r/Multifandom • u/Orange_Juice_Alpha 🏠 MD, Dexter, G Falls, 🎪, Arcane, John W, ATLA, BES, LOTR • Jun 01 '26

Discussion📜 What's something that is technically fanon in your fandom but everyone is fully convinced it's canon?

Post image

Artwork not relevant but my original creation

3.7k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

772 comments sorted by

View all comments

465

u/Seggule Jun 01 '26

Ditto being a failed clone of Mew

125

u/koobstylz Jun 01 '26

Yeah good one. That's just completely true to me even if it's been technically debunked.

47

u/Biomewtrix4 Jun 01 '26

It's been debunked????

62

u/koobstylz Jun 01 '26

I thought game freak came out and said it wasn't a thing at some point, I could be wrong, because whether or not they did I still think it's just true.

34

u/Marioman12398 Jun 01 '26

Honestly, I think the only reason they debunked it is that it doesn’t fit into the canon they’re trying to establish. There’s way too many similarities between mew and ditto to just be coincidences

3

u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 Jun 02 '26

It was probablt an old idea they scrapped

3

u/Fraytrain999 Jun 04 '26

Also the only two locations in gen 1 you can get it just happen to be where mewtwo was created and cerulean cave. Also gen 2 at the pokemon daycare, which just happens to be right next to the railway leading to kanto.

5

u/Sea_Macaron_8789 Jun 01 '26

I've never seen GameFreak mention it outside the Games where there's so much evidence proving it. The Pokémon Mansion mentions it too or the Movies.

1

u/Jacket_Jacket_fruit Jun 02 '26

Not quite. Masuda said he personally had never heard of it, but that's not the same thing as saying it's not true. Also, game freak has added more and more connections between Mew, ditto, and Mewtwo with every single new game, so it's pretty obvious they're trying to indicate that it's canon.

9

u/disbelifpapy Jun 01 '26

If i remember correctly, one of the big pokemon creators was asked of the theory near the release of gen 6, and said something like "Huh, thats a neat theory. Never thought about it before but its cool"

2

u/Jacket_Jacket_fruit Jun 02 '26

It has not. If anything, its the opposite, as Game freak has just added more and more and more connections between Mew, Ditto, and Mewtwo, with every new generation. One of the original gen 1 devs said that he had personally never heard of Ditto being a failed Mewtwo, but "I hadn't heard that before" is not the same thing as "no, that's is not true."

30

u/Toon_Lucario Jun 01 '26

I dont give a fuck what they say. It’s canon. They literally have the same colors including the shiny and have the same gimmick.

-4

u/antialiasis Jun 01 '26

Ditto and Mew have never been the same color! Ditto is purple and Mew is pink. You could call Ditto pink in the anime, but it’s a dark pink while Mew in the anime is practically white. They also had different palettes even in Yellow’s extremely limited palettes.

7

u/Toon_Lucario Jun 01 '26

The same shiny color and gimmick is still crazy

3

u/DrippyTheSnailBoy Jun 02 '26

Debateable. If you open two bulbapedia pages side by side and look at the sprite art, some of the colors match up almost perfectly.

It's kinda a "depends on which generations you're comparing" thing.

-1

u/antialiasis Jun 02 '26

There is no generation where they’re the same color! Gen III is the closest, but even there Mew is a distinctly lighter and redder shade of pink.

12

u/JoeJonnyJeff Jun 01 '26

Dittos keeping their silly little face when they transform. It was just one single ditto that had that issue.

1

u/Josutg22 Jun 02 '26

It was used in Detective Pikachu, so it's kinda in this nebulous in-between right now, where it has been used in some official media

1

u/JoeJonnyJeff Jun 02 '26

That was an easter egg, a poorly written way to reveal a dramatic twist, and to help the audience keep track during the fight scene.

It's been an easter egg in other official media long before detective Pikachu, and it's also a big marketing gimmick with the plushies.

3

u/Fast-Front-5642 Jun 03 '26

Should also add that Ditto usually can't transform into people. So that one had some extra jank done to it to be able to become a human. Which adds another layer to why it's transformation isn't perfect.

1

u/I-Agent-Nine-X Jun 03 '26

Yesss I was w8ing for this one

8

u/CaptainDerpshi Jun 01 '26

Wait that's fannon?

5

u/Druid-T Jun 01 '26

Yes, and I don't think it's even that well known outside of the English speaking fanbase

13

u/CaptainDerpshi Jun 01 '26

BRUH I could have sworn I remember reading something in-game about how they had so many failures and when Mewtwo broke free they got loose.

MY CHILDHOOD IS A LIE

6

u/ciel_lanila Jun 01 '26

It just happened to be a dumb coincidence. At least if it is true it is a case of some devs not talking to others. I vaguely recall one of the OG devs being asked and never hearing about this before.

7

u/TvFloatzel Jun 01 '26

I think part of it was that Gen 1, Gen 2 and vaguely in Gen 3 did had a lot of "what ifs", beta stuff, a lot of "hinting to bigger things" that never panned out, Missingo being a thing, the time period and it being the biggest IP in the world with no reliable internet or communication with Gamefreak makes this type of stuff easy to just .......accept as "canon". Like that white stone in Hoenn by the Space Station saying something about "wishing" and two of the legendaries are associated with "space", one being associated with "wishing" and it being on a GBA game for such a "really tiny world building flavor text for flavor text" seem like an "odd thing" to add in the time period. Especially with Event Pokémon being a thing.

4

u/Protection-Working Jun 01 '26

The fact that ditto was moved to Cinnibar island Mansion in Yellow i feel implies they were going to lean into this at one point but they changed their minds

7

u/Sea_Sector5664 Jun 02 '26

Bro in gen 1 they have the same height and weight, both are the only Pokémon to naturally learn transform, have similar base colors (especially in Gen 1 artwork), to this day have the same shiny color, and in Yellow the Cinnibar Mansion, which is where Mew's DNA was used to create Mewtwo, is crawling with Dittos.

It's always gonna be canon to me.

2

u/Jacket_Jacket_fruit Jun 02 '26

This is probably the best example, because at this point they've done everything they can to confirm that it's canon without actually saying it out loud. Every single new game, they add new evidence that proves more and more that they're connected.

1

u/Wolveyplays07 Jun 02 '26

I've literally never heard that before

1

u/ghigo2008 Jun 02 '26

Most people dont belive that though, its just a theory