Is Mew hiding under the truck?
The most famous playground rumour in Pokémon. We checked.
Case status: Busted. A rumour that does not hold up.
What the games say
In Red and Blue there is a truck parked near the S.S. Anne dock in Vermilion City. It is scenery. The Strength move can't push it, and nothing is under it. It is also in FireRed and LeafGreen, where you can reach it by surfing past the ship. There the developers left a small joke: a hidden Lava Cookie item lying near the truck, and still no Mew.
The truth about Mew is on a Nintendo page. In an Iwata Asks interview, Game Freak's Shigeki Morimoto said Mew was added right at the end of making the game. The team had removed debugging tools, which freed up about 300 bytes of space, and Mew fit in that gap. It was meant to stay hidden unless the team found a good use for it later. Mew was then handed out at official Pokémon events instead.
What fans think
Fans have a simple explanation for the rumour. Mew was real but impossible to catch in the normal game, so kids needed a reason. A big mysterious truck that sits alone on the dock was the perfect place to put one.
Some fans joke that the truck is a decoy and the developers sat back to watch. That is a joke. Nobody has said why the truck is there.
Our verdict
Case status: Busted
Busted. The truck does nothing, and Mew is not under it. The real story, a Pokémon squeezed into 300 spare bytes, is better than the rumour.
What do you think?
Did you ever try the truck?
- Yes, and it did nothing
- No, but I heard about it
- I am going to try it now
Pick an answer on the page. Your pick stays on your own device: we do not collect votes or show totals.