I've always wondered about why Game Freak makes HMs impossible to remove on a Pokemon without a move deleter (especially since TMs and HMs can be used infinitely now), but now I'm curious about a related question…
Can you legitimately get stuck, where it is absolutely impossible to progress further in the game?
For example, going to a late place in the game, buying stuff to get rid of all your money, getting rid of all your items, getting rid of all your pokemon except maybe a level 1 magikarp, etc. So that, any direction you go, you HAVE to fight a trainer, and you WILL DIE because either they have all attacking moves or you will struggle and die.
To be clear, I'm not as interested in a 1/10000000 chance to still be able to not be stuck anymore, for example, by going backwards and avoiding all encounters, but that might be interesting too.
I'm actually curious about this kinda thing for all RPGs, but I thought I'd just stick to an RPG that I know about.
Edit: oh yea, i forgot about trading… Not sure what would happen then…
Although, that brings back some memories where I had no friends to trade with ;_;
Best Answer
Well, yes you can get 'stuck', but it depends on the version.
For instance, in the first Gen II versions Gold/Silver/Crystal, you can get stuck.
Here's a gif from Pokemon Gold I made some moment ago. (the gif is quite big)
The main way I see it is when you are 'stuck' on an island where you require at least Surf to get off it and you don't have any Pokemon to use Surf or can teach it to since you released all the Pokemon who could.
In Red/Blue/Yellow, you have Cinnabar Island and in Gold/Silver/Crystal, you have Cianwood City.
As for Generation III games and remakes of previous games, there's a feature which prevents you from releasing some of the Pokemon, especially those which have Surf, Dive of Fly.
Here's another gif of Pokemon Emerald I made some moment ago. (that one's quite big as well)
The Pokemon will even keep the move in some cases (the Lanturn in the second gif refused to forget Surf at the move deleter). That means that as from Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, there's a way you can go back and train your Pokemon until it levels up and be able to fight the trainer, though that might be extremely tedious (you'll perhaps have to save at every step when walking through tall grass/surfing) and go to a place where the wild Pokemon is of a reasonable level to train your current Pokemon.