About

Galarian Zapdos refers to an iteration of the Legendary Pokémon Zapdos specific to Pokémon Sword and Shield added to the game in The Crown Tundra DLC. While Zapdos in the first seven generations of Pokémon games is a yellow, Electric/Flying-type bird, the iteration in The Crown Tundra is an orange, Fighting/Flying-type bird that runs instead of flies. Several elements of the character including its redesign, difficulty to obtain, and walking animation were joked about after the character's debut.

Origin

On January 9th, 2020, Pokémon announced both The Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra DLCs. The trailer included a glimpse at Galarian Zapdos (shown below).

On June 2nd, 2020, Pokémon revealed a slew of new Legendary Pokémon that would be present in the then-upcoming Crown Tundra DLC.^[1] These included closer looks at the Galarian variants of three legendary birds--Articuno, Moltres, and Zapdos--which had been in the games since the first generation (Galarian Zapdos shown below).

The Crown Tundra DLC released on October 22nd, 2020. In the DLC, the trainer is tasked with catching the Galarian variants of Articuno, Moltres, and Zapdos. Zapdos is found running in the Wild Area of the main region of the game, and the player needs to use their bike to catch up to it and start the encounter (guide shown below).

Spread

Shortly after the release of the DLC, players began making various jokes about Zapdos, primarily centered around the process of catching it and its walking animation. On October 23rd, Twitter user @ArthurCaliber posted a Why Are You Running? meme about players attempting to catch Zapdos, gaining over 110 retweets and 230 likes (shown below, top). @OoCPokemon posted a clip in which a player nearly catches up to Zapdos before accidentally running into a Metapod, gaining over 6,300 retweets and 29,000 likes (shown below, bottom).

After catching the Pokémon, players commented on how the character seemed to have a spastic walking animation in the game's camp feature and when it followed players around in the game's overworld. @OoCPokémon posted a clip of a Galarian Zapdos running in circles next to a non-Galarian Zapdos, gaining over 1,300 retweets and 11,000 likes (shown below, top). User @PaulDrawsArt highlighted a clip where it appeared Zapdos was stuck on level geometry in the overworld (shown below, bottom).

The jokes were covered by Polygon,^[2] who wrote, "Before, Zapdos was a fearsome, powerful monster whose mere gaze was intimidating; now, Game Freak’s decision to rob Galarian Zapdos of his flight turns him into something that’s more like a chicken, or perhaps a Chocobo."

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References