>>27532516this is the only good fan theory
sprite art got made before sugi art for a lot of 'mon so green sprites are more instructive:
butterfree and venonat have same eyes, hands, antennae, feet, and very similar bodies
venomoth and metapod have same +-shaped eyes, venomoth's wingtips have same kind-of-blobby shape as caterpie's tail
meanwhile venonat and venomoth have fucking nothing in common while all butterfree can claim is that its antennae look kind of like caterpie's
they have to have gotten swapped sometime before they were all fully added to the game, because of their index numbers (venonat's way earlier than the others, caterpie family is together, venomoth is just before them)
presumably some papers got shuffled, someone thought it worked fine, and everyone said fuck it because 1995 gamefreak was held together with shitty code and sake
