Here goes some immature nostalgia.
According to this interview with veteran Pokémon graphic artist Atsuko Nishida, The game's creators originally had very different plans for everyone's favorite electric rodent.
That's understandable, but here's what has Poke-stans going wild: initially, the evolution of Pikachu was supposed to be Pikachu >>> Raichu >>> Gorochu.
According to Nishida, Gorochu had "fangs and two horns" but the development team removed the character to "maintain game balance" — whatever that means.
omg this interview is the best: in the game series, the game planner "hid" Pikachu (making it a rare pokemon) because he loved it so much he "didn't want to let other people touch Pikachu as much as possible"
Super-stan @lusamine almost lost it when she heard the news. She demanded her followers create visual versions of this forgotten Pokémon immediately in a caps-lock-laden message.
Lo and behold, the tweets responded to her to demands.
Flip the page to see some fan art renderings of what Pika's future self "Gorochu" would look like if he didn't get scrapped at the drawing board.