Trivia / Super Smash Bros. Brawl

• Acting for Two: Lana Minella voices both Pit and Lucas in this game. Pit would later be replaced by his Kid Icarus: Uprising voice actor Antony Del Rio for future Smash Bros games, though Minella would remain the voice of Lucas, and also portray a few of the Koopalings.
• Blooper: Some trophy descriptions contain errors.
  • The Black Knight's trophy says he wields the blessed sword Ettard. This is an oversight; in the Japanese version, the sword he wields is Ettard, but it was re-named Alondite outside of Japan. The European version corrects this.
  • Lyn's trophy says she's 15 years old. This is another oversight; Lyn is 15 in the Japanese verison, but she was aged up to be 18 in the English version.
  • The Outset Link trophy says he wears a shirt with a shrimp pattern, but it's actually a lobster.
  • Aryl's trophy says that her telescope has a turtle on it, but it actually has a seagull on it.
• Creator Backlash: Sakurai has come to regret creating the Subspace Emissary story mode for this game, as he was not happy with how the cutscenes leaked onto YouTube before the game itself released. This, combined with how time-consuming and workload-heavy it was, Sakurai would end up not implementing a story mode in Smash 4, and make World of Light a far more streamlined experience with few cutscenes.
• Dummied Out: Rayquaza is programmed to have a weak spot, where all types of attacks would be about 40-50% more powerful against him, and in turn would counterbalance Rayquaza being resistant to every type of attack. However this weak spot was not applied to any of Rayquaza's hurtboxes in the released game, which effectively left Rayquaza a Damage-Sponge Boss.
• He Also Did: Pat Cashman is well-known as the narrator in Bill Nye the Science Guy.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Unlike many other high-profile Wii games (such as Punch-Out!!, both Super Mario Galaxy games, Metroid Prime Trilogy, and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword), it was never released on the Wii U's Virtual Console, nor was it re-released on any other system. A possible culprit is Snake, as legal issues with Konami resulted in Snake and all Metal Gear content being dropped from the Wii U's installment of the franchise.
• Killer App: Brawl has sold over 12 million units, making it the 8th best-selling game for the Wii. It's also notable for being one of Nintendo's fastest-selling games ever in the United States upon its release, selling over 874,000 copies on launch day alone.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.":
  • Mother 3 was never officially released outside Japan, so Lucas makes his international debut in Brawl.
  • A couple of Assist Trophies fall under this for anyone in the Americas (though not PAL territories); namely the Devil World Devil, Barbara from Daigasso! Band Brothers, and Helirin from Kuru Kuru Kururin. Saki Amamiya from Sin and Punishment averted this, with S&P getting a Wii Virtual Console release five months before Brawl debuted.
  • This can apply to any character from Japan-exclusive games that appear solely as stickers. However, Lilina is a noteworthy example, as because she was absent from the PAL versions of Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade due to the removal of that game's extended epilogue, this is the first time PAL players actually got to see her at all, albeit as a sticker. She would make a physical appearance in the PAL version of Fire Emblem: Awakening five years later.
• The Original Darrin: King Dedede is voiced by Masahiro Sakurai. Yes, you're reading this right — the man himself was Dedede's first voice actor, doing so in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. Sakurai plays this to Ted Lewis and Kenichi Ogata, both of who voiced Dedede in the Kirby anime (source of which Meta Knight retains his seiyuu from).
• The Other Darrin:
  • Pat Cashman takes over Dean Harrington as the announcer, Master Hand and Crazy Hand. Cashman notably ends the "emcee" style used by Jeff Manning in 64 and Harrington in Melee.
  • Following the changes in voice actors in the Super Mario Bros. franchise, Princess Peach is now voiced by Samantha Kelly instead of Jen Taylor, having taken over the role since Mario Strikers Charged (though one of Taylor's taunts as Peach can still be heard through the Wii remote speaker when Peach is selected).
  • With the transition from the Ocarina of Time character designs in Melee to those of Twilight Princess in Brawl, Link and Ganondorf's voices shifted accordingly. Link went from Nobuyuki Hiyama to Akira Sasanuma, and Ganondorf from Takashi Nagasako to Hironori Miyata.
  • Meta Knight retained his Japanese voice actor, Atsushi Kisaichi, from the Kirby anime, but not his English voice actor, Eric Stuart. Meta Knight is dubbed in English by Eric Newsome instead.
  • The Star Fox crew mostly drew voice actors from Star Fox: Assault, while Melee's Corneria secret conversations drew from Star Fox: Adventures. Accordingly, Fox and Slippy's voices change from Steve Malpass and Chris Seavor to Jim Walker and Mike McAuliffe, respectively. However, while Falco and Peppy's Melee voices, Ben Cullum and Chris Seavor again, are replaced, they are not voiced by their Assault actors, Mike Madeoy and Henry Dardenne, respectively, but instead both are voiced by Dex Manley (who voices ROB 64 in Assault). The Star Wolf team also saw their voice actors changed from Assault — Wolf went from Grant Goodeve to Jay Ward, while Leon and Panther, who were both voiced by David Scully, are instead voiced by Jim Walker and Eric Newsome, respectively. Fox's Japanese voice actor also changed from Shinobu Satouchi to Kenji Nojima.
  • Ivysaur was voiced by Eric Stuart in the Pokémon anime, but following the recasting fiasco between 4Kids Entertainment and Pokémon USA, Stuart left the dub team. As a result, Ivysaur is voiced by Craig Blair.
  • Ivysaur in Japanese has always been portrayed by other voice actors, but in Brawl, it is voiced by Tomoko Kawakami.
  • Bill Rogers continues to voice Lucario in Brawl, serving as the Darrin to Sean Schemmel, the voice of the character in Pokémon: Lucario and the Mystery of Mew (who this specific Lucario seems to be based off of).
• Posthumous Credit: Grey Fox's Japanese voice clips were archived from Metal Gear Solid, where he was voiced by Kaneto Shiozawa, who died from a cerebral contusion in 2000.
• Production Lead Time: The game features no content from Super Mario Galaxy, which was released in November 2007, due to the two games having mostly-concurrent development cycles. It's only briefly mentioned in the game's Chronicle, so the game instead treats Super Mario Sunshine as the latest console-based mainline Mario game and New Super Mario Bros. as the latest handheld one. For the same reason, content on Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is nonexistent (only having a mention in the Chronicle), so the newest Metroid content in the game is as of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (console, 2004) and Metroid Prime: Hunters (handheld and overall, 2006). In both cases, this also affects the information recorded in the trophy descriptions, as many enemies and characters that appear in past Mario and Metroid games would also return in Galaxy and Corruption respectively, yet this isn't acknowledged in the tabs citing the characters' "latest" appearances (and the aforementioned information is also preemptively outdated).
• Role Reprise:
  • Charles Martinet, Samantha Kelly and Kazumi Totaka reprise their roles as Mario and Luigi, Princess Peach and Yoshi, respectively. Brawl marks the first time in the series where not only does Martinet voice Mario and Luigi using newly recorded voice clips, but where theirs are separate, finally causing Luigi's voice to match his portrayal in the main games. Martinet also reprises his role as Mario's anti-counterpart, Wario. On the other hand, Totaka still voices Yoshi via repurposed voice clips from Yoshi's Story.
  • Akira Sasanuma, Jun Mizusawa and Hironori Miyata respectively reprise their roles as Link, Zelda and Ganondorf from Twilight Princess. Both Sasanuma and Miyata utilize repurposed voice clips from Twilight Princess. Mizusawa also reprises her role as Sheik, from Ocarina of Time. Both of her portrayals of Zelda and Sheik are a combination of newly recorded voice clips and reused ones from Melee.
  • Sachi Matsumoto reprises her role as Link (Toon Link) from The Wind Waker. As with Sasanuma, her portrayal is repurposed from this Link's source game.
  • Makiko Ohmoto reprises her roles as Kirby and Ness. This time, both portrayals are a combination of new voice clips and reused ones from Melee.
  • Masahiro Sakurai reprises his role as King Dedede, having previously voiced him in Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (notably a HAL Laboratory game, a company for which Sakurai no longer works for).
  • Atsushi Kisaichi reprises his role as Meta Knight in Japanese from Kirby: Right Back at Ya!.
  • Jim Walker reprises his role as Fox after voicing him in Star Fox: Assault in English.
  • Kenji Nojima, Hisao Egawa and Mahito Ōba respectively reprise their roles as Fox, Falco and Wolf from Assault in Japanese as well.
  • Ikue Otani, Rachael Lillis, Michele Knotz, Shin-ichiro Miki and respectively reprise their roles as Pikachu, Jigglypuff, Squirtle, and Charizard from the Pokémon anime.
    • Otani's portrayal of Pikachu is a mix of newly recorded voice clips and reused ones from Melee.
    • Lillis' portrayal of Jigglypuff is reused from 64.
    • Mika Kanai's Japanese portrayal of Jigglypuff is a mix of voice clips last used in Melee and some new ones.
    • Rikako Aikawa also reprises her role as Squirtle from the Pokémon anime in Japanese.
    • Shin-ichiro Miki portrays Charizard using significantly more realistic, dragon-like voice clips, compared to his previous appearances in Smash as a Poké Ball Pokémon as well as the Pokémon anime.
  • Ryō Horikawa reprises his role as Captain Falcon via reused voice clips from 64 and Melee (including the then Dummied Out "BLUE FALCON!" voice clip for what would finally become his Final Smash in this game).
  • Sanae Kobayashi reprises her role as the Ice Climbers, using a combination of new voice clips and reused ones from Melee.
  • Hikaru Midorikawa's portrayal of Marth is a mix of voice clips reused from Melee and previously unused ones from the same game's recording sessions.
  • Jason Adkins and Michihiko Hagi reprise their roles as Ike in English and Japanese respectively, both having voiced him in both Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn.
  • David Hayter and Akio Ōtsuka reprise their role as Solid Snake after voicing him throughout the Metal Gear Solid games in English and Japanese, respectively.
  • Lastly, Jason Griffith and Jun'ichi Kanemaru reprise their role as the respective English and Japanese voice for Sonic the Hedgehog.
• Screwed by the Lawyers:
  • The Metal Gear main theme is notably absent because of the infamous plagiarism scandal that caused it to be completely removed from its own series.
  • Legal issues are probably also why Sonic CD's "Sonic: You Can Do Anything" is on the scrapped music list, potentially to avoid paying royalties to Keiko Utoku and Casey Rankin.
  • "Snake Eater" and "His World" from the above series are only available as instrumentals possibly to avoid paying royalties to the original singers (Cynthia Harrell for the former, Matty Lewis and Ali Tabatabaee for the later).
• Serendipity Writes the Plot:
  • The reason Sonic doesn't have much of an actual role and only shows up at the end to fight Tabuu, is because Sonic wasn't added to the roster until over halfway through development. With the licensing and finalization of Sonic's spot on the roster coming so late, there was no time to go back and rewrite the SSE's story and redo cutscenes to have him in, which explains his out of nowhere appearance tacked on at the end.
  • Toon Link, Jigglypuff, and Wolf don't show up in the SSE until as bonus characters after beating the game for a similar reason; all three were among a designated group of low priority characters planned for inclusion but not seen as essential, and were thus expendable to get scrapped mid-development as needed to satisfy development constraints (while in their case they were fortunate enough to make the roster cut in the end unlike the rest of their peers in the low priority group). Because of this, they were withheld from being given a real role in the story, as rewriting the plot to account for a character's removal and redoing already-done CGI cutscenes with scrapped characters wasn't practically feasible, so everyone involved in the SSE had to be characters whose spot on the final roster was locked down early in development. This is also the reason why they're the final unlockable characters in the game outside the SSE.
• Troubled Production: The original plan for the game was to have a separate team work on The Subspace Emissary. However, Sakurai couldn't find a suitable team, so the base team had to work on the mode while developing Brawl. This made some of the mechanics of the game less polished as a result, and part of the reason why Sakurai was frustrated with how the cutscenes were posted onto YouTube.
• Urban Legend of Zelda:
  • The announcement that Solid Snake would be joining the roster led to dozens of rumors about other possible characters, including Simon Belmont and Mega Man. In a repeat of the Sonic incident, the latter of these characters actually did make it into the Wii U and 3DS games, and the former followed suit for Ultimate.
  • There were also some rumors (or at least wishful thinking) that Bomberman would make it into the roster.
  • It was commonly thought that the picture of a cat in the Pokémon Stadium 2 stage was of Sakurai's cat. Eventually, he stated this was false.
  • Brawl has a number of scrapped music tracks, but since they aren't actually implemented in game, fans had to speculate what they were based entirely on their filenames. The most infamous is a Mario track called "MORINOKINOKO"^note "Forest Mushrooms" which was widely believed to be Super Mario RPG's "Beware the Forest Mushrooms". In actuality, it was probably Toadwood Forest from Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, since its file is right after Gritzy Desert and another scrapped Partners in Time track - along with the legal issues involved in using Super Mario RPG music.
• What Could Have Been: Has its own page along with the rest of the series.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: Despite fans' clamor growing over the years from Smash 4 not having a Story mode and from those who felt Ultimate's World of Light was underwhelming in comparison, Sakurai has stated that there the Subspace Emissary experience would not be made again because of the cutscenes leaking onto YouTube and spoiling the story for those who were yet to play it.

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