Red Gyarados is the famous first shiny Pokémon encountered in Pokémon Gold and Silver.
Players meet this unusually colored Gyarados at the Lake of Rage during the main story. Unlike ordinary Gyarados, which are normally blue, this one is red. Its distinctive appearance made it the franchise’s most widely recognized example of a shiny Pokémon.
Shiny Pokémon are rare alternate-color versions of regular Pokémon. In the original games, their appearance was determined by hidden statistical values rather than by a separate species or evolution. The Lake of Rage encounter guarantees that players can experience the phenomenon instead of relying only on extremely low random odds.
The Red Gyarados is not the first shiny Pokémon chronologically in every possible sense: players could encounter other alternate-color Pokémon through random encounters. However, it is the first guaranteed shiny encounter in Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal and is the example most closely associated with the mechanic’s introduction.