Pokemon Go Halloween Quest Has Hilariously Dark Twist

A Pokemon Go research quest has an appropriately dark connotation to it this Halloween season. [...]

By Christian Hoffer

A Pokemon Go research quest has an appropriately dark connotation to it this Halloween season. Yesterday, Pokemon Go launched its annual Halloween event, an annual tradition involving double catch candy and spooky new Pokemon. As part of the event, Pokemon Go released two new Ghost-type Pokemon - Yamask and Litwick - into the wild for players to catch. These Pokemon are permanent additions to Pokemon Go, but they have boosted spawn rates during the Halloween event. As part of the Halloween event, players can also receive special Halloween Field Research tasks to complete within the game. These tasks are mostly aimed at catching new Pokemon, but there's one quest that has caused players to raise a few eyebrows.

On its surface, the quest is relatively benign - players are tasked with defeating a Team Rocket Grunt, which have been plaguing PokeStops for months. When players defeat the Team Rocket Grunt, they have an opportunity to capture a Yamask, and that's why players are questioning what happens to a Team Rocket Grunt when they're defeated.

Yamask is a Ghost-type Pokemon that was allegedly once a human. After death, Yamask became a Ghost-type Pokemon and carries around a mask that resembles its human face. A few players are questioning if the Yamask that appears after the Team Rocket Grunt is defeated is actually the Team Rocket Grunt, doomed to eternal ghostly Pokemon servitude for their loss. Instead of fleeing, maybe Pokemon Go actually kills off the Team Rocket Grunt and then uses their immortal soul to populate the Pokemon players joyfully catch this Halloween season. One Redditor even shared a Photoshop showing Yamask staring at a death mask containing the face of a Team Rocket Grunt.

Of course, players probably aren't actually killing Team Rocket Grunts and then capturing their spirits in PokeBalls, but Pokemon Go does have a proud tradition of making players wonder if something more sinister is going on in the game. After all, why does Professor Willow give players candies for transferring Pokemon and what happens to those Pokemon after they disappear? Are they sent to a farm upstate or are they turned into candies fed to Pokemon to make them stronger?

Pokemon Go's Halloween event runs through November 1st.

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