Every soul contains a whisper of light
Gleaming faintly as it dwindles from sight
No escape, no greater fate to be made
In the end, the chains of time will not break
Gleaming faintly as it dwindles from sight
No escape, no greater fate to be made
In the end, the chains of time will not break
—"Lifelight", the theme of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
The fact that this is the first and only Smash Bros. game to get its own page should speak volumes.
Moment Subpages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned.
Pre-Release and Trailers
- Ridley's reveal trailer has him murdering/mortally wounding Mega Man and Mario. It's kind of hard to watch when you see many peoples' childhood heroes unceremoniously killed. Granted, Mega Man could easily be repaired given he's a robot, but Mario? If it weren't for the fact that the characters are all alive and playable, everyone would have to assume the worst.
- Simon Belmont's trailer is not much nicer to his brother. He's shown to be exploring Dracula's castle, only to find his tools are not useful on the foes he stumbles across and then stumbles unto Death himself! The worst part? Simon doesn't show up in time to save Luigi, who Death slashes the soul out of. It's saddening to see Luigi stuck in a situation where he is incapable of defending himself and then die as a result.
- On November 1, 2018, the same day of the final Ultimate Direct, Sakurai tweeted
that Incineroar's voice acting in Japanese is done by the late Unshō Ishizuka, who passed away in August of that year. He then asked for people to pray for his soul. The recency of his departure at the time was still close to the heart, and this could very well be his last performance. - The opening to Sephiroth's trailer, set during World of Light, where the fighters are fighting a losing battle with Galeem. As they stand defeated, the normally plucky Pit— who claimed that they'd win the battle against the Master Hands in WoL's opening cutscene before everything goes horribly downhill—can only look towards Galeem in horror as he charges up his ultimate attack to slay the fighters yet again. Thankfully, his attack is cut short (literally!) by Sephiroth. Too bad this is Sephiroth we're talking about...
- The start of the release trailer for Pyra and Mythra, in spite of the big Mood Whiplash at the middle, can be quite tearjerking. Nia goes to check on Rex, who is sitting dejectedly at one of the Argentum Trade Guild's ports... alone. His blade, the Aegis, is not there with him, which Rex lampshades saying one day, she "just disappeared". He goes on a quest across Alrest to see if someone has her - neither Tora, nor Mòrag, Brighid, Niall or Aegaeon, nor Zeke or Pandoria, have any idea where his blade might be. Rex finally arrives to the ancient ship where he awakened her, but neither is she there. Not helping it is the depressing violin reprisal of "Drifting Soul".
- Those who have played XC2 may see it with more clarity. Over the course of the story, Rex goes through losing his blade, who he has been following to the "paradisal" Elysium, after the game's recurring villains abduct her and goes through a Heroic BSoD in the process. Meanwhile, Pyra and Mythra, despite being respectively nice and confident, aren't willing to cling to life after the mental scars from the wars centuries ago, and only go to Elysium so they can meet their creator and ask him to allow them to die; only Rex's devotion to the Aegis' lets them grow out of this. If not for the fact it was a Smash trailer, the fact they disappeared could rise implications that they were Driven to Suicide again.
- The final DLC character reveal trailer: Inkling Girl stands before the blazing Smash logo, with every other fighter standing alongside her, waiting. The flames of the logo flicker and dim, and finally go out as the last of its cinders drop to the floor... and in an instant, the entire cast returns to being lifeless trophies. The endless fight has finally come to an end, and the toys have all been returned to their box, signifying Ultimate's closure after 3 years.
- Even with the reveal of the final character moments later breathing life back into the cast, there's still a very solemn sense that this is Smash's last hurrah. Mario approaches the logo's last embers with a sort of hesitance, as if he's aware that things are coming to a close and he has to make this count. Reaching into the flames, he pulls out and flings a key-shaped blade, and from the keyhole it creates—set to the bittersweet orchestral rendition of Simple And Clean—comes Sora, ready to give the Smash cast one last adventure together. Regardless, this becomes slightly less depressing if you interpret it as the fighters being ready to roar to life and continue the endless battle just as long as the fans are there to fuel their life force with their imaginations. As the Heartwarming subpage puts it, the show might be over, but Smash will never die.
- Perhaps the more sobering note is that everyone's faces are frozen in the exact moment that the flame dies out, staring at it in terror and intrigue. Mario's expression? Grim acceptance, closing his eyes as he awaited the end he knew was coming. And unlike the dynamic poses the trophies did in Melee and Brawl, they're just standing.
- If you follow the Epileptic Trees theory of the Smash series reflecting growing up, this becomes even more poignant. When the fighters become trophies, they are notably much more detailed than any of their previous trophies or even their real-life amiibo, and are all in the same static, boring standing pose, lined up neatly. The child who owned the plushies in Smash 64, now an adult, is being forced to abandon their imagination and tackle the bleakness of real life (possibly even representing Sakurai himself leaving Smash behind). When adults collect toys, they don't play with them the way kids do, often leaving them on display lined up neatly in static poses. Adults also often collect toys that are more detailed and elaborate than the ones that children play with. Mario, being a very nostalgic character for many people, begs The Person Upstairs to spark their imagination and enter their childhood mega-mashup dream world one last time, and summons Sora - a character many people have wanted for years while growing up - to give everyone one last hurrah. This is what happens when the innocent kid with a vivid imagination who loves playing with Nintendo toys becomes an adult whose headspace is now dominated by their Soul-Crushing Desk Job or Soul-Sucking Retail Job.
- This becomes even sadder when you consider that the "world of imagination" where Smash takes place simply fades from existence whenever the trophies' owner is forced to ground themself in the real world.
- To hammer down Ultimate truly being the End of an Era, it seems fitting to note that the last in-game remix exclusive to this game did not come from Kingdom Hearts despite Sora being the final character released, but from Tekken via Kazuya's DLC pack: "Aloneness" from Tekken 7. While instrumental, this orchestral remix of its credits theme carries over every single bit of melancholia befitting that 7 also had its own era-ending moment for the Mishima Saga with its story mode; it's simultaneously somber to lament the fact that this massive crossover which may not be rivaled in the near future is coming to a close, but also hopeful to at least keep fans happy knowing that such an insane event — a love letter to gaming as a whole — happened to begin with.
World of Light/Spirit Board
- The new Adventure Mode starts with a big Player Punch: every single character, playable or not, is wiped out and turned into a spirit after the new villain, Galeem, unleashed an attack similar to Tabuu's Off-Waves despite their best efforts to fight off the attack. The Sole Survivor of the entire ordeal is Kirby, while everyone else is turned into a shadow of their former selves. And we thought Subspace Emissary was dark... Galeem, on the other hand, caused (what at least looks to be) the death of all life.
- Even worse is that Kirby crash lands onto the ruined world after, only to see the barren wasteland before him. Sure, Kirby's been in tough situations before, but starting off this time? He is truly alone, with no helpers in sight, nor even a supporting character assisting from the sidelines. The pink puffball starts his journey to restore the world with nobody to guide him.
- Look closely and you'll notice that Sonic is reaching out to Pikachu as if he wanted to save him before Pikachu was caught by the pillar of light. Sonic even looks distressed that he failed to save Pikachu.
- What's worse, as many have noted, is that Sonic is the fastest thing alive; while he may not have outrun the beams, he certainly stood the best chance of doing so out of all the heroes. He only gets caught because he slowed down to try and save Pikachu.
- Palutena stays behind and tries to protect Pit and Dark Pit by creating a barrier to slow down the pillars of light. Not only do the pillars consume her without slowing down at all, the moment Palutena is captured, Pit and Dark Pit lose the Power of Flight, causing them to get captured too. Worse is that she's all too familiar with the sensation of powerlessness. And considering they're all getting Trapped in Villainy, that means she's also getting possessed right afterward. As if Palutena wasn't reminded enough of the Chaos Kin...
- Even worse? Palutena's one of the last four characters you can save in the story mode. And as Pit is obligatory to unlock in the Light Realm, before the Dark Realm is accessible, he has to go throughout his journey without his beloved goddess with him. At least the Viridi spirit is available as company...
- Shulk has a vision of the attack and attempts to warn everyone to run for their lives. And as the cutscene entails, it was All for Nothing. He knew it couldn't be stopped... Even worse is that Shulk is all too familiar with being unable to prevent his visions.
- The Duck Hunt dog is shown cowering as the duck tries to pull him to safety, to no avail. In the same shot, all the Villager can do is run around in circles in pure terror.
- If you look closely, you can also see an expression of either resignation or dread on the Wii Fit Trainer's face as she does yoga poses beside the Duck Hunt duo and the Villager before being taken down alongside them, giving off the impression that the reason she's just standing there doing yoga poses is because she knows what is coming and can't escape this and is choosing to Face Death with Dignity by going out doing what she does best.
- Another reading of the Wii Fit Trainer, Notice how quickly she switches between yoga poses. She may very well be trying to reduce her own stress and calm herself down.
- When the Inklings see what's coming, they freak the hell out and desperately try to hide in their ink. They get taken anyways. Similarly, Snake tries to use his box trick to outwit the attackers... and just gets hit at a slightly slower rate.
- Seeing several characters running instead of fighting is definitely heartbreaking because most of them are not running away with their friends. Falco is by himself in his Arwing quickly jettisoning himself away from the massacre. Similarly, Diddy Kong is flying away via his Rocketbarrel Pack as fast as he can alongside Rosalina & Luma. The only reason we can assume that they didn't try escaping with Fox and Donkey Kong respectively is because they already just watched their closest friends rather apparently murdered.
- Even the new theme, Lifelight, sounds a bit somber as it details everyone's fate, as well as being a Dark Reprise of the previously triumphant main theme. The lyrics at the top of the page are particularly noteworthy.
- Note that many of the spirits are friends of the fighters, having been reduced to nothing as well only to be shoved into statues of their defeated friend to control an evil clone of them. Think about that: someone like Otacon or Jeanne being forced to use the body of their best friend to attack people they don't even know. And I Must Scream doesn't begin to cover it.
- Otacon probably does know who all of the fighters are. But being both a fan and a Non-Action Guy, this can't be fun for him. Especially with his fight being reminiscent of his Reluctant Mad Scientist days. No wonder the guy tries to avoid fighting.
- Fridge Horror: Huey tried to use young Hal as a pilot/Wetware CPU for Metal Gear Sahelanthropus. Fast forward a few decades and it pretty much happens.
- Also, Snake and Otacon have a child. Where the hell is Sunny? Otacon and Snake have to go through the whole ordeal of light not knowing if their daughter is alive or if she's suffering the same fate.
- On a related note, Bowser and Chrom are both fathers too, but they don't even have the cold comfort of ambiguity— their children got vaporized right in front of their eyes.
- In the True Ending, all of the Spirits fly away into deep space after the main threats are vanquished once and for all. No words. No bodies. No nothing. They simply... leave the universe behind.
- Of course, Sakurai's lore stated that heading to the real world is the goal of everyone in the World of Imagination, so one could say that it's a Bittersweet Ending or even an Earn Your Happy Ending for them.
- The game specifically says that dismissing a spirit sends it to its homeworld. That's what's happening — all the spirits are being dismissed, their jobs done, so they go home.
- Some contexts for the Spirits, either in-battle or displayed on the world map, can get downright heart-rending.
- Claus and Hinawa, the late brother and mother of Lucas (even before Galeem's Apocalypse How) are found beside each other as separate spirits; Hinawa on the light side of the final map, Claus on the dark side. In a stroke of Video Game Cruelty Potential, Lucas' recruitment fight can be found relatively early in the campaignspoiler, so it's entirely possible to make him fight his own family. Even worse, you have to fight at least one of them to reach the True Final Boss, as they're each blocking the path on one side.
- To twist the knife even further, when you beat Adventure Mode, you'll unlock a spirit as part of a challenge. What spirit is that? The Masked Man.
- And as if all of this gut-punching to the Mother Fandom isn't enough, the gimmick for Hinawa's spirit battle is "All fighters are more easily launched".
- Young Link's recruitment fight is hidden away in a copy of The Lost Woods, behind some impassable terrain. To remove the roadblock, the owl statues give the hint of "someone who is waiting for the hero", and you must find and defeat the hinted spirit hidden deep in the forest to reach Young Link. The spirit in question is Saria, Young Link's Only Friend. She's still waiting for him. The mood changes depending on how you view it: it's a Heartwarming Moment if Saria and Link are still looking out for each other even as Brainwashed and Crazy puppets, or a heartbreaking case of Dramatic Irony wherein Saria didn't even know she was Young Link's Barrier Maiden - or worse, they were fully aware and now Young Link is trying to repay Saria's assailant in kind.
- Alm and Celica as children appear as Spirits at around the middle of the game. Anyone who has even touched the game know that at the very beginning, the two are running for their lives (and are even instructed to hide away from danger), which ends up kicking off the game's plot. What's the battle objective for this one? Kill them, while they're running away from you. Really gives you the role of the bad guy here.
- Right near where you recruit Isabelle, you can battle her brother, Digby. While not quite on the same level of Video Game Cruelty Potential as the Claus and Hinawa example above, you can still make the sweet, innocent Isabelle fight against her own twin brother, whose spirit is trapped in a copy of her body.
- Similarly, Ike can be recruited very close to where you can battle his sister, Mist, and as a result have him battle her. This is especially harsh when one remembers that he almost killed her when they were children while in madness from seeing their father kill their mother. Likewise, Elincia is in the same place as Mist.
- Remember the ending of Pokémon Heroes? Well considering the stage in which you battle Latios and Latias imitates Alto Mare, it's implied that the two dragons from the movie are possessing the two Charizards you fight against. So the two are reunited... but unless you KO both of them at the same time, they will have to go through losing their beloved twin sibling all over again thanks to you, especially if you kill Latios first.
- Just in case you haven't seen Pokemon Heroes, just consider Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon where both of the Eon Duo were outright killed off together and pretty much suffered a Fate Worse than Death in the Voidlands, which is essentially the PMD world's equivalent of Hell. For all we know, this could be the PMD world's Eon Duo, and the two have to suffer yet again.
- In fact, in relation to PSMD, Galeem annihilating all the fighters at the start of the story draws rather depressing parallels to Dark Matter proceeding to petrify the rest of the hero and partner's allies.note In fact, a good majority of the legendary spirits in World of Light just so happened to be among those turned to stone,note so for all we know, they could be reliving rather harsh memories upon being turned into Spirits.
- Claus and Hinawa, the late brother and mother of Lucas (even before Galeem's Apocalypse How) are found beside each other as separate spirits; Hinawa on the light side of the final map, Claus on the dark side. In a stroke of Video Game Cruelty Potential, Lucas' recruitment fight can be found relatively early in the campaignspoiler, so it's entirely possible to make him fight his own family. Even worse, you have to fight at least one of them to reach the True Final Boss, as they're each blocking the path on one side.
- In a very weird way, the deaths of Galeem and Dharkon assuming you don't fight them both: the other kills them rather brutally. Sure, they deserved it for the immense crimes of their greed, but still...
- What makes their deaths a little harder to watch is that they are some of the only times we see them with anything resembling emotion: in the light ending, Dharkon's eye actually widens in utter panic when he sees the light beams barreling towards him, knowing they will rip him apart, he's unable to escape them and there's absolutely nothing he can do about it, and then he immediately gets blown apart and slowly vaporized into fine dust. In the dark ending, Galeem similarly closes his wings around his core in what looks to be a gesture similar to someone blanketing themselves out of a sense of retreating vulnerability, visibly struggling not letting Dharkon's chains pull his wings open. The way his body is just held up like a hunter's fresh kill and looking as angelic as he does in such a dark hell never paints a pretty picture. The Master Hands Galeem controlled actually turn to look at him whenever he is injured as well, implying that despite everything, they are concerned for him.
- While it in no way completely mitigates the Fridge Horror of their friends and loved ones turning into Spirits; there is still some solace that some characters from the same franchise still have each other regardless if they were friend or foe. However for characters who are the sole representative of their franchise, they may as well be the Last of Their Kind.
- For the Paper Mario universe, it's a bit sad that not only has his versions of Peach and Luigi been turned into spirits, but they're stuck in corrupted forms of the Shadow Queen / Folded Form and Mr. L. Even saving them from puppet fighters still leaves them out of their right minds.
- Paper Bowser arguably gets it even worse. He starts out as his normal self, before getting enhanced into his Paper Mario: Sticker Star appearance, who's possessed by a Royal Sticker throughout the entire game. It may not seem like much at first, but within the context of Ultimate, this means that you're forcefully placing a sentient being back under corruption, possibly against his will, just to make him stronger. The same can be applied for Skull Kid, Daroach and Lotus.
- In the base game, Cloud was entirely by himself for the Final Fantasy universe.note Eventually, it's shown that not only has all of his friends been turned into spirits, the only other person to survive Galeem's assault is Sephiroth.
- For the Paper Mario universe, it's a bit sad that not only has his versions of Peach and Luigi been turned into spirits, but they're stuck in corrupted forms of the Shadow Queen / Folded Form and Mr. L. Even saving them from puppet fighters still leaves them out of their right minds.
- For the Paper Mario: The Origami King spirits, Olivia's spirit battle has only Bob-ombs as items. For those who played the game, it is a sad reminder of Bobby the Bob-Omb who sacrificed his life to save her.
