Fridge / Super Smash Bros. Brawl

To see Fridge moments for the rest of the Smash Bros series, go here.

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Fridge Brilliance

• It's kind of odd to have Captain Olimar being named "Pikmin and Olimar" in the Japanese release of Brawl. It sounds cumbersome in comparison to just Olimar, like in the American release. But then, think about who's actually doing the majority of the work in that team. Just like in their own game, it's really about the Pikmin, and all the crap they go through to help Olimar. The captain himself is pretty much an afterthought. -Enlong.
• Why do the Ice Climbers have such good grabbing ability? Because they are ice climbers — i.e., they climb icy cliffs on a regular basis.
• In Classic Mode, Stage 10 will have the player either fighting Sonic, Snake, or Wario. Now why would Wario be in THIS category rather than be grouped with Stage 2, which hosts Yoshi, DK, or Diddy, who are all from Mario spin-offs? Because Wario runs his own third-party gaming company called WarioWare, a parody of Western third-party developers, which basically categorizes him with the actual third party characters!
• The story is about a child who is growing up. Master Hand is the child, just wanting to play with his toys — the brawlers. Tabuu is the kid growing up. Playing with toys is childish, and as such, TABOO for an adult. So, he takes the worlds and locks them away in a sense as memories of his childhood. He puts away the toys (they turn into statues to represent this). Eventually, the urge comes to play with them, but he resists and locks all but a few lost ones away (the ones that Dedede's timers were on). Master Hand is, of course, gone. Eventually, his own future children find the lost toys and bring in their own toys (Sonic), and the child — of course a parent now — embraces his inner child once more as he plays with his children.
  • Also to go along with that, look at Master Hand's movement in the original. Now compare it to Brawl... he's aging and arthritis is starting to set in... that or the chains of light did a number on his knuckles.
  • Snake being there is explained by the fact that, since he's gotten older, he's embraced new things.
  • There are a few Out Of Character Moments that certain characters have, such as Marth's Japanese "Hey everybody, look at me!" and Captain Falcon's (canonically The Stoic and The Comically Serious) hammy lines. The Master Hand, who is making the toys move, is misinterpreting (or re-interpreting) their personalities.
  • A lot of the variations that can be thought about this boil down to the theme of lost and regained childhood. For example, it doesn't need to be the "future children", but rather the adult simply goes back to play once more out of nostalgia's sake, and Sonic could just be a toy that was left somewhere else that, when rediscovered, triggers the nostalgia.
  • The change from toys to trophies could also be interpreted as Master Hand moving on from his plush toys and going for action figures instead.
  • Another component of this motif would be the undertones of Darker and Edgier seen in small places of the games, such as a darker, more muted colour palette, a Mario and Luigi that don't smile, and the Mushroom Kingdom that's been left alone so long the colours have all washed out and the grass has died and so on. The kid has begun to leave Super Mario Bros. behind as he "matures".
  • So what does the Master Core represent, then? God?
    • Master Core represents the dark side of the kid's imagination unleashed.
  • Conversely, Tabuu could be interpreted as the symbolic parent to Master Hand's symbolic kid. The parent thinks the kid has gotten too old to be playing with toys, so the parent takes the toys (and everything associated with them) from the kid and locks them all away. The kid is upset by this, but is forced to submit to the authority of the parent; thus, Master Hand is controlled by Tabuu's chains of light. Tabuu's defeat by the Brawlers is symbolic of the parent realizing how much joy these toys have brought the kid, causing the parent to give the toys back and allowing the kid to play with them to his heart's content. Come the next installment, Master Hand is back playing with his toys.
  • If Master Hand is the child, then who is Crazy Hand? The younger brother who is unpredictable and breaks all the toys, but can still get along with the older brother.
    • That does make sense, I mean, tons of people can relate to when they were kids, and had a friend who was a little too rough with their toys during playtime.
• At first, Sonic sweeping in to save the day at the end of the Subspace Emissary seems to make absolutely no sense. But then, a little quip in Smash Bros DOJO explained everything: "Heroes always arrive late."
  • On top of the great irony of it being quite easily, the fastest character of the entire cast, he was also late to being announced, late to be in the sections you'd prefer speed over strength (scrolling stages), late to actually saving the day, late to filling the blue animal spot, late to filling the speedster spot... the list could go on, he's just terminally late.
  • This also fits Sonic's character. He's always late to the party. He always shows up at the last second. He never gets to the fight early or even on time. He was too late to stop Eggman from chaining up the Little Planet. He was too late to stop Knuckles' brainwashing. He was too late to save Station Square from Chaos' chaos. He was too late to save the moon. He was too late to save his friends from being tossed into robots. He was too late to stop the capture of the Flickies. He was too late to stop Eggman from enslaving Mobius, he was too late to stop Eggman from crashing the EggCarrier 3. He was too late to stop Iblis (not his fault), he was too late to prevent ANYTHING. He's always, well, too slow.
  • The point of Sonic is that he's late, but he still fixes everything at the last second. He's annoying in that he's always too late to stop the bad guys, but he more than makes up for it when he finally gets to it. Furthermore, he was able to save everybody purely BECAUSE he was late! Sonic has used that flaw to his advantage to make up for itself. It's brilliant!
  • He's always late because he can afford to be late. One of the perks of being so fast is that you can take your time.
  • Wasn't Sonic also one of the main reasons Brawl was delayed so much? It just gets more and more meta!
  • The fact that Sonic is the last character to show up in the story and saves EVERYONE'S bacon also contrasts very well with the fact that Mario is the FIRST character to appear in the story, and undergoes numerous failures during the story, up to and including needing to be SAVED by Sonic.
  • A late rescue can become good. A bad rescue is bad forever.
• It's a bit odd that on Luigi's Mansion, only two windows are visibly lit up from the outside, even though the entire interior of the house is well lit. But take a look at the whole house from the outside: The two windows make the front of the house look like an angry face.
• The first fight in Subspace Emissary (Mario vs. Kirby) is the exact same match-up as the one at the end of the intro movie to the very first Super Smash Bros.!
• Why does Pokémon Trainer/Red have such a scratchy, hoarse, annoying voice? Well... he isn't used to using his voice, is he?
  • Or maybe it's because he's 11 — 12 years old. His voice should be breaking.
• Why are Red (Pokémon Trainer) and Lucas shown to be such good friends? This could be a reference to the fact that many of the people that worked on MOTHER also worked on the Pokémon series.
  • Also, the most recent Pokémon games at the time of Brawl were Diamond and Pearl, and the male protagonist of those games is canonically named Lucas.
• In Mother 3, the Pig King statue has 1,000,000 HP, making it practically impossible to fight conventionally, but you can kill it in one hit with PK Flash. And in Brawl, PK Flash is the one special move Ness has that Lucas doesn't. That's why Lucas can't defeat the Pig King Statue in The Subspace Emissary, but as soon as Ness shows up he destroys it utterly with PK Flash!
• We all know Snake has a bunch of codec conversations for the characters. However, there contains a bit of brilliance in at least one of them that nobody seemed to catch at first. Namely, Sonic's. Some people thought it was a jab from Konami to Sega for making the character look like a chump in the industry. However, this is not the case. The reason Snake has a negative look on Sonic is that, in the wild, hedgehogs actually hunt for snakes to feed on for food. Snake gets a bad vibe because he knows Sonic is a hedgehog and Snake's named after something they eat. So basically, this conversation is all one big nature joke.
  • It can also be seen as Sonic stealing Snake's "OMG 3rd party character!!!" thunder once Sonic was revealed.
  • Snake's codec about Sonic is Fridge Brilliance no matter how you look at it. One part is Lost in Translation, as pointed out in the main page. In the Japanese version of the game, the person who voices Big Boss also voices Eggman.
• In the Subspace Emissary cutscene where Luigi is afraid of Waddle Dees, it looks like something made just to further Luigi's status as a coward. But then consider this: If any multiplayer matches where Dedede has been involved are not counted, this would be the first time that Luigi would have seen a Dee. Not to mention how both he and Mario have been killed by Goombas, who should be about as big as Dees, in their original series. He simply doesn't know that they're (relatively) harmless yet, and also knows how size isn't always related to the power of that person.
• Lots of games and anime start off in Japanese, then get translated. The theme song for Brawl could have followed that, and got the all-too-common They Changed It, Now It Sucks!. But they made the theme song in Latin, a practically dead language. The theme song is a Bilingual Bonus no matter what version you play!
• This may seem a little cheesy, but the little rocks in Tetra's Ship stage can be pretty annoying, until one realizes they are shout outs to the islands in the middle of nowhere.
• In Subspace Emissary, the Pokémon Trainer faints at one point. Pokémon protagonists often "black out" or just "faint" after they lose a battle.
• Snake's Final Smash involves a helicopter coming from freaking nowhere, right? Wrong. Think back to Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty — specifically, the evacuation part and the Harrier fight. Who was piloting the copter then? That's right, Otacon's on the other end of Snake's Final Smash. Fitting for the two life partners.
• King Dedede controlled Sonic's invitation to Brawl. His plan in Subspace Emissary wouldn't have worked otherwise, and despite appearances, he's smarter than to leave a big part of his plan dangling.
  • You know what makes this even better? King Dedede is Sakurai. Literally. As in "Sakurai is Dedede's voice actor."
• When the heroes perform their assault on the Entrance to Subspace, there's only one Arwing, even though an Arwing is a one-person vehicle (well, you can cram a another small person in if you have to). Weird... Until you remember that Sheik wrecked Fox's Arwing. It's probably actually Falco's we see flying.
• When Peach and Zelda are saved and on the Halberd in Subspace Emissary, the next scene shows Zelda, now as Sheik, planning their escape. Why does Peach smile at Sheik as the two left the room they were held captive in? Remember that, in Twilight Princess, Sheik was never used, but was planned to be in the game. Not to mention that Peach, being a princess, probably has had experience with tailoring clothes (a girl needs SOME kind of hobby, right?). Who's to say Peach didn't make the Sheik costume herself during the scene transition?
  • It can also be interpreted as defiance of Snake's insisting that they stay put and remain safe. Like "Hehe, silly man, thinks women are too weak to look out for themselves!" They are both good fighters and clearly competent, as Sheik busted them out pretty quickly.
    • In Snake's defense, his line of work does sort of justify it. He's used to solo sneaking missions, and trying to sneak around can be difficult in larger groups. (Don't particularly question why he mainly engages in open combat during gameplay, although the cutscenes do heavily imply that he still prefers stealth if it can still be helped.) Besides, that particular group - Meta Knight, Lucario and Snake - was already pushing it too much in terms of size and were all lone wolves to certain extents, so choosing to operate by themselves might have also been a tactical decision on their own part.
    • Not only that, but consider how Peach and Zelda were freed when their copies, who had their moves and more, were defeated. Snake, Lucario and Meta Knight could have deemed them as The Load after the fight if the three of them were enough to defeat them and couldn't take the risk of having progress slowed down, hence the decision to leave the princesses behind while they advance to the bridge.
  • All the scenes between these two display the depth of the differences between Zelda and Peach. While Sheik jumps out onto the bridge absolutely serious and on guard, Peach is just as bubbly as ever, just enjoying the ride. Before then, they were both shown in the story to act as generally regal women who can fight because they were both being used to fill the same role in the story, but now that Zelda has gotten serious about things, we can see how different the two of them truly are and additionally, how well they get along and fight together not just in spite of, but BECAUSE of it.
  • Or another possibility is that Zelda had to disguise herself as Sheik in front of Peach, so now Peach knows Zelda's secret, something that possibly no other fighter in Smash knows.
• The loading screen displays a spinning Smash logo. It looks like the disc, which also spins.
• Snake doesn't use any of his non-explosive weaponry not because of Fantasy Gun Control, but because he's Genre Savvy. He did some reconnaissance on how fights worked in Super Smash Bros., discovering that the objective is not to just cause damage, but to knock away the opponent into oblivion. Now think on his series: What are the only ways to knock back enemies there outside of killing them, something impossible in Smash Bros.? It's either explosives or close quarters combat. Snake figured this out and ditched his standard weaponry in favor of the stuff that he knows can knock people away, and therefore more effective on this battlefield.
  • Plus, Snake also figured out how the rules of the Smash Bros. universe work and switched his load-out accordingly. He's obviously aware that firing a RPG directly at his feet will blow that fire-breathing turtle-dragon into the skies, and sticking packs of C4 on the finely-dressed princess-slash-ninja is A-OK.
  • The best way to put this into context is in the form of boss battles against the titular Metal Gears themselves. More often than not, ballistic weaponry isn't enough to take them down, so explosives are often the way to go. Consider how much of the roster use arsenals and abilities far beyond what we see in the real world, let alone the Metal Gear universe; Snake had to enter Smash with his most powerful weapons to compensate against his opponents in order to survive.
  • This is backed up by Bayonetta's appearance in WiiU/3DS; her Scarborough Fair and Love is Blue are huge-caliber guns, but they're still guns, and while they're decent at racking up damage they're horrible at launching.
• Here's some more Snake-related brilliance: he's an unlockable character while his home stage (Shadow Moses Island) is part of the first few stages the player has available. The way Snake is discovered is similar to how an enemy guard finds him in his home series: after 15 fights on Shadow Moses, the player discovers Snake hiding around and fights him to make him playable. Bonus points for Snake's intro having him disengage his stealth camo and the theme for his fight being Encounter, the remixed alert theme from the first MGS game.
• The Zone themes that can be played on Green Hill Zone in Brawl are as follows: Scrap Brain Zone, Emerald Hill Zone, Green Hill Zone, and Angel Island Zone.
• Ivysaur. Why Ivysaur rather than Bulbasaur or Venusaur? Well, yes, to have one starter at each stage (first, middle, final), but there's a reason for that configuration — it corresponds to Ash's Pokémon. EP056, "The Ultimate Test", has the characters fighting with borrowed Pokémon, and they invoke irony by giving Ash a trio of Pokémon that correspond to Team Rocket — Weezing, Arbok, and Meowth — while James receives Pokémon corresponding to Ash's Pokémon: Charizard, Pikachu, and Ivysaur. (This episode was after the one in which Bulbasaur showed that it was ready to evolve and elected not to.) That suggests that even though Ash's Bulbasaur had chosen not to evolve, the fact that it had the opportunity to do so meant that the writers considered it to be the equivalent of an Ivysaur. Meanwhile, despite seemingly having gotten plenty of experience, Ash's Squirtle never got the chance to become a Wartortle. Hence, Ivysaur was chosen for the middle evolution requirement.
• While Snake's taunts may not exactly be interesting, they're perfect for his characterization. Everyone else tries to bring attention to themselves with mocking voices and gestures, but Snake doesn't necessarily want to be seen.
• In Pit's Codec, Snake asks if he's a mutant. Not only is this an X-Men reference, but it's a bit of actor/director allusion, as David Hayter, the voice of Snake, wrote scripts for the first two X-Men movies (Angel did not appear in them, but was planned).
• Why does Porky show up as a boss in Subspace Emissary, and why is Ness a Guest-Star Party Member during the fight? Well, Earthbound's stinger stated that they would fight again at some point, but it never happened in their own series. It's only the trophy version of Ness which gets the chance, but that's better than nothing.
• There are four playable Pokémon characters: Pikachu, Pokémon Trainer, Lucario, and Jigglypuff. However, Pokémon Trainer doesn't actually fight, instead having his Ivysaur, Charizard, and Squirtle do the fighting for him. This means that the playable Pokémon form a team of six, the maximum number of Pokémon players can have in their parties in the Pokémon games.
• It's eventually revealed that the Ancient Minister is R.O.B.. The title is appropriate for him, as he came from Nintendo's "ancient" past, and his initial role was to convince retailers that the NES wasn't just a video game system, and thus wouldn't be an inevitable failure after the video game crash; thus, preaching the merits of the system like a "minister".
• Why is R.O.B. assembling himself for his intro? The actual Robotic Operating Buddy can't do something like that. Well, if one looks closely, he's assembling from the bottom up. Rather than stacking colored discs, he's stacking himself up.
  • It could also be a reference to Kirby's Dream Land 3; in one level, you collect R.O.B.'s pieces and help Professor Hector assemble them at the end, and he's stacked up in a similar way.
• King Dedede has his title as part of his official fighter name while other royalty (e.g. Peach, Marth) doesn't. This refers to the original games he's in where his title is self-proclaimed. He's boastful enough to write his name as "King Dedede" when registering into Smash (or, alternatively, the hypothetical administrators took "King" to be part of his actual name since he's always going around calling himself that).
• In Snake's codec for Luigi, when Campbell calls him the "king of second bananas", it instantly garners a Dude, Not Funny! response from Snake. Makes sense. He's seen what it's like.
• One could probably liken Lucario's Aura Storm to a Kamehameha. Remind me, who's voiced both Lucario and Goku?
• In the Battlefield Fortress level, enemies called Autolances appear. You use Marth and Meta Knight, who are sword fighters. Taking the weapon triangle of Fire Emblem into consideration, lances, which Autolances use, beat swords, which Marth and Meta Knight use.
• In one particular cutscene in the Subspace Emissary, King Dedede has a scuffle with Bowser and he surprisingly wins. The next scene afterwards is probably not intentional but it seems to have a Literal Metaphor within it. When he revives Bowser a second time, he's being completely ignorant and hostile until Dedede slaps (hilariously) him. Bowser takes offense but Dedede points and shows him where Master Hand is defeated and the entrance to The Great Maze. By that point onward Bowser now understands what's at stake and soon follows. Now what exactly is the Literal Metaphor for this you may be wondering? It's simple: King Dedede literally slapped some sense into Bowser.
• It's pretty appropriate that Pikachu helps Samus fight Ridley. If Ridley were a Pokémon, he would almost certainly be a Flying-type, which would make him vulnerable to Pikachu's Electric-type attacks. Sure enough, Pikachu blasts Ridley out of the sky with a single Thunder, forcing him to drop Samus and land.
• The Enemy Mine between Link, Zelda and Ganondorf against Tabuu at the end seems pretty straightforward, right? There's actually more to it. All three show Courage, Link and Zelda by risking an alliance with Ganondorf, Ganondorf by not relying on himself, and trusting his mortal enemies. All three show Wisdom in recognizing that Tabuu is the bigger threat and so their histories with each other absolutely must be put on hold. And all three show Power with their individual strengths, Link with sword fighting and gadgetry, Zelda with magic, Ganondorf a mix between the three, and through combining them. In conclusion, symbolically the Triforce has actually been unified!
• Playing Mother 3 paints the animosity between Lucas and Wario in a new light. Wario shares many traits with Fassad, whom Lucas traded blows with in Mother 3. Plus, Wario trophy-fies Ness, mirroring how the Pig Masks brainwashed Claus, making the parallels all the more apparent. The Pokémon Trainer could also be a stand-in for Kumatora and Duster and his Pokémon for Boney.
• It's revealed that Mr. Game and Watch is the source of the Shadow Bugs, something he happily agrees to because he has no concept of good or evil. Why is that the case? Because the original Game and Watch titles were among the simplest games ever created—there were no enemies, just obstacles to overcome and tasks to do. In other words, there wasn't any sort of "good versus evil" in those games—so naturally the main character wouldn't have a moral compass, either!
• Why is Ike a starter character while Marth is unlockable? Because Ike hails from a Fire Emblem game released in the West. At the very moment, it is expected that fans during the late Gamecube era would know about Fire Emblem thanks to Path of Radiance. Marth would end up surprising players who have never seen him in the series much like back in Melee when Fire Emblem was introduced to the west.
• After the scene where Mario, Link, Pit, Yoshi and Kirby fail to stop the Subspace Bomb from going off, the next time we see the Anicent Minister is when Samus and Pikachu confronts him and he refuses to fight. And in the next scene after is where he tries to prevent the R.O.Bs from detonating more bombs and is revealed to be R.O.B himself. Since the scene with Mario’s team had portrayed multiple R.O.Bs sacrificing themselves (one grabbing onto the bomb to force it to drop it and getting it’s head knocked off when it hits the ground, two R.O.Bs nodding to each other in determination before setting the bomb to go off and more R.O.Bs dragging Mario and Pit away when they try to disarm it, with one of them waving goodbye to its leader), this scene was undoubtedly the Ancient Minister’s breaking point when it comes to following Master Hand/Tabuu’s orders as he refuses to do so anymore afterwards.

Fridge Horror

• When you replay a certain stage with a certain character, have you noticed that some enemies you battle are actually enemies that work for you? For example, if you replay a stage with the R.O.B. enemies a R.O.B. himself, you're actually committing homicide! That also goes with Bowser defeating his own Koopa Troop.
  • They also attack you so that could very well count as betrayal.
  • No R.O.B.s appear as enemies in the Great Maze, when pretty much every other kind of enemy is represented. They were so completely destroyed that they didn't even make it into Subspace.
    • Alternatively, given that they were deliberately killed off to detonate the subspace bombs, and the only one we know of is actively working against Tabuu, they might have had enough and left Tabuu's forces.
• If King Dedede didn't have his badges on Ness and Luigi, the whole world would've been doomed! Or at least it would have been up to Sonic, Jigglypuff, Toon Link, and Wolf to save the day.
• Passing over all the Fan Wank (which is some cool theories, don't take this the wrong way) about child's play, there's one major bit of Fridge Horror at face value. Aside from the Dedede Brooches, trophies cannot self-revive. Thus, they become trapped for who knows how long if somebody ever falls in battle to someone who won't revive them, or worse, decides to either hide their trophy or keep it as an actual trophy because they hate them that much (or are that much of a Jerkass). And some of the earlier villains are implied to be in the second category, such as Wario...
  • The Dedede brooches. Why did he make them? Quite aside from Word of God and removed content suggesting he had forewarning about Tabuu, when you think about it, the bigger headscratcher is why didn't anyone do it before. There is plenty of Fridge Horror involved in becoming something inert and lifeless (even if it beats realistic death, because you can be revived). Anyone sensible (and/or Genre Savvy) in the setting would want a self-revive ability.
    • Maybe no one knew how to make them until Dedede figured it out not long before the events of Subspace Emissary.
• Luigi's Final Smash, Negative Zone, has this as it's final line in it's trophy description in the NA version of the game: "This technique is a reflection of the dark side he embraced in his brother's shadow." Usually, Luigi is seen as being fine with being Player 2. But what if the only reason he seems fine with this is to charge up the attack? What if he's waiting to use it on just Mario?
• After Tabuu turns everyone into trophies and there's no-one left, you're forced to play the subsequent levels where Luigi, Ness, Dedede, and Kirby are revived. The objective is to find the fallen fighters and revive them. But here's the kicker: you can run through the levels and ignore the fighters while still beating the story mode. This creates an alternate Bittersweet Ending where Tabuu and Subspace may be gone, but so is everyone except the six remaining characters^note specifically, the aforementioned quartet, Bowser and Sonic.
  • Well there is the three post-story characters

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