MissingNo.

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'M (00) (Red/Blue)/3TRAINERPOKé₽ (Yellow)	MissingNo. (many index numbers)	▶ A (BF) (Red/Blue)/4 4 (BF) (Yellow)

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 glitch 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 Pokédex category is the "???" Pokémon.

MissingNo. and 'M (00) are among 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 there 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 trap, 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.

MissingNo. unlike 'M (00) and other 000 family glitch Pokémon cannot learn any level up moves.

Obtaining MissingNo.

Below are 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 glitch:- 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.

In the Spanish versions, it is required to walk on the shore tiles with walk through walls instead of surfing on it. While the old man glitch is possible the same way in the Italian versions, MissingNo. and hex:00 may freeze the game.

The glitch can be pulled off by surfing in the French versions, MissingNo and hex:00 also freeze the game at either a black or white screen.

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.
Remaining HP glitch:- with one of the following 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.
Time Capsule exploit:- 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.
TMTRAINER effect via '-' (when sprites are not flipped).

Via evolutions

…… (E2)	Level 25 →	File:MissingNo. RB.png MISSINGNO. (AF)

.PkMn (DF)	Level 224 →	MISSINGNO. (Ghost) (B8)

ゥ₽ (F4)	Level 195 →	File:MissingNo. RB.png MISSINGNO. (B5)

After the evolutions have finished, both glitch Pokémon will look like this on the evolution screen:

Pokémon Yellow (English)

Ditto trick/Trainer-Fly variation (fossil/ghost MissingNo. recommended to avoid a freeze)
Remaining HP glitch:- with one of the following 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.
Time Capsule exploit:- 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 ws m.
TMTRAINER effect via '-' (when sprites are not flipped).

Via evolutions

Z ゥ (hex:E5)	Level 225 →	MISSINGNO. (Ghost) (B8)

After the evolution has finished, the glitch Pokémon will have a different sprite on the evolution screen, such as below:

(in Viridian City) (in Pokémon Center)

Pokémon Red, Green, Blue (Japanese)

Ditto trick/Trainer-Fly variation (with the aforementioned Special stats. Regular MissingNo. may freeze the game in Red/Green)
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 てヘ (tehe).

Data

All MissingNo. are Pokédex number 000. and cannot 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.

MissingNo. occupies the following index numbers.

Hexadecimal ID	Decimal ID
1F	31
20	32
32	50
34	52
38	56
3D	61
3E	62
3F	63
43	67
44	68
45	69
4F	79
50	80
51	81
56	86
57	87
5E	94
5F	95
73	115
79	121
7A	122
7F	127
86	134
87	135
89	137
8C	140
92	146
9C	156
9F	159
A0	160
A1	161
A2	162
AC	172
AE	174
AF	175
B5	181
B6	182
B7	183
B8	184

'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 additional glitches/cheating such as the Time Capsule exploit, large storage box byte shift glitch, arbitrary code execution

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 constant of 29, and Yellow regular MissingNo. has a catch rate constant of 0.

Red/Blue regular MissingNo.'s experience group is hex:1A. For this group, MissingNo. has a total experience of 345420 at level 100. In Yellow it is the hex:06 group instead, where MissingNo. will usually stay at Level 1 and has less experience at Level 255 than 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.

MissingNo.'s base experience yield byte is 0x8F. Its base stats sprite dimensions are 8x8, while its actual front sprite dimensions are 13x13. Its front sprite source pointer is at 0x1900 and its back sprite source pointer is at VRAM:8F37.

Pokédex data:

'Regular' Yellow MissingNo. data

'Regular' Yellow MissingNo.'s random front sprite commonly freezes the game, but when it doesn't, it may cause a multiple walking characters effect after exiting battle. Regular Yellow MissingNo. is a dual-typed Normal/Glitch (0x25) glitch Pokémon.

The corruption is caused by the source of Yellow MissingNo.'s front sprite, at 0x0006 in the ROM. Here the dimensions of Yellow MissingNo.'s front sprite are 0x0 which is apparently interpreted as a size of 256x256. Yellow MissingNo.'s back sprite pointer is at 0x0D0C in the ROM where its dimensions are specified as 6x6.

Starting moves

Pay Day
Bind
Water Gun

Pokédex data:

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). It is part of experience group 0x06.

Its base experience yield byte is 0x0B. Its sprite dimensions in the base data structure is 10x13, but actual sprite dimensions are 0x0. Its front sprite source pointer is 0x0006 and its back sprite source pointer is 0x0D0C with actual sprite dimensions of 6x6.

'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 two-byte backsprite pointer is instead taken from another Pokémon that was in memory. In Red/Blue the pointer if banked, is from bank 0x0B for MissingNo. 0xB6 (Kabutops Fossil) or bank 0x0D for MissingNo. 0xB7 (Aerodactyl Fossil, Pokémon Tower Ghost).

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 5 forms of MissingNo.; which are the previously mentioned 'special' (Kabutops Fossil, Aerodactyl Fossil) MissingNo. as well as Red/Green MissingNo., Japanese Blue MissingNo. and Japanese Yellow (Pocket Monsters Pikachu) MissingNo.

The Pokémon that occupies 'Ghost MissingNo.' in the Japanese versions however is not called "MissingNo." (unlike the localizations) but rather "ゴースト" (ghost) (not to be confused with "ゆうれい" (yuurei), used for Pokémon Tower ghosts in the final game.

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).

Placeholder 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, either in case Game Freak wanted to add more Pokémon into the game or replacing a deleted Pokémon.

The list of Pokémon by index number is not in Pokédex order. These numbers rather correlate with the numbers given to Pokémon sprite art during the development of Pokémon Red and Green (as revealed by concept art in the official 2018 "Satoshi Tajiri: The Man Who Created Pokémon" educational manga).

It may be of note that there are 39 MissingNo., and 151+39 comes to 190.

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.

Note that MissingNo. hex:45 has a cry identical to Zubat, and MissingNo. hex:89 has a cry identical to Dragonair.

The data is as follows (see here for recordings):

The cry for MissingNo. 67 (0x43) may belong to the unreleased Pokémon "Cactus", due to Cactus being given the same number.

Index Number	Hexadecimal Identifier	Base Cry	Cry Pitch	Cry Length
67	0x43	0	128	16
69	0x45	29	224	128
79	0x4F	34	255	64
81	0x51	14	224	96
94	0x5E	15	64	192
95	0x5F	15	32	192
127	0x7F	17	32	16
137	0x89	15	64	128
181	0xB5	29	0	128

Menu sprites

Sample Red/Blue menu sprite (Viridian City)
Sample Yellow menu sprite (Viridian City)

Front sprites

Red/Blue regular MissingNo. sprite

Red/Blue regular MissingNo. sprite
Kabutops fossil MissingNo. sprite
Aerodactyl fossil MissingNo. sprite
Pokémon Tower ghost MissingNo. sprite
Yellow MissingNo. (and other 000 family glitch Pokémon) sprite
Regular MissingNo. (Red/Green v1.1, with fixes)
Kabutops fossil MissingNo. sprite (Red/Green)
Aerodactyl fossil MissingNo. sprite (Red/Green)
Japanese Blue regular MissingNo. sprite
French Red MissingNo. sprite (sound bank fix)
German Red MissingNo. sprite
Red regular MissingNo. sprite (Italian localization)
Blue regular MissingNo. sprite (Italian localization)
Spanish Red MissingNo. sprite

Spanish Red MissingNo. sprite
Japanese Yellow MissingNo. sprite
French Yellow MissingNo. sprite
German Yellow MissingNo. sprite
Italian Yellow MissingNo. sprite
Spanish Yellow MissingNo. sprite

Backsprites

Sample Red/Blue backsprite. Actually 'random', from 0x8F37 in VRAM.

Sample Red/Blue backsprite. Actually 'random', from 0x8F37 in VRAM.
Sample MissingNo. 0xB6 backsprite. From bank 0x0B loaded with the two byte backsprite pointer of the previous Pokémon in memory (a Rattata).
Sample MissingNo. 0xB7 and 0xB8 backsprite. From bank 0x0D loaded with the two byte backsprite pointer of the previous Pokémon in memory (a Pidgey).
Yellow backsprite.
Sample MissingNo. 0xB6 backsprite, with Pidgey as the opposing Pokémon.
Sample MissingNo. 0xB7 and 0xB8 backsprite, with Pidgey as the opposing Pokémon.
Red/Green backsprite (v1.0, with fixes)
Red/Green backsprite (v1.1)
Japanese Blue backsprite
French Red backsprite
German Red backsprite
Italian Red backsprite
Spanish Red backsprite
Japanese Yellow backsprite
Japanese Yellow backsprite (Rev A, Rev B, Rev 3)
French Yellow backsprite
German Yellow backsprite
Italian Yellow backsprite
Spanish Yellow backsprite

Experience group

Red/Blue experience group 0x1A: Experience=

Experience at Level 100: 345,420
Experience at Level 255: 2,185,270

Yellow experience group 0x06: Experience=

Experience at Level 100: 16,136,684
Experience at Level 255: 13,582,671

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]

External Links

MissingNo.

Contents