Pokemon fans are torn between Mudkip and the leaked starter that was replaced

Key things

Among the many things revealed by last week's Pokemon leak was the design of an unused water-type starter Pokemon.
The Pokemon was eventually replaced by Mudkip, and now some fans wish it hadn't.
Defenders of Mudkip have also risen, and there seems to be an even split between fans who think Pokemon did and didn't make the right call.

Pokemon followed in the unwelcome footsteps of Grand Theft Auto and Insomniac last weekend when a Game Freak hack sent almost everything you'd ever want to know about Pokemon — and quite a few things we didn't want to know — out onto the internet. The ripple effects of that leak continue nearly a week later, including a heated argument between Mudkip fans and people who fell in love with Hoenn's water-leaked starter.

Pokemon from Gen's 3 are Treecko, Torchic and Mudkip. However, a Game Freak leak revealed that Mudkip was a replacement for a water-type rabbit that ultimately didn't make the cut. The water bunny has a rubber ring incorporated into its design to help it swim, and many Pokemon fans have fallen in love with it.

No, The Mysterious Latias x Blaziken Pokemon is not just a Delibird evolution

The leak didn't confirm that the Pokémon's unused Latias/Blaziken hybrid wasn't just an evolution of Delibird.

Reactions to Mudkip taking on the unnamed water bunny range from more tactful Pokémon fans telling the former to look away and that it's nothing personal, to tirades aimed at poor little Mudkip. There's already fan art of the Gen 3 rabbit, as the leaked images of him are little more than the pixelated sprites that would have ended up in Ruby & Sapphire if Pokemon's designers hadn't come up with Mudkip and made the executive decision to ditch his adorable new bunny.

Mudkip was chosen over an unnamed water rabbit and some of you are not happy about it

Not everyone was fickle enough to ditch Mudkip in favor of a new rabbit Pokemon, or at least a newly revealed rabbit, the leaked design will actually be over 20 years old by now. Mudkip has been called an excellent design by some and well, they might be right because it's a design that ended up in the games. There's even fan art of Mudkip and the bunny together for those who have room for both in their hearts. You never know, maybe someone at The Pokemon Company will see all the love for their lost water rabbit and pick up a design from the cutting room floor for Gen 10.

The somewhat amicable disagreement over whether replacing the rabbit with Mudkip was the right choice is pretty tame compared to some of the other things we've seen in the background of the Game Freak leak. An unused lore that has been widely shared on social media since the leak revealed Pokemon timelines where humans and Pokemon have mated and had children together. A slightly less disturbing but equally interesting discovery revealed that Kalos was supposed to be a much larger region.