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Consider the following scenario: A trainer is trying to catch a rare or strong Pokemon, and figures that catching it in a PokeBall will have a low likelihood of actually catching and containing it.

What would happen if, after the trainer threw the first PokeBall and before the wild Pokemon breaks free, the trainer hit the occupied PokeBall with a second PokeBall? Would the both the original PokeBall and the wild Pokemon be "caught" by the second PokeBall? Would the wild Pokemon just be transferred from the first PokeBall to the second PokeBall? Would this double the likelihood that the Pokemon will be caught, due to the fact that it has to break out of two balls instead of one?

If the PokeBalls can be "layered," and the probability that you catch a Pokemon increases with how many PokeBalls you can layer on it, could you not just keep layering PokeBalls until you reach the strength of a Great or Ultra Ball?

We already know that inanimate objects and things other than Pokemon can be "caught" by PokeBalls, as evidenced by this question.

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wcarhart
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  • "We already know that inanimate objects and things other than Pokemon can be "caught" by PokeBalls" .... well the link you provide for this states it is not known, but evidence is it isn't possible. So a follow up question presuming something wrong, appears flawed to me... – Zaibis Aug 15 '16 at 12:53
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    And then you have the issue of having to yell "I choose you Pikachu" 16 times as nested Pokeballs continue to anticlimactically roll out of your thrown Pokeball while your rival Gary laughs at you unremorsefully. – DasBeasto Aug 15 '16 at 13:16
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    @Zaibis From the first answer of the linked question: "It can happen, that there are different things than a Pokémon in it, like when Ash found a riceball in his Pokéball." I know that isn't totally conclusive, but it does provide evidence of the phenomenon occurring, which is enough basis to ask follow up questions – wcarhart Aug 15 '16 at 14:42
  • Whoa, maybe this question is more appropriate for the Philosophy site. – Jason C Aug 15 '16 at 16:14
  • If you can catch the PokeBall while it is attempting capture, what's to stop other trainers from stealing your captures? It's still technically a wild Pokemon until the stars shoot out. – David Starkey Aug 15 '16 at 17:36
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    Yo dawg, I herd you like pokeballz... – Cave Johnson Aug 15 '16 at 19:38
  • The Pokéball would open and fall to the ground. –  Aug 15 '16 at 21:50
  • @ArtGT Source? Any other thoughts? You need to back up your argument with something... – wcarhart Aug 15 '16 at 22:41
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    @ThePickleTickler Also some support as to the possibility that a PokeBall could catch another PokeBall is that in the games you often will find items (ex. potions, full heals, evolution stones, etc.) laying on the ground in what appear to be basic PokeBalls. – Cyberson Aug 17 '16 at 04:24

4 Answers4

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While it's not an ordinary Pokéball, the Mewtwo ball is capable of capturing another Pokéball inside it.

enter image description here

This is demonstrated in the first Pokemon movie and quoted in the synopsis section of the movie's wiki page. A gif of the event is below too:

"Ash tries returning Bulbasaur and Squirtle (who have been fighting the balls bravely), but it's no use. Two of Mewtwo's Poké Balls fly over and capture Bulbasaur and Squirtle's Poké Balls."

enter image description here

Granted, this is a special kind of ball developed by Mewtwo, so I can't say for sure in this answer whether a standard Pokéball would behave similarly.

Additionally, the catch rate for the Mewtwo ball is listed as 100% on the wiki page. Therefore it's impossible to say whether it would increase the catch chance of a wild pokémon through stacking, as it's a guaranteed capture with just one.

Matt
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    Great, you mentioned the perfect example for the question( which i was presuming to be a 'confusion') – ABcDexter Aug 15 '16 at 19:08
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    I love it when I read a question and think "this cannot possibly have any meaningful answer" and then I scroll down to find the meaningful answer – Nacht Aug 16 '16 at 01:45
  • Thanks to @Ikaros for his [help](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/31722901#31722901) in sourcing a gif solution! – Matt Aug 16 '16 at 14:16
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You can make a Pokemon hold a Pokeball in the games - which then goes inside its Pokeball! But cannot hold a Pokemon at the same time; that would be like trying to compress an already compressed file.

Obviously there are differences in the universes between games and anime, but this also appears to correlate to the other answers.

Thomas
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  • *"that would be like trying to compress an already compressed file."* I feel like thats how MissingoNo happens – DasBeasto Aug 16 '16 at 12:42
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I don't think it works like that at all. The best thing I can think of is consecutively spamming pokeballs at a pokemon as soon as they break out, so they have to struggle to break free from each one, losing considerable amounts of strength, and eventually getting caught.

The whole catching and holding pokemon deal is probably based on electronic concepts like data storage (transferring pokemon to Bill's PC supports that idea). So catching a pokemon could be analogous to throwing memory cards at them (or usb flash drives or SD cards). Can't really put a memory card inside another memory card (unless it's a drive image file like iso/img, but that sounds overcomplicated for the pokemon universe).

Hakase
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  • It might not be too overcomplicated, considering we're talking about putting PokeBalls in PokeBalls, which, in my opinion, is a complicated question – wcarhart Aug 15 '16 at 06:55
  • Well, I've never heard this idea before, so I suppose it is overcomplicated. Haven't watched digimon, but maybe they have some interesting twists on holding the "mons". – Hakase Aug 15 '16 at 06:58
  • Perhaps we could dub this process PokeCeption, or Metaballs? – wcarhart Aug 15 '16 at 07:01
  • Inception (as defined in the movie) is the process of planting an idea deeply in one's subconsciousness, making the target think they thought of it themselves. So you could call it "a ball within a ball". – Hakase Aug 15 '16 at 07:11
  • Well the textbook definition of [inception](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/inception) is a start or beginning, but I was more referencing off [common 'ception jokes](http://m.quickmeme.com/img/94/94696cd54dd59363102d2daff8144f630fbfb6dcb265a70f67e7b94aecb43663.jpg) with PokeCeption – wcarhart Aug 15 '16 at 09:04
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    I got that, and what I meant was [this.](http://i.imgur.com/LEk4ieU.png) – Hakase Aug 15 '16 at 09:16
  • Well done, I'm impressed you found a meme that _mirrors our coversation almost exactly_ – wcarhart Aug 15 '16 at 09:17
  • What if I told you my replies were based on this much older meme ;) – Hakase Aug 15 '16 at 09:27
  • @Hakase Digimon aren't captured like Pokemon in the show; they live in a parallel world – Izkata Aug 15 '16 at 15:03
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I believe Pokéballs are a technology which only works with Pokémon (except for the Mewtwo balls), alone the prefix of the ball "Poké" tells a lot.

You don't seem to be able to catch humans with Pokéballs, that automatically excludes all living entities which are not Pokémon. If you miss and hit a tree with the ball, the tree won't get caught either. Therefore I think Pokéballs are only capable of catching Pokémon and no other matter in the universe.

Marv
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  • See the first answer of the linked question, or see my comment to my original question – wcarhart Aug 15 '16 at 16:58
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    "You don't seem to be able to catch humans with Pokéballs, that automatically excludes all living entities which are not Pokémon." => Well, actually it automatically excludes only the humans you tried to catch. At most we can make some reasonable assumptions and extend it to theorize that it automatically excludes *all* humans. But that alone isn't enough to automatically exclude everything that isn't a Pokémon. – Jason C Aug 15 '16 at 17:36