History ThatOneLevel / FightingGame

*** 75m. It's near impossible to fight at the small platforms in the middle of the stage, leaving players to take a risk either at the top right, where they are very close to the blast zone, or in the larger platform with [=NES=] Donkey Kong, who attacks them periodically and deals huge knockback.

* Three-medaling some of the Challenge stages is exceptionally difficult in VideoGame/BatmanArkhamAsylum, but the Extreme version (i.e. more enemies to fight, more special enemies) of Shock and Awe takes the cake, biscuit and whatever else it can lay it's hands on. You fight in a room where the floor is electrified - it's not active, but after a time limit, it switches on and you automatically lose. You face knife-wielders from the first round, baton-wielders from the second, both in the third and both with lots of regular mooks in the last. The regular mooks can also run to a gun cabinet on another level of the room. ''And'' you have to rack up 30000 points.
** The difficulty only really ramps up in the second stage of the challenge, as that's when the normal mooks run to the gun cabinet, ruining your combos and forcing you to jump up while being attacked. The solution? Jump up onto the right-side platform at the start of each stage, and Ultra-Batclaw pull the mooks as they come up. You'll disarm any baton-wielders and it doesn't count against your combo status, allowing you to pull off the 30k score easy. Just make sure you use Takedown on the knife guys whenever you get the chance.
** In Story Mode, later in the game when you have to re-enter the building in which you started, things will be much hairier the second time you get to the room with gargoyles. For one, you can only stay on a gargoyle for around three seconds before it blows up - and ''all six'' Mooks will be carrying a firearm, which means that a) you must disable all of them while on foot; and b) if you get found out, they'll pile on you and most likely kill you in seconds. The area's increased difficulty stands out in that, at least in Normal difficulty, no other area features such a spike in difficulty.

** The "Space Travelers" event. You play as Ness and have to defeat Samus, Kirby, and Fox on Fourside. Once that's done, you'll be teleported to Battlefield, where you'll fight Captain Falcon and Falco, both of whom are high-tier characters with fast and powerful attacks. What really makes this level infuriating is that it must be completed with a single stock.

* Raiden's chapter in ''VideoGame/MortalKombat9'' is downright ''brutal''. Completely ignoring the fights against [[spoiler: Liu Kang and an even stronger Shao Khan]], the marathon fight in Netherrealm is enough to make you tear your hair out. If you're not proficient in Raiden (who isn't the easiest to master to begin with), his chapter is, appropriately enough, a living hell.

*** Spirit Train can be an absolute nightmare, depending on your luck and how long the match takes. Touching the tracks in front of the train just knocks the player upwards, but touching the tracks behind it drags you almost instantly off the screen to your death - and given how low the back end of the train is, it's very easy to get knocked onto them. Then there's all the obnoxious CameraScrew where the view pans far to the left, obscuring the right side of the stage so a new section can be loaded. Finally, one of the obstacles is a massive bomb that randomly drops onto the train, covers roughly 75% percent of the stage and kills anyone who was standing on it when it goes off.

* The event "Enough With The Kidnapping" pits you as Peach against Bowser and Bowser Jr. Bowser himself can take you out at low percentages, but the real issue is the level's main gimmick: Boss Galaga and Nabbit will repeatedly try to carry Peach off the stage, the former of which can knock the princess out when her damage percentage is as low as 60%.

** The "Space Travelers" event. You play as Ness, and you have to fight 5 opponents, with each of them getting progressively more difficult. The first 3 opponents you fight are Samus, Kirby, and Fox, while fighting on Fourside. Samus and Kirby are not that hard to deal with, but Fox can be a little challenging. Since it's Fourside, you can camp here, but if you get knocked down, hope you saved your midair jump. You'll need it. If you survive the first 3, you'll then be teleported to Battlefield, where you'll fight Captain Falcon and Falco. Both of them can hit hard, so if you have high damage coming in here, pray that you can deal with them without taking too much damage. Since this is Battlefield, there is not much to hide. Oh, by the way, you only have ONE STOCK, so good luck.

*** The Ruins. Bad enough on Normal, ridiculous on Hard or above. Nearly every single [[GoddamnedBats Goddamned Bat]] makes an appearance somewhere, as do a good proportion of the DemonicSpiders in the game. You've got the auto scrolling section with the mites knocking you back into the autoscrolling screen of death as you try to break down barriers of bricks in the path, a relatively annoying puzzle section with switches, a four battle platform ride where the terrain and enemies become even worse... The battle against Charizard that concludes the level is a breeze compared to the hell leading up to it.

*** Classic mode has the 2-on-2 battles. On higher difficulties, the odds are stacked so far against you that it often becomes a LuckBasedMission. Your ally may as well be a dead fish, as it frequently does ''nothing at all'', and is handicapped to the point where it can die at 0%. So in actuality, these fights are a 2-on-1, where your opponents both have frame-perfect reflexes as well as buffs that make them individually stronger than you. Your only hope in most cases is to avoid them and wait for an item to spawn next to you - if it spawns anywhere else, the AI will almost certainly grab it first, sometimes on the ''exact'' frame it appears in midair. Worse, on the Wii U version, you can have 4-on-4 battles, so it's entirely possible to be a part of ''4-on-1'' battles (The opponents team vs your "team"), so if that happens, good luck.
*** In All-Star Mode, the 1994-98 segment (third in the [=WiiU=] version, fifth in 3DS) will give you major headaches. Shiek is very fast and loves spamming Burst Grenade with unusually good accuracy, Charizard loves to use Flare Blitz at the exact moment you let your guard down (which is almost certainly a KO), and Ganondorf hits like a train, but the worst are the evil trio of Diddy Kong, Ness, and Pikachu. These three ''will'' give you hell if you can't KO them very quickly, as they're all fast and small with annoying projectile attacks- but especially Pikachu, who just won't stop spamming Thunder Jolt and Quick Attack to keep you from attacking while Ness and Diddy Kong keep up their assault. It's a nasty, nasty segment, and don't be afraid to use a healing item for this.

*** Spirit Train can be an absolute nightmare, depending on your luck and how long the match takes. For starters there's the train tracks; touching the tracks in front of the train just means getting knocked against the train, while touching the tracks behind it means getting dragged almost instantly off the screen to your death - and given how low the back end of the train is, it's very easy to get knocked onto them. Then there's all the obnoxious CameraScrew where the view pans far to the left, obscuring the right side of the stage so a new section can be loaded. But the worst part by far is when a bomb drops onto the train. When it explodes, roughly 75% percent of the stage detaches and flies away, killing anyone who was standing on it. The only part that doesn't fly away is the front of the train, which happens to be the part that the bomb lands right next to. A player who doesn't know this is obviously going to get as far away from the bomb as possible, but in order to survive, most of the time, you have to [[ViolationOfCommonSense do the exact opposite.]]

*** Pyrosphere combines the worst elements of Wily's Castle and Magicant. The layout of the stage is fine, but the problem comes in the form of Ridley. Ridley is huge, even on this relatively large stage, and his attacks can easily clear out the entire battlefield in a few seconds. And then, he'll begin fighting for whoever damages him most, much like Flying Man above, meaning he'll now be laying waste to the entire battlefield except one person. Ridley is the type that can easily decide the outcome of a match by himself.

*** The event matches give us "Kirby's Crazy Appetite". You play as Kirby with a very high damage percentage on The Great Cave Offensive (itself another contender for That One Level) against three tiny King Dededes. The goal is to reduce your damage to 0%, which is easier said than done when all there is to heal is food which spawns in random locations and you have three different enemies trying to knock you into one of the stage's many lava pits which are instant death at over 100% damage. And if you take too long, two more Dededes spawn. Have fun.
*** The event "Unwavering Chivalry" can also count as this if you're getting the reward (Clearing it on Hard difficulty). You play as Meta Knight on the Halberd stage, and your opponents are Peach, Zelda, and Marth. Your objective is to KO Marth, but if you KO any of the girls, you will lose the event. This is easier said than done, because Peach and Zelda have increased knockback and are naturally lightweight characters, so they can easily be KO'd if you're not careful. Not only can they easily be KO'd, but YOU do as well. Marth, on the other hand, has less knockback, so he can tank more attacks. It doesn't help that your opponents can gang up on you when you're left open. Thankfully, you only have two stocks, but cherish those lives if you can.
* The event "Enough With The Kidnapping" which pits you alone as Peach against Bowser and Jr can also be this. Peach at 87 is much lighter than both of her opponents, and Bowser especially can take you out at low percentages. Furthermore both Boss Galaga and Nabbit can also take you away, hense the kidnapping. About to hit the 155% Bowser with your forward Smash for the win? Na you just got grabbed by Boss Galaga at 60% have fun escaping. Just avoided Boss Galaga? Oh look you are suddenly in Nabbit's bag and he has no intention of letting go. Managed to escape Boss Galaga's grasp? You have two heavy weights in the ground ready for you and you come down very slowly as Peach. Caught in Boss Galaga's beam or Nabbit's bag but an opponent accidentally hit you with an attack that has enough force to get you out? Well you are Peach so watch your 87 weight value Princess butt fly to the blast line.

** All-Star Mode, now known as All-Star Smash, is ridiculously hard. For starters instead of being by phases, it is now combined with the Endless Smash mode, meaning that there are no healing items, it can only be played on the Battlefield form of any stage, it loops back to the first fighter that shows up once you defeat them all and it is over if you are K.O'd. The four fighters that can be on the stage at a time, who show up based on the Japanese release date of their debut game (from Mr. Game & Watch in 1980 to Byleth in 2019), all gang up on you and it becomes way too much of a pain to deal with. As in; characters like Palutena, Simon, Ryu, Ken and Snake '''love''' to spam projectiles, the Ice Climbers, Yoshi and the Wii Fit Trainer's aerial attacks are a headache, Peach and Daisy pelt you with turnips all the time, Sheik is incredibely evasive unless you strike her by surprise, Ness and Lucas' PSI attacks become a huge problem if you don't take care of them quickly, any character that fights with a sword is the most likely to K.O. you and the less we talk about heavyweights like Bowser, King Dedede and Ganondorf the better.

** All-Star Mode, now known as All-Star Smash, is ridiculosuly hard. For starters instead of being by phases, it is now combined with the Endless Smash mode, meaning that there are no healing items, it can only be played on the Battlefield form of any stage, it loops back to the first fighter that shows up once you defeat them all and it is over if you are K.O'd. The four fighters that can be on the stage at a time, who show up based on the Japanese release date of their debut game (from Mr. Game & Watch in 1980 to Byleth in 2019), all gang up on you and it becomes way too much of a pain to deal with. As in; characters like Palutena, Simon, Ryu, Ken and Snake '''love''' to spam projectiles, the Ice Climbers, Yoshi and the Wii Fit Trainer's aerial attacks are a headache, Peach and Daisy pelt you with turnips all the time, Sheik is incredibely evasive unless you strike her by surprise, Ness and Lucas' PSI attacks become a huge problem if you don't take care of them quickly, any character that fights with a sword is the most likely to K.O. you and the less we talk about heavyweights like Bowser, King Dedede and Ganondorf the better.

* The event "Enough With The Kidnapping" which pits you alone as Peach against Bowser and Jr can also be this. Peach at 87 is much lighter than both of her opponents, and Bowser especially can take you out at low percentages. Furthermore both Boss Galaga and Nabbit can also take you away, hense the kidnapping. About to hit the 155% Bowser with your forward Smash for the win? Na you just got grabbed by Boss Galaga at 60% have fun escaping. Just avoided Boss Galaga? Oh look you are suddenly in Nabbit's bag and he has no intention of letting go. Managed to escape Boss Galaga's grasp? You have two heavy weights in the ground ready for you. Caught in Boss Galaga's beam or Nabbit's bag but an opponent accidentally hit you with an attack that has enough force to get you out? Well you are Peach so watch your 87 weight value Princess butt fly to the blast line.

*** The event "Unwavering Chivalry" can also count as this if you're getting the reward (Clearing it on Hard difficulty). You play as Meta Knight on the Halberd stage, and your opponents are Peach, Zelda, and Marth. Your objective is to KO Marth, but if you KO Peach or Zelda, you will lose the event. This is easier said than done, because Peach and Zelda have increased knockback, so they can easily be KO'd if you're not careful. Not only can they easily be KO'd, but YOU do as well. Marth, on the other hand, has less knockback, so he can tank more attacks. It doesn't help that your opponents can gang up on you when you're left open. Thankfully, you only have two stocks, but cherish those lives if you can.

*** Classic mode has the 2-on-2 battles. On higher difficulties, the odds are stacked so far against you that it often becomes a LuckBasedMission. Your ally may as well be a dead fish, as it frequently does ''nothing at all'', and is handicapped to the point where it can die at 0%. So in actuality, these fights are a 2-on-1, where your opponents both have frame-perfect reflexes as well as buffs that make them individually stronger than you. Your only hope in most cases is to avoid them and wait for an item to spawn next to you - if it spawns anywhere else, the AI will almost certainly grab it first, sometimes on the ''exact'' frame it appears in midair.
*** Oh, by the way, on the Wii U version, you can have 4-on-4 battles, so it's entirely possible to be a part of ''4-on-1'' battles (The opponents team vs your "team"), so if that happens, good luck.

*** Oh, by the way, on the Wii U version, you can have 4-on-4 battles, so it's entirely possible to be a part of ''4-on-1'' battles (The opponents team vs your "team"), so if that happens, good luck.

*** Oh, by the way, on the Wii U version, you can have 4-on-4 battles, so it's entirely possible to be a part of ''4-on-1'' battles, so if that happens, good luck.

* ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros Melee'':

* ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros. Brawl'':

* ''Super Smash Bros. 4'':

* ''Super Smash Bros. Ultimate'':
** [[VideoGame/{{Splatoon}} Moray Towers]] in ''Ultimate'' takes everything that people dislike about it in its home games and adapts it to ''Smash'', with a series of vertically zigzagging walkways, making vertical movement quite the chore.
** Lots of the Spirit Battles in ''Ultimate'' can be considered this, so they have their [[ThatOneLevel/SuperSmashBrosUltimate own page]].

*** The Great Maze combines small portions of every previous stage into a gigantic area with intertwining paths. The goal is to explore the level to find and defeat all the characters the player has recruited up until that point (meaning the entire roster except Sonic, Jigglypuff, Toon Link and Wolf) and all previous bosses in addition to the final boss, making for a total of 44 separate fights. The Great Maze alone can take up to 2 hours of play time on a first playthrough, but mercifully there are save points and healing stations spread across the map, making it the only stage in the entire campaign to provide these features to the player.
*** The Canyon and Entrance to Subspace. Both of them are short, which would be a good thing, except there are [[CheckPointStarvation no doors to serve as checkpoints]], so the stages each have to be cleared in one shot. Both stages feature [[DemonicSpiders Giant Primids]] teamed with tough enemies and, due to the flat nature of the arenas, it's near impossible to outmaneuver them outside of some frame-perfect dodging.
*** The Ruins. Bad enough on Normal, ridiculous on Hard or above. Nearly every single [[GoddamnedBats Goddamned Bat]] makes an appearance somewhere, as do a good proportion of the DemonicSpiders in the game. You've got the auto scrolling section with the mites knocking you back into the autoscrolling screen of death as you try to break down barriers of bricks in the path, a relatively annoying puzzle section with switches, a four battle platform ride where the terrain and enemies become even worse... The battle against Charizard that ends the level is a breeze compared to what came previously.

*** Mario Bros. Because of the level's tiered layout, it's very difficult to get a KO except by using the spawning enemies as thrown projectiles. Problem is, the critters have ''huge'' knockback on their own and can knock out their targets even at low percents. The match usually devolves to a single player running around collecting enemies and chucking them at their opponents as soon as they walk up to them, accumulating points in the process.

*** Rumble Falls is Icicle Mountain from ''Melee'' made worse. The vertical autoscrolling is so ridiculously fast it puts characters with poor jumping at a severe disadvantage and changes the focus of the match into pure platforming. There is also a barely noticeable spike at the start of the level that deals absurd knockback and can lead to cheap [=KOs=].
*** 75m. It's impossible to fight at the small platforms in the middle of the stage, leaving players to take a risk either at the top right, where they are very close to the blast zone, or in the platform with [=NES=] Donkey Kong, who attacks them periodically and deals huge knockback.
* ''Super Smash Bros. 3DS'':
** Magicant. The actual stage layout is quite non-threatening and there aren't many hazards. The only problem is the [[DemonicSpiders Flying Man.]] Shortly after the match begins, one will spawn on the far right of the stage and ally with the first player to reach him, giving them a tremendous advantage. The Flying Man has incredibly powerful homing melee attacks that can easily KO a player even at low damage.
** Once the fanbase got over their initial excitement and started actually playing the stage, Wily's Castle drew some flack because the Yellow Devil's attacks are simply too difficult to dodge (even compared to the source material), and the boss takes up too much of the stage, leaving very little room for people to actually play. Worse, while the stage looks just fine visually, the actual layout is a bit lackluster compared to some of the more dynamic stages.
** The ''Smash 4'' version of Mute City, mostly for taking the moving platform design of the first Mute City stage and splitting it into two platforms that drift apart and together seemingly at random. There are also two cars underneath them that will often zoom offscreen very suddenly and kill anyone unlucky enough to be standing on them. It also doesn't help that the two upper platforms, which are the safest to stand on in the stage, are fall-through, meaning it's very easy to accidentally drop through them and slam into the road while going for a down attack.
** Spirit Train can be an absolute nightmare, depending on your luck and how long the match takes. For starters there's the train tracks; touching the tracks in front of the train just means getting knocked against the train, while touching the tracks behind it means getting dragged almost instantly off the screen to your death - and given how low the back end of the train is, it's very easy to get knocked onto them. Then there's all the obnoxious CameraScrew where the view pans far to the left, obscuring the right side of the stage so a new section can be loaded. But the worst part by far is when a bomb drops onto the train. When it explodes, roughly 75% percent of the stage detaches and flies away, killing anyone who was standing on it. The only part that doesn't fly away is the front of the train, which happens to be the part that the bomb lands right next to. A player who doesn't know this is obviously going to get as far away from the bomb as possible, but in order to survive, most of the time, you have to [[ViolationOfCommonSense do the exact opposite.]]
* ''Super Smash Bros. for Wii U'':
** Pyrosphere combines the worst elements of Wily's Castle and Magicant. The layout of the stage is fine, but the problem comes in the form of Ridley. Ridley is huge, even on this relatively large stage, and his attacks can easily clear out the entire battlefield in a few seconds. And then, he'll begin fighting for whoever damages him most, much like Flying Man above, meaning he'll now be laying waste to the entire battlefield except one person. Ridley is the type that can easily decide the outcome of a match by himself.
** Auto-scrolling stages in general are rarely popular, since they effectively [[UnexpectedGameplayChange turn the game's format]] from "fighting game" to "competitive platformer", but the king of this is Pac-Land in the UsefulNotes/WiiU version. It's a remarkably dead-on recreation of ''Pac-Land'''s aesthetics - it's just that those aesthetics happen to be butt-ugly, with the typical comparison being to an MS Paint drawing. The fact that the 3DS's ''VideoGame/PacMan'' arcade-style stage is a much more standard layout with much nicer design based on a much more popular game doesn't help matters. The reaction to Pac-Land arriving in ''Ultimate'' rather than the arcade version provoked quite a bit of confusion.
** Classic mode has the 2-on-2 battles. On higher difficulties, the odds are stacked so far against you that it often becomes a LuckBasedMission. Your ally may as well be a dead fish, as it frequently does ''nothing at all'', and is handicapped to the point where it can die at 0%. So in actuality, these fights are a 2-on-1, where your opponents both have frame-perfect reflexes as well as buffs that make them individually stronger than you. Your only hope in most cases is to avoid them and wait for an item to spawn next to you - if it spawns anywhere else, the AI will almost certainly grab it first, sometimes on the ''exact'' frame it appears in midair.
** In All-Star Mode, the 1994-98 segment (third in the [=WiiU=] version, fifth in 3DS) will give you major headaches. Shiek is very fast and loves spamming Burst Grenade with unusually good accuracy, Charizard loves to use Flare Blitz at the exact moment you let your guard down (which is almost certainly a KO), and Ganondorf hits like a train, but the worst are the evil trio of Diddy Kong, Ness, and Pikachu. These three ''will'' give you hell if you can't KO them very quickly, as they're all fast and small with annoying projectile attacks- but especially Pikachu, who just won't stop spamming Thunder Jolt and Quick Attack to keep you from attacking while Ness and Diddy Kong keep up their assault. It's a nasty, nasty segment, and don't be afraid to use a healing item for this.
** The event matches give us "Kirby's Crazy Appetite". You play as Kirby with a very high damage percentage on The Great Cave Offensive (itself another contender for That One Level) against three tiny King Dededes. The goal is to reduce your damage to 0%, which is easier said than done when all there is to heal is food which spawns in random locations and you have three different enemies trying to knock you into one of the stage's many lava pits which are instant death at over 100% damage. And if you take too long, two more Dededes spawn. Have fun.
** Ironically, Final Destination gets this treatment in some circles, despite being [[FixedFloorFighting the blandest and most featureless stage]] in the series. Points of contention include its [[DiscreditedMeme memetic overuse]] among professional and [[StopHavingFunGuy wannabe-professional]] players, and many arguments from tournament-goers that it's actually ''not'' the most balanced stage, as the lack of platforms means that fast characters and projectile users have an advantage that they wouldn't have on, say, Battlefield. The debates only got more heated with the addition of Omega stages in ''[=3DS/Wii U=]'', which renders ''every single stage'' (even Battlefield) into a Final Destination clone, and is the only option when playing For Glory online.

*** The Great Maze combines small portions of every previous stage into a gigantic area with intertwining paths. The goal is to explore the level to find and defeat all the characters the player has recruited up until that point (meaning the entire roster except Sonic, Jigglypuff, Toon Link, and Wolf) and all previous bosses in addition to the final boss, making for a total of 44 separate fights. The Great Maze alone can take up to 2 hours of play time on a first playthrough, but mercifully there are save points and healing stations spread across the map, making it the only stage in the entire campaign to provide these features to the player.

** Ironically, Final Destination is starting to get this treatment in some circles, despite being [[FixedFloorFighting the blandest and most featureless stage]] in the series. Points of contention include its [[DiscreditedMeme memetic overuse]] among professional and [[StopHavingFunGuy wannabe-professional]] players, and many arguments from tournament-goers that it's actually ''not'' the most balanced stage, as the lack of platforms means that fast characters and projectile users have an advantage that they wouldn't have on, say, Battlefield. Additionally, the addition of Omega stages in ''[=3DS/Wii U=]'', which renders ''every single stage'' (even Battlefield) into a Final Destination clone, is the only option when playing For Glory online.

** Magicant. The actual stage layout is quite non-threatening and there aren't many hazards. The only problem is the [[DemonicSpiders The Flying Man.]] Shortly after the match begins, one will spawn on the far right of the stage and ally with the first player to reach him, giving them a tremendous advantage. The Flying Man has incredibly powerful homing melee attacks that can easily KO a player even at low damage.

* ''Super Smash Bros. 3DS'' has Magicant. The actual stage layout is quite non-threatening and there aren't many stage hazards, so what makes this stage so annoying? ''[[DemonicSpiders The Flying Man.]]'' Shortly after the match begins, a Flying Man spawns on the far right of the stage. The first player to reach him has a tremendous advantage. The Flying Man has incredibly powerful homing melee attacks that will easily KO a player even at low damage. Now the the player who reached him can just sit back and avoid the fight while the Flying Man [=KOs=] everyone. Although only five Flying Men appear during a match, most matches won't last enough to see more than one or two. Probably because the Flying Man [=KOed=] everyone. Fortunately, set the stage to Omega Form and you'll never worry about the Flying Man.
** Once the fanbase got over their initial excitement and started actually playing the stage, Wily's Castle in the fourth game drew some flack for this. The chief complaint is that the Yellow Devil's attacks are simply too difficult to dodge (yes, even compared to the source material), and the boss takes up too much of the stage, leaving very little room for people to actually play. Worse, while the stage looks just fine visually, the actual layout is a bit lackluster compared to some of the more dynamic stages.
** Combining the above two is Pyrosphere. The layout of the stage is fine, but the problem comes in the form of Ridley. Ridley is huge, even on this relatively large stage, and his attacks can easily clear out the entire battlefield in a few seconds. And then, he'll begin fighting for whoever damages him most, much like Flying Man above, meaning he'll now be laying waste to the entire battlefield except one person. Ridley is the type that can easily decide the outcome of a match by himself.
** The ''Smash 4'' version of Mute City, mostly for taking the moving platform design of the first Mute City stage and splitting it to two platforms that drift apart and together seemingly at random. There are also two cars underneath them that will often zoom offscreen very suddenly and kill anyone unlucky enough to be standing on them. It also doesn't help that the two upper platforms, which are the safest to stand on in the stage, are fall-through, meaning it's very easy to accidentally drop through them and slam into the road while going for a down attack.
** Spirit Train on the 3DS version can be an absolute nightmare, depending on your luck and how long the match takes. For starters there's the train tracks; touching the tracks in front of the train just means getting knocked against the train, while touching the tracks behind it means getting dragged almost instantly off the screen to your death - and given how low the back end of the train is, it's very easy to get knocked onto them. Then there's all the obnoxious CameraScrew where the view pans far to the left, obscuring the right side of the stage so a new section can be loaded. But the worst part by far is when a bomb drops onto the train. When it explodes, roughly 75% percent of the stage detaches and flies away, killing anyone who was standing on it. The only part that doesn't fly away is the front of the train, which happens to be the part that the bomb lands ''right next to''. A player who doesn't know this is obviously going to get as far away from the bomb as possible, but in order to survive, most of the time, you have to [[ViolationOfCommonSense do the exact opposite.]] ''What the hell.''

** Classic mode has the 2-on-2 battles. They could be tough in the past, but Smash 4's takes the cake and shoves it down your throat. On higher difficulties, the odds are stacked so far against you that it often becomes a LuckBasedMission. Your ally may as well be a dead fish, as it frequently does ''nothing at all'', and don't think about using it as bait - as if being dumb wasn't enough, it's also handicapped to the point where it can die at 0%. They can actually prove ''worse'' than useless, particularly if you have the First Striker equipment. So in actuality, these fights are a 2-on-1, where your opponents both have frame-perfect reflexes as well as large handicaps that make them individually stronger than you. Your only hope in most cases is to avoid them and wait for an item to spawn next to you - if it spawns anywhere else, the AI will almost certainly grab it first, sometimes ''on the exact frame it appears in midair''. So remember to cherish that second life you get, always.
*** What makes this even more ridiculous is that the other matches are pitifully easy in comparison. Giant opponents can be juggled to near-death with extreme ease, and you're often given two allies, who are smarter than the one you get in the 2-on-2's. Metal opponents always seem to have Halberd or Daybreak pieces spawn in their fights, and they never even try to grab them.

** Ironically, Final Destination is starting to get this treatment in some circles, despite being [[FixedFloorFighting the blandest and most featureless stage]] in the series.
*** Points of contention include its [[DiscreditedMeme memetic overuse]] among professional and [[StopHavingFunGuy wannabe-professional]] players, and many arguments from tournament-goers that it's actually ''not'' the most balanced stage; the lack of platforms means that fast characters and projectile users have an advantage that they wouldn't have on, say, Battlefield. This may even explain why [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs fast projectile users]] like Fox and Falco have dominated the tier lists in ''Melee'' and ''Project M,'' and even make a strong showing in vanilla ''Brawl''.
*** What may have finally brought Final Destination's issues to the fore in the fandom is the addition of Omega stages in ''[=3DS/Wii U=]'', which renders ''every single stage'' (even Battlefield) into a Final Destination clone, and is the only option when playing For Glory online. It doesn't help that [[TierInducedScrappy Little Mac]] also seems built to exploit Final Destination's flaws despite being considered a mediocre character in other situations.

*** Rumble Falls is Icicle Mountain from ''Melee'' made worse. The vertical autoscrolling is so ridiculously fast it puts characters with poor jumping at a severe disadvantage and changes the focus of the match into pure platforming challenge. There is also a barely noticeable spike at the start of the level that deals absurd knockback and can lead to cheap KOs.

* ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros Melee'' has Icicle Mountain. The random, often high speed, scrolling in both directions is a killer, especially for people that jump badly; it's good for your opponents, but not for you. You can often barely get in a hit either.

* ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros. Brawl'' has a brutal level at the end of the Subspace Emissary which combines small portions every single other level. The player also had to go through and beat every single character they had unlocked yet (all but Sonic, Jigglypuff, Toon Link, and Wolf) and all bosses they had fought yet (all but Tabuu), making for a total of 43 fights. This level took up roughly 2 hours of play time on Easy mode. Luckily, you're able to save in the middle of the level, and switching characters also removed all damage.
** There are some that can be bad on Intense, such as Battlefield Fortress, but the Canyon and Entrance to Subspace take the cake. Both of them are short, which would be a good thing, but what happens when the levels are made to be so short? Don't get the picture? Well, what is going on is that there are [[CheckPointStarvation no doors to serve as checkpoints]], so the stages each have to be cleared in one shot. Oh, but here's the best part: at the end of both stages are ''[[DemonicSpiders Giant Primids teamed with tough enemies]]''. You can abuse the terrain on Canyon to get around this problem, but not so much at Entrance to Subspace.
** The Ruins. Bad enough on Normal, ridiculous on Hard or above. Nearly every single [[GoddamnedBats Goddamned Bat]] makes an appearance somewhere, as do a good proportion of the DemonicSpiders in the game. You've got the auto scrolling section with the mites knocking you back into the scrolling screen of death as you try to break down barriers of bricks in the path, a relatively annoying puzzle section with switches, a four battle platform ride where the terrain and enemies become even worse, and well... it's downright annoying. At least there's an easy end battle and decent music though.
** Intense is ThatOneLevel. The Great Maze is actually pretty easy compared to, levels like the Subspace Bomb Factory. Why did it take so times to get past the first stage in that level? Oh right, [[DemonicSpiders Autolances and Metal Primids]].
** Mario Bros. is this, because it's very difficult to get a KO because of the level's tiered layout. Plus, the enemies that spawn have ''huge'' knockback, even at low levels.
** [[VideoGame/{{Electroplankton}} Hanenbow]] is seen as one of the most baffling stages, both for its obscurity and its bizarre layout. It's basically a bunch of constantly shifting platforms, spaced just far apart enough to be hard to get to. Most of the things you'd expect to be ledges flat-out aren't, the map is very large while the platforms you fight on are very small, and there's a bunch of water below that (unlike all other water in the game) [[SuperDrowningSkills you sink like a rock in]].

** If someone doesn't want to use the Anti-AI moves, they don't deserve any sympathy. The game sure as hell won't give it to them.

** Auto-scrolling stages in general are rarely popular, since they effectively [[UnexpectedGameplayChange turn the game's format]] from "fighting game" to "competitive platformer", but the king of this is Pac-Land in the UsefulNotes/WiiU version. It's a remarkably dead-on recreation of ''Pac-Land'''s aesthetics - it's just that those aesthetics happen to be butt-ugly, with the typical comparison being to an MS Paint drawing. The fact that the 3DS's ''VideoGame/PacMan'' arcade-style stage is a much more standard layout with much nicer design based on a much more popular game doesn't help matters. The reaction to it arriving in ''Ultimate'' rather than the arcade version provoked quite a bit of confusion.