Super Smash Bros / Tropes N to Z

Tropes A to D | Tropes E to M | Tropes N to Z

N

• Nerf:
  • Each new addition of the game sees many nerfs to the returning characters and various mechanics. Smash 4 additionally had many balance patches released, that had some nerfs to characters perceived by the competitive community to be overpowered or to have an aspect to them that was overly-centralizing; most notably nerfed by patches were Diddy Kong, Sheik, Luigi, Zero Suit Samus, and Bayonetta (the lattermost even having a patch that was entirely dedicating to nerfing her and changing nothing else).
  • In Smash 64, Kirby was the second-best character in the game. In Melee, Kirby was nerfed so badly that some argue that it is the biggest nerf in video game history, with him being worse than Pichu, a character that hurts itself with half of its attacks and was specifically designed to be bad.
  • Not a character, but deserves to be mentioned. In Wii U/3DS, edge grabbing was severely nerfed in two ways. Firstly, you no longer gain invincibility when grabbing the ledge multiple times in a row, discouraging camping underneath the stage. And secondly, you can no longer “Edge Hog”^note An infamous tactic where you grab the edge before the opponent and thus, prevent their recovery. This rendered many characters' recovery moves (such as Kirby's) completely useless., forcing players to be more aggressive with their edge guarding tactics.
  • In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the Ice Climbers received a major nerf simply by making the lead Climber's partner unable to act when the leader is grabbing or has been grabbed, making extremely effective and borderline game-breaking strategies such as Wobbling or infinite chain-grabbing impossible to perform.
  • Of the entire series, only a few characters have been near-universally nerfed between installments, which include the aforementioned Kirby (between 64 and Melee), Meta Knight (between Brawl and For 3DS and Wii U), and Bayonetta (between 4 and Ultimate).
• Nintendo Hard:
  • Mostly, the hardest level in Classic/Adventure/All-Star/Boss Battles and the Cruel Multi-Man modes, where you fight against Those Several Mooks. And don't even try abusing button mashing tactics, the opponents will absolutely mop the floor with you if you don't have breakneck reflexes and actual strategy to your fighting.invoked
  • Smash Run is not to be taken lightly. Many enemies have attacks that can stun you and rack up your damage, some enemies are immune to certain attacks, some enemies can lower your stats, and there are several mini-bosses that have powerful attacks and have a ton of health, requiring players to be skilled at avoiding attacks in order to do well.
  • Master Core, the secret final boss of 3DS/Wii U's Classic mode who is fought at difficulties 5.5 and over. You start by fighting Master and Crazy Hands simultaneously, but after doing about 75 HP of damage to them, Master Hand will transform into various forms made of a strange shadowy swarm (the higher the difficulty, the more forms you have to fight). Each form has attack patterns that can be learned, but it will take you quite a long time to learn them. And even so, with the sheer length of the fight, it is very unlikely you will make it through without a hefty amount of damage, but if you try to play defensively, you will risk running out of time.
  • Master Fortress in the Wii U version, which can only be challenged in Solo Classic after defeating Master Core on difficulties 8 and over. After defeating Master Core's final form, an opening to a horrible Eldritch Location made of the same shadowy swarm will appear, and you must enter with nothing more than a Heart Container. Inside, you will find a labyrinth filled with enemies; most notably one carrying a shield, a flower-looking thing that fires an extremely-damaging laser that goes through walls, and a floating ball of energy. You must take out four of the Fortress' "hearts," all the while dodging attacks and avoiding "danger zone" walls that will insta-KO if you touch them while over 100% damage. To make things worse, two of the hearts are located right next to these zones, forcing you to be extra-careful while attacking them.
• Non-Indicative Name:
  • In Melee, the stage "Mushroom Kingdom II" is actually based on Subcon.
  • Duck Hunt is renamed the "Duck Hunt Duo" in PAL regions, despite the fact that the team consists of a trio: the dog, the duck, and the in-universe player wielding the NES Zapper.
  • The name "Smash Bros." implies that all the playable characters are male. The game always had playable female characters, ranging from just one (or two, if you count Jigglypuff) in 64 to roughly over a quarter of the cast.
  • Music from the original and Melee was this in Brawl and 3DS/Wii U, as they were named for their stages rather than their actual basis, an example being Corneria, which was actually a medley of Venom and the main theme. Averted for Ultimate, which gave several tracks renamed to better fit their origins.
• Non-Standard Character Design:
  • While all other items upgraded from sprites to 3D models between 64 and Melee, the Food items are flat, high-quality pictures of real food.
  • Mr. Game & Watch is nearly completely two-dimensional, in contrast to every other character in the game.
  • Steve retains the blocky aesthetic and limited animation of his origin game.
  • Kyle Hyde's trophy in Brawl mimics the Squiggle Vision artstyle of his home series, thus making him the only animated trophy in the entirety of the franchise◊.
  • A few Spirits in Ultimate (most notably certain EarthBound and Pikmin Spirits, as well as all of R.O.B.'s) are real-life pictures, as opposed to official art.
  • The Assist Trophies have this to a major degree. They can range from anything to simple sprites, to low-polygon 3D models, to fully-detailed but stiffly-animated characters.
• Non-Standard Prescription: "Dr. Mario is in the house! His prescription? KOs!"
• No Plot? No Problem!: All of the games, aside from Brawl's Subspace Emissary mode and Ultimate's World of Light mode. During the making of 3DS/Wii U, it was decided there wouldn't be much point to making a story with cutscenes because people would just watch the cutscenes on YouTube instead of buying and playing the game to see them, and it would be better to focus time on developing the actual gameplay.
• Nostalgia Level: Not only of certain game levels, but previous Smash stages as well.
• Not Drawn to Scale: Every character and stage have been compromised to not look weird (and give neither an advantage). Compare the 0.2 m Kirby or Meta Knight to the 5.2 m Lugia. Play Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, or Super Mario Galaxy after having played on Princess Peach's Castle on Melee. And even the shortest characters are bigger than an entire floor of the Fourside buildings (measurable when they hang onto them — Mario, for example, is big enough to take up almost two floors.)
  • Also in Melee, a case that overlaps with Your Size May Vary is with the F-Zero machines: in the Mute City stage, compared to the fighters, they look like radio-controlled jet cars (to the point they can be crushed with a well-timed blow), but in Big Blue, they are of a more reasonable size, already big enough to fit Captain Falcon inside.
  • Luigi's Mansion in Brawl. Luigi himself is about as tall as the entire first floor.
  • Olimar. In the games, he's about two centimetres tall, which obviously wouldn't be a very great fight.
  • For a good comparison, check out this height chart, based on the characters' given heights in their own games. It's easy to see where scale has been compromised in favor of balance.

O

• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • In Melee, Meteor Smashes could be "meteor cancelled", where the target could just act out of hitstun and completely negate the knockback of getting hit by one by jumping or using their up special shortly after getting hit. However there were some attacks, distinguished by the community as "Spikes", that launched downward like Meteor Smashes but could not be meteor cancelled by the target due to a technicality concerning the launch angle (as their launch angle was slightly outside the launch angle range the game used to determine a Meteor Smash), which made them blatantly outclass Meteor Smashes as an edge-guarding move. Additionally meteor cancelling itself was absurdly powerful, as they could be initiated as soon as 8 frames after being hit, which allowed even powerful Meteor Smashes to be survivable at high percentages that other more conventional moves would have KO'd easily at (and in turn made Meteor Smashes mostly impractical for their designated purpose of edge-guarding at high level play). Brawl addressed both these problems, by enlarging the angle that the game considers a Meteor Smash so that all downward-launching attacks in that game could now be cancelled, and then would adjust the meteor cancel window to occur much later (25 frames now after being hit for most characters, with a handful of others having a differently programmed window), while the games after Brawl would just remove the meteor cancelling mechanic altogether.
  • 3DS/Wii U removed the ability to chain grab by implementing a mechanic where after a character is released from a grab or thrown, they'll be invulnerable to any followup grab for a second.
  • 3DS/Wii U also removed the ability to edge hog by making it so that whenever a character comes in contact with a ledge, they'll bump off the character that was already on it and grab it themselves.
  • After the 1.1.1 patch was released for 3DS/Wii U, a glitch was discovered where Diddy Kong could become completely invulnerable to grabs for the rest of his stock, just by shield jumping or shield grabbing when a multi-hitting attack was hitting his shield. The impact of this glitch was considered so great that major tournaments at the time announced they were banning Diddy Kong from being used until the glitch was patched. Just a week after 1.1.1's release, patch 1.1.2 was released, with the only change being fixing this glitch. Even the patch notes for the update specifically addressed it was fixing the glitch, whereas the patch notes for the Smash 4 updates were infamous for their vagueness and refusing to list any specific changes made to characters.
  • Shortly after Bayonetta's release, she came under fire for being seen by the majority as severely overpowered. Even after she received a few nerfs in the 1.1.5 patch, the competitive community's fervor over her increased to levels that perhaps even exceeded the infamy of 1.0.4 Diddy Kong, and players of her came under extreme scrutiny under allegations of "paying to win", among other insults. While debate raged on at the time if she was truly that overpowered or if players simply "didn't know the matchup", patch 1.1.6 was released two months after 1.1.5, and the only changes in 1.1.6 was a bunch of fairly significant nerfs to Bayonetta (which would then end up proving to be last update with any character changes, and that patch would also prove to be direly necessary to make Bayonetta remotely fair, as even in her nerfed post-1.1.6 form she would become nigh-unanimously considered to be the best character and arguably to such a degree to be bannable).
• Odd Friendship:
  • The unlikely pairing of the three Duck Hunt characters as a single unit is lampshaded in the European and Japanese version's Punch-Out!! arena aliases, which are "The Most Unlikely of Partnerships" and "Unique Partners"^note translated, of course, respectively.
  • Slippy and Snake develop one in Brawl in one of Snake's codecs — he compliments Slippy on his intellect and considers asking him to design a weapon.
• Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: The fourth installment breaks the subtitle trend of previous games, instead using the the less-than-eloquent subtitles for Nintendo 3DS and for Wii U.
• Old Save Bonus:
  • In Melee, if you had Pikmin saved on your memory card, it would unlock the Captain Olimar trophy.
  • Figure Player data stored on amiibo can be transferred from Wii U/3DS to Ultimate.
  • Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! unlock Pikachu and Eevee spirits using artwork from that game.
• Ominous Latin Chanting:
  • The Final Destination theme.
  • The main theme for Brawl is in Latin. Helps that this was composed by Nobuo Uematsu of all people.
  • The main Fire Emblem theme in Brawl is also in Latin, although it isn't very ominous.
  • 3DS/Wii U's remix of "Melee (Menu)" for Final Destination.
• One-Hit KO:
  • Mr. Game and Watch's Judge. A number pops up over his head, determining the strength of his hammer. A 1 will inflict damage on Game and Watch but doesn't even cause flinching to enemies hit. A 9 will almost always guarantee a KO or two.
  • Jigglypuff's Rest. Jigglypuff falls asleep, which, for some reason, sends anyone next to her flying. It has a ton of lag time, however, and may not immediately kill heavier characters. It makes up for the latter weakness by flowering survivors, which can rack up huge damage over time.
  • Being hit with a Home-Run Bat. The Bat has a long wind-up time if used as a Smash attack, but will nearly always KO if it connects. The only way to survive is to lose momentum by bouncing off of the geography multiple times, a totally random and rare occurrence.
  • Marth and Lucina's Final Smash. Critical Hit knocks anyone it hits off screen, but when used in the air, it can cause the user to KO themselves if it doesn't connect.
  • Once Little Mac's KO meter fills up, it turns his neutral-B move into an uppercut that will send anyone it touches flying off-screen.
  • Odin's Zantetsuken. Don't stand in the middle of the stage when he appears.
  • Being crushed is instant death, regardless of damage. It's incredibly rare, however, only occurring in two stages^note Pirate Ship in Brawl only and Midgar and in a handful of areas of The Subspace Emissary.
  • Hitting a Danger Zone over 100% damage (as well as the Ultimate Chimera in Ultimate) is also instant death. The affected character simply disappears in a flash.
• One Stat to Rule Them All: In Smash Run, Speed and Jump are this. Because treasure chests and otherworldly doors (which lead to treasure/challenge rooms) are spread throughout the map, having a good Speed and/or Jump stat makes the searching much easier. What's more, the final battle may not be a battle at all, but a race to the finish or a climbing marathon, both of which make the other stats absolutely useless.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted in 3DS/Wii U. Bowser Jr. has Roy Koopa as an alternate costume, and it changes the name to Roy as well. Later, Roy from Fire Emblem was added as a DLC character. This was lampshaded in Fire Emblem!Roy's trailer in which one of the first things he did was to attack Roy Koopa.
• 1-Up: In 3DS/Wii U the Special Flag item grants an extra stock in stock matches. In timed matches, it instead adds a point to the character's KO score. The catch? To get the extra life, you have to raise the flag above your character's head for about five seconds, without taking any hits in the meantime, and you can't cancel/guard/dodge your way out once you start the attempt — you're completely defenseless.
• One-Winged Angel: Master Hand does this in 3DS/Wii U if you defeat him under certain conditions. Called "Master Core", he turns into a black grotesque shape-changing phantom intending to pummel you some more.
• Orchestral Bombing:
  • The main theme to Brawl is almost ludicrously epic.
  • Master Core's theme, which is equal parts epic and menacing.
• Ornamental Weapon:
  • Ever since the first game, Captain Falcon wears a holster with a handgun to show that he's an armed bounty hunter. He never uses it.
  • Sheik wears a short sword but never draws it out. Ultimate averts this — she now uses it for her Final Smash.
  • Ganondorf never used his sword in Melee and Brawl. A Custom Special finally allows him to do so in 3DS/Wii U, and in Ultimate, he uses a sword as part of his Smash attacks.
  • Snake is not allowed to use his holstered handgun for "family-friendly reasons".
• Our Dragons Are Different: Yoshi, Charizard, Corrin and Ridley are all dragons to some extent, and are very different. Yoshi is a cutesy Cartoon Creature dinosaur who attacks with eggs and by swallowing the foe, Charizard is a stereotypical heavyweight flying fire-breather, Corrin is a Half-Human Hybrid who attacks with a sword, transformed draconic body parts, and water powers, and Ridley is a demonic, highly intelligent and sadistic pterosaur-like alien. While never officially likened to a dragon, Bowser also has some draconic properties, and aside from Ridley, the serpentine dragon Rayquaza and the fire-breathing wyvern Rathalos appear as bosses. Additionally, most Spirits of dragon characters use Charizard as their stand-in puppet/possessed fighter, with Ridley as a close second.
• Outside-the-Box Tactic: Several exist for the various drone fights. Two of note are for Cruel Melee/Brawl (jump off the stage — the player has a recovery move to get back on stage, but the drones don't but will try to pursue you anyway ^note this doesn't work in 3DS/Wii U because they no longer jump after you) and the 15-Minute mode (run away — since the AI level of the drones improves in proportion with how many have been eliminated, simply avoiding them results in having to dodge very incompetent foes. No one ever said you had to fight for the entire 15 minutes, just survive!).

P

• Pacifist Run: In the first two games, one of the bonuses you can get is "Pacifist", in which you clear the stage or finish the match without inflicting any damage. There is also the "Switzerland" bonus, in which you clear the stage or finish the match without inflicting or taking any damage.
• Pain & Gain:
  • Fighter Lucario takes some creative liberties with how aura is used in Pokemon. In Smash, Lucario becomes stronger the higher his percent is (or lower his HP is in stamina mode), becoming ludicrously powerful when he reaches the cap at 190%.
  • Starting in Smash 4, the rage mechanic gives a smaller version of the aura boost to every single character.
• Paper Fan of Doom: The item. Do not be fooled, especially in Multi-Mook Melee mode.
• Party Game: While Smash Bros. is often considered a "party game", it didn't take up the more specific definition of the term until Wii U's Smash Tour mode, where players move their Miis all over the board collecting status boosts and fighters, then play matches when they come into contact with each other.
• Palette Swap: A fighting game staple, with the latest installment having 8 choices for alternate color schemes. Some characters have a further distinction of having entirely new costumes for their color changes:
  • Wario was the first to implement this, all the way in Brawl: he could be played with his WarioWare biker outfit or his classic Mario overalls.
  • Robin, Corrin, Wii Fit Trainer, Villager, Inkling, Byleth, Pikachu, Pichu and Pokémon Trainer^note the latter three in Ultimate only can be played with male or female variants. Notably one of Pikachu's female outfits is Pikachu Libre.
  • Cloud has his design from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, and that has two variations which either keeps or removes the sleeve on his sword arm. On a similar note, Bayonetta has her appearance from the first game as her alternate outfit. It even has a Bilingual Dialogue bonus in the Japanese versions: she speaks in Japanese in her Bayonetta 2 outfit while retaining her English voice in her original.
  • Little Mac has his classic pink tracksuit as one. In addition to that, all of his 8 normal outfits, including the tracksuit, have variants which turn him into a wire-frame boxer from the arcade game, giving him a total of 16 color options. In Ultimate, this is reduced back down to 8.
  • Additional one-off costumes are Zero Suit Samus' outfits from the endgame pictures of Metroid: Zero Mission and Metroid Fusion for her last 2 slots, Shulk's swimming trunks, and Joker's school uniform (also for his last two slots).
  • Bowser Jr. and Olimar have costumes that turn them into different people altogether, complete with the Announcer making the appropriate adjustments. In the former's case, the other 7 Koopalings take up the other color slots, while Alph from Pikmin 3 takes the second half of Olimar's. Ultimate implements another character like this in the form of the Dragon Quest Hero, alternating between the protagonists of several titles as cotumes.
  • In Ultimate, Ike has outfits based on his Bishōnen Ranger appearance from Path of Radiance (originally used as his Brawl design) and his more rugged appearance as a Hero from Radiant Dawn (which was the basis of his For 3DS/Wii U design).
  • Ultimate also gives Mario and Link new cosmetic options, Mario gaining his builder and wedding outfits from Super Mario Maker and Super Mario Odyssey respectively. And while Link has been redesigned to his Champion Tunic appearance from Breath of the Wild, he still has his iconic green look by having the Tunic of the Wild as an alternate costume.
  • Among the newcomers in Ultimate who get this treatment: Ridley can become Meta Ridley, Isabelle can change between her summer and winter uniforms, Piranha Plant changes its pot for a Warp Pipe, Joker gets his school uniform, Sephiroth becomes shirtless, Kazuya gets his business outfit, and Sora gets his basic outfits from Kingdom Hearts II, Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], and Kingdom Hearts III alongside his Timeless River, Valor Form, and Wisdom Form outfits from II and Ultimate Form from III.
• Pause Abuse: In 64, if you pause after every frame of movement, then the on-screen timer won't clock forward. This makes it possible to complete the Break the Targets and Board the Platforms challenges with a time of 0:00.
• Perpetual Frowner: A wide amount of characters in this game will never crack a smile, but the most notable example is Mario. Those who do crack a smile most likely put up a cocky look while doing it. Lucas used to be frowning all the time in Brawl, until the sequel has him always smiling much like Ness.
• Personal Space Invader: The ReDeads in Melee (making a crossover from Zelda), the LikeLikes in the same level (also making a crossover from the Zelda series), and the Bucculus in Subspace Emissary.
• Photo Mode: Every game in the series since since Melee has Snapshot mode (called Paint in Wii U version) and, since Brawl a Replay mode, the latter of which is commonly used for Machinima videos, both gaining more functions in each game. Masahiro Sakurai shares pictures made in game regularly on his Twitter account and used a more flexible version of it available only to developers during Smash Directs.
• Pictorial Letter Substitution: Starting from Super Smash Bros. Melee, the "o" in the "Super Smash Bros" logo title is replaced by the series' logo, which is a filled round with a "+"-shaped cross near the lower-left corner.
• Piñata Enemy: Every enemy in Smash Run is this. Every enemy, no matter what, will drop stat boosts if you can deplete its health, and sometimes items, equipment, or gold. Stronger enemies (Boom Stompers, Bulborbs, Reapers, etc.) and/or rare enemies (Iridescent Glint Beetle, Sneaky Spirits, etc) drop better awards.
• Player Creation Sharing: Stages made with the Stage Builder tool can be shared online.
• Player Elimination: In a stock match involving three or more players, you're eliminated when you run out of stocks, and the others get to play on until only one team or player remains. However, if it's a team match, the "share stock" option can transfer a surviving teammate's stock to you.
• Platform Fighter: The best-known example.
• Pocket Protector: The Franklin Badge, as well as the Reflectors used by the Star Fox team.
• Poison Mushroom:
  • The Trope Namer itself appears as an item that shrinks you if you touch it, making you lighter and your attacks weaker. It looks similar to a Super Mushroom, but has a slightly darker coloration and angry eyes instead of the Super Mushroom's plain eyes.
  • Ultimate has the Fake Smash Ball, which releases a devastating explosion when it's broken. Compared to a real Smash Ball, the Fake Smash Ball has a thicker horizontal line and a thinner vertical line.
• Pokémon Speak:
  • Most Pokémon retain their voices from the anime, and (except for Mewtwo, Charizard, Lucario, and a few Poké Ball Pokémon) can only say their names.
  • Yoshi can also only say "Yoshi!" and unintelligible noises.
• Power Creep, Power Seep: Inevitable in a crossover series like Super Smash Bros., where simple Pokémon like Jigglypuff or the fitness instructor Wii-Fit Trainer can take on Cloud or Shulk, who have taken down massively powerful figures. Taken to its logical extreme with Bayonetta, who has killed what was essentially the God of her game's universe.
• Power Floats: The Smash Ball itself.
• Power Glows: Whenever a character picks up a Smash Ball.
• Power-Up Letdown:
  • Getting Goldeen from a Poké Ball or Master Ball, as it's a fish Pokémon unable to do anything on land.
  • When picking up a Hammer, sometimes, its head will fly off while the character who picked it up still uncontrollably swings the handle back and forth, leaving them very vulnerable to attack. Furthermore, opponents can actually pick up the hammer head and then throw them at the poor victim for massive damage. The Golden Hammer has a similar faulty version that isn't as obvious at first; instead of the head falling off, it makes squeaky noises when it comes into contact with an opponent while doing no damage.
• Power-Up Motif: Several examples; see the trope page for details.
• The Pratfall: There's a random chance of pratfalling in Brawl whenever the control stick is hit, discouraging excessive dashing and pivoting.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Despite most of the cast being silent, some unleash these during their Final Smashes:
  Mario / Dr. Mario: Oh, yeah!
  Pikachu: Pika.... CHUUUUUUU!!!
  Meta Knight: Know my power... / Behold!
  Capt. Falcon: Come on! Blue Falcon!
  Lucario: Watch the power of Aura! (Aura Storm in Brawl) / Max Aura! (Mega Lucario in Wii U/3DS, Aura Storm in Ultimate)
  Pokémon Trainer: Take this! Triple Finish! (It's Super Effective!)
  Fox: Landmaster! (Landmaster in Brawl and Wii U/3DS) / It's go time! Star Fox — fire at will! / This is the end for you, Wolf! (Team Star Fox in Ultimate, the latter line is for when Wolf is targeted)
  Falco: Personally, I prefer the air! (Landmaster in Brawl and Wii U/3DS) / Showtime! Time for a little payback! / We've got multiple bogies inbound! (Team Star Fox in Ultimate, the second line is said when Falco hits multiple opponents)
  Wolf: We're gonna have some fun with this thing... (Landmaster in Brawl and Wii U/3DS) / Wolf Pack! Gahahaha — the hunt is on, boys! / I've got you now, Star Fox! (Team Star Wolf in Ultimate, with a unique line if Fox or Falco are hit)
  Pit: All troops, move out! (Palutena's Army in Brawl) / Equipped! / Bye now! (Three Sacred Treasures in Wii U/3DS) / Lightning Chariot! Phos! Lux! Let's go! (Lightning Chariot in Ultimate)
  Snake: It's show time!
  Sonic: Now I'll show you! (Brawl) / Super Sonic Style! (Wii U/3DS)
  Robin: Chrom! (Followed by Chrom chiming in "On my mark!")
  Lucina: Time to change fate!
  Shulk: Let's go, everyone! / Time for a Chain Attack!
  Dark Pit: Goodbye! / It's time!
  Wii Fit Trainer: Let's step up the intensity!
  Ike: Great... AETHER!
  Palutena: Watch this: Black Hole... and Mega Laser!
  Corrin: Out of the way! (Male) / This ends here! (Female)
  Bayonetta: Smashing!
  Cloud: You're out of luck.^*Translated from Japanese.
  Chrom: Anything can change! / Now I'm mad! / Your time has come! Aether!
  Simon / Richter: Away! / Now!, Grand Cross!
  Ryu: Shinkuu Hadouken! / Shin Shoryuken!
  Ken: Take this: Shinryuken! / Gotcha! Shippu Jinrai Kyaku!
  Joker: Ravage them! (Followed by another line from either Morgana - "Time for some brutality! / Quiver in fear! / It's too late for apologies!" - or Futaba - "Time for an All-Out Attack! / Here comes the pain! / Beat 'em up!")
  Terry: Overheat! Slam! Here's the big one!
  Byleth: I'll finish with this! (Followed by another line from Sothis - "Your will and mine are now as one! The end approaches!")
  Sephiroth: Return to the Planet.^*Translated from Japanese.
  Pyra: Yeah, on it! Burning Sword!
  Mythra: Concentrate, Rex! Sacred Arrow!
  Kazuya: This will be your burial ground!^*Translated from Japanese.
  Sora: Let's go!
• Pre-Rendered Graphics: Every game since Melee features an elaborate pre-rendered opening that establishes that game's tone and story mode.
• Production Foreshadowing:
  • The Metal Gears that show up on Shadow Moses Island in Brawl ended up hinting at Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Foreshadowing your work in a competitor's game takes guts.
  • Pit's presence in Brawl gives this impression since a lot of the elements made for Brawl were used in Kid Icarus: Uprising, but there was no intention to do another Kid Icarus until after Brawl was finished.
• Prolonged Video Game Sequel: The Smash Bros. games started from humble beginnings, but the series' character roster has expanded wildly with each new entry:
  • Super Smash Bros. 64: 12
  • Super Smash Bros. Melee: 26
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl: 39
  • Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U: 58 (51 in the base game, 7 as DLC)
  • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: 89^note Counting Echo Fighters, all three of Pokémon Trainer's Pokémon, and Pyra and Mythra as separate characters (76 in the base game, 13 as DLC)
  • Furthermore, the single-player "Adventure" modes of the games have likewise grown. Melee has a 12-stage Adventure mode that can be played with each character. Brawl has "The Subspace Emissary," a huge, sprawling single-player mode that involves all of the playable characters and features different kinds of gameplay. Finally, Ultimate has "World of Light," an utterly massive Smash/board game hybrid that can take hours to complete, but it allows you to unlock characters and Spirits along the way.
  • Ultimate is also noteworthy in that, while the base game has 69 characters, only a paltry eight are available upon first play. While a handful of characters are available immediately as paid DLC, the other 61 can only be unlocked through play, which isn't a speedy process. While this delighted some fans, others were chagrined that their favorite characters required quite a bit of grinding to unlock, even in the best-case scenario.
• Promoted to Playable:
  • Downplayed. Giga Bowser (a Superboss from Melee's Adventure Mode) is Bowser's Final Smash in Brawl. But like all other Final Smashes, it has a time limit.
  • Played straight in Brawl with Charizard, who was originally a Poké Ball Pokémon.
  • The 3DS and Wii U installments add two characters that appeared in Brawl: Little Mac, who was originally an Assist Trophy, and Palutena, who originally appeared in Pit's Final Smash and in a cutscene in The Subspace Emissary.
  • The addition of Echo Fighters and using the Smash Ballot as a frame of reference to the development of Ultimate opened the door for a number of characters who had small roles in the series to appear as their own characters.
    • Daisy becomes her own Echo Fighter after being represented as a Palette Swap for Peach in every single one of her appearances.
    • Ridley, after being in various unplayable appearances in all four previous iterations of the franchise, finally becomes playable in Ultimate.
    • Chrom becomes an Echo Fighter for Roy, although he's actually more of a Composite Character with traits from multiple Fire Emblem fighters.
    • Dark Samus is an Echo Fighter for Samus with the most distinctive animation changes out of any character shown.
    • Isabelle is a Newcomer who borrows moves from the Villager, but has enough to set her apart from the Echo Fighter label.
• Pun-Based Title: Super Smash Bros. for Wii U / 3DS.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: The announcer makes a point of clearly enunciating Duck Hunt's name with a gap between the words, probably to avoid any possible misinterpretation.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: The Wii Fit Trainer, the Villager, Robin, Bowser Jr., Corrin, the three Mii Fighters, the Inkling, Pikachu, and the Pokémon Trainer can either be male or female, depending on what the player chooses. The only thing that is different is the characters' voice lines will be male or female to match your choice. However, the Villager and Pikachu are exceptions.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Melee: Dr. Mario, Mewtwo, Pichu, Roy, and Young Link don't return for Brawl. (Dr. Mario, Mewtwo, and Roy return for Smash 4, with the other two returning in Ultimate)
  • Brawl: Ice Climbers, Ivysaur, Snake, Squirtle and Wolf don't return for 4. (All return in Ultimate)
  • Averted with Smash 64 and Smash 4 as every playable character in those games returns in their immediate sequels (Melee and Ultimate).

R

• Random Drop: The Poké Balls and Master Balls make a random Pokémon appear out of them. Same with Assist Trophies.
• Randomized Damage Attack/Random Effect Spell: Mr. Game & Watch's side special attack (called "Judgment") does random damage and random effects, ranging from Mr. Game & Watch damaging himself through various Status Effects to smashing the opponent off the map for a One-Hit KO.
• Randomly Generated Loot: Equipment in 3DS and Wii U works this way. Each character has three equipment slots, and each type of equipment will have one + modifier and one - modifier for attack, defense, or speed, and some will also have a special effect.
• Random Number God:
  • Barrels, Crates, Capsules, and Party Balls all have about a 1/8 chance of exploding when hit or thrown.
  • Poké Balls will release a Pokémon of variable usefulness… or release the completely useless Goldeen. The new Master Ball in 3DS/Wii U, which releases Legendary Pokémon only, is not exempt from the Goldeen misfire.
  • Starting with Melee, picking up a Hammer would either lead to a rampage of high damage and easy, fast KOs or lead to a moment of helpless stupidity because the Hammerhead fell off. Same goes for when you pick up a Golden Hammer (introduced in Brawl), in which you would either get an even more destructive Hammer or a fake replica that just squeaks harmlessly.
  • Subtly done with Luigi's side special, "Green Missile". There's a 1/10 chance of Luigi misfiring when charging, which gives him a powerful launch regardless of how long it was charged.
  • Peach's Side Smash used to randomly swing either a Frying Pan (Power), a Tennis Racket (Balance), or a Golf Club (Range). It changed in 3DS/Wii U, where they are used in a set order.
  • Peach's down special, "Vegetable", gives her a Turnip with a randomly picked face; its strength is determined by the chosen face, including the very elusive "Stitchface" Turnip which deals 30% damage on contact. She also has a rare chance of pulling out an item instead — specifically, a Bob-Omb, a Beam Sword, or a Mr. Saturn.
  • Mr. Game & Watch's side special, "Judgement", is this. (For example, 1 damages yourself, 7 spawns an apple, and 9 is a One-Hit KO.)
  • Melee has a very strange case with its Item Containers; They all had a very low chance of producing a Goomba or a Redead on the field, whether it was during a normal Match or Event Mode.
  • Olimar used to pick Pikmin of a random color in Brawl. This has been changed in 3DS/Wii U to a set pattern of colors: red, blue, yellow, purple, white.
  • King Dedede's side special, "Waddle Dee Toss", would make him throw a Waddle Dee, a Waddle Doo, or a Gordo. It was replaced with "Gordo Toss" in 3DS/Wii U.
  • Villager's up and down aerials attack with one, two, or three turnips at random, referencing how the turnips in the original games acted like the stock market (and so put the player at the mercy of the RNG).
  • As a nod to his home series, all of Hero's smash attacks have a one-in-eight chance of dealing a Critical Hit with increased damage and knockback.
  • Random tripping was the RNG's unwanted interference in Brawl; essentially, there's a random chance of falling flat on your face every time you run or turn while running. This disrupted gameplay majorly, and the condemnation of this mechanic was so severe and widespread that its removal was the very first detail for 3DS/Wii U that was explicitly confirmed by Sakurai.^note Which can be interpreted as an apology from Sakurai himself for having the undesirable mechanic introduced and implemented in the first place. Non-random tripping has stuck around, though.
  • The Customization System in 3DS/Wii U. Every time you pick up a Modification (Red Wrench), you will either get a Piece of Equipment, an Outfit, Headgear, or a Custom Special Move.
• Rare Random Drop:
  • The Legendary Pokémon are this, with a very low chance of appearing compared to the rest of the Pokémon. This is quite frustrating because they give the best rewards. 3DS/Wii U's Master Ball limits its Pokémon to Legendaries, except for the odd Goldeen and Zoroark (as a nod to how Zoroark had to be acquired in Pokémon Black and White via either event or evolving an event Zorua).
  • The extremely rare Level-3 Equipments of 3DS/Wii U bestow the strongest stat modifications, at the cost of being the most difficult to obtain.
• Real Is Brown:
  • The Mushroomy Kingdom stage is a parody of this trope. It is World 1-1 of the original Super Mario Bros., but decayed over the years. It's entirely brown.
  • Brawl also has a slightly more muted, desaturated color palette compared to the other games, enough that Sakurai specifically pointed out that the next games will make more use of primary colors. Indeed, Smash 4 re-saturated the colors and returned to a brighter, more cartoony look.
  • Ultimate has it both ways. The characters themselves universally use a duller, less saturated palette than in SSB4, which results in more colorful and abstract characters such as Pac-Man looking somewhat odd. On the other hand, the attack effects are brighter and more colorful than ever before, with some of the most stylized animations in the entire series.
  • A minor example: The hilt of Toon Link's Master Sword is a brighter blue than the more realistic Link's one despite them being the same blade.
• Recovery Attack: When knocked onto the stage or tripped, some regular attacks behave specifically to allow the player to get up. Alternatively, these can be used to get back up from ledges or back onto the stage. However, once a fighter's damage exceeds 100%, the fighter's ledge recovery attack typically has a slower animation but deals slightly more damage.
• Recurring Boss: Bowser in the Events is your opponent in several of the events after the first (including, in Melee, a harder sequel to the first event), including in one of the obligatory All-Star Battles and as part of the final battle (in Melee, his Giga Bowser form was the True Final Boss).
• Recurring Camera Shot: During the "Subspace Emissary" campaign, Diddy Kong tries to enlist the help of Fox McCloud to help him rescue Donkey Kong. Fox starts to walk away, so Diddy grabs him and drags him off by the scruff of his collar. Later he tries to get Falco to help as well, who does the same thing, so Diddy grabs him and drags him off the exact same way.
• Recurring Riff: Generally speaking, the main theme for any given installment in the series will appear in all future Smash games. This also applies for the games in which the main theme debuts; in Brawl, it reaches the extent where it has its own section in the sound test dedicated almost entirely to remixes of the main theme.
• Red Baron: The Boxing Ring's Wii U version gives a title and/or explanatory sentence to any character who fights, including Alph, the male Wii Fit Trainer, and the Koopalings.
• Red Herring: For months, the boxing ring stage in the Wii U version was a generic ring based on no other franchise having the Smash Bros. Logo in the middle of the ring and on the screens. However, with Little Mac's reveal, the boxing ring received a huge makeover to make it themed after Punch-Out!!. In-game, you can choose which of the two styles you want with a button-press as you select that stage.
• Reflecting Laser: Franklin Badge, Gardevoir, and Gray Fox have reflectors that reflect projectiles back at 180 degrees exactly. Likewise, Mario, Pit, every Star Fox character, and both EarthBound characters have shields or attacks which reflect projectiles (or redirect them in the case of Ness' yo-yo).
• Replay Mode: Brawl has an option to rewatch all cutscenes triggered in The Subspace Emissary. Since some of the cutscenes are mutually exclusive, the SSE has to be played at least twice to unlock them all.
• Ret-Canon: Elements of this series have been incorporated into the canons of some source series.
  • A few moves introduced in Smash went on to be in future titles of the source series. The most famous of these is Captain Falcon's Falcon Punch, which was mentioned briefly in F-Zero GX, and in the anime was used to finish off Black Shadow for good.
  • Link shoots his bow in the direction he's facing instead of aiming in any direction, but he can charge the bow by holding down the button. This carried over to The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords, since as a top-down Zelda game the arrows are fired in the direction Link's facing. In addition, rolling behind enemies became one of Link's techniques in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
  • Kirby gets a Smash ability in Kirby & the Amazing Mirror, Kirby's Dream Collection, and Kirby: Planet Robobot, which allows him to pull off the same moves that he can use in the Smash games. Heck, even Master Hand and Crazy Hand appears as bosses in Amazing Mirror, and the former gives Kirby the ability when you beat him as a Mini-Boss.
  • Kirby and company, from Kirby: Triple Deluxe onward, can also roll and air dodge just like in Smash Bros. This is probably because the Mini-Game Kirby Fighters is very Smash Bros. inspired.
  • Kid Icarus: Uprising references Pit's appearance in Brawl as canon on a few occasions (though seeing as there is No Fourth Wall in that game, whether one takes it seriously is another matter).
  • Several palette swaps debuted in this game before being appearing in their home series as well. In the case of Pit, one palette swap became a full-fledged character, and then that character made it into the next Smash.
• Retraux:
  • Multiple Games
    • Mr. Game and Watch is a generic stickman based on the Game & Watch games, appearing in the same monochrome frame-by-frame style. His stages (Flat Zone, Flat Zone 2, and Flat Zone X) are designed in the same style. In fact, zooming out reveals that the stages themselves are essentially one giant Game and Watch.
    • The 8-bit Mushroom Kingdom stages in the Nintendo 64 game and Melee, right down to the background music.
    • The graphics in both Smashville from Brawl and Spirit Train from 3DS resemble Nintendo DS graphics, with jagged models and blurred textures.
    • Similarly, whenever stages from the original game reappear in future installments, they appear exactly as they did on the N64 — jagged models, blurry textures, and heavy use of sprites that always face the camera. This even holds true in Ultimate, which enhances stages from Melee, Brawl, and 3DS.
  • Melee
    • Mushroom Kingdom II is based on the Super Mario All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros. 2. The background music that plays on this stage is from the original NES version of the game.
  • Brawl
    • 75m and Mario Bros. resemble Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. respectively.
  • 3DS/Wii U
    • The 3DS Mute City stage, based on the Super Nintendo release of F-Zero, complete with Mode 7.
    • Dream Land in 3DS, which takes place inside a giant Game Boy that's playing Kirby's Dream Land.
    • Balloon Fight from 3DS and Duck Hunt from Wii U are accurate to their original NES games, though the "sprites" in Duck Hunt are 3D models made from voxels rather than pixels.
    • Pac-Maze appears to draw visual inspiration from both the original Pac-Man and the somewhat flashier Pac-Man: Championship Edition. Pac-Land is essentially a straight rip of the 1984 arcade game, hilariously outdated graphics and all.
    • Pilotwings in the Wii U version starts off with a Mode 7-esque runway ripped directly from the SNES version. By contrast, it soon transitions to a highly detailed rendition of Wuhu Island from Pilotwings Resort.
    • In terms of music, Forest/Nature Area and Escape both begin as 8-bit styled remixes before transitioning into new arrangements; PAC-MAN is done entirely in an 8-bit arcade style.
    • In Smash Run, enemy Cuccos are represented as their sprite from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. This is to differentiate them from their item form, which resembles their appearance in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
• Ring Out: The main method of defeating opponents.
• Rocket Jump:
  • One of Palutena's custom moves, replacing her Up Special. In comparison to the other recoveries, it doesn't give her much height, but it's also her only damaging recovery.
  • Cannon Uppercut for the Mii Gunner. The explosion alone isn't very strong, but the actual uppercut is to be feared.
  • Samus can place Bombs and get a little upward momentum when they explode.
• Rocket-Tag Gameplay: Sudden Death works with everyone starting the sudden death round with 300%, so all but the weakest of attacks will send one flying to a rapid death. From Melee onwards, Super Sudden Death applies the "start at 300%" rule to an otherwise-standard match.
• Rotten Rock & Roll: Mario villains Bowser, Bowser Jr., and Piranha Plant use a rock version of the normal Super Mario Bros. victory fanfare.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Quite a few of the fighters can be counted as Royalty or have some kind of royal title: Bowser (King of Koopas), Ganondorf (King of Evil), King Dedede (Self-proclaimed king of Dream Land), Marth (The Hero King), Peach (Princess of the Mushroom Kingdom), Zelda (Princess of Hyrule), Lucina (Princess of Ylisse), Corrin (Prince or Princess of Hoshido/Nohr), Bowser Jr. (Prince of Koopas), Daisy (Princess of Sarasaland), Chrom (Prince of Ylisse), and King K. Rool (King of the Kremlings). Even both Robins could potentially be royalty by way of marrying either Lucina or Chrom, respectively. Other characters are also rulers of their domains, but don't have a royal title, like Rosalina, Palutena, and Donkey Kong.
• Rule of Three:
  • To delete your Brawl data, you must say yes three times.
  • At E3 2013, the year between E3 2013 and E3 2014, and E3 2014 itself, exactly three newcomers for the series were revealed. E3 2013 revealed Villager, Mega Man, and Wii Fit Trainer. Over the following year Rosalina, Little Mac, and Greninja were revealed, and at E3 2014, Palutena, Mii Fighters, and Pac-Man were shown. Afterwards, Lucina, Robin, and Shulk were revealed before the release date. When the 3DS game was released, there were only three newcomers that weren't revealed: Bowser Jr., Duck Hunt, and Dark Pit.
  • Likewise for Ultimate. E3 2018 revealed Inkling, Daisy, and Ridley. Then unique fighters Simon, King K. Rool, and Isabelle, and Echo Fighters Richter, Chrom, and Dark Samus were revealed before the November 2018 Smash Direct; which that direct revealed Ken, Inceneroar, and DLC fighter Piranha Plant.
• Rule of Cool: The game's main reason for existing.
• Running Gag: Quite a few cross over between installments. Samus and Little Mac's height contrast, Wii Fit Trainer training the other characters, Donkey Kong's awkward photo ops, Groin Attacks, Zelda chasing after Link, etc.

S

• Same Content, Different Rating:
  • Cartoonish X-Ray Sparks are about as violent as the games get, but both Melee and Brawl were rated T (recommended for ages 13+), in stark contrast to the original's E rating. Officially, it's due to the more realistic graphics being more damaging to young children's psyches or something, but they're far more child-friendly than most parents would assume. Humorously, both versions of the fourth game and Ultimate are this to Melee and Brawl, being rated E10+ (which at least didn't exist when the first two games came out) despite not really being any less violent.
  • Melee was originally rated 11+ by the UK's ELSPA (now known as Ukie, which no longer rates games) but was later rerated 3 by the European PEGI. All games since Brawl have been rated PEGI 12, while the Wii Virtual Console release of the first game is the only game in the series to receive the much more fitting 7 rating.
• Same Language Dub:
  • In 3DS/Wii U, the majority of text is worded differently between the NTSC and PAL versions, including trophy descriptions and gameplay tips. This includes not only the English versions, but also Spanish and French.
  • The Wii Fit Trainer has an American accent in the English NTSC versions, while they have a British accent in the English PAL versions.
• Scenery Porn: Achieved in Melee and pushed to even further extents in each subsequent installment.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In 3DS, smashing apart the cage holding the Mii on the Find Mii/StreetPass Quest stage causes the Dark Emperor to leave the fight prematurely for a while.
• Secret Character: Each game has characters that aren't playable by default.
  • 64: Luigi, Ness, Captain Falcon, Jigglypuff.
  • Melee: Jigglypuff, Dr. Mario, Pichu, Falco, Marth, Young Link, Ganondorf, Mewtwo, Luigi, Roy, Mr. Game & Watch.
  • Brawl: Ness, Marth, Luigi, Falco, Captain Falcon, Lucario, Snake, R.O.B., Ganondorf, Mr. Game & Watch, Sonic, Toon Link, Jigglypuff, Wolf.
  • 3DS/Wii U: Ness (3DS only), Falco, Wario, Lucina, Dark Pit, Dr. Mario, R.O.B., Ganondorf (3DS only), Mr. Game & Watch, Bowser Jr. (3DS only), Duck Hunt, Jigglypuff (3DS only).
  • Ultimate: Every character that didn't debut as a starter character in 64 and isn't a DLC character. Counting Echo Fighters, that's 70+ characters. However, unlike previous games, Ultimate makes no effort to actually make these characters secret — the entire roster is shown on the inside of the game package and it's always possible to look up tips ingame relating to characters that haven't been unlocked yet.
• Self-Referential Humor: There's a soda can with a Smash Ball on it in the background of the Distant Planet stage in Brawl. The Smash Ball also appears in the scrolling background of Figure-8 Circuit's (formerly Mario Circuit's) Jumbotron (replacing the Stars that scrolled there in Mario Kart DS), as well as in a variation of the Boxing Ring stage.
• Sequel Escalation: More notable between the first game and Melee, which pretty much took everything the N64 game had and expanded upon it:
  • 1P Mode was split into different experiences: Classic Mode, Adventure Mode and All-Star Mode. Notably, while Classic was the most similar to the original game's 1P Mode (hence the name), it now had randomized opponents instead of a fixed sequence.
  • The Giant DK and Metal Mario fights served as the basis for including the Super Mushroom and Metal Box as items, so now you can be giant and/or metal as well. Also, the Special Melee matches also has a Giant Melee option, where everyone is giant.
  • The idea of you having to bring Master Hand's HP down to zero as opposed to racking up percentage was developed into the Stamina mode in multiplayer. Many of these ideas were also applied to Event Mode, which dealt with specific scenarios and objectives to be fulfilled.
  • The stages where the Fighting Polygons and Master Hand are fought were made available for players, becoming the famed Battlefield and Final Destination.
  • The character bios feature was expanded into the trophy gallery (which itself only got bigger with each game in the series), depicting not only the fighter characters but also other characters in the history of Nintendo.
  • Not to mention the gameplay changes, such as side specials, air dodging, four-way throws etc.
• Sequential Boss: 3DS/Wii U has Master Core, an amorphous mass of black matter that emerges from Master Hand at higher difficulty levels. The number of forms you fight through also depends on the difficulty, including in order; Master Giant, a large humanoid form; Master Beast, a quadruped dragon/scorpion hybrid; Master Edges, five swords attacking at once; and Master Shadow, a Mirror Match. For the Wii U version, Master Core has one final form that can only be fought at the highest difficulty levels: Master Fortress, an Eldritch Location Colossus Climb.
• Shaking the Rump:
  • Yoshi's on-scren appearance in Brawl and SSB4.
  • One of Wario's taunts ever since his introduction, done directly towards the camera.
• Shape Dies, Shifter Survives: Due to a bug in Brawl and For 3DS/Wii U's Stamina matches, characters with a transformation for a Final Smash who run out of HP in that state will revert back to normal and be able to keep fighting, though they'll be defeated for real if they touch even a non-damaging hitbox in this state. [1]
• Shared Signature Move: The Smash games are chalk full of Moveset Clones who've all gone through significant Divergent Character Evolution and have found their own unique styles while retaining moves with their base characters. Characters from the same franchise will also share similar attacks to each other.
  • Mario and Luigi began as clones in 64 before gradually becoming their own unique fighters overtime. But they still retain many superficially identical moves like their classic fireball (based on the fire-flower powerup from their series of origin), Super Jump Punch, and Mario Tornado/Luigi Cyclone. The attributes of these moves though differ greatly and lend to different playstyle archetypes, Mario being a Jack of All Trades and Luigi being a combo-centric Fighting Clown.
  • The three Star Fox fighters all have seemingly similar attacks to each other. Falco was originally Fox's clone in Melee but was significantly changed in Brawl to become a more unique fighter. Brawl also introduced Wolf who has little in common with the previous two in terms of playstyle. All three's specials consist of a Ray Gun, Dash Attack, directional up-special, and Attack Reflector.
• Shipper on Deck: For promoting 3DS/Wii U, Sakurai released a Miiverse picture of Peach looking flirtatiously at Link over his shield with the caption “By any chance, are you hiding something from me?”
• Shown Their Work: Mixed with Continuity Porn. Nintendo won't leave the smallest aspects of other games out. The series could fill its own page with this trope. A YouTube channel will have to do in the meantime.
  • Hitting a Starman with a powerful attack creates the famous "SMAAAAAASH!!" word art and accompanying sound effect.
  • Hitting the Yellow Devil with Electricity-based attacks is one of the best ways to defeat him, which is a reference to a certain weakness he had in Mega Man.
  • Mega Man's appearance, and especially the trailer, are one huge love song to the franchise with some incredible attention to detail, especially blink-and-you-miss-it moments like Guts Man's serial number, the cooldown needed on attacks using both blasters, and even the hand preference of every Mega Man ever.
  • In Brawl and Wii U, if, for whatever reason, Olimar finds himself swimming within water, all the Pikmin he has on him will immediately die, except for Blue Pikmin, who will swim alongside Olimar until either he drowns or he jumps out of the water. Unlike the other Pikmin types, the Blue Pikmin is amphibious in that it can both swim and breathe underwater.
  • All of Robin's attacks follow the durability system of the Fire Emblem series. If all uses of his/her tomes are exhausted, he/she will throw away the tome and be unable to perform the corresponding attack until a set amount of time passes. The same goes for the Levin Sword, which will become a Bronze Sword after 8 uses before it respawns after 6 seconds.
  • Ryu's attacks also follow his home series, Street Fighter. His basic ground attacks change from Light to Medium/Heavy attacks from Street Fighter depending on whether the attack buttons are tapped or held down. Inputting button combinations from the Street Fighter games also strengthens his attacks. This all applies to Ken as well.
• Shows Damage:
  • The fourth game and Ultimate have the particle emit variety, in which heavily damaged characters start to emit steam.
  • Little Mac's face gets bruised and bandaged up the higher his percent gets and the more times he's K.O'd, much like in his own games.
  • When Olimar or Alph are hit with a heavy attack, their helmet gets cracked, though it quickly repairs itself.
• Sigil Spam: The Smash logo is everywhere. Coins, trophy stands, difficulty levels, items unique to Smash (bats, beam swords, Smash Balls, etc.) Master Core's final form, the cardboard box that Snake hides in…
• Signature Sound Effect: The Ping sound, which plays whenever certain high-damaging attacks are used.
• Single Player Gauntlet: Called 1P Game in the first game and Classic Mode in all subsequent entries. Each keeps the same basic concept, but plays around with the formula differently. 64 has a fixed sequence, Melee randomizes the fights but keeps the types in the same place (predefined teams will always be the second match, etc.), Brawl groups the fights by series, for 3DS gives a series of branching paths, for Wii U has a much greater focus on free-for-alls, and Ultimate gives predefined paths for each character related to either their respective stories or thematic elements.
• Situational Damage Attack:
  • Lucario's Aura attack gets stronger the more damage he takes, as illustrated here.
  • Marth and Roy's attacks do more damage depending on what part of their swords hit their target (the tip and the base, respectively).
  • Some characters' moves become a Meteor Move depending on which frame the attack is executed and hits the target.
• Sky Face: The opening of Melee shows Zelda's head in the sky above Sheik's.
• Slapstick: All of the games run on cartoon violence and many of the moves and items are based on classic slapstick gags. Villager, Game & Watch, and Bowser Jr. stand out in particular. The more serious characters only have more dignity to lose.
• Sliding Scale of Living Toys: The characters fall under "real and living to everyone" — that is, while they are conjured from trophies, they possess no toy-like characteristics in their own (imaginary) universe aside from death being replaced with "trophification". Some characters are the same as their fully living canon selves (such as Pit), and some can be summoned in other universes where they are indistinguishable from ordinary humans (like with Marth).
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World:
  • Both Ice Climber stages. Icicle Mountain in Melee takes place on the side of a snowy mountain, while Summit in Brawl takes place on the top of a mountain (until the top breaks off and slides towards the ocean).
  • Pokémon Stadium 2 in Brawl and 3DS/Wii U has one of its transformations turn the floor into ice, reducing traction.
  • The ice blocks in Stage Builders can allow players to create their own.
• The Smurfette Principle: 64 only has one player character that is a confirmed female, Samus Aran, although Jigglypuff is usually considered to be a female. Melee moved away from this with the addition of Peach and Zelda, and 3DS/Wii U completely subverted it. Nearly half the cast is or has the option of being female.
• SNK Boss: Giga Bowser in Melee was designed to be one; his attacks have far greater reach and much larger hitboxes than what any other character could throw out while hitting even harder than Ganondorf's attacks, he's completely immune to all grabs (including special grabs), his shield can not break (which makes his immunity to grabs even more broken), his recovery move covers great distance while having extremely large hitboxes and significant amounts of invincibility that makes it near impossible to edgeguard him (on top of him being far heavier than the playable cast to make KO'ing him even more difficult), and many of his moves have effects to significantly improve their effectiveness (such as his massive Fire Breath that doesn't shrink in size, and his Whirling Fortress that attacks with the aforementioned abnormally large hitboxes and invincibility). However, Giga Bowser ends up not being an SNK boss when you actually fight him, as Melee's notoriously poor and easily exploited AI turns Giga Bowser into a bumbling giant punching bag that barely utilises any of Giga Bowser's tremendously powerful abilities, rather than being the terrifyingly broken character he would be in the hands of a competent player.
• Snowy Sleigh Bells: True to its origin, Snowman from Mother has sleigh bells ringing through the entire track. There is also the Icicle Mountain theme from Melee, in which the sleigh bells are even more prominent.
• Socialization Bonus: StreetPassing with the 3DS version earns you rival tokens to play against in StreetSmash, a side game which has you knocking them off a field. You can earn coins based on the number of tokens you knock off, and some challenges require you to complete certain tasks in StreetSmash, but you can complete them in Practice mode if you can't get StreetPasses.
• Some Dexterity Required: While Smash 64 and Melee were intended to be simple fighting games with easy controls, the competitive community found a wide number of tactics and techniques that require fast, precise button inputs on top of lightning reflexes, and these games can be very technically difficult at high levels of play. A large part of the design focus in Brawl and 3DS/Wii U went into keeping the games as easy to play and as newcomer-friendly as possible.
• Songs in the Key of Panic:
  • The Mushroom Kingdom stage in the first two games and the Mushroom Kingdom 2 stage in the second change the background music in a timed match when 30 seconds remain on the timer. In the Mushroom Kingdom stages, the "Hurry up!" jingle plays and the music simply speeds up. In Mushroom Kingdom 2, the boss theme from Super Mario Bros. 2 begins to play instead.
  • Suzaku Castle in 3DS/Wii U continues this tradition. Unlike the above two stages before Ultimate, the music will also change in a stock match when two fighters remain and one is down to their last life, as in the main Street Fighter series.
• Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • The TV commercial for the first installment showed Mario, DK, Pikachu, and Yoshi engaging in vicious beatings to the sounds of "Happy Together" by The Turtles.
  • Calling to the Night, a slow, somber tune, plays in Shadow Moses, an action-packed stage with lots of destruction.
  • Brawl is the only fighting game the "Uta" Pikmin songs could even remotely fit in as background music.
  • In Brawl, the Halberd is the only new Kirby stage, and as such is host to all its music. Things like the Gourmet Race rock remix fit nicely. Things like Butter Building? Not so much.
  • One of the two songs available in 3DS for the Lumiose City stage is the city's theme itself, taken exactly from the games, and thus, not remixed. In other words, it's still a completely casual "welcome to the big city"-esque song, but now it plays while the fighters battle each other within the city.
  • The level based on Wrecking Crew from Wii U features mellow tunes like the Balloon Fight Medley, Icicle Mountain, and Lip's Theme on a noisy stage that's all about Stuff Blowing Up.
  • Smash Run lets the player invoke this, as every song can be chosen to be the background music.
  • Ultimate allows any song to be played on any stage from that song's franchise (with the "miscellaneous" stages allowing for all of the "miscellaneous" songs), allowing bright and happy music to be played on dark and dreary stages or vice-versa. Combinations like the Wii Shop Channel theme on Find Mii or The Grand Finale on Rainbow Cruise are all but guaranteed.
• Space Zone:
  • Final Destination is a platform floating in front of a nebula in space, which then transports itself (and the characters and items on it) to different dimensions over time.
  • A good number of Star Fox stages fit this trope:
    • Sector Z, which only appears in Super Smash Bros. 64, takes place on the Great Fox as it flies through space. The lack of neither air nor gravity presents a problem, but Arwings occasionally fly by to shoot at fighters.
    • Lylat Cruise is set on a spaceship called the Pleiades, which flies through the Lylat System over the course of the battle. The ship carries the players through a number of spaceborne sights, including a pitched battle between two space fleets, an asteroid belt, a skirmish between the Space Fox and Space Wolf fighter teams, and a pass through the outer atmosphere of the planet Corneria. The fighters never have problems with air, gravity or lack thereof during this stage.
    • Orbital Gate Assault is another Star Fox stage set in space. It takes place primarily on the Great Fox, but certain parts require the fighters to balance of flying Arwing starfighters. Again, gravity and air aren't concerns — the primary dangers are getting shot at by passing fighters or falling into the Great Fox's exhaust flames.
  • Mario Galaxy takes place on the surface of a Baby Planet small enough to have a noticeable curvature. Projectiles and thrown characters will fly along the curve of the planet instead of following straight paths, while a variety of planetoids and literal space ships pass across the starry background.
• Spectacular Spinning: In Melee, Peach's taunt and Up Smash. Brawl adds spinning taunts for Kirby and Jigglypuff, and the fourth game does so for Palutena.
• Splash Damage: Alongside the various explosives, there are some attacks that have hitboxes that extend farther than what you'd expect, and are capable of hitting multiple opponents.
• Spoiler Opening:
  • Ness and Marth, being secret characters, appear in Brawl's opening, and the Green Hill Zone battle stage not only appears in said opening, but on the back of the game's box too. The Guest Fighters Snake and Sonic are excused since even though they are heavily featured in the promotion, Sakurai outright said that they're unlockable to begin with, and Snake's stage was one of the game's default stages.
  • Some of the cutscenes from the Subspace Emissary appear in the opening which could spoil which characters team up with each other, and maybe a few other things from the story.
• Spoony Bard: Some fighters have unique traits compared to others. Subverted in they tend to be more or less as effective as the more straightforward characters.
• The Spook: In the Wii U version, Palutena has all the information on most of the fighters. Enter a fight with a DLC character? She comes up blank. Viridi speculates that they've fought their way in from another dimension.
• Spotlight-Stealing Crossover:
  • The title is a play on Super Mario Bros., and that franchise gets the most representation by far (even if you're generous and count characters with spin-off titles — Yoshi, Donkey and Diddy Kong, and Wario — as coming from their own series instead of Mario's). Nintendo's other major cash cows, The Legend of Zelda and Pokémon, aren't too far behind, with the latter having more playable reps than Mario in Brawl and Ultimate depending on how the Pokémon Trainer and their Pokémon are counted. In Brawl, the entire cast of Mario Kart 64 is playable (excluding Toad), let alone the fact that Toad actually appears in one of Peach's moves.
  • Kid Icarus gets this in the fourth game, with the sudden spike in representation with Pit's new moves, many new items, two new characters^note one's a clone, but the other has unique custom specials, tons of Smash Run enemies^note though they were mainly chosen because they could work on the 3DS, and two 5-minute songs while hardly any other songs surpass 3 minutes. Sakurai had previously worked on Kid Icarus Uprising before working on 3DS/Wii U.
  • The Fire Emblem series exhibits this to some extent. The 3DS and Wii U games have four Fire Emblem fighters in their default roster, a fifth (Roy) was present in Melee and added as DLC for 3DS/Wii U, and a sixth (Corrin) was later also made available as a DLC. Justified, as the popularity with Western audiences of Marth and Roy in Melee led to Nintendo's decision to begin localizing the Fire Emblem series, which had to that point been Japan-only.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Invoked. The Squid Sisters appear in Ultimate as an Assist Trophy, where they have a concert at the middle of the stage. The bad news is that the camera pans towards them, making the boundaries smaller and it's easier to KO others.
• Sprite/Polygon Mix: The playable fighters in 64 are rendered as 3D models, but items and minor characters such as Pokémon summoned from Poké Balls are rendered as 2D sprites. Most of it was gone by Brawl (and what remained in Melee was minor at worst), but 3DS/Wii U uses this for different reasons entirely.
• Standard Female Grab Area: Male characters are usually grabbed by the chest or clothes near the chest, while most female characters are usually grabbed by the arm◊ or hand. This can look odd in some situations, such as Wario who holds male opponents by their neck but looks like he has a stranglehold on a female's opponent hand.
  • That is, unless your character is being grabbed by Mega Man. He just singlehandedly holds whoever he's grabbing over his head by the back. Though he can appear to be grabbing some girls by their butts.◊. In some of his throws he can look like he is going to town on said female's butt in some frames◊.
  • Wii Fit Trainer grabs male and female fighters by their shoulders◊ and lifts them off their feet.
  • Interestingly items share this property, the beetle for example seemingly grabs a girl by their hand while it usually grabs men by their waist. It can look strange on some occassions such as with Kappn's bus that uses a character's standard grabbed animation when trapped inside thus the girls have their hands extended for no reason and look like they are trying to free their hand for a non existent grabber.
  • Some female characters who can also be male avert this by being grabbed by their neck or waist, and some male characters who can also be female are also grabbed by their hands just like the girls.
• Status Effects: In 3DS, the Dark Emperor inflicts these on fighters at random on the Find Mii/StreetPass Quest stage.
• Status Line: The status box contains each player's accumulated handicap in percentage as well as the number of lives left if that's the mode selected. All over a watermark of the character's original game logo.
• Stealth Pun:
  • One of the ways to unlock Dr. Mario in Wii U is to complete a Master Order on Hard. In other words, a doctor's order. The same character has a challenge to get 8 Fevers in one Trophy Rush.
  • Lucas' reveal in 3DS/Wii U says "Lucas comes out of nowhere!". Where does Lucas hail from? The Nowhere Islands!
  • One of the ways to perform a meteor smash is by using Wii Fit Trainer's head during her Header move instead of her ball. In other words, spiking them.
• Stepping Stones in the Sky: The Umbra Clock Tower stage in 3DS/Wii U is basically one huge one, with other platforms whisking on by occasionally. What? ...You're wondering how fighters still gravitate towards the direction of the main platform despite the entire stage twisting and turning as it falls? Well, don't!^note The actual reason why is justified in the opening of Bayonetta, which essentially boils down to "because magic."
• Sticky Bomb:
  • The Gooey Bomb.
  • If he's close enough to his opponent when he executes the attack, Snake can stick a C4 onto his opponent.
  • The Crash Bomb returns in 3DS/Wii U.
• Stock Food Depictions: The food items, part of the series since Melee, take up standard forms for easy indentification.
• Successful Sibling Syndrome: Luigi's Brawl Final Smash, the "Negative Zone", is implied to have been generated because he has lived in his brother Mario's shadow for so long.
• Suddenly Voiced: Certain characters originating from games with no voice acting are given voices in Smash. Examples include Captain Falcon, Ness and Lucas, the Ice Climbers, and Pit.
• Suicide Attack: After beating all of its forms, if you take too long to send the Master Core flying, it will start unleashing One-Hit KO shockwaves. Evade them all, however, and the Core will self-destruct.
• Super Drowning Skills: Downplayed. Some stages have water that a character can swim in, and regardless on if the character can swim (Mario, Donkey Kong, Squirtle, Greninja) or can breathe underwater (Mega Man, Bayonetta) in their own games, if they stay in there too long, they will eventually drown and sink to the bottom, costing them a KO.
• Super Special Move:
  • Mario's Final Smash, the "Mario Finale", has him fire two massive fireballs that spiral past the edge of the screen. This is an amped-up version of his standard fireball, which serves as his neutral special. Dr. Mario has the similarly named "Dr. Finale" that uses Megavitamins instead.
  • Link's Final Smash in Ultimate is the Ancient Bow & Arrow from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a version of his standard arrow projectile using a powerful, technological equivalent.
  • Cloud Strife's Limit Break ability allows him to perform super-charged versions of his other special attacks.
  • Kazuya Mishima's "Final Blaster" is an even stronger version of his standard Devil Blaster, a laser beam fired from his eyes. Final Blaster has him transform into the Devil first, and several other beams across his wings fire in unison with the one from his eyes.
• Summon Magic: Picking up Summon Materia on the Midgar stage allows players to call forth one of 5 Summons (Ifrit, Ramuh, Leviathan, Odin, or Bahamut ZERO) from Final Fantasy VII. Each Summon uses their Signature Move to alter the battlefield in some way and inflict damage to anyone that didn't summon them.
• Super Mode: Several characters' Final Smashes.
• Super Move Portrait Attack:
  • Most Final Smashes use the alternate version of zooming in on a character.
  • Robin's Final Smash gives Chrom a cut-in when he's summoned, as a direct reference to Fire Emblem: Awakening.
  • Ultimate instead uses the standard version, with a cut-in of the character's portrait appearing before the Final Smash activates.
• Sword Lines:
  • They appear for all bladed weapons from Melee and Brawl. The 3DS and Wii U games do this for all swinging-type attacks, which is intended to make their effective ranges obvious.
  • Marth's Dancing Blade technique is a prime example of this trope, as the color of the blade's trail in Brawl is dependent on the input of the Control Stick/Directional Pad, with red being neutral/forward/side, blue being up, and green being down.

T

• Take a Third Option: In Corrin's reveal trailer, he is given the choices of joining either the Nohr or Hoshido armies or refusing to fight both. A fourth option to join Smash shows up in the selection box, and he instantly takes it.
• Take That!:
  • Sakurai wrote a Dojo post for Brawl's website that includes a screenshot of a battle with the caption "I'm finished registering." Rather than translating it properly, Nate Bihldorff switched it entirely to say "Real men use items!", a jab at competitive players who play with items off. This mistranslation would also fuel the misconception that Sakurai abhorred competitive play.
  • Some people think that Starfy's general uselessness as an Assist Trophy is a jab at the Starfy series. The line "Stafy, why did you even come here?" in his Dojo update is probably what cemented the idea. Downplayed in Ultimate where while his Assist Trophy is still useless, his Spirit is an Ace Spirit with a starting 8000 power.
  • In Snake's codec call for Luigi, the Colonel essentially gives lots of these. 'Oh, you mean the King of Second Bananas. Look at that pale skin. Comes from standing in his brother's shadow so long.' Of course, it's a Mission Control Is Off Its Meds thing like "I need scissors! 61!".
• Technology Porn: The close-up shots of Mega Man's weapons transforming in his debut.
• Temple of Doom: The Zelda-themed "Temple" stage, the Ruins from the Subspace Emissary, and the Smash Run stage. Palutena's Temple also qualifies, with some hazards typical of the trope dotted around too.
• Tentacled Terror: Mr. Game and Watch can turn into a frighteningly huge octopus as part of his Final Smash. In Brawl and 4, he can extend his tentacles and deal damage while moving around, while in Ultimate, he snags his hapless victims and carries them straight to the blast zone.
• Theme-and-Variations Soundtrack: The main theme of each game (starting with Melee, but exemplified with Brawl) is remixed into several versions, each for a different situation. The game's opening version, the main menu version, the Final Destination version, boss battle version, etc.
• Theme Music Power-Up: In the Mega Man trailer, the music starts off as the main theme from Mega Man 2, but when the Blue Bomber gets his second wind and breaks out the Robot Master powers, the fan-favourite Dr. Wily's Castle 1 tune from the same game plays.
• Thick-Line Animation: The characters in the 3DS version to take full advantage of the 3D function and help the characters better pop out. If it's not to your taste, you can instead give them thin lines, or no lines.
• Three-Stat System: In 3DS/Wii U, when customization is turned on. The seven possible combinations are acknowledged in-game.
  • Attack increases the damage and knockback of attacks. Buffing it reduces defense.
  • Defense decreases damage to the fighter and shields. Buffing it reduces speed.
  • Speed allows the fighter to walk and run faster on the ground and move faster laterally in the air. Buffing it reduces attack.
• Three-Strike Combo: Several characters' jab consists of three consecutive strikes just by tapping the basic attack button. When possible, the animation matches their three strike combo's in their home series.
• Throw-Away Guns:
  • You automatically toss away guns in 3DS/Wii U when they run out of ammo. Usually forward, meaning your foes will be hit by it.
  • Robin tosses away their Levin Sword/Tome if it runs out of durability. The discarded item can hurt, making for close saves where an incoming attack is stopped by your broken Levin Sword.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works:
  • Melee weapons like the beam sword can instead be thrown for fairly absurd damage and knockback.
  • Ike's Special Move Aether involves him tossing his sword up into the air, and the Super Armour on it will make sure it always does work.
  • Despite using the same Up-B as Ike, Chrom averts this.
• Tiebreaker Round: In the event of a tie, rankings are decided by a Sudden Death round in which everybody has 300% damage. The last player to get knocked off the stage wins. If a Sudden Death match goes on for too long, Bob-ombs start raining from the sky.
• Timed Mission: Target Breaking, Zebes Escape, and Home Run Contest, among others.
• Time Keeps On Ticking: In Break the Targets and the other minigames, time passes even when the game is paused, likely because pausing allows you to see the entire map.
• Time-Limit Boss: Any of the non-Subspace Emissary mode bosses, such as Master Hand, have the standard 5-minute time limit that the rest of the stages have. Special mention goes to Master Core, as the fight has the standard 5-minute time limit like normal (with 3 minutes being added upon reaching Master Fortress), but upon reaching its final form, the time limit actually freezes. However, this final form has a second, invisible time limit; while the final form has seemingly no attacks, take too long to defeat it, and it rises up and attempts to One-Hit KO you using screen-wide shockwaves in a similar vein to Tabuu's Off Waves. You can, however, dodge all the shockwaves with skillful timing, at which point it simply self-destructs.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: Not romantically, but Sakurai first pointed out the visual contrast between Little Mac and Samus when the former was an assist trophy in Brawl. Since becoming a playable character, it's become a Running Gag to pair them up.
• Title Scream: Both in 64 and in Melee, but not since Brawl.
• Took a Level in Badass: Peach (and Daisy)'s Toads seem a lot less helpless in Ultimate than in previous installments (where it seemed that they were being used as human shields). Now, they jump out to protect their Princess and assist with throws.
• Tornado Move:
  • With the Gale Boomerang, Link can throw it to create small tornados to attack opponents with.
  • One of Meta Knight's attacks is spinning himself rapidly to become a tornado, a la Taz-Mania.
  • Mega Man's Top Spin from Mega Man 3 and Air Shooter from Mega Man 2.
  • Mario and Luigi have had their spin attack, complete with a very small tornado around them, since 64. Brawl subverted this by replacing Mario's with F.L.U.D.D. It's still used now as his DAir, and Dr. Mario can still use it in 3DS/Wii U.
  • Smash attacks performed with the Ore Club in 3DS and Wii U will generate whirlwinds that travel horizontally.
  • One of the Mii Swordfighter's neutral specials shoots out a tornado projectile that both damages and pushes back enemies.
• Tournament Play: Every installment has had an active tournament scene. Since Brawl, there has been two distinct scenes co-existing; one for the latest Smash game and one for Melee, that each rival or exceed the scenes of the biggest fighting games in their era, while Smash 64 and the Brawl mod Project M/Project + have their own much smaller but dedicated scenes that persist to this day. Melee's is particularly notorious, as its competitive scene has lasted for two decades now, and while it's decisively smaller than Ultimate's, it is still larger than most other active fighting games. The games since Melee also have a dedicated tournament mode, but it's never used for actual competitive play due to many inadequacies that makes it unsuitable for running real tournaments.
• Trailer Spoof: Despite opening with the Smash Bros. logo, the first scene in most trailers for Wii U/3DS and Ultimate either look like they're for a different game altogether or a different character than the one being revealed:

  • The debut trailer opens with Animal Crossing to introduce the Villager.
  • Wii Fit Trainer's is, of course, Wii Fit U.
  • Rosalina's is a mix of Kirby Air Ride and Mario Kart 8.
  • Little Mac has a Punch-Out!! trailer complete with a motion comic artstyle, similar to Bob's endings from Tekken Tag Tournament 2.
  • Greninja is introduced in a Charizard trailer, and further appeared in shadow, causing many to mistake him for Mewtwo.
  • Robin is introduced in the same trailer as Lucina, appearing while she fights Captain Falcon, while Chrom laments his exclusion from Smash (at least as a playable character; he's still in as part of Robin's Final Smash).
  • Duck Hunt's trailer literally starts with the original Duck Hunt.
  • Ryu's trailer mimics the Super Street Fighter II intro.
  • Cloud is unique. The Nintendo Direct version of his trailer doesn't have the usual criss-cross that other newcomer trailers had, and instead opens with the "Opening ~ Bombing Mission" theme from Final Fantasy VII. Until the Smash Bros. logo itself showed up later in the trailer, a fair amount of people believed that the trailer was for Final Fantasy VII in some capacity. For most fans who assumed it was going to be a trailer for Smash, they failed to recognize the music and assumed the starry background was for a space-oriented character, like a returning Wolf, until the Final Fantasy VII logo showed up.
  • Corrin's reveal begins as the Decision cutscene from Fire Emblem Fates, where a fourth option to join Smash is added.
  • Bayonetta's reveal starts out focusing on Pit, implying a new Kid Icarus character.

  • Ultimate's reveal trailer initially appears as a remake of Splatoon's own first trailer.
    • Isabelle's reveal trailer for Ultimate starts out resembling a trailer for a new Animal Crossing game. However, it's Double Subverted in that a new Animal Crossing was actually revealed after the Smash announcement.
    • Simon's reveal starts off with Luigi exploring a haunted house, making it look like an advert for a new Luigi's Mansion game.
• Training Dummy: The CPU in Training Mode and Sandbag in the Wi-Fi waiting room.
• Training Stage: Brawl had the Wi-Fi Waiting Room, with a layout identical to the popularly simple Final Destination, the signature tiles laid out on the floor, and an infinitely-regenerating Sandbag to smack around until the match starts. It's not available for normal play without hacking, though.
• Tremor Trampoline:
  • The POW Block in all of its appearances has this in one way or another:
    • In 64, it appears in the unlockable Mushroom Kingdom stage, and once struck, does major damage to all characters on the ground and sends them high into the air, potentially KO'ing characters at high percentages.
    • In Brawl, it appears in the Mario Bros. stage. This time, it does no damage when stuck, but it does bounce characters standing on the ground up gently, potentially interrupting Smash attacks, as well as flipping every enemy on the ground.
    • It appears again in 3DS/Wii U, this time as a fully fledged item. Once thrown by a character, it damages all ground-bound opponents and throws them into the air, like in the first game, but the user themselves (as well as any potential team-mates) is also harmlessly affected, being bounced gently into the air as well.
  • The Polar Bear in Smash Run also causes this when it jumps, damaging and launching you up if you're caught on the ground.
• Trophy Room: The Trophy Vault from Melee onward, but Wii U groups related trophies together in Trophy Boxes.
• True Final Boss:
  • Giga Bowser in Adventure Mode of Melee is unlocked by beating Adventure Mode on Normal or higher in under 18 minutes without continuing. He's twice as big as Bowser, cannot be grabbed, and he can usually take over 300% damage before being smashed off the stage. He's also this for Melee's Event matches, being the main opponent alongside Ganondorf and Mewtwo in the secret final Event of the game.
  • For the Brawl and Wii U Events, Mario and the non-DLC third party mascots serve as the True Final Boss in the single-player Events. In the Co-Op Events, the True Final Boss ends up being every playable character (excluding DLC characters).
  • On higher intensities on Classic Mode in 3DS, you fight Master Hand and Crazy Hand on Final Destination like in most other Smash games; however, midway through the battle, Crazy Hand suddenly dissipates while Master Hand goes into a violent spasm, before exploding and revealing the real final boss, a shadowy being known as Master Core. Master Core has several forms it fights with (the higher the intensity, the more forms you need to fight), including a gigantic multi-armed being named "Master Giant", a fanged scorpion with the name "Master Beast", several floating swords under the name "Master Edges" ("Master Sabres" in the PAL version), before transforming into a shadowy clone of your current character, entitled "Master Shadow". After that, you fight its true form, a sphere resembling a Smash Ball that has to be damaged enough so you can smash it off of the screen in the traditional way.
  • Exaggerated in Wii U, where after defeating Master Shadow, Master Core assumes a form so massive it becomes a stage in its own right, a form appropriately named "Master Fortress", in which you venture inside to destroy several weakpoints whist fighting against "swarm" versions of select enemies from the 3DS game's Smash Run mode. Fortunately, the game is kind enough to give you a special Heart Container that heals all damage like in All-Star Mode, before letting you take it on. There is no additional boss after that; after the fortress is cleared by destroying the final weakpoint, the game proceeds to Master Core's spherical form like normal.
  • In Ultimate, the best ending of World of Light is obtained by fighting Galeem and Dharkon together, which requires substantially more effort to reach than a battle with either of them individually.
• Try Not to Die: Falco says this before the second fight on the Great Fox in Melee's Adventure Mode.
  Falco: Try to stay alive, huh Fox?
• Turns Red:
  • In 3DS/Wii U, everyone deals more knockback the higher their damage percentage is. This gameplay mechanism is known as "Rage".
  • Lucario has this as a key part of his fighting style: as his damage percentage increases, his Aura attacks become more powerful.
• Twinkle in the Eye: Every fighter upon being selected on the fighter select screen. For the Duck Hunt Duo, both the dog and the duck have one.
• A Twinkle in the Sky: Called "Star KOs" here. In 64 through Brawl, this will happen to your character if they go past the upper blast line. In Smash 4 onwards however, it has been randomised to be either this or a regular Blast KO instead, with some stages not even having Star KOs altogether.
  • In the "Find Mii"^note (AKA "StreetPass™ Quest" for PAL users) stage, this will happen to the trapped Mii in the cage if you attack said cage too much, causing said Mii to get sent flying into the distance.
• 2½D:
  • The games themselves operate this way, being 3D models on a 2D playing field. Hitboxes work in 3D, and this can affect rare situations where a character steps off of the playing field during a dodge.
  • The Jungle Hijinks stage from Wii U is notable for its gimmick; like in its source game, fighters can switch between the foreground and the background.

U-V

• Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: Comes with the game being a Massive Multiplayer Crossover.
• Unstable Equilibrium: Ledge recovery attacks become slower but stronger if the player's character is at or over 100% damage. Removed in 3DS/Wii U for game balance purposes.
• The Unfought:
  • Jigglypuff, Ness, and Captain Falcon cannot be fought in the original game's Classic mode. They will show up as allies in the Mario Bros./Giant Donkey Kong battles, however.
  • In Melee's Classic Mode, the player will never battle Roy or Ganondorf. All other characters have a chance of showing up.
  • In Melee's Adventure mode, Dr. Mario, Ganondorf, Young Link, Marth, Roy, Mewtwo, and Mr. Game & Watch cannot be battled under any means.
  • The Mii Fighters in 3DS/Wii U's All-Star mode.
• Use Your Head: There's a lot of attacks in which the character will use their head, but the most common use of their heads is pummeling. Characters who pummel using their head are: Mario, Dr. Mario, Luigi, Ike, Ness, Diddy Kong, Duck Hunt (from the duck), King Dedede, Pac-Man, Olimar's Pikmin, Pikachu, and the Mii Brawler.
• Useless Useful Spell: Subverted by air dodging in Melee. For its intended purpose, the maneuver is very ineffective; the air dodge makes you move a short distance, but afterwards, it holds you in place and makes you helpless afterwards, making it all too easy for the opponent to trap you. However, it turns out that it is far more useful when it is used near the ground, as air dodging "into" the ground at an angle allows you to slide a short distance very quickly.
• Universal-Adaptor Cast: Part of the fun of the Smash Bros. series is that each of the characters are unique enough from each other that they can work as an ensemble and create situations and stories that couldn't happen in a single franchise alone.
• Vague Hit Points: The series shows damage in whole percentages but actually deals damage to the tenth of a percent, although that wouldn't become clear until Super Smash Bros. Ultimate which would show the first decimal place.
• Version-Exclusive Content: 4 has the same roster of fighters between its console and portable versions, but some stages differ between the portable and platform versions, and each features different game modes as well (e.g. sidescrolling-beat-em-up-style Smash Run on the 3DS vs. board-game-style Smash Tour on the Wii U). The Wii U version also supports up to eight simultaneous fighters (instead of four) and features a Level Editor. It's not possible for the two versions to play together, but it is possible to use the 3DS version as a controller for playing the Wii U version, and transfer customized Mii Fighters between the two versions.
• Versus Character Splash: They appear before each fight in the Classic mode (1P mode in the original game), though only your opponents appear on the splash screens in 4. Ultimate features them on the loading screen for standard matches.
• Victory Pose:
  • The winner of each match does one at the results screen, and some of the taunts count. As of Brawl, each character has three victory poses and three taunts.
  • You gain bonus points for taunts after a K.O. in 64 and Melee. You also get points for attacking someone who's in the middle of a taunt.
  • Thanks to Luigi having a damaging and knockback-causing taunt, there are two Luigi-exclusive bonuses: one for damaging a foe with a taunt, and one for KO'ing a foe with a taunt.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: More prevalent in Brawl, where you can pick up a Bonsly and throw it into any number of hazards (such as lava, or pits, but especially water, where it immediately sinks offscreen with it being part rock-type), and on the Great Bay stage in Melee, one could wait until Tingle floated over water and then pop his balloon, resulting in him plummeting into the water, back when characters couldn't float.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Anytime the player finds themself in a level adapting the Game & Watch game Oil Panic, attacking the costumers results in the player taking damage.
• Video Game Perversity Potential: The Miiverse Stage allowed one to draw pictures for various in-game characters so that the stage, itself, could display them when said characters were in the match. The problem? Miiverse posts were apparently not moderated before appearing on the stage. Cue Rule 34 (at least until they had been shot down by Nintendo).
• Video Game Flight: Winged characters can glide in Brawl. It's Not Quite Flight, but close. Played straight with certain character's Final Smashes, like Sonic and Yoshi for example (though they only last for a limited amount of time like all Final Smashes).
• Viral Unlockable: In Brawl, playing against a secret character online will unlock that character for you.
• The Voiceless:
  • The Mii Fighters in Wii U/3DS, but not in Ultimate.
  • Mega Man, Pac-Man, Olimar and Isabelle are all notably silent, whereas their original appearances have had voices before (though Olimar wouldn't speak until Pikmin 3 and Pac-Man is explicitly based off his original appearance).
  • Villager counts as well.

W-Z

• Wallbonking: The computer players in Brawl have a problem with being addicted to the spike traps that can be placed on custom stages. They'll frequently drag out a match, gaining over 900% damage quickly — if you can catch them at this point, they'll invariably be KO'd in one hit.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Shulk and Sephiroth have alternate costumes that leave them shirtless, while Kazuya is already shirtless by default.
• Wall Jump:
  • Most that can do it in their games do it here and many others gain the ability. ^{The list}Mario, Dr. Mario (but not in Melee), Young Link and Toon Link (not Link), Samus, Dark Samus, Zero Suit Samus, Pikachu (not in Melee), Pichu, Fox, Falco, Wolf, Sheik, Mewtwo (not in Melee), Diddy Kong, Squirtle, Lucario, Mega Man, Villager (not Isabelle), Wii Fit Trainer, Little Mac, Greninja, Pac-Man, Duck Hunt, Bayonetta, Inkling, Mii Gunner and Brawler (not Swordfighter).
  • Bizarrely, Luigi had the ability to wall jump in the E3 build of For 3DS, but lost it when the full game came around.
• Warm-Up Boss:
  • The Events of Melee, Brawl, and Wii U have the first event pit you as Mario up against Bowser to teach you how Event Mode works.
  • Mr. Game & Watch in Brawl's All-Star Mode is the only concrete example from that particular mode.
• Wham Shot:
  • Most of Ultimate's character reveal trailers start with the logo tearing through the black screen and/or the logo appearing in some additional form; in some cases, in the form of an invitation with a logo-stamped wax seal. It's a sign that someone is about to join the roster.
  • 4's announcement trailer introduces Animal Crossing's Villager running off after receiving his invitation.
• William Telling: Melee has, as a reward for completing single player modes as each character, still but usually comical screenshots created in-engine and in-gameplay. Clear Adventure Mode as expert archer Link, and you get rewarded with one of Link aiming at one of Whispy Woods' apples, placed on Kirby's head.
• Windmill Scenery:
  • The Water version of the Pokémon Stadium stage in Melee has a large spinning windmill at the left of the arena whose sails can be used as platforms. The stage reappears in Brawl as well.
  • In 3DS, the Hither-Thither Hill phase of the Paper Mario stage features the aforementioned level's trademark windmill on the right side of the arena, and its sails can be stood upon. When the Fan appears in the background and starts blowing gusts of wind, it starts spinning frantically, and the players will not be able to stand on it anymore.
  • In Wii U, the Windy Hill Zone stage has a giant windmill on the right. Only a portion of the spinning mill is within the blastlines, so standing on it carries the risk of being swooped away from the stage straight into a KO.
• Wintry Auroral Sky: The icy Summit stage is (at the start of the fight at least) located on top of a frozen mountain bathed in the shimmering lights of auroras borealis.
• Womb Level: Master Fortress in the Wii U version has the player navigating a giant, bodily fortress made of Master Core's Swarm.
• The Worf Effect:
  • Seems to be the general rule for Newcomer trailers in 3DS/Wii U and Ultimate: a bunch of previously-shown Smashers (mostly veterans) gang up on the newcomer, who proceeds to kick their asses.
  • Even the newcomers themselves get their bums handed to them in various trailers, particularly Lucina (sharing her trailer with Robin and the trailer also confirmed Captain Falcon's return), Little Mac (to show how bad his recovery is), and Ken (shares his trailer with Incineroar).
  • King K. Rool's trailer is an interesting case, as while King Dedede himself does get trounced (for pretending to be him), Donkey and Diddy Kong manage to stand up to him.
  • When Sephiroth murders a huge array of opponents and oneshots Galeem. He is pretty tough, but not remotely as powerful as portrayed, as Cloud defeats him several times in the game where he first appeared.
• Wreaking Havok: The Trophy Rush feature of 3DS/Wii U makes it a lot more obvious that the game uses a physics engine in-game due to the blocks that fall conforming to physics typical of that from tech demos containing blocks succumbing to gravity.
• Writing Around Trademarks:
  • If a trophy has to reference a game that's exclusive to a non-Nintendo console, such as Sonic Adventure or Metal Gear Solid, then it'll either be substituted with a version that's on a Nintendo console (such as Sonic Adventure DX or Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes) or avoid mentioning the original console entirely.
  • Due to Rare being bought by Microsoft, the Proximity Mine trophy in Melee replaces what the item originated from with "TOP SECRET". However, the credits do mention Perfect Dark in the PAL version.
  • In Wii U, the "PAC-MAN's House" trophy dances around referencing Pac-Man World, which was originally a Playstation exclusive.
  • Zigzagged with Kingdom Hearts in regards to its relationship with Disney properties in Ultimate. During the presentation for Sora, footage from the Kingdom Hearts games is shown with the Disney characters intact, and Sakurai namedrops Maleficent when going over Hollow Bastion. In addition, Sora’s keychain still features a Mickey Mouse emblem. Within Ultimate proper, however, other than the keychain, Sora’s stain glass in the Dive to the Heart replaces Donald and Goofy with a raft and a paupau fruit. And as expected, there’s no songs from Disney worlds, be it remixes or even KH-original songs of Disney worlds, nor are there any Disney character spirits.
• X-Ray Sparks: Most characters when hit by an electric attack in the first game, although some (like Kirby and Jigglypuff) simply get ash-faces.
• "YEAH!" Shot: Many cinematics end in a variation of this as the player gets to choose which of the available characters to play. Also, the camera zooms in on the player and takes a snapshot for the results screen of Classic matches. The player can set up some good victory shots with this.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: Master Hand and Crazy Hand are supposedly the antithesis of each other, but when one fights them simultaneously, they coordinate their attacks.
• You All Look Familiar: In 3DS, the Miis fought during Multi-Man Smash will all be one of four Miis randomly chosen at the start of the match, who will then spawn over and over again, as oppose to being a constant stream of random Miis from your collection. Considering how the game pushes the limits of the 3DS, this is likely to save on every drop of memory the game can to keep things running smoothly, by not having to constantly access new faces throughout the match.
• Your Size May Vary: Several characters have their sizes changed drastically from their source games to better fit in the playable roster.
  • Ridley is scaled down from his Metroid appearances, where his claws alone are roughly the size of Samus. In Ultimate, he is only slightly larger than Samus.
  • Olimar, meanwhile, is much larger than he is in Pikmin, where he's less than an inch tall. In Ultimate, for example, he is about two-thirds Mario's height, including his helmet.
  • Kirby is similarly much larger than his canonical height of 8 inches; for example, his Ultimate incarnation is a little over half Mario's height.
  • And that's before you come to characters like Bowser, whose size is all over the place even within his own series. His incarnations in Melee and Brawl are only slightly taller than Mario, while in Ultimate he is about one and a half times Mario's height.
• Zero-Effort Boss: In 3DS/Wii U, Master Core's final form is a sphere resembling a Smash Ball that is almost completely incapable of harming you. However, while the timer stops at this phase, if you take far too long to smash it off of the stage, it floats up and promptly unleashes massive waves of energy that instantly sends your character flying off of the screen not unlike Tabuu's Off Waves, which means the only way to lose now is to purposely jump off of the stage or (deliberately) take way too long to finish Master Core off. Even then, if you dodge five of these shockwaves, Master Core self-destructs.

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