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10 Celebs Who Look Like Pokémon Characters

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Justin Bieber’s swept-bangs era finally found its cartoon twin, and it’s shaped like a pink balloon with a curl on its head.

At the height of the 2016 Pokémon Go craze, the pop-culture channel TheThings Celebrity dropped a video listicle titled “10 Celebs Who Look Like Pokémon Characters,” pairing ten famous faces with the animated creatures they supposedly resemble. The comparisons lean on hair, makeup, expression and wardrobe rather than anything scientific, but the timing was perfect — the whole planet had just spent the summer chasing Pikachu on their phones. The video’s biggest laugh line goes to Justin Bieber, whose old swept-bangs look gets set side by side with Jigglypuff.

• Justin Bieber is matched with Jigglypuff, the video citing his signature swept bangs and wide, doe-eyed look as a match for the balloon Pokémon’s round face and curled hair tuft.
• Rihanna is paired with Houndoom, the dark/fire-type hound Pokémon known for its horns and skeletal accents, a nod to her sharper, black-leather styling.
• The list arrives just weeks after Bieber himself made headlines sprinting through New York’s Central Park in July 2016, chased by a crowd of fans, to catch a rare Gyarados on Pokémon Go.

The Jigglypuff Pairing

Bieber’s early-career look — those flat, swept-forward bangs and the perpetually surprised eyes — is the centerpiece comparison in the video. Jigglypuff is one of the most recognizable Pokémon in the franchise, a round, pink singing creature whose curled tuft of hair sits almost exactly where Bieber’s bangs used to fall. The joke lands because it’s visual, not personality-based: put a still photo of teenage Bieber next to Jigglypuff’s character art and the resemblance is immediate.

Bieber sprinted through Central Park with a crowd chasing him — not for an autograph, but for a shot at the same rare Gyarados.

That Central Park sprint is worth dwelling on, because it’s the real-world punchline the video is riffing on. In July 2016, weeks before Pokémon Go officially existed in some markets, Bieber was spotted running through the park with fans in tow, phone out, chasing a Gyarados sighting like anyone else stuck in the app’s grip that summer. TheThings Celebrity’s Jigglypuff joke works precisely because Bieber wasn’t just cast as a Pokémon lookalike — he was one of the loudest examples of a celebrity who’d fully bought into the mania.

Houndoom’s Edge

The second marquee pairing swaps cute for menacing. Houndoom is a Dark/Fire-type Pokémon built around horns, a skeletal ribcage pattern and a permanently snarling expression — the kind of design meant to look tough in battle. The video lines that up with Rihanna’s harder-edged red-carpet phases, pointing to sharp features and black-leather fashion choices as the visual overlap. It’s the same trick as the Bieber comparison, just aimed at intimidation instead of innocence.

The Rest of the Lineup

Beyond the two headline pairings, the full ten-deep list mixes in Ed Sheeran alongside Teddiursa for their shared round-eared, soft-featured look, and Zooey Deschanel next to Chansey for her wide eyes and rosy cheeks. Emma Stone gets Skitty, Taylor Swift is tied to the Eevee line for its shape-shifting reputation, and Benedict Cumberbatch draws Alakazam for his angular features. Beyoncé is matched with Dragonite, Ryan Gosling with the aura-reading Lucario, and Sandra Bullock closes out the list opposite Lapras, the calm, singing sea Pokémon.

None of these are meant to be taken as anything more than a fun scroll — the video’s whole premise is that with more than 7 billion people on Earth, a few are bound to double as pocket monsters. It sits in the same lane as other side-by-side comparison content that circulates constantly, the kind covered in pieces like Celebrity Doppelgängers Who Look Freakishly Alike, just with an animated cast instead of another real person.

Riding the Pokémon Go Wave

The timing is the whole story here. Pokémon Go launched in July 2016 and turned parks, malls and city sidewalks into hunting grounds within days, dragging Pokémon back into mainstream conversation for the first time in years. TheThings Celebrity built this video specifically to catch that wave, and it’s part of a broader run of Pokémon-themed content that flooded YouTube that year — the same appetite that later fed videos like GIGANTAMAX Pokemon Battle Royale. Celebrities weren’t immune to it either — Bieber’s Central Park chase became one of the most widely shared images of the summer, proof that the craze wasn’t just a kids’ phenomenon.

TheThings Celebrity never claims any of these ten are secretly moonlighting as Pokémon between takes — it’s a wink at just how deep the catch-’em-all fever ran that summer, right down to the guy who sprinted through Central Park for a Gyarados he didn’t even need for anything.