Comment by ctxc

Anecdotally, I'm a fan and generally pick the rarer ones. Eg I had a pair of socks and a few stickers made for my kid which had rarer pokemon.

If OP got a tattoo of Pikachu, it was interesting to me that he picked the most mainstream pokemon (I assumed he was a huge fan)

But from the response, my sample of 1 assumption checks out: "When I was planning it was obvious there'd be a Pokémon due to his (continuing) interest in those and to me as a non-fan that's the most immediately-recognizable one."