Some Gamers Are Campaigning For Harambe The Gorilla To Become A Pokemon

The story of Harambe the gorilla has managed to take some parts of society by storm, so much so that people have begun to petition to honor the fallen gorilla by having a Pokemon named after him in an upcoming game from Nintendo.

According to Geek.com, the petition was started by the jocularly named Eric CreamyMemes from Alabama. The petition is said to be delivered to Nintendo and the Pokemon Company upon reaching the desired supporter count. At the moment they have 63,000 supporters. The petition simply reads...

There are no details on which Pokemon game Harambe is supposed to appear in, nor are there any requests for feedback from Nintendo or the developers. It almost reads like a joke.

However, the petition doesn't seem to be slowing down. Lots of blue-checked, verified accounts from Twitter have been lending their support to the petition, from BuzzFeed Russia to various members of the media, including MTV and The Sun. This could all be one huge prank to put some social media pressure on Nintendo to bite the bullet and add Harambe to an upcoming Pokemon game, or it could be people who legitimately care about the gorilla who was shot and killed at a zoo in Cincinnati.

The petition does contain a mock-up image of how Harambe would look in the game. They pulled a photo from the Pokemon Sage wiki page of the monkey type Pokemon Monkezuma, and renamed it to Hambo (for his early starter form) and Harambe (for his final form).

As some people pointed out in the comment section, the Monkezuma Pokemon is actually a monkey and has a tail, where-as Harambe was a gorilla and did not have a tail. Very observant.

This isn't the first time that Nintendo was heavily petitioned regarding the popular monster-catching franchise. Previously a bunch of people signed a petition to get Nintendo to hire actor and director Danny Devito to voice Pikachu in the game Detective Pikachu.

Nintendo definitely has some wild and crazy fans. The thing is, even if they wanted Harambe in games like Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon, it wouldn't be possible so close to the games' release. Both titles are due out this November, and they're likely already finalizing everything to ensure that it's a bug-free playing experience.

Harambe, however, could end up in a game like Pokemon Go given that Niantic Labs is constantly evolving, adding and expanding the mobile game to reach as many different people as possible. The flexibility of the mobile game affords Niantic a lot more leeway than the more traditional route of making Pokemon titles under the Game Freak label, which usually is in planning and development for quite some time before landing on store shelves.

Given the reach and popularity of the petition, it might get big enough for Nintendo not to ignore it. But then again, they were able to ignore the Danny Devito requests for Detective Pikachu, so maybe they'll continue to pay no mind to the petition to include Harambe in any future Pokemon titles.