Which Pokemon Families Were Used The Most By Important NPCs?

[Yung Dramps]

As the generations have worn on, we've met a wide variety of iconic characters, each with their own distinct teams, whether it be fierce tyrants like Cyrus and Ghetsis, high-energy adversaries like Hop and Barry or the menagerie of Gym Leaders, each carries their own set of Pokemon to leave their mark on the player in battle and possibly represent their own personality. With so many distinct in-game teams by characters with such stature in their world and the Pokemon community, one may be led to ask: Which Pokemon are chosen to most to be the battle partners of these youths, elders, scoundrels and legends? By spending hours combing through each and every important in-game team on Bulbapedia, I have compiled a spreadsheet to answer this question.

Click here to view said spreadsheet.

Now, this is all quite a bit to digest, so I'll just leave a highlight reel:

Accolades

Most Used Family Overall: Crobat line (27 uses)

Most Used Johto Families: Weavile and Honchkrow lines (13 uses)

Most Used Hoenn Family: Altaria and Metagross lines (11 uses)

Most Used Sinnoh Family: Bronzong line (13 uses)

Most Used Unova Family: Kingambit line (11 uses)

Most Used Kalos Family: Goodra line (7 uses)

Most Used Alola Families: Salazzle, Lycanroc and Toxapex lines (5 uses)

Most Used Galar Families: Archaludon, Alcremie, Corviknight, Coalossal, Toxtricity, Hatterene and Copperajah families (3 uses)

Paldea is too recent to add to this list.

Most Used Starters: Charizard and Empoleon lines (9 uses)

Most Used Minor Legendaries: Zapdos and Entei (5 uses)

Most Used Mascot Legendaries: Reshiram and Zekrom (2 uses)

(Possibly) Coming Soon:
-More Accolades
-Individual tabs for most used Pokemon by region

Enjoy the data! I look forward to your discussion, corrections and suggestions.

Spreadsheet/OP edit history

12/16/19: Spreadsheet finished and publicly uploaded
12/17/19: "No-Use Blunders" section added
12/24/19: Added Eusine's Pokemon
3/23/20: Added Aarune and removed the mentions of extra forms from No-Use Blunders + added Indeedee there
3/27/20: Added Most Used Mascot Legendaries accolade
5/12/20: Changed URL so the owner is not my school Drive account
5/17/20: Added Tabitha's Koffing from ORAS bringing Weezing count to 11
6/3/20: Prelude to Isle of Armor micro-update: Bumped up Slowbro's usage by 2 points from Klara and Avery's Galarian Slowbros as shown in yesterday's IoA release date trailer (only one was shown using it but its obvious they'll both have it and even if they somehow don't I can quickly slash off 1 use)
6/17/20: Isle of Armor update
6/18/20: IoA Update Pt. 2: Honey battle added and an incorrect Mustard mon was dropped down
8/4/20: Ditto added to No-Use Blunders
10/23/20: Crown Tundra update
10/24/20: Bumped up Tsareena one since Milo uses it in Galarian Star Tournament
12/25/20: Fixed an error where I missed Blue's Fearow from Yellow, bumping it up to 2 uses
11/9/21: BDSP update
11/10/21: BDSP update wrapped up
11/19/21: BDSP update impromptu part 3, Battle Tower mons added
1/28/22: Legends Arceus update
2/28/22: Legends Arceus update part 2: Daybreak
12/6/22: SV update
8/13/23: Corrections! Removed a fake team someone put on Bulbapedia for Bianca for some reason, also added Janine PWT mons and Tate & Liza PWT Grumpig
9/13/23: Teal Mask update + Minor legends removed from No Use Blunders
12/18/23: Indigo Disk update
12/21/23: More corrections! Added Lacey's Plusle & Minun and Giacomo's Mabosstiff
1/20/24: Mochi Mayhem micro update, aka the Yukito and Hideko battle and Nemona's non-Paldea starters from the League Club

 

[greentyphlosion]

I... was not expecting Crobat to be the top one. And Magnezone was a surprise too. My first thought was Metagross.

Nice work!

 

[Antihaxxer]

Impressive ! Is it possible to re-do the same exercice without the evil team of the generation ?

I really thought Charizard and Gyarados would be number one

 

[Yung Dramps]

Impressive ! Is it possible to re-do the same exercice without the evil team of the generation ?

I really thought Charizard and Gyarados would be number one

Removing evil team representation seems pretty arbitrary to me. If I did, I suspect that Crobat usage would go down, but he'd still be in the top 3 imo because lots of normal trainers use him as well. Weezing usage would also take a big hit.

 

[LurkerBurger]

First off, wonderful work for such an unassuming topic.


Second off those evil teams use poison types quite a bit don't they. Wonder what's up with them.

 

[Worldie]

Second off those evil teams use poison types quite a bit don't they. Wonder what's up with them.

It's mostly due to the design of Poison (and Dark, recently) types.

They tend to look "evily", as well as purple and black being colors generally associated with "evil".

You'd not really take a evil team seriously if they used Jigglypuff.... but then, not that anyone takes team Skull or Yell seriously anyway

 

[LurkerBurger]

You'd not really take a evil team seriously if they used Jigglypuff.... but then, not that anyone takes team Skull or Yell seriously anyway

I will smite you with my evil looking jigglypuff and my world destroying chimeco

 

[Yung Dramps]

Update #1: I have added a new tab I dub "No-Use Blunders". As the title implies, this is a section for Pokemon that have never been used in any important fights, sorted by region. tl;dr it's the typical early-route shitmons + a handful of more surprising omissions like Kingler and Orbeetle

 

[Siggu]

I frankly never realized that every major Team Galactic trainer (not counting the unfought Charon) used the Zubat line.

 

[wdcjernigan]

Update #1: I have added a new tab I dub "No-Use Blunders". As the title implies, this is a section for Pokemon that have never been used in any important fights, sorted by region. tl;dr it's the typical early-route shitmons + a handful of more surprising omissions like Kingler and Orbeetle

From this quote I guess Ash is not included in the category of important characters? This is probably fair since he's been around the whole time and has used so many, but I'm curious about if you feel Ash should be included and why. Cool data! I really like the one use and no use pages too. I'm surprised about the Lake Trio not being in big battles.

 

[super433]

nice

 

[Yung Dramps]

From this quote I guess Ash is not included in the category of important characters? This is probably fair since he's been around the whole time and has used so many, but I'm curious about if you feel Ash should be included and why. Cool data! I really like the one use and no use pages too. I'm surprised about the Lake Trio not being in big battles.

I'm not factoring in the anime at all: This is just for major battles in the games.

 

[wdcjernigan]

I'm not factoring in the anime at all: This is just for major battles in the games.

Whoops, that's what I get for trying to pay half attention when posting.

So what would you say is the most interesting thing you've learned from putting together this data?

 

[Yung Dramps]

Whoops, that's what I get for trying to pay half attention when posting.

So what would you say is the most interesting thing you've learned from putting together this data?

I think the biggest surprise is that there's not as many Kanto Pokemon in the top tiers as I was expecting. Like yeah, they still compromise a large majority, but then there's stuff like Weavile, Bronzong and Toxicroak that settles at that level which really caught me off-guard.

Also the fact Nidoking has only ever been used by Giovanni. Easily the weirdest one-use mon: It's a fairly strong and iconic Gen 1 mon, and nobody else has used it? Stuff like Seaking and Dugtrio have gotten more usage ffs

 

[Siggu]

Also the fact Nidoking has only ever been used by Giovanni. Easily the weirdest one-use mon: It's a fairly strong and iconic Gen 1 mon, and nobody else has used it? Stuff like Seaking and Dugtrio have gotten more usage ffs

Actually that has a fairly simple explanation: the Nidoran line has only appeared in THREE Regional Pokédexes: Kanto, Johto (which already includes all of Kanto so it doesn't help) and Kalos.

So much for an iconic mon.

 

[6Roggenrolas]

A lot of these really surprised me, but made sense as I stopped and thought about them. I generally expected them to be spread out over the generations, which was probably the mistake- stuff like Bronzong is used by 5 different trainers in Sinnoh alone by my rough count (Galactic Admins, Lucian, Byron), which just makes sense considering the smaller dexes you get with certain games.

also somehow can't name a single trainer who has used Bisharp besides Grimsley probably so uuuh 1/10 fake fan here i guess

 

[Lightning Energy]

also somehow can't name a single trainer who has used Bisharp besides Grimsley probably so uuuh 1/10 fake fan here i guess

Ghetsis in BW1 and one member of the Shadow Triad in B2W2 use Bisharp.

 

[Blanca Weiss]

A lot of these really surprised me, but made sense as I stopped and thought about them. I generally expected them to be spread out over the generations, which was probably the mistake- stuff like Bronzong is used by 5 different trainers in Sinnoh alone by my rough count (Galactic Admins, Lucian, Byron), which just makes sense considering the smaller dexes you get with certain games.

also somehow can't name a single trainer who has used Bisharp besides Grimsley probably so uuuh 1/10 fake fan here i guess

I'm pretty sure Molayne use one in his E4 battle in USUM.

 

[Coronis]

It's mostly due to the design of Poison (and Dark, recently) types.

They tend to look "evily", as well as purple and black being colors generally associated with "evil".

You'd not really take a evil team seriously if they used Jigglypuff.... but then, not that anyone takes team Skull or Yell seriously anyway

You don’t take Team Skull seriously?!

 

[Pikachu315111]

You'd not really take a evil team seriously if they used Jigglypuff.... but then, not that anyone takes team Skull or Yell seriously anyway

 

[R_N]

Ghetsis in BW1 and one member of the Shadow Triad in B2W2 use Bisharp.

All of the shadow triad use Bisharp. Two of them, actually. Their teams are Pawniard/Pawniard(Bisharp/Bisharp) and then Absol, Banette & Accelgor

 

[6Roggenrolas]

Considering the Bisharp/Bronzong spam and taking a look at the spreadsheet, it seems that being an evil team mon is the best boost you can get aside from (obviously) being a kanto pokemon. Half the Pokemon in the top 12 (Crobat, Weavile, Bronzong, Bisharp, Toxicroak, Weezing) are used a good amount by evil teams.

 

[Yung Dramps]

Very small update: I added Eusine's Pokemon to the list. Didn't really change much except now the Gengar line is tied with the Gyarados line for 3rd place.

 

[Yung Dramps]

So this spreadsheet's been kinda sitting around for a while "gathering dust" so to speak. I don't want to abandon it until the next mainline game whenever that may be, so I brainstormed some potential expansion ideas I'd like to hear your opinions on.

-How about including certain spin-offs? Colosseum/XD seem like the most obvious candidates, but I've also considered adding Pokemon Conquest since Pokemon are also technically controlled by humans in that game, albeit not in the traditional team structure. I also considered doing Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2 at some point, so maybe that idea's worth reviving if you guys are interested.

-I also might include a trivia section. So far I got two factoids: Every Fighting specialist has used Machamp at some point and Snorlax has been used the most by rivals. I would like to get more from you guys before I add it as a separate section.

 

[sb879]

So this spreadsheet's been kinda sitting around for a while "gathering dust" so to speak. I don't want to abandon it until the next mainline game whenever that may be, so I brainstormed some potential expansion ideas I'd like to hear your opinions on.

-How about including certain spin-offs? Colosseum/XD seem like the most obvious candidates, but I've also considered adding Pokemon Conquest since Pokemon are also technically controlled by humans in that game, albeit not in the traditional team structure. I also considered doing Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2 at some point, so maybe that idea's worth reviving if you guys are interested.

-I also might include a trivia section. So far I got two factoids: Every Fighting specialist has used Machamp at some point and Snorlax has been used the most by rivals. I would like to get more from you guys before I add it as a separate section.

I'd be cool with seeing any spin-off that uses the normal Pokemon mechanics added into the stats, but not the more unrelated spin-offs. If you really want to include those I would have a separate sheet with those factored in.

Though, in general, you really shouldn't be that concerned with the spreadsheet gathering dust. It's data from pre-existing games, you can only do so much with it.