Rumored New Pokemon Appears Publicly in ‘Pokemon GO,’ Then Vanishes!

Last night, Twitter user @Chrales discovered a hidden Pokemon model while debugging the network traffic of Pokemon GO. The Pokemon appeared in place of Kecleon, who is yet to be available in the game. In light of the months-old news that Pokemon GO will feature a brand new Pokemon for Let’s Go PIkachu & Eevee, many fans thought this could be that Pokemon.

 

At first only a static image of the Pokemon and its shiny form were shared. Since the Pokemon looks like someone slapped a nut onto Ditto’s body, many fans thought it could simply be a placeholder model used by Niantic for programming purposes.

This afternoon, @Chrales livestreamed the hacked Pokemon within Pokemon GO, revealing that the model has its own unique animation and even a red tail resembling a wire. Its metallic body is also slightly different than Ditto’s.

The model’s file has an ID of #891, indicating it may be a Gen VIII Pokemon. Since Zeraora is currently the last Pokemon at #807, the new Pokemon’s ID may have unintentionally revealed that Gen VIII will have a minimum of 84 new Pokemon. If this truly is the first Mythical Pokemon of Generation VIII, this might even reveal the exact number of new Pokemon before the Legendary Pokemon in the game’s Pokedex.

A few hours ago, right after Pokemon GO‘s Chikorita Community Day ended, the new “Pokemon” started to appear in the wild across countries like Japan and Australia. No longer was the Pokemon hidden within the network traffic of the game, it was now publicly available to Trainers everywhere. Upon capturing it, the Pokemon changed into Ditto and sometimes Chikorita. This seemed to indicate its appearance might be due to a glitch on Niantic’s part.

Soon after the Pokemon’s public appearance, Kento Suga, the head of Pokemon GO‘s marketing, made a Tweet saying “???” with the screenshot to the right. This seemed to indicate the Pokemon’s appearance was a marketing ploy. However, soon after the Tweet, the Pokemon began to disappear, was then replaced by Kecleon’s model, and then vanished from most people’s games. (Almost like a Mythical Pokemon if we were really living in the Pokemon world!)

The Pokemon’s appearance could have been a marketing ploy @Chrales stumbled upon early, it could be a mistake Niantic is trying to pretend was a marketing ploy, or it could even be Niantic poking fun at the fan hype (if it is indeed a placeholder model that only appears when something goes wrong with the game or when they’re debugging things). At this point we have no idea what’s really going on. If it truly is the new Pokemon, we’ll see its official reveal around November!

What do you think is going on, PokeBeach readers? What do you think of Dittonut’s design? Let us know below! If it’s real, I think Dittonut looks like a tiny Ultra Beast that would help you at your work bench in the garage while you’re soldering your broken electronics. Maybe it’s Electric / Steel because of the wire tail and metallic body?