Anyone who spent time with the original Pokémon Gold and Silver in the 90s remembers Red Gyarados; a raging, rose-colored variation of the water and flying-type serpent best known for evolving from the comically weak Margikarp. Red Gyarados began the trend of shiny Pokémon: extremely rare color-inversed monsters that appear only one in every 8000 times a particular Pokémon is met. If recent reports from players on Reddit and elsewhere are true, Niantic appears to have acknowledged the existence of these rare one-offs and added them to its wildly popular Pokémon Go mobile application.
Worth noting is that there's also a water-type event happening right now in Pokémon Go, and it appears as though only water-type shinies have so far cropped up as a result. In the Pokémon RPGs players are liable to find shinies at any time (albeit doing so is quite rare), so it will be interesting to see if the discovery of Red Gyarados and a yellow Magikarp are mere coincidence or if the likelihood of uncovering them has gone up thanks to the water event. Whether or not the two shinies remain in the game once the water-type event ends at the end of the month (March 29th) ought to be a good indicator of this.
What we do know is that shinie shinies in Go don't make their presence so obvious; inverted colors are not be shown from the map when a Pokémon is near, but instead only become apparent once it's encountered in battle. To me this seems a bit harsh for something that is already so incredibly rare, but I suppose it does further add to the mystique of Pokémon Go shinies.
Red Gyarados is alluded to in Pokémon Sun and Moon by story characters on several occassions, so its cultural importance to the series is certainly not lost on Niantic even all these years later. Niantic has promised features like trading and PvP for the game sometime in 2017, so we'll see if permanent shiny-finding makes the cut. For more Go, check out our advanced tips and general cheats and guides page.
