Warning: long article ahead.


Remoraid is a small blue fish pokemon. It's entire body is made to mimic a handgun, complete with a trigger, butt of a gun, hammer, and a gun's front sight. The inspiration is due to it's ability to shoot jets of water from it's mouth, including a variety of beam-based moves.
Although mostly based on a remora, a pure saltwater fish, it can be found in a variety of freshwater locations throughout johto due to the lack of water types at the time (same as chinchou).
This is explained in the games by it swimming down to the sea when ready to evolve. It's also partly based on an archer fish (it's ability to shoot down bugs out of the air) which would partly explain this.


Upon it's evolution to Octillery, Remoraid changes drastically, which has often stumped many fans. The reason for this is due to the similarity between a tank's tracks and an octopus' tentacles, and a turret and an octopus' snout. Remoraid essentially goes from gun to tank. This is proven by it's japanese name Okutank (octopus + tank) and english name Octillery (octopus + artillery).
Also, Remora's are sometimes called a suckerfish as it has a distinctive dorsal fin that works as a sucker-like organ. The tank reference is further evidenced by the fact that Octillery becomes a lot slower. When analyzed like this it's obvious to see the connection between the two.


Mantyke is a small blue manta ray. With a flat body and wide fins, it's based on those floating boards children use to learn to swim. Although it shares the same species name as it's evolution, it doesn't look much like a kite, nor is it often seen flying. An interesting fact about Mantyke says that the back markings are different based on the region, though to what extent is unknown. This is most probably a reference to aircrafts having different markings around the world - for example [link] (Thanks to ~ModernDrift)


Mantine was originally designed to be a counterpart for Skarmory (who is Steel/Flying instead), This can be seen in the stats below;



Whilst Skarmory is part steel type and has moves like roost and stealth rock, Mantine has a 4x weakness to electric moves, making them uneven counterparts. To fix this Game Freak tried to improve it by adding a pre-evolution (Mantyke). (Thanks to ~Xtreme1992)

For Mantyke to evolve into Mantine, a Remoraid is required to be in your party. This is because Mantine originally always had a Remoraid attached (which Mantyke would then need if it was going to become one).
This is where it gets interesting because Mantine is actually able to learn quite a few moves that aren't common in water pokemon, including Psybeam, Bullet Seed and Signal Beam. Mantine can use all these moves because of the Remoraid attached, they are all moves that Remoraid can learn!

This is a perfect example of a symbiotic relationship, parallel to that of a whale shark and a remora. In real life, the whale shark keeps the remora safe, and the remora returns the favour by keeping it clean. Likewise, Mantine offers protection to Remoraid and in turn Remoraid gives it beam-based attacks otherwise impossible.

Suddenly you realise that Mantine is not only based on a manta ray, a kite, but also a fighter aircraft, with a "gun" attached to it's under-wing! Thus, why the Water/Flying typing.
These 4 pokemon truly represent amazing design, whose visuals are directly linked to technical abilities and serve as great inspiration to pokemon designers. I would love to see more pokemon as well thought out as these.

N.B. Interestingly, Remoraid was removed from Mantine's in-game visual from Gen IV onwards, even though this was when Mantyke's new evolution method was introduced. This is probably because the Remoraid in your party would have to essentially be 'deleted' when it evolves, which could potentially upset some unknowing players. Regardless it does not seem to affect Mantine's move list, sadly rendering this previous connection obsolete.
It's truly ironic that by adding the new evolution method for mantyke they made the evolution method no longer make sense.

tl;dr
Remoraid = gun, Octillery = tank, Mantine with remoraid attached = Fighter aircraft with gun attached.