How can slowpoke evolve without a shellder?

Question

regardless of weather I have a shellder weather I could possibly be near a shellder or if shellder is even in the game I'm playing, slowpoke will evolve and the tail-shellder will materialize out of nowhere. if I trade my slowpoke with king's rock from terminus cave to lumiose badlands a shellder appears on slowking. What?

Comments

This is literally unanswerable.

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I agree. This question needs drastic editing.

Answer 1

The Pokemon designers made some Pokemon based on a mythical creature called the sazae-oni, and they wrote Pokedex entries to help players understand why a pink platypus-hippo matured into an upright pink platypus-hippo with a snail shell on its tail. However, during the first two generations, they probably wanted to keep gameplay simple, so they didn't really implement a Shellder-requiring evolution. Additionally, evolving a Slowpoke in a way that makes sense would require sacrificing a Shellder, which players were probably not willing to do. These represent my best guesses, but I hope it makes enough sense to answer the question.

Comments

I get the game logic, but hooow does shellder just appear?

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I already said.
> evolving a Slowpoke in a way that makes sense would require sacrificing a Shellder, which players were probably not willing to do.

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And i already said. I get the metagame logic of gamefreak, but this is like the cubone of evolution (confusing dex entries create confusion and paradoxes)

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The implication made in the answer is that there is no clear reason why or how Shellder appears, just that it works the way it does because it is convenient gameplay-wise or doesn't need to be practical. If that doesn't answer the question, you may not have made it very clear what you're after.

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good enough -filler-