Game Theory: Poké Balls Are KILLING Pokémon?!

Pokéballs are presented as dangerous devices that could be lethal to the Pokémon they capture, contrary to their innocent appearance in the games.

Matt Patton acknowledges this is his first dedicated Pokémon episode despite the franchise being central to his childhood and gaming history.

The release of Pokémon Legends ZA reinvigorated his interest in exploring fundamental aspects of the franchise, particularly how Pokéballs actually work.

While replaying Pokémon Legends Arceus, the professor explains that Pokémon possess the ability to shrink themselves, and Pokéballs utilize this power to capture them.

Shrinking serves as an evolutionary escape strategy similar to real animals like lizards detaching tails, puffer fish inflating, or sea cucumbers ejecting their intestines.

• Pokémon stands for 'pocket monsters,' implying their ability to fit in pockets • There is a Pokémon move called 'Minimize' confirming shrinking as a documented ability • The Four Fs of evolution (feeding, fighting, fleeing, mating) support fleeing as the logical reason for this ability

• Pokémon hiding in tall grass undetected until encountered suggests they are shrunk down for protection • Pokémon that are knocked unconscious cannot be caught, which makes sense if shrinking requires conscious control • These explanations resolve plot holes in the series

Despite having the ability to shrink, Pokémon don't remain shrunk constantly, suggesting that living at microscopic size comes with serious drawbacks.

• As pupils shrink below 400 nanometers (the wavelength of visible light), no light can pass through, resulting in total darkness • Sound becomes inaudible as the Pokémon's cry becomes too small for ears to detect • Outside voices become shock waves rather than understandable communication

When shrinking to 1/10th size, surface area decreases by 100x but volume decreases by 1,000x due to the square-cube law. This forces the Pokémon to eat its body weight daily just to maintain body heat and avoid hypothermia.

The shrunk Pokémon's lung volume becomes so small relative to internal surface area that it cannot absorb enough oxygen. At extreme sizes, oxygen molecules may be too large to enter the lungs or bind to hemoglobin.

A captured Pokémon forced into a metal ball unable to return to normal size would slowly suffocate and freeze in darkness, effectively creating a coffin.

Any object with mass can become a black hole if compressed into its Schwarzschild radius. For the heaviest Pokémon (Cosmo and Celesteela at 999.9 kg), the Schwarzschild radius is 1.485 × 10⁻²⁴ meters, about 2 billion times smaller than an electron.

• Compressing the heaviest Pokémon into a standard Pokéball (7.5 cm diameter) creates density of 4,526,500 kg/m³, over 370 times denser than Earth's core • In anime-sized Pokéballs (ping-pong ball size), density reaches nearly 30 million kg/m³

Despite extreme density, captured Pokémon don't sink through Earth because solid objects resist penetration differently than liquids. The weight of even the heaviest Pokémon (999.9 kg) is comparable to an African elephant, which Earth can support.

When Ash catches a Pokémon, the ball doesn't suddenly gain weight, meaning the Pokémon's mass must be converted into energy according to the law of conservation of mass.

Using Einstein's E=MC², the mass-to-energy conversion reveals the true cost of capturing Pokémon.

An Eevee with mass of 6.5 kg converts to 584 quadrillion joules of energy, equivalent to 139,624,968 tons of TNT or 93,000 times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

Cosmo or Celesteela at 999.9 kg releases 89 quintillion joules (21 gigatons of TNT), exceeding the most powerful thermonuclear bomb ever created, the Soviet Tsar Bomba.

• This apocalyptic level of energy is contained in an item costing only 200 Pokédollars • The energy conversion happens every time a Pokémon is captured and reconverted when released • Pikachu's reluctance to enter Pokéballs is justified—the captured Pokémon is almost certainly dead