It’s no surprise that Pikachu is the most popular Pokémon. (There’s literally a movie based on it!) But the title of the first Pokémon goes to an unexpected one.

When art director Ken Sugimori was first tasked with designing Pokémon characters, he started off by drawing characters that looked like kaijuu. (If you’ve seen Godzilla, or Pacific Rim, you’ll know these creatures look like dinosaurs.) 

Consensus suggests that the first official Pokémon that drew is Rhydon, and Ken suggests that Nidoking also survived from those drawings—which might make it the second. Since one premise was for Pokémon to battle each other, the initial Pokémon looked tough.

Another premise for Pokémon was for players to trade each other with the Gameboy’s Link Cable. As the team thought about it more, they realized that some players might want variation—so they drew weird-looking ones, big ones, mechanical ones, and cute ones. That last directive inspired designer Atsuko Nishida to create Pikachu.

When you’re making something new, you won’t plan it all from the beginning. You won’t plan it all from the beginning. Trust that you’ll find what you need along the way. Without drawing Rhydon, Nidoking, and all of the other tough ones, the team may not have found the idea to try cute ones as well. 

There’s also a factoid floating out there (which I haven’t confirmed) that the first concept of a Pokémon character is Diglett, a character that Ken drew when he was a child (well before the term Pokémon existed).