Theories on why some pokemon know odd moves?

Primeape can elarn overheat because it gets so angry its body can emit enough heat to discharge fire.

ALso explains firepunch

 

Apparently Cryogonal can learn Attract despite being genderless.

What the hell is so attractive about a giant snowflake though?

I would’ve thought it would infatuate Pokémon of either gender or something special...Shame it doesn’t.

 

Diglett can learn Scratch and Slash... yeah, I can't think of an explanation for that. Might just be Game Freak fucking with us

 

Well, if we're talking about Alolan Diglett, those strands of 'hair' are metal, and being as thin as they are could potentially slice through just about anything.

Regular Diglett, though... I guess the teeth (does it have teeth? we never see it open its mouth, IIRC) work best?

 

Doduo and Dodrio were the weirdest ones for me in terms of movesets. Although they are supposed to be flightless, they can still learn Fly. :/

 

http://www.awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=030711

 

For some reason, I always thought Woopr punches with its head. Don't ask, but it made perfect sense to me at the time.

Maybe it just wanted to be loved so desperately that it forced itself to be able to learn it?

 

Out of the 802 Pokémon, 795 of them can learn Toxic. More than 99% of Pokémon are capable of potentially spitting super poison.

 

Explosion. I kind of understand how so many inorganic-seeming Pokémon can do it, but what about the ones that are clearly living? Cloyster, Exeggutor, Skuntank, Lickilicky? Those things are all animal (or plant) and they can combust? I don't know, maybe it's easier for me to visualize a Golem reconstituting itself from rocks after exploding than it is for me to see a large skunk or coconut tree explode and somehow not be dead-dead afterwards.

Maybe they just have really bad gas from Taco Tuesday...

 

For Cloyster, given that it can learn Spike Cannon, maybe it uses the explosive force from launching the spikes to cause the explosion? Kind of like what would happen if a missile was launched but the clamps were not released. Or like Bugs Bunny plugging the holes in Elmer Fudd's gun, causing it to backfire on him.

Also, in Exeggutor's case it's one of the only Pokémon capable of learning Egg Bomb (the Normal-type variant of Iron Tail), so likely it's just all the heads exploding at once.

Like mine did when I saw the last level in Super Mario Odyssey.

 

I can't think of any specific example that haven't been mentioned off the top of my head but I hear that a lot of Pokémon learning odd moves like Gastly learning sucker punch is due to translation quirks. Sucker punch for example is called surprise attack in Japan which is why armless Pokémon can use it.

 

Uh, Shroomish. It can learn, as a TM, FALSE SWIPE. Uh, it has NO HANDS. It can also learn, as an egg move, Focus Punch, Drain Punch, and Wake Up Slap. It has no hands.

He kinda reminds me of Alan from The Amazing World Of Gumball. "Dude, no hands"

 

Heh, whoops...

Well, Shroomish eventually evolves into Breloom, a Grass and Fighting type, and maybe Shroomish has really small arms? Or maybe he projects his will or something that makes the shape of an arm or something?

 

Azelf can learn Explosion because this forum is mindblowingly amazing.
*drops mic and walks away* *walks back and fumbles with mic because I forgot to say the last line* CASE CLOSED *drops mic even more dramatically and moonwalks away*
#MissingNo

 

The hypothesis of why Wooper can learn ice punch is because he uses his tail to hit with. It would be more of a slap in the face, but oh well.