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I am rather certain that I once had a Magikarp in my party and when it used its Splash attack on an enemy, it actually did do some damage. But it never happended again after that and all accounts that I have read so far always state that the Splash move is utterly useless.

Since I did not play very many different editions of Pokémon, it must have happened on one of the Red/Blue/Yellow, Gold/Silver/Crystal editions or the White edition (however, playing White isn't all that long ago so I don't think it was there).

Did I dream all this or can anyone confirm my experience?

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Splash attack is the most powerful attack of them all – Retrosaur Aug 14 '12 at 20:52
There's a medal in Pokémon Black/White 2 for trying to use Splash. – Jonathan Drain Jan 8 at 13:02

3 Answers

up vote 15 down vote accepted

Splash will never do anything.

You may either be misremembering your Magikarp using Tackle or Flail, both of which are moves that Magikarp can learn that do damage.

You may have also run out of PP for splash (unlikely I know, who's going to spend 40 moves splashing around to no effect?) then your Magikarp will "Struggle" which will cause damage to both your enemy and yourself.

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5  
Also, when a Pokemon runs out of PP for all its moves, it will use Struggle, which does deal damage. – DisgruntledGoat Aug 14 '12 at 12:27
@DisgruntledGoat Ah yes, I forgot about Struggle, I'll add it into the answer, thanks. – Mr Smooth Aug 14 '12 at 14:40
2  
Thank you for your answer. It is indeed possible that my Magikarp used Struggle instead of Splash because I once actually had a Metapod use Harden 40 times just for the heck of it, so it's not too unlikely that I might have tried this with Magikarp, too (even if that doesn't make sense to anybody else). – Anju Fabulina Aug 23 '12 at 6:11
up vote -3 down vote

Splash will never do anything. Except on Blue/Red versions, where it could damage a Tentacool (only).

Besides this specific case, it never does damage.

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Do you have source for this, or it's only experience based? – Michel Jan 8 at 11:35
up vote -3 down vote

As a matter if fact, when playing soul silver, a magikarp did indeed defeat one of my pokemon with splash. I was trying to level up a weak mareep by having it battle some low-level fishermen, and his magikarps continued to use splash one by one untill, spontaneously, my mareep fainted. I was not paying attention because I did not think anything would need my attention. I know that the magikarp did not use tackle or flail because it was level 9. Also, it did not use struggle, because when I sent out my next pokemon, it continued to use splash. After talking with some friends, one of them introduced the idea that splash does indeed have a 1 in 1000 chance to deal damage.

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