It’s Spooky Week here at Kotaku, and what better time to look back at Parasect, one of the most unsettling Pocket Monsters to date.
The Bug/Grass type evolves from Paras, and its name appears to be a portmanteau of “parasite” and “insect.”
Hence, Parasect.
What makes Parasect so unsettling is that it’s been taken over by a fungus.
That expression doesn’t help, though.
While Paras has pupils, Parasect’s eyes have turned white as if it’s become a soulless zombie. Perhaps it has! There’s a theory that Parasect isn’t even a Pocket Monster.
Check out these Pokédex entries (via Bulbapedia):
Parasect is reminiscent of a Scientific American article I once read called “Fungus Makes Zombie Ants Do All the Work” with the tagline “A tropical fungus has adapted to infect ants and force them to chomp, with surprising specificity, into perfectly located leaves before killing them and taking over their bodies.”
Goodness.
It’s really those white eyes. If Parasect had pupils, this zombie-mon would be cute!
But it doesn’t, so this infested Pokémon is the stuff of nightmares.
Look forward to tales of ghosts and glitches all week during Kotaku’s Spooky Week.