Why are Ice and Water so different elementally speaking when regular ice is just frozen water?

Put it this way: Calling it the ice-type is admittedly a bit of a misnomer. While, yes, most of its associated moves use literal ice, the element’s core actually centers around cold. As such, most of the other elements are reacting to ice’s need or use of cold temperatures, rather than its need or use of frozen water. The only exception to this is the fighting-type, which doubles in strength against ice-types because it’s reacting to the physical fragility of ice against a good whack.

Why are Bite and Crunch Dark-type moves? Biting seems like a pretty basic attack, so why aren’t they Normal type?

To put it in short, for the same reason Twineedle is a bug-type move, despite the fact that it’s just the act of stabbing something with a stinger: it’s not just about how basic a move is but also with which element is incorporated into its use. Bite may look like an ordinary bite, but it’s only truly the Bite technique if it also involves imbuing the user’s teeth with dark-type energy. Crunch is the same way but in larger, easier to see doses. (This, plus the fact that the dark type was discovered after Bite’s registration as an officially recognized technique, is why it was originally classified as a normal-type move, by the way.)

How come charizard look like dragons but are not dragon type?

For the same reason gligar and gliscor look like poison-types but are ground/flying, why the chansey line and audino’s base form aren’t fairies despite being pink and cute but the snubbull line is, why no member of the porygon line is electric despite being digital in nature, why azurill is normal/fairy instead of water/fairy like its evolutions, why trapinch and vibrava aren’t bug-types, why altaria is a dragon-type, why stunfisk is partially a ground-type and not a water-type despite being a fish, and so on and so forth.

It’s because typing is dependent on what element a pokémon aligns with, not on what it looks like.

Hey Bill, has the research community considered adding a sound type? There seems to be several techniques to justify the inclusion, and historically sound-based moves have caused different effects than the normal type they are generally classified as (see: St. Wulfric of Rovngalad).

Actually, yes, especially considering pokémon such as the whismur line, the jigglypuff line, and chatot, all of which are reliant on sound-based maneuvers or come with abilities that make them immune to sound-based techniques. We’ve certainly amended the registered type list with fewer on-hand examples, no less.

But the problem is that none of these pokémon display the physical attributes that would indicate any other type than the ones they already have. (Well, jigglypuff was recently discovered to be a fairy-type a well, but you get the idea.) In order to amend the type list, a proposed type must be present not only in techniques but also in pokémon examples—the latter of which tends to be more of a priority than the former. That is, without compelling evidence that a new type of pokémon exists, a researcher can’t amend the list at all, whereas nothing in the Symposium rules prevents us from registering a new type without examples of techniques.

In short, while sound-based moves such as Chatter and Uproar may hint at a new type, we can’t present evidence that a sound-type exists without first locating a pokémon that clearly is of the sound element.

Why is the flygon line not bug type?

The trapinch line, despite their insectoid appearances, do not actually exhibit any affinity for the bug element naturally, anonymous. (Or, well, vibrava is capable of learning Bug Buzz without assistance, but other than that, I mean.) Rather, the entire line exhibits a strong alignment with the ground-type at first, then with the dragon-type as it grows into its advanced stages. This goes for both its offensive and defensive capabilities. It’s not only true that members of the trapinch line are incapable of learning bug-type moves, but it’s also true that none of them display any of the weaknesses or resistances of a bug-type.

Remember, anonymous, a pokémon does not simply receive an elemental classification according to its physical appearance. What matters more is that pokémon are both capable of controlling a certain element and respond to other elements in a certain way.

Is there any reason that pokemon are typed in a certain order? I don’t think I phrased that well, so what I mean is why is salamence dragon/flying and why is noivern flying/dragon? They have the same weaknesses and resistances, so is there a reason?

In many cases, it’s in the order of which element describes a pokémon’s phenotype more. For example, salamence is very clearly a dragon, as it possesses highly draconic features. Noivern, by contrast, seems to be more related to a bat or bat-like pokémon, so it’s classified as a flying-type first.

Granted, this is not a system that applies to all pokémon, and this is particularly true with the flying type. Take the zubat line, for example. One would assume that by the above logic, zubat, being a bat-like pokémon, would be classified as flying/poison, rather than poison/flying, especially given its reliance on flying techniques to support that argument. However, it’s classified as poison/flying instead because back when it was first introduced to the National Dex, the term “flying” was vague and required modification. That is to say, calling a pokémon a flying-type could have meant a lot of things. (It could mean, for example, that the pokémon in question was pidgey-like, or it could mean that it’s more gyarados-like.) However, calling a pokémon a poison/flying-type clarified things more.

In some cases, it may come down to prior classification (for example, the jigglypuff line being classified as normal/fairy because it had once been classified as just normal) or even just the researcher’s preference (girafarig, for example, whose classifications are alphabetized because that’s just what Professor Elm would do). It really depends on the pokémon, but I must say that the higher up in National Dex number you go, the more likely the classification simply describes what element a pokémon is most like, followed by the second most fitting element.