"Theory: Mawile was supposed to be a Dark-type Pokémon"

Sometimes types are changed mid-development for balancing reasons, such as Umbreon (pure Poison in the 1997 Gold and Silver beta, then changed to Dark in the full release) and Frillish (originally pure Water, then changed to Water/Ghost so Unova would have more Ghost-types). For several reasons, I believe Mawile is another example that has gone unnoticed, and was originally intended to be pure Dark-type:Nothing about Mawile's design suggests Steel-type. Several of its Pokédex entries claim that its huge jaw is actually a "transformed steel horn", but never say what caused the transformation in the first place, making it come off as more of a last-minute cop-out than an actual explanation.Mawile is based on the futakuchi-onna, a yōkai woman with a mouth on the back of her head. This second mouth has nothing to do with metal, but is often portrayed as having a mind of its own, and usually isn't benevolent.Mawile's version counterpart is Sableye, a Dark/Ghost-type Pokémon.According to the Pokédex, Mawile's cutesy appearance is just a facade to mask its extremely violent disposition, earning it the title of the Deceiver Pokémon.The Dark type's Japanese name is the "Evil type" and Mawile's is "Kucheat". Cheating and deception are a common theme of Dark-type moves, such as Foul Play, Fake Tears and False Surrender.In Generation III, Mawile can learn five Dark-type moves (Fake Tears, Bite, Faint Attack, Crunch and Torment), but only one Steel-type move (Iron Defense).The most likely reason behind this change would be to increase type variety in Hoenn: if not for Mawile, the Aron line would be the only new non-legendary/mythical Steel-types besides Beldum and its evolutions, which can only be obtained after beating the game. As for why it ended up as pure Steel and not Steel/Dark, either it needed to be more distinct from Sableye, or there were already getting to be too many new Dark-types. via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/lxZhgL1