case, the fact that Missingno. is found between the index numbers of real Pokémon is significant because it shows that the Missingno. may have been deleted entries. Furthermore, the number 151+39 comes to 190 which may be considered as a 'round' number, and according to [a post from Zog on Smogon, Shigeki Morimoto confirmed that there were originally 190 Pokémon, and that the rest were saved for later.
There may have once been an extra Missingno. occupying Mew's index number, hex:15; because according to Iwata Asks: HeartGold/SoulSilver, Mew was a last minute addition to the game once debugging features were removed.
Unused cries
Of the 39 Missingno., nine of them have unique cries that may have originated from deleted Pokémon.
The data is as follows (see here for recordings):
| Index Number | Hexadecimal Identifier | Base Cry | Cry Pitch | Cry Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 67 | 0 | 128 | 16 | |
| 69 | 29 | 224 | 64 | |
| 79 | 34 | 255 | 64 | |
| 81 | 14 | 224 | 96 | |
| 94 | 15 | 64 | 192 | |
| 95 | 15 | 32 | 192 | |
| 127 | 17 | 32 | 16 | |
| 137 | 15 | 64 | 128 | |
| 181 | 29 | 0 | 128 |
Other uses of the term 'Missingno.'
Missingno. is sometimes used as a general term for every glitch Pokémon, but this is a misnomer, as not all glitch Pokémon are called Missingno., and Missingno. is a placeholder name rather than an error handler per se.
In Generation IV, there is a sprite that reads 'missing number' (けつばん) in kanji (欠番) but it is not related to the glitch Pokémon Missingno. and the name Missingno. from Generation I.[1]
