>>58162142
>Butterfree
>Generic bug creature

It's literally just a cartoon butterfly, this thread is hellbent on the face somehow being a smoking gun when Butterfree is pretty explicitly intended to be a butterfly, its face looks more like Mothra than anything. That's why I can see the intent of designing a larval stage for a realistic butterfly/moth and then immediately designing a cartoon butterfly instead due to the original idea being too mundane. The design also provides a much better parallel to Beedrill (which these threads seem to ignore)

Generally I feel like Venonat is a complete afterthought in this design process given how much more early in the Index it is (slot 41/065 when Venomoth is 77/119). Its design doesn't really fit any mon outside of Butterfree, which would make more sense if it was listed before Caterpie. Mons in Gen I are pretty cut and dry with their relations, the only ones that were blatantly merged for redundancy were the Squirtle line which cut the redundant designs entirely. It's hard to believe a line as back-to-back focused as Caterpie had intentional design swaps. If it were more scattered in the Index, maybe