Is This Shiny Pokemon GO Pikachu More Disturbing Than Cubone?

Today you'll find a very strange Pikachu in the game Pokemon GO. This Pikachu has a special hat, like so many special limited edition Pikachu released before. But this Pikachu is different. This Pikachu is wearing a hat that looks, for all the world, like the ripped-off top skin of the head of a Rayquaza. Or it might just be a hat – but this is Pokemon. Absolutely anything is possible when it comes to the people who write the storyline for this game series.

Shiny Pikachu with Rayquaza hat is already being called Piquaza over at the Reddit community The Silph Road. That's where the imagery of the shiny Pikachu with Rayquaza scalp shown above originates, thanks to user Flobivare. This monster is also available in non-Shiny form – but the dead eyes of the Rayquaza remain the same, one way of the other.

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While I'd love to tell you that the red coloration just under the Rayquaza's skull cap was blood, that's actually the color of the mouth/lip area of the Rayquaza. It's just unfortunate – or extremely fortunate, depending on how you see it, that it fits the disturbing theme so very, very well.

But it's not a big deal, right? We've seen Pokemon wearing other Pokemon costumes before, why not... the top half of the head of another Pokemon? Look at these official Pokemon GO Halloween costumes. Do these seem the same to you?

This isn't the first time a Pokemon has appeared to be wearing on its head the disembodied skull of another Pokemon. Take for instance a pair of Pokemon from the first 150: Cubone and Marowak.

Descriptions of Cubone and Marowak from the official Pokedex posted by the Pokemon Company International include gems such as: "At night, it weeps loudly for its dead mother," and "It's thought that Marowak is trying to avenge its parent." These elements are made more disturbing by earlier descriptions of the monster, posted by the same official Pokemon website.

If we head back to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine and hit February 9, 2014, we see the original broadly distributed Pokedex entry for Cubone. "It wears the skull of its dead mother on its head. When it becomes lonesome, it is said to cry loudly." Marowak's entry back then suggested "It is small and was originally very weak. Its temperament turned ferocious when it began using bones."

Another version of the Cubone entry in this official Pokedex, retrieved in February of 2015, read as follows: "Cubone pines for the mother it will never see again. Seeing a likeness of its mother in the full moon, it cries. The stains on the skull the Pokémon wears are made by the tears it sheds."

Imagine how tragic it'd be to realize that the skull you were wearing as a helmet all these years was actually from the mother you'd thought you'd lost? That'd make me feel sorta ferocious too. But is it a stranger story than the potential for this new Piquaza? That, we're not quite decided on just yet.