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#145 Plastic surgery perhaps?
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Looking Back:
Like most video games, the Pokémon games re-use art for various NPCs throughout the game. And I can't blame them. Being a game designer myself, I know how much extra time and effort it would take to create original sprites or models for every single character in the game. And when you're talking about an unimportant NPC that's probably not going to get much screen time, it just isn't worth it. That said, the Pokémon games overdo it a bit as the nurses in every single Pokémon Center are identical. While their appearance does get upgraded a bit with each new game, you can tell that they're still the same. In the Pokémon anime, it's a running gag that all the Pokémon Center nurses are not only identical but have the same name. Incidentally, the name Joy came from the anime, not the games. The anime even went a step further and created another girl with identically named relatives in every town, Officer Jenny. Supposedly Brock (Ash's girl crazy travel companion), is one of the only people who can tell all the Joys and Jennys apart.
But anyway, when it comes to the story there's really no logical reason for why they all look exactly alike. In fact, barring a lot of plastic surgery, or some really good disguises, it's pretty much impossible. But hey, the Pokémon world does have aliens (several pokémon, such as Deoxys, as listed as having come from space in their pokédex entries) and time travelers (the legendary pokémon Celebi) so maybe alien technology and time travel really are the answer... I suppose there aren't really any wizards, but you've got a lot of Psychics, which is kinda similar.
I originally had nurse Joy giving a different explanation for why they all look alike, but decided it wasn't really appropriate given Pebble Version's PG rating so dropped it. I thought about bringing it back in a Blooper Reel comic but, once again, decided that it wouldn't really be appropriate.




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