Hey guys! In the lead-up to Sun & Moon, I had the idea for this fun little project. I'll be writing about a random Pokémon every week; stuff like design, name, game data, trivia, etc. Sort of like Mey's Vanguard Clan of the Day thing.

So! 27 weeks until Sun & Moon release, 27 random Pokémon to talk about. Let's start!

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Design + Name
Gastly may be based on stylized ghosts seen in cartoons and anime. It also draws inspiration from a cloud of poison gas (obviously), will-o'-the-wisps, and the yōkai sōgenbi, which is the decapitated head of a monk doomed to float around the Earth while on fire... yeah.

Gastly's name is such a natural pun that I did not even notice it until just now, while researching for this post. It's a combination of "gas" and "ghastly." All these years I just figured they left out the H to give it more ~*~pizzazz~*~. :V

As for the Japanese name, it's... Ghos. Literally just "Ghost" - T. So basically what I thought Gastly was in English. :B

Game Data
Even though it's 4'02" (read: the height of an 8-year-old), it's the lightest Pokémon in existence, along with Flabébé and Haunter, at 0.2 lbs. Because it's literally just a ball of gas.

It's funny, you'd think Haunter would be heavier, given it looks more solid, but looks can be deceiving. :V

Stats-wise, it's got a BST of 310, which is about as much as you'd expect from a base form. However, its distribution is pretty wild. It has a base Special Attack of 100, which is nothing to sneeze at. (Because if you did sneeze at it, apparently Gastly would float away.) And a base speed of 80 means it'll be outspeeding even a few fully-evolved 'Mons.

Its evolutions don't really build on that all that much, though. Gengar gets 130 Special Attack and 110 Speed, and fair buffs in both if Mega Evolved. Stat gains on leveling up mostly focus on building up its weaker stats, like Attack and Special Defense.

However, prior to Gen IV, all Ghost-type and Poison-type moves were Physical. So that amazing Special Attack stat did absolutely nothing for it on STAB moves.

The Pokédex entries mainly seem to mention two things:

1) It's literally just a ball of gas, so its body can be torn apart by the wind;
2) If it wraps the gas in its body around you, bad things happen. You get knocked unconscious or fall asleep, mostly.

Oh yeah, and this line gets awesome type coverage. They learn damaging moves from Ghost, Dark, Psychic, Poison, Normal, Electric, Fighting, Grass, Bug, Fairy, Fire, and Ice types. Pretty nifty.

And for whatever reason, it can learn Rock Smash in ORAS. Like, how the heck does that work? I have no freaking clue.

Trivia
In its Red/Green/Blue sprites, it doesn't have that spherical body. It's literally just a cloud of gas, like the Pokédex says it is:


I'm not sure what caused them to change the design so drastically. Maybe the anime team just found it really hard to animate. In any case, they fixed it in Yellow:


As a side-note, I find Gastly's Shiny form to be pretty rad. Comparison:



Also, despite how hard they hit you over the head in Gen I saying that Ghost-types were the absolute best ever at battling Sabrina... Gastly's line, the only Ghost-types at the time, were literally the worst Pokémon to battle Sabrina with.

To date, because of their Poison typing, they are the only Ghost-types to be weak to Psychic-type moves. And due to bad coding, in Gen I, Psychic-types were immune to Ghost-type moves. Not that that mattered much, because the only Ghost-type move the entire line could get STAB from then was... Lick.

Yeeeeah. Kinda makes you wonder how the hell these games made it through beta testing.

Speaking of beta, Gastly's beta Japanese name was literally just Spirit. So there's that.

In the anime, the Gastly from "The Ghost of Maiden's Peak" is one of the few Pokémon that can talk without the use of telepathy. My personal theory on that is that it spent so much time in the afterlife with the ghost of Maiden's Peak, that it learned to talk just by being around her.

It also transforms into a real-world animal, a mongoose:

mongoose:

And gives us a rather ghastly Pokéfusion in the form of Venustoise:

venustoise:

And with that, that's about it! Hope you guys liked it and learned a bit. A lot of this stuff is on Bulbapedia, but I'm trying to dig around to find some more obscure things. In the meantime, here's a Gastly fan art!

Gastly by MusicalCombusken: