Super Smash Bros Ultimate / Tropes C to F

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Tropes A-B HERE!

Tropes C-F HERE!

Tropes G-O HERE!

Tropes P-Z HERE!

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C

• Call-Back:
  • The Inkling's reveal trailer (which doubled as the game's teaser trailer) begins in the same manner as the original Splatoon's, with the female Inkling laying down ink and swimming through it as a squid before revealing her humanoid form.
  • In K. Rool's trailer:
    • Donkey Kong's and Diddy Kong's eyes burst out of their heads when K. Rool appears. This was a facial expression seen regularly in the Rareware-era of the series; the opening of Donkey Kong Country had DK do it when Cranky threw a TNT Barrel at him, while Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest has it be Diddy and Dixie's reaction to every boss.
    • The end of the trailer has K. Rool lying on the ground while the Kongs celebrate. K. Rool turns out to be Playing Possum, like he did in the Victory Fakeout segment of Donkey Kong Country.
  • When Isabelle receives an invitation in her reveal trailer, the envelope is identical to the one Villager got in the 3DS/Wii U reveal trailer, complete with a Smash-logo-shaped wax seal. It's also sent through the post, except Isabelle receives her invitation personally from Pete, while Villager picked up theirs in a mailbox.
  • "World of Light" is a homage to the Kirby series, due to a villain that is just as devastating as a main villain from that series, how, in Japanese, the title is the Kirby title in reverse, and how you start the mode as Kirby. The cliff and the overview shot in the opening also take homage to Subspace Emissary from Brawl.
  • In this trailer, the Inkling Girl's eye has the Smash logo reflected in the pupil, just like the very first teaser.
  • Joker's reveal trailer at The Game Awards 2018 starts with the screen turning to static as the Phantom Thieves "steal" the show. This is how the Phantom Thieves sent Shido's calling card, and how Persona 5 was first revealed.
  • Jigglypuff's Classic Mode route, "All Original, All 64", is a Call-Back to the "1P Mode" of the original Super Smash Bros. 64. You fight each of the other 11 playable characters from the first game, and the final round is a fight against a giant Donkey Kong, much like in round 6 of the 1P Mode.
  • Banjo & Kazooie's reveal trailer starts almost the same way as King K. Rool's, showing a series of pictures of playable heroes fighting their playable enemies, but then throws in a new image based on King K. Rool's reveal trailer. It even follows a similar format: DK and Diddy in their treehouse relaxing (with the addition of K. Rool this time), a character's silhouette being shown, it turns out to be another character impersonating them, that character laughs... and then the actual character drops in, knocking the other away. In the former, the impersonator was King Dedede; in the latter, it was Duck Hunt. It ends with K. Rool falling off a cliff leaving an Impact Silhouette before a bolder crushes him, just like Grunty's fate at the end of Banjo-Kazooie.
• Calling Your Attacks: A handful of characters, but of special note is Terry Bogard. He continues his own series' trend by bringing in his "Power Wave!", "Crack Shoot!", "Burn Knuckle!", " Rising Tackle!", "Are you OK? Buster Wolf!" among others.
• Came Back Wrong: How Spirits operate in World of Light — they were put under the direct control of a higher power and possess a puppet fighter. Some downplayed exceptions include those that reincarnated as a Mii Fighter that more closely resembles them, such as Lip, who is now a Mii Swordfighter in her image.
• The Cameo: Following the pattern of Slippy appearing in one of Snake's codecs in Brawl and Chrom in one of Palutena's Guidances in WiiU, Alucard appears and joins the conversation when Pit asks Palutena about Richter. He also Lampshades him being available as an Assist Trophy.
• Camera Abuse: One of Joker's victory screens begins with Morgana running directly into the camera and briefly stunning himself.
• Canon Identifier: "Joker" is the Phantom Thief codename used for the hero of ''Persona 5, and is how he's known in this game.
• Capture and Replicate: What happened to the fighters in "World of Light". They get captured and then Galeem creates a puppet out of them, which then a controlled Spirit possesses. You have to free them in order to make them playable in "World of Light".
• Casting Gag: In the 3DS port of Dragon Quest VIII, one can have Eight marry Jessica, who is voiced by Ayana Taketatsu in Japanese. In what is most likely an intentional casting, Yūki Kaji, who is married to Ayana, voices Eight in Ultimate.
• Cerebus Call-Back:
  • The setting that Kirby transports to at the end of the Downer Beginning looks exactly like the background used in several 3DS/Wii U character reveals.
  • When Kirby crash lands his Warp Star in Rosalina and Luma's reveal trailer, he comically tumbles to a stop. Compared to in the "World of Light" opening, where him crash landing and sliding to a stop is definitely not Played for Laughs.
• Chaos Is Evil: Dharkon, an Eldritch Abomination who's the Embodiment of Chaos and Darkness. While his counterpart Galeem wants to establish order by remaking the world in his own image, Dharkon's goal is simply wanting to destroy everything. He even manages to pull it off in his bad ending.
• Character Customization:
  • Spirits can be equipped to fighters to power them up or grant special skills, similar to Gear in 3DS/Wii U. They are also similar to Stickers in Brawl in that they are represented by various art assets from various games and are used in their games' respective Adventure Modes.
  • Mii Fighters return from 3DS/Wii U, and retain their changeable names, headwear, outfits, and special moves. New to this game, you can also change their colors without having to change the color of the Mii in Mii Maker, and select one of several voices and change its pitch.
  • Figure Player customization for amiibo has been greatly expanded. Instead of feeding equipment to Figure Players, you can now feed them Spirits. Feeding them Spirits gives a small amount of EXP and boosts their stats. In addition, feeding them Primary Spirits can alter a Figure Player's "personality", which alters their approach to combat, and feeding them Support Spirits can bestow them with Support Skills.
• Character Roster Global Warming: Downplayed. While the majority of the cast is still lightweight-midweight, a few heavyweight fighters have been brought in, those being Ridley, King K. Rool, and Incineroar, with Simon also being on the slower end of things.
• Character Select Forcing: Certain challenges in Spirit mode are set up so that you have to equip certain Spirits to overcome the stage hazards. For example, the Kapp'n battle is almost unbeatable without using a Spirit that gives resilience or immunity to winds. Coincidentally, you find one, a Snorlax, very close to Kapp'n's location.
• Charge-Input Special:
  • Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury appears as a Guest Fighter, bringing his Rising Tackle with him as his up-special move. While the move can be performed with a single directional input, Terry can utilize the same charge input as the original to grant added damage and invincibility.
  • Guile appears as an assist trophy and much like a real Guile player, he plays defensive and usually stays crouching and using his Sonic Boom or Flash Kick depending on the distance. Occasionally, he does a jump kick instead of a Flash Kick, which can only mean he's programmed to drop his inputs.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: Apparently happened In-Universe according to Pit on the Palutena's Guidance entry of the Ice Climbers. Aside from the real-life hardware limitations of the 3DS (which was why they were cut in the first place), the duo were actually temporarily suspended from participating when their dual-fighter playstyle was deemed against the rules. They were patched since then to make it much harder to perform the "unfair" combos (keeping them separated and juggling opponents with no means of escape).
• Chest Monster:
  • There is a particular Chest in the Temple of Light dungeon that transforms into a Mimicutie Spirit upon being opened.
  • Mimics can show up on Yggdrasil's Altar, giving up items like the real chests if you manage to KO them.
• Chromatic Rock Paper Scissors: Spirits are color-coded red, green, blue, or purple. The first three are strong or weak against each other in the usual red > green > blue > red order. The last one is, appropiately, neutral to everything.
• Clock Tower: The iconic one from Castlevania appears in the background of Dracula's Castle. There's even a section in "World of Light" as part of a Nostalgia Level based on the original NES game. You end up destroying the inside with a cannon.
• Clone Army: The puppet fighters in "World of Light" are replicas of the original fighters possessed by brainwashed Spirits.
• Closest Thing We Got: Galeem's method of creating puppet fighters works like this: Due to his initial onslaught resulting in several characters losing their bodies, he creates a vessel for them which physically matches what their previous identity was using a fighter as a base, with some additional aspects sprinkled in to complete the replication.
• Colony Drop: The Moon assist trophy, from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, drops onto the battlefield, blasting everyone excluding the player who called it in. The trick to avoiding it is to run away from its rather small impact point.
• Combat Commentator: When fighting at Cloud Sea of Alrest, Azurda (who forms the stage itself) will make remarks as the fight progresses, such as complimenting KOs.
• Comeback Mechanic:
  • Joker, after his Rebellion Gauge gets fully charged by taking damage, becomes a complete Lightning Bruiser, having the kill power of Bowser combined with the swiftness of Sheik and similarly to Cloud, gains better specials. However, unlike Cloud's Limit in Smash 4, it only lasts for 20 seconds rather than until you use it.^note It also goes away faster if Joker takes hits while it's active, meaning well-placed aggression can remove it almost as fast as it activates.
  • Terry Bogard gains the ability to use super special moves using certain inputs once he's above 100% on his damage meter. Power Geyser and Buster Wolf, while tricky to master, are among the nastiest kill moves in the game, and along with the rage mechanic added in Smash 4 it increases his already brutal early kill potential given that he can cancel many of his normal attacks into them. However, these moves will leave Terry wide open if they don't connect, meaning that using them unwisely can lead to Terry losing the stock entirely if he's not careful.
  • Sephiroth can gain his Winged Form when he's significantly damaged. While in this form, he gains an extra midair jump, a speed and damage boost, and his smash attacks have super armor. The amount of damage he needs to take to activate changes based on how many stocks he's ahead or behind by. It disappears when he gets KO'd or he score a KO on someone, although there's a chance he keeps it if he's far behind.
  • Kazuya has Rage, which he enters after taking more than 100% damage and makes his attacks deal 10% increased damage in this state. He automatically uses his Rage Drive in this state when he lands a grab, down special, or Dragon Uppercut. He loses Rage after using his Rage Drive, repeatedly missing those attacks that trigger it, getting hit too many times or gets KO'd.
• Commercial Switcheroo:
  • The game's reveal trailer starts out with what at first seems to be a repeat of the original Splatoon trailer, giving strong implications that they're porting the original game to the Nintendo Switch.
  • Isabelle's reveal trailer is made to look like a new Animal Crossing game. Played with, as a new Animal Crossing game really was revealed immediately afterward.
  • Joker's reveal trailer looks like it could be a reveal for a Switch port of Persona 5.
  • A series of commercials for the game start out looking like gameplay from Splatoon, Street Fighter, and Animal Crossing until Mario shows up.
  • Pyra/Mythra's trailer begins with Rex searching for the former in Alrest and talking to the other party members, leading some people to believe it was an expansion for his game before he finds Pyra.... on Final Destination.
• Companion Cube: Some of the Spirits are of inanimate objects, such as the Star Fox ships or Samus' individual power suits.
• Completion Meter: This is shown on your Adventure Mode save files after clearing it for the first time. It is not revealed until after clearing Adventure Mode to prevent an Interface Spoiler regarding the Dark Realm and The Final Battle.
• Composite Character:
  • Piranha Plant's moveset takes inspiration from the various Piranha Plant subspecies, like Putrid Piranha, Ptooie, and the Spiked Piranha Plant from Super Mario Galaxy. It briefly dons the color scheme of two subspecies for its side-special and side-smash as well.
  • Spirit battles consist of fighting against playable fighters taking on the traits of characters that didn't make the cut.
  • The Ganon boss utilizes attacks from some of its various incarnations, like Demise's Skyward Strike and Calamity Ganon's laser beam and homing fireballs.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • In stages that can be partially hidden (such as Luigi's Mansion), the CPU fighters will know exactly in which section any given item spawned and take it. The best the player gets is the sound that an item spawned, but no way to know where.
  • In the highest CPU levels, the CPU fighters react to the button press instead of the player character's movement, so the player character and the A.I. character move simultaneously and according to the command the player sent. Of course, an actual player wouldn't be able to know this, as players would react to the opponent's movement. This can be justified under Purposely Overpowered.
  • In many Stamina spirit battles, your opponent has more stamina than you do, but thankfully, you can defy this trope by equipping multiple copies of the Stamina ↑ spirit ability.
• Console Cameo:
  • One Mii fighter costume for the Mii Brawler is a jumpsuit with the Robot Toy-Con set, complete with the Joy-Cons being used and placed as part of the cardboard mechanisms.
  • One location in World of Light has an abundance of Nintendo consoles in the form of a city with the buildings in the shape of them, including a monument of the Nintendo 64 logo.
• Continuing is Painful: Just like in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, continuing after a loss in Classic Mode lowers the intensity and requires payment. This can be mitigated with the use of a Classic Ticket, but Tickets are hard to come by (they do appear in the Shop from time to time, but are a pretty expensive item at a price of 5000 G), and if you continue at all, you are locked out of Intensity 9.9 unless you use a Ticket while already at 9.9, complicating matters in clearing a certain Challenge.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Galeem and Dharkon are the most distinctive villains so far. In terms of design, all of the previous villains in the series looked vaguely anthropomorphic or creature-like; Galeen and Dharkon are utterly alien beings that look completely inhuman. In terms of motivation, Galeem seeks to control the universe whereas Dharkon seeks to obliterate it. This makes them a contrast to the Hands, who are ambiguously evil and don't seem interested in domination. Also unlike the Hands, who get along well and make a good team, Galeem and Dharkon absolutely hate each other; even when they're forced to team up, they actively fight amongst themselves.
• Convection, Schmonvection: In spite of it being made of bridges that traverse over a floor of lava, none of the fighters have any trouble navigating the Molten Fortress in World of Light.
• Convenient Weakness Placement: In World of Light, some Spirits are located close to others their abilities have an advantage over. For example, there's a fight against a Spirit of Kaepora Gaebora whose gimmick involves flipping the camera upside down, and nearby his location is a chest containing a Nihilego Spirit, which negates screen flipping.
• Cosmetic Award: Fighter spirits earned by completing a fighter's Classic Mode (or buying them in the shop) simply appear on the Spirit List and are not used in battle.
• Counter-Attack: In addition to bringing back all previous fighters with this move, the game introduces new characters capable of performing this move:
  • King K.Rool uses his gold-plated gut as a counter similar to that of the Fire Emblem characters (including Chrom, who also debuts in this game and is an Echo Fighter to Roy).
  • Princess Daisy, being an Echo Fighter of Princess Peach, borrows her counter move (and once again it's used by simply pressing B, instead of holding Down beforehand).
  • Incineroar has a variation of a Counter called Revenge, where it still takes damaged (albeit reduced) but it powers up Incineroar's next attack.
  • DLC Character Joker has a variant of counter called Rebel's Guard where he takes reduced damage to fill up his Rebellion Gauge; when deactivated, Joker can deal minor damage to the opponent if he took a hit; and filling up the Rebellion Gauge allows him to summon Arsene, who will replace Rebel's Guard with Tetrakarn (a more traditional counter), and Makarakarn (a reflector).
  • Sephiroth's Scintilla creates a reflective barrier in front of him that blocks hits, but the attack comes out even if it doesn't block anything and deals more damage if it does.
  • Sora's Counterattack staggers opponents it counters and doesn't redirect projectiles.
• Crack in the Sky: In World of Light, the sky cracks open when Dharkon enters from the Dark World.
• Creative Sterility: Galeem just creates copies and rearranges what's already there; unlike Tabuu, it never creates anything new. This is true for Dharkon as well.
• Creator Provincialism: Several of the Spirits available in the game are from Japan-only properties, which may or may not have properly translated titles in their description. In contrast, absolutely no Nintendo-owned games which didn't receive a Japanese release of some sort ^note such as Elite Beat Agents being considered a spin-off of sorts of Ouendan are represented, notably StarTropics, Geist, Gumshoe, and the Cruis'n series.
• Crippling Overspecialization:
  • The new "Smashdown" mode can Invoke this if you're skilled with a very small number of characters or just one, since after a fighter has been chosen for a match, they will be locked for the remainder of the playthrough. This can work in the other player's advantage if they pick a fighter they know their opponent is exceptionally good at.
  • The Absolutely Safe Capsule from Mother 3 is a Legend Primary Spirit that can only be summoned with a Mr. Saturn Spirit and six Shield Cores. It is a Shield-type Spirit that has enormous Defense but gives a whopping zero Attack.
  • A minor example comes with other slotless spirits. They are exceedingly powerful, but they are helpless against the many Geo Effects in the game.
  • The I-Tetromino spirit is a big one, it has similar attacking stats to Akuma, Hades and Fierce Deity Link but has much worse defence (Only around 2000) than either of them, as such, there's no reason to use it after you get those spirits.
• Crisis Crossover: The game brings together every single Smash Bros. fighter ever, plus a few new ones, to take down the "ultimate enemy" named Galeem and his just-as-evil counterpart Dharkon in World of Light.
• Critical Hit:
  • The Killing Edge will intermittently glow with a purple aura, during which it has vastly increased power.
  • Some Spirits grant the Critical Hit skill, which randomly increases your damage and knockback.
  • The Hero from Dragon Quest is able to do this as an innate ability.
• Critical Status Buff: The Rage Blaster is very weak if you're at a low damage percentage, but it becomes more powerful as you reach higher percentages. Think Lucario's Aura mechanic, weaponised and usable by all fighters.
• Cross-Referenced Titles: The two character reveal trailers set in Donkey Kong's house and the surrounding jungle: King K. Rool's is "The Rivals", while Banjo & Kazooie's is "Best Friends".
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Two of them: Bad Ending #1: Dharkon is straight-up vaporized. Bad Ending #2: Galeem is impaled by a dozen needle tentacle spike things.
• Crystal Landscape: The Battlefield, both the fighting arena proper and the background behind it, is decorated with tapered spires of smooth bluish crystal growing from the ground. The ones of the stage aren't much taller than the fighters, while the background ones are the size of houses.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: The opening cutscene of World of Light shows Galeem vaporising the whole cast effortlessly. Nothing like this can happen in any other part of the campaign, including the actual fight against Galeem.

D

• Damage-Sponge Boss: The Snorlax-possessed K. Rool in World of Light is a literal DPS check, sporting hundreds of HP and a time limit of only one minute, but zero inclination to do anything more than sit there and eat randomly-spawning food.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • The game looks very similar to its predecessor, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, but many mechanics have been changed, such as how rolling and spot dodging will leave you more vulnerable the more times you use them in a short timespan. Players more used to Melee will also find it difficult to adapt to not only how hard it is to wavedash, but also how nerfed it is in this game, and all Smash players will take time to adjust to how collision in the game works. Furthermore, players who are used to shielding with the R button on the 3DS version may get thrown off by the fact that it is now the grab button.
  • Getting too used to some of the abilities available in World of Light, like super armor when charging smashes or extra midair jumps, can cause problems when playing the modes without those upgrades.
  • Many a player has fallen victim to Ike's buffed Eruption, which now shoots out additional flame pillars when used based on its charge level. Players too used to the mediocre range of the attack in previous games may end up on the receiving end of a shield break after standing outside what they think Ike's attack range is.
  • Perfect shielding, otherwise known as Parrying, has changed from what it was in every Smash game before, going from "Press the block button right as the attack hits you" to "Release the block button right as the attack hits you", meaning you have to preemptively put up your shield in order to properly punish your opponent for throwing out an attack. You can no longer react to attacks with a perfect shield, which throws many players off. There are jokes among the community how most parries are accidental.
  • No more can you pass through other players and even assist trophies. Some players take a while getting that.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • Inkling, Ridley, Simon, and Sephiroth's respective trailer reveals, in comparison to reveal trailers of the previous games. Inkling's ends with them staring at the Smash logo on fire, surrounded by darkness and Ominous Chanting. Ridley's has Mega Man brutally stabbed by Ridley himself before he grabs Mario by the head. Simon's has Black Comedy with Luigi getting his soul ripped out of his body by Castlevania's Death. Sephiroth's trailer has him introduced by first worfing World of Light's Big Bad Galeem with one swing of his Masamune, and then brutally plundering the fighters who were confronting Galeem, including a moment where Mario appears to be impaled by Sephiroth. Overall, Ultimate continues a trend from Smash 4 with rather violent trailers in dark, realistic locations.
  • The game's story mode likewise has higher and much darker stakes than even The Subspace Emissary did. While the destruction of the entire universe was prevented in Subspace, this story opens with the Big Bad Galeem successfully doing so, obliterating not only all the main playable characters (sans Kirby, who was barely able to escape), but every other video game character in the entire universe as well. Put simply, the Darkest Hour is already here, everybody's almost dead (the playable characters are now trapped in limbo, their bodies used to create red-eyed Empty Shells; the non-playable characters only living on as ghost-like wisps called Spirits bearing their images on them), and Kirby is the only one who can get up and stop it. Even past the beginning, the mode's story is overall more dramatic and serious than usual for Nintendo, especially when Dharkon (who makes Tabuu and even Galeem look like normal Nintendo characters) appears... and then you discover that it's possible for the heroes to lose once and for all.
• Dark Is Evil: Dharkon is the lord of darkness to Galeem's light, seeking to both eliminate Galeem and to envelop all of existence in shadow.
• Dark Reprise: The orchestral theme is uplifting and triumphant. The lyrical version Lifelight... isn't; the lyrics basically describe the plight of the heroes in the story mode World of Light, wherein the entire universe has been wiped out by Galeem, all of the main characters have been captured to be used to make clones called Puppet Fighters, and everyone else has been turned into body-less entities forced to possess said puppets. It's not entirely dark as there's a noticeable hopeful tone within it, but altogether it's still a pretty somber song. However, there's actually more Dark Reprises to the Dark Reprise, in the form of the ominous and glorious theme for Galeem, the sinister and intimidating theme for Dharkon, and the absolutely epic theme for both of them at once. Finally, there's a sombre piano rendition of "Lifelight" that plays if you get a Game Over during Classic Mode.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • In World of Light, by virtue of being the Sole Survivor, Kirby gets a lot of focus as he has to start saving the fighters that were captured by Galeem.
  • At some point during World of Light, you take control of and play as Master Hand himself to fend off an army of shadow clones.
  • Aside from some hints in later World of Light cutscenes, Sora's reveal trailer is the first one to put an overt focus on Mario more than other veterans, like in the 3DS/Wii U days.
• Deadly Dodging: In the True Final Boss fight with Galeem and Dharkon, the game design heavily encourages this. Friendly Fireproof is not on and their attacks do more damage to one another than they do to the player (due to the two despising one another), making luring the two into harming each other a major aspect of the fight. It is almost possible to defeat the two using nothing but this tactic; the only thing stopping you is that the game requires you to personally deal the final blow.
• Death Montage: World of Light opens with the entire cast being wiped out by Galeem's now-infamous blazes of light. Each character tries to avoid it in their own way. Highlights include Snake of Metal Gear fame trying to escape them by slipping under a cardboard box, and Palutena as she appears in Kid Icarus: Uprising trying to reflect it. Not this time!
• Deconstructive Parody: The Belmonts' trailer has Luigi trying to use his Luigi's Mansion 3 toolset to defeat the monsters in Dracula's Castle of all places. His usual tools like the flashlight don't work on them since they're corporeal, resulting in him "dying" at the hands of Death. Even as Luigi's soul is about to return to his body at the end, Carmilla pops over to scare the crap out of him one last time.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: It's a Smash game, so enemies getting thrown off the stage results in them exploding in a huge pillar of energy upon defeat. When both are killed in the True Final Boss fight, Galeem and Dharkon both crash into the ocean and explode in huge blasts of light and darkness, respectively.
• Defeat Means Playable:
  • Aside from the usual Challenger Approaching unlocks, spirits are Deprogrammed when defeated, allowing you to add them to your Spirit Teams.
  • Once the real Master Hand and Crazy Hand are freed through their defeat, Master Hand becomes playable in one special battle where he fights 50 puppet fighters by himself to clear the way for the actual fighters.
  • The limited Sephiroth Challenge mode was available to people who purchased Sephiroth (individually or as part of Challenger Pack 2) for five days prior to his release. Beating Sephiroth in this mode unlocked him as well as the Northern Cave and the new Final Fantasy music, in advance of the wider release.
• Demographic-Dissonant Crossover: In addition to bringing back all veteran characters in the series (including Snake and Bayonetta), the game added Joker from Persona 5, a game drenched in sex, blood, violence and profanity, as its second DLC fighter (and first from the Fighters' Pass). Unlike Snake, Joker actually gets to wield a fairly realistic model pistol as part of his moveset (with the attack in question simply called "Gun") - this was jarring enough to players that the line "For his Neutral Special, he wields a gun." from his Content Approaching trailer (April 2019) would become a meme. In addition to this, several of the DLC Mii costumes are based on characters from adult-oriented games as well, such as Travis Touchdown (No More Heroes), Dragonborn (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim) and Doom Slayer (Doom). Spirits of Resident Evil characters were also made available, and Yuri Kozukata from Fatal Frame is an Assist Trophy. Lastly, many of the introduced characters hail from T-rated games with a higher degree of violence and/or fanservice elements than others, such as Castlevania (Simon and Richter), Tekken (Kazuya) and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Pyra and Mythra).
• Demoted to Extra:
  • While every playable character above got brought back for this game, this fate befell the Subspace Army — the primary antagonists of Brawl's adventure mode — in the World of Light adventure mode. Except for Galleom returning as a boss, the entire Subspace Army, including Tabuu himself are reduced to spirits.
  • As part of the "Phantom Thieves of Hearts" Spirit Battle included with the Joker DLC, all of the Phantom Thieves except Noir, Oracle and Crow are represented by their Spirit counterparts. While Noir herself watches from the background, and Oracle commentates during Joker's Final Smash, Crow himself doesn't appear at all, owing to him not having a cameo on Mementos and his absence from the "Phantom Thieves of Hearts" Spirit artwork.^NoteThis is very likely due the Spirit in question's artwork being comprised of the official art of the thieves, and Crow's official artwork being witheld by Atlus for a future reveal. Said artwork was accidently leaked via an official wallpaper before being pulled and replaced with a cropped version of his All-Out Attack finisher screen.
• Deprogram: In the World of Light adventure, the only way to free the captured characters from the brainwashing done to them is to beat them into submission at which point they are free and will join the heroes once more.
• Desperation Attack: Terry Bogard has Fatal Fury's Desperation Moves as a unique mechanic; If Terry's damage reaches 100%, or 1/3 of his total health in Stamina Mode, he can use the moves Power Geyser and Buster Wolf that are much more powerful than his standard arsenal. However, if he is healed beyond these thresholds or is KO'd, he loses access to them again.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • At the end of a match in the English versions of the game, the announcer says "[character/team] wins!" In the specific instances where the winners are the Ice Climbers, Rosalina & Luma, or Banjo & Kazooie, the announcement is changed to "[characters] win!" to be grammatically correct.
  • If you manage to find your way to one of the other paths at the beginning of World of Light after Master Hand blocks your way but before defeating your first boss, the shield guarding the character from the front automatically breaks.
  • You can unlock each type of Mii Fighter the old-fashioned way instead of creating one by fighting their Spirits in World of Light. This gives you the Mii shown in the artwork with a default 1111 moveset.
  • Some of World of Light's Broken Bridges can be fixed by more than one character's Spirit. Chances are you'll run across the Shadow Dragon axe users first, but you can also use Reese and Cyrus or Guts Man to do the job of fixing the bridges. Similarly, you'll most likely open the Base via the Hal Emmerich spirit, but Susie or Mega Man.EXE works just as well.
  • In the pre-rendered cutscene depicting the conflict between Galeem and Dharkon leading up to the final battle, the only characters depicted as witnesses are Kirby, Mario, Bowser, Fox, Simon, Pit, Samus, Zelda, Sonic, and Greninja. By the time you get to this point in World of Light, you are guaranteed to have all of the mentioned fighters on your team, even if you avoided freeing characters whenever possible. ^note The player begins with Kirby being the only fighter available. Mario is always the first fighter you battle. Bowser is achieved after beating Giga Bowser. Fox guards one of the switches to the Temple of Light, in which you save Simon and Pit to unlock the eastern part of the map, where Samus is the first obstacle to reach Rathalos. Zelda and Sonic are required to fight Ganon, and Greninja is on the path to Marx. The only other "mandatory" fighters (excluding the variable pairs of Marth and Pac-Man, Sheik and Yoshi, and Villager and Lucario ^note which pair is mandatory depends on the route you take after freeing Mario) who are absent are Young Link, Cloud, Ganondorf, Ike, and Meta Knight.^note The former three whom are required to fight Ganon and the latter two whom are required to fight Marx.
  • In the Palutena's Guidance conversation about Cloud, Viridi mentions the strong knockback of his Finishing Touch. However, the fact that there is less knockback to attacks in stamina mode is acknowledged if the Guidance is played there.
  • If a Poké Ball Pokémon or Assist Trophy already makes an appearance somewhere on a stage, it cannot be summoned from its respective item when playing on that stage.^note For example, Electrode will not appear on the N64 Saffron City stage because it sometimes pops out of the door.
  • Because Kirby needs to taunt to get rid of copy abilities manually, taunts are not disabled in Quickplay for him when he has one.
  • The game prevents you from manipulating the camera during a Stage Morph. This keeps the player from potentially breaking the immersion if they are transitioning from a 2D stage to a 3D stage or vice versa.
  • On stages with water, fire Pokémon and Inklings will take damage while they swim. Conversely, water Pokémon can still drown, but need much longer to do so before their drowning timer starts. Also, Sonic similarly takes damage while he's in the water, a reference to his notorious Super Drowning Skills.
  • Stamina matches will prevent Pichu from killing itself with its Final Smash by never letting its HP go below 0.1 while the move is active.
  • Alucard, a half-vampire, does not appear as an Assist Trophy in stages with reflections.
  • Defeating Rathalos while it is trapped in a pitfall trap has it fall unconscious while still buried in the trap a la capturing a Rathalos with a pitfall in Monster Hunter.
  • Joker's victory animations have him continuously running, while the other characters stay in place at the end of theirs; however, he has a unique victory animation where he stays idle if he's not the leading player on the winning team of a Team Battle^note though it's recycled from his up-taunt and idle stance.
  • Every single character has a unique animation when K.O.'d without taking knockback, something that can only happen in Stamina mode, and there's only a select few attacks that can do the job (such as Fox's Blaster).
  • Depending on if you purchased their Mii costume or not, the stand-in for their Spirit battle will be changed to feature their costume/music (e.g. If the Cuphead Mii Costume has been purchased, his series' spirit battles will be changed to feature said costume and/or "Floral Fury". Otherwise, they will use music already in the base game and the stand-ins for Cuphead and his pal Mugman will be Mega Man's red and blue/white palette swaps respectively.).
  • If you purchased the DLC character packs for Min Min or Pyra/Mythra, some Spirit battles representing characters from ARMS or Xenoblade Chronicles 2 that were part of the base game get updated with assets from the respective character packs, such as the stage or background music.
  • As in previous games in the series, certain characters, namely the casts from Star Fox, Fire Emblem Awakening and Kid Icarus, will say a unique victory quote if they win against an opponent they're closely associated with. For example, if Falco defeats Fox in a fight, he'll quip, "You're off your game, Fox!", or if Palutena defeats Dark Pit, she'll taunt by saying, "Poor little Pittoo". Simon is the only character who has a unique victory quote against a character that isn't from his home series, in his case, if he beats an opponent associated with darkness (Dark Samus, Bayonetta, Ridley, Dark Pit, Ganondorf), he will proclaim, "To darkness!"
  • Both Fox and Wolf will say a special line if they use their Final Smashes against each other.
    Fox: This is the end for you, Wolf!
    Wolf: I've got you now, Star Fox!
  • Ryu's Final Smash actually has three variations. The third one is never mentioned by the game, but it happens if Ryu is close enough to use Shin Shoryuken on an opponent yet misses the first hit. This causes Ryu to use the very weak Forbidden Shoryuken move that Ryu uses in other Street Fighter games if the same thing happens.
  • On the off chance that Incineroar grabs someone with Alolan Whip, but fails to hit them with the followup attack, he'll have a unique animation where he shrugs at the screen.
  • Incineroar's Final Smash is also a grab, and it's affected by the timed grab immunity all characters get after being grabbed once. There's also a unique animation if Incineroar uses it on such an opponent, where he tries to grab them, but he passes right through them. This is specific to this sort of immunity, as the Final Smash won't trigger an animation at all against normally-invincible targets.
  • After you defeat a Spirit on the Spirit Board, you're taken to an empty area with you carrying a special Spirit Gun, tasked to shoot the Spirit through a rotating barrier. Just like the results screen area, this area is actually a stage and not just a background, and hacking to play on the stage in a normal match will reveal the Spirit Gun is not just a prop, but its own fully-functional item. Its beam deals 36% and heavy knockback to other players.
• Diabolus ex Nihilo: Taken to its logical conclusion with Galeem, the main antagonist for the World of Light adventure mode. It arrived out of nowhere one day, was pushed into a corner by the many heroes and villains, proceeded to unleash an ultimate attack that wrecked everything in the universe (except for Kirby, who barely escaped by having his warp star go into hyperspeed), then remolded it. Dharkon also arrives suddenly later on, with its only motivation being that it can't stand Galeem at all, and has also remolded a part of the universe.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: All three endings involve the fighters defeating a Physical God (or gods). However, in all but the True Ending, the other entity simply capitalizes on the situation to claim victory.
• Diminishing Returns for Balance: Dodging now decays. If a fighter keeps dodging too many times in a row, their duration of intangibility keeps getting shorter, and their recovery time keeps getting longer. In addition, trying to repeatedly grab the side of a stage as a defensive tactic can result in your character losing their grip.
• Disc-One Final Boss: The battle with Galeem in World of Light only marks the midway point of the story, something savvy players who have explored the map may see coming when they notice that they only have about half the roster recruited. Immediately after Galeem's defeat, his dark counterpart Dharkon appears and the Dark Realm is unlocked, which has all but four of the remaining fighters. But in turn, Dharkon's defeat renders it another example of this trope, since both it and Galeem have to be fought at the end (which also has the last four fighters), with the True Ending being acheieved by fighting both of them at the same time. Galeem is still (half of) the final boss and main villain, it's just that his initial fight in the Light Realm was not the end.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • If you start with Marth's route at the beginning of Adventure Mode, you will eventually come across the Polar Bear Spirit around an hour or two into the game. The Polar Bear is a Support Spirit that bestows the Slow Super Armor ability for two Support Slots, which turns any character into a Mighty Glacier that is Immune to Flinching at low percentages. This can easily trivialize spades of Spirit battles, as the ability to push damage without being interrupted by the opponent and sheer resilience to launching is invaluable for all but a few Spirits.
  • On the Villager route, if you're lucky, it's possible to purchase a spirit at Anna's Emporium which grants you a battering item... such as Death's Scythe. From that point onward, it's possible to cheese the ensuing fights by racking up a high percentage, then going in for a One-Hit KO. This doesn't work in a stamina battle, though.
• Ditto Fighter: The trope-naming Ditto takes the form of the character who summons it from the Poké Ball, and fights alongside them against the opponents. This Pokémon was planned to appear as far back as Melee, but technical constraints didn't make it possible there or in the immediate followups until Ultimate.
• Dog Got Sent to a Farm: The Palutena's Guidance for Pokémon Trainer has Viridi wondering about the "weak Pokémon who get left in their balls and forgotten", which gets Pit worried about "PikaPit". Palutena assures him that any such unused Pokémon are "playing together at a farm upstate".
• Do Not Adjust Your Set: Meta: The Game Awards 2018 ceremony was briefly hijacked by The Phantom Thieves of Hearts to reveal that Joker had just stolen an invitation to Ultimate, securing his spot as the first DLC character of the Fighters Pass.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: The Gourmet Race subarea of the overworld in World of Light challenges the player to collect food as they navigate down a series of paths, with them receiving first, second or third place rewards depending on how much food they snag. However, getting higher prizes doesn't unlock the lower prizes, forcing the player to intentionally do worse in terms of food count if they want all the prizes.
• Downer Beginning: The World of Light intro cutscene has various heroes against Galeem, when Shulk has a vision about everyone vanishing before it becomes reality, with everyone losing their bodies, leaving Kirby as the Sole Survivor in the process, meaning that it's up to him to undo the damage.
• Downer Ending: The two endings besides the True Ending in World of Light. Should you allow either of the forces of light and darkness to gain too strong of a foothold on The Final Battle map, you'll only face one of the two Big Bads, and the surviving one will obliterate what's left of the world (and all of the characters) with either light (Galeem) or darkness (Dharkon) once and for all.
• Downloadable Content: Like the previous title, several new fighters, stages and Mii Fighter were added post-launch. Unlike its predecessor, the DLC has a more organized structure: Five of the extra characters are part of the Fighters Pass, while another six follow up in Fighters Pass Vol. 2. Each fighter in the Fighters Pass comes with a stage, a selection of music and its own Spirit Board. Counting the standalone additions of Piranha Plant and Small Battlefield, there's a total of 12 characters and 12 stages added post-release:
  • The first DLC fighter is Piranha Plant, which was free for those that registered the game with their My Nintendo account before the end of January 2019, and became available for purchase for non-early adopters starting February 1, 2019.
  • Five other completely new fighters with their own stage and music are purchasable separately or in a bundle called the Fighters Pass. The bundle also comes with a Mii Fighter costume of Rex from Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
    • The first of the bundle is Joker from Persona 5, who made his playable debut on April 17, 2019.
    • The second Fighters Pass character is the Hero from Dragon Quest, who comes in multiple skins representing the main characters from Dragon Quest III, IV, VIII, and XI, with the latter being the default as a tie-in to his game's then-recent release. The fighter was released on July 30, 2019.
    • Third in the pack are the team of Banjo and Kazooie from Banjo-Kazooie, who were made available on September 4, 2019.
    • The fourth member of the squad is Terry Bogard, known for appearing in SNK's fighting games such as Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters. He was released on November 6, 2019.
    • The fifth and final character is Byleth from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, who came out on January 28, 2020.
  • Additional fighters beyond the Fighters Pass were also confirmed in September 2019 due to strong sales, followed by the January 2020 Mr. Sakurai Presents video confirming the count of six new characters. Like before, each fighter will come with their own stage and music are purchasable separately or in a bundle, Fighters Pass Vol. 2. This bundle will include a bonus Mii Fighter costume based on the Ancient Armor from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
    • The first character is Min Min from ARMS, released on June 29, 2020.
    • The second character is Steve from Minecraft, along with Alex, a Zombie, and an Enderman as alternate skins, released on October 13, 2020.
    • The third character is Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII, released December 2020. Notably he could be acquired before his official release date of December 22nd by completing the limited-time "Sephiroth Challenge" mode that began 5 days earlier.
    • The fourth is the transforming duo Pyra and Mythra from Xenoblade Chronicles 2, released March 4, 2021.
    • The fifth character was Kazuya Mishima from Tekken, released on June 29, 2021.
    • The sixth and final character was Sora from Kingdom Hearts, released on October 18, 2021.
  • An extra stage, Small Battlefield, was launched for free in August 2020, coming along with the option to play any music regardless of its source material (this was also implemented into the other two Battlefield stages as well as Final Destination).
  • Additional Mii Fighter costumes are released at the same time as the new fighters, but are separate from the Fighters Pass and are bought individually.
    • Joker's release brought six new costumes, with all of them also being tied to Sega: wigs of the Persona 3 and Persona 4 protagonists and matching Swordfighter-exclusive outfits, a hat based on Teddie from Persona 4, a hat based on Morgana from Persona 5, a hat based on Tails' head and a matching Gunner-exclusive outfit, and a hat based on Knuckles' hair and a matching Brawler-exclusive outfit.
    • Alongside the Hero's release came three new costumes and one hat, all also from the Dragon Quest series: Veronica from XI and (the descendant of) Erdrick from I as Swordfighter outfits, the generic Martial Artist first seen in III as a Brawler outfit, and a Slime hat based on the series' Mascot Mook.
    • Banjo & Kazooie's release broke the trend with an assortment of costumes unrelated to them: Goemon from the Ganbare Goemon series and Zero from the Mega Man X series as Swordfighter outfits, Team Rocket (Grunt) from the Pokémon series as a Brawler outfit, and Protoman from the Mega Man series and Sans from Undertale as Gunner outfits. The Sans costume also comes with a new remix of "Megalovania" for play in stages in the "Other" category.
    • Terry Bogard's associated costumes are, like him, all from fighting games. Nakoruru appears as a Swordfighter costume, and the rest are Brawlers: Ryo Sakazaki and Iori Yagami are new outfits, and the Akira Yuki and Jacky Bryant costumes are returners from 3DS/Wii U.
    • Byleth brought in a slew of unrelated costumes, similarly to Banjo & Kazooie. Altair from Assassin's Creed (as a Swordfighter), a hat based on the Raving Rabbids, X from Mega Man X (as a Gunner, returning from 3DS/Wii U), MegaMan.EXE from Mega Man Battle Network (ditto), and Cuphead from his self-titled game (as a Gunner) were all added alongside Byleth and the 7.0.0 update.
    • Min Min's accompanying Mii costumes are a motley collection: fellow ARMS character Ninjara, Tekken's Heihachi (returning from 3DS/Wii U), the Squid Sisters Callie and Marie from Splatoon, and Fallout mascot Vault Boy.
    • Steve's costumes are half and half; Creeper, Pig and Diamond Armor all come from Minecraft, and there's also Gil from The Tower of Druaga (returning from 3DS/Wii U), Bomberman, and No More Heroes' own Travis Touchdown.
    • Alongside Sephiroth, there is an assortment of Square Enix costumes. Three of them are from Final Fantasy VII: Barret Wallace (as a Gunner), Tifa Lockhart (as a Brawler), and Aerith Gainsborough (as a Swordfighter). The remaining costumes consists of a Chocobo hat (returning from 3DS/Wii U) and Geno from Super Mario RPG (as a Gunner, returning from 3DS/Wii U).
    • Alongside Pyra and Mythra, there was a selection of Capcom costumes. Three of them were from Monster Hunter: the Hunter and Rathalos armor outfits (as a Swordfighter, both returning from 3DS/Wii U), and a Felyne Hat. The last costume was Arthur from Ghosts 'n Goblins (as a Swordfighter). These costumes were tie-ins to then-recent Nintendo Switch releases, namely Monster Hunter: Rise and Ghost 'n Goblins Resurrection.
    • Alongside Kazuya, only one costume was tied to the same company, Lloyd Irving from Tales of Symphonia (Swordfighter, returning from 3DS/Wii U and thus completing the list of Mii costumes that returned to this game). The other costumes are unrelated: the Dragonborn from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (as a Swordfighter), Dante from Devil May Cry (as a Swordfighter), and Shantae from her self-titled series (as a Brawler). The Shantae costume comes with a song from Half-Genie Hero.
    • Only three items were revealed alongside Sora: an Octoling wig and Judd hat from Splatoon, and the Doomslayer (aka Doomguy) from Doom (Gunner).
• The Dragon:
  • Master Hand and Crazy Hand unwillingly serve this purpose for Galeem and Dharkon, respectively. Throughout the story both entities send puppets of the hands to try and stop the fighters, and their last-ditch effort involves sending the original Master Hand and Crazy Hand after them.
  • As far as the puppet fighters go, Galeem's final imprisoned fighter is Palutena, a Goddess of Light and canonically one of the strongest fighters in the game. Similarly, Dharkon's final imprisoned fighter is Bayonetta, an Umbra Witch with a similar level of power. In fact, Masahiro Sakurai admits that besides Kirby taking advantage of the properties of his Warp Star to escape Galeem's first attack, Palutena and Bayonetta were the only other two fighters with enough power to escape. Since neither is very beginner-friendly, he decided to explain their imprisonment by having their homeworlds being destroyed by Galeem as well, giving them no where to run.
  • On the final map, the last branch of the pathways leading to Galeem and Dharkon, respectively, are guarded by one final spirit each. Galeem is guarded by Arceus, the creator of the Pokémon world and canonically one of (if not the) most powerful Pokémon. Dharkon is guarded by Madama Butterfly, an extremely powerful demon that is the source of most of Bayonetta's power. Each is "assisted" by Solgaleo and Lunala being nearby - Pokémon with the power of sunlight and moonlight, respectively.
• Dramatic Red Samurai Background:
  • Ridley's reveal trailer has him grab Mega Man and Mario and stab them with his tail; the acts are done in front of a bright red background, with their bodies and his tail in complete black.
  • Like in his game of origin, Joker's Final Smash, "All-Out Attack", has him call on his teammates to barrage his opponent(s), with the deed framed in black against a red background —as this is an E10+ Nintendo game, the spray of blood coming out of the victims is instead a stream of stars.
• Dramatic Unmask:
  • In the "Vampire Killer" trailer, right after Luigi gets his soul taken out of his body by The Grim Reaper, said Reaper gets slammed in the jaw by a chain whip wielded by a hooded figure seen earlier entering the Haunted Castle where this all took place. The figure dramatically pulls off the hood to reveal Simon Belmont as a new Guest Fighter.
  • In the "Clash of Flames" trailer, Ken Masters is portrayed in a boxing match against Little Mac as the eyes of a mysterious onlooker are seen from the shadows of the entrance hall. Once Ken revels in his victory against Mac, the onlooker suddenly jumps into the ring wearing a hooded boxer's robe. The new challenger burns away the robe to reveal Incineroar as the final new fighter of the base game.
• Dream Match Game:
  • Although Super Smash Bros. as a series is already based upon this concept, this game takes it further by bringing back every fighter up to the point of this game's release, including the third-party characters, which allows for matchups that wouldn't have been possible at the time of their releases (such as Snake being able to fight Mega Man), and adding more third-party characters for good measure.
  • The Marketing of the game even drove this home with the slogan: "Everyone is Here!" This was ultimately bookend with the final DLC character, Sora with the title card being "Sora is Finally Here!"
• Dual Boss: Along with the Master and Crazy Hand battles, getting the true ending for the Adventure Mode involves facing both Galeem and Dharkon at the same time. Notably, they attack each other as well as you during this battle.
• Dualvertisement: The addition of the Trials of Mana protagonists as spirits on April 24, 2020 is a tie-in with the release of that game's remake on the Switch releasing on the same day.
• Dub-Induced Plot Hole:
  • Downplayed with Sakurai's comment on the changes to Super Sonic. He references the "You're Too Slow" taunt, which hadn't changed for the Japanese version, but was replaced with different quotes for each language in the previous and this game, so those not introduced to Sonic in Brawl may not understand the reference.
  • Yama's origin game is said to be SimTower SP in localized versions of Ultimate. This game was actually released as The Tower SP without being a part of the Sim Series.
  • Sephiroth's challenger pack adds two songs named "Those Who Fight (AC Version)" and "Those Who Fight Further (AC Version)". The non-Advent Children versions of these songs have the tiles "Let the Battles Begin!" and "Fight On!" ^NoteBoth being the Final Fantasy VII songs originally in the game, leaving those unfamiliar with the franchise confused as to why these songs would be placed where they are.
• Dub Name Change:
  • The original Japanese version of "World of Light" has an alternate name for the main villain: "Kiira" (based on the Japanese onomatopoeia for glittering, "kirakira").
  • In the Italian translation, the "World of Light" story mode is instead titled "The Star of Hope." The main villain was renamed Kiaran (a corruption of "chiara," meaning clear).
• Dub Pronunciation Change: The Italian dub has Lucina pronounced as "Lu-chee-na" instead of "Lu-see-na" and Pyra pronounced as "Pee-ra" instead of "Pie-ra".
• Dungeon Shop: In the "World of Light" mode, there are 24 Master Spirits on the map that you can find and battle. Once you defeat them, they don't join your party like every other Spirit; instead, they promptly set up a business in the area you defeated them in (either a gym, a dojo, a treasure-hunting service, or an item shop).
• Dynamic Difficulty: The game will increase the difficulty of Classic Mode based on how well you perform in the previous match. The higher the difficulty gets, the more items you earn and the more points you get upon completion. The difficulty also takes a drop if you lose and pay coins to replay. If you want the reward for beating it on 9.9 difficulty, that means you can never lose a life while doing extremely well on almost every fight.
• Dynamic Entry:
  • In the "Vampire Killer" trailer, Simon makes his entrance by smacking Death in the jaw with the Vampire Killer.
  • Sephiroth one-ups him in the "One-Winged Angel" trailer by slicing Galeem in half before descending on the rest of the cast.

E

• Early-Bird Cameo: The Castlevania reveal trailer featured Luigi's new Poltergust before Luigi's Mansion 3 was formally announced. In Ultimate itself, Luigi uses it as his grab, and even incorporated that game's Slam move as his back throw.
• Early Game Hell:
  • There are two ways to unlock things; you can fight baseline Smash battles with the Original 8, get an unlock battle every ten minutes, and earn Spirits through the Spirit Board once you have a fighter you excel with. Or, you can unlock everything via Adventure Mode, starting with just your randomly-chosen Primary Spirit starter and whatever Old Save Bonus spirits you have. The latter is this trope. The Schizophrenic Difficulty plus your lack of good spirits means you will often have to face powerful 3-star level spirits with a bunch of wimps. Fortunately, once you start to pull yourself together and get better spirits, the difficulty evens off, and by the time you reach the Dark Realm, you'll only really fear the strongest enemies in the game at that point.
  • Early on in World of Light, you'll be able to take on a couple of Spirits, especially if they're around the 2000-power range, but you'll eventually run into Ace- or Legend-class Spirits that suddenly have power levels in excess of 9000+, which will easily pound you and the spirits you're likely to have at that point into the dirt. You're meant to find other ways around and, through leveling up Primary Spirits and acquiring a wider range of Support Spirits, eventually come back to those powerful Spirits later to fight them on more equal terms.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Mr. Sakurai Presents, a presentation for the DLC character in the character passes before they are released, is rife with this. To wit:
    • The update video for the first DLC character, Joker, is not actually a Mr. Sakurai Presents presentation, but a standard overview trailer like most other Nintendo videos in that format.
    • The first proper Mr. Sakurai Presents entitled Mr. Sakurai Presents Hero mostly used Japanese footage and didn't even mention the songs being played in the background. Starting with Mr. Sakurai Presents Banjo-Kazooie, the video uses English footage and the songs being played throughout the video are labeled in the upper-left corner. Additionally, the first video wasn't streamed live, simply being posted online, while all the following videos starting with the second were aired live before posting the recorded footage.
  • The base game Spirit Battles are all dead-set on never using the default costumes for any Puppet Fighters, even when it would make the most sense to do so. Spirits added later on in the game's life, both from free updates and DLC Spirit Boards, stopped caring about this restriction and freely use default costumes if they fit.
• Easier Than Easy: Very Easy difficulty mode in World of Light, added in the Version 4.0 update, in which most enemies are set to level 1 and walk around like idiots. Useful for very young or inexperienced players and those who just want to cruise through World of Light without a hitch.
• Easter Egg: Many of them are retained from previous games, but there's plenty of new ones too.
  • If you tilt the camera on the left side of Great Bay, you'll find a Heart Container hidden off-screen, where it was in Majora's Mask.
  • If you zoom inside one of the buildings in Fourside, you'll see a completely modeled version of Monotoli's office.
  • If you zoom inside Dungeon Man in Magicant, you'll see Brick Road's face.
  • Multiple clocks in the game properly display the system time; Umbra Clock Tower displays the time on its face, the Persona 3 version of Mementos displays the time on its clocks, and Town and City displays the time on the clock in the City phase.
  • This game's Final Destination track is the melody of "Lifelight" played backwards. This despite already already being a variation of the song when played normally.
  • If Joker ends a match with his Final Smash, it goes straight to the results screen instead of playing a victory animation, similar to how All-Out Attacks work in Persona 5.
  • On the Mementos stage, if the song playing during a match is one from Persona 3 or Persona 4, the stage will change its appearance to match the respective game. If Joker wins a match under these conditions, the respective game's victory theme will play instead of his own.
• Easy Level Trick:
  • For most of the Challenges and Spirit battles, anything is fair game as long as you stick to the rules. Because most of these involve A.I. opponents, you can get away with particularly cheesy methods to clear them with far less difficulty than you were expected to have, most notably sacrificial KOs like Kirbycide.
  • As pointed out in "Mr. Sakurai Presents Min Min", Pauline, considered one of the most Nintendo Hard Spirit Battles in the game, can be easily defeated with just two shots of a Staff, since the vast starting distance between the player and the target Peach puppet lets the Staff (which fires fast sniper shots that increase in power the further away the target is from the shooter) reach its full potential. Fortunately, Cupid (which gives you a free Staff at the start of a fight) can be found fairly early in World of Light.
  • The Odyssey's battle involves a Giant Jigglypuff that is hard to launch and frequently shields itself, which would make it difficult to defeat under a time limit. Equip a Spirit that starts you off with a Mr. Saturn, and you can end the battle in just one hit.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: The easier difficulties of the Classic mode difficulty mural show adorable light pictures of the cuter characters. Averted otherwise; besides the amount of coins and Spirit Points, there's no reason but pride if you want to go to Easy or Very Easy in World of Light to take on Ace or Legend ranked Spirits that are a bit too hard for the average player, or use an item to make a hard battle or the barrier on the Spirit Board more bearable since that's what they're there for.
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • An entry on Palutena's Guidance in Ultimate reveals that the goddess herself is actually this in reality. The form we're accustomed to is only one we can comprehend. It's then implied that this also applies to Viridi.
  • The game manages to up the ante even further than Master Core in the fourth game already did with the Big Bad Duumvirate faced in World of Light:
    • Galeem. In terms of appearance, Galeem wouldn't appear out of place in Evangelion, consisting of a core of pure light surrounded by multiple floating, ribbon-like wings, with no other real body to speak of; it looks practically angelic in nature. That's not even getting into the fact that it (or "he", according to the website) apparently controls an entire army of Master Hands, or that the very first thing we see him do in the game is launch an attack so powerful that not only does it straight-up kill all of the fighters (except Kirby, who narrowly managed to escape), but expands to encompass what appears to be the entire universe in its wave of destruction.
    • Dharkon is even worse. It's a gigantic, monstrous eyeball with a blue sclera and a yellow iris that's surrounded by monstrous spike-studded tentacles whose appearance is comparable to Shuma-Gorath and Yog-Sothoth. It's also described as the embodiment of chaos and darkness that seeks to smother everything in everlasting darkness and eradicate all forms of life wheras Galeem wishes to remake the entire universe in its own image. It also apparently commands an army of Crazy Hands similarly to Galeem's own Master Hand army, and it introduces itself by making a crack in the sky and ripping through it following Galeem's first defeat. And then there's the fact that the two are fighting against each other and can only perform Teeth-Clenched Teamwork at best when they're both fighting the fighters at the same time, with one of them willingly taking the opportunity to attack the other when it becomes stunned.
• Eldritch Location: The Dark Realm, a mashed-up mess of multiple dimensions filled with chaotic architecture hung over a purplish grey void. The strangest part is the northern end, which starts with a maze-like landscape before turning into a digital-looking mashup with various floating shapes. It says something that Dracula's Castle is the most stable part of the place.
• Enemy Civil War: In World of Light, Galeem's acquaintance, Dharkon, ambushes Galeem and attempts to take over Galeem's project of capturing every capable fighter in the universe. In the True Ending, the battle is technically you versus the both of them, but not only do neither of them try to assist the other, both of them will sometimes create groups of replicas of playable characters as enemies—which then immediately start fighting each other instead of you.
• Enemy Mine:
  • Bowser and King K. Rool stand alongside the heroes in the World of Light cutscene, and together they oppose the new enemy Galeem, in spite of them sharing bad chemistry with each other in Mario Super Sluggers previously. It's nothing new for Bowser, but this is also notably the first time K. Rool has ever aligned himself with Donkey Kong (baseball aside). Also counts for the other villainous characters once they join the party, as well as spirits that are enemies to any of the heroes.
  • Galeem and Dharkon can be driven to do this at the very end of World of Light if the fighters manage to confront them both simultaneously. However, having a common enemy doesn't stop Galeem and Dharkon from taking potshots at each other.
• Enemy Rising Behind: King K. Rool does this to King Dedede in his reveal trailer before slapping him aside and snarling at the Kongs.
• Equippable Ally: The moves pertaining Banjo using Kazooie as a weapon are present in this game as part of their moveset.
  • Breegull Blaster: Banjo wields Kazooie like a shotgun, so she can shoot eggs from her mouth while they're on the move.
  • Beak Bayonet: Kazooie pecks at enemies, though unlike in Banjo-Tooie Banjo doesn't move forward.
  • Breegull Bash: He uses Kazooie as a club to batter enemies. Notably, it's the only move related to the mysterious Stop 'n' Swop items that is present in this game.
• Escort Mission: Some Spirit fights involve you protecting another character while also dealing with the Spirit. For example, Calamity Ganon requires to you win before your NPC-controlled Zelda teammate dies.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Ridley's infamous reveal is shot like a horror movie, with only brief flashes of him being visible as he ambushes and apparently violently murders Mario and Mega Man. When Samus realizes that her compatriots are gone, and who's responsible, she closes her eyes in resignation, and turns around to find Ridley standing behind her, spinning Mario's hat around on his finger with a ginormous smile on his face.
  • King K. Rool's starts with the Kongs' cabin being shaken by massive footsteps, and as they look out the window to see who it is, a massive crowned silhouette rises up to blot out the sun... only to unmask himself as King Dedede. While Dedede is laughing at the Kongs, the real K. Rool rises up behind him and casually knocks Dedede aside with one slap before baring his teeth and roaring at the Kongs.
  • Simon Belmont reveals himself by hitting the Grim Reaper in the face with the Vampire Killer.
  • The boxing ring features Ken and Little Mac fighting. After Ken defeats the boxer, he is challenged by Incineroar, who uses flames to show off its prowess. After defeating Ken, we see him all boisterously happy, before shrugging his head upon seeing a line of challengers behind him.
  • In one of the most shocking moments in Smash Bros. history, we see various Yoshis and Luigi dazed out of their mind. Mario steps toward the character responsible for this and attempts to attack him... only for the Piranha Plant to dodge him, bite him back, and knock Mario off of the screen.
  • Joker's reveal trailer, first shown during the 2018 Game Awards, has him pulling a Do Not Adjust Your Set, running around Phantom Thief style, and then revealing a stolen Smash invitation.
  • Banjo and Kazooie's trailer mimics K. Rool's, with the Duck Hunt dog and duck trolling the Kongs and K. Rool by pretending to be the famous bear and bird duo (complete with the dog's infamous laugh) before Banjo bashes the dog aside with his banjo and makes his appearance with Kazooie, to the Kong's (and even K. Rool's) delight.
• Establishing Series Moment: invoked The first "Mr. Sakurai Presents" video, done for Hero, manages to explain itself neatly early on. Sakurai offhandedly states that the budget for the presentation was a lot lower than what they usually work with (partly because the advertising logistics for Joker was already very costly), which causes someone to laugh in the background. This neatly summarizes the highly informal style of presentation that this series would continue with, as well as why they picked the style.
• Eternal Engine: The Power Plant in World of Light is an electrical power plant, powered by Zapfish from the Splatoon series. In order to proceed through the plant, you have to solve puzzles involving using said Zapfish to power bridges throughout the facility. The area is home to the spirits of electrical and robotic videogame characters, and completing it unlocks the Electric-type Pokèmon Pichu as a fighter.
• Even the Subtitler Is Stumped: Kraid appears as a master of one of the many dojos in the Spirits adventure mode. His "speech" is mostly roars and grunts, which the game does its best to translate, but sometimes it's not even sure of what Kraid is saying.
• Everyone Calls Her "Barkeep": The main female deuteragonist from the obscure 1999 Japan-only SNES game Famicom Bunko: Hajimari no Mori appears as a Spirit, simply titled "Girl from Hajimari no Mori". This is quite strange considering that not only is every other Spirit with a given name referred to as such, but she does have an actual name, Komurasaki.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: The cinematic for the "World of Light" adventure mode shows the cast standing against Galeem, who absorbs an enormous amount of energy, unleashing devastating destruction upon the entire universe, killing the entirety of the cast...except Kirby who managed to reach safety. This is downplayed, as the adventure centers around rescuing all the fighters and taking down Galeem and his evil counterpart, Dharkon, too. Played straight in the 'Galeem wins' and 'Dharkon wins' endings, in both of which Kirby is killed too.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: World of Light's opening scene starts with almost every single character in the roster completely atomized by Galeem, leading the Master Hand army. The only one to survive the onslaught is Kirby... who may have the courage to save everyone else.
• Eviler than Thou: Not even previous Big Bad Tabuu was safe from being turned into a spirit by Galeem.
• Evil Knockoff: Much like the Shadow Bugs creating false copies in Subspace Emissary, the captured fighters in World of Light are covered in a golden liquid which creates a vessel for the spirits to possess. Both Galeem and Dharkon also have a personal army of clones of the fighters made of Hard Light and Hard Darkness, respectively, which they deploy during their boss battles and detonate like bombs.
• Evil Versus Evil: Galeem and Dharkon are at odds with one another. Both are also Omnicidal Maniacs looking to end the world in their own ways.
• Evil Versus Oblivion: If Bowser's and King K. Rool's presence at the (doomed) fight against Galeem at the beginning of World of Light is of any indication. Every villain can be rescued to assist against Galeem and spirits of villainous characters can also be equipped to fight his puppet fighters.
• Evolving Title Screen: The Adventure Mode title screen is mostly empty, with Galeem on its right. After the conclusion of the Light Realm arc and the surprise reveal of Dharkon, Dharkon himself is added to the left side of the title screen, opposing Galeem like in the story.
• Excuse Plot: Unlike Brawl's elaborate plot and the rest of the games' lack of plot, Ultimate gives a pretty simple reason for fighting a vast collection of characters and bosses.
• Expy Coexistence:
  • Super Smash Bros. for Wii U features Palutena's Guidance, a series of hidden convos Pit can activate on Palutena's Temple as well as a send-up to Brawl's Snake Codecs. In Ultimate, Snake and his codecs make a return, albeit without updated lines.
  • The game features Akira Yuki from Virtua Fighter as an Assist Character and Kazuya Mishima from Tekken as a DLC fighter, both of whom were at least inspired physically by Ryu and are now all coexisting in the same game.
  • There's a downplayed example with Bayonetta and Dante; while Bayonetta herself is a playable fighter, her direct inspiration Dante only appears as a Mii Fighter costume.

F

• Failure Montage:
  • The majority of Terry's trailer has a variety of the SNK cast trying and failing to catch the flying invitation to Smash, which involves Geese Howard falling to his death trying to get it. It's eventually claimed by Terry, who simply waited for it to land on the floor.
  • In Min Min's trailer, Spring Man is the first one to see the flying Smash invitation and reaches out to grab it... only to get knocked out of the way by Ribbon Girl... who is knocked out of the way by Ninjara... and so it goes with almost every member of the ARMS cast until Min Min finally ditches her job at the ramen shop to leap in and take it for herself.
• Family-Friendly Firearms:
  • While Snake (who only uses explosive weapons) and, to a lesser extent, Bayonetta (who uses pistols, but they're magic) play this straight, Joker outright averts it, by bringing his real pistol that shoots real bullets. Somewhat justified in that this is only due to the nature of the Metaverse making the gun real; in the "real" world of Persona 5, it's just an airsoft model. His special that uses it is just called "Gun." Since the Gun is Joker's neutral B, Kirby also can copy the gun, blasting foes while saying, "Bang! Bang! Bang!"
  • King K. Rool has a flintlock blunderbuss, but it fires a comically large and slow moving cannon ball (and somehow acts a vacuum).
• Family-Unfriendly Death: The character trailers have uncharacteristically violent deaths.
  • In Ridley's trailer, he impales Mega Man with his tail and crushes Mario's head.
  • In the Belmonts' trailer, with a literal Family-Unfriendly Death who slashes Luigi's soul out of his body. This one shocked enough people that the Nintendo UK Twitter account had to reassure people that he would be fine; indeed, one can see Luigi's soul was about to return to his body at the end of the trailer.
  • The whole cast sans Kirby gets one in the intro to World of Light. Disintegration could not have been a pleasant way to go...
  • Physical God be damned, Galeem suffers a brutal death at the hands of Dharkon in the second bad ending, upon which his wings are stabbed, bound, and pulled apart by chains, then Galeem himself is impaled by multiple chains simultaneously before emitting a bright stream of light from his entire body, likely Galeem's version of bleeding.
  • In the first bad ending, Galeem just straight-up vaporizes Dharkon, and we get to see him slowly crumble into dust.
• Fanservice Extra: The game features Assist Trophies, which summon a fighter for a few seconds. Some of these are fairly attractive and show off a lot of skin.
  • Krystal's outfit consists of a strapless bra, a loincloth with nothing underneath, and tattoos.
  • Phosphora wears a cropped tube top and short shorts while having vines all over her body.
• Fanservice Pack:
  • Played Straight for Daisy, as her design is slightly bustier than in the Mario sports and party games.
  • Double Subverted for Zero Suit Samus; her bustline was toned down to more realistic proportions in comparison to her 3DS/ Wii U incarnation. However, she is noticeably more muscular than her previous appearances, which is also more realistic, considering her profession.
  • Also inverted for Snake, as his bodysuit isn't as skintight as it appeared in Brawl. Among other less defined areas, his butt was toned down.
  • Less notable but also inverted for Palutena, as her dress cut has been slightly stitched, exposing less of her thigh. This change was originally made in the Japanese version of the previous game. ^*Her dress does get briefly lifted up if she's hit by King Dedede's Dede-Rush Final Smash, however.
  • Unlike the poses she had in her previous artworks, Sheik's arms are no longer obscuring her chest, making it even more obvious that Sheik is a woman.
  • Unlike the examples above, somehow Wolf managed to have tight, formfitting pants that shows his shapely buttocks. His leather undersuit also manages to be tight enough to show off his biceps.
  • Krystal, who was already Ms. Fanservice in her original appearance◊, is now slimmer and more muscular.◊ Also, manipulating the camera to... very specific angles◊ reveals that she isn't wearing any underwear.
  • Done quite literally and inverted with Pyra and Mythra in the fourth Challenger Pack of Fighters Pass 2, being the most suggestive fighters to be added up to that point. Their outfits have vastly differing modifications for their appearance and subsequent promotion here (Pyra's are negligible while Mythra's hides a lot of skin), yet they are the first female fighters whose chests make use of actual Jiggle Physics.
• Filler: Any themed spirit events that don't introduce any new spirits can be seen as this, although there is the occasional subversion (like the black color-themed spirit event that Lotus arrives in).
• Final Boss:
  • Unlike previous installments, the final opponent in Classic Mode depends on who the player picked to play, instead of all characters facing Master Hand at the end. Besides Master Hand and Crazy Hand, characters can also face off against the likes of Giga Bowser, Galleom, Ganon, Dracula, Marx, and Rathalos.
  • Certain Classic Mode routes will have a fight against a more powerful version of a regular foe at the end instead of a boss. Bowser fights Mario, who comes back as a metal Mario; Bayonetta fights a giant Palutena; Jigglypuff fights a giant Donkey Kong; and Hero fights Robin, followed by a giant Charizard. Mega Man's final challenger is an exception in that they're not "more powerful," but he does fight Dr. Mario and Mewtwo in succession. This is zigzagged with Mario, who first fights Bowser in a regular 1-on-1, then he comes back and turns into Giga Bowser.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning:
  • The Hero can use a wide array of spells, with their neutral special being Frizz/Frizzle/Kafrizz, which throws a fireball, and their side special being Zap/Zapple/Kazap, which fires a lightning bolt from their sword. They can also use Kacrackle Slash, a sword strike which freezes its targets, as part of their down special.
  • Sora can cast Firaga, Thundaga, and Blizzaga in that order with his neutral special; Firaga allows him to shoot multiple fireballs rapidly, Thundaga lets him fire a row of thunderbolts, and Blizzaga has him fire a cone of ice that freezes anyone caught in its path.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • King K. Rool's trailer starts with various Nintendo heroes fighting their respective villain or rival before cutting to Donkey Kong yawning, presumably watching this series of images on his television.
  • In the intro of World of Light, Shulk sees a vision of everybody being vaporized by Galeem's beams. He only gets about a split second to try to warn them before the events he foresaw play out.
  • The E10+ logo in front of the Persona 5 trailer is rather conspicuous given that the franchise is normally T to M-rated, hinting that Joker was going to appear in the family-friendly Smash series.
  • Banjo & Kazooie's reveal trailer has a Jiggy bounce through Donkey Kong's house, less than a minute before the duo themselves appear to take out Duck Hunt and secure their spot on the roster.
  • During Sephiroth’s reveal trailer, there’s a moment where the camera focuses on Pit, and you can only see his left wing. He looked like a one-winged angel in that shot.
• Flaming Emblem: One is shown at the end of the initial trailer for the game - its reflection in an Inkling's eye being the confirmation that a new instalment in the series was coming. The final DLC fighter reveal trailer for Sora begins in the same way.
• Foil: Palutena and Bayonetta's role in the World of Light mode plays up the contrast between them. It was noted in developer interviews that they are the only ones other than Kirby who could have survived Galeem's attack were it not for extenuating circumstances, and their juxtaposition as immensely powerful — and opposing — forces of light and darkness, respectively, is highlighted by their locations in World of Light: in The Final Battle map, they're each summoned alongside Master and Crazy Hand as agents of Galeem and Dharkon and personally stand guard before each hand, Palutena before Master Hand and Bayonetta before Crazy Hand. Notably, this makes them the last characters you can unlock in the campaign.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The majority of the game's main theme: Lifelight references several points in World of Light: Connotations to darkness, Galeem and Dharkon's struggles, and what all the spirits do in the Golden Ending: Weave into a spire of flame to head back to the real world.
  • During the Banjo & Kazooie/Version 5.0 video, Sakurai noticeably refers to most of the cameos on the Spiral Mountain stage as "poor souls". Later, Sans from Undertale, a game with a large emphasis on souls, was revealed as a Mii Gunner costume.
  • Take a look at Galeem's entire army in the "World of Light" intro. He has absolutely no Crazy Hands present. Turns out Dharkon has an army purely consisting of Crazy Hands.
  • During the reveal of the ARMS character, it starts with Captain Falcon and Kirby enjoying ramen in a shop. Anyone who knows the lore of the games should have been able to guess that the fighter was Min Min.
  • When Heihachi's Mii Costume is revealed to be returning, the trailer recreates his Tekken 2 ending by showing him throwing Wolf into the Wuhu Island volcano, a reference to how he threw his son Kazuya into a volcano in said ending. Guess who ends up joining the roster nearly a year later?
• Free-Floor Fighting:
  • The game adds "Battlefield" variants to the stages. These variants consist of a simple main platform with three smaller platforms above it, allowing players to have elevated battles in a variety of scenes without having to worry about the intrusive gimmicks of the main stages. Of course, the "Omega" variants from the fourth generation, which just consist of one main platform a la Final Destination, return as well.
  • Ultimate also has Stage Morphing, where two separate stages will transform into each other during the match.
• Full Health Bonus:
  • The Annie Spirit grants increased attack power while at 0% damage.
  • Link's forward smash also creates a Sword Beam if he's at 0%, as an homage to his home series.
• Funny Background Event: Haru/Noir isn't represented in the Phantom Thieves Spirit battle, so instead, she appears as a permanent background element for the fight (as opposed to normal fights on Mementos, where she only appears periodically).
• Fun with Palindromes: A unique case as it's a song. Normally, the new Final Destination theme plays the title melody and is followed by an apparently-new composition. Play the song backwards, however, and aside from the obvious audio errors from reversing songs in general, the result has an identical melody with the title theme first and then the "new" section.