Fridge / Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

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Fridge is for post-release discussion; as such, beware of unmarked spoilers.

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Fridge Brilliance

• Yoshi is one of the last two characters to be shown in the Everyone is Here trailer. In Brawl and 3DS/Wii U, he was the last of the original eight to be revealed.
• The reveal of Ultimate makes a big deal about the number of fighters that had been in the series, eventually revealing that everyone who had been a fighter in Smash would be returning for this game. However, note the number given to the most recent fighter that had been announced for Smash prior to the proper reveal of Ultimate, Inkling. Inkling is given the number 64 as the 64th fighter to be in Smash as per Nintendo's official count. In terms of fighters, Smash had reached the most significant number in Nintendo's history... and then with the reveal of Ridley as the 65th fighter in Smash, surpassed it and kept going.
• Link's new Final Smash has him using an Ancient Bow and Ancient Arrow, while Toon Link retains the Triforce Slash. Why didn't Toon Link get a new one? Consider the role the Triforce plays in their respective games. It was a key part of The Wind Waker, but wasn't very significant in Breath of the Wild, which placed more emphasis on the Sheikah technology. This fits with Zelda's new Final Smash too, since the Triforce was also important in A Link Between Worlds.
  • It's also worth pointing out that Breath of the Wild Link doesn't even have the Triforce. Zelda was implied to have had the whole thing. On the other hand, the Links of Ocarina of Time, The Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess all had the Triforce of Courage, and so all have/had Triforce Slash as their Final Smash.
    • Speaking of the Breath of the Wild Link not having the Triforce, when you go into the Zelda map within the Adventure Mode, it should be noted that Young Link is the one who wields the Triforce of Courage, not Adult Link, due to that fact.
• Ridley's reveal trailer is full of brilliance:
  • He takes out Mega Man in one hit with his tail. Yes, it may be because he is huge and powerful, but remember that he has a sharp point at the end of his tail, AKA, a spike. What was the thing that kills Mega Man in one hit, again?
  • The way he takes out both Mega Man and Mario. As explained above, not only is Mega Man weak to spikes, but impaling things with his tail is Ridley's trademark killing method. As for Mario, he takes him out the same way Samus believed how he killed her father. The icing on top is him twirling Mario's hat on his finger, referencing a gameplay mechanic in Super Mario Odyssey while mocking the bright tone of said game.
  • Of all people to accompany Samus, why Mario and Mega Man? There are many reasons:
    • It's a Shout-Out to Alien. Samus mirrors Ripley, Mario mirrors the other human characters, Mega Man mirrors the android characters, and Ridley of course mirrors the Xenomorphs.
    • Mario and Mega Man have faced (traditional) dragons before. Mega Man has Mecha Dragon from Mega Man 2, and Mario has the Ruined Dragon from Super Mario Odyssey.
    • Mario represents Nintendo's first-party characters, while Mega Man represents third-party characters. Of course, Samus is there for her connection with Ridley.
  • Of course Ultimate is the fitting game for Ridley to finally make his playable debut. Part of the installment's theme is that 'Everyone is Here', with everyone from every Smash game returning, and guess who has been in every Smash game in some capacity but not playable until now? Ridley.
• Ultimate adds a new "category" known as "Echo Fighters", which is a fancy term for Moveset Clones. But what's the point of this distinction and why is this so important?
  • This opens up new design possibilities when it comes to new fighters. For years, people have been clamoring for a certain character to show up as a playable fighter, but these ideas are often turned down by others due to the stigma of being too similar to another fighter, even if that character is distinct personality-wise. Echo Fighters allow these characters to mostly bypass that stigma. With Chrom (his up special being borrowed from Ike instead of Roy) and especially Ken (the sole semi-clone Echo Fighter) breaking the mold of what is an Echo Fighter, the possibilities are expanded even more.
  • They're easier to add on the developer's part. You could call it laziness, but coming up with brand-new distinct characters is still a very hard thing to do. Echo Fighters can allow the game developers to introduce a new character without potential backlash. It serves as a good marketing tool.
• The Inklings applaud the winner as opposed to their usual behavior in their own games whenever they lose. Why? Because a temper tantrum is embarrassing to everyone and it reflects on your series badly. Not to mention, in their own game, they never had a platform fight game mode. Throwing tantrums for losing in a game you're good at is just as expected as applauding the winner of a game you're not good at.
  • They also don't have a personal stake in the outcome. Even the most casual Turf War has an Inkling risking their hot streak, which they get paid out for maintaining. They have nothing to lose in a Smash, so missing the podium hurts less.
• In the reveal trailer, it's fitting that Ryu is shown facing off against Ganondorf. Ganondorf is the closest thing Smash Bros has to an Akuma expy. Both are dark-skinned redheads who use dark powers in conjunction with hand-to-hand combat.
• The first three newcomers to Ultimate have parallels with the new designs of Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf.
  • Inklings and Link are both the protagonist of their respective games, and the games that they take the most influence came out after 3DS/Wii U. They both are projectile-based and were in the initial teaser of the game.
  • Zelda and Daisy are both princesses and their designs are a modified version of a previous design. They're also the most Genki Girl out of all the princesses in the game.
  • Ridley and Ganondorf are both the main villains of their respective series. They're some of the few characters to not have playable appearances before they debuted in Smash and they happen to be the most outright sinister villains of Nintendo.
• In the reveal trailer, Snake appears to announce that "Everyone is here!". Immediately after Snake comes Pichu, a purposeful Joke Character who only appeared in Melee, and the character considered to be the least likely to ever return. This quickly hammers home that the trailer is serious when it says that it includes everyone.
• Why would Donkey Kong's new Final Smash be his Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs from Donkey Kong Jungle Beat? Much like Donkey Konga, the inspiration for DK's original Final Smash, the original version of Jungle Beat was compatible with the DK Bongos, meaning that this new Final Smash is not only quicker and more appropriate, it also still fits the motif of using the DK Bongos (even if it's not shown).
• Isn't it funny how Capcom lets Mega Man be stabbed by Ridley in the latter's reveal trailer? Well, those two characters share some similarities with each other. They were revealed in the second character reveal trailer for their respective game (and the first to not announce the game itself), they were revealed at the end of an E3 direct, their character reveals had dark CG visuals, and they were expected to be in the previous game due to how popular they were. Considering how everyone was expecting Mega Man to return in the game, of course Ridley would take him out to steal the spotlight.
• Link in this game is based on his Breath of the Wild incarnation, whereas Ganondorf was based off his Ocarina of Time appearance. Consider that Breath of the Wild is the last game in the Zelda timeline, while Ocarina of Time is the first game to feature Ganondorf, both canonically and by release date. Ocarina of Time is also the game that splits the timeline into three branches. As for the other fighters in the Zelda series, they represent the three branches of the timeline. Zelda for the Downfall timeline, Toon Link for the Adult timeline, and Young Link (and Sheik if you consider her to represent Twilight Princess) for the Child timeline.
• Of course Dark Samus is an Echo Fighter. After all, she debuted in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes.
• It makes perfect sense for Dedede to dress as King K. Rool to scare the Kongs, as the former is voiced by Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of the Smash Bros. series, who has a reputation as a Trolling Creator. This is also another one of his trolls, as King K. Rool turns up, miffed that he was being made fun of, and smacks him out of the way. Sakurai was trying to make us think K. Rool was deconfirmed.
  • It's also a bit of a Mythology Gag, since K. Rool was a popular pick for the Smash Ballot, only to end up a costume for Mii Fighters, much to the outrage and frustration of fans. Fittingly, this time around, Dedede wears a K. Rool head and costume to prank the Kongs, only to get violently smacked out of the way by the real deal.
• Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong are very surprised to see King K. Rool again. And why wouldn't they be? He hasn't been around for ten years!
  • When Dedede took off the K. Rool costume to reveal himself, the Kongs did a Jaw Drop with an expression that's less about What the Hell, Hero? and more like Oh, Crap!. Why is that? They probably saw something shaped like K. Rool sneaking behind Dedede.
• Speaking of the Kremling king, his official art and in-game model reveals his cape is faded and torn in contrast to the bright red it once was. This detail represents two different things: the fact that he disappeared both in and out of universe for ten years to where he was seemingly forgotten and the fact K. Rool canonically became resentful and hateful of the Kongs that by 64, he wanted to exterminate them and their island. Considering the fact K. Rool acts more bestial in Ultimate, one can argue he became crazier in his decade-long absence.
• Some have commented that K. Rool has become even more deranged based on his "crazed eye twitch", bestial running stance, and slightly more aggressive mannerisms in his trailer. Considering that last we saw him, he had been defeated by the Kongs FOUR times in a row (not counting spin-off titles), one of which involved having his latest doomsday device malfunction when he was moments away from destroying DK Island, being betrayed by some of his own minions (K. Lumsy and Snide), and being defeated by five Kongs in front of his entire army, on his home turf! With all that's happened, he's likely cracked even more! Him and the Kremling Krew being reduced to cameos while the Tiki Tak Tribe and the Snomads took their place as villains for the series' revival likely didn't help.
• The beginning of K. Rool's reveal trailer shows a bunch of still images of some Nintendo heroes with their respective "rivals". However, Yoshi and Pokémon are the only "Original 8" series to not have their own still images. The reasons for their exclusions are rather simple: Yoshi's main rival is BABY Bowser, not Bowser Jr., but Bowser is already represented as Mario's rival. As for Pokémon, Mewtwo^note Who is the closest thing to an antagonistic Pokémon fighter in Smash isn't really a rival to any of the playable Pokémon cast. The only "true rival" it really has is the Mon it was cloned from, Mew, who's not even a playable character. Now as for why Meta Knight was chosen for the rival for Kirby, that's probably so they can do some fun slapstick with Dedede.
• It was surprising to see, out of all people, Richter Belmont as the second Castlevania representative by nature of being an Echo of Simon. This was in light of there being more popular protagonists in the series than him, like Alucard (who was relegated to being an Assist Trophy) or Trevor (arguably behind Simon in terms of mainstream recognition, helped by being the main protagonist of the Netflix show). However, Richter's ties to Simon within the context of Smash are surprisingly strong:
  • Simon and Richter represent two different time periods within Nintendo's history; by virtue of being the player character of the first Castlevania, Simon represents the NES, whereas Richter's debut game — Castlevania: Rondo of Blood — made its overseas debut on the SNES albeit in the toned down Castlevania: Dracula X.
  • One argument that hurts Trevor is the fact that the only classic Nintendo title he was playable in (Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse) had him play almost exactly like Simon with little to no differences. Richter's gameplay, on the other hand, expanded upon the default Belmont movelist with running, aimed whip strikes, and Item Crashes — all of which are present in their appearances here. This is tied into one last point...
  • Richter is Simon's descendant, whereas Trevor predates them both. As someone who not only understood how his ancestors fought but allowed their fighting style to evolve, it seemed fitting that he gets his own chance to shine given how Simon has taken to using some of Richter's moves here.
  • Then there's his meme-worthy scene in Symphony of the Night, which is all too memorable for players of that game to not recognize him, even moreso given how Alucard and Dracula take more after their appearances from Symphony as well.
• Simon's trailer is shown at the start of the August 2018 Direct, which is set at 7 AM PT. In other words, the morning sun has vanquished the horrible night.
• Villager trying to steal K. Rool's crown has become a bit of a Running Gag in promotional material. K. Rool's crown looks very similar to the "crown" accessory item from Animal Crossing, which is the second most valuable item in the game at a cool million Bells. This is well over the price of even the largest of Villager's house loans, so if he can sell K. Rool's crown, he can pay Tom Nook and have a good chunk of change left over for public works projects and home decorating. No wonder he's trying to steal it!
• In Simon's reveal trailer, why does Luigi use a plunger to fight a mummy? Well, a mummy's bandages look like toilet paper. Luigi, being a plumber, would probably have experience dealing with clogged toilets.
  • This is also not the first time he has fought mummies, which were ultimately Greenies in sheets. How did he fight them? Flash them to make them blind to make them charge at the nearest solid wall! And if his Poltergust's flashes didn't work, he'd bean them in the face! Though usually with things with more mass than a plunger, like a loose knight helm...
• Of course the New Pork City stage is making a return in Ultimate. After all, it's the stage where the Ultimate Chimera appears!
• What is Bayonetta's number in the official order of characters? 63. And how was Bayonetta conceived? As a female counterpart to Dante from her predecessor's game.
• Why are Lyn and Waluigi still Assist Trophies? Because they're too popular and have plenty of exposure in recent games. All of the newcomers besides Inklings, Incineroar, Ken, and Isabelle, have fallen out in some way or shape:
  • Daisy and Chrom are characters that are in a lot of spin-off games, but they tend to get overshadowed by someone else and tend to have Memetic Loser status outside of Smash Bros. Them getting in as fighters is redemption for their reputations.
  • The two Belmonts have been ignored in favor for their Metroidvania counterparts^note out of which only one was a Belmont, with Richter only being known for his opening scene in Symphony Of the Night outside of hardcore fans. Them getting in puts focus back onto the Classic Series.
  • Ridley is the most recurring villain in the Metroid series, but the Metroid franchise has been on hiatus until recently, and even then Ridley appeared as a rotting version of himself in that game. Meanwhile, Dark Samus only appeared in the Metroid Prime series, and ceased to exist in the third game, making it unlikely for her to return at all. For these two to be playable characters, it shows that Smash Bros cares a lot for the Metroid franchise even if it's not the most relevant.
  • King K. Rool hasn't appeared since 2008, and he was replaced by two other villains in the Retro Studios games. His return means a lot for the fanbase.
  • Even the Inklings represent this in a way. The Inklings and most of the Splatoon-related content are based on the first game. Now, what console was the first game released on? The Wii U. Because Splatoon is the only franchise with a playable character in Smash Bros. that debuted on the Wii U exclusively, the Inklings are representing the lowest-selling Nintendo home console that the company has abandoned now.
  • Before their appearance in Smash Bros., Banjo and Kazooie's franchise had been dormant for over 11 years (the last game of which, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, had the lowest reception and is considered a Franchise Killer).
  • Isabelle, however, is a subversion: she's a recent Breakout Character from a very popular series, smashing the trend against the rocks.
  • And the reason so many of the newcomers are characters that have been mostly forgotten? Because this game is supposed to comprise of all of Smash's history, and this is the chance to shine light on loved characters that might have been lost to history or have been overshadowed.
  • This even applies to the fighters who were cut from the last game, too. The Ice Climbers don't have much in the way of new games, as Smash makes up the bulk of their popularity; Star Fox had mostly remained dormant until the release of Star Fox Zero after 3DS/Wii U ended its run of DLC (which kept Wolf in the cold); Pichu has long been overshadowed by its succeeding evolutions: Pikachu for reasons that are all too obvious and Raichu getting a fair amount of attention for its Alolan form. Barring Hyrule Warriors and the remake of Majora's Mask, the specific design of Young Link is by no means current. Lastly, Snake's last canon appearance was 10 years ago and the issues regarding Konami and Hideo Kojima made it unlikely we would get to see another new mainline Metal Gear game, let alone having him return to Smash at all.
• When Ditto shows up and is shown off, it gets KO'd by Zero of all people. The hilarity here is: based upon a Ditto copy's color scheme, if it were to copy Zero, it would be a dead ringer for Nightmare Zero from Mega Man X6.
• Legal issues regarding Hideo Kojima aside, the shift of the Metal Gear series logo from the FOX insignia to the trademark "!" does make sense in a few regards:
  • First, the "!" can be argued to be more of an iconic logo than FOX's, given that it is not only older but also more easily recognizable (and memed to death) even by non-Metal Gear fans.
  • Second, it does seem to fit Snake's M.O. in Smash. He's in a position where sneaking around isn't much of an option and his presence can be easily seen by opposing players, so he has to make do with direct confrontation.
  • Third, within his series' canon, Solid Snake himself (the one playable in the Smash games) was never affiliated with FOX, nor could he have been; the unit itself had long been disbanded before he was even born and he has much closer ties to its successor group FOXHOUND, which sports a different logo to begin with — never mind the fact that casual fans often mix up both groups when trying to credit the source behind the logo. It was his father/predecessor Naked Snake/Big Boss who actively served as a FOX operative in his youth when he closely resembled his son as he is in Smash.
  • Lastly, think about this from a meta perspective. Many Smash fans thought that even in the event that many older veterans who were cut in previous games like Pichu and Wolf were sure-fire picks to return if ever, Snake and Metal Gear weren't due to the controversy surrounding Konami's botched relationship with Kojima and their subsequent pachinko-focused business practices which have been negatively received. Thus, the "!" could very well signal the utter surprise that was seeing him in Smash, 12 years after he did it for the first time.
• This time Ness receives help from Paula and Poo for his PK Starstorm Final Smash. Why isn't Jeff helping out? Is it because he's already an Assist Trophy? Yes, but there's another reason; in Earthbound, Jeff doesn't have psychic powers like the other three, which means he can't help with PK Starstorm.
  • Boney doesn't have psychic powers either. How could he help Lucas with PK Starstorm?
    • Possibly because Boney has been with Lucas the longest and is supporting Lucas emotionally to give him the confidence to perform PK Starstorm. Kumatora is obviously there as she was the one who taught him PK Starstorm, paralleling Ness and Poo. As for Duster's absence, while he and Lucas are friends, Duster's role was closer in helping Kumatora as part of the story Leder reveals near the end of the game, making him optional in that sense aside from also not having PSI abilities.
• In the November 1st Nintendo Direct, it makes perfect sense that Kirby would be the last one standing after everyone else gets turned into spirits. Here's why:
  • Kirby was created by Sakurai, so of course the game's director would be playing favorites.
  • Kirby was one of the last fighters to survive Tabuu's onslaught back in the Subspace Emissary (because he ate one of King Dedede's badges).
  • Kirby is able to copy the abilities of defeated opponents, much like how the spirits seem to be taking on the form of fighters, giving said fighters the quality of the spirits!
  • Kirby also regularly topples otherworldly horrors to the point where it's practically his day job in his home series — for him, someone like Galeem is just another monster to throw on top of the pile. Galeem even looks the part of a Kirby villain.
  • On a practical level, it's because the Warp Star is able to travel to different dimensions. Sonic might have Super-Speed, and Captain Falcon and Star Fox might have access to vehicles that travel faster than the speed of sound, but those can't save you from an all-powerful being. Confirmed by Word of God.
  • In a meta sense, Kirby makes for a pretty good beginner character, and his series was designed precisely with beginners in mind. So him being a starter would most likely help for new players willing to jump into Story Mode. Particularly since Sakurai stated that the only characters other than Kirby who might have escaped were Palutena and Bayonetta; both characters are more complex and less beginner-friendly than Kirby, especially Bayonetta whose mechanics are far more convoluted than most characters (with some outright breaking standard conventions, such as her recovery), making them sub-optimal fighters to introduce beginners to the game with.
• The starting roster is restricted to the original 8. But a nice touch with how they are ordered (Mario, Donkey Kong, Link, Samus, Yoshi, Kirby, Fox, and Pikachu) is the exact same order as the original Smash 64's intro rollcall.
• Piranha Plant might be seen as a weird addition, but there are a few things in mind.
  • The Mario spin-off games always have an Unexpected Character, notably in the Mario Kart series that not only includes Double Dash, which features Petey Piranha, their Final Smash, as a playable character, but also Mario Kart 7, which excludes Waluigi in favor of... Honey Queen. Since Smash Bros typically has at least one Lethal Joke Character/Fighting Clown as a playable fighter, it's a nice shake-up to switch the focus from a retro hardware rep to a Mario rep.
  • While Piranha Plants themselves aren't particularly popular enemies, its aforementioned Final Smash is a relative Breakout Character, having multiple playable appearances and being a boss in Brawl. The Piranha Plant (as well as its subspecies) also has been a staple in the Mario series since Super Mario Bros, appearing in every main Super Mario game (barring the North American version of Super Mario Bros. 2), and appearing in most Mario spin-offs as hazards and obstacles.
  • Piranha Plants have a Non-Standard Character Design compared to every other fighter in the game, as they have no obvious arms and legs. Their design is enough to work compared to Goombas, while also making sure to be unique within itself.
• Fox is leading the fighters in the World of Light trailer. This makes sense, because he's the head of Star Fox and would be well-suited to organizing the fight. But look at who else speaks in the trailer: Marth (a legendary hero-king), Zelda (a princess with supernatural wisdom), and Pit (an angelic general). They're also people who would be good at organizing this strange "army" against the threat.
  • Additionally, Fox is the member of the original 8 who talks the most. Mario usually only says a few catchphrases, Link is a Heroic Mime, Yoshi and Pikachu use Pokémon Speak, Donkey Kong and Kirby only do sound effects, and Samus never spoke in her games (outside of the much maligned Other M) until Metroid Dread, years after Smash Ultimate's release. Fox, on the other hand, comes from a game with constant radio communication between his team, which has also appeared in Smash since Melee.
• There's a gameplay-related reason for why Link was able to block Galeem's attacks with his Hylian Shield, but the various reflectors didn't. Every reflector will eventually fail if an attack is too powerful, but Link's shield will always block a non-Final Smash projectile no matter how strong it is.
• Leave it to a phantom thief like Joker to once again steal the show like he did with his game's reveal.
  • The jokes were inevitable, but his DLC announcement was quite literally the "Last Surprise" before the release of the game.
• Joker's inclusion in the game makes more sense than you think. This game's gimmick is the Spirits, where you can equip player characters with one or more spirits to aid them in battle. Now, what is the Persona series' gimmick again?
  • The Personas come from the collective unconscious of humanity, where figures from all sorts of mythologies and cultures mix and mingle in a giant Crossover Cosmology. This is a remarkably similar to the premise of Super Smash Bros., which takes place in a world where imagination has brought to life countless video game characters and allows for all sorts of strange combinations, i.e. a subset of the collective unconscious focusing specifically on video games. The more you think about it, the more Persona becomes the perfect fit for inclusion in the series.
  • Even if Joker himself hasn't done it, the Shin Megami Tensei universe is no stranger to using the spirits of powerful Nintendo characters to fight; just ask Itsuki and Tsubasa.
• Wonder why Joker, a character from a video game series that has next to no connection to Nintendo, would be "invited" to Smash? Well, considering his role as a Phantom Thief and the nature of his announcement video, it seems much more likely that Joker actually stole the invitation, which would, In-Universe at least, explain why he's in the game over so many safer choices.
  • Nintendo of America confirms that the invitation was indeed stolen.
• Why does Marx appear as the Final Boss of Inkling's Classic Mode, as well as Rosalina and Luma's? Well, several of Marx's attacks (raining seeds, ice balls, the mouth laser) are similar to attacks used by DJ Octavio, the Final Boss of Hero Mode in both Splatoon games, and they share a purple colour scheme as well as Flight (well, the DJ's mech flies). Also, Inkling's ink resembles paint; in Super Star Ultra, Paint was an ability Marx Soul could provide Kirby with. As for Rosalina and Luma, where does the battle against Marx in Kirby Super Star take place again? On a planet in outer space. In addition, the Galactic NOVA from that game is a giant clockwork comet that moves across the cosmos, similar to the Comet Observatory.
• Sakurai had stated that besides Kirby, the only fighters who would potentially be able to survive Galeem's initial attack in World of Light are Palutena and Bayonetta; however, in that mode, they are among the last fighters able to be rescued. Galeem and later Dharkon must have kept them the most securely captured after realizing how powerful they would be if freed.
  • Shulk might have been able to escape, too, considering the Monado gets its power from the Conduit, which is explicitly referred to as a gateway to other dimensions. However, the last time someone (Klaus) tried that, he had all three of the Trinity Processor cores to help him, where Shulk at best has only one of them. And even then, Klaus did almost as much damage to the world as Galeem did: even if Shulk knew using the Monado to escape was possible, he's not the kind of person to risk an entire world just to save himself.
  • And we know Palutena was taken out because her attention was divided — Pit and Dark Pit don't steer her Power of Flight, she does. She was distracted trying to get the angels to safety and got overpowered because of it.
  • Also Palutena is the Goddess of Light, Galeem is the Lord of Light. Of course Galeem would want Palutena under his control as The Dragon. Bayonetta is also an Umbra Witch associated with darkness, and has defeated Gods before, and has a hatred of Palutena's kind, just like how Dharkon has a hatred of Galeem.
• How does Galeem make puppet fighters with Kirby as their main body when Kirby was never captured? Well, Kirby might have escaped, but Meta Knight didn't, and it's long been a popular theory that the two are the same species. Take away the armor and cape, and there's a free puffball to make new Kirby-like puppet fighters.
  • Alternatively, since it's been shown that Galeem's attack had gone through time and space (for example, among the many spirits are Mario Tennis versions of the Mario Bros.), it's possible that he obtained Kirby through an alternate timeline and used that one as a base.
  • There's also Keeby, a character who is identical to Kirby except for his yellow color, and we see that Galeem has no issue with recoloring his puppet fighters.
  • According to an interview with Sakurai, Galeem managed to analyze Kirby at some point to make puppets of him.
• On that note, Galeem must notice at some point that Kirby survived and is freeing the other fighters, especially when his shield starts to weaken. So why doesn't he just wipe them out like he did before? Simple: He'd just recreated/rewritten the entire universe, which would take quite a bit of power. Most likely, Galeem was somewhat exhausted from the effort, which is why he just sits there, not bothering to do anything until confronted directly.
  • Which also explains why he was capable of being defeated, as he still hadn't fully recovered yet.
  • In addition, Galeem probably realizes that exhausting every last ounce of his strength will just make him easy pickings for Dharkon afterwards; Galeem has clearly shown that he does not care much for the fighters compared to Dharkon, because even when you come knocking at both their doors in the final battle, they are menacing each other for the most part and largely ignoring/barely taking notice of you.
• There are some parts of parallelism between the beginning and the Dharkon ending of World of Light:
  • When Galeem attacks the world and the fighters with light, Kirby is the sole survivor. But when Dharkon won against Galeem and covered the world in darkness, Mario turns out to be the last man standing before he faints.
  • Not only that, the two were standing on the same cliff while staring at the aftermath of the attack. While Kirby saw the new world that Galeem had created, Mario probably had it worse when he had to watch Dharkon fatally injuring Galeem and taking him hostage. This might be one of the reasons he collapsed. Might count as fridge horror.
  • Kirby and Mario are the two mascot characters who have appeared in the campaign, as they are Masahiro Sakurai's and Shigeru Miyamoto's creation. These two are always together in the series, such as in the opening of Super Smash Bros. 64, the cutscenes from Subspace Emissary, and in the World of Light story mode.
• Joker being in the game and probably bringing some Spirits along means that Tokyo has been hit with an apocalypse. Not something that ever happens for real in his series, but a staple of what it spun off from.
  • The implication of this is that Joker was also part of the "strange" army of myriad warriors led by Fox, Marth, Zelda and Pit that was assembled to face down Galeem. When facing down an evil godlike being who wants to bring his own twisted sense of order to all of reality, our strange army brought in someone who... faced down an evil godlike being who wanted to bring his own twisted sense of order to all of reality. Even once you consider Dharkon, an evil godlike being who wants to bring his own twisted sense of chaos to all of reality, Joker (or at least, a hero from his franchise) still makes complete sense. Malevolent gods of order and chaos fighting each other with only the neutral path being the best ending, while relying on catching and using spirits to aid in battle, all in an apocalyptic landscape. For Joker, this really is just a Shin Megami Tensei plot!
• Galeem and Dharkon's usage of each hand actually has a correlation: Galeem, who seeks to shape the world as he pleases, uses Master Hand, who represents creativity and order, while Dharkon, who favors chaos and discord, uses Crazy Hand, who not only embodies those traits, but also uses darkness-themed attacks. This correlation turns into a Foil, however, due to a key difference between the two pairs: Master Hand and Crazy Hand are partners and even use combination attacks when fighting together, whereas Galeem and Dharkon tolerate each other at best during their boss fight and not only make no attempt to prevent friendly-fire, they'll drop what they're doing and gladly take a swing at the other whenever they can get away with it.
• Viridi's distaste for bananas seems odd at first, but it actually makes sense from her perspective. Bananas weren't created through natural selection, they were created through artificial selection by humans, and it's well established that Viridi hates humans.
  • This apparently doesn't stop her from wanting a cinnamon roll or sprinkle donut, though.
    • Perhaps she has less distaste for products humans actually made using her gracious gifts (sugar, cinnamon, etc.), vs something that was made by humans meddling in the natural order.
• What happens when there's three players left in a game of Smash? In most groups, Chronic Backstabbing Disorder; any alliances made against a more powerful third party are typically dispensed with the moment an opportunity presents itself, and the third party can usually take advantage of Friendly Fire to ensure the pair ganging up on them regrets it. In this way, the True Final Boss fight with both Galeem and Dharkon represents a distillation of the spirit of free-for-all Smash — absolute chaos that favors keeping both enemies relatively even and giving them opportunities to betray one another.
• Why is Castlevania in Dharkon's World of Dark, which is heavily associated with Chaos? Because Dracula's castle is a creature of chaos and Dracula himself is Chaotic Evil and has a hatred of humanity rivaling Viridi's. This may explain why he seems to be one of the few characters to side with Dharkon that doesn't seem to be brainwashed and controlled.
  • This extends to the other two bosses in World of Dark as well. Marx is well-known for his Chaotic Evil motivations, even if he decided to be the Evil Versus Oblivion in Kirby Star Allies. Ganon, meanwhile, most likely decided to join Dharkon instead of Galeem just to spite Master Hand for what happened in Subspace Emissary. Finding out that Dharkon had enslaved Tabuu probably also helped win the King of Evil's approval and allegiance.
• The game's opening manages to give every single playable character at least one shot where they're the primary focus. After beating World of Light, you'll realize this includes Master Hand.
• There's a specific line in Lifelight: "Everyone caught in the struggle." At first, you might think this is talking about the battles between the fighters. However, after beating World of Light, it could be a mention of the fighters being caught between Galeem and Dharkon's struggle.
  • Alternatively, it's referring to how everyone was affected by Galeem's initial attack. Not just the fighters and other characters with combat experience, but even the civilians and innocent people.
• Within the official artwork/mural, there are a few clever parts:
  • R.O.B and Luigi are flying overhead, which is a nod to the latter doing the exact same thing in the official artwork (the one with all the characters) for Super Smash Bros. Melee. Luigi even has the exact same facial expression.
  • Villager is chasing a butterfly, but it's an emperor butterfly, which sells for a reasonable price in his home series. Add this to the fact that he's close to Marth, Roy, Mega Man, and Zero Suit Samus, and it's clear that Villager likes blue things.
  • Snake has his Nikita launcher pointed at Sonic, a possible reference to his Codec call in Brawl where he expresses his dislike for Sonic.
  • Lucas has his Rope Snake heading towards Snake — in other words, it's a Snake Eater.
  • Lucina is reaching out to Captain Falcon as if trying to drag him into a rematch from her 3DS/Wii U reveal trailer.
    • Made even more poignant with Chrom's inclusion — who is standing and looking over to Robin (as if consulting his tactician on what course of action to take) while Captain Falcon hovers next to him, making it look like Lucina is also rushing to her father's aid against the man that defeated him.
• The fact that Autopick makes the game set the weakest spirits as your main isn't actually a flaw, but rather a subtle way of saying that you need to diversify your selection and not use one spirit to fight every battle. After all, overspecialization breeds weakness, and continuing to use a spirit that can't be leveled up anymore is throwing away experience points that the unused spirits could've used. Also, using a spirit that offers an overwhelming advantage penalizes you with reduced earnings after a victory, which is another way of saying that your victory was cheap.
• Combined with Fridge Horror: Mewtwo's Classic mode is called "Psychic Control," in which it mind-controls several of its opponents into fighting alongside it. These fighters have all been mind-controlled canonically in their respective universes:
  • Lucas: Uses the palette swap of his brother Claus, who was brainwashed into serving Porky.
  • Cloud: Was mentally manipulated by Sephiroth through their shared Jenova-cell infusion.
  • Ken: Brainwashed by M. Bison in Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, leading to the creation of Violent Ken. Also, barring SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos, where did Violent Ken debut as a playable character? In Ultra Street Fighter II, a Switch-exclusive version of SF2.
  • Richter: Brainwashed by Shaft in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and serves as its Disc-One Final Boss; non-lethally defeating him here is needed to progress further.
  • Pit: Had his soul forced out of his body when Palutena was possessed by the Chaos Kin, falling under its control.
• All of the characters that are playable in Spirits Mode/World Of Light have an identifiable reason for their pick:
  • The original 12, because... they are the original 12. As the oldest Veterans of the game, it makes sense why they are playable.
  • Each franchise has at least one playable representation. The only ones who aren't either part of the original 12 or here to represent a franchise could be considered The Lancer for either (i.e. Falco, Diddy Kong, or Isabelle). They join the fight because they don't want their friends to go alone.
  • One character who doesn't fit into either is Bowser. Why is Bowser playable despite being the Big Bad of his series? If you played the RPG games, you would know that Bowser has a heroic side and will oppose any villain nastier than himself. Additionally, Galeem killed Kamek, who raised Bowser, as well as Junior and the Koopalings, his son and foster children. Old Koopa probably wants a piece of the angelic monster purely for his family's sake. And then there's Peach — the one person whose being in mortal peril can make Bowser and Mario shake hands and work together without quarrel.
    • It might look weird that other villains of the roster like Ganondorf, King K. Rool, Dark Samus, or Ridley might also be assisting the heroes, until you realize that it might be a case of Pragmatic Villainy. Ganondorf, Ridley, and Dark Samus have been shown in their home series to be very cunning. Seeing a threat bigger than their common enemy by a large margin might be enough to put them on a begrudging alliance until it's taken care of. While K. Rool might be insane, he's intelligent enough to assume a mad scientist persona and build functioning machinery; even for some of his most questionable moments, not accepting to help the Kongs to deal with something that can threaten him would be stupid.
    • Not to mention that not only is Ridley intelligent, he is also very much of a Sadist. If anything, apart from taking down the greater threat, his main motivation would just be to see such a mighty threat suffer the most painful death imaginable — just so Ridley can have a laugh out of it, and prove that he is the one to be feared.
  • Kid Icarus: Uprising establishes that the gods aren't allowed to directly interfere in the affairs of mortals, and that's why Palutena has an army to protect mankind. However, it's also mentioned that the Centurions are quite fragile, which is why she only sends Pit to do the job. But Galeem is someone who doesn't just threaten mortals, but also all of existence, which seems to be enough for Palutena to take on the action herself. It also explains why Pit was the only soldier of her army present.
  • Mr. Game and Watch is rather significant as well, because he has no understanding of good or evil according to the Smash Dojo. However, since he's made of Shadow Bugs, he would definitely feel threatened by a being of pure light like Galeem.
  • For Bayonetta, who shares an intense rivalry with Palutena, why would they work together? Bayonetta probably sees Galeem just like how she saw Jubileus and the Cardinal Virtues, and the fact that even Palutena and Pit want to stop Galeem means Bayonetta must have had to realize Pit and Palutena aren't malign like the angels she's used to dealing with, which in turn would get Palutena to see that Bayonetta may not completely hate all light-based entities after all. Bayonetta also considers Dharkon in a similar sense to the demons that betrayed her in Bayonetta 2, and she's not one for pets who don't listen to their masters, which would help distinguish her from the malicious Underworld Gods that Palutena has no love for. In addition, Bayonetta and Palutena's relationship is a Foil for Galeem and Dharkon's relationship. Palutena hates Bayonetta's guts and vice versa, with both characters being Light- and Darkness-based just like Galeem and Dharkon, and they can be heavy-handed in how they deal with oppositely aligned-beings, but when the universe needs saving, they are willing to work together against the bigger threat and can even put aside grudges to enjoy a friendly match or two. This is completely unlike Galeem and Dharkon, who are in no way willing to work with each other in virtually any fashion to focus on the bigger threat in the fighter-spirit army and are constantly at each other's metaphorical throats, to the point that the two's goals are ultimately laid broken before them with their demises in the true ending.
• How do spirits fit into the classic Smash Framing Device of a kid playing with their toys? In terms of the lore, these spirits are characters without physical bodies of their own, and so they are forced to use one of the 70+ playable fighters as vessels. In Spirit Battles, each battle is catered to evoke the idea of fighting the spirit, essentially pretending that the playable character is the unplayable spirit instead. In real life, children may not have very many toys (let alone at least 1,297), so if they want to play with a toy they don't have (i.e. the spirit lacking a physical form of its own), they may use one of the toys that they do have as a substitute (i.e. the spirit using a puppet fighter) and, using their imagination, pretend that this toy represents that other toy (i.e. the Spirit Battles). For example, a kid wants to play with Salamence but does not have that toy in his collection; since he does own a Charizard toy instead, so he chooses to use that Charizard toy while pretending it's Salamence.
  • Adding further brilliance to the idea, DLC can affect who fights on behalf of a spirit, such as Cuphead's spirit fight switching out Mega Man for a Mii wearing the Cuphead costume. While they most likely will never get all the toys they want, the kid gets a couple more and revises their play fights to use better fitting characters when revisiting those scenarios.
  • Another addition of brilliance comes from the arrival of characters like Min Min, Pyra, and Mythra. Originally, these characters were all spirits, but thanks to the DLC, they're now made into playable characters. How does this fit in? Well, it could fall in line with the idea of the kid being able to expand on their collection by having their parents purchase new toys - or, if you follow the "growing up" theory, the kid (now an adult by the time of Ultimate) being able to afford rarer and more expensive and elaborate toys to fill in the gaps in their collection and imagination. And as a result, the kid no longer has to pretend with a "spirit" substitute, as now they have the real toy to use instead!
  • On a related note, older fans spend a disproportionate amount of time on Waluigi memes and depict him as depressed and depraved for not being able to be a full-fledged fighter. Waluigi toys are extremely rare, and many adults as of Ultimate's release have crippling depression and see the real world as a Crapsack World. If the trophy owner is now an adult, Waluigi in Smash is a manifestation of their depression and fear of exclusion, given life because of how emotionally charged their feelings are but unable to find a proper vessel to be an actual playable character and become part of the crew.
• The Sacred Realm dungeon/sub area in the World of Dark is basically just one big reference to the Zelda series in how its gimmick is set up.
  • The southwest area has some simple puzzles, just requiring the player to solve a clock-based puzzle twice to unlock some more Spirits. As this tests the player's knowledge, it's pretty fitting that the Triforce of Wisdom gets revealed once this section is cleared.
    • The solution to one of said puzzles involves setting the clock to the 4:40 position. What occurs as a result of this? You get to fight and unlock Mii Brawler, who was introduced in the fourth game in the series.
  • The southeast area is a forest, basically being The Lost Woods. With a lot of fog everywhere obscuring some paths, this tests the player's courage to venture into the unknown, revealing the Triforce of Courage once this section is cleared.
  • The northern area doesn't really have any gimmick or puzzle so to speak; it's really just a bunch of Spirit battles. Just a bunch of tests of strength which leads the way to the Triforce of Power.
• Kirby's Switch game has him using magic hearts to befriend his enemies. Kirby is also the first character you get in World of Light. Suddenly, evil spirits joining you makes a lot more sense.
• Most of the Bayonetta cast have all been turned into spirits, except for three. Jubileus (who is already dead, considering this game takes place after Bayonetta 1), Queen Sheba, and Omne. All three of these are cosmic god-entities that apparently recreated the universe anew alongside Aesir with the Eyes of the World. No wonder they're not spirits; they're considered roughly equal to Galeem and Dharkon, who are capable of doing the exact the same thing.
  • Similar-tier characters (e.g., Tabuu and Arceus) were able to be turned into Spirits, though.
    • Tabuu was heavily weakened after his near-death in Subspace Emissary, and Arceus gets captured by a 10-year-old in a Poké Ball; if Arceus was in his Poké Ball, it wouldn't be able to defend itself with a Judgement.
  • On the topic of Bayonetta, it may seem strange that Prophet/Loptr isn't a enhanceable spirit, considering in Bayonetta 2 he turns into Aesir after obtaining the Eyes of the World. But he doesn't have the Sovereign Power anymore, due to the Eyes of the World being erased in Bayonetta 2, and while Bayonetta is a character, Balder is a spirit, so there's no way for him to become Aesir.
• Alex Roivas of Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem being a Spirit might seem like Nintendo just showing the IP some acknowledgement after sixteen years, but "World of Light"'s finale actually contains a strong parallel to that game's. In Eternal Darkness, Alex is forced to summon a rival Ancient to combat the one Pious spends the game summoning; however, once Pious' Ancient is killed, she has a vision of the one she summoned wreaking untold havoc on the planet in its stead, and it's up to the ghost of her grandfather Edward to seal it away before it can do so. Given that there are three Ancients in the story, you have to play the game three times to earn a secret ending which shows that Mantorok, the Corpse God who provided the Tome of Eternal Darkness to the heroes, then combined all three potential timelines into one, obliterating all three Ancients simultaneously. Take out the alternate timelines aspect, and you get exactly what happens in "World of Light": defeat Galeem or Dharkon separately, and the other just wreaks havoc unopposed; defeat them simultaneously, and the world is saved.
  • Even the Spirits parallel the game. Primary spirits share the same color coding as Eternal Darkness's Ancients — red for Attack, green for Throw, blue for Defense, and purple for Neutral. Support Spirits are the same yellow as an unaligned magick rune.
• Why does Chrom share the original Fire Emblem victory theme instead of the new one shared with his Awakening comrades Robin and Lucina? Maybe it might be by pure coincidence, but he has one thing in common with Marth, Roy, and Ike: they've all canonically used the Fire Emblem in their own games, whereas the other two have not.
  • This also explains why Corrin has a unique theme as well. While they have used their own Fire Emblem, it is again worth pointing out that the Omega Yato is the Emblem itself; unlike the four main Lords who share the main theme, Corrin actively uses their Emblem in Smash.
    • As of the 3.0.0 update, Chrom has now been given the Awakening victory theme.
• While Ridley is capable of racking up damage like no one's business, he has some difficulty in actually killing a target, as most of his moves that reliably kill at lower percentages are slow and/or unsafe. As a result, his gameplay revolves around bursts of pressure to rack up damage, then falling back to bait the opponent into making mistakes that he can capitalize on. This lines up perfectly with his established personality: he's a cruel, sadistic predator who treats it as one big fucked-up game, and he delights in torturing others and causing pain until he either finally decides to deliver a coup de grace, or the opponent makes a serious mistake that he can punish them for.
• In the Sacred Land, you come across a village that also counts as a puzzle resembling a large clock. In other words, you’re in a Clock Town.
• At first, Marx being the final opponent of Kirby's Classic Mode route seems to be nothing more than fanservice to longtime fans, considering the fact that the theme of the route is opponents who, like Kirby, are Big Eaters. But then you think back to Star Allies...
  The famous jester from Kirby Super Star has finally arrived to get in on the action! Sure, he's had a diabolical past as a final boss, but he'll be your buddy if you keep him well-fed. It's a dream come true!
• The initial teaser pre-E3 saw the Inklings stare at a giant fiery Smash logo with the shadowed cast underneath it. The final character reveal trailer focused on Incineroar and Ken, characters best known for Playing with Fire. What happens when something is set on fire for long enough? They get reduced to ash — exactly what everyone (minus Kirby) ends up as after being disintegrated by Galeem. For bonus points, the army of puppet fighters from the World of Light opening cutscene look eerily similar to the hidden cast from the Inklings' teaser.
• Lucina mirrors Marth not only in her moveset, but also her character art. Lucina's stance is similar to that of Marth in his character art, but with a few differences. Lucina's Falchion points towards the right, whereas Marth's Falchion points to the left. On the other hand, Lucina's cape flows to the left, whereas Marth's cape is flowing to the right. Lucina is also looking away from the viewer with her hands also away from the viewer, while Marth is looking more towards the viewer with his hands also towards the viewer.
  • Dark Pit also mirrors Pit in his art, albeit to a lesser extent. Dark Pit takes a stance that mirrors Pit's, just like Lucina and Marth. Additionally, Dark Pit is holding his eponymous staff away from the viewer, while Pit is aiming his Palutena Bow in its bladed form towards the viewer.
• The yoga pose Wii Fit Trainer was taking as the beam hit her? That move has invincibility frames in 3DS/Wii U.
• Piranha Plant's classic mode titled "New Bloom" is a fight against all the newcomers and Rathalos. Why that boss specifically? Well, Master Hand and Crazy Hand, Giga Bowser, Ganon, and Galleom have already appeared before in the series. Meanwhile Marx and Dracula, while new in Smash, are still pretty old characters compared to Rathalos.
• The opening starts off by showing Mario, Link, Samus, and Kirby each on their own, then it shows an image for Fire Emblem by using Marth, Robin, and Lucina, then continues the previous trend for Mega Man and Inkling. Why is Fire Emblem using multiple characters unlike the others? The other heroes saved the day on their own, but Fire Emblem is a game about commanding an army all at once.
• All-Star Mode being replaced with All-Star Smash might seem like a letdown but think about it: in the last game, All-Star Mode was a daunting and harrowing task to complete in one go (and that was without the DLC added in)! Trying to beat 70+ fighters (and new ones announced and heading their way to Smash) with a limited number of healing items would be an exercise in masochism. At least in All-Star Smash, the characters have the durability of a Mii Fighting Team member, so you can send 'em flying easily. Just be aware, don't get swarmed, and you'll do fine.
• While most of the fighters are under Galeem's servitude, some have been claimed by Dharkon and stay in his realm. As a representation of darkness and evil, the particular fighters under Dharkon's control have some reason why he must've corrupted them. First and foremost are the Obviously Evil villains under his control, unlike Bowser and Dedede: Wario is a self-centred greedy jerk who is willing to betray his own friends as shown in WarioWare and Brawl; Ganondorf wants to obtain the Triforce and rule the world; Dark Samus wants to infect everyone with Phazon and make them worship her; Ridley is a sadistic psychopath who enjoyed killing Samus' friends and family while taunting her about their deaths; and K. Rool is an Ax-Crazy Bad Boss who's willing and eager to blow up DK Island with his Blast-O-Matic while his victims are still inside. There are also heroes and less monstrous antagonists who were mainly tempted to serve Dharkon through their problems and vices: Luigi always spent his time stuck in his brother's shadow to the point where his Final Smash in Brawl, Negative Zone, reflects his envy and bitterness towards being unappreciated for so long; Daisy is known to be rather hot-blooded and aggressive; Meta Knight is an Anti-Hero; Sonic has a colossal ego^note with that said, he also had enough Heroic Willpower to avoid being mind-controlled by Dark Gaia, a destructive and shadow-themed Eldritch Abomination much like Dharkon, so take that as you will; R.O.B. is lonely about being the Last of His Kind; Mewtwo suffers from existential crisis due to being a clone; Wolf has a rivalry with Fox and his father James, and so on.
• While Snake's strategy to avoid Galeem isn't foolproof, credit where credit is due for the series' first Guest Fighter. He's actually among one of the last on-screen disintegrations, while characters who either possessed faster speeds (Sonic, Captain Falcon, Falco) or superior defenses (Link, Palutena, Zelda, Mewtwo) all fell before him; the implication here is that for a split-second, the man who fittingly defined stealth action games was able to use those same tactics against this almighty deity and almost get away with it.
• In an interview, Sakurai clarified that to the dev team, the reason why Galeem was able to copy Kirby into puppets was because he analyzed him. This may be seen as a wave off comment, until you realize he exhibits this in-game: During his boss fight, he can create puppets of fighters even if the player has freed any of them, meaning that he doesn't need the originals for the cloning process after all, just information on them.
• Certain Assist Trophies won't appear in specific stages. Knuckles won't appear on Green Hill Zone because he's a background character. Same applies for Moon in Great Bay and it won't appear in indoor stages, moving or transitional stages (hard to hit a mobile target), or retro stages (it would feel out of place). Alucard won't appear in Wii Fit Studio due to the background being a mirror and his vampiric traits despite being a Dhampir. Nikki from Swapnote won't appear in the Training Mode stage or Final Destination for reasons unknown, though for the former, it might be seen as cheating and the latter might be too scary and overwhelming for her, or maybe the flashing colors would interfere with her drawings.
• If the final bosses throughout the series all come back to a kid playing with their toys...then what the heck are Galeem and Dharkon supposed to be? It's actually quite simple. They represent two children, most likely siblings, fighting over said toys. Rather soft compared to Tabuu and Master Core, no?
  • Or more precisely, a la The LEGO Movie, Galeem, the one obsessed with order, represents an adult fan who wants to line up the trophies and display them in a boring way (a concept that also ties in to Sora's reveal trailer). Dharkon, the one obsessed with chaos, represents their child who simply wants to play with the trophies with little regard to sense or keeping the figures in good shape. It's only by parent and child coming to an understanding and finding a happy medium that Galeem and Dharkon are defeated.
• At the end of the Inkling/Smash Ultimate reveal in general, you can hear a faint bit of Lifelight when the Smash logo appears. Comparing it to the lyrics of Lifelight, it comes from the end of the chorus; specifically "Bare this torch against the cold of the night, Light will guide you on your way to the ultimate fight". The 2nd half is the brilliance, because that trailer was our first stop on the way to The Ultimate Fight.
• Daisy hasn't been seen using Peach's usual abilities from Smash or from where she derived her moveset from. So why is Daisy able to use them? Well, if you follow the fan theory that Peach borrowed Daisy's clothes to use as one of her alts, it makes sense that some of her powers wore off on Daisy's outfit, thus conferring them to her. Thus, Daisy gained the ability to levitate where she couldn't before, just like Peach does now.
• While it's weird that in a cutscene a puppet of Pokémon Trainer was seen but in gameplay, whenever one of his Pokémon are fighting, there is no Trainer puppet, it makes sense when you realize that Galeem is controlling the Pokémon. Galeem is the Trainer himself! As for why the cutscene puppet existed, well, Word of God says Galeem only needs information to create more puppet fighters; perhaps he created that one to get better information on how to command them and then disposed of it.
• It's stated that Joker's invitation to Ultimate was actually stolen, which leaves many to wonder who was the intended recipient. It's possible that the invitation was meant for Piranha Plant since it's separate from the Fighter's Pass and it was possible for it to be reimbursed rather than have an unlucky fighter miss out due to circumstances beyond their control.
  • Given the fact that of the DLC Fighters in Ultimate, only Piranha Plant has a Palutena's Guidance, development on Joker could have indeed made it so that Piranha Plant could not be completed in time for the base game. If one looks at the development of Ultimate in that way, Joker did quite literally steal Piranha Plant's invitation, but it all ended up working out in the end as both still get to be in Ultimate!
• Joker stealing K. Rool's crown and Wario's motorcycle looks like a typical "thief joke", but take a look at the characters' history. K. Rool is an insane tyrant who goes around trying to murder the Kongs and steal their banana hoard, while abusing his subjects (he's quick to invoke You Have Failed Me and Klubba even says that K. Rool "treats [the Kremlings] rotten" in DKC2). Wario is a greedy treasure hunter-turned-video game developer who steals and swindles others to make a quick buck. Joker isn't just stealing their stuff for fun, he's stealing their treasures to change their hearts!
  • K. Rool is a classic example of a ruler letting their power go to their head, so stealing his crown makes sense, but Wario's bike is more complicated. While calling Wario a hero is a stretch, he's shown to have a Hidden Heart of Gold in the Wario Land games and a few of the Mario spin-offs. But after his game company took off in the WarioWare series, his greed and selfishness became heavily flanderized. As for why Joker is stealing his motorcycle? WarioWare was when Wario got his now-signature biker look, suggesting that it's the cause of his distorted desires.
• Why does Joker summon Arsène and not one of his more powerful Personas when facing off against other Smash fighters? The same reason that the Demi-fiend as the Optional Boss of Digital Devil Saga uses low-tier Demons against the party: to him, they are simply a mid-tier Random Encounter. For Joker, using a Persona other than Arsène would skew the battle in his favor to the point of making it too easy. Case in point, Joker using his final Persona, Satanael, allowed him to kill a god, something that only a handful of characters within Smash can really boast about.
  • Alternatively, he may simply not have it yet, similar to how the Pokémon Trainer sticks to starters rather than using powerful endgame legendaries.
  • This could also be an interesting case of Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration. Sure, higher-level Personas look big and powerful, but Arsène's low base level means that he can be min-maxed using the gallows to specialize in specific stats at the expense of other, less useful ones, simply because he has more room to grow. It's also possible to give him most attacks via fusion, the gallows and skill cards. This all can make him effectively more powerful and optimized than many late-game Personas. Given that most of Arsène's attacks in Smash aren't things he learns on his own, Joker would have had to do all of these things to at least some extent, so him going further wouldn't be unreasonable.
• Why is Morgana present when Joker taunts? In Persona 5, you have a navigator for each palace, which is filled by Morgana or Futaba, depending on which dungeon the player is in. Considering the events of the game, Joker probably asked Morgana to be his navigator for the "palaces" of Smash, in order to keep Futaba — the sole non-combatant within the Phantom Thieves — safe from harm.
  • It also gives an explanation how the other Phantom Thieves can quickly get to Joker for his Final Smash, since Morgana can quickly leave the "palace" that Joker is presently in and rally them up to assist Joker.
  • Also considering in Persona 5, you can have Joker potentially going in all alone to palaces instead of having a team by his side, it references one of the palace exploring mechanics in the game, where you swap out team members while the other ones stay behind, but also close enough if backup is needed.
  • It could also be a reference to how Morgana never quite leaves Joker's side under any circumstance^note aside from one particular incident where he temporarily splits from the team due to a bruised ego. He remains active as a navigator for the first four Palaces even if he's not in the active party, and accompanies him throughout his civilian life in the real world.
• A lot of jokes were made about how Joker uses a gun in Smash when Fantasy Gun Control disallows Snake from using anything but grenades, mines, and rocket launchers. On the other hand, Joker's not using a real gun! In Persona 5, the Phantom Thieves bought their weapons from a vendor selling model guns which are no more deadly in the real world than an airsoft gun. In the Metaverse, however, Your Mind Makes It Real, so to someone within who doesn't know any better, a model gun is just as deadly as a real gun with live ammo.
  • Alternatively, while Nintendo and/or Sakurai may have prevented Snake from using guns when he was introduced in Brawl, they seem to have suddenly lightened up when it comes to newer characters like Bayonetta and Joker. In order words, they had a change of heart.
• In Joker's Classic Mode, he gets each fighter he defeats as an ally in his next fight. The story is called "Shadows". Shadows are representations of people's repressed feelings and desires. When a person's Shadow is defeated and accepted by the host, that person gains a Persona and can potentially join the party. So in other words, Joker helps people overcome their internal issues and gains them as allies, which is pretty much his modus operandi in his home series!
  • Incineroar (the last opponent in Joker's route before the final battle) doesn't join Joker to battle Master Hand/Crazy Hand. The Hands are a stand-in for the Final Boss of the game, Yaldabaoth — specifically, the final phase of his fight. That fight ended with Joker taking him out by himself, which sort of translates over to his Classic route ending in the same way. As for Incineroar, it could be a stand-in for Masayoshi Shido, the Big Bad of Persona 5, as both are Bare-Fisted Monk type fighters, and even his battle theme "Rivers in the Desert" plays.
• Of course Arsène is invincible: Personas were never targetable in Joker’s home series, either in combat or otherwise.
• If the player listens carefully, Galeem's battle theme only just uses the second verse of Lifelight ^note On that day, when the sky fell away, our world came to an end..., while Dharkon uses the third verse ^note These little sparks, cling onto life.... This most certainly signifies how they are both opposites and make up half of the Big Bad Ensemble. But, during the final three-way fight, both parts play... and the first verse^note Colors weave into a spire of flame..., which wasn't there in either previous version. But then the realization sets in; the final battle is a Mêlée à Trois between you, Galeem, and Dharkon, and two thirds of the song are associated with both the antagonists... and the last third is associated with the playable fighters themselves.
• Galeem's theme uses an all-female choir, while Dharkon's theme uses an all-male choir. In the final battle, when they're being battled together, it makes sense that the choir of their shared battle theme has both male and female vocals.
• As sad and unfortunate it is that the longtime tradition of collecting trophies has ended and been replaced with a new system of utilizing spirits, there's actually a lot of valid justification behind the decision. Imagine that Sakurai asked himself what was the point of making trophies and collecting them if it felt more of a tedious chore than a fun task and that the players would look at the trophies just once and never again, going on to literally collect dust for the rest of their existence. What would the answer be? The eventual realization is that trophies were a self-defeating effort, both for the programmers and the 3D modelers who put in so much time and effort to make them. So in essence, the spirit system not only provides a usable functionality for collectibles, like the stickers and badges, but frees up a lot of memory space that would've been reserved for the trophies to be better utilized for more important things like more characters and more stages.
• It may seem odd how in this Challenge Board image◊, Incineroar is chosen as the "Pokémon villain" rather than the much more accepted Mewtwo. Notice, however, that the image otherwise only contains either truly evil villains (Ganondorf and Ridley) or villains who, despite occasionally teaming up (Bowser and Wolf^note whose appearance in Ultimate is based on his depiction in Star Fox Zero, which reverts him back into a full-fledged villain like in Star Fox 64 due to being a Continuity Reboot) or even having friendly competitions with their enemies (Bowser again and K. Rool), almost always revert back to their villainous roles in following installments. Assuming the Mewtwo in Smash is the (first) one from Pokémon: The Series, it shares a distinction with the Kirby antagonists and Wario as being one of the few playable "villains" to have made a Heel–Face Turn and rarely (or never) reprises their antagonist role in following installments, thus making it plausible that Mewtwo simply refused to join a force with motives it no longer agrees with. In the case of Incineroar: unlike that specific Mewtwo, most (if not all) Pokémon species don't really have a sense of morality, only following orders from those who caught them. Thus, Incineroar would likely be more willing to join the forces of evil if only because it doesn't know any better. Additionally, Incineroar is straight-up based on a villain archetype (that being the Heel wrestler in Professional Wrestling) more so than most other Pokémon species, so it actually fits in better with the villains than Mewtwo in at least an aesthetic sense.
  • The simpler reason is Incineroar is a Dark-type Pokémon, which is known as the Evil type when translated from Japanese.
• So why are Malon and Ruto in their child forms instead of adult forms? Because they match Young Link and Ganondorf’s designs pre-seven years.
• The reveal trailers for both King K. Rool and Banjo & Kazooie take place in DK's house, and they both involve Bait-and-Switch. Of course they would, DK's house is located deep in the Jungle Hijinx.
• The TV scene at the beginning of King K. Rool's reveal trailer actually has a specific order; the villain character's debut, and thus their number, in Smash. First it's Mario vs Bowser at #13, then Link and Zelda vs Ganondorf at #23, then Kirby vs Meta Knight at #27, then Fox and Falco vs Wolf at #44, and finally Samus vs Ridley at #65. Banjo & Kazooie's announcement trailer continues this with an extra TV scene at the end between DK, Diddy, and K. Rool (based on the ending of his own reveal trailer), who is fighter number #67.
• If you recall the fact that Banjo & Kazooie had gotten lazy and out of shape from the lack of adventuring in the eight years after Banjo-Tooie, then either they got themselves back to normal for Ultimate or Nuts & Bolts didn't happen.
• Banjo & Kazooie's trailer starts off with the same montage of heroes fighting villains that preceded the King K. Rool trailer, with the addition of the Kongs and the King fighting. In a roundabout way, Banjo & Kazooie are antagonists to Nintendo as a whole, since they're representatives from Microsoft, one of Nintendo's biggest competitors on the console scene.
• Banjo & Kazooie's inclusion as DLC in Ultimate as well as the possibility of Spirits from other Rare Ltd. games gives the game's tagline of "Everyone Is Here!" a whole new meaning. As of now, every company who has ever been considered a part of Nintendo itself is now truly involved in Ultimate in some way. Everyone Is Here!
• This one brought to you by Ethan Mouta's Twitter:
  Guys, I just made the best discovery ever. In King K. Rool's trophy description [in 3DS/Wii U], it says "He probably could have been Donkey Kong's most trustworthy animal friend. Think he'll ever have a change of heart? Not likely." But look: we know they're friends now [as of Banjo & Kazooie's reveal trailer]. Did he have a change of heart? And the answer is yes! Joker stole his treasure [in his gameplay reveal trailer, "The Masked Rebel"]! King K. Rool had a change of heart!
  • If he did have a change of heart, the fact that the Kongs have accepted him as their friend is heartwarming on its own.
  • The Phantom Thieves only steal someone's heart if they're asked to by someone who has been hurt by that person's distorted desires. That makes it very possible that the Kongs themselves asked Joker to steal K. Rool's heart (as they would count as people who have been hurt by his desires).
• The end of Banjo and Kazooie's reveal trailer features a shot of many Nintendo characters cheering his big return, but one character sticks out a bit: Sonic, who is not a Nintendo character and was mostly absent during Banjo's heyday with no major games in that period. So why is he cheering with everyone else? Because in his case, he's greeting a fellow competitor from a previous crossover game.
  • Isabelle and Inkling, two characters that were introduced long after Banjo and Kazooie left the Nintendo family and quite a long time after the last game in their series (Nuts & Bolts in 2008), are cheering for them because they are regarded as Nintendo legends and thus are excited to be able of meeting them.
  • The real oddballs are Pac-Man and Mega Man, 3rd parties that have nothing to do with them. Mega Man is an icon associated with Nintendo like Simon, as for Pac Man, considering Pac-Man is from Bandai Namco, the co-developers of the game, he could be serving a role as a "co-host" of sorts for the series, thus explaining why he shows up to Banjo's "welcoming party".
  • Almost every series shown during that last freeze frame debuted on or before the N64 — remember that Animal Crossing was originally the Japan-only Animal Forest on the N64. The only exception is Inkling, who is counted as fighter 64 on the official list.
• Arsene not only serves as Joker's Super Mode, but also his Comeback Mechanic: the Rebellion Gauge fills up faster the closer Joker is to losing a match, which fits their literal personas as thieves quite well, as fighting back from the jaws of defeat allow them to literally steal away a win.
• Why do the protagonists of Dragon Quest go by such a generic name as Hero? Consider just how influential Dragon Quest is as a franchise in Japan. Its influence is to the point where any reference to an Eastern RPG or a Fantasy setting in Japan after Dragon Quest III will invoke tropes created by Dragon Quest. He isn't just a hero. He's THE Hero, the definitive article from which all other Eastern RPG heroes are derived.
  • It also makes sense on why he shares some of his traits with characters like Link or Marth, both of who had their series influenced by Dragon Quest. The Hero isn't copying them, they are the ones copying him.
• Hero being the one to rescue Link from the onslaught of Dharkon's minions in his trailer makes sense when you consider that Dragon Quest and The Legend of Zelda share a lot in common with each other as fantasy video game franchises. They're both medieval fantasy series that debuted in 1986 with an emphasis on adventure rather than story, they're centered around legendary heroes chosen by the goddesses who fight back against an evil demon king, a mythical sword is emblematic for both their franchises, and their iconic shields even somewhat resemble each other. It seems as though Hero was looking after his spiritual brother in that sense.
• Rather unusual for Joker's gun to be counted as a physical attack thanks to hitscan rather than a projectile which can be absorbed or reflected. However, consider that in a Joker mirror match, Arsene counters with Tetrakarn rather than Makarakarn if hit with the other Joker's gunshots. This exchange is actually accurate to how said skill works in Persona 5, as Tetrakarn reflects both Physical and Gun skills, which in turn makes the gunshots being physical attacks within Smash accurate as well to their source material.
• Final Fantasy VII received no representation at all in regards to Spirits that are found on the Spirit Board or in World of Light. Meaning that FFVII's world, as well as characters like Barret, Tifa, Aerith, and Sephiroth, weren't dusted by Galeem, and managed to survive his destruction of what seems to be almost everything.
  • Then Sephiroth showed up along with Mii costumes of the three. So yeah, that world's dead.
• The stage Spiral Mountain has a never-seen-before rotation with the mountain as the center. The reason for this mechanic could be because Banjo-Kazooie is one of the pioneers of the 3D Platforming genre. Even though other characters in Smash like Mario could be considered pioneers of the genre as well, Banjo and Kazooie were conceived as 3D Platforming characters first and foremost, and as Smash operates on a 2D plane, have a rotating stage is a good way to implement this aspect of the series.
  • There's also the simple fact that it's named Spiral Mountain. It's only fair the stage has some kind of circling mechanic when it's named after a line that keeps turning around towards the center. Still, the 3D platforming explanation only holds more water when you consider the gameplay of Super Smash Bros is already heavily influenced by 2D platformers, seen most obviously in its movement and stage layouts. Just as Banjo-Kazooie had one dimension more than their platforming predecessors, so too does their stage in a 2D platform brawler.
• The new remix of "Gobi's Valley" that plays on Spiral Mountain is done with a Surf Rock approach, which makes a lot of sense when you consider the history of that musical genre. Surf rock was pioneered by Dick Dale, a Lebanese-American who incorporated elements of Middle Eastern music into his songs (most obviously with his iconic cover of the Levantine folk song "Miserlou"). So it's natural that the Banjo-Kazooie song associated with the sandy Egyptian-style level would have a surf rock vibe.
• How does Marth know how many Master Hands they are facing? Fire Emblem games usually have a counter telling you how many enemies are in the battlefield.
• The spirit battle for the Wild Gunman uses the track Dillon's Rolling Western: The Last Ranger. While the track may have been chosen due to both games taking place in The Wild West, it could also be a reference to how in The Last Ranger, there are moments in the game where Dillon must partake in a Quick Draw with an ally in order to recruit them, in which he must wait for the right time to strike and making a move too early or not responding in time will get him shot, not unlike in Wild Gunman.
• The handling of the Swords of Justice in the Spirit Board seems to be deliberately invoking the Rookie Red Ranger trope. The spirit for Cobalion, Terrakion and Virizion is a three star Ace spirit. The newcomer Keldeo's spirit is merely two stars... until you upgrade him to his Resolute form, which makes him a four-star Legend that outranks the other three.
• Not only are Galeem and Dharkon counterparts to one another, the bosses under their control are counterparts to one another in some way:
  • Master Hand and Crazy Hand go without saying, both of them representing creativity and order for Master Hand and destruction and chaos for Crazy Hand.
  • Giga Bowser and Ganon both originated as characters created by Shigeru Miyamoto. They are also based on the main villains from two of Nintendo's biggest franchises.
  • Galleom and Marx are both characters created by Masahiro Sakurai himself. They also have a black hole motif; Marx uses it for his attacks while Galleom uses devices to create one to take areas to the Subspace.
  • Rathalos and Dracula are both third-party bosses. Their battles also work differently compared to the other bosses; Rathalos is the only boss where you can use specific items on it, while Dracula is a two-part battle.
• It makes some sense that Sans appears as a Mii Fighter costume instead of Sans actually appearing as another fighter, since Sans is a Lazy Bum as he only truly participates in combat if the player ROYALLY pisses him off by killing everybody in the game. So, Sans himself may not have any real motivation to participate in a fighting game himself.
  • Sans may not be participating because accepting a place on the roster would make the Undertale universe a "primary" universe, thus linking it to the universes of the other fighters through the World of Light. And if there's a path, any genocidal kid with a knife might find a way along it...
  • Additionally, Sans being a costume for the Mii Gunner is brilliant in that it ascribes to the kind of game Undertale is and how Sans himself fights during his boss fight^note Avoiding contact with the player lest he go down in one hit due to having the lowest HP and defenses of any monster and controlling the pace of the fight with moving bones and his Gaster Blasters. The Mii Gunner's wide array of projectiles effectively allows players who don the Sans costume to recreate the feel of the iconic boss fight and, subsequently, be able to give opponents a bad time.
  • However, if we are to assume that this is the Sans as opposed to a guy dressed as him, given his laziness and awareness of the fourth wall, it would totally make sense for him to use someone else's moveset.
• Why is Cuphead in Smash but no Mugman? The opening of his game and the show portray Mugman as the more reasonable of the two, while Cuphead is a Hot-Blooded Thrill Seeker.
• Vault Boy being in? Vault-Tec advertising themselves in the biggest fighting match out there.
• Bomberman being in could very well be for the same reasons Rex and Spring-Boy wanted to be in. They just wanted in on the game. That and Galeem and Dharkon are essentially magic versions of Buggler. Bomberman does fight evil after all.
• Sans is also in Deltarune, a game about darkness making rooms full of toys, computers, and such into worlds full of people and creatures. Toys coming to life has been Smash Bros.' Excuse Plot since day one.
  • Hell, Dharkon's ending and Sora's trailer has a similarity to the Roaring, before Sora shows up at least.
  When the LIGHT is subsumed by SHADOW
  When the FOUNTAINS fill the sky
  All will fall into CHAOS.
  The TITANS will take form from the FOUNTAINS
  And envelop the land in devastation.
  The surviving Darkners, crushed by the darkness
  Will slowly, one by one, turn into statues...
  Leaving the Lightners to fend for themselves.
  Lost eternally in an endless night...
• As noted by Smash fans who are well-versed in traditional fighting games like most of SNK's repertoire, the company itself has produced titles that helped codify many of the system mechanics and visual elements that many other fighting games — including Smash — make liberal use of. Within the context of Smash, we have: running, rolling, and sidestepping as movement and evading options, a rage mechanic, an elimination team battle mode, the idea of "inviting" fighters via an envelope marked with a red stamp, etc. Hell, even Captain Falcon's portrayal as an over-the-top fire-based brawler that speaks in Engrish and loves Calling Your Attacks — despite none of that having any canon basis at all in F-Zero — seems to have taken its fair share of inspiration from Terry himself. With how much Smash had been influenced by Sakurai's own background as a competitive fighting game player in the '90s, it seemed naturally fitting that he would have a say in picking a company and series that helped shape what Smash is today.
  • In fact, Sakurai himself had written in Famitsu about an incident he had while playing The King of Fighters '95 where he was trying to practice on the AI when an unknown human opponent started playing against him. He was absolutely curb-stomping this opponent... so much so that he thought it had been too easy. He took a peek to see who his opponent was, and it was a couple who had just wandered into the arcade on their date. He was ruining their date and their first experience with The King of Fighters '95 with how expertly he was playing. Sakurai left the arcade with a bad taste in his mouth, wondering about how to make a fighting game that anyone of any skill level could play. That idea would eventually become the first Super Smash Bros. Without The King of Fighters to serve as an antithesis, there might have been no Super Smash Bros. And without Fatal Fury and Terry Bogard, there would be no The King of Fighters. Super Smash Bros. could very well owe its own existence to Terry Bogard!
    • Terry making his Smash debut in Ultimate is all the more fitting due to its nature as a title where every returning fighter in Smash history is back for one more brawl. While he himself is still a newcomer to Smash as a whole, the concept of a Dream Match Game isn't new to him: SNK after all ended up created the Trope Namer for it! It's also a concept that his fellow fighting game compatriots are used too, thanks to titles like Street Fighter Alpha Anthology and the Tekken Tag Tournament games being their own equivalents to their respective series.
  • Terry's stage is an original design that takes elements from various stages from The King of Fighters, but note the iconography used for it. Unlike any other stage, the iconography it has is merged Super Smash Bros. & The King of Fighters logos. However, this stage makes complete sense when one realizes that The King of Fighters is a Massive Multiplayer Crossover Fighting Game series featuring video game characters just like Super Smash Bros. The two franchises are not that different from each other, and the stage where the two franchises intersect reflects that with a composite design between the two.
• This could be unintentional, but the fact that Banjo & Kazooie's moveset is mostly conventional compared to Joker summoning Arsène, the Hero's heavy use of the RNG, and Terry's fighting game inputs means that out of all the Fighter's Pass characters so far, they feel the most like additions made in Melee or Brawl, where the movesets hadn't gotten as experimental as Mega Man's expansive projectile game or Robin's breakable weapons. Appropriate, given that those games were nearer to the peak of their popularity and the golden years their fans remember so fondly.
• There was an Online Tourney called Heroes Vs. Villains, in which only heroic or villainous fighters could be selected. While it features only a handful of the playable protagonists, it notably has every playable antagonistic fighter... everyone except for Piranha Plant, which is a common enemy in the Mario franchise. However, given that games such as the Paper Mario series prove that the species associated with Bowser's Army are not Always Chaotic Evil, the same likely also applies to the Piranha Plants species, and considering that all the other "villain" characters are single individuals, its absence from the event could be because the Piranha Plant species as a whole is not inherently evil.
• Why are Bowser and King Dedede in the Light Realm unlike the other villains playable in Smash? Because they are the only villains to have shown heroic sides in their games. Bowser is an antihero in Super Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story and King Dedede is an antihero in most Kirby games. Even if you disregard that, Bowser isn't that bad in comparison to the others considering all he does is kidnap Peach, whereas Ganon and Ridley both have attempted genocide and King K. Rool attempted to starve out the Kongs.
• Why does Mementos make such a drastic change with certain music? Don’t forget, it’s the world made up by cognition. When the music plays, songs from the other games may give feelings of playing those games. Those songs are overwriting your cognition!
• Terry's Classic Mode involves things related to SNK. For example the battle with Palutena, Pit, and Dark Pit references Athena.
  • Another example is the heavyweight team battle. The first opponent is Bowser and the music that plays is Tarkun and Kitapy a.k.a. Brave Raiden. Bowser's attacks include a fire breath, a flying slam, and highly damaging dropkick. The wrestler known as Raiden/Big Bear has a similar moveset.
  • On the subject of Terry, take a look at his stage, King of Fighters Stadium, and its many, many cameos ranging from Andy and Joe to The King of Fighters main characters Kyo and Iori. While one can interpret it as Terry representing The King of Fighters as a whole, SNK is no stranger to having characters from their many games appearing as cameos in their crossovers, The King of Fighters included.
  • Going back to his classic mode, why is his set up as a 1 v 3 instead of a 3 v 3 to emulate The King of Fighters? Consider that one thing that SNK is also known for is the infamous SNK Boss Syndrome and you realize that this trope is inverted, you're the overpowered boss character against the three normal characters.
  • On the surface, his Final Boss encounter being a match against Ryu, Ken and another Terry could easily reference Capcom vs. SNK and be done with it. However, note the theme that plays in that battle: Art of Fighting Ver-230000000.0 from Fatal Fury Special, which plays during the True Final Boss fight against Ryo Sakazaki, SNK's own homage to the Street Fighter protagonists and one of the first instances of a Guest Fighter (albeit as an Optional Boss NPC) shown in a fighting game. The fight not only represents the last time Capcom and SNK formally clashed with each other, but also one of the key moments that led to the creation of The King of Fighters, and by extension, inspired Sakurai to create Smash.
  • Hilariously something funny comes up when you go through Terry's classic mode on 2 players, the 1 v 3 turns into a 2 v 3 but the team of 3 has to fight two characters simultaniously. If you decide to do two Terrys, you unintentionally reference a specific boss fight that does a similar thing. In The King of Fighters 2003 one of the sub-bosses is Chizuru Kagura, but her mirror powers allows her to fight alongside her decesed sister Maki Kagura. Because 2003 changed the team format into a tag team based system, this allows Chizuru and Maki to fight simultaniously and because of their illusion powers, it's hard to tell whose who.
• After defeating Dharkon for the first time, there's a cutscene that shows Dharkon and Galeem fighting each other to a standstill while the fighters watch. The fighters present are Samus, Pit, Kirby, Mario, Greninja, Sonic, Simon, Zelda, Fox and Bowser. There's another cutscene for when Galeem overpowers Dharkon and engulfs the world in light as Mario, Samus, Bowser, Fox, Greninja and Zelda look on helplessly. Might seem a little weird having these characters. Why not have Link with his fellow Nintendo heroes especially since Zelda is there. Why not have Mega Man with 3rd party crossover buddy Sonic? Why Greninja as the only Pokemon, but not Pikachu the mascot or fresh new face Incineroar? The characters in these cutscenes are required. Kirby is the default character since he survived Galeem's first onslaught, Mario is the first fighter you have to rescue, Fox blocks one of the buttons needed to enter the Temple of Light, which brings us to Simon and Pit. Simon is blocking another button to reach the temple's second floor and Pit is blocking a crystal that controls the light preventing you from crossing the bridge on the east side of the map. Once you cross the bridge, Samus blocks you from going anywhere. Bowser is automatically recruited when you defeat Giga Bowser, which is required along with defeating Galleom and Rathalos to even fight Galeem. In the Hyrule sub-map, Zelda's Triforce is one third of the key to fighting Ganon, who can't be reached until the Master Sword is used to dispel the darkness in the northern section which is blocked by Cloud and Sonic. Greninja blocks your way to Marx in the Mysterious Sub-Dimension. It wouldn't make much sense for a character to show up in those cutscenes if you didn't rescue them and since the developers don't know if you rescued every character, they put required characters in those cutscenes. Same reason why Marth, Sheik and Villager don't show up. Only one of them is required, but which one of them is decided by you.
• Many expected a fifth character from an outside studio for DLC 5. In a way, they got it: Three Houses was developed in large part by Koei Tecmo. It's a cheeky enough way of applying this trend if they were thinking this way.
• Many expected the final character to a character from Sony Interactive Entertainment, and in a way they did, but in not the way that expected. Sony was the international publisher of Final Fantasy VII, the European publisher of the first few Tekken and of the original Kingdom Hearts, as well as the publisher of the Playstation versions of Minecraft. Another thing worth highlighting that many third-party publishers departed from Nintendo to Playstation in the late-90s and 2000s due to both being easier to develop and reach a wider audience. Without the Playstation line of consoles, there would be no Metal Gear Solid, no Final Fantasy VII, no Persona, no Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and no Kingdom Hearts. Sony is indirectly responsible for bringing to life many of the third-party series represented în the game.
• The lance Areadbhar gives Byleth an advantage against sword users due to its superior range. The axe Aymr is quite risky to use against characters with counter moves due to its power and wind-up, and a lot of characters with counters use swords. The super armor Aymr grants during Byleth's down special can allow Byleth to counter another Byleth using Areadbhar. This represents the weapon triangle in most Fire Emblem games where lances beat swords, swords beat axes, and axes beat lances.
• Many on social media quickly realized that the reason why Bernadetta doesn't appear in the Garreg Mach stage or on the Spirit Board, despite being one of Three Houses' most popular characters, is that she's a Hikikomori, Nervous Wreck, and Shrinking Violet rolled up into one anxious ball ready to flee. If she wasn't already locked away in her room when the Smash cast arrived, she would have GTFO'd and locked herself in her room the moment they began fighting.
• A possible in-universe explanation for Fighters Pass Volume 2 having six fighters instead of five is that another invitation was mailed to the original recipient who had their invitation stolen by Joker.^note Assuming, of course, that said original recipient wasn't Piranha Plant, as postulated above.
• Mario's Classic Mode route has him fighting the Koopalings with Larry, Morton, and Wendy as the first three, and when you knock any of them out, the remaining Koopalings come out in the order of Iggy, Roy, Lemmy, Ludwig, and Bowser Jr. This is the order that Mario fought them in SMB3, followed a couple of decades later by Bowser Jr. Yoshi's Classic Mode route has them in a different order. Iggy, Morton, and Lemmy are the first three Koopalings, followed by Ludwig, Roy, Wendy, and Larry. This is the order they were fought in SMW, Yoshi's debut. Peach's classic mode meanwhile has Lemmy, Morton, and Larry as the first three, with Wendy, Iggy, Roy, and Ludwig following, which was the order in which they were fought in their most recent mainline game appearance, NSMBU.
• Of course Sothis would force Byleth into Smash. She has no corporal body to call her own, since she's dead in the physical sense.
• When female Byleth is flying during the reveal trailer, she heads off to the horizon, with an orange sky. She’s soaring away into the dawn.
• Dr. Mario's Classic Mode Route has him fighting a trio of red, blue, and yellow opponents to represent the viruses and mega vitamins. Two of the trios are Wii Fit Trainer and Wario. They might look out of place as the other opponents are species. But they do fit in Dr. Mario's classic mode in different ways. Wii Fit Trainer keeps people physically healthy while Dr. Mario helps anybody whose physical health has declined due to sickness. As for Wario, remember Dr. Mario 64? That game had a story mode where you can choose between Dr. Mario or Wario and the True Final Boss is a powered up version of the other character.
• Yoshi's Classic Mode congratulations picture has Olimar in it. Notice the soccer ball and how the Yoshis are divided in two groups? They're playing soccer and Olimar is the referee since he has a whistle.
• The "Everyone is here!" tagline, combined with the ability to play as Master Hand in World of Light, becomes much more meaningful when you remember/find out that you could play as Master Hand in Melee. When they said everyone was here, they meant everyone.
• Much is made of how light Ridley is in Ultimate. While he's by no means a lightweight, he's still nowhere near as heavy as you'd expect — Samus (with the suit on) is heavier than him. Based on actual biology, however, this actually makes a modicum of sense. In order to fly, you need to be very light compared to your size. Heck, simply being much bigger than an elephant requires you to be light in order to support yourself. Sauropods could only support their necks because their bones were hollow. T. rex was about 40 feet long, yet it (probably) was only about the weight of an elephant. Being as big as he is whilst being able to fly, Ridley almost definitely has bones that are hollower than a politician's promises. On top of this, he's almost emaciated, making him even lighter compared to his size. So while nobody would bat an eye at a space dragon being a superheavyweight, and it might not make sense for him to be that "light"... it definitely makes sense that he's lighter than you'd expect. Also, if you take weight to be more of an indicator of defenses (which is the easiest way to make Mewtwo's weight make sense), his emaciation causes his "low" weight to make even more sense, seeing as he doesn't look too durable.
• It would make sense Min Min was chosen to represent ARMS. In addition to being the official winner of the Party Crash Bash Tournament, she has unique attacks such as a divekick for her down aerial, a flip kick up smash that reflect projectiles like Ness and Lucas' forward smashes, the ability to buff up her left ARM after landing a throw, and of course her signature dragon left ARM that can shoot lasers. This is contrast to Spring Man who would have been derided as a "Little Mac with a longer reach". To put it simply, Min Min represents ARMS as a whole while still being a unique enough character on her own, even in the game she came from.
• Round #6 of the Mii Fighter Costumes has a connection to Min Min. Ninjara, obviously. Tekken is a 3D Fighting game. Splatoon and ARMS are from the eighth generation of Consoles. Fallout has a game titled Fallout 76, and Min Min is fighter #76.
• Round #6 of the Mii Fighter costumes features both Callie and Marie, with Marie being a Mii Gunner while Callie being a Mii Brawler. This may seem odd for Callie to not be like her sister (actually cousin) and use a splattershot, but considering their playstyles it actually makes sense. Marie's weapon of choice is a Charger, a weapon that encourages to avoid direct confrontation while rewarding you with great power and range, and Callie's is a Roller, a weapon used to charge the battlefield and mow down opponents with range being the big issue. Of course Callie's Mii Costume would be the one with the more aggressive fighting style with little to no ranged options.
• The fighters that don't fight the Hands at the end of their Classic Mode.
  • Mario fights Bowser then Giga Bowser, because they're arch-enemies.
  • Captain Falcon's route is called "Up Close and Personal", Giga Bowser engages in close range combat as he only has one projectile (his fire breath) and can move surprisingly fast for a giant turtle.
  • Yoshi and Marth have similar routes dealing with dragon-like reptiles (and in Marth's case, Miis wearing dragon costumes) and end with another dragon in the form of Rathalos. Yoshi goes further given that while he's classified as a dinosaur, there are times when Nintendo has also labeled him a dragon.
  • Duck Hunt deals with animals and Rathalos is the closest to a normal animal of the 6 regular World of Light bosses.
  • Bowser fights Rathalos during his route as similar to Yoshi, he's a dragon fighting another dragon. Could also be a reference to Odyssey where Mario and Cappy can capture a realistic T-Rex. His real final boss is Mario and when defeated turns into Metal Mario. This is, effectively, Mario's route reversed.
  • Piranha Plant's route has it fighting the other newcomers and barring DLC, Rathalos is part of the newest franchise to join Smash.
  • Similar to Bowser, Hero fights Rathalos during his route rather than at the end. Dragon Quest is a typical RPG in a medieval setting, making Rathalos the perfect boss in Hero's route.
  • Mega Man encounters Galleom during his route, as he is a robot fighting another robot and is well experienced in defeating destructive robots (such as the Guts Tank). His real final boss is Dr. Mario followed by Mewtwo. Dr. Mario represents Wily while Mewtwo is the alien from the end of Mega Man 2.
  • Likewise, R.O.B. is also a robot and they both made their debut in Brawl and worked for the Subspace Army. However, R.O.B. is a foil to Galleom as R.O.B.'s employment was unwilling while Galleom didn't seem to have any refusal and R.O.B. joined the heroes while Galleom has remained an antagonist.
  • Snake is a special ops agent and takes down giant doomsday robots every week, so fighting Galleom is something he's used to. The two also made their Smash-series debuts in the same game. Additionally, Galleom's built-in Subspace Bomb essentially makes him a Metal Gear with free will.
  • Wolf's route has him reunite with other fighters who were cut after Brawl. Galleom had been cut from 3DS/Wii U.
  • King K. Rool along with his Kremling Krew are an industrial group and use heavy machines, including robots.
  • Dark Pit's route has him fighting opponents who were man made or otherwise, not born through natural means, like himself. As a robot, someone (most likely Tabuu) built Galleom.
  • Min Min fights Galleom as a reference to Hedlok.
  • Ganon is fought by Link, Zelda, Young Link, and Toon Link. Quite simple to figure out as he's the villain of their series.
  • Simon and Richter fight Dracula, as they're vampire hunters and they're all from the same series.
  • Luigi's route is nightmares and a nod to his skills as an unwilling amateur ghost hunter. It was also foreshadowed during Simon and Richter's trailer where he's wandering Dracula's Castle as preparing him for Luigi's Mansion 3.
  • Pac-Man can eat ghosts, so a vampire shouldn't be too different. He's also the oldest boss character in the game, coinciding with Pac-Man's route centering on classic characters (this is also why the 8-bit "Dwelling of Doom" track is used for his battle).
  • Kirby fights Marx because much like Mario, the Zelda characters, and the Belmonts above, he's fighting someone from the same series.
  • Rosalina & Luma travel through space, much like Kirby in his battle against Marx in Super Star and the Ultra remake.
  • The Inklings have colorful ink for their turf wars carrying over to their route. Marx is the most colorful with his wings.
  • Bayonetta fights a giant Palutena since she's an angel hunter and Palutena is a goddess commanding angels.
  • Jigglypuff's route has her fighting the original 12 fighters from the first game with giant Donkey Kong as the boss. Giant Donkey Kong fits the route better as Master Hand has always been the boss of Classic Mode.
  • Terry's final fight is 1-against-3 with Ryu, Ken, and another Terry. Basically an inversion of the infamous and dreaded SNK Boss.
  • Kazuya's technically the final boss of Tekken 2, thus he repeats the pattern in his own route.
• In Steve's reveal trailer, why is it Mario out of all characters who suffers the Amusing Injuries? Well, consider that Mario has been breaking blocks with his fists for 35 years now. Steve is indisputably lord and master of all things blocky, and his block subjects want their revenge!
  • It does hold some water as to why Mario is the Butt-Monkey up until Sora shows up. The original Smash Bros. 64 trailer featured Mario, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, and Pikachu skipping through a field of flowers, but then it all goes south when Mario kicked Yoshi in the shins. Meaning all of this technically started with him. It's only when Mario welcomes the last fighter with open arms does he get a break.
• One might wonder why Kirby just turns blocky instead of looking like Steve. That's because it isn't just Steve being represented, because with the Alex, Enderman, and Zombie costumes, it's more of a representation of Minecraft as a whole. Plus, Steve is only the default player character that can be customized, meaning he's more of a blank slate, so Kirby turning blocky is a result of him changing his avatar to suit the world of Minecraft.
• Of all characters, Steve and his ilk have the worst jumping height. Of course they would; they have no knees. Getting anything close to a decent jump without bending your knees is downright impossible.
  • Another note is that they don't tumble while being launched. This is again keeping true to Minecraft's roots.
• While there's little denial on Sephiroth's own power, it does look strange that he was able to one-shot Galeem, who had previously erased the universe, in his reveal trailer. However, there are some things to note: many fighters are in the trailer, not just Kirby (who doesn't even appear) and they're all clearly beaten by Galeem, who was about to unleash a powerful attack and, unlike the beginning cutscene of World of Light, didn't absorb his Master Hand puppets to increase his attack tenfold. This, as well as the lack of Dharkon's presence, may indicate that the trailer takes place in an alternate take of the Light Ending, where after Dharkon's death, Galeem was beaten down enough that he had to deal with the fighters slowly rather than in one shot, and Sephiroth took the advantage to take a cheap shot once Galeem was distracted enough.
  • Another thing to note is Galeem seemed to be prepping at least a weaker version of his World-Wrecking Wave. The fact he needs to absorb his entire army to actually use it implies that it takes all of Galeem's power to pull off on top of the power his army had. It'd make sense if Galeem had to dump all his power into it that Galeem is vulnerable while charging even a watered down version.
• One clever bit of Foreshadowing: during Sephiroth's trailer, we see a shot of Pit (an angel) staring at Galeem and the armada of Master Hands. Moments later, all are wiped out in a single strike by Sephiroth, whose most well-known nom de guerre and theme is called "One Winged Angel".
  • Additionally, one of the first characters shown in the trailer is the Hero, who belongs to the same company as Sephiroth. The only other character who could provide Foreshadowing in this manner would be Cloud, the other Square Enix rep, but because he hails from the same game as Sephiroth, his appearance would have possibly spoiled the surprise too early, which is why he only appears after Sephiroth reveals himself.
• A clever parallel to Sephiroth comes in the form of the Hero, who was the first DLC newcomer for Square Enix, the third fighter overall of the first DLC wave for Ultimate, and the one whose reveal trailer also prominently features World of Light. In the Hero's case, he first appears by fending off Dharkon's forces to protect Link. Sephiroth follows this same formula, being Square's second DLC newcomer and the third overall for the second DLC wave, but for his trailer, Galeem is featured instead of Dharkon.
• Pyra and Mythra being able to fight without Rex. Though not wholly representative of their home game's mechanics, it HAS been shown multiple times in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 that a strong-enough Blade is perfectly capable of fighting on their own, even when their Driver is far away. And given that the Aegis is the strongest Blade, it stands within reason that they are capable of performing such a feat here. Plus, with Rex being nearby at all times with their up taunts and Final Smashes, the issue of distance is mitigated.
  • There actually IS some credence for Pyra and Mythra to be fighting by themselves from a gameplay perspective when one remembers the Torna - The Golden Country expansion pack. In it, Blades take a more proactive role in combat alongside their Driver and can switch in whenever necessary, with Mythra fighting alongside her Driver Addam while using her own weapon. Additionally, Mythra's special moves in Smash (Lightning Buster, Photon Edge, and Ray of Punishment) are the arts that she was capable of using when she was the Vanguard.
• In Terry's trailer, you see many SNK characters vying for the Smash invitation, but why? It's the same way The King of Fighters chooses its roster, through an invitation for the tournament.
• Why did Min Min and Pyra/Mythra join the playable roster despite being spirits in the base game? The real reason is fan demand and Sakurai himself admitting he would've added a Xenoblade Chronicles 2 rep and an ARMS rep to the base game roster were it not for Ultimate being too far along in development. The meta reason is likely the sheer power of will these two (technically three) combatants had to un-spirit themselves.
• It turns out that Sonic's Spin-Dash can completely ignore Mythra's Foresight. While this could be a programming oversight, there is canon information in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 that supports it being completely intentional. In Tantal, Jin's boss fight demonstrates that even if Mythra can see an attack coming, Foresight won't help her if the attack is coming faster than she (or Rex) can physically react to it, such as at the speed of light. Multiple Sonic games establish that he can move at or faster than light speed (like in Sonic Colors where he almost outran a black hole), so if anyone in the cast can move fast enough to No-Sell Foresight like Jin could, it's Sonic.
  • The possibility of this being intentional has gotten incredibly likely, as it has not been patched out like any bugs or glitches.
• In Megaman's Final Smash we have all 5 unique Mega Men that come after him arrive to aid him in one giant attack. The reason we don't see a version from the ZX and ZX Advent games is because the Living MacGuffin used by the main character already contains the spirit of X, who is present for the Final Smash. Zero isn't present because he never used Mega Man as a title. The other Mega Men in the franchise are derivatives or adaptations of these core 5.
  • Doubles as Heartwarming, but X looks the most angry out of all the Mega Man incarnations during the Final Smash. Why? Because Mega Man from the Classic Series is his brother.
• Pyra and Mythra using their respective Blade Arts in Torna or Blade Specials in the main game as their Special moves in Ultimate makes sense. They're now fully trusting Rex after the events of the base game, so they're no longer holding back and because Ultimate has so many strong opponents, they have no choice but to use their full power.
• Kazuya indulging in the great Mishima tradition of throwing people off cliffs in his trailer makes perfect sense in the context of Smash, since the most effective way of beating someone in Smash is to...knock them off the stage.
• While Ganondorf and Kirby are the exceptions due to Breath of the Wild 2 due to come out within 2022 and Kirby being able to fly out, three of the people shown being thrown off the cliff (Captain Falcon, Pit, Min Min) are those who haven't had a new game or sequel in years.
• Some of the characters that Kazuya throws off can also refer to the various Tekken characters he has fought against;
  • Ganondorf is obviously a stand in for his father Heihachi Mishima.
  • Captain Falcon can be a stand-in for Paul Phoenix, a man known for his powerful punches.
  • Pit can be a call back to Angel, the alternate costume for Devil in Tekken 2.
  • Min Min can be a stand in for Ling Xiaoyu, a Chinese martial artist who is infatuated with his son Jin.
  • Marth can be a reference to Yoshimitsu, a mysterious character who wields a sword, whose ancestor is also apart of the Soul series of games, one of which includes Link and Heihachi as guest characters.
• Some of the characters Kazuya fights during the gameplay parts of his trailer may also be a reference to other Tekken characters, too.
  • The green-colored Inkling, thanks to his skull bandana, may be a reference to Bryan Fury.
  • The black-clad Zero Suit Samus he attacks mere moments later may also be a reference to Nina Williams.
• Lucario is fought as one of the opponents in Kazuya's Classic Mode route, and while it may simply be there to reference its appearance as the poster character of a Pokémon spin-off inspired by Tekken, it's absolutely one of the most apt opponents Kazuya can fight; Lucario is a Fighting/Steel-type Pokémon, and one of the elements that make up steel is iron. Combined with many of its martial arts-inspired moves, Lucario is the literal embodiment of someone who has an "iron fist", which when translated to Japanese gives us "tekken".
• Many of Kazuya's attacks do high shield damage, in addition to the final hit of his 10 Hit combo being an unblockable attack. Fittingly enough, this all comes from the representative of a series that makes use of unblockable attacks very frequently although they are slow and easily telegraphed.
• Behind Galeem and Dharkon, the Spirit with the highest base power out of any others is Galacta Knight. And why is this the case? ...Because, based on Meta Knight's wish to Nova, Galacta Knight is the strongest warrior in the entire galaxy. And if this game is any indication, possibly the entire multiverse.
• Of course Capcom, the company with a big penchant for epic crossovers, would be one of the companies with the highest amount of contributions to the Smash roster.
• The final fighter trailer for the game starts exactly how the first fighter trailer ended: the Inkling Girl staring at the fiery Smash logo in awe.
• With the revelation that Sora was the true winner of the Smash for 3DS/Wii U ballot, it also casts a new context on why Ultimate had a “literal light vs literal darkness” approach to its theme song and story- because that’s one of the Kingdom Hearts series' big themes! Sakurai partially themed the game in anticipation of Sora’s arrival.
  • It also helps when you considered Smash for 3DS/Wii U's very last fighter; Bayonetta, who is a fighter affiliated with darkness.
• It's shown that Sora's weight is among the lightest of all fighters, and he has a strong affinity for aerial combos and maneuverability. These traits, while also similar to his source games, may be a play on how Sora's name is the Japanese word for "sky."
• Sora’s trailer begins with the flaming symbol from the initial teaser dying out, and all the fighters turned back into lifeless trophies. However, one little ember remains, which revives Mario from his trophy form and turns into a Keyblade to summon Sora, and subsequently revive the other fighters in a shower of light. “Deep down, there’s a light that never goes out!”
  • Adding to this, listen to the lyrics of “Lifelight” again, and it adds to the thematics of Sora’s reveal. “Bear this torch against the cold of the night. Search your soul and reawaken the undying light.”
  • Furthermore, Mario is Nintendo's company mascot and superficially resembles Mickey Mouse. In Sora's trailer, he acts as the Big Good and briefly wields the Keyblade to summon Sora and help awaken the other fighters from darkness. He's basically filling in for King Mickey!
  • There's a good reason the Keyblade (initially) manifests as a ball of fire for Mario: Fire(balls) is one of Mario's defining elements in his games, if not THE defining element. It appeared as a form he was familiar with, and one he could easily wield in place of the Keyblade's regular form.
  • The trophies are all in the same boring, static, neutral pose, and are also notably extremely detailed, looking like real collector statues at times. This makes them feel much more like a collector's display than children's toys. If you follow the "child growing up" interpretation of the Smash framing device, it's easy to interpret this as the trophies' owner (now an adult) being forced to abandon their imagination and face the bleakness of real life, possibly even alluding to Sakurai himself having to do so.
  • And who better to reignite that childlike wonder and imagination than a kid at heart like Sora? Or how the one to summon him is Mario, the most famous video game character of all time, considered a Sacred Cow who even the most jaded and cynical grown-ups are likely to retain a soft spot for. One can imagine the trophies' owner as, say, an office worker being forced to devote all their time, energy and headspace to their Soul-Crushing Desk Job, only for their oldest friend Mario to tap into their imagination to beg them to play with the trophies and give them life one last time with the help of his newest friend Sora, re-igniting all the happy childhood memories they had with these characters.
  • Given the world of Smash is one big tournament, one could interpret the bonfire logo's use in the trailers as part of it. Inkling's trailer has the logo lit for the first time after some eyecatching spectacle and the gathering of other competitors, akin to the Olympic Torch being lit during opening ceremonies. Sora's trailer, marking the end of development on Ultimate, instead has the fire go out as in closing ceremonies, as well as ending the game on a triumphant, anticipatory note for what's coming next. Just because the fire is gone doesn't mean the fighters aren't gearing up for the next battle, just as the athletes keep on in their respective sports long after the torch goes out.
  • Interestingly, Sora's full trailer doesn't feature any third-party characters in cinematics or gameplay footage outside of Cloud and Sephiroth, whom he's interacted with in his home series. Additionally, the three third-party stages shown (aside from Hollow Bastion) are the Umbra Clock Tower from Bayonetta 2 (which Nintendo funded and partially owns), Spiral Mountain from Banjo-Kazooie (which Nintendo used to own), and Yggdrasil's Altar from Dragon Quest XI (which is another Square Enix franchise). This might seem odd at first, given how Ultimate has been described as gaming's biggest crossover, but it fits when one considers how Nintendo is often compared to Disney, for better or worse. Sora's home series is about various Disney properties crossing over, and now Sora gets to interact with the characters owned by the video game company most compared to Disney.
• Sora's Final Smash, Sealing the Keyhole, is a brilliant little note of finality to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as a whole. He shuts a Smash-themed door to Kingdom Hearts, and locks the door with the Keyblade — in other words, Sora closes the door on the game as his final move.
• The ranks of all the Kingdom Hearts spirits does make sense when you think about it.
  • Kairi is a Novice spirit. She has the least experience fighting out of everyone and as of the most recent game, is still training to use a Keyblade. She's also the most important person for Sora so of course it would be easy so they can reunite early.
  • The Advanced spirits are Axel, Xion, Terra, and Ventus. Terra and Ventus have been using their Keyblades for awhile but they are not ready to become Keyblade Masters yet. Axel has started to use his Keyblade once he became whole but he has enough experience fighting to keep up with Terra and Ventus. Meanwhile, Xion is made from Sora's memories so she would have some knowledge on how to use a Keyblade, even if she doesn't know how to comprehend it.
  • Riku and Aqua are Ace spirits. Both of them are deemed Keyblade Masters who both went through hell before coming back stronger than before. Both of their appearances also leads to revelations about the history of the realms, for Riku, Darkness is not inherently evil, and for Aqua, Master Xehanort's plan began long before the events of the first game even started.
  • The Legend class spirit is none other than Roxas, someone who took a long time for Sora to even discover who he is. As Roxas is Sora's nobody, it would make sense that the most dangerous person to encounter is basically yourself. Add to the fact that dual-wielding Roxas is generally considered one of the most dangerous warriors in the franchise, unnerving even Xemnas himself, with matching Gameplay and Story Integration in Kingdom Hearts III.
• When you think about it, Mario was the perfect character to open the keyhole that revealed Sora, after all, he used to go through secret keyhole gates using large keys before.
• Take a look at who Sora is next to on the banner art reveal. The King of Evil sounds pretty similar to "The Mistress of All Evil," and on his left is a dark counterpart to the hero.
  • Continuing the themes of light and dark that accompany, the last four characters unintentionally follow this trend. The first is one of the darkest villains of all time, followed by a literal blade of light, who is then followed up by an actual devil, ending with one of the destined pieces of light.
• As this tweet points out, Sora's trailer lines up pretty well with the story told by Kairi's grandma.
• While any explicit references to Donald and Goofy have been removed, Kingdom Hearts fans have taken notice of one thing: Two of Sora's alternate colors are his Valor and Wisdom Drive forms from Kingdom Hearts II. How does he achieve these forms? By fusing with Goofy and Donald respectively. His partners are in the game after all!
• When copying Sora, Kirby, notably, doesn't copy the Kingdom Key, instead he wields a "Keyblade" made of the corresponding magic he uses. In the Kingdom Hearts canon, the only people who can wield a Keyblade are those given the ability to do so by a Keyblade Master (with Sora being the only real exception in canon, and even he was still "chosen" by something else.) Kirby, of course, was never chosen to wield a Keyblade.
• Likewise, Mario never actually touches the Keyblade, the ember he throws doesn't transform into the Keyblade until after it leaves his hands.
• The first Challenger Pack features Joker, someone who operates from the darkness and "steals hearts", and the last features Sora, someone who brings light to hearts that have fallen into darkness.
• All but two DLC stages feature numerous cameos from their franchises (Mementos features the Phantom Thieves; Yggdrasil's Alter features Dragon Quest creatures like Slimes; Spiral Mountain features Banjo and Kazooie's friends, and a few enemies; KOF Stadium has a lot of SNK characters; Garreg Mach Monastery features a lot of Byleth's companions; Spring Stadium has screens depicting many ARMS fighters; Minecraft World has Villagers and mobs; Alrest features Pyra/Mythra's friends; and Mishima Dojo has Heihachi), with the only exceptions being Sephiroth and Sora. The reason for this?
  • Sephiroth's stage does have AVALANCHE's ship, but you never see anyone there in person. Sephiroth is a loathed monster that only someone as detached from reality as Professor Hojo would support, and Hojo certainly isn't doing it out of love. The DLC trailers make a point of the fighters' friends cheering them on, but Sephiroth doesn't have any. Hell, the fact that you see AVALANCHE's ship flying to prevent his meteor basically means in his own stage, the people in the background are rooting and fighting against Sephiroth.
  • Sora's stage is pretty empty, despite him being a Magnetic Hero, but a recurring theme in Kingdom Hearts is that your friends are with you even if you're worlds apart. Sora may not be alone despite his stage seeming hollow. The fact that his stage turns into someone's Heart near the end suggests that, yes, Sora's friends are with him here. Hell, depending on how far you wanna go with this, their Hearts even feature Namine, Saix, snd even Ansem, Xemnas, Xehanort, and Vanitas as well.
  • This also applies to Kazuya, a man who's become so monstrous that nobody, not even his own son, would come to support him. The only person who'd even come to see his fights is his own Archnemesis Dad, and even then, it's not out of support, it's out of sadistic amusement.
  • Gruntilda showing up in Spiral Mountain and not bothering to attack Banjo, Kazooie, or Tooty also applies to this. She has a habit of prioritizing showmanship over actually finishing her evil plans. She set up a game show with her mortal enemies after all. It's possible she took to mocking them over actually killing them once their backs were turned. Or maybe since Banjo-Kazooie has No Fourth Wall, she knows she can't really kill them in a game where everyone is Made of Iron and can shake off getting impaled, shot, stabbed, burnt, etc.
• Sora's 5th alternate costume lets him take on his physical form in Timeless River. The black & white nature of the costume can be interpreted as not a representation of the Kingdom Hearts franchise but represents the early days of Disney animation.
  • By extension, including that skin means a celebration of all animation that was started BECAUSE of Steamboat Willie, including Ultimate's own animations!
• When Death harvests Luigi's soul, it's like the ones Soma Cruz can get. Specifically a Guardian Soul. One of the Guardian Souls Soma could collect was Persephone, who's Soul could allow Soma to absorb enemy's HP with a vacuum. Luigi himself brought a vacuum to this monster-fight.
• Why is Rathalos an assist trophy as well as a boss? Because Ultimate was released after Monster Hunter: Stories, where Rathalos can fight alongside humans as well as against them.
• It's no secret that Tingle isn't popular in America, but the Tingle that has a Spirit here is from Majora's Mask, where Tingle was arguably more tolerable to people in the West, compared to how he acts in Wind Waker. Hence it'd be easier for players to want to save him.
• Ness' Father is a Legend Spirit despite being unseen. Why? Well, it's implied he's Ninten years later, and Ninten's a Legend Spirit as well.
  • Paula also gets a Legend Spirit. Makes sense, she's actually the one who defeated Giygas.
• Why is Tooty shown running around in Spiral Mountain? It may be a reference to the opening cutscene but given Tooty's absence from the rest of the series that came after the first game, it could be that Tooty is returning home from wherever she disappeared off to, and just in time to cheer her brother and friend on.
• Why are Raiden and Heihachi Legend Spirits that are difficult to reach (One can only be summoned and the other is the Final Boss of a DLC Spirit Board)? They're on-par with the Smash fighters themselves. Naturally, they'd be difficult for the fighters to get because Heihachi and Raiden are both one of the fighters in a sense. Hell, they fought a giant Eldritch Abomination that corrupts fighters in that game too. No wonder they'd be so valuable.
  • Assuming these two were among Galeem's victims, the reason they aren't in Adventure Mode may be that Galeem or Dharkon hid them and any other All-Stars that could've gotten through because they had enough issues with the fighters. Having Solid Snake against you is bad enough, have a cyborg-ninja Solid Snake with a Superpowered Evil Side hunting you down is even worse, let alone having two members of the Mishima family when one of them is plenty power-hungry and bloodthirsty on his own. And that's not getting into the fact that that game's roster also had Kratos and Zeus.
• As much as he wants to crush Cloud, Sephiroth showing up may have actually given Cloud all he needs. As when Sephiroth shows up, so does a Spirit Board full of Cloud's missing allies.
  • Alternatively, going by the bit above about Sephiroth's stage, they followed Sephiroth there to help Cloud against him.
• Why does Sonic manage to send Mario to Minecraft? Both Mario and Sonic have done official crossovers with Minecraft before. Mario characters appeared as costumes in the Wii U version of Minecraft and Sonic has an official mod of it now.
  • Similarly, Mario being able to summon Sora. Mario has met Square Enix characters, specifically Final Fantasy before in Mario Basketball 3on3 and Sports Mix, and his arch-enemy appeared in Wreck-It Ralph (Mario himself was even mentioned to be in that universe), and Ralph appeared as one of Sora's summons. Meaning Mario was indeed connected to the Kingdom Hearts universe and could call Sora in.
  • Link had a Death by Cameo in a Final Fantasy, thus linking him to Square Enix as well, Dragon Quest included, so it's fitting that he'd be there when the Heroes show up.
  • DK, Diddy, and K. Rool being there when Banjo and Kazooie show up is obvious, seeing as they're all Rare characters, but Diddy being there is especially notable, because Banjo actually made his debut as one of Diddy's friends in Diddy Kong Racing.
• When discussing why Kazuya was chosen and not Heihachi for their Tekken character, Sakurai had stated that Kazuya's devil powers had given him an edge as it allows Kazuya to have more access to abilities more fitting to a platform based fighter that Smash is. But of course that begs the question, why not Jin? He also possesses the same devil gene powers as Kazuya, what gave the father the edge that the son didn't? Quite frankly it comes down to preference, not of Sakurai's preference, but Kazuya and Jin's. Jin rebels against his heritage and despises his devil gene. Hell, the boy enacted World War III in the Tekken universe just to eliminate it. No more is this obvious than the fact that Jin and Devil Jin are always considered separate characters with their own moveset (Devil Jin's moveset is based on Jin from Tekken 3 after Jin unlearned the Mishima style in Tekken 4 to rebel against his bloodline). While he can use it when he needs to, he would rather not have to use it given the choice although by the time of Tekken 8, he's becoming less reluctant (one can only theorize that Jin would be the next Tekken representative if we get another game). Kazuya on the other hand has no qualms against using it, if he needs that extra edge to defeat his opponent, he won't hesitate to use his devil gene if it gives him the victory he seeks.
• The DLC fighters showing up in the story mode out of nowhere seems odd, but so does Galeem and Dharkon returning in the trailers. If you look at some of the trailers, you can see a bit of a hidden story. First, you have the light-hearted trailers where a character shows up either invited (Banjo, Kazooie, Terry, Byleth, Min Min, Pyra, Mythra), or not (Piranha Plant, Joker, Steve), which could be interpreted as the new fighters being called in for help or arriving Late to the Tragedy. The Hero's trailer shows Dharkon controlling more Puppet Fighters, and the Hero saves Link from them, lending credence to this. Byleth's trailer even says joining Smash consumes even the darkness itself. Then Galeem shows up, only to get killed by Sephiroth, possibly for good, leaving only Dharkon and Sephiroth as the fighters' big threats. Cue Kazuya, who shows up and makes things worse by cutting down the roster, probably not even realizing he's dooming everyone until it's too late. Then in the final trailer, darkness consumes the world, and the roster turns into trophies, Sephiroth and likely Kazuya included, indicating that Dharkon has won. Then Mario calls in Sora, who revives everyone, nullifying Dharkon's Total Party Kill. A kid who fights darkness regularly is now helping the fighters, and Sephiroth seems to finally be on their side, given how he makes no efforts to kill or hurt them in that trailer, and the same can likely be said for Kazuya. Galeem's time ran out, and Dharkon will soon be joining him.
• Mythra, a Blade has a costume based off of Nia, a driver. while it's just a simple recolor based off of a beloved character and it's there to compliment Pyra's Gormotti hoodie inspired costume; It makes sense if you have made it very far in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 when you later learn that Nia herself was a Blade before becoming a Driver. Makes it even more hilarious when learning in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 where the Aegis sisters and Nia all had children with Rex.
• It seems odd that Joker's glasses in his school uniform is in place of his Phantom Thief mask but it makes sense in the context of P5's prologue; Joker winded up on probation, and the glasses are meant to mask his "delinquent transfer student" persona. Even in reality, Joker has to uphold another identity to himself.
• Why is Sora's KH1 outfit appears as his default look and not his most recent appearance? Aside from it being one of his most iconic outfits, the design of Sora's original outfit is based on Mickey Mouse. Not only is he representing a character important in Kingdom Hearts, but rather important to the entirety of Disney. What better way to represent the company than a small tribute to the mouse himself.
• Why is the Buzzbomb one of the Banjo-Kazooie spirits? Well, it's the first character you see when turning on Banjo-Kazooie, during the logo sequence. As such, many people know who it is and that's why it got a spirit.
• Among the event tourneys is a Heroes Vs. Villains themed event. Every main hero and villain in the roster is playable, but some exceptions may seem a bit odd, with some villains like King K. Rool and Sephiroth appearing without their nemesis.^note For reference, the heroes include Mario, Link, Samus, Fox, Marth, Young Link, Roy, Chrom, Pit, Ike, Sonic, Toon Link, Mega Man, Shulk, Simon, Richter, Hero (who the event revolves around) and Sora However, they can easily be explained.
  • Only the main character of games appear as heroes, so characters such as Luigi, Zelda, and the Aegis sisters don't appear.
  • "Heroes" who are merely trying to reclaim what is theirs or doing a job (such as bananas, ship parts, or a sister) are excluded. This includes Donkey Kong, Olimar, and Banjo & Kazooie.
  • Similarly, this includes characters who save the country or world, but that was just a plus to the fact they were trying to accomplish their own goals. Kirby (at least in Sakurai's games) was only trying to get back to dreaming, Red was only trying to beat the Pokémon league, Snake was doing his job, Cloud wanted to settle a score with Sephiroth, and Bayonetta wanted her memories and friend.
  Cloud: "What are we all fighting for? I want us all to understand that. Save the planet... for the future of the planet... Sure, that's all fine. But really, is that really how it is? For me, this is a personal feud. I want to beat Sephiroth. And settle my past. Saving the planet just happens to be part of that. I've been thinking. I think we all are just fighting for ourselves. For ourselves... and that someone... somethin... whatever it is, that's important to us.
  • Competitors likewise are not included, and just happen to face evil opponents (or at least jerkish people) in their fights and competitions (and when they are trying to fight someone evil, it's typically for revenge such as the above characters), such as Captain Falcon, Little Mac, Ryu, Terry, and Min Min.
  • Characters just going about their lives and not really fighting evil are obviously excluded, This being the Ice Climbers, Mr. Game & Watch, Villager, PAC-MAN (at least in the arcade games) and Inkling (as in the species, not just Agent 3 and 4).
  • Corrin, Byleth, Joker, and Steve could be considered more grey. Corrin and Byleth can choose paths that to do what they believe is right, mean playing along with a war (conquering Hoshido or the Church of Seiros). Joker stops villains, but through brainwashing, the ethics of which are questioned by the Phantom Thieves as the game goes on. The ending also implies he was out for revenge as well, similar to Cloud. Steve is the most blank slate and can go around fighting monsters or terrorizing citizens.
  • Kazuya is not in as well as hero or villain, with his villainy depending on game to game. In his first appearance, he's no different than Ryu and Terry wanting revenge, with his transition to villainy being in the later games.
• All of the Echo Fighters are affiliated with Dharkon, while their original counterparts are affiliated with Galeem. This could imply that Dharkon is Galeem's Echo Fighter.
• Galeem has an angelic appearance despite his intents. You could say his appearance resembles that of a Seraphim, a type of angel that only appears upon the end of the world. What Galeem indeed appears at the end of a world, in fact being the driving force that ends the current world and creates the new one.
• The Spirits for the various Metal Gears are all Shield-type, due to their heavy armor, with the exception of Metal Gear RAY, which is a Grab-type. Due to Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors giving Grab-type Spirits an advantage over Shield-type Spirits, this gives RAY, which was made specifically to counter REX, an advantage over REX.

Fridge Horror

• Ridley's Final Smash has him shooting a huge plasma beam at Samus's gunship, which you can see crashing in the background afterwards. If he uses this Final Smash in stages like Fourside or Wrecking Crew, which show a sprawling city in the background, if these were not simulation worlds in any story sense, the crash will likely result in civilian deaths or at least some casualties. And to make matters worse, Ridley would want that chaos.
  • He's not the only one, K. Rool's Final Smash has him blowing Donkey Kong Island off the face of the Earth. All the Kongs, animals, and anyone else on there were likely in the line of fire, and K. Rool would be fine with this.
  • Sephiroth dwarfs both of them by destroying entire planets, to kill a few fighters.
• Ridley's new design has some rather unpleasant implications. Aside from being smaller, he has several areas that show exposed flesh (mostly around his legs and eyes), which shouldn't be possible due to his Healing Factor. Because he was rejected from joining the roster for being "too big", as well as his psychopathic personality, it's not a stretch to think that he dismembered and regenerated himself until he was small enough to compete, all for a chance to fight and torture Samus and her friends.
  • Ridley's design is based on his Super Metroid sprite, the game where he died for good. In other words, Ridley actually came back from the dead and looks more like an animated corpse because of that.
  • His Meta Ridley costume shows his skin to be more saturated and overall healthier, with cybernetic implants on most of his body. Take note that the Metroid Prime Trilogy takes place before Super. Now compare his default appearance with Meta Ridley, and you will see that the battles with Samus have seriously taken a toll on the Space Pirate commander's body, with newly exposed flesh near his eyes and back, pale, dehydrated, almost skeletal looking scales and skin, sunken glowing eyes, and a very large scar across the front of his right leg — which his Meta Ridley costume features a cybernetic implant on exactly that same region. As Metroid Prime said, Ridley's transition into a cyborg was immensely painful; so it must have been even more painful regenerating and pushing all the implants out of the body. The only saving grace about this? It's Ridley enduring it.
  • Hell, even his reveal trailer is chock full of disturbing, if not heartbreaking implications. Samus' fear of the monster, though not as crippling as it was in Metroid: Other M, is still apparent. Once you get over Ridley's reveal and the gruesome demises of two of gaming's biggest heroes, what we're left with afterward is a girl who just came face-to-face with the very monster responsible for her parents' deaths and is desperately trying not to lose it at the mere sight of her childhood terror. Thankfully, she's still willing to take him down, even without the Power Suit.
  • Also, take a moment to consider what must be going on through the mind of not just Samus after having lost both Mega Man and Mario to this monster in a heartbeat, but another innocent bystander who was there to witness everything — Cappy. The poor little guy's undoubtedly paralyzed in unadulterated terror and anguish after what happened to his longtime partner and from being unfortunate enough to get caught up in the sadistic claws of said friend's murderer, not to mention that Ridley would've ripped him to shreds if he knew Cappy was sentient, what with the spree he was on...
  • There's something even more frightening about Ridley whenever the player has him fighting the Ice Climbers. Popo and Nana don't clap like most characters do, but instead they weep in defeat. However in this game Popo is the only one present while Nana is nowhere to be seen. What makes this so horrible you may ask? One of Ridley's victory animations has him apparently violently mutilating someone he's fought with, and since Popo is practically outright useless without his partner there's a morbid idea that Ridley has outright murdered Nana. Therefore Popo isn't sobbing after losing a match but he's instead grieving over the death of his dearest friend. Note that after a Team Battle, it's revealed that no one is there and he's likely 'just' practicing more violence, but the fact that Ridley smiles after doing so truly makes him one of the most vile and despicable Nintendo villains.
• Some of the spirits have themes with their abilities. Some are humorous, like Buzz Buzz being a small Mr. Game & Watch with 300% at the start of combat (and making you start with 30% when you equip him)^note granted, this is extremely Black Comedy considering Buzz Buzz's canonical fate of being smashed dead by Lardna Minch just for being an "annoying fly"; it verges on Dude, Not Funny! territory for anyone who's played Mother Cognitive Dissonance. However, one of the spirits included was Paz Ortega Andrade from Metal Gear Solid V. Her effect? Fighters with her equipped start with a Bob-omb. Anyone who has played The Phantom Pain will understand the disturbing implications.
  • On that note, some spirits possess fake Kirbys, i.e. the sole survivor of Galeem's attack while everyone else was captured and cloned. Since we do not rescue other Kirbys in the game (and honestly wouldn't need to from a gameplay perspective), it makes one wonder how Galeem got his feathers on whatever it is he uses for them and where they're being kept. Maybe's it's just Meta Knight who's being used to clone both himself and the fake Kirbys, or Galeem managed to snag some other Kirby elsewhere...^note Word of God has since confirmed that Galeem was able to analyze Kirby at some point, explaining the Kirby puppet fighters.
  • Also, some Spirits may be aware of the character they're possessing from the actual game the puppet fighter is from. Otacon, for example, possesses Dr. Mario, and given his indulgence in geek culture, as well as his Mario and Yoshi figures in Twin Snakes, he probably knows exactly whose body he's forced to fight in, and perhaps his opponent as well, depending on your choice. He knows they're real now... and is forced to fight them.
• The shopkeeper spirits all sell spirits based on their general profession. This is kind of okay, as most of them typically sell inanimate object-like spirits, with the exception of Anna, who sells you spirits of living breathing people! Not helping her case is that her "stock" consists of overall nice and heroic people.
  • Mitigated by a loading screen tip that explains she specializes in weapon and equipment spirits. The wielders are just dragged into her fascination with their shiny gear, and how she can make a buck off it. This is perfectly in-character for more recent Annas.
• Viridi's disgust towards Mewtwo being a man-made creation, to the point of wanting it to be destroyed, is already cruel, but it's even worse considering that Mewtwo is based on the one from the anime. That Mewtwo felt a lot of sorrow over its nature as a clone and struggled to find its purpose in life. The sheer callousness Viridi shows is even similar to how the scientists that created Mewtwo treated it, as if it were a lesser form of life because it's a clone.
  • On the subject of Viridi, there's also the Palutena's Guidance moment for the Inklings in which Viridi happily cheers the total annihilation of the human race. Get this, though; humans were far from the only species eradicated when the world flooded — virtually every land-dwelling species had been subjected to possibly the largest mass extinction event in history, and with Antarctica having been nuked, there had to have been numerous aquatic casualties as well thanks to the water properties assuredly having changed drastically from what most in that kind of niche would be comfortable in — let alone able to survive in. The resulting fallout would also assuredly mutate survivors in potentially horrific ways if not outright killing them from the blast. How Viridi is not absolutely fuming at this, considering her intense hatred of humanity due to their activities rapidly depleting the natural world, could only be explained as her thinking that with the humans gone, the world will revert itself to its natural state — which shows a rather horribly callous aspect of her in that she'll condone mass destruction of the world so long as humans are ultimately wiped out by the end of it and that the world wasn't completely destroyed along with them (she is the creator of the Reset Bombs, which do restore a form of life to the environment... after obliterating everything else in its vicinity). She also ignores how overwhelmingly human-like the Inklings and Octarians are, not just in physique, but in mindset as well, especially concerning their turf wars, which are fought for at times more trivial reasons than most human wars^note Commander Tartar, a similar genocidal villain, pointedly cited this as grounds for the planet's unavoidable destruction at its hands.^*To be fair to the Inklings, their modern "Turf Wars" are essentially just sporting events, not dissimilar to boxing, dodgeball, or paintball, and are mostly treated as such (though what we see of Inkling society does appear to revolve around Turf Wars to a degree that is probably unhealthy). Since these "Turf Wars" are effectively just an organized sports league at the end of the day, the fights can and should be for trivial reasons, if a reason is needed at all. (The fact that nobody gets permanently hurt certainly helps their case.) On the other hand, the genuinely serious and implied-to-be-genuinely-deadly Turf Wars that were fought against the Octolings in the backstory and story modes of both Splatoon games were actually driven by competition over usable living space being in limited supply (i.e. a crucial resource was at stake), which makes those conflicts much more similar to most historical human wars than banal and simplistic War for Fun and Profit. Viridi at this point could only really be best summed up as a hypocritical, delusional goddess that's more of a personification of nature's wrath against humanity in lieu of the classical Greek Gods.
  • If the DLC characters had gotten new lines for Palutena's Guidance, Viridi would either be charmed or soiling herself in absolute terror at the presence of Sephiroth. While Sephiroth's origins are similar to Mewtwo's, he became a Physical God capable of destroying planets. Viridi had better keep her own mouth shut if she know what's good for her
• Many battles in World of Light can be potentially crushing for the characters, depending on who you choose to awake certain fighters and your progression. Want to have Mario see his brother or Peach being out of their minds, who — in another universe — already had bad experiences with being possessed? Or Chrom having to forcibly beat his best friend and daughter to make them regain consciousness (the reverse also applies with Robin/Lucina fighting off their close friend/father, depending on which order you rescued them)? How about making Pit relive flashbacks of when the Chaos Kin possessed Palutena? Maybe have Bowser see his son being brainwashed and attacking him? Possibly the Villager witnessing their sweet, innocent, and loyal secretary having become a mindless killing machine trying to beat them within an inch of their life? You get the point.
  • You want to know what makes this even better? The puppet fighters are not silent like the false characters in the Subspace Emissary; they're fully voiced this time around, meaning that they will vocalize their attacks like regular fighters and whenever they're attacked. The spirits can feel the pain you're putting them through (even if only to save them).
  • It's also very possible to have Link or Toon Link fighting Young Link. That's right, you can make Link fight himself. Especially horrifying with Toon Link, since both of them are around the same age. Although Adult Link might have some experience with this entire clone situation. (cough cough Dark Link in Twilight Princess)
• There is something disturbing about the Dark Realm; it vaguely seems to take inspiration from many worlds represented in the Super Smash Bros. series all melded together, much like the World of Trophies from Subspace Emissary and its light counterpart. Here's the thing: there exists a Sacred Land ala The Legend of Zelda, and the thing that is fridge horror comes in the form of the Sacred Land's boss — Ganon. Unlike fellow giant boss Giga Bowser from the Realm of Light, who is simply an empowered Bowser, however, you actually unlock Ganondorf literally right before the boss fight with Ganon rather than defeating his souped-up form to get him first. And topping it off, the boss fight has another Ganondorf transforming into said beast. Why is there another Ganondorf and where did he come from? How long has he been in the Sacred Land, and for that matter, why is the Sacred Land a part of the Dark Realm instead of the "Realm of Light"?
  • While this second Ganon is most certainly not Demise (who is already a spirit), it may very well be a physical manifestation of Demise's curse against Link and Zelda, which is what Ganon is generally considered to be a vessel for. Even with Ganondorf himself being a bit more diplomatic in the Smash universe, the curse that turned him into the King of Evil still uses his face for its form.
  • You don't have to look all that close, but while there is clearly an abundance of civilization present in the Realm of Light, there are also some houses (or at least similar-looking buildings) in the Dark Realm as well, which includes an entire city at the very least. This is the same dimension that is also home to Ganon(dorf), Dracula, and Marx. Seeing what Dharkon's attack did to the last remaining world (i.e. killing Mario for one), what other lifeforms out there could possibly survive in such a hellish domain?
  • The Sacred Land being in the Dark Realm is probably a reference to A Link to The Past, where that game’s Dark World is actually the Sacred Realm after being corrupted by Ganon’s evil intentions.
• The battle with Marx is conventionally creepy, but from Kirby's perspective, it might be even worse. The last time we saw Marx, he was an ally of Kirby's who never objected to the pink puffball^note although you do fight him in the credits of Heroes in Another Dimension, but that fight is more like a Legacy Boss Battle than an actual conflict, and could even be construed as a mean-spirited, but ultimately harmless prank, so to see someone who had seemingly reformed suddenly attack him would likely be nerve-wracking for Kirby. It should be noted, however, that Marx's canonical reason for aiding Kirby in Star Allies is the threat of the Jamba Hearts being dangerous to Marx as well as Kirby, but the point still stands.
  • And even if you assume Marx had genuinely chosen to turn over a new leaf, that just makes things worse — after getting dusted, Galeem or Dharkon jammed the semi-reformed jester into a puppet body similar to his fully Nova-empowered self, only even more juiced up to the point his new attacks put him through Body Horror, and his defeat has his body painfully fall apart. Call it karmic for Milky Way Wishes, but that's still some pretty nasty trauma.
  • As the Character Page points out, Marx's new attacks and animations seem to imply he's possessed by Dharkon here, similar to what he did to Crazy Hand. He transforms in a dark aura eerily similar to Dharkon's own, and when he's defeated, he turns back to normal with a small, dark flame leaving him. It's very likely that Marx, reformed or not, wasn't doing this of his own free will, and he definitely wouldn't be the only one like this...
  • While Ganon and Galleom's track record wouldn't earn them much sympathy (Outside of Ganondorf's transformations usually costing him his sanity), Bowser was actively fighting against Galeem, and then he's forced to turn into Giga-Bowser to serve him. Rathalos is simply an animal being forced to attack the heroes. Dracula probably gets this the worst depending on how you look at is Spirit. It evolves into Soma Cruz, Dracula's reincarnation who refused to be like him. So either you can just miraculously fast-forward Dracula's reincarnation after defeating him, or Galeem or Dharkon didn't go after Dracula (Aside from his second form) to be a boss, they went after Soma, and reverted his own soul back into Dracula. And considering the picture used for Soma's Spirit isn't demented, grinning one from his game's bad ending, it's very unlikely he was okay with this.
  • Dracula is the only bossfight barring Galeem and Dharkon that earns you two Spirits, Dracula and Dracula's second form. The former evolves into Soma and the latter remains a monster. Meaning, yes, Soma was forced into this, be being merged with his past self. And even killing Dracula doesn't revert him to normal. All the poor kid can do is hope for you to level up and evolve him.
• Porky Minch is nowhere to be seen as a Spirit. However, the Absolutely Safe Capsule — which Porky trapped himself inside in a careless attempt to save himself from death — shows up as a summonable Spirit, which could be interpreted as Porky being in the Capsule. If so, it would seem that even as a Spirit, Porky is unable to escape from the Absolutely Safe Capsule. Crosses over with Fridge Brilliance.
  • Another character that was not present as a Spirit is Giygas — the Arc Villain of both EarthBound Beginnings and EarthBound (1994). While there is the explanation that his (then-current) form would be too dangerous to be stored into any Puppet, whether it were made by either Galeem or Dharkon, think about how he was defeated as well. As Giegue, he was defeated by singing because it reminded him of Maria — his adoptive mother. Then, his own body and mind had collapsed due to his mental conflicts (wanting to conquer the world but also remembering his love for Maria) blending with his extreme psychic power. By the end of it, he had become a shapeless, infinite Eldritch Abomination that was eventually destroyed as well by the power of prayers around the world, once Ness and his friends got to his time period. Giygas could not be converted into a spirit: not because his own power is so immeasurable that he could never be safely placed inside of a Puppet Fighter, but because he's not just dead — he simply no longer exists. There's just nothing to make a spirit out of, because he had been eradicated entirely.
  • What's actually unnerving is that astute Earthbounders will notice that the sprite the Absolutely Safe Capsule uses is different from the one used when Porky is inside it, meaning that Porky may or may not even be inside there. Or worse, he could have perished on the inside of the capsule, and the capsule is all that remains of him.
  • On the other hand, this leads to Fridge Logic considering Claus and Masked Man are separate spirits, not even one evolving into the other, so clearly multiple spirits can be made from the same person at different points in time, which means it should be possible for a spirit to be made out of the younger incarnation of Porky.
• When you think about it, World of Light's true ending is not quite the Golden Ending that it appears to be. Please keep in mind that Galeem's Apocalypse How was never reversed. Those Spirits are not going home, simply because they have no homes to go back to. "Shaggy Dog" Story does not begin to cover it.
  • Unless the "real world" they're trying to go back to is separate from the universe that Smash takes place in, which can be considered the "world of imagination".
  • This might also be why several Spirits keep coming back for Spirit Board events; desperately trying to find homes for themselves and newly-discovered Spirits. And guess what? You’re constantly thwarting their efforts to find new homes via beating them right back out of their Puppet Fighters and re-collecting them, which means this is either a case of Poor Communication Kills or The Farmer and the Viper. On that note, while it may have been justified due to Galeem at first, using Spirits after World of Light is basically mass slavery, given their previous freedom.
• After completing World of Light's true ending, you get Galeem and Dharkon as spirits. You can now punish them by sending them out on mundane treasure hunting trips or whatever it is you like doing with spirits, just to put them through what it's really like being spirits. Except, it's not as harmless at it may seem; first off, what did Galeem do to every other spirit in the game? Force them to take control of the puppet fighters. If weak spirits like Dan Hibiki can effectively control a body that's not his, Galeem and Dharkon can likely do the same to much greater effect. Also, several spirit battles show that multiple bodies can be controlled by a single spirit, and it sometimes goes up to somewhere around eleven completely separate fighters at once. As anyone knows from the spirit fights, the spirit battles often feature spirits with a team power higher than what you can raise that same spirit up to, and Galeem and Dharkon have the highest team power out of all playable spirits, meaning that as enemy spirits they'd be unmatched. All it'd take is for either Galeem or Dharkon to take control of a stray puppet fighter's body and they'd be running their schemes once again...
  • Additionally, as spirits they give their own skills: "Bane of Darkness" and "Bane of Light". They increase the damage dealt to fighters of the opposing alignment, but they also increase damage taken from them as well, turning the character into a glass cannon using Galeem or Dharkon in battle. When you look at their endings, it suddenly makes sense as to why after they were weakened they were so easy to take out, and in hindsight it'd also make sense as to why they give those effects in the first place: spirit battles often feature the spirit using tactics and powers that they don't give when they're on your side, so out of the many things Galeem and Dharkon could give a fighter controlling them they give them the glass cannon effect rather than just a flat advantage over the other side. It could either be a sort of aesop about "no true power without light and darkness in moderation", but at the same time it could just as easily be interpreted as Galeem and Dharkon having not reformed and that they're hoping you use them to get yourself killed in subsequent runs being overconfident.
  • Dismissing them can also be surprisingly creepy. Where exactly would Galeem and Dharkon go? Far out of your reach that's for certain, and assuming that spirits returned to whence they came are restored to their old selves after being dismissed, this also means you've just let Galeem and Dharkon roam off into the vast beyond with plenty of time for them to reform and start over, and they will not give you another chance to screw them over a second time when they return — and that's assuming that they don't just wipe everything out from where they stand without anyone around to stop them but each other.
    • And you want to know what the maraschino cherry on top of all of this is? Not every spirit is encountered in World of Light; a little under half of the game's spirit total count is accounted for by the time the adventure mode is done, which means that if playing the adventure mode is the first thing a player did, then there are still tons of spirits out there not under Galeem's or Dharkon's control (including a few that cannot be brought into existence without cores and a good number of them are ace and legend spirits). If they are still at it with their plans, they basically have another army waiting for them when they get back unless the rest of the spirits have already been collected by then...
    • And the above thing about some Spirits simply not taking on a puppet form could mean that no matter how many spirits you collect, they still have an army somewhere out there. Not to mention the deal about Spirits having nowhere to go when they’re dismissed... They might be pretty resentful that there’s nowhere for them to go, and might even ally with the two of them out of spite.
• Yoshi's new Final Smash involves trampling characters under a stampede of Yoshis. This takes place in what looks like a deserted canyon...
• When Galeem's and Dharkon's puppet fighters are in the same battle, they will focus almost exclusively on each other over the player. There is however one exception to the rule; the battle where Master Hand takes on 50 puppet fighters. Just how powerful and/or dangerous is Master Hand that Galeem and Dharkon genuinely sets their differences aside for the moment to take on Master Hand?
  • Powerful and dangerous enough that Galeem decided to find a way to strip Master Hand of his Master Core form (considered an SNK Boss by many and one of the toughest fights in 3DS/Wii U), condense it into a spirit, then shatter that spirit into more spirits representing all of its various forms before ever attempting to enact his plan. Given Master Fortress is a Kaiju-sized living dungeon, it probably could have snatched Galeem and Dharkon in one hand each and crushed them both into nothing. The pair could be deathly afraid that, if they let him have the chance and the Master Core spirit has been reassembled by this point, Master Hand will absorb that spirit and effectively regain his full power, then annihilate them in a Curbstomp Battle.
• As shown in the final boss fight's boss gauntlet portion, some spirits such as Marx, Rathalos, and Ganon are strong enough to take physical forms without a clone to inhabit. Does this include Galeem and Dharkon? Tabuu?
• Word of God had stated that Galeem and Dharkon analyzed Kirby enough to the point where they can make spirits out of him without even needing to capture him — but what if Kirby had been captured by Galeem before the others? Kirby had fought his fair share of Eldritch Abominations before, and is powerful enough to defeat or escape any one of them. There may be a bigger reason as to why Kirby fled on the Warp Star: he's been through this before. He knows what the beams of light were capable of, and something like the Warp Star is the only possible option to escape light itself. Galeem may have not analyzed Kirby without having to capture him — he could have managed to get Kirby first. And upon Kirby's escape, that would be when the other fighters become aware of the great threat.
  • However, this loops back around to Fridge Awesome if it's true; if Galeem caught Kirby and Kirby escaped before the World of Light into, and the other fighters were unaware of Galeem before Kirby told them about him, then it can be inferred that Kirby was able to escape from Galeem without any assistance whatsoever. As if the pink puff's badass credentials weren't already extensive enough...
• King K. Rool meeting the same demise as Grunty may be funny, but there may be some unsettling implications on what happened to him. Unlike Grunty, K. Rool doesn't have magical beings to revive him, and while there may be his Kremling army that may help him with the rock, they probably don't know where exactly K. Rool is. It's possible that K. Rool might be dead for real if it wasn't for the trailer being non-canon.
• The Dark Ending is already rather brutal, but think on it for a bit—specifically, Galeem's death. Tied up, impaled, left to hang...sound familiar?^note In case you don't understand, Galeem was pretty much crucified in the Dark Ending.Yeeeeeah...
• At the beginning of his trailer, Sephiroth one-shot Galeem. Does this mean he guaranteed the Dark Ending?...
  • Considering its Sephiroth, nothing probably would stop him from decimating Darkhon with little effort either. He wasn't the type to sit back and let others upstage him in being the top Omnicidal Maniac.
  • Or the fact that Sephiroth is the true Dark Ending, seeing how he decimated many of the fighters with relative ease.
  • The end of the reveal trailer showed Sephiroth becoming Safer Sephiroth. If you look closely, there's a certain circle of equations appearing behind him before it cuts off. His final smash might be Supernova, the infamous galaxy destroying attack. What worlds are going to be the victim this time?
    • And turns out, his Final Smash is Supernova. While it's a highly sped up version, we still see a planet get destroyed by Meteor before the Sun is struck. And unlike the original attack sequence, we see Earth getting disintegrated by the imploding star.
  • Let's not jump the gun here. Perhaps Sephiroth's trailer takes place during the heroes first confrontation with Galeem in the Light Realm, but before they find out about Dharkon?
    • The problem with that is that Richter, Bowser Jr., Rosalina & Luma, King K. Rool, Zelda, Mewtwo, Sonic, Greninja, and Bayonetta all appear, when they are only unlocked in the Dark Realm or Final Battle.
  • Sora's trailer has all the fighters, Sephiroth included, all turning back into trophies as the light dies down, which brings Dharkon's ending to mind. That said, Sora revives them all, and Sephiroth seems to be on the fighter's side in the final trailer. If Dharkon is still around, it's possible his time is running out.
• You can choose any fighter to battle the puppets, including the villains. They could very well learn how to deal with their heroic arch-enemies either actively or subconsciously through fighting their puppets. They can also fight their own puppets and learn of any weaknesses they have and find some way around them. They're working with the heroes for now, but the truce won't last forever.
• The reason why you find Palutena, Bayonetta, Roy and Dark Samus in the last dungeon. Palutena and Bayonetta are said to be one of the few to really take on Galeem and Darkhon, so it makes sense that they would want to keep them close. Roy is said to wield a very powerful sword that can rival many. But the darkest example has to be Dark Samus, or rather, what she is made out of, Phazon. Phazon is a very dangerous virus, that would destroy almost anything it touches and take control of nearly any being in contact with Phazon. Either Galeem and Darkhon wants to use the Phazon for their own purposes, or know exactly that they can't really control it themselves, so they opted to keep Dark Samus close for this reason.
• Sora's trailer. When the light of the Smash emblem goes out, all the fighters return to being lifeless trophies. According to some theories, the entirety of Smash is meant to reflect the owner's imagination and events happening around them in the real world. The implication is that when the owner no longer has time to spark their imagination and spend time with their figurines, the entire "world of imagination" in which Smash takes place simply vanishes from existence.
• Kingdom Hearts has a somewhat stern Light Is Good / Dark Is Evil theme going for it (key exceptions being Eraqus and Terra), but now Sora is in a game where a being of light is not only the Big Bad, but it also annihilated most of his friends. Imagine how much that'll shake his world.
  • On that note, the Cloud and Sephiroth here aren't the same ones Sora knows. How's he gonna react when he learns what Sephiroth, the guy who seemingly just showed up to challenge Sora and Cloud, really did in his home-series? Especially considering Sora's a friend of Aerith?
  • Similarly, Wario's buddies from WarioWare are Spirits too. Keep in mind that most of them still consider Wario their friend despite how bad he acts. So how are they going to react if, let's say, Lucas tells them what he did back in Brawl? Especially Mona?
• Pyra and Mythra's appearance in Smash has them with only half their core crystal, indicating their lifeforce is shared with Rex. And as Xenoblade Chronicles 2 shows, this means that he shares their injuries. Every single time Pyra and Mythra take a hit, which is a lot considering this is Smash Bros, Rex is feeling it too.
• King K. Rool's Final Smash is the Blast-O-Matic from Donkey Kong 64. The weapon was never actually used in its origin game since it malfunctioned and the Kongs disabled it before the Kremlings could repair it. Since the Kremling King's weapon is finally working, what's to stop him from truly annihilating Kong Island? There's also a scene from Donkey Kong 64 when the Kongs enter Hideout Helm and K. Rool tries to activate it despite the Kremlings warning and begging him not to since it isn't tested and could destroy everyone, Kong and Kremling. While the Blast-O-Matic works, there's no indication the Kremlings have prevented it from backfiring on them.

Fridge Horror: The extent of Galeem's attack

A recurrent thought, to the point of requiring its own folder, is how many universes and multiverses were affected by Galeem's attack at the beginning of the game, and how many powerful entities were brought down by its attack.

• Spirits are the souls of those defeated by Galeem's insanely powerful light attack, which was unleashed in one burst. Among the Spirits are Calamity Ganon, The Shadow Queen, Infinite, Arceus, Galacta Knight, Rodin, Dyntos, Jin, Malos and Pneuma and Tabuu! Let that sink in for how strong this guy is.
• Why can't Sonic, the fastest character in gaming, outrun the beams? He's not running at full speed because he's trying to grab Pikachu. In Sonic's games, he's frequently shown rescuing small, cute animals from the bad guys, so it's only natural that he would try to grab Pikachu. Unfortunately, he fails, and because he's not at his normal speed, he can't outrun the beams to save himself.
  • Also, the beams are made of light. Sonic may be the fastest thing alive, but he's only been shown to match light speed. Even if he could outrun the beams, there would simply be nowhere for him to run to, as the beams of light encompass the entire planet. Simply put Sonic was doomed from the start.
• Before Dark Pit is offed, it can be seen his wings glow in the same color as Pit, meaning Palutena is the one providing him with the Power of Flight and it's gone for both angels the moment she's disintegrated. Then one realizes that in gameplay, his version of it is provided by Viridi. While it's granted that her lack of a playable status means she can't be in the cutscene, it makes one wonder if she fell beforehand and what circumstances brought the characters together.
  • Spare a thought for Pit when Palutena is disintegrated. He probably knew what had happened the moment his wings stopped working: his patron goddess is dead, and he's next. And even if Galeem didn't hit them, they were quite a ways up in the air and likely would have died upon impact with the ground...
  • Keep in mind that Palutena is the goddess of light. Not even a deity who controls light could do anything against Galeem's light beams.
  • Also, much like Bayonetta, Sakurai confirmed that Palutena was one of two other characters who could have survived Galeem's attack, but much like Sonic above, who would have had a somewhat better chance at surviving for longer had he not tried to save Pikachu too, Palutena chose to save Pit and Dark Pit in vain before she was vaporized. Palutena is the one responsible for controlling the angels' flight paths and she has to try and do that without getting them accidentally killed, thus splitting her focus. She was also already devastated seeing Pit's critical condition in Uprising following the Chaos Kin fiasco, and the thought of him dying horribly while she escaped would have broken her heart and haunted her forever. Ultimately, even if Palutena had the power to escape, there was no way she was doing so at Pit's expense.
• Snake hiding inside his box before getting killed is probably the one death that's Played for Laughs the most, especially considering that he apparently never makes any attempt to evade or resist Galeem's attack. However, recall how much Snake and his relatives have obsessed over cardboard boxes, with Big Boss in particular describing being inside one as very peaceful. It's likely that seeing what happened to his allies made Snake realize that he was likely going to die within seconds, and chose the one place he was likely going to die happy in.
• Before Bowser and the Pokémon Trainer get erased, the former stomps in immediately blowing fire — making a completely rash decision to attack out of fury, despite his place in authority as the Koopa King. While this could just be Bowser's typically short temper, you should also remember how much he cares for Bowser Jr.. Something would have to trigger Bowser's anger, to raise his ire to get him riled up like this intro shows. The most likely explanation? Galeem killed Jr. first. And all you see of Bowser is his Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• This game has a total of 1,513 spirits, which is already a high confirmed death toll, but the more disturbing aspect of that is that this is nowhere near close to half of all the lifeforms wiped out by Galeem's attack; many more characters are simply unaccounted for. Considering how Galeem blindsided everyone with his attack, it's likely that absolutely nothing survived except for Kirby (who, even then, Galeem only needed to watch over to understand how to spawn fake Kirbys), but the spirits we've seen are the only ones that have manifested in the last remaining world. The other Mario Baby characters not seen? The Kokiri outside of Saria? The other Kongs? Olimar's entire family and the Pikmin populace? The other Belmonts, like Juste, who is Simon's grandson and the protagonist of Harmony of Dissonance, Christopher and his son? The other Pokémon? Sora's Disney friends? Even Jubileus and Sheba of Bayonetta renown, the closest equivalents to Galeem and Dharkon's power out of every franchise that made it into Smash? They're all just... gone. No spirit. No references. No nothing. Absolutely and unequivocally gone.
  • The only Pokémon spirits besides both Trainers' Fighter spirits (which can be bought from the vault) are the Pokémon themselves. No professors, gym leaders, or even the villains like Team Rocket. Were they utterly destroyed or do they simply not care? The lack of items turned into spirits like badges or berries points to the former.
  • Take a look at Banjo & Kazooie's DLC spirits and you'll notice L.O.G. (Lord of Games) is nowhere to be seen. Keep in mind back in Nuts and Bolts, L.O.G. was the equivalent of a god in-universe. Is it entirely possible Galeem erased them from existence?
    • There are plenty of characters in the Banjo series that don't have spirits; Boggy, Humba Wumba, Grunty's sisters, Jamjars, Klungo, King Jingaling, etc. That’s a lot of casualties there.
  • It’s actually quite disturbing seeing some of the background characters who lack corresponding Spirits, especially the ones in the K.O.F. Stadium stage, knowing that in World of Light, these colorful, cheerful individuals are utterly gone, due to Galeem.
    • Speaking of K.O.F., South Town had once been completely destroyed in canon, only to later be rebuilt. With Galeem getting involved with that universe, well, Shoot the Shaggy Dog doesn't even begin to cover it...
    • One of those cameos left without a Spirit? Blue Mary. Looks like Terry’s Cartwright Curse finally caught up with her. Poor guy.
    • While Mai Shiranui didn't get a Spirit or a cameo in the King of Fighters Stadium stage due to Sakurai wanting to preserve the Japanese version's age rating, what if Galeem's onslaught caused her to be Deader than Dead?
  • Pay attention to the Punch-Out!! Spirits, and you'll notice that while they all use artwork from the Wii installment, the full cast isn't there. What did Galeem do with Disco Kid and Aran Ryan? And if they somehow survived, considering that one is Fun Personified and the other is an Ax-Crazy Combat Pragmatist, they definitely wouldn't have had pleasant reactions to finding out that the entire rest of their league (which included a child!) was wiped out.
    • Assuming Galeem didn't come for her as well, how did Don Flamenco's girlfriend Carmen react to finding out her boyfriend was blasted and turned into a Spirit?
  • Calm down, everyone. While Galeem no doubt blasted them, it's possible that the Smashers never came across those unaccounted-for spirits. (Either because Galeem/Dharkon didn't put them in a puppet fighter, or the Smashers simply never crossed their path.) Regardless, it's safe to assume that, at the end of the game, those unseen spirits were rescued and returned home safely following Galeem and Dharkon's defeat at the end of the game. After all, the final scene in the True Ending shows a whole spiral of spirits heading back to their homes, and its size suggests that there were ''way'' more characters/items that Galeem turned into spirits than the ones you can collect in the game.
  • As stated above, that fridge horror is alleviated. What isn't is what the Spirits we DO see must be thinking about this. People bring up how the Fighters go through intense horror seeing everyone they love ripped away and turned into Spirits, and it's likely they aren't the only ones in horror. Tron Bonne has a spirit, but her brothers and Servbots are nowhere to be seen. Soma Cruz's spirit is gained by evolving Dracula's spirit, implying that Galeem or Dharkon went and forcefully reverted his very soul, and his "friend" Mina is absent in Smash.^note And Soma has a chance of going crazy when he thinks Mina is killed in his game, making things worse. Cream the Rabbit gets a Spirit, but her mother Vanilla doesn't, and her beloved pet Cheese is part of her own Spirit. Baby Mario and Luigi are present, but their unseen parents are nowhere in sight. The Champions of Hyrule's successors don't have Spirits, and two of them are Mipha's little brother and Daruk's descendant. People like Susie, Shadow, and Zero get spirits, but in a sick twist of irony, neither Max Haltmann, Maria, or Iris get ones, while more horrid people like Dark Meta Knight, Infinite, and Sigma do. (Thankfully even worse people like Mephiles and Dr. Weil are also not Spirits) Shantae has an adopted uncle and friends that aren't seen, and like Cloud with Sephiroth, the only familiar spirit to her is Risky, and unlike Cloud, this wasn’t rectified with updates. Kiddy Kong only shows up when Dixie evolves, and he's her baby cousin! And that doesn’t even begin to cover the many Spirits that are the sole representative of their universe! Galeem and Dharkon's defeat may free them all, but one has to wonder how many scars they've left on their victims...
  • Also consider what it must be like for the fighters, who are probably thinking the same horrifying things about any Spirit(Or fighters) they can't find. As mentioned above, Olimar, Alph, Cloud, Red, and Leaf don't have any of their families as Spirits; Cloud only gets his friends through the Spirit Board and is otherwise alone; Pac-Man has a wife and child that are absent; some of Kirby's friends like Taranza, Adeleine, and Ribbon are absent, adding more stress to the little guy's plate; Luigi and Bowser Jr. aren't found until the Dark Realm, likely worrying Mario and Bowser sick; Lucina came from a doomed future and losing her father and friends again is likely going to bring back some unhappy memories; Pit is separated from Palutena until the final area, and getting Viridi and Dark Pit before hand isn't comforting; Lucas essentially lost everyone he cares about again; Wario has a pet hen, the only thing he actually cares about besides money, who is absent; Tails isn't found until the last area, and he is, in all but name, Sonic's adopted brother or son; and so on.
• Another thing; given the crossovers Nintendo has occasionally had with non-Video Game intellectual properties such as Hello Kitty or even Shaun the Sheep, could Galeem's attack have not been restricted to just Video Game universes? Perhaps even...
  • The fact that there are Nintendo Labo spirits. From a story perspective, this means Galeem (and Dharkon) has the ability to reach beyond video games and into the real world. Fortunately, it seems he only has influence over video game peripherals, though, so your PS Move had better watch out.
  • Wanna make it more scary, though? The King of Fighters All-Stars (represented in SSBU by way of Terry) features the WWE superstars as playable characters. Yes, Galeem's attack extending their reach into the real world by way of a real-life wrestling federation.
• Kind of a no-brainer, but each time a downloadable fighter from a new universe is added, that franchise's world is also in danger of being destroyed/absorbed by Galeem or Dharkon the moment you buy it. This drastically shifts the mood of receiving/accepting a Smash invitation severely and sheds it in a harsher light: From being a universal badge of honor and acknowledgement of critical acclaim to the equivalent of giving your entire universe the Black Spot.
  • In the case of Joker and his series: The fact that most of those spirits are Joker's fellow Phantom Thieves, which makes matters worse considering that they already experienced something similar at the hands of Yaldabaoth towards their game's endgame...
    • Two of the spirits are Igor and Caroline & Justine. The latter two in particular being spirits implies that Galeem got them before they could fuse back into Lavenza and reveal "Igor" to actually be Yaldabaoth in disguise. Speaking of him, while Yaldabaoth himself is not a spirit, the artwork of Igor used in this game is based on him disguised as Igor, rather than Igor himself. This leaves open two possibilities: either Yaldabaoth is never outed and enslaves humanity with no resistance, or he, while disguised, was offed by Galeem and imprisoned as a spirit while the real Igor was either spared or worse completely destroyed; if the latter is true, then considering what it took to defeat him in his original context, one shivers to imagine how strong Galeem is if the God of Control can be "dusted" as casually as a Goomba. Even in the case of the former, Igor is plenty powerful in his own right, so Worfing him would be no small feat either.
    • Then there is the most important factor to consider: The fact that Joker stole his Smash invitation in the first place. Assuming he had no idea of what the full ramifications were: This means that Joker inadvertently doomed his entire universe with his thievery!
    • On the flip side: Assuming he stole the invitation from a yet-to-be included universe, he may have actually done that universe a huge favor, sparing them from Galeem and Dharkon's reach.
  • Given that Hero's trailer happens during World of Light, it might not be that far-fetched that it is the case.
  • Given the number of Spirits from franchises without even a stage or Assist Trophy, it’s entirely possible those universes had already been torn asunder by Galeem. If anything, it’s possible the DLC fighters receiving their invites was the saving grace of a world otherwise devastated.
• So, there's one underlying pattern that prevents Galeem's multi-franchise bloodbath from going full Anyone Can Die: spirits from updates and DLC don't have red eyes on their assigned fighters and don't show up in World Of Light, implying that they aren't under Galeem or Dharkon's control. So, does that make it any better? No! Sakurai mentioned in the final Smash direct that spirits originate from the toys representing fighters across the series. However, he also pointed out that, if they are ignored, those toys slowly lose their physical form and become the spirits we know today! Yep, you read that right. Not only are the safe characters still unsafe from certain death, but get a slow and painful one too! Suddenly, getting obliterated by Galeem sounds a lot less brutal!!
• As a meta example, the fact that characters from different worlds appear (i.e. Mario and Kirby), that means there are worlds beyond those appearing in Smash. Galeem's attack becomes something of a literal, total Franchise Killer, due to the scope of which characters in the series have appeared outside the series. It's probably best not to think about the sheer potential of universes Galeem and/or Dharkon would have access to thanks to many cameos and crossovers connected to Nintendo's games, but to name some examples below:
  • Link had appeared in SoulCalibur II for the Nintendo GameCube version, which dooms the Soul series characters, but guess who also showed up in that game for the other versions? Heihachi of Tekken fame (Street Fighter, Fatal Fury, and Final Fantasy are already in hot water thanks to appearances in Smash but thanks to Negan showing up in Tekken 7 alongside these guests, that also means the world of The Walking Dead is screwed) and Spawn. Spawn just recently had a guest appearance in Mortal Kombat 11, and if Sonic didn't already get them in trouble thanks to his varied cameos described below (Kano himself notably showed up in Wreck-It Ralph alongside him), then Link's shared appearance with Spawn guaranteed that the Mortal Kombat realms would not escape notice. Mortal Kombat itself has also featured the likes of Kratos (who previously showed up in a Soul game like Link, Heihachi, and Spawn), Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Leatherface, the Predator and the Xenomorph (both of whom already have a number of crossovers under their belts as well), the Terminator, RoboCop, and Rambo; that's all of these real world-based universes gone in the blink of an eye. Even without counting the Injustice universe, the MK crossover with DC also erases The DCU, and accounting for it also deletes Hellboy, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as well as anything they've crossed over with, such as Power Rangers, Star Trek, and Masters of the Universe. Link having ties to the Soul series means that Galeem would also get access to all other guest fighters that showed in these games (from Star Wars to Assassin's Creed to The Witcher, to NieR: Automata, and the list can go on). Mortal Kombat shares a few horror guests with Dead by Daylight, which also drags in Halloween, Left 4 Dead, Saw, Scream, Evil Dead, Stranger Things, and Silent Hill. And if that isn't enough, Johnny Cage's presence as a Guest Fighter in NRS's mobile game WWE Immortals also gives Galeem another entrance into the real world... by way of the aforementioned WWE!
  • Snake's appearance in the series effectively dooms a number of PlayStation franchises due to Raiden's appearance in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, wiping out the likes of Kratos (already doomed by way of Mortal Kombat 9), Nathan Drake, Sackboy, Ratchet & Clank, Jak and Daxter, Kat, Big Daddy, reboot Dante, Isaac Clarke, and a variety of others. Solid Snake and Simon Belmont both showed up in the DreamMix TV World Fighters game, which included the likes of other crossover characters like Optimus Prime and Megatron from Transformers as well as Tyson Granger from Bakuten Shoot Beyblade, putting them all on Galeem's radar, and then this also puts Beyblade Burst in Galeem's crosshairs due to a crossover with Transformers.
    • Heihachi appears as a background character in the Mishima Dojo stage, and was playable in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, so everyone from that game is doubly fucked. Heihachi also appears in Bot form in Astro's Playroom (along with Snake, Alucard, and Cloud's Buster Sword), which dooms even more Sony franchises like The Last of Us, Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima, Resistance, ICO, Shadow of the Colossus and Bloodborne, as well as other non-Sony franchises that also appeared in Astro's Playroom, such as Silent Hill, Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon and Legacy of Kain. The implications of it wiping out the Legacy of Kain universe are especially frightening, given the sheer amount of omniscient beings and eldritch horrors present within that series.
  • Mega Man, Ryu, and Pac-Man both have characters appearing in other crossover franchises, such as Project × Zone, which already puts beloved series such as Ace Attorney or Darkstalkers or even obscure games like Resonance of Fate in danger. The scariest example here is the Marvel vs. Capcom games; the Marvel characters in them, such as Spider-Man, Iron Man, and Captain America, also appear in Disney Infinity, which effectively wipes out Star Wars (who in their LEGO outings also featured Indiana Jones), Pixar, and most, if not all Disney cartoon characters, which were already in trouble thanks to Sora and the appearances of Cloud and Sephiroth in Kingdom Hearts. And both the Star Wars and Marvel doors, coupled with a bunch of Street Fighter guests, also deletes Fortnite, which in turn thanks to a cameo, deletes the Unreal universe (already in hot water thanks to Raiden's appearance in Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict).
    • The Disney cartoon characters also appeared in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, alongside the Looney Tunes and other cartoon classics, like Betty Boop, Woody Woodpecker and Droopy. Looks like Judge Doom and the Dip are the last things they have to worry about now. And that's not even getting into how all of Warner Bros' franchises are present in Space Jam: A New Legacy.
    • MvC also erases other classic Capcom universes such as Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Ōkami, Ghosts 'n Goblins, and Dead Rising.
  • Joker appeared in Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth alongside the casts of Persona 3 and Persona 4. Despite the fact that Mementos in Ultimate can have its colors changed to resemble that of the Dark Hour and the Midnight Channel, neither S.E.E.S. nor the Investigation Team even appear as stage cameos or spirits unlike the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, meaning they were wiped out by Galeem. The same could also apply to the casts of the first Persona and Persona 2 as well, though those guys have their own problems. In Yu Narukami's (Persona 4's protagonist) case, his appearance in BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle meant that all the properties featured in that game (such as BlazBlue, Under Night In-Birth, RWBY, and others) bit the dust as well, and Hatsune Miku’s appearance in Persona 4: Dancing All Night caused her and the rest of the Vocaloids to become literally deader than disco.
    • To build off of BlazBlue here: One of the franchises in Cross Tag Battle is Senran Kagura, which has crossed over with the likes of Dead or Alive, Super Sonico, and Neptunia, that last one having a lot of alternate dimensions in it so Galeem could wipe out multiple different versions of Gamindustri. Also considering that a huge portion of Neptunia’s casts are either goddesses or like-goddesses...
    • Miku's Persona 4 appearance guarantees several other worlds will be hit by Galeem's attack. Not only are her and the Crypton Vocaloids at risk, but Gumi makes a guest appearance in the 3DS version of Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA, dooming the Vocaloids of Internet Co. Ltd. as well (or at least, Gackpoid, Lily, and Cul). Back to Miku, some notable games she cameos in include Just Dance, Yakuza 5, and The Idolmaster, which in turn affects its spinoffs. She also appears in Shinkansen Henkei Robo Shinkalion, which itself crosses over with Neon Genesis Evangelion and Godzilla (with Godzilla then crossing over with several famous movie monsters); as well as appearing in Lucky Star, which then dooms Haruhi Suzumiya which in turn ends Katawa Shoujo via a genderbent Haruhi cameo; Groove Coaster, dooming the likes of Touhou Project, hololive, and Kizuna AI; and so on, and so forth...
    • Miku also has a Coord in Aikatsu!, effectively dooming the idols across the franchise and other Data Carddass related properties. The collaboration with Pretty Series dooms them as well.
    • The Idolmaster (in which the aforementioned Miku appears as a guest) is no stranger to crossovers, dooming (among others) Ace Combat, God Eater, Granblue Fantasy, Katamari Damacy, Taiko no Tatsujin, Ridge Racer, Tales Series, Super Robot Wars, and the aforementioned Tekken. Looks like Joker stealing that invite set off quite the chain reaction.
    • Team RWBY's guest appearance in SMITE also wipes out Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra (and the TMNT again), and all the Nickelodeon crossovers out there (the Nicktoons Unite! video games especially) by extension, which wipes out SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly OddParents!, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, Invader Zim, Danny Phantom, Rugrats, My Life as a Teenage Robot, The Loud House, and Ren & Stimpy, among others.
    • Making matters worse is the fact that, while no direct connection currently exists within Smash Bros., Persona's parent series Shin Megami Tensei is still in extreme danger of being discovered by Galeem and Dharkon; all it would take is something as simple as a Jack Frost spirit or costume getting into the game. Should that ever come to pass, it would mean uber-powerful beings such as YHVH, Lucifer and the Demi-Fiend being in their crosshairs, ending the Forever War in that series in the worst way possible and killing nigh every mythological being in every religion in the world. "The God you know is dead" indeed. And no, not even Matador's Red Capote would get him out of this one. Having said that, Galeem made Tsubasa Oribe into a Spirit giving Shin Megami Tensei a link to Fire Emblem via the Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE crossover. It would hardly be far-fetched to say that the aforementioned Shin Megami Tensei was Galeem'd in the end. This can't be good.
  • Sonic has the worst luck of all. His appearances in Wreck-It Ralph and Ralph Breaks the Internet wipes out several classic arcade games, as well as the entire Disney Animated Canon and the Pixar catalogues. His appearance in LEGO Dimensions essentially destroys The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Back to the Future, The LEGO Movie, Jurassic Park, The Simpsons, Adventure Time, Ghostbusters, Mission: Impossible, The Powerpuff Girls, Knight Rider, Gremlins, The Goonies, The Wizard of Oz, Ninjago, Portal, Legends of Chima, The A-Team, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Knight Rider, Beetlejuice and Scooby-Doo and whatever it in turn has crossed over with, amongst others. Or his cameo in Ready Player One, where all the avatars that appeared in the OASIS had their home universes wiped out as well^note Or possibly not, since those aren't the real characters, but rather avatar skins within a Fictional Video Game. Or his appearance in OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes, which leads to the destruction of O.K. K.O. itself, RPG World, Captain Planet, and if "Crossover Nexus" is taken into account, all of Cartoon Network's and Hanna-Barbera's library, as well as other Warner Bros. animation and acquired shows through crossovers. Sonic has also had brief crossovers with Angry Birds and Hello Kitty for Sonic Dash, the latter of whom had a brief meeting with the original Mobile Suit Gundam, putting that extended universe at risk.
    • Need we forget Sonic's racing career? That gets rid of Super Monkey Ball, Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi, House of the Dead, Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, Shenmue, Space Channel 5, Skies of Arcadia, NiGHTS into Dreams…, and even Team Fortress 2. That last one is especially worrisome, as thanks to Poker Night at the Inventory, we can extend Galeem's reach to Sam & Max, Homestar Runner, Penny Arcade, Portal (and by extension of them being a Shared Universe, Half-Life), Borderlands, The Venture Brothers, and Evil Dead.
    • Speaking of Half-Life, on one hand, Gordon Freeman could've survived Galeem's interdimensional massacre thanks to the G-Man keeping him in stasis. On the other hand, the last time we saw Gordon as of this game's release, he was passed out on the floor after Eli was killed by Combine Advisors...
  • Mario, while probably not as bad as Sonic in this regard, showed up in some old Simpsons episodes alongside Donkey Kong, and The Simpsons, which also crossed over with Sonic in the aforementioned Lego Dimensions, is already known for its wide amount of guest appearances whether real-life celebrity or other cartoon and/or video game characters. And even just in terms of official crossovers, that immediately knocks out Futurama, Family Guy (and by extension, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show), Bob's Burgers, Rick and Morty, Cheers (and by extension, Frasier), The X-Files, Archer, King of the Hill, South Park, and more. Mametchi's guest appearance in Mario Kart Arcade GP 2 puts Tamagotchi at risk, as well. Worst of all, the presence of the Mystery Mushroom in Super Mario Maker not only endangers the aforementioned Hello Kitty and Shaun the Sheep (and by extension, Wallace & Gromit) as well as Nisekoi and Onegai My Melody, but also gives Galeem yet another entrance to the real world via Shinya Arino and Babymetal.
  • While a Tekken character was not playable before Kazuya's addition, there is a Heihachi Mii costume around as of June 29, 2020, it still has ties to the Street Fighter series, which puts it and all other franchises showing up in it in Galeem's kill range as explained earlier. Still, maybe the horror would just end there since no Tekken character has made any significant crossovers that hasn't already been covered right? Nope. Just when most of us would think that anime would be relatively safe, Lars Alexandesson of Tekken 6 renown, as cruel fate would have it, showed up as a bonus character in Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2. Naruto, being a Shonen Jump favorite, has co-starred with a number of popular anime and manga series through the use of crossover video games and animated media, not the least of which include One Piece, Bleach, Dragon Ball, Yu-Gi-Oh!, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and My Hero Academia just to name a few. Some of these series have not faced the likes of something like Galeem and/or Dharkon, and those that have (namely the Dragon Ball characters) would still face a serious threat given that universal/multiversal level destroyers are something the casts face with some odd mixed results. Meanwhile, Lili de Rochefort and Sebastian appeared in Digimon World Re:Digitize, which brings the Digimon franchise into it, the various different continuities occasionally having crossovers with each other.
    • As of August 2021, Kazuya got added as one of the newest fighters, so even if Tekken wasn't already as screwed as its fellow fighting game universes before, it definitely is now. Suddenly, it makes getting thrown into a volcano a pleasant thought.
    • Heihachi was also in Pac-Man Fever, which puts Ridge Racer in the crosshairs because also in Pac-Man Fever is Ridge Racer's icon Reiko Nagase.
    • Fist of the North Star also is doomed by proxy of being in some Shonen Jump games. Kenshiro cameo'd in an episode of Urusei Yatsura. Lum and Ataru were featured in a crossover short with Ranma, InuYasha, and Kagome, dooming their worlds. And further horror sets in when InuYasha being doomed also makes its sequel, Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon, doomed as well.
  • Rayman is in the game as a spirit, so we already know his world isn't safe. But his appearance in Brawlhalla endangers Tomb Raider, Ben 10, Steven Universe, The Walking Dead, and Achievement Hunter, among others.
  • With Sora now in the game, he's effectively subjecting all the worlds he's been to based off classic Disney films to a fate worse than being swallowed by darkness. Considering how Sora broke down in Kingdom Hearts III's Darkest Hour, this revelation might break him even worse.
    • In addition, only the Original Generation characters like Riku, Kairi, Roxas, Xion, Axel, etc, are featured as Spirits, adding onto the possibility that Mickey and friends weren't spared from Galeem's wrath.
    • Even then, had Sora not joined Smash, the Kingdom Hearts series would still be screwed since Cloud also appears in Kingdom Hearts, so he'd also be to blame.
• One of the many spirits held by Galeem and Dharkon is none other than Tabuu from Brawl. Again, not only is this a massive display of power of just how powerful Galeem and Dharkon can be, but the real scary stuff is what happens at the end of the game. All the spirits are set free... including him. And sure, he may be a tad grateful that the heroes freed him from being a spirit, but it's not like that stopped other villains' evil schemes. Tabuu is back in action with his newly restored body, and he's certainly going to be out for revenge on everyone and rebuild the Subspace army. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.
• With Steve's appearance, this means that the cast of Minecraft: Story Mode is doomed as well. And what about all the player avatars of Minecraft YouTubers?
  • Also, let's not forget all the mash-up packs, which puts at risk DuckTales (2017) (and by extension, the 1987 version and Quack Pack too, as well as Goof Troop and Darkwing Duck), Toy Story, LittleBigPlanet, Pirates of the Caribbean, and more.
• There is also the case of Sans, Vault Boy, and Dante appearing as costumes for the Mii Gunner, alongside the Dragonborn for the Mii Swordfighter, dooming their worlds as well.
  • The Vault Boy also dooms the Doom universe (via an easter egg in the 2016 DOOM game) which by extension also dooms the Quake, Commander Keen and Wolfenstein universes by way of Doom's presence in Quake III: Arena and Quake Champions and the original timeline confirming that Wolfenstein's B.J. Blazkowicz is the grandfather of Billy Blaze, the protagonist of the Commander Keen games. Not to mention the Doom RPG timeline which also mentions the Doomguy being a descendent of his. And if the Easter Egg somehow disqualifies Doom's connections, the appearance of the Doom Slayer himself as a skin for the Mii Gunner outright dispels all doubts.
  • Shovel Knight showing up as an assist trophy also endangers Yooka-Laylee, as well as Creepy Castle (which featured Plague Knight) and all the other games that crossed over with, which includes Super Meat Boy, Cave Story, and Five Nights at Freddy's. And with numerous Meat Boy references appearing in them too, you can kiss The Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon goodbye.
• Mario and Sonic have crossed over several times, but they happened in real-world locations that hosted the Olympics. Meaning that they most likely put each of the games real-life mascots in danger. There's also a chance that the they ended up endangering real-life athletes; both veteran and newcomers to the games.
  • Following the athlete part, this could get a lot worse when you remember that the real-life Olympics dates back in ancient Greece, when the games were created to honor the god Zeus. In Hindsight, the people of ancient Greece and their god's spirit alongside the past Olympic Games prior to their first meeting in Beijing 2008, were put in danger because of Mario and Sonic.
• There's some horror to behold when considering how Galeem was able to destroy the Absolutely Safe Capsule. It's confirmed by Dr. Andonuts to be completely indestructible, and according to Word of God, it has the durability to be the only thing able to survive the heat death of the universe. Now, consider the fact that Galeem is able to destroy the indestructible, and turn attention towards the Persona universe. In Persona 3, Nyx is confirmed to not be able to be killed, with her being the embodiment of humanity's desire for death, and in The Answer, Erebus is stated to be eternally present so long as Nyx exists. If Galeem is able to destroy something that's unable to be destroyed, what would happen if his light beams were to destroy the literal embodiment of death itself, and how would all universes in the multiverse be affected by the concept of death no longer existing?
• Let’s also apply this logic to other properties from the companies, and shared engines or hardware. Kingdom Hearts having manga adaptations in Square Enix’s Gangan comics dooms other Gangan comic series like Higurashi: When They Cry or Wata Mote. Square Enix having Bubble Bobble leads to Azumanga Daioh having its own Bubble Bobble variant and therefore the entirety of Kadokawa. The Sanrio characters above appeared in Kirara Fantasia, dooming the entirety of Hobunsha. DDLC+ on the Switch affects the original game and other Ren’Py visual novels. Clannad being on the Switch affects the rest of Key’s works. Type-Moon isn’t safe, due to Tsukihime having a manga run on the aforementioned Kadokawa. Higurashi leads to the rest of 07th Expansion’s works being affected as well. Type-Moon then affects games made with Kirikiri. Looks like high-stakes manga that appeared in crossovers aren’t the only manga affected.
• Following this logic, we’re effectively dooming everyone we put in the Spirit WMG pages.
• The game frames Galeem's attack as being Apocalypse How Class X-4, with Galeem obliterating the Smash universe, but given the fact that tangential relationships with franchises can leave them at risk of Galeem, this would scale up the apocalypse ranking as Class Z-1. Galeem has the potential to destroy all living beings in the omniverse, leaving behind nothing but rotting, abandoned worlds, and unless he's stopped immediately by a force like Dharkon or Sephiroth, there's no known way to counter his attacks. At this point, Class Z-3 is starting to sound good, because at least Galeem wouldn't exist in that theoretical apocalypse.
• While the horrors of Galeem and Dharkon threatening other universe is possible, there is one force they cannot overcome, no matter how powerful both they are: The various creators of the aforementioned series. They can easily revive their characters and/or easily weaken Galeem and Dharkon. At least, we hope that...
  • There is an advantage the creators have over both Galeem and Dharkon: The ability to work together. Galeem and Dharkon are infamously incapable of cooperating, as they refuse to tolerate each other's very existence. The various godlike entities can use various tactics to bring them both down ranging from armor breaking questions like asking what would they do next after destroying the universe and/or each other to fighting them both to a standstill. Galeem and Dharkon may be powerful, but there are forces just as powerful, if not more so, and they will not go down easily without a fight.
  • Also, Galeem and Dharkon are powerful, for sure, but they aren't invincible. You can very well beat them as a goofy dog and duck or a short boxer. Plenty of the worlds listed above do have people who can fight back against them like the fighters did.
• This user here has gone and put together a list of all franchises, series, and others that are connected to Smash in some way so far; fair warning — it is positively fucking massive: https://atlas.mindmup.com/crumkid4/copy_of_super_smash_bros_nov_8th/index.html
• Another utterly horrific thing about this is that Galeem is capable of making puppets of Kirby by analyzing him, and both he and Dharkon can make clones of light and darkness respectively. Meaning all this suffering, all this mass-murder, all these souls being ripped from their lives was All for Nothing! It wasn't some evil plan to make an army from the strongest fighters and spirits they could find, it was just two mad abominations contorting every world they could reach into a twisted mockery out of spite or even sadism. Considering Galeem is the one that kicks this all off, it shows that despite looking like some no-nonsense Angelic Abomination, Galeem is just as demented, just as utterly petty as the dark counterpart they loathe so much. The entire story was the universe of Smash Bros. being at the mercy of two giant, eldritch manchildren.
• Let's ignore Galeem and Dharkon for a moment and consider that they're not the only threats to these worlds, not by a long shot. If the other fighters can access these worlds, what if say, Maleficent took an interest in other villains with Darkness in their hearts, like Dracula or Grunthilda, or one of the evil fighters? What if people like M. Bison, Geese Howard, or Dr. Wily decide to flee to another world to continue their misdeeds? What if Viridi decides to target other worlds with humans? What if thieves like Wario, Rouge the Bat, and Bonnes steal valuables from houses and castles on other worlds? What if Bowser, Eggman, and the like decide to team up? Granted, there's nothing stopping the fighters and other people on those worlds from teaming up against them as well, but still.

Fridge Horror: Classic Mode

While many of the Classic Routes are pretty tame for the most part, some of the Classic Routes for the more villainous characters have some disturbing implications or worst possibilities when you look beneath the surface.

• The Classic Mode course for Dark Samus is titled "The Great Poison Given Form". It starts off with you fighting Link with Zelda teamed-up alongside you. Later fights have you fighting groups or individuals, with one who should be from that group, helping you. Anyone who's played through Metroid Prime will immediately see the implications: you, as Dark Samus, are corrupting heroes with Phazon and are now using them to kill or at least knock out their friends.
  • One battle involves you and Robin versus Chrom and Lucina, which will give anyone who's finished Fire Emblem: Awakening a shock: it means Dark Samus somehow managed to make Grima (or at least, Grima's vessel) into a mere puppet under her control.
  • The last fight has a three-way match with you, Samus, and Ridley. Naturally, Samus and Ridley start battling each other, while you're off to the side, completely untouched. The game actually allows you to be an evil onlooker, watching the fight and just waiting to swoop in and clean up the pieces when the other two have worn each other down for you. Really does make a statement about how calculating Dark Samus really always was and how evil a manipulator she became.
• Bowser's Classic route, "The Red One. Every Red One!", has him gunning for all red-clad characters ^note  and one orange (Charizard), referencing Mario's usage of the color...which can bring very unsettling implications. After so many years of losing to Mario, and occasionally Luigi, so many times, it can only be assumed that Bowser has finally lost his goddamn mind; going on what seems to be a manhunt against every single person who just happens to wear red. Imagine a rampaging monster charging towards you, just because you remind him of someone he hates, someone you may not have even met. The worst part is that the final boss turns out to be Mario... which means that Bowser wins.
  • You know what's even scarier? Rathalos is one of Bowser's targets and is similarly pummeled into the ground, and this is considering that the fire-breathing wyvern being is as far removed from looking anything like Mario as one can get. Then it gets worse when you remember that Mario is wearing Cappy in this game; Bowser probably convinced himself that Mario was possessing the body of Rathalos and went after the beast despite the distinct lack of a mustache, blue eyes, and the obvious cap—but then you also remember that Bowser probably never actually saw Mario possess someone using Cappy, which means he'd have never actually known if this was the case.
    • Except Bowser's troops have seen what Cappy can do. And given he is usually on very friendly terms with his army, they would have definitely told him about the Bonnetter's body-snatching shenanigans...but the mooks may not have really noticed any of the possession's giveaway tells, only that Mario threw Cappy onto a buddy's head, disappeared, and suddenly said buddy goes berserk and starts attacking his own squad, only for Mario to later pop out of the poor sod's head. Bowser was probably trying to beat Mario out of Rathalos. Additionally, the cap doesn't change size — it's considerably tiny compared to the head of the various T-Rexes you can possess in Odyssey — and Rathalos doesn't have very visible eyes, so Bowser may have simply made a snap judgment and opted not to check for the tells, given that presumably "Mario" would use this massive new body against him on sight.
• Ganondorf's Classic route is called The Beginning of the End in Japanese. As one could suspect, this version of Classic pits you against heroes from various franchises, each seeming to stand on the way to stop him, culminating in that before the Hands, you have a battle against Link and Zelda where the player wins. The implications are more than obvious: You have given Ganondorf a free ticket to ravish and conquer the world of Smash, with nobody being left to stop him. And considering what this incarnation of Ganondorf did to his Hyrule, the remaining fighters will have a bleak future ahead of them. The fact that one of the opponents is Palutena makes the English title, Encroaching Darkness, even more poignant.
  • This isn't even the first time old 'Dorf has tricked the player into leading him to victory. He's already done it once in Hyrule Warriors, where he also smashed Link and Zelda into paste (and stole their Triforce pieces to boot) during his campaign. Let's hope he doesn't make this new and highly effective scheme a habit...
• While not a full-fledged "villain" like the other examples mentioned here, Mewtwo's Classic Mode route is still pretty freaky in concept. Remember the event in Super Smash Bros. Melee where you fought against Mewtwo and a mind-controlled Zelda? Well, Mewtwo's Classic Mode in this game, appropriately titled "Psychic Control", takes it further. At the beginning of each stage (except the first one), Mewtwo is partnered with an opponent it faced in the last stage, with the implication that Mewtwo is now mind-controlling that opponent into fighting for it. These opponents include Ken, Pikachu, and Cloud (which adds in some Fridge Horror if you remember the events of his home game). But the scariest one of all has to be the very first victim when it controls what appears to be Lucas with a gray palette swap. But when you think about what happened in Lucas's home game, it suddenly hits you: that's not Lucas. It's Claus.
• Ridley's Classic Mode, "It Can't Be! Space Pirates!", may not seem that scary at first^note he goes after characters that pilot(ed) ships, which is in character with his Space Pirate tendencies, but pay attention to the music selection used throughout it. After beating Samus, and you get to fight all of the non-Metroid characters, every track used is either sinister, tense and/or dramatic in tone, as if an aura of dread accompanies him as he travels to other worlds to defeat their respective heroes. It gives the impression that, to anyone other than Samus, Ridley is a horrifying threat that should not be taken lightly. Worse still, there's the implication that, should Ridley ever defeat Samus, no other forces of good in the universe would be able to stop his bloodlust.
  • Worse still, is when you examine Ridley's personality and why he'd go around fighting people in other worlds: according to the manga, he's a twisted, sadistic Psycho for Hire who doesn't just pillage and kill for money or even just because it's under Mother Brain's orders, but for laughs. This beast is going around, killing innocent people and pillaging their resources, just for his own amusement. This is even more of a ghastly threat than Porky Minch could be; and now he's wreaking havoc, ripping apart the Smash world bit by bit, before slaughtering Master Hand and Crazy Hand themselves, leaving behind many bodies in the wake of it all. The dark music playing through the whole run pretty much signifies that you are playing as not just a formidable fighter, but the aptly named Cunning God of Death himself. But even Ridley pales in comparison to....
• Sephiroth for his route, The Chosen Ones, is the worst of them all. He takes on the end bosses (save for Galeem and Dharkon) for the throne of Big Bad. Though Rathalos and the Hands aren't really evil, the latter team up to take down the One-Winged Angel, for they are the last bastion as Cloud and Sora, the two people who can truly stop Sephiroth are clearly absent and they know it. Sephiroth's victory will mean the death of the universe, if not the entire multiverse. Not even the other villains (aside from Galeem and Dharkon) are capable of such carnage. This is further highlighted by the choice of stage and music; instead of fighting Master Hand and Crazy Hand on Final Destination, they are fought on the Northern Cave, with One-Winged Angel playing in the background. Instead of Sephiroth challenging the Hands on their home turf, the Hands challenge him directly on his. Combined with Sephiroth's signature Leitmotif blaring, it gives the impression that the One-Winged Angel is entering his victory lap, and eliminating the last bastion of resistance - hero or villain - not only establishes his terrifying godhood, but truly means that all hope is well and truly gone.
• While Kazuya's path isn't as extreme as Sephiroth and Ridley's, it's not any better either as we're talking about a Blood Knight seeking any opponent. It gets worse as of Tekken 8 as Kazuya announced the King of Iron Fist Tournament to make fighters prove themselves worthy and if they fail, their country or homeland will cease to exist. Now imagine that horror inflicted on the Mushroom Kingdom & New Donk City, Hyrule, Tazmily Village, South Island, the Destiny Islands, Kongo Bongo Island, Popstar, the Lylat System, Mute City, Spiral Mountain, Eagleland, Skyworld, PNF-404, Inkadia, Altea, Ylisse, etc....

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