As always, Charles Martinet voices Mario, Luigi, Dr. Mario, Wario, and Waluigi.
Makiko Ohmoto is once again Kirby (in all regions), Ness (in all regions), and Lyn and Viridi (in Japanese).
Xander Mobus returns as the Announcer and Master & Crazy Hand, and reprises his role as Joker, while Jun Fukuyama (who already plays Roy in Japanese) reprises as Joker as well. This marks the first time the voice actor of Master Hand shares a role with another member of the roster.
Ikue Otani voices both Pikachu (in all regions), Tiki, and Morgana (in Japanese).
Billy Bob Thompson now voices the male Pokémon Trainer, as well as Greninja and Charmander.
Brandy Kopp voices both Palutena and Zelda (though the latter only in the World of Light cutscene).
A majority of the Mii Fighter voices share Japanese voice actors with important characters: Type 1 (Yuji Kishi) is Ken, Type 3 (Takashi Ohara) is Fox, Type 4 (Ayumi Fujimura) is Zelda and Sheik, Type 5 (Ryōtarō Okiayu) is Alucard and Zero, Type 6 (Makiko Ohmoto) is Kirby, Ness, Lyn and Viridi, Type 7 (Michihiko Hagi) is Ike, Type 8 (Minami Takayama) is Pit, Dark Pit and Knuckle Joe, Type 9 (Hideo Ishikawa) is Simon and Type 11 (Kiyoyuki Yanada) is Richter.
Standard directional attacks, where one attacks while pressing a direction but not hard or fast enough to perform a Smash attack, were officially called "Strong Attacks" in previous games, but were called "tilts" by the community. Ultimate is the first game to use "tilt" in menus and the website.
"Neutral" was the term used by the community when using any move without pressing a direction, while "Standard" was the official name used by prior games. In Ultimate, the fan term is officially used in menus.
"Dash Dancing" is a high-level technique that originated in Melee. And now after many years, Level 9 Computers can and will "Dash Dance" in Ultimate.
Viridi uses the competitive term "edge guard" (the act of preventing an opponent from coming back on stage) in Incineroar's Palutena's Guidance skit.
The Mii Gunner costume for Sans depicts him wearing pink slippers. Although Sans wears slippers in the original game, they appear white in all of his sprites. After the game's release however, it became extremely common for fan artists and modelers to depict the slippers as being pink. This game marks his first official appearance outside of merchandise with them colored this way. He is also depicted wearing a white shirt underneath his hoodie, which the fandom usually depicted him wearing instead of an exposed ribcage which some could interpret from his sprites. The original model also gave Sans' non-gun hand actual fingers, again another common fan depiction, before Toby Fox requested it be changed to a mitten-like hand.
After it was stated that Joker entered Smash with a stolen invitation, this indicated that invitations are apparently interchangable between recipients, much like fanart depicting a character giving their invitation to another, usually out of kindness. This was brought up again with Terry and Min Min's reveal trailers, showing various characters from SNK's series of games and ARMS respectively trying and failing to grab the invitation.
The tracks that play in Smash 64's Metal Mario and Battlefield stages return in this game, giving them English names for the first time... and they merely retain their Japanese names, "Meta Crystal" and "Duel Zone", almost certainly due to the community's long-time usage of those names.
It is a common fan theory that getting into Smash is considered a huge honor In-Universe. This is referenced in both Terry's and Min Min's trailers, which show various characters getting excited over and going after the invitations, as well as Joker's reveal, where Morgana states the invitation is "the greatest treasure of all".
A spirit from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 appears under the name "Pneuma". This character, Pyra and Mythra's combined form, is only called this once in reflection by the Architect, and this is never treated in-game as their proper name. The name was, however, commonly used by fans to differentiate her from her other forms.
Awesome, Dear Boy: Monolith Soft was very keen on the addition of Pyra and Mythra to the game, as they were the ones who developed their reveal trailer (Sakurai and his team only worked on the gameplay showcase), they contacted the original game's character designer to provide official art for Last Episode, New Character Pneuma for her Spirit (as the character didn't have any at first), and finally uploaded a short video showing an excited Pyra (and a feisty Mythra) ready to enter the fray, to celebrate their arrival to the game.
Rosalina's showcase video has a glitch when she hits Luigi with her neutral aerial, where her dress suddenly deforms upwards and exposes her only-partially-modeled legs◊.
The 8.0.0. update released with Spring Man's logo on the LCD screen in Spring Stadium incorrectly being Springtron's. This was fixed in the 8.1.0. update, but is still fully visible in "Mr. Sakurai Presents Min Min".
Noah & Mio's Spirit doesn't label them as being from the Xenoblade Chronicles series.
Some information on the roster was leaked by GameFAQs user Vergeben. Prior to the E3 2018 reveal, he stated everyone from 3DS/Wii U would return, and that Ridley would finally become playable, alongside Simon from Castlevania. Post-E3, he'd mention Isabelle, Ken, and Incineroar as playable before their official reveals. Before E3 2019, he leaked Banjo and Erdrick, though the latter was actually a Palette Swap of the Dragon Quest XI hero. Vergeben also claimed that Minecraft content would arrive in the game, although this claim would not be confirmed until over two years later, when Steve was confirmed as the second fighter in the Fighters Pass Vol. 2.
ResetEra administrator Shinobi teased Banjo & Kazooie days before they were officially announced.
There was actually a leak◊ for the three final pre-Fighters Pass characters, including Piranha Plant, more than a month before the final pre-launch Smash Direct, though it didn't circulate until after the Direct.
On the night before the August 8, 2018 Direct, Nintendo accidentally posted the then-recently uploaded "Galaga Medley" with the title of "Bloody Tears/Monster Dance" on Ultimate's website, which spoiled that Castlevania was getting some form of representation.
On September 21, 2018, this image◊ of Ken was posted on 4chan that caused a lot of debate on whether or not it was real, especially since the Ken model was never traced back to any existing ones, and the screenshot appears to contain graphical oddities that have been observed in demo builds. Sure enough, the November 1st, 2018 Direct not only confirmed Ken, but the model from the pic as well.
Two weeks before the release day, the entire game, including the Final Boss, was leaked onto the internet thanks to Nintendo sending early copies to a Mexican mom-and-pop store that ended up selling it prematurely, and was able to be illegally downloaded from online.
On March 30, 2019, Best Buy's website featured an ad for the Fighters Pass which included a never-before-seen Joker render. It was removed later the next day, which blatantly confirmed it was his official render placed in the ad by mistake.
On April 9, 2019, a TV ad for the game briefly showed Stage Builder on a menu screen in the background, a mode which had since been missing from launch and was later confirmed to be added in the 3.0.0 update.
On July 26, 2019, 8 spirits of characters from Dragon Quest were found to have been uploaded on Ultimate's spirit database.
On September 1, 2019, a copyright for SNK was added to the page for Challenger Pack 4 on Nintendo of Europe's website. The day after, multiple leakers that included Vergeben and Sabi claimed that it would be TerryBogard, which was verified in the September 4th, 2019 Nintendo Direct.
Months before the final Mr. Sakurai Presents, an anonymous source on 4chan that suggested he was from Disney Music claimed that Nintendo had requested permission from Disney to use Kingdom Hearts music in a "digital event" to take place on October 5. Come that date, and Sora would be announced as the final DLC character. This was the only sense of content leakage that occurred officially for the Wave 2 pack.
Creator Backlash: Tetsuya Nomura reveals it was him instead of Disney who was against adding Sora as a character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, as he felt it would go against the lore of Kingdom Hearts. However, he mentions he was pleased with the positive reception Sora received upon his inclusion.
In the August 8, 2018 Nintendo Direct, Sakurai said that the Castlevania series was very popular with the music team. Hence the reason why "Dracula's Castle", the sole Castlevania stage, contains a whopping 34 music tracks, 12 of which are new remixes.
He also declared that Mega Man was popular with the composers as well, and one person, Takeshi Kuramochi, single-handedly swelled the library of Fire Emblem remixes.
Ridley's down taunt (the one where he stands up straight) is one of Sakurai's favorites from this game.
Min Min's inclusion as a fighter was specifically requested by ARMS producer Kosuke Yabuki, as she's his favorite character.
The SNK content in the game could be considered this, as it pulls from their entire library of games, rather than just Fatal Fury or The King of Fighters, and in addition to Terry's inclusion as a fighter, also featured 20 characters as stage cameos in the "King of Fighters Stadium" stage, a whopping 50 songs, and a trailer that was confirmed by Sakurai to have been done in-house by Bandai Namco.
The Luminary (the default costume for the Hero) is voiced by Mitsuki Saiga, a woman.
Kazooie, a female bird, is voiced by Chris Sutherland.
Cut Song: More like "Trimmed", to be exact. Several lengthy songs, such as "The DK Rap" from Donkey Kong 64, and "Cremia Attacks" from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance were shortened, likely to fit more songs in.
On Christmas Day, 2018, so many people tried to download the game at once that many reported having to wait up to 6 hours before the download finished.
Within seconds of the 3.0 update (which includes Joker and the stage builder) the server immediately overloaded due to many people trying to update the game at once. It also managed to take down the eShop for everyone as well since many people were trying to buy either the Joker DLC or Fighters Pass. History repeated when Sora joined the battle with the 13.0.0 update.
The announcement of Steve/Alex caused Twitter to crash within seconds for a few minutes.
Descended Creator: Greg Chun is the voice of Ike and the music director of "Lifelight", the theme for Ultimate.
Back in Brawl, Ridley was planned to be an Assist Trophy, before being converted into a boss. The similarly-draconic Rathalos appears as an Assist Trophy and a boss.
Ditto was planned to be a Poké Ball Pokémon all the way back in Melee, but was scrapped due to difficulties getting it to work. 17 years later, Ditto finally ended up appearing in Ultimate, functioning exactly how it was planned to in Melee (transforming into an AI-controlled copy of the player who summoned it).
Banjo's backpack has a flap that opens at the bottom, as seen when using Talon Trot and Grenade Egg. This was something his designer Steve Mayles had wanted to include since the first Banjo-Kazooie.
Ninjara spends the second most amount of time with the envelope before he loses it, which reflects how close he was to becoming a fully playable character; Sakurai, when talking about why Min Min was picked, said that his choices were down to Min Min or Ninjara, with Min Min winning out due to ARMS producer Kosuke Yabuki telling Sakurai he wanted her in.
Rex didn't make the cut for Ultimate because Xenoblade Chronicles 2 came out well after the roster was decided on. The trailer for Pyra and Mythra makes a jab at this when Pyra reveals her invite, with Rex saying that he was originally gonna be in Smash.
With Jump Force, due to being a crossover fighting game of Shonen Jump works while Ultimate is a crossover fighting game featuring the characters from Nintendo's video game series and other related works. Plus, both games were announced at E3 2018, and were released on competing consoles (Ultimate is exclusive to the Nintendo Switch, while Jump Force instead was released on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One with no set release on the Switch itself at the time, until 2020 when it would end up coming to the Switch). Both of them featured characters from Dragon Quest in their rosters.
To a lesser extent, BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle. Both games are easy to play Massive Multiplayer Crossover fighter games with characters from various franchises (though in BB:CTB's case just multiple characters fromfourdifferentfranchises compared to Ultimate) being released almost six months apart from each other and unlike Jump Force it was also ported to the Nintendo Switch but not Xbox One. It also features characters and franchises that were involved with by two different creators that died in the same year of 2015 (Satoru Iwata for Ultimate and Monty Oum for BB:CTB).
According to Sakurai's book published in 2019, DLC was planned without the developers' will.
One of the reasons why Mai Shiranui (a Ms. Fanservice with a Buxom Beauty Standard figure) wasn't included with the rest of the SNK cameos was because CERO's (Japan's equivalent of the ESRB) restrictions meant she couldn't be included in a game rated for all ages unless her outfit and appearance were toned down, which Sakurai wasn't willing to do.
When Nintendo initially brought up the idea of putting Steve into the game, Sakurai resisted on the grounds that implementing the character while being true to their roots would be difficult. Nintendo then asked him to try anyway.
Sakurai joked about Nintendo's involvement when showcasing Kazuya:
One day, I heard a voice from the heavens. It might've been from a company with the Japanese character for "heaven" in its name.note referring to the "ten" in "Nintendo" [...] The voice was telling me, "Masahiro... Masahiro... You must get Tekken into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate." Like it's that easy.
Exiled from Continuity: Presumably due to legal reasons (and most of them not originating from video games), other than Sakurai namedropping Maleficent during the presentation to explain Hollow Bastion's history, some brief gameplay footage and Sora's keychain still being a Mickey Mouse emblem, no other Disney characters or indica appear in the Kingdom Hearts DLC proper. Disney characters are even removed from the stained glass in Dive to the Heart. Sora's alternate costumes look to get around this issue, with Valor Form being him fused with Goofy, Wisdom Form being him fused with Donald Duck, and Timeless River replicating the art style of Classic Disney Shorts.
Ridley's announcement trailer carried the slogan "Ridley Hits the Big Time!", playfully referencing how the character was considered "too big" for Smash and would be unlikely to be included for that reason. His Palutena's Guidance even begins with Pit excitedly screaming out "RIDLEY CONFIRMED!", much like the general fan reaction.
It was assumed by some fans, due to the team fighting style of Duck Hunt and one of their alternate palettes, that the two were a very obvious stand-in for the titular duo of Banjo-Kazooie. Banjo & Kazooie's release trailer for this game references this, with Duck Hunt impersonating the two as a prank before being knocked away by Banjo and Kazooie making an entrance. The first fight for Banjo & Kazooie's Classic Mode also has them fight Duck Hunt with a palette swap resembling their colors on Spiral Mountain.
Byleth's trailer has Sothis asking "Too many swordsmen, are there?", referencing a common jab at the roster.
The Crack Pairing of Sephiroth and Pichu almost immediately took off due to the proximity of the two on the website's banner mural. A couple weeks after Sephiroth was revealed, Sakurai uploaded this image to twitter seemingly showing Sephiroth defending Pichu from attackers.
When fighting on Skyworld, Steve's common Tier 1 materials are Wool blocks, which are a common choice for Minecraft players for building something similar to Solid Clouds.
Near the end of the E3 2018 presentation, Sakurai said "We made including every single fighter ever our number one goal, so I'm kind of hoping you aren't expecting too many new challengers..." right before revealing Ridley. In the subsequent weeks, many video game news outlets took this to mean that the full roster had already been revealed in that presentation, and that Ridley would be the last new fighter. This was proved wrong in the following months, with an additional 8 fighters slowly being announced as joining the base game, and 13 more included as DLC.
A quote circulated after Joker's reveal seeming to show that Reggie Fils-Aime said that all of the Fighters Pass DLC characters would, like Joker, be from series never before seen in Smash, seemingly disconfirming basically every current major Nintendo franchise and also any further fighters from all current third-party franchises in Smash. In reality, his quote from the post-Joker reveal was that all of the DLC characters would be new to Smash itself, and they would be just as unexpected as Joker, like Dragon Quest's Hero was for Japan and Banjo-Kazooie's Banjo & Kazooie were to Western audiences. This also applies to Nintendo characters whose series are in the base game, like Fire Emblem's Byleth.
Many people say that Sakurai based the user interface off of Persona 5 and that the game was the main influence for Ultimate's UI design. This got more common after the reveal of Joker. Sakurai never said anything like that, he simply praised the UI of the game stating that it would probably win a game UI contest by a mile. Tellingly, he also mentions Pokémon GO as an example of good game UI and yet no one ever mentions that game when talking about Ultimate's UI. There was also minor confusion that the game took some influence from Persona 5's aesthetic (with the player color, black, and white victory screens and the Super Move Portrait Attack during the Final Smashes) but he never said anything on the manner.
Online, tons of people have used made-up rules (often called "fanrules") as reasons why a particular character "couldn't" or "wouldn't" be added to Ultimate. The only rule Sakurai gave is "No characters from a manga/anime"(and later used examples like Spongebob to make it clearer it meant non-video game characters), but a casual perusal of Discord servers, Twitter, and any other online gathering place will show people saying characters can't be made playable in the game for reasons like "only appearing in one game" (in spite of several characters who fit this criteria, like Ness, Ice Climbers, Lucas, and Duck Hunt already being playable), "being a Spirit, Assist Trophy, or Mii costume" (Spirits deconfirming was shot down with Min Min in the second pass and, as many have pointed out, lots of popular characters are both playable and have a Mii costume based on them, though people still argued that post-launch spirits and DLC costumes—especially those bundled with a song—were off the table as they would've been saved for a character otherwise), "their aesthetic clashing with the game" (despite there being all sorts of characters ranging from cartoony to realistic to outright blocky in the roster, and even a character who is two-dimensional), "not having moveset potential" (in a Famitsu column, Sakurai shot this one down) or "not being well-known by the Smash fandom and/or general public" (this was also discredited by Sakurai in "Mr. Sakurai Presents "Terry Bogard"", where he said "whether or not the character is fun to play as is more important than whether the character is new or old, or whether the character is recognizable to everyone").
During the announcement of more DLC beyond the first Fighters Pass, Sakurai said that more DLC fighters would mean adding more worlds to the game. As had happened when Reggie stated the Fighters Pass characters would be new to Smash, many once again took this as all post-Fighters Pass 1 DLC would continue to solely be third-party characters, disconfirming all Nintendo franchises. In reality, Source Gaming's PushDustIn had his own translation of the statement conducted, actually meaning that every time DLC is added to the game, its scope increases. The third-party assumption would later be proven false with both the last member of the first Fighters Pass, Byleth, and the first member of the second Fighters Pass, Min Min.
After it was announced that there would be more DLC characters after the Fighters Pass, many interpreted this as an announcement of a second Fighters Pass, despite there being nothing in either the September 2019 Direct or "Mr. Sakurai Presents "Banjo & Kazooie"" that suggested that the new fighters would be in a bundle. However, this turned out to be the case, as demonstrated with the announcement of Fighters Pass Vol. 2 at the tail end of "Mr. Sakurai Presents "Byleth"".
When Sakurai said that the DLC characters were chosen by Nintendo and he decides if they can create a fighter based on them, people interpreted it that Nintendo gave Sakurai a list of characters to choose from. However, the wording didn't suggest that, and he later said that the characters were not decided by him.
When the game was first released with the DLC packs underway, it was implied early on that characters that appeared as Spirits in the game would not be considered eligible for promotion to fighting as a character in-game, due to the context of how Spirits came to be. It continued to be the case until Wave 2's first fighter revealed was Min Min, a character whose Spirit was already confirmed as a Spirit to fight against in-gamenote Initially with female Corrin representing Min Min before the character's release.. With Min Min's inclusion, it opened up a second chance for characters that made it as Spirits only to appear as a fighter in Ultimate.
The whole segment after Steve's trailer where Sakurai briefly talked about the character's development was often twisted, either to things like "Sakurai being held at gunpoint to make Steve" or "Sakurai not liking the character". What he actually meant was that he didn't originally agree on doing the character simply because Sakurai believed that doing something true to his roots would take much, much too long. He also cites how characters aren't just simply added, as there are many parameters to consider, like how they interact with other existing characters, stages, and the like. In addition, he pointed out that he plays Minecraft himself in the announcement so it would be very strange not to like someone he knows that he could project himself into.
People often quote Sakurai as saying Sephiroth is the "second most" iconic video game villain after Bowser, which resulted in fans debating whether or not that was true. What he actually said in "Mr. Sakurai Presents Sephiroth" is that Sephiroth is one of the most well-known video game villains aside from Bowser, which is more broadly worded.
There were quite a number of "generally accepted rules" within the community itself when it came to speculating the eligibility of a character actually being a viable DLC potential or not. The most common ones were: 1) if the character is already a Mii Fight Costume or Assist Trophy, they won't be playable, 2) every company gets 1 representative. The only problem is Sakurai himself has never said this was a specific rule and the latter specifically got rather swiftly debunked the second Simon and Richter were confirmed (as Konami would now have three characters included in the game). DLC characters like Joker, the Dragon Quest Hero and Sephiroth all further blew holes into that theory.
In a 2020 podcast, game journalist Imran Khan claimed that Sakurai tried to get Sora as a DLC character but Disney turned him down, specifically Disney Japan. Fans took this as definitive proof that Sora would never get into Smash. Sakurai's only statements on the matter after Sora finally did get confirmed is that it took extended talks, and that having Sora in the game was "a huge undertaking".
Killer App: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was positioned as the keystone for Nintendo's holiday 2018 season, and it not only moved many Switch units when it launched but also sold so many copies itself that within just 4 months (13.81 million worldwide by then) it became the best-selling Fighting Game of all time.
Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": Thanks to Dragon Quest X still not being localized at the time of the Dragon Quest Hero's release, this marks the first appearance of the hero from DQX to Western audiences.
This Nintendo Versus tweet announcing Richter's debut in Ultimate says "Enough talk! Have at you!" in reference to one of Dracula's lines from the infamous dialogue between Richter and Dracula in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. The announcement of the Castlevania-themed event for the Spirit Board also riffs on this line.
This Nintendo UK VS tweet wishes luck to all the European players at the Genesis Smash tournament... with a picture depicting four King Dededes on Battlefield-form Summit, referencing the "European players are penguins" meme that started just days prior.
This Nintendo Versus tweet mentions the Plant Gang, Piranha Plant mains' term for themselves.
This Nintendo Versus tweet refers to Yoshi as "no fraud", in reference to the memetic allegations that Yoshi commits tax fraud.
A couple from Masahiro Sakurai in the final video presentation:
He acknowledges the “Can it run Doom?” meme, saying he heard the game Doom Slayer is from can run on any computer.
He expresses his disbelief that "he" is in Smash while pitting Sora against Mario. Sakurai clarifies that he isn't talking about Mario, but Sora, which is a reference to the "Mario is finally in Smash" meme.
One of Mythra's taunts has her say "Think you can take me?" This is a reference to a memorable line that the Ardanian soldiers say in Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
When round #10 of the Mii fighter costumes releashed, Nintendo of Europe subtly mentions that this round features Dante. This is a reference to the "Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series" meme from Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne.
SSB Ultimate's nature as a Dream Match Game is especially significant because it came out one month before the entire Super Smash Bros. series' 20th anniversary.
The first trailer for the game was released on March 8, 2018, one day before the 10th anniversary of the North American release of Brawl.
Ultimate brings back Young Link and Ganondorf's Ocarina of Time design, just in time for that game's 20th anniversary. Ganon's beast form from that game is also a boss.
The game's one-year anniversary gets celebrated with a Spirit Board event. In particular, the image that represents this event◊ features every newcomer in Ultimate up to that point, as well as every other character that came back after being Put on a Bus in either Brawl or 3DS/Wii U (or both in Young Link and Pichu's case). Inkling even gets the ''Smash'' logo in her eye, again!
Octopath Traveler was released July 13, 2018, and a Spirit Event for the game occured July 10-15, 2020.
Delayed by a month, but Ultimate began celebrating its own 5th anniversary with the introduction of new Spirits in January 2024, including Rauru from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Deep Cut from Splatoon 3, and Zagreus from Hades.
Missing Trailer Scene: The dialogue for Joker's reveal trailer at The Game Awards 2018 is different at the beginning from the version released on the Smash Bros. website. The Game Awards trailer has Joker mentioning he's infiltrated the Awards Show and the rest of his team are shocked he ran off alone until Morgana explains why. The online version removes all mentions of The Game Awards.
TGA Version
Joker: This is Joker, I've infiltrated the theater. Ryuji: Wait, seriously?! He went alone to The Game Awards?! Ann: But it's so far away, why is he there?
Online Version
Joker: This is Joker, the mission is go. Ryuji: Wait a second! You mean...he went alone?! Ann: What's so important that he'd run off by himself?
Newbie Boom: As a running theme among first-party titles to the Nintendo Switch, this game brought in a whole ton of fans that had never played a Smash Bros. game before due to the hype train surrounding it before release and the Switch's install base, which has led to the game slowly selling Brawl's lifetime sales in a month. This has led to a lot of people experiencing many of the things that for 3DS/Wii U introduced. The boom was especially apparent in Japan, where the series had definitely been popular but not nearly as popular as it is in North America; Ultimate managed to outsell the lifetime sales of the previous Japanese best-seller (for 3DS at about 2.5 million) in a bit over a month.
No Budget: According to Sakurai, the budget for the DLC characters' gameplay overviews practically ran out after Joker's flashy trailer, which is how the "mock livestream" setup, "Mr. Sakurai Presents", came about for the gameplay overviews for every other DLC character, with a special set-up at home under quarantine for Min Min, Steve and Pyra/Mythra. Fan reactions to this setup have been very positive regardless.
None of the Sakurai Presentations for the fighters included in the second Fighters Pass are dubbed as a drawback of the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in subtitles being added to all presentations outside of Japan, as opposed to outside of Japan and English-speaking countries. This also extends to their crowd cheers (barring Pyra and Mythra due to their Dub Name Change); while Min Min, Zombie, Sephiroth, Kazuya, and Sora can get away with it, Steve, Alex, and Enderman's crowd cheers sound too much like "Stivu!", "Alesu!", and "Endamon!" to be from native English speakers.
From a character standpoint, Cloud is still voiced by Takahiro Sakurai due to Steve Burton's complicated contractual issues stemming from him being part of a union and the Smash dub being a non-union work. Meanwhile, Sephiroth is voiced by his Japanese voice actor Toshiyuki Morikawa, rather than English VAs Lance Bass or George Newbern.
The Hero from Dragon Quest XI is also not dubbed despite having a prior English voice actor, Rasmus Hardiker. However, it's less of a big deal in his case since in both his source game and Smashhis only vocalizations are grunts.
Kazuya has only his Japanese voice, provided by Masanori Shinohara. While he has had a few English voice actors in the past (with one of them in this game), Tekken games have the characters speak Bilingual Dialogue where, more often than not, each character speaks their native tongue, so keeping Kazuya with only his Japanese voice makes sense.
While Lyn is played by Lani Minella in Smash games, all English Fire Emblem media starting with Fire Emblem Heroes (which was released after For 3DS/Wii U) has her played by Wendee Lee. Since Ultimate opted to recycle voice clips from previous games instead of updating them, Lyn is once again played by Minella.note Wendee Lee is still in the credits, however.
Zelda and Sheik are now voiced by Ayumi Fujimura (reprising her role as Zelda from A Link Between Worlds) rather than Jun Mizusawa. For a brief moment in the English World of Light introduction, Zelda is voiced by Brandy Kopp as well. For the case of the Link to the Past Zelda, Ayumi replaces Mariko Kouda, who played this incarnation of Zelda in The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets and The Legend of Zelda: Sound and Drama.
Dayci Brookshire takes over Hynden Walch's role as Viridi. In addition to recording all of Viridi's lines during the new Palutena's Guidance conversations, Brookshire also redubbed all of Viridi's old dialogue from Smash 4.
While Takashi Nagasako does return to replace Hironori Miyata as the voice of Ganondorf, he does not do so for his other major role as Donkey Kong, whom he voices in most games outside of the Smash series, with DK once again using his realistic gorilla roars from previous entries. This also applies to Bowser, Diddy, and King K. Rool, who all utilize Stock Sound Effects instead of being voiced by Kenny James, Katsumi Suzuki, and Toshihide Tsuchiya respectively.
Billy Bob Thompson takes over for Michele Knotz as the male Pokémon Trainer, though Knotz still reprises Squirtle in the roster. Additionally, Ivysaur is now voiced by Justin Anselmi rather than Craig Blair in English, and by Inuko Inuyama (replacing the late Tomoko Kawakami) in Japanese. In the Italian version, Tania Di Domenico replaces Francesca Giudice as Pokémon Trainer.
Transitioning from Assault to 64 3D and Zero: Takashi Ohara replaces Kenji Nojima as the voice of Fox, while Kosuke Takaguchi takes over for Hisao Egawa as Falco, and for Mahito Oba as Wolf.
On the Saffron City stage, all the Pokémon are voiced by their current voice actors:
Justin Anselmi as Venusaur in place of Eric Stuart.
Billy Bob Thompson as Charmander in place of Michael Haigney (despite his clips being retained for Snorlax).
Sarah Natochenny as Chansey in place of Rachel Lillis.
Oddly, Porygon is voiced by Megumi Hayashibara instead of Katsuyuki Konishi despite the Virtual Pokémon not appearing in the anime ever since the infamous "Electric Soldier Porygon" episode.
Incineroar is voiced in Japanese by Unshō Ishizuka, who died of esophageal cancer 4 months before the release of Ultimate. Archived audio of Ishizuka as Heihachi Mishima from Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (which were later recycled from 7 onwards) is also used for Heihachi's appearance in the Mishima Dojo stage.
Colonel Roy Campbell appears in the game via reused codec calls from Brawl. His Japanese voice actor, Takeshi Aono, died of a stroke in 2012. His passing is a heavily cited reason as to why there are no new codecs, since this was the exact reason why Campbell was retired from the series.
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.
Pre-Order Bonus: Of a sort: from December 17 - 22, 2020, players who purchased the Sephiroth DLC or Fighters Pass Vol. 2 could play the Sephiroth Challenge, which features him as a boss. If they cleared the challenge, they could play him and his stage before the general release on December 22, 2020 (his Spirit Board was still locked until the official day release).
Production Lead Time: The game, due to having a short development period and having many of its planned contents decided almost from the beginning, got hit by this in various fronts:
Despite Splatoon 2 coming out a year and a half before Ultimate, Splatoon content is almost entirely based on the first game, with 2's inclusion being limited to a pair of Mii costumes and content taken directly from the original game (such as music and spirits). Notably, the Inkling character itself has zero reference to the second game, with their Final Smash being a move that was cut altogether from the sequels.
The base roster and first set of DLC in Ultimate were locked in before the release dates of ARMS and Xenoblade Chronicles 2, so they had to compromise by representing them with Mii costumes, spirits, and music. Characters and extra content overall from both games were eventually included in the second set of DLC.
Many of the DLC characters took years of negotiating to include, and as a result not all of them are portrayed in a manner that corresponded to then-current developments. For instance, Sora, who was released in 2021 but in negotiations since the Smash Ballot in 2015, only minimally references Kingdom Hearts III, which was released in 2019.
Ultimate features content from Snipperclips, made by a group that once named themselves the Super Flash Bros. after their love for the series.
Tomoya Ohtani, of Sonic the Hedgehog fame, is also a big fan of the ''Splatoon'' series. When given the opportunity to remix music from the series, he immediately jumped at the chance and was even indecisive on which track from the game to remix, before finally settling on "Bomb Rush Blush".
Ray Chaseloved Roy in Melee before getting to be his English voice actor.
An accidental example - the Masked Man Spirit used a fan-made sprite prior to Version 2.0.0, which was replaced by his canon sprite in that patch.
Abby Trott, the singer of the English version of "Lifelight", is a life-long fan of Nintendo and said that she cried when she was told that the song was for Smash.
Erina Koga, the singer for the Japanese version of "Lifelight" was also a fan of Smash via playing as Kirby. She didn't actually know Sakurai created Kirby until she looked him up after meeting him in person.
According to Sakurai, it was a dream for Yūki Kaji, the voice actor for Eight, to provide voicework for both Dragon Quest and Smash Bros. Kaji was more than happy to express his excitement on Twitter.
Sakurai himself used to play many SNK games in Japanese arcades and on the Neo-Geo, and the presentation video for Terry makes it very obvious that Sakurai is very ecstatic to be working with the characters from the games he grew up playing so much and eager to go over the games' history.
Zach Aguilar, the voice of male Byleth, said that it was a dream come true to voice him in Smash Bros.
Much like with Mega Man and Pac-Man almost entirely using unmodified sound effects from their original series, Banjo and Kazooie's voice clips are the same ones they had in their original games.
The King of Fighters cameos on King of Fighters Stadium use edited models from The King of Fighters XIV. This is why some characters like Blue Mary use their designs lifted directly from that game rather than older Art of Fighting / Fatal Fury / The King of Fighters games. In turn, the Fire Emblem: Three Houses cameos in the Garreg Mach Monastery stage reuse animations from the King of Fighters characters.
Ditto was originally supposed to be implemented as a Poké Ball Pokémon as far back as Melee, but hardware limitations prevented it from being used. Ditto was finally implemented once the Switch had the processing power to have it transform into a duplicate AI partner of the player.
Fourside's music was originally supposed to have a country western theme to it in Melee, but thanks to Executive Meddling, it was changed to have a sci-fi sound to it. The remix of Fourside in Ultimate revisits the original concept and has an electric western sound to it.
The plot of World of Light is one of the ideas that Sakurai had for Brawl's Subspace Emissary.
A variant; Heihachi was initially considered for 4, but Sakurai had trouble implementing his moveset, so he ended up settling with Pac-Man as the sole Bandai Namco fighter. The idea of a Tekken character with full mechanical implementation would ultimately be applied to Kazuya instead.
Ken is once again voiced by Reuben Langdon (who began voicing him since Street Fighter IV back in 2008) in English, and by Yuji Kishi (who voiced him since Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike all the way back in 1999) in Japanese.
Ultimate is the first game in which the English voice of Fox isn't recast. Mike West not only returns, but Sakurai confirmed that all of his dialogue was re-recorded, indicating he's aware of the poor reception to West's voice acting in the previous game and the subsequent vast improvement he made for Star Fox Zero.
Jay Ward returns from Brawl to voice Wolf in Ultimate (not using his VA in Star Fox 64 3D and Star Fox Zero). However he voices him with a new style - with a slightly deeper and rougher voice rather than having a Southern drawl.
In English, at least, this is also the first time the announcer and Master Hand weren't recast, with Xander Mobus returning from the 3DS/Wii U game to voice them once again after every other game gave them different voice actors.
Haruna Takatsu reprises her role as Min Min for Ultimate as well.
While all Captain Falcon's dialogue by Ryō Horikawa has been in place since 64 (including the then-unused Final Smash quote), he was asked to record new dialogue for the first time in 22 years for Min Min's trailer, specifically for Captain Falcon eating and slurping ramen noodles.
Toshiyuki Morikawa returns as the Japanese voice of Sephiroth; much like Cloud before him, this applies to Sephiroth's appearances in all regions in the game. This continues the trend set since Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children was released in 2005, 15 years before Sephiroth's inclusion as a playable fighter.
Masanori Shinohara reprises his role as Kazuya Mishima as per usual; Kazuya's inclusion in Smash just so happens to coincide with a full 20 years he's voiced the character since Tekken 4 all the way back in 2001.
Miyu Irino and Haley Joel Osment reprise Sora in their respective languages (albeit via recycled voice clips). This marks the first time a member of the Smash roster is voiced by a Celebrity Voice Actor, and the first Square Enix-affiliated fighter to have an English voice after Cloud, Hero and Sephiroth went undubbed.
In one of Sakurai's Famitsu Columns, he mentioned that it was either very expensive or very difficult to secure the rights to some of the music for a worldwide release. While he didn't say which franchises were affected by this, most people conclude that is the reason why the Final Fantasy and Sonic the Hedgehog franchises in particular have a limited amount of songs in the game. Similarly, this was also assumed for the Dragon Quest songs after Hero was released, due to the songs in the game only being in MIDI format, and their composer the late Koichi Sugiyama being infamously difficult to work with. In the presentation for Sephiroth, Sakurai states that which songs and how many can be featured in Super Smash Bros. depends on getting the approval by the company or companies that hold the copyright and, in some cases, in every region, and confirms this as the reason why Final Fantasy has had a very limited selection of songs in for Wii U / 3DS and the base content of Ultimate (with Sephiroth's inclusion, the franchise has an additional nine songs).
Among the very few songs from Brawl not returning for Ultimate are Checker Knights, which was originally from the anime Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, and all of the Strawberry Flower songs for the Pikmin stages, which no doubt would have carried a fatter price tag than the songs owned wholly by Nintendo.
The reason that Cloud still isn't dubbed in English is because Cloud's English voice actor prior to 2020, Steve Burton, is a union member and the game's dub is a non-union project. Other union actors who appear in the game get around this by using pseudonyms or not appearing in the credits, but Burton's contract required that (a) he used to be the only one who could voice Cloud in English, and (b) that he must be credited using his real name in any project he appears in before he got replaced by Cody Christian. Furthermore, the Crispin Glover Rule in the SAG-AFTRA collective bargaining agreement prevented Square Enix and Nintendo from just re-using Burton's archived audio of Cloud from past appearances without paying a ridiculously large amount of money. All of these rules and red tape combined make it impossible for Steve Burton to voice Cloud in Smash, in any shape or form and this is unlikely to change any time soon, as Yoshinori Kitase has confirmed Cody Christian will only be Cloud's voice actor in Final Fantasy VII Remake and its sequels and no other projects.
While in his livestream, Sakurai stated that there would be no music from the original Minecraft because the music in that game was "too relaxing", elsewhere he's alluded to other issues leading to the omission. The classic C418 composed tracks are likely absent due to him personally holding his song's publishing rights (having declined to give them to Microsoft), leading to complications for re-licencing them, though why the later Lena Raine composed tracks (which in contrast are owned by Microsoft) are also missing isn't known.
The music from Xenoblade Chronicles X isn't owned by Nintendo, so it would require them to license it. This is likely the reason why fan favorites like "Black Tar" and "Uncontrollable" were excluded from this game.
EarthBound is the only series that lacks sourced music. It’s been speculated that it’s either due to distribution rights not being owned by Nintendo or the sampling used in some of the game’s music.
Serendipity Writes the Plot: The original idea for a Xenoblade Chronicles 2 fighter was to have Rex and Pyra/Mythra fight together, but it turned out to be rather complex to implement within the game's limitations, so that idea was scrapped in favor of just Pyra/Mythra.
Spoiled by the Merchandise: Infamously, after Isabelle was revealed, the box for the Special Edition was unveiled, showing off every fighter revealed thus far (except for Isabelle) on the sides. Because of the way the characters were organized, it implied that only two characters were left to be revealed, with one of them being an Echo Fighter of one fighter from a specific set of characters. People figured out that the two missing characters were Ken and Incineroar, which the leaker Vergeben later confirmed.
Teasing Creator: Nintendo had a bit of fun with this one: In the ARMS series DLC reveal for Ultimate, shown during the March 26, 2020 mini-Direct, the only clue given for the character was "This fighter's arms can exteeeend!". A quote punctuated by a character gallery for ARMS' entire roster.
Sakurai noted during an interview that the reversibility of the World of Light's Japanese title to refer to Kirby note 灯火の星/Hoshi no Kabi. Kabi being the Japanese pronunciation of Kirby, meaning if you reversed the order of the characters, it could be read as "Kirby of the Stars" was a coincidence, but one that they did notice during development and ultimately left in.
In a less intentional case, the "Don't be late. [S]" message in Terry's reveal trailer actually stemmed from an in-joke among the staff, with the "S" in brackets standing for Sakurai. The man himself was quite embarrassed when he found out that it was left in, and he stated that the "S" could also mean Super Smash Bros.
At some point before or during Ultimate's development, WayForward decided to email to Nintendo two company-grade PNGs of Shantae and Risky Boots, saying that they could do whatever they wanted with them. Nintendo's response was to convert them into Spirits in Ultimate, which WayForward never found out about until after the game was released.
Trolling Creator: In a jab at fans who complain that there are "too many anime sword-users," Byleth is initially shown off in his/her trailer using only sword attacks alongside other sword-wielders to fool those fans into thinking that he/she is just another generic Fire Emblem character. To show that Nintendo is well aware of this complaint, Sothis wryly remarks, "Too many swordsmen, are there?" and only after that is it revealed that Byleth can actually use a variety of different weapons.
Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: Nintendo went nuclear when Smash Ultimate was leaked more than two weeks ahead of schedule, striking down YouTube channels (such as that of longtime game soundtrack uploader Crunchii) that uploaded music videos, Classic and World of Light videos, and generally a wide assortment of Smash footage.
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