With a franchise as vast and popular as Pokémon, it's inevitable that the series would spark countless fan theories to fill in any gaps. From the plausible conjecture that the legendary Ho-Oh granted Ash eternal youth in the first episode to explain Ash remaining 10 years old for almost 30 years to the chilling speculation that the meat people eat in a universe without animals comes from slaughtering actual Pokémon, several theories with varying amounts of evidence help to provide answers for what has otherwise been left ambiguous.

One of the biggest mysteries in the franchise pertains to the endless amount of identical Nurse Joys and Officer Jennys who are all canonically related by either blood or law, and who are always acting in the same roles. While it's easy to argue that recycling the same character design saves time and money, there's a much more disturbing theory that offers a far more interesting explanation.

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Pokemon brock coming on to nurse joy

Introduced on Reddit by user Bkwordguy, this fan theory suggests that Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny are actually Pokémon species. But does this theory hold any weight? Each species of Pokémon consists of several identical-looking creatures, some of which have human-like characteristics like Machoke and Lucario. So, it wouldn't be impossible for a species to look similar to humans. Additionally, both Joy and Jenny only ever serve one purpose. While Joy can heal Pokémon back to full health, Jenny performs all the duties of a police officer. No Joy or Jenny has ever strayed from this path.

The biggest difference between these characters and Pokémon is Joy and Jenny's ability to communicate with humans. Although most Pokémon can only speak the name of their species, Team Rocket's Meowth has proven that Pokémon can learn human speech. In the episode "Go West Young Meowth," it's revealed that he learned how to talk and walk like a human in an attempt to impress a female Meowth. Nothing in canon indicates that Meowth is somehow special compared to the rest of his species, allowing presumptions that other Pokémon can learn this skill too -- and they have. Ghastly in the episode "The Ghost of Maiden's Peak," Darkrai in The Rise of Darkrai and Arceus in Arceus and the Jewel of Life have all shown their ability to speak with humans. With this in mind, an entire species learning human speech isn't totally absurd.

However, as counterevidence, both Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny have shown off family pictures at some point. Then again, some Pokémon have been seen to have a family/pack of identical individuals. Moreover, the series confirms that Joy is her surname, which backs up the show's explanation that they're all just related and part of a long lineage of nurses. Based on this information, it's presumed that Jenny is merely the character's surname as well.

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Pokemon Officer Jenny

Furthermore, the Nurse Joy fans meet in the episode "Drifloon on the Wind" is married and has two daughters -- Marnie and Paige -- who oddly look exactly like their mother and bear no physical resemblance to their father Karsten. Still, while this seems like damning evidence, Pokémon Diamond, Pearl and Platinum feature old Sinnoh folk tales for the player to read. The Japanese translation of Folk Story 3 tells of a time when humans and Pokémon once married. The English translation was changed for unknown reasons.

Another peculiar detail is that an older Nurse Joy or Officer Jenny has never appeared in the franchise. While fans have seen a younger Nurse Joy in Marnie and Paige, it seems like both Joy and Jenny stop aging at a certain point. There are no older Joys or Jennys to teach the younger ones or to offer the wisdom of an elder. Rather, they are almost always seen at the same age during each appearance.

Fans can go back and forth debating the plausibility of this theory, but there's no denying the abundance of canon material that leans in its favor. If Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny are indeed Pokémon, the franchise continues to be subtly more disturbing than most might recall from childhood.

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