Mime appears early on as a house cleaner and helper to Delia, the mother of series protagonist Ash Ketchum, while others are shown as entertainers or cooks.

In the Pokémon Adventures manga, its abilities are utilized to create training rooms and surround an entire city with a barrier to prevent access from the outside world.

[4] In these games and their sequels, the player assumes the role of a Trainer whose goal is to capture and use the creatures' special abilities to combat other Pokémon.

Some Pokémon can transform into stronger species through a process called evolution via various means, such as exposure to specific items.

[5] Introduced in Red and Blue, the design first started as pixel art sprites by the development team, with a single color identity chosen to work within the Super Game Boy hardware limitations.

[1] While conceived as a group effort by multiple developers at Game Freak,[7] the finalized design and artwork was done by Ken Sugimori.

When the games were localized for English-speaking audiences as Red and Blue, Nintendo of America gave the various Pokémon species descriptive names related to their appearance or features as a means to make them more relatable to American children,[9] and renamed it "Mr.

Their hands are depicted with four fingers and an opposable thumb, with larger fingertips and red dots on their underside.

However, game representations of the character featured only three fingers on each hand until the release of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire.

[13] When asked by Rob Letterman, the director of the live action film Detective Pikachu, to explain what exactly Mr.

When the real Ash showed up, still in costume, she was quite puzzled, but wound up keeping 'Mimey' (バリちゃん, Barichan) as her live-in maid.

It is used by the villainous organization Team Rocket to generate an invisible wall to seal off the whole of Saffron City.

Mime appears in the film Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, being interrogated by the titular character and his partner Tim Goodman, due to being an informant for the latter's father.

Mime was a poor fit for the film, until Letterman pitched the suggestion directly to their president Tsunekazu Ishihara, who laughed and let them proceed.

Mime to a 3D model for the film proved difficult, and required a different approach than they had used towards other Pokémon in the movie in an effort to retain the design's more cartoonish aspects.

[31] Visual effects supervisor Erik Nordby stated "When you look at the character, it instantly feels creepy.

The visual effects team worked to add more elements to enhance the character's silhouette, such as subtle freckles in order to give Mr.

[32][33] The staff of GamesRadar complained about its design, noting that while "mimes/clowns aren't the easiest material to work with in the first place," they felt it was creepy due to its gangly arms and humanoid appearance compared to other Pokémon.

[34] Fellow contributor Carolyn Gudmundson further elaborated on the sentiment, noting that the humanoid designs were some of the most overused amongst Pokémon in the franchise, and thar Mr.

Mime's design, suggesting that Sugimori developed it—along with Jynx—to draw upon the humor of heta-uma (a term meaning bad/nice).

The book notes that the designs "oscillate between the poles of good and bad," and as a result offer diversity within the game and invite scrutiny from players.

Mime was cited by writer Vincenzo Idone Cassone as an example of fans making light out of dissonant elements in the series.

He cited a common fan-theory that stated Mimey was actually protagonist Ash Ketchum's father, noting that it led to fans of the series tying several unrelated elements together to construct a comedic explanation due to a lack of clarification in the series' canon as to the true whereabouts of Ash's father and Mimey's unique traits in the anime.