Unnerve desync glitch

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The Unnerve Cheek Pouch glitch is a natural glitch, occurring in Generation VI, VII, and VIII. It results from the smoothed-out manner in which animations play when multiple Pokémon take damage from the same move.

Summary

In order for this glitch to occur, battle animations must be enabled. One trainer should have a Pokémon with the Cheek Pouch ability, which has taken a small amount of prior damage--at least 1, but less than 1/3 of its maximum HP missing. This Pokémon should hold a Berry that heals a status condition, while one of its opponents has the Unnerve ability to prevent that Berry from being used. The Cheek Pouch Pokémon should then be inflicted with the status corresponding to its held Berry, and then one of two options needs to happen: either the Unnerve Pokémon uses Self-Destruct, Explosion, Misty Explosion, Final Gambit, Mind Blown, or Steel Beam to knock itself out and deal enough damage to knock out the Cheek Pouch Pokemon as well (the simplest way to do this is by having a Mewtwo from the Virtual Console Generation I games learn Self-Destruct from TM36 there, then send it to Pokémon Bank where it will receive Unnerve as its ability), or if the battle is a Double or Triple Battle, one of the Unnerve Pokémon's teammates can use a multi-target move to hit its teammate (which is processed first), then the Cheek Pouch Pokémon, dealing enough damage to knock out both of them.

As an alternative to the Cheek Pouch Pokémon, a low-level Pokémon holding an Oran Berry can be used. In this case, it must be low enough in level to have maximum HP of 18 or less, so that it can be missing at least half of its HP to be in range for consuming the Berry, but still have that missing portion represent less than 10 HP.

If battle animations are off, the visual representation of events in this case will show the Unnerve Pokémon faint before the Cheek Pouch (or Oran Berry) Pokémon takes any damage. The Cheek Pouch Pokémon will immediately use its Berry to heal its status condition, and Cheek Pouch will restore its HP to full (which, crucially, involves healing less than the full amount the ability is capable of, because healing is capped at the maximum HP). The damage of the incoming attack had already been calculated by that point, and was similarly capped by the amount of remaining HP that the Cheek Pouch Pokémon had at the beginning of the move, so only that much damage will be dealt, leaving the Cheek Pouch Pokémon with remaining HP equal to the amount that ability was able to heal before it bumped into the maximum.

On the contrary, if battle animations are on, the visual sequence will show the Cheek Pouch Pokémon take enough damage to drop all the way to 0 HP, but not faint yet. After all HP changes have been shown, the Unnerve Pokémon will faint, which then causes the berry-eating animation to play. Cheek Pouch will then pop up its message, making the Pokémon appear to heal from 0 HP back up to 1/3 of its maximum, but in this case, there is sufficient space to hold the entire 1/3 gain, so Cheek Pouch will be depicted as gaining that much, even though it's more than the amount that was healed in the animations-off case.

At this point, the behavior with animations off is a more accurate representation of the game state: the Cheek Pouch Pokémon does not actually have its full 1/3 HP allotment remaining after the ability popup, it has some lower amount instead. However, by playing with animations on, the HP total will not be corrected as long as the battle is still going. If the Pokémon takes enough damage from a later attack in the same battle to knock it out from the HP total that would have been shown with animations off, the animation will show the Pokémon losing only that much HP and being left with a positive number of HP equal to the difference between the two figures. Then it will faint, still with that positive HP total shown--thus it will hereafter be referred to as the "undead Pokémon".

If the undead Pokémon was one of the player's own, and the battle is not of a type that causes each team to be fully healed at the end, then ending the battle will cause it to be properly recognized as fainted, with 0 HP. Until that happens, though, the Pokémon menu will still show it as non-fainted, with the previously noted HP total, and the red and white dots showing each player's count of remaining healthy Pokémon will still count it as a healthy Pokémon.

Since a Pokémon just fainted, the player will be sent to a menu and forced to choose a replacement. The player can attempt to send out the undead Pokémon, but rather than failing with the usual message "There's no will to battle!" that accompanies a fainted Pokémon, the failure message will be "[Nickname] is already in battle!" Whichever Pokémon does get sent out next, the glitch will still persist afterward.

If a trainer's team is reduced to only the undead Pokémon plus other Pokémon that are truly fainted in all regards, the game will correctly recognize at that point that their entire team has been defeated, and that trainer will lose the battle and/or black out, after which time the effects of the glitch will end and their Pokémon will be healed.

Other than the initial menu to replace the undead Pokémon, the trainer whose team it's on will have the option to switch to it on a later turn, and this switch, if the trainer chooses to make it, will not fail. In a Single Battle, if it's ever sent out again, the game is effectively stuck: the player will still receive an action menu at the beginning of each turn, but any actions they select from that menu will be skipped, including selecting moves, switching Pokémon, using items from the Bag in battles that allow it, running away or forfeiting, or attempting to call upon Mega Evolution or Dynamax. The opponent will still be able to use moves, but any move that targets the undead Pokémon will be treated as though there's not actually a Pokémon there, and will fail as a result. Notably, this includes Struggle, so the opponent will not be able to hit with Struggle and will not damage itself with recoil, meaning the player with the undead Pokémon does not have the potential for a win condition of waiting for all the opponents to faint from Struggle recoil. The only ways for the battle to end at this point are by turning off or resetting the game, or in the case of a link battle against another player, waiting for the match timer to run out.

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