>>29416705First of all, we know they HAVE to be Totems because two of them are after Raticate. All of the sprites are arranged in National Dex order. The two blacked out sprites following Raticate therefore must be Totem Raticate, and it follows that all other Totems have placeholder sprites as well. It's no coincidence that the Pokémon followed by placholder sprites include every confirmed Totem except Wishiwashi, a Pokémon many people speculated to be a Totem, and the evolved form of a demo-exclusive Totem.
As for why Totems have Pokédex sprites in the first place, I would point out that you only have to encounter a form to register it in the dex, but that's not actually relevant in this case because they're blacked out which means they're not meant to be seen in the dex at all; in fact, the dex sprites are also now used for Team Preview instead of the menu sprites used in previous gens. And they're there specifically to stop the game from crashing if the player hacks a Totem into their team.
The game knows a particular wild encounter is a Totem because it's coded as an alternate form of that Pokémon. Every alternate form points to a unique sprite for the reasons I just explained, even if their in-battle models are identical, like all the Minior shells and shiny cores, or like the Totems just being scaled-up versions of the base form with a fancy aura effect. Apparently GF thought that was easier than pointing multiple forms at the same image.
Of course the fact that you can't catch Totems is specifically why their Team Preview sprite is blacked out; this also indicates the Pokédex doesn't register the Totems as separate forms despite being coded as such, or they would have actual sprites. Interestingly this also points to Zygarde being the eight Totem, as we know the Cell and Cores are treated as items and if the Pokédex doesn't have visible sprites for them, then there would be no reason to code them as alternate forms to begin with.
