I’m something of a Pokémon superfan, and the recent Palworld discourse had me wondering something; have any other major properties been secretly plagiarizing from Game Freak this entire time? I had to do some classic investigative journalism in order to get to the bottom of this. Nintendo is clearly helpless in this matter and needs someone like me to protect them from further copyright infringement.
I started with looking for any obvious Pokémon clones. You know, your electric rats, or birds made out of fire, or suspiciously hot rabbits. I did learn about something called a “phoenix” during my research, but that seems to be a couple years older than Moltres, so those get a pass.
Then I noticed something I can’t believe I had never seen before: there’s this animal called a “sheep” that looks way too similar to Wooloo to be a coincidence.
Almost everything about them is copied directly from Wooloo. They have fluffy white wool, which primarily covers their torso and not their limbs. Their ears stick way out from the sides of their heads, and they sometimes have horns! You can even occasionally find ones with black wool, just like a shiny Wooloo. This is all clearly taken directly from Pokémon.
The worst part has got to be the eyes, though. As if the rest of that wasn’t enough, it’s like the eyes were traced; they’re yellow on the outside, with a horizontal, rectangular pupil. It’s so shameless! Pokémon came up with such a unique and original design just for it to be ripped off like this.
Right about now you may be asking how a real animal is copied from a video game, and I do not have the answer to that. But I have to ask you a question: Had you ever even seen – no, had you ever even heard of a sheep before 2019? That’s right, you hadn’t. Nobody had ever seen a sheep before Pokémon Sword and Shield came out when – you guessed it – Wooloo was introduced.
Upon further research, I believe I know who is responsible for this blatant plagiarism: New Zealand. They have five times as many sheep as they do people. It’s the perfect place to manufacture and release these bootlegs. The New Zealand government needs to be stopped!
I suggest that Nintendo and The Pokemon Company pursue legal action in order to right this obvious copyright infringement before they do it again. I suspect they already have, by copying Game Freak’s other original designs such as Pidgey and Magikarp.
