YMMV / Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Return to the main franchise YMMV page here.

YMMV items with their own pages:

• And the Fandom Rejoiced
• Broken Base
• Epileptic Trees
• Game Breaker
• High-Tier Scrappy
• I Knew It!
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!
• Low-Tier Letdown
• Memetic Mutation
• That One Level (Spirit Battles)
• Unexpected Character

---

A

• Abridged Arena Array: The option to turn off stage hazards was a direct attempt to avert this trope, along with the addition of "Battlefield" variants and improvements to the "Omega" variants. And it was somewhat successful, to the point that in a first for competitive Smash, a few stages are banned for being too similar to other stages. However, most stages remain tournament-illegal because the hazards are baked into its style (for example, "moving" stages where players can be left behind or damaged by the background or "walk-off" stages where players can camp the edge of the screen).
• Accidental Innuendo:
  • There have been four instances when the word "Smash" could be taken for something else:
    • One for the website where the section for the tutorial says "How to Smash".
    • An especially bad one comes from Tom Nook in the Animal Crossing for Switch teaser, where he says, "I'm sure they'll be tuckered out after all that camping and smashing and whatnot."
    • One of the pre-made messages you can send to opponents before or after a match is "Let's smash, bro!"
    • During the February 2019 Nintendo Direct, the narrator says "Spring is the time to Smash". Cue the jokes.
  • In the Palutena's guidance for Roy, Pit, upon being told that Roy is only 15, asks "Is that even legal?", to which Viridi enthusiastically replies "It is in Ostia, where Roy spends his days as a noble, being smart, brave, and dependable. I bet he smells like heaven!"
  • During Alpharad's World Of Light Nuzlocke, he discovered that when Incineroar is equipped with the Empress Bulblax spirit, the placement of said spirit on the results screen is... rather unfortunate.
  • Steve has a victory screen where he eats a piece of steak, then puts his arm down, still holding the steak, which is now in front of his crotch. Many fans were very quick to notice it. Nintendo also caught on and quickly changed the animation in version 9.0.1, so the steak now disappears when it's eaten, much to the lament of many.
• Alas, Poor Scrappy: All those jokes about wanting to shoot the Duck Hunt Dog are a bit Harsher in Hindsight after what Galeem did to him.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • While the game depicts Galeem and Dharkon as rivals who are equally evil, some fans depict Galeem as a Well-Intentioned Extremist who needed the fighters and spirits to save the universe from Dharkon. Seeing Dharkon as at least the greater evil might be justified, as it's implied that he wants not to control the universe, but to destroy it.
  • Mr. Game & Watch has been changed so that his moves have him temporarily change into the original G&W character he is referencing. While it's pretty neat and helps cement his status as a reference to the entire Game & Watch era, it does give way to the interpretation that he's some sort of face-stealing, shapeshifting abomination or amalgamation of multiple poor souls or something of the sort. Not helping is the fact that, in The Subspace Emissary, he lacked a moral compass and also was the only source of Shadow Bugs, which had similar form-copying abilities.
  • In regards to character reveal trailers, at least one fan theorized that Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong's reactions to Dedede's prank and King K. Rool's actual return were actually due to the two of them eventually believing that K. Rool was dead during his prolonged absence. Thus, the Kongs may have reacted with shocked disgust over Dedede impersonating a dead man, then to K. Rool's arrival with genuine surprise over him being there for real, and not fear.
  • Some fans believe that Shulk helped Kirby escape from death in the World of Light trailer by casting his Monado Speed on Kirby after he saw his vision, believing that Kirby has the best chance of surviving.
  • During the World of Light opening cinematic, did Wii Fit Trainer continue to do yoga because she didn't realize the danger, because it was all she could do, or because she realized she couldn't outrun the light beams and instead accepted her fate? Or was she just trying to exploit that pose's invincibility frames?^note Wii Fit Trainer's up smash renders her invincible from frames 9-12.
  • While the canonicity of the Land of Challenge in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is dubious, it's easy to suggest that the versions of Pyra and Mythra in Ultimate are ones that have been more involved with it and were more focused on min-maxing; Mythra is wearing her censored "Massive Melee Mythra" outfit, which is a subject of Complacent Gaming Syndrome in more competitively-focused runs of the original game for the boost it gives to her crit rate, and both she and Pyra recognize Shulk who they can only meet if they go to the Land of Challenge.
  • Once Galeem begins wiping everyone out at the start of World of Light, Captain Falcon is taken out while attempting to jump into the Blue Falcon - Had he realized how very, very bad things had gotten and was trying to hightail it out of there? Or was he trying to fire up his Final Smash, which requires the vehicle?
• Americans Hate Tingle:
  • The announcement of the Dragon Quest Hero as a DLC character was met with far less fanfare in the West (particularly in the Americas) than in Japan, though it was inevitable as Dragon Quest is more of a niche series there rather than the synonymous-with-RPGs juggernaut it is in Japan. Not helped by Banjo and Kazooie, a very popular Western pick, being announced at the same E3. It's rather common for fans unaware of Dragon Quest to comment that another Square Enix character (whether it's another Final Fantasy fighter^note Which would wind up happening on December 2020, Sora^note though his copyright mainly belongs to Disney, albeit he did become the final DLC character, or even Neku Sakuraba) would have been preferable instead, or that the game didn't need yet another sword fighter. In fact, according to Smash-focused YouTuber Aaronitmar, Hero's announcement was met with considerable disdain on (presumably the English-speaking side of) Twitter, to the point that when he tweeted that people are taking Smash characters too seriously, he was called a "Japan-defending weeb." He also caused a storm in the competitive community due to the heavily randomized nature of his moveset, which directly flies in the face of their decades-long efforts to have Smash seen as a game that depends more on skill than luck.
  • To a lesser extent, Terry. While his inclusion wasn't met with the same level of vitriol as Hero's, many Smash fans were confused about who he and his company are. Again, this was centralized to primarily Western reactions (and similar to Hero's announcement, it coincided with the much demanded Sans); those within the demographics that Terry targeted (Latin American and Asian countries, as well as anyone with a traditional fighting game background) treated his inclusion a lot more favorably.
  • While Byleth was a heavily requested character in Japan and has consistently polled there as one of the most popular fighters in the game, their announcement as the last character for the first Fighters Pass received more negativity from Westerners than even Hero got, with Byleth's reveal trailer listings on YouTube having dislike ratios varying from 30%-50%. The reasons range from being a first-party fighter in a pack that otherwise only contained third-party fighters, being another swordfighter (even if they mix up the formula with three other uniqueweapons in their moveset), being another Fire Emblem character (a series that is already highly represented with seven other playable fighters), or just being an underwhelming choice for the first Fighters Pass to conclude on. Even Fire Emblem fans and other people who genuinely wanted Byleth to make it in agree that they should've been saved for the middle of the second Fighters Pass. One demonstration of this is when Byleth was revealed at the Nintendo NY store (a locale that became popular for hosting a crowd of Nintendo fans that usually pop off, cheer, and get rowdy at every consecutive reveal — even for Hero and Terry), where in comparison to past reveals, the initial reaction to Byleth was much more mild, being more chatter than cheering, only really picking up after Sothis' "Too many swordsmen, are there?" quip and the reveal that Byleth multi-wields.
  • Pyra and Mythra. They are one of the most popular fighters (if not the most popular fighter) in Japan, consistently winning popularity polls, but have gotten some flak from Western players for being "yet another anime swordfighter", for their fanservice-y design, and for their High-Tier Scrappy nature. Nonetheless, they were generally more positively received than Byleth and led to a Newbie Boom for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in the West, making them a stronger case of Germans Love David Hasselhoff than this trope.
• Annoying Video Game Helper:
  • Potentially the assist trophies that can get KO'd. Normally not a problem if they're helping, but the fact that they can get counted for a point against you in timed matches if they get KO'd might be an incentive to let them be. Alternately, you can strike down your own Assist Trophies to save your score.
  • Palkia (who flips the screen upside down), Nightmare, (who turns the screen entirely black), Nintendog (who partially obscures the screen), and Skull Kid (who can do what Palkia does, but can also reverse controls or make all the players invisible). While it would be arguably helpful against an opponent, the fact that these effects are afflicted on you as well makes them less than ideal. Given that Skull Kid is meant to be a trouble-maker, however, it's likely that he is not even trying to assist you at all.
• Anti-Climax Boss: The end of Byleth's classic mode has all of the Fire Emblem characters against Master Hand and Crazy Hand. On lower difficulties, the final battle of that mode becomes a Curb-Stomp Battle in the player's favor. Though on higher difficulties when Crazy Hand comes in, it gets subverted when both hands take out your allies very quickly.
• Awesome Art:
  • The official art for Ultimate manages to take it to a whole new level◊, with beautiful paintings of just about every single character who's ever appeared in Smash Bros. (barring DLC characters). The fact that the◊ picture was updated◊ when a new character◊ was revealed◊ is also impressive. Even better, DLC characters were also added to the art after they released. This also marks the first time that the box art has been hand-drawn since the first game.
  • The character portraits this time around are a big step up from those of previous games, featuring every character in a dynamic pose that conveys the feel of their home series while still sporting very realistic textures that wouldn't look out of place in a modern Disney movie. Of special note is Ken, whose designs in Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter V had rather mixed reactions at best, while his design in Ultimate has a rather favorable reception.
  • The amazing mural◊ in Classic Mode is a stunning piece of art that's worth gutting out the harder intensities just to see it all.
• Awesome Bosses: Amongst the commonly listed highlights of World Of Light are its boss fights:
  • Out of all the bosses in the game, Marx, Dracula, and Rathalos are amongst the most revered due to their fights being both fun and faithful to the fights against them in their canon series.
  • The fights against Galeem and Dharkon are also noted as highlights of the mode thanks to their flashy attacks, amazing atmosphere, and the Awesome Music blaring in the background. The final battle that involves both of them is praised for the same reasons, along with being a very spectacular finale for the mode itself.
• Awesome Ego: Incineroar loves to show off for its fans, they love it back, both in and out-of-universe.

B

• Breather Boss:
  • Both in Classic Mode and World of Light, Marx is rather simple to defeat compared to the other bosses in the game. The majority of his attacks can be avoided by either running away or staying beneath him, and while they are fast and deal high damage, they do not have too much launch power compared to other bosses. He also suffers from being a little too faithful to his debut in Kirby Super Star, so any muscle memory you have from that game will serve you well here, especially if you're playing as Kirby.
  • Galleom is very easy to take down due to his attacks being slow, blatantly telegraphed, and having blind spots where they can't hit you (especially with his missile barrages), as well as him being a massive target. That being said, unlike Marx, his attacks deal much higher damage and have rather nasty knockback after a certain point, especially when he turns red. Their high damage, however, means that any character with a counterattack, like Marth (which you can get early on and blocks the route to him), will prove to be the bane of him.
  • Although he's That One Boss with the other Zelda characters, fighting Ganon in Toon Link's Classic Mode route is surprisingly easy, because like the other fights in his route, you have two other CPU allies fighting alongside you. Not only will Ganon likely target them instead of you, incapacitating him means that all three of you will be able to rack up lots of damage before he gets back up. It's not uncommon for the trio of Links to earn a Nice Play worth +1.4 Intensity or more from this fight alone.
  • Compared to other final battles in Classic Mode, Pikachu's route can be this due to fighting Mewtwo as the final boss. After defeating it, you face off against Master Hand, who appears without Crazy Hand. It still can get tricky due to some of his attacks, but he's still easy to defeat.
  • Typically, the fight against Master Hand & Crazy Hand is incredibly difficult, but in Incineroar's route, the fight is easier due to having Greninja as your partner, causing a lot of difficulty to be sidelined in a similar vein to fighting Ganon in Toon Link's route. The final match in Ryu's route is similar to Incineroar's, as Ryu fights alongside Ken against Master Hand & Crazy Hand, but is a bit harder due to being in Stamina mode, like in the previous matches in his route.
  • Pokémon Trainer's route is easier than Pikachu's since they have one advantage Pikachu doesn't, the Pokémon Change Down Special. You can use it as a safe and effective dodge to Master Hand's attacks, and like with Pikachu, Crazy Hand won't appear at all.

C

• Captain Obvious Reveal: Disregarding any disappointment that comes with being a first-party character, this was ultimately the main criticism regarding Byleth's reveal trailer. Within less than ten seconds of the trailer, Byleth is already shown off, immediately clueing into the fact that it's a rep from Three Houses. Then, it takes a full minute for Sothis to reveal that Byleth has been invited into Smash, which makes the reveal come across as not surprising in the slightest. And unlike the reveal trailer for Pyra & Mythra, which was at the start of a general Nintendo Direct and thus could be mistaken as a trailer for additional Xenoblade Chronicles 2 content, Byleth's reveal trailer was first shown in a dedicated Smash Direct, meaning there was no room for a Bait-and-Switch.
• Catharsis Factor: In general, if there's a spirit of a character that rubs you the wrong way, chances are that fighting them will be this. Some specific examples include:
  • Beating the snot out of Adam Malkovich, and by extension Other M Samus, for all the crap he put her and the player through. Even better if it's Samus who battles him.
  • Similarly, fighting and beating Viridi during Adventure Mode counts as well. It feels pretty satisfying to destroy her after everything she's done, especially when she somehow manages to become a Karma Houdini because of unneeded divine intervention of the Aurum and The Chaos Kin. Actually getting to fight her counts as well, for those who saw her lack of a boss fight as a case of them wasting a perfectly good character.
  • Wailing on Tatsu for being The Load during one's adventures on Mira would also be this.
  • Given all of the shit he puts his family and innocent civilians through, getting the chance to beat up Heihachi is a real treat and karmic justice for everyone he's wronged.
  • The 4.0.0 update introduced a Very Easy difficulty setting for World of Light. Ever had trouble with some of the more problematic battles? Feel free to switch to this difficulty and go to town. Even better if you start a New Game Plus run with it and proceed to steamroll through just about everything.
• Character Rerailment: While some fans were already relieved that Samus didn't act like her Metroid: Other M self in Smash 4 despite her design and the game heavily using content from that game, Ultimate went a bit further in showing that this is the Samus fans know and love, even though she retains her Other M-inspired designs in both her forms. Zero Suit Samus now sports a Heroic Build that wasn't used for years until Metroid: Samus Returns, and in Ridley's reveal trailer, Samus stares in shock for a couple of seconds, but instead of breaking down or getting pulverized, she regains her composure and proceeds to kick her nemesis' ass.
• Common Knowledge:
  • Kirby being a Sole Survivor in the opening for World of Light is said by people to be proof that Kirby is the most powerful character in the Nintendo Universe. While there is plenty of evidence for him being that in his home series, the only reason why he managed to escape Galeem's attack was because of the Warp Star's ability to transport to far away locations quickly. Sakurai even pointed out that both Bayonetta and Palutena had the capabilities of surviving, but didn't in order to apply The Worf Effect to Galeem, as well as being deemed more difficult to use than Kirby. He also points out that the Blue Falcon is supposed to travel fast enough to go from land to space, but admitted to making artistic liberties there. Really, there were several characters who could have made it into space and beyond, and Kirby was simply the most apt to fill the "sole survivor hero who comes back and saves everyone" role (as a Nintendo protagonist in good standing who had been a core part of the roster since the first game).
  • Many are surprised that Joker uses a "real gun" whereas Bayonetta and Snake have their weapons Bowdlerized, to an extent. While it is true that Joker didn't get his gun censored in the transition from Persona to Smash, it was never an actual weapon to begin with; because of how The Metaverse works, one need only bring what looks like a gun, and it'll work just fine. Combined with the fact that The Phantom Thieves don't exactly have easy access to firearms, not a single ranged weapon in the game, save maybe Morgana's Slingshot, actually functions as a ranged weapon in the real world. ^note It stands to reason that Smash Bros. doesn't follow the rules of "normal" reality, possibly even less so than the Metaverse, the Dark Hour, or the TV World. That said, understanding that Joker's gun isn't a real one requires quite a bit of context that can't be found in the game, so it still comes across as a realistic gun to those who haven't played Persona 5.
  • The claim that Banjo-Kazooie is obscure or even disliked in Japan spread after the E3 2019 stream revealed the duo as DLC fighters alongside the Dragon Quest Heroes, who come from a series well-known for having much fewer fans outside of Japan than in it. Actually, Banjo-Kazooie was, like in the West, among the most popular games for the Nintendo 64 in Japan (though obviously not the kind of sales juggernaut that Dragon Quest is there), with gamers showing enthusiasm for the characters' announcement.
  • In the case of Ridley, who is often credited as only making it in due to the Western fandom with the rest of the world not caring for him. This is in spite of the Smash Ballot he scored high in being a worldwide poll, and Ridley being a highly demanded character in Japan due to their dynamic with Samus and brutal design. The claim that Ridley was referred to as "Captain America" in Japan is also being limited to a couple of people on a Discord channel. Sakurai himself also stated that Ridley was especially popular overseas, not just America.
  • People often say that "Dragon Quest is a difficult prospect to get in Ultimate". Turns out, it wasn't. Ironically, Nintendo and Sakurai were expecting hardship, but mostly for getting Hero himself rather than having a character from Dragon Quest in general (never forget that Dragon Quest had crossed with Super Mario before). As the livestream interview states, Yuji Horii was welcoming to the idea especially after their smartphone game showed that a previous taboo of different Heroes meeting each other actually works. The only true difficulty indeed was the music copyright.
  • Many fans take Sakurai's comment about Mai Shiranui's absence due to CERO regulations as him saying that she had been planned to be playable at some point, however Sakurai was specifically talking about the cameos that various SNK characters make in the King of Fighters stage when he mentioned Mai. There has never been any evidence suggesting that Mai had ever been considered to be a playable character, nor that she would've been picked over Terry even if she had been.
  • Ken has more gameplay differences than Echo Fighters are supposed to, something Sakurai himself has admitted, leading to most people believing him being classified as one is entirely arbitrary. Except while his faster running, Crazy Kicks, etc. are not in line with what Echoes are supposed to be, over half of his tilts, aerials, Smash attacks, and throws are exactly like Ryu's, as are most of his physical stats like his weight, jump height, etc. This is not the case for Moveset Clones like Falco, Roy, Ganondorf etc. who have been given their own fighter numbers.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Ever since it was discovered that Mii Swordfighter has an incredibly easy kill-confirm (Gale Strike to Hero's Spin), you'd be hard-pressed to find someone whose Swordie doesn't have those two moves.
• Contested Sequel: Not the game as a whole, but World of Light has lead to some split opinions among fans of previous games' single-player modes, particularly The Subspace Emissary. Is it an epic and fun journey that goes through a large part of Nintendo's history beautifully? Or is it a slog to go through, having to fight many repetitive fights without any character? WoL is intended to be played in short bursts in order to go with the Switch's portability, so anyone trying to rush through it might get tired of it quickly. It doesn't help that all of the cutscenes focuses on the heroes fighting a bigger threat, rather than the characters interacting like Subspace Emissary's cutscenes, which are widely considered the best part of the mode. However there are people who don’t mind even that since the relative lack of cutscenes was likely what allowed the dev team to focus their CGI efforts on the acclaimed character trailers, which for many make up for WoL’s lack of cutscenes.
• Creepy Awesome:
  • Ridley is a sadistic Space Pirate that looks like a pterodactyl-dragon with a Xenomorph-like build, has unsettling corpse-like textures compared to his earlier appearances, a brutal fighting style, and is one of the darker villain characters made playable in the series. His introduction trailer even plays him up like a horror movie villain, and has him apparently violently murder Mario and Mega Man and then taunt Samus about it afterwards. He was also one of the most highly-requested characters by the Western fandom for over a decade.
  • Dark Samus is an insane doppelgänger of Samus of alien origins and is capable of corrupting the minds of others (including Ridley) in her home series. This being the first true HD depiction of Dark Samus, she's been given a design update similar to Ridley to make her "armor" look even more organic and slimy, and has more wraith-like movements compared to the character she's Echoing. And like Ridley, she was also a highly-requested character by the Western fandom.
• Creepy Cute:
  • The Piranha Plant seems to be kind of adorable with its movements. It can summon Petey Piranha, who is also pretty cute.
  • The Enderman is much shorter than the regular mob version, and is completely devoid of their scariest aspects, which results in it being incredibly endearing to look at. Even Sakurai himself noted in the character showcase how cute it looks.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Seeing Ridley stab Mega Man and grab Mario, accompanied by a Sickening "Crunch!", in his reveal trailer is pretty horrifying and sets up how big a threat he is. But to then have him twirl Mario's cap on his finger a la Super Mario Odyssey, it makes Ridley come off as hilariously cruel.
  • And in the August 2018 Direct, Luigi follows suit, by having his soul ripped out by Death. The fact that his soul appears intact at the end of the trailer, only to be interrupted by Carmilla just before returning to his body just makes it come across as hysterically mean-spirited.
  • Yoshi's Final Smash. Being crushed to death by an Animal Stampede, à la Mufasa? Horrible. Being crushed by a stampede of Yoshis, who look like they couldn't give a care in the world, in one big homage to Melee's intro? Hilarious!
  • The beginning of the World of Light trailer shows about the entire cast, except for Kirby, facing a swift demise by beams of unstoppable light. There are a few characters whose doom is portrayed in a bit of a silly way, though. For example, Villager runs around in circles while flailing his arms, Snake hides in his cardboard box, and Captain Falcon jumps into the Blue Falcon, but gets blasted before he can even lower the hood.
  • Paz appears as a Spirit... with the condition that she starts off holding a Bob-omb. And a spirit battle where Bob-ombs rain. While this may have been intended as a reference to the events of Peace Walker, which involves her attempting to launch a nuke, the fact that she dies by implanted bomb during Ground Zeroes has led to some assuming it was an incredibly dark joke.
  • The Three Mage Sisters spirit increases the power of battering items, which could be a reference to the weapons they use, but it could also be a dark reference to Hyness using them as bludgeons in his boss fight.
  • Hinawa's spirit battle has all fighters being easy to launch, referencing her dying incredibly early in her home game.
  • One of the spirits is Ness's Dad, with its picture simply being a telephone. It requires fighting an invisible Snake. The dark comedy doesn't end there; the special ability? Running Start. Poor Ness.
  • One of the Challenge images◊ pays tribute to Aerith's death.
  • Seteth's spirit battle starts with you having to defeat a female Villager representing Flayn, before fighting against Dr. Mario representing Seteth. In Three Houses, Seteth is very overprotective of his little sister (actually his daughter), and on the Crimson Flower route, they become antagonists and you can potentially kill them in that order, which ends up causing Seteth to lose his resolve to fight upon seeing his daughter die in front of him.
  • Orville and Wilbur's spirit grants increased attack and speed, but only when undamaged. Given that both of them are dodos, an extinct animal, this is a very twisted joke.
  • One of Steve's attacks involves lighting the enemy on fire with a flint and steel. What character did he use this on in the demo video? Pit. Cue Kid Icarus fans having flashbacks to the scene in Uprising where he burns off his wings trying to rescue Dark Pit.
  • The trailer for the FFVII Mii Fighter costumes showed the Mii in the Aerith costume getting thrashed by Sephiroth the most, and his Down Air is the same move he used to kill her.
  • Sephiroth's trailer has yet another reference to Aerith's death. This time, he attempts to use Hell's Gate (the same move he used to kill Aerith) on Zelda, who's lying unconscious on the ground. Except he completely misses her.
  • Kazuya's trailer has him tossing Ganondorf into a volcano... and then he subsequently does it to Captain Falcon, Pit, Min Min (who he kicks her ARM dangling on the side of the cliff) and Marth. He even does it to Kirby who floats away while he keeps waiting for the puffball to drop into the magma.
• Crossover Couple: In the advent of her Palutena's Guidance being rewritten to accommodate her new redesign, many fans took to shipping Pit x Zelda, due to how much Pit fawns over Zelda's new appearance, complete with Viridi using Pit's new crush on Zelda to repeatedly make a fool out of him.

D

• Damsel Scrappy:
  • Certain spirits are essentially Escort Missions that require you to protect a CPU ally, who frequently won't do much to defend themselves.
  • In general, any spirit that prefers to avoid conflict can fit into this. They are programmed to avoid the player, running away from them and can be time-consuming to deal with. Some, like Wrys or the Postman, aren't difficult to deal with, but others, like Nyna and Dr. Light, are accompanied by another character who will annoy the player by pursuing and attacking them to protect their ally. And that's not getting to infamous ones like Pauline.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Enemy Assist Trophies in Spirit matches will always be a pain in the ass to deal with, especially if the power level of a Spirit is at least 8,000 or over. The Sheriff from 9-Volt and 18-Volt's battle is an infamous example, considering that it's shooting at you, cancelling your attacks as you're fighting two already annoying powerful characters (Incineroar and Villager), and that its bullets ignore shields and reflecting abilities. And the fact it's almost impossible to knock out. Other enemy Assist Trophies are a pain to deal with as well, but most of them are generally temporary.
  • Any Spirit battle wherein the opponent is Giant and has Super Armor. In regular or Stamina Battles, they can wipe you out in just a couple of hits while, even with Giant Killer, they still don't flinch easily and require a serious beatdown. The Giga Mac battle at the end of the game is a particularly infamous example.
• Designated Villain: The trailers for King K. Rool and Banjo & Kazooie both begin with a slideshow of various Nintendo heroes fighting their home series "rivals", among them being Kirby facing off Meta Knight. While the title of King K. Rool's trailer (The Rivals) seems to suggest these are supposed to represent rivalries rather than actual "villains", the rest of the "rivals" shown in the slideshow^note Bowser, Ganondorf, Wolf, Ridley, and, in Banjo & Kazooie's trailer only, King K. Rool) are full-fledged villains in their series and one notable pair of "rivals", Pit and Dark Pit, are completely absent from the slideshow. Due to these factors, Meta Knight's presence comes off as rather out-of-place. A Heroes vs. Villains online tourney was later done to celebrate Hero, and Meta Knight is seen on the main image among the villains.

E

• Ending Fatigue: The final map in Adventure mode can be seen as this by some. While it is beautiful to look at and has an interesting gimmick, having to fight through waves of Spirits to reach Galeem and Dharkon can be seen as a bit tiring, especially since by this point, the player has already gone through both the World of Light and Realm of Dark maps and defeated both Galeem and Dharkon once before. The grand finale itself is agreed to be amazing, though.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Sans made so many waves upon his announcement as a Mii Fighter costume that some people treat him as a full-fledged addition to the roster instead of just the basis for an outfit. While most Mii Fighters require a lot of Willing Suspension of Disbelief to pretend they're another character due to their cartoony proportions, the Sans costume matches his proportions very well, making it much easier to imagine Sans himself is in the game. It helps that the costume comes packaged with "MEGALOVANIA", rearranged by none other than Toby Fox himself. The announcement was so widely-discussed that some even think it overshadowed the surprise-drop of Banjo and Kazooie in the game, or the announcement that Terry Bogard would be the fourth character on the Fighters Pass, which is quite something considering that Sans is just a costume.
  • History repeated itself during "Mr. Sakurai Presents "Byleth"", when it was announced that Cuphead would appear as a costume for the Mii Gunner. Like with Sans, Cuphead quickly gained a lot of praise for being a character from a really fun indie title with a well-crafted "premium"-style costume that cuts out almost everything relating to Miis, in addition to coming with the Floral Fury song from his home game. However, Cuphead's case may even be more extreme than Terry's situation, since the circumstances around Byleth's controversial reveal only highlighted the Cuphead Mii Costume to the point that some people claimed that it single-handedly salvaged a reveal that proved to be incredibly divisive at best.
  • Perhaps the most extreme example aside from the Mii costumes is Waluigi. Although he has been an Assist Trophy since Brawl, Ultimate propelled his exclusion as a playable fighter to Memetic Mutation and Memetic Loser status, even though there was no precedent for making him playable despite the "Everyone is Here!" selling point. It got to the point where people found a way to rag on Waluigi with every single newcomer announcement for the game, making the prior support for Mewtwo's, Ridley's, and K. Rool's inclusion look like a quiet minority movement in comparison.
• Even Better Sequel:
  • Ultimate is the first game in the series since Melee to garner universal praise from fans as well as critics, without the usual "it was great BUT..." types of caveats associated with Brawl and 3DS/Wii U. The game is held in high regard thanks to its faster yet still accessible engine, its selling point of bringing back every character in the series (including fan favorites Snake and Ice Climbers who were dropped in the previous game), and having a fair amount of single-player content (particularly World of Light) with good replay value. It also seemed to smother out the disagreements between Melee players and the newest installment as it was able to win over many Melee fans who found the games in-between to be too slow for their liking. Ultimate even grew to become the best-selling fighting game of all time, with nearly double the lifetime sales of Brawl and reviews on par with it.
  • Competitively, this is absolutely one to Wii U/3DS and Brawl. Not only is it much faster, but the entire cast has gone through extensive rebalancing and retuning to make it so that even the infamous Joke Characters like Pichu and Mr. Game and Watch are now not only competitively viable but also fun. It's also notable that the game mostly avoids inserting many High Tier Scrappys that absolutely plagued the previous games in the series (check out their respective pages for more information) meaning that the metagame isn't exclusively dominated by a handful of oppressive and powerful characters like almost every single past entry. While Character Tiers do exist they're not nearly as set-in-stone as once thought and many of the mid-to-low tiers are still extremely viable and strong. The result is a vibrant and strong competitive community with a dynamic tournament scene not seen since the golden age of Melee.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Ridley is the Arch-Nemesis of Samus, and he's lovably sadistic in-game, which helps with his already cool and menacing look.
  • While her history with Samus isn't as big as Ridley's, Dark Samus is another major enemy of hers. As an Echo Fighter of Samus, she's got a much more menacing and ethereal feel to her. She's also been given a visual update that makes her look even more creepily alien. And that's without mentioning that she once turned the Space Pirates (including Ridley) into her own cult.
  • King K. Rool hasn't been seen for a long time, yet still manages to be threatening and hilarious at the same time, just as we remembered him.
  • Galeem and Dharkon have proved to be quite popular thanks to their cool yet terrifying designs, awesome battles with epic music, and the fact that they can actually succeed in their evil plans.
  • Sephiroth, the first playable third-party villain, is every bit as malicious and cool as he is in his home game, and his trailer plays up how much of an unstoppable, terrifying badass he is.
  • While not as eyecatching as the previous third-party villain, Kazuya from his trailer alone shows he's not like the other honorable fighters, he's here to take everyone down. With his Difficult, but Awesome moveset, you can pull of strong and impressive combos that can knock you out in one go. Add in his Badass in a Nice Suit status and you have a villain who not only looks threatening, but can look stylish while doing so.

F

• Fan-Disliked Explanation: While a case of Broken Base, some fans weren't too happy when Sakurai confirmed in the November 1, 2018 Nintendo Direct that the fighters are "toys in the real world" that became real in the "world of imagination". Even though this angle had been heavily implied all along, some felt that the Living Toys aspect broke immersion and invalidated the crossover concept, especially with the absence of non-Assist trophies in Ultimate. That said, one's response to this depends on how literally they take it. By its very nature, the "world of imagination" where Smash takes place is a fictional universe, and its level of "realness" compared to other video game universes has never been explicitly stated (only the version of the "real world" implied in-game), leaving quite a bit open to interpretation and still allowing for multiple theories on how "real" the fighters are from a fictional perspective — especially given the Canon Welding with some of the characters' home universes. As this explanation is often seen as "ruining the magic" of Smash, Sora's reveal trailer took this trope and ran with it, with all the characters reverting to lifeless trophies - an angle that hadn't been outright shown in Ultimate material up to that point - serving as a Player Punch that made Sora's grand entrance that much more emotional and heartwarming.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception:
  • Calling Super Smash Bros. Ultimate a port of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U has quickly become a source of anger among people who pay close attention to the mechanics of the game, given the numerous overhauls to the returning roster from the previous game (both major and minor), bringing back characters who haven't been seen since Melee or Brawl, tons of new gameplay mechanics, and various changes to the physics, sounds, animations, and artstyle. While Ultimate plays more similarly to its predecessor than any of the other games ^note because the same production team who worked on Smash for Wii U/Nintendo 3DS also worked on Ultimate, rather than an entirely new one as with past games, that does not make it a port. Fortunately, most of the "port" accusations petered off after the August 8th, 2018 Direct, which revealed that Ultimate would have much more new content than people initially assumed.
  • Calling Terry "Hat Ken" is a good way to piss off fans of both Smash Bros. and SNK's fighting games who were excited for his inclusion, due to the similarities between Terry and Ken being superficial and minor at best, as well as the term generally being used to dismiss a character from one of the most influential fighting game companies (not unlike when the Dragon Quest Hero was sometimes dismissed as a "generic anime swordsman").
  • Don't complain that the traditional fighting game inputs used by Terry and the Street Fighter characters are ruining the game by making overly complicated motions needed to make the character work. Smash fans who play traditional fighters know that the motions used by the three current fighters of the genre are easy by those standards, and do not represent the Smash roster as a whole.
  • For the competitive scene, don't claim that anyone is "carried by Joker" or you will likely anger a lot of people and/or be considered a clown. The reasoning for this is because most players with Joker haven't had been winning supermajors with the character except MKLeo and Zackray, who are considered the best player and the 7th best player in the world respectively. That said, most people do believe Joker to be one of the best characters in the game, especially when Arsene is out.
  • Continuing the trend of traditional fighting game characters somehow being a magnet for these misconceptions, do not call Kazuya a Shotoclone. When some fans began calling him a "shoto" purely because of an expectation that he would have similar system mechanics like motion inputs, automatically facing the opponent in a 1 on 1 match and using Lag Cancel to chain special moves together, it was done to simply give a classification for this specific group of characters that was quick and easy to type and say out loud, even if doing so was not wholly accurate. Understandably, the other section of fans — especially those who play Tekken and can easily point out how mechanically different it is from Smash, Street Fighter, and The King of Fighters - were quick to point out the many different ways their usage of the label "shoto" goes against what the archetype is actually supposed to mean - one such example being that Tekken does not have a Lag Cancel mechanic that allows any of its characters to cancel moves into special inputs, which are not as prevalant for them as they are for other franchises.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • Not so much a fandom rivalry than just a rivalry between character supporters, there were many arguments online about who would be the Microsoft fighter if there was one. This was almost entirely between Steve and Banjo & Kazooie, with characters like Master Chief being occasionally thrown around. The arguments boiled down to which was more "deserving" to be in: a character from an old, beloved, but "dead" series, or someone from a more recent and incredibly popular game. Eventually, this began to die out as Banjo & Kazooie were confirmed for the game as DLC, and Steve was added later on in the second Fighters Pass.
  • The September 4th, 2019 Nintendo Direct and the following Banjo & Kazooie gameplay presentation saw the reveals of both Terry Bogard as a DLC character and Sans as a DLC Mii Fighter costume. This ended up spawning a rivalry between fans excited for Terry's inclusion and fans excited that Sans is now in Smash Bros. at all, due to the wildly different general reactions to the two and the perception that a Mii Fighter costume ended up overshadowing a fully-fledged playable character.
  • The reactions to the October 1, 2020 Direct, while largely positive, also exposed a major rivalry among the same fault lines seen with Terry and Sans: fans of more "classic" DLC characters (who were excited about Terry and were expecting new fighters like Geno, Dante, Shantae, Crash Bandicoot, or Lip, only to have their hopes dashed with Steve) and fans of characters from more recent games that are frequently viral (who were excited for the Sans and Cuphead costumes and now Steve as a true fighter). The former accuse the latter of only caring about the meme potential of fighters and not about what would work best with the series' original mission, frequently unfavorably citing potential fighters from trendy 2010s games such as Five Nights at Freddy's, Fortnite, Angry Birds, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, or Among Us as options if the group gets its way, or otherwise they're concerned about the game becoming too much of an Unintentional Period Piece since what's modern now isn't necessarily going to be modern forever. The latter accuses the former of having a Nostalgia Filter and believing that Smash should only appeal to 90s kids, as well as not caring about some of the extremely popular newer games that could have representation in Smash.
  • Fans of Platformers vs fans of Japanese Role-Playing Games. The former criticize the roster for having too many characters from the latter genre and generalize them all as "generic anime swordsmen", especially the Fire Emblem characters. The latter fans accuse the former fans of being entitled and hypocrites, pointing out that there are just as many characters from Platformers as there are from Role-Playing Games, if not more, in the roster. Those fans started to call Platformer characters like Crash Bandicoot and Rayman "Cereal Box Mascots", "cartoon animals", and as of 2021, "Scrimblo Bimblos" to mock the "anime swordsmen" complaint. This got much more heated in June 2021 before E3, particularly on Twitter to the point JRPG and Platformer were trending, all because Euden of Dragalia Lost beat Crash in a Twitter fan poll that has no effect on who becomes DLC. Doesn't help that there were only two DLC characters left to announce at that point.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: A very popular AU is having Sonic and Pikachu escape Galeem's lasers along with Kirby and having them as a starting trio. This is taken from the implications that Sonic could have also outrun the lasers, but him slowing down to help Pikachu led to both being wiped out. Furthermore, some have expanded on the premise by adding in the DLC characters as part of this initial group, having survived by other means or being dragged into World of Light by happenstance.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Every character has their own set path in Classic Mode, but since it goes from fight to fight, it's up to the players to interpret what happened in-between the fights.
  • The Exploration Missions are an endless well for adventure stories that feature unlikely team combinations. For example: Charmander, King Knight, Revolver Ocelot (MGS3), and Sigurd are out in the jungle and working together to find treasure. Before then, that would've been very hard if not impossible for anyone to imagine. But Ultimate has now made it possible.
  • Considering Sora's origins as part of a crossover, what type of stories can be made if the Smash and Kingdom Hearts world collide? It's also easy to imagine Mario as a potential Keyblade Master and the Smash universe's counterpart to King Mickey (given that the Keyblade did not immediately return to Sora's hand after Mario summoned it), despite the fact that Sakurai had to specifically change parts of the reveal trailer as none of the other Smash fighters (Mario and Kirby included) can wield the Keyblade.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Some refer to the Battlefield Forms of each stage as their Alpha Forms, as a complement to their Final Destination Forms being called their Omega Forms.
  • "Echoes Fighter" for Dark Samus, due to her game of origin and that she was able to create duplicates of herself called "Echoes" in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.
  • King K. Rool has been called "the true Smash Ballot winner" due to Sakurai mentioning his popularity in the 3DS/Wii U ballot, and how suspicious some fans were of Bayonetta's Dark Horse Victory in that poll. It was later proven incorrect by Sakurai himself; during Sora's fighter presentation, Sakurai admits that he had scored the most points out of any character listed, which has caused the nickname to transfer to him instead.
  • With the far-reaching Massive Multiplayer Crossover that seems to grow even more with each new announcement, Ultimate itself is playfully called "Video Games: The Video Game".
  • A few fans have nicknamed the Piranha Plant either "Audrey" or "Planty". Plant is also common.
  • After the infamous "World of Light" trailer was released, many took to calling this game "Super Smash Bros.: Infinity War".
  • The Adventure Mode intro's heavy focus on Kirby, as well as a theme song that sounds like it came straight from his anime and a villain that would fit right in on Pop Star, earned the mode the unofficial title of "Kirby and the World of Light". This nickname has only been reinforced by the release of the game, as the mode turns out to feature Marx as a boss and has a second primary villain who also would be in good company with Kirby's Rogues Gallery.
  • While the second major overworld level in Adventure Mode is officially known as "The Dark Realm", many players have taken to calling it the "World of Dark" to contrast the "World of Light".
  • The Lariat that Incineroar throws on a successful Alolan Whip results in the receiver taking a really violent hit to the neck, chin, or face. Several nicknames can apply here such as "Guillotine", "Necksnapper", "Jawbreaker", and "Facesmasher".
  • As if the sudden inclusion of Piranha Plant wasn't ridiculous enough, the players who picked it as a main like to kick it up by just calling it "Plant" and the people who play it the "Plant Gang". Some also refer to Ivysaur as a part of the Plant Gang, due to its typing.
  • One of Joker's possible stances while firing his gun has him spin in mid-air while shooting downwards. The competitive community proceeded to nickname this move "Rainstorm". Even more hilarity ensues when one realizes how much of Joker's pre-existing moveset is nearly similar to that of Dante's.
  • The Erdrick alt for Hero has inevitably been called "Goku" by many people, due to the resemblance between the two as a result of Akira Toriyama having designed both. The Luminary default and Solo alt have also been called "Android 17" and "Trunks" for similar reasons.
  • Some refer to Terry Bogard as "Hat Ken", either intentionally because of the physical similarities to Ken or because they forgot his name.
  • Byleth's down special is referred to as the "Warlock Axe", since, mechanically, it's basically Ganondorf's Warlock Punch, but in the form of an overhead axe swing. Because it's an overhead swing that's mechanically like the Warlock Punch, it's also been referred to as the "Warlock Doriyah," since it's a combination between two of Ganondorf's most iconic moves, his neutral special, and his Ultimate forward smash.
  • Due to the Steve being a case of Aerith and Bob, most fans of Smash Bros. who aren't big into Minecraft refer to Steve as "Minecraft Steve".
  • When the Enderman was made playable, their limbs were shortened by about half in order to work with the Steve/Alex model. Various nicknames have sprouted up to refer to this shorter individual, such as EnderBoy, Endermanlet, EnderWee, and Gary.
  • Downloadable Mii Costumes that completely replace the Mii's head, might come with a music track and a more elaborate presentation in the Mii Costume showcase, and are followed by Sakurai talking about them after the Mii Costume showcases in Sakurai Presentations are referred to by fans as "Deluxe", "Premium", or "PreMiiUm" Mii Costumes, the latter two despite the costumes not costing more.
  • "Down-Aerith" for Sephiroth's Down Air, AKA Hell's Gate, due to how it resembles how he infamously killed Aerith.
  • Kirby's Sephiroth hat has been referred to as "Edgeworth Kirby" due to Sephiroth's hair looking more like the latter's on Kirby.
  • Pyra and Mythra are sometimes collectively referred to as "Pythra" or "Aegis".
• Fanon:
  • Because of their similar looks, fashion sense, and the fact that both characters use guns, many fans have latched on to the idea that Joker is Bayonetta's son. It makes sense when you realize that both characters are owned by Sega. ^note Sega holds ownership of Bayonetta as a series (though Nintendo has full publishing rights for the ports and sequels on their platforms that they funded the developments of), while Persona is owned by Atlus, which was bought out and became a subsidiary of Sega in late 2013.
  • Similarly, Simon as Zelda's dad got pushed as a light-themed counterpart to Bayonetta as Joker's mom due to both being blond Religious Bruisers with somewhat similar headwear.
  • A theory that has gained some traction (for lack of any other in-game explanation) is that the DLC characters (somehow) managed to survive Galeem's initial onslaught and escaped capture like Kirby or were captured but escaped all by themselves. Some fanart even shows them traveling alongside fellow survivor Kirby. It helps that trailers have shown DLC characters (such as the Heroes, Sephiroth, and Banjo and Kazooie) being present for the events of World of Light alongside everyone else, suggesting that the developers also consider the DLC characters to have canonically been involved in World of Light.
  • This tweet by Ethan Mouta managed to spread the theory that in Joker's gameplay reveal trailer, "The Masked Rebel", Joker changed King K. Rool's heart by taking his Treasure (his crown), hence why the next time the croc appeared in Banjo & Kazooie's reveal trailer, "Best Friends", he had no problem hanging out with his rivals DK and Diddy.
  • A very common explanation for why Sans is just a Mii costume is that he got an invitation to Smash, but he couldn't be bothered doing something that takes so much effort.
  • Due to Sephiroth not being shown attacking Pichu in his reveal trailer or screenshots, as well as the duo's close proximity on the game's banner, there are many fans who see it as him having a soft spot for the baby Pokémon.
  • It's very common in fanart to depict Mario as the definitive main character and The Hero among the cast, having him take up the central or most visible spot and/or depicting him larger than the other fighters to make him appear closer and more prominent. In fact, while Mario (being fighter #01) has had some appearances that do indeed paint him as Nintendo's mascot among the cast and have him represent Nintendo as a whole (most notably Sora's reveal trailer), his Spotlight-Stealing Squad nature is downplayed quite a bit from previous games, with most pieces of official art only giving him slightly more prominence than other fighters and often giving Link an equal or nearly equal amount of focus, and Kirby being The Hero of World of Light. The "Everyone Is Here!" panoramic art in fact makes a point of not putting Mario dead center the way most fanartists do, having him and Link flank the banner on either side while the rest of the Original 8 (and Inkling) are in the middle.
• Foe Yay Shipping:
  • If you complete Classic Mode with Wolf, you're rewarded with a picture of him and Fox peacefully sitting down close to each other.◊ And then there's that one screenshot where he is grabbing Fox while both in pink colors.
  • And if you complete it with Bowser, you'll get a picture of Bowser kidnapping Mario away, the latter in his wedding outfit with a rainbow in the background.◊
  • For whatever reason, some people ship Galeem and Dharkon. Even though their only in-game interactions have them trying — and, in the bad endings, succeeding — to kill each other.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Surprisingly, fans of the tried-and-true Melee competitive scene and Ultimate's growing competitive scene actually get along, which is saying something considering that the Melee scene wasn't thrilled by Brawl or the 3DS/Wii U titles. It helps that Ultimate addresses many desires that Melee fans have been demanding of the series while putting its own unique spin on them, particularly more versatile movement options ^note in lieu of reintroducing wavedashing, the post-run skid can be cancelled into any move and decreased landing lag for better combo flexibility ^note while also removing the divisive L-Cancel mechanic.
  • In addition to Crash himself already being a very wanted fighter, the Crash Bandicoot and Smash fandoms ended up crossing over more than usual after Min Min's reveal, as Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time was announced the same day, only a few hours later.
  • When Sephiroth was revealed on the 2020 Game Awards two days from the launch of Crash 4's art book, it didn't stop fans from doing crossover art, mainly by having him interact with the fellow genetically-enhanced super soldier bandicoot.
  • Surprisingly, fans of Capcom vs. have taken to Ultimate rather nicely, as the game features content from Capcom games like Mega Man (Classic), Street Fighter, Monster Hunter, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Devil May Cry, and Resident Evil, and there were reunions for SNK vs. Capcom and Street Fighter X Tekken with the additions of Terry Bogard and Kazuya Mishima. And to top it all off, the closing shot of the final newcomer trailer has Sora and Mario shaking hands in manner very similar to Ryu and Cyclops' iconic handshake from the beginning of X-Men vs. Street Fighter.

G

• Genius Bonus:
  • As Sakurai himself explains, the reason for the three fingers when advertising the Byleth showcase was as a subtle hint that utilizes this twice. There are 17 main Fire Emblem games, and, counting the way he did, the three middle fingers is the number 17 in binary.
  • Like how the original Final Fantasy VII version of Sephiroth's Supernova attack had equations that calculate the force needed for a star to go nova, the new ones that replace them in Smash Ultimate calculate quantum mechanics, fluid dynamics, and spacetime.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Invoked. All the newcomers in Ultimate have been celebrated by Western fans when they got revealed:
    • Metroid and Castlevania's newcomers are loved because of how well they represent their franchises, both of which are more popular on the other side of the Pacific.
    • Chrom (a character heavily requested in Japan) has been welcomed not only due to him being more like the traditional Marth and Ike, but because he finally got his chance to appear in the game.
    • The Hero's reveal was met lukewarmly by Western fans of his origin franchise; even so, Eight, the hero from Dragon Quest VIII, was chosen specifically because Western fans of Dragon Quest requested him the most, and Erdrick, the hero from Dragon Quest III, received this treatment due to him being the closest-looking character to a Dragon Ball character, as well as being voiced by Nobuyuki Hiyama, who has also voiced another hero that has appeared in Smash before.
    • Despite being anime-styled fighters from a "niche" and very Japanese game, Pyra and Mythra ended up becoming extremely popular with Western fans, particularly compared to Hero or even Byleth, largely due to their Ms. Fanservice appeal and cool and dynamic swap-out moveset (a gimmick only shared with Pokémon Trainer). This got to the point where physical copies of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 started selling out of Western stores and were bumped up in price on the secondary market.
  • The announcement of Banjo & Kazooie caused its share of excitement in Japan.
  • Terry Bogard was well-received in Latin America and South East Asia, owing to the strong popularity of Fatal Fury, The King of Fighters, and other SNK games in those regions.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • Giga Bowser. Like many other bosses, he takes zero knockback from the other characters' attacks. Unlike all the other bosses, however, which are fought on plain arenas devoid of pits, you fight Giga Bowser in Final Destination. His attacks all deal heavy damage like other bosses, but the fact that the stage is small and has shorter blast lines than the other bosses' stages, coupled with Giga Bowser being huge like Galleom, can make dodging some of his attacks difficult despite being easily seen coming. His up smash also has crazy knockback compared to his other moves, and will KO you if your damage is high regardless of where you are.
  • The first battle against Dharkon. While you'll definitely have very good Spirits coming into his battle (including the stupidly powerful Soma Cruz spirit, which you obtain by enhancing Dracula's spirit), Dharkon's attacks are still more difficult to dodge than Galeem's. Particularly, his X Bombs explode ordinally (in an X) instead of cardinally (in a +), making them harder to avoid even while destroying each. For his Thorn Spray attack, the projectiles can't be reflected or absorbed, unlike Galeem's, and at half damage, he fires a bigger and more powerful one on top of them. Tangled Rush has him launch his tentacles inside portals, which are quick, deal high damage, and can shield stab. Lastly, his Temporal Rift attack has him slash and creates a rift in a random spot across space, slowing you down and making you a victim of his other attacks. The slash can hurt you as well.
  • Galeem's second solo battle, when compared to Dharkon's second solo battle. He has the same attacks as in the first fight as well as many others that are deadlier. His new attacks include Heat Seeker, in which he fires a huge fireball that homes in on you, exploding if it touches you or the floor; you can trick it, but the resulting explosion is still strong. For his Photonic Wave, he creates waves of light that travel along the screen borders, dealing constant damage if you're inside of them unless you're actively dodging. But the real kicker comes when he uses Lens Flare, a reprisal of Tabuu's Off-Waves; although his aren't necessarily a One-Hit Kill move like Tabuu's, they still hurt a lot, are much harder to detect, and can snowball one into another. And you better hope that the Random Number God will not have him use this attack right after he summons puppet fighters. However, not many of his older attacks took a level in difficulty to avoid, particularly his Tri-Eye Attack and Laser Net. Even his Drill Pierce, which now causes many more of his wings to come down, isn't too terrible to avoid.
• Good Bad Bugs: The game launched with a number of odd, yet absolutely hilarious glitches:
  • Should you have two Isabelles try to reel in an item that activates upon acquisition (including Assist Trophies, Hammers, and Warp Stars) with their side-specials at the same time, whichever of the Isabelles ended up with it will experience… interesting side effects. This includes summoning infinite copies of the same Assist Trophy repeatedly or getting stuck on a Warp Star with no way out. This has now been patched.
  • For some reason, Olimar and Alph's Pikmin don't scale properly with Spirits, causing their damage to inflate to obscene values and become capable of obliterating most opponents short of actual bosses in a single hit, given that enough Attack and/or Attack boosts are compounded together. If the set-up and conditions are right, Olimar/Alph can deal anywhere between a few hundred percent to a few thousand at once (although damage still caps at 999.0%). The bug has been fixed as of update 2.0.0.
  • Having a Monado Art activate immediately before Shulk is hit with a cinematic Final Smash (like K. Rool, Ridley, the Star Fox fighters, etc.) will give him the effects of every Monado Art at once, until he dies or activates another Art. This means he has the recovery and movement speed of Jump and Speed, the defense of Shield, and the power and knockback of Buster and Smash with very little of the drawbacks. This has since been patched out.
  • Hilariously, hitting Simon with Mario's cape at the exact moment that he uses his whip to tether recover causes Simon to start spazzing the hell out until he grabs the ledge.
  • If Ridley uses Space Pirate Rush on Sonic during Sonic's Homing Attack animation, Sonic will briefly experience a positioning error that causes him to momentarily warp away from his current position before he is properly returned back to Ridley's claw grab. However, if this is used on a 2D stage, it causes Sonic to teleport to the blast zone. This has since been patched out.
  • Using Rosalina's Gravitational Pull against Zelda's Phantom as it's attacking causes the Phantom to become stuck in an infinite orbit.
  • If a character throws an explosive item at the right moment as they are being inhaled by King Dedede, his face will get stuck with a hilarious expression. It has been patched since the 2.0.0 update, however.
  • Should Olimar/Alph throw their Pikmin onto Mother Brain (after being summoned through Assist Trophy by another player) before she has grown to full size, the Pikmin will increase in size along with her. It's only a graphical glitch and the Pikmin will return to normal size the minute they let go, so no fights using giant Pikmin for you.
  • If Yoshi eats K. Rool while K. Rool's crown is in mid-air, the crown will suddenly become much bigger than it is supposed to be upon hitting the ground and remain that way until it either respawns on K. Rool or K. Rool picks it up. This has been patched out.
  • In earlier versions of the game, Ditto can be exploited with the Pokémon Trainer in Training Mode to make him/her actually appear onstage and allow the Trainer to be interacted with. They're treated as an obstacle, having "weight" and being able to be pushed around but cannot actually attack or be attacked.
  • When playing the Shedinja spirit battle, the Game & Watch will be periodically invincible and when you do land a hit, the game will do the dramatic zoom in but sometimes he survives. And when he does, the game will start bugging out where the music will stop while the fight continues and the victory/defeat screen will be delayed by a few seconds or even up to a minute.
  • In Home Run Contest, if you batdrop the sandbag to make it fall just a bit off the platform and then hit it to the left, it will then rise up high, and then fall down into white oblivion.
  • On very rare occasions, upon loading up Town and City, Blanca's face will bug out and start rapidly cycling through all of the faces she can have in the game.
  • Pac-Man's hydrant can be very janky. Sometimes he'll be launched into the stratosphere. Sometimes his enemy will be launched instead. Others have taken advantage of this and can use it to dash halfway across the stage and forward smash in half a second. Pac can also use it to become intangible to people running into him (as well as not doing idle animations).
  • Under certain circumstances, such as getting hit by Palutena's Explosive Flame while climbing back onto a stage, Kazooie's neck may suddenly stretch out an incredibly long distance for a moment.
  • If multiple people have selected custom stages in an arena, the game can load one custom stage with the background, music, and blast lines of a different one.
  • Following the 8.0.0 update, it was found that if Little Mac uses his forward smash on one of the princesses, it will tear off the lower part of their dresses, exposing their legs. It has been fixed since.
  • In version 9.0.0, if certain characters attacked two of Steve/Alex's blocks in a certain way when one block is stacked one space in the air above the other one, they could fall through the stage's floor. This was patched in version 9.0.1.
  • Another oversight in version 9.0.0 caused Steve/Alex to be unable to be hurt by lava in the Super Mario Maker stage. This has been patched.

H-I

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • During Sakurai's signing off in the August 8th, 2018 Smash Direct, there were large vibrations which caused the camera to shake as a tease for K. Rool's reveal trailer, the start of which contained stronger vibrations that caused the Kongs' treehouse to bounce. Less than a month later, a deadly earthquake rocked Hokkaido, which, among other, significantly more serious things, caused the next Nintendo Direct to be delayed.
  • Ultimate was jokingly referred to besting Avengers: Infinity War as the biggest crossover of 2018. The November 1, 2018 Direct bested it, but not in a fun way. Infinity War's Downer Ending with half of the iconic characters disintegrated? Ultimate opens with everyone except for Kirby being disintegrated. This may possibly go back to Hilarious in Hindsight or Heartwarming in Hindsight when the first trailer to Avengers: Endgame was released the same day as Ultimate itself.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Before the release of the game, the now-late Etika expressed a particular fondness and loyalty to the ARMS fighter Min Min. Cut to years later, one year after he sadly took his own life, Min Min was announced to be the first character in the second Fighters Pass, and as a specific request from the game's developer, no less. Desmond is probably looking down with a smile on his face.
• He's Just Hiding: Hilariously, Nintendo UK seem to echo this sentiment after Luigi's unfortunate fate in the Belmonts' trailer, pointedly reassuring fans that Luigi would be just fine. Considering that Luigi had his soul slashed out by Death and didn't look any closer to heading back into his body before Carmilla spooked him again, fans weren't entirely convinced. Luigi is just fine in-game, but still, ouch.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The memes that spawned from Kirby’s copy ability from inhaling Joker giving him a gun got even funnier after Kirby and the Forgotten Land introduced Ranger as a copy ability, and it’s one of the best in the game at that.
  • Back in January 2019, Ultimate's first DLC character had a lot of people scratching their heads and asking "Why Piranha Plant?" Flash forward four years and now there's Piranha Plants aplenty in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, a bold, experimental title that shakes up the 2D Mario formula in a fair few ways. Suddenly, its inclusion doesn't seem as odd...still odd, but not as much.
  • Ganondorf's Classic Mode focuses on him defeating the heroes of various Nintendo franchises. Stage 1 has him facing Mario and Luigi on New Donk City. 5 years later, Mario and Luigi take on their own villain in New Donk's real life counterpart.
• Ho Yay:
  • In a couple of Palutena's ​guidance conversations, Pit calls Link and Cloud handsome.
  • Roy's Classic Mode Route Ending picture shows him smiling at Roy Koopa with a cute little heart between the two of them, implying a bit more than a strong friendship.
  • Some of the challenge board pictures fall into this category too. An example would be the Classic Mode 5.0 Snake challenge, which features an image of Bayonetta and Zero Suit Samus in the background, laying down very close to each other...
• Improved Second Attempt:
  • After the controversy that ensued from splitting Charizard off into its own character in the last game and leading to accusations of it being a Creator's Pet, it was rolled back into Pokemon Trainer, the other two starter Pokémon who are their own individual characters (Greninja and Incineroar) are generally considered to have more personality and more unique movesets than the other playable Pokémon, including Charizard and the other two members of the Trainer's trio.
  • After many fans complained that every Fire Emblem hero has to have a sword as their default weapon, the developers made sure that, while their sword still is their default weapon, Byleth also prominently uses the other weapon types in their moveset.
  • Upon release, Square Enix was accused of being very stingy with their Final Fantasy franchise, only offering Cloud Strife at launch and not featuring any Final Fantasy spirits aside from Cloud himself, plus the infamous mere two song tracks. While the inclusion of the Dragon Quest series in the game, and later spirits from Octopath Traveler and Trials of Mana, did give Square Enix more representation, Final Fantasy was still considered horribly underrepresented at the time. Come the 2020 Game Awards, however, and Final Fantasy VII antagonist Sephiroth was revealed to be a DLC fighter, giving fans lots of hope for better representation for the series. Indeed, the Mr. Sakurai Presents Sephiroth trailer showed a complete 180 in the music department from poor to prime with nine new tracks, including four Smash-exclusive remixes. Sakurai himself comes clean with why they previously had so little FF material previously: due to the complex rights issues with the original game at the time that only allowed them to barely scrounge out Cloud, Midgar, and three tracks (including Cloud's victory theme). Additionally, come Sephiroth's official release in Version 10.1.0, Cloud's fighter spirit for his FFVII appearance was retroactively changed to include his official artwork for that game.
  • When Final Smashes were first introduced, Zelda and Sheik’s were just the same with a different launch angle and Pokémon Trainer would always use the same one, feeling like different characters could have had different Final Smashes. Even Zero Suit Samus having a different Final Smash was still lackluster since it was just transforming back. Pyra and Mythra on the other hand have quite different Final Smashes while still being just as effective as each other.

M

• Memetic Badass:
  • Kirby is the only fighter to escape the Big Bad in the World of Light trailer, when every other fighter (including a Physical God or two) falls victim to it, lending credence to the belief that he is the most powerful Nintendo character of all-time. Even the inclusion of Sephiroth has not detracted his badassery; if anything, it enhances it as fans only dread what god-like powers Kirby would have if he eats Sephiroth. He's also the only fighter shown in Kazuya's trailer that survives getting thrown off a cliff, simply floating away afterward.
  • Isabelle is usually portrayed as this when not as a Memetic Psychopath or a complete Moe. This perception only increased when she was found to have several crazy glitches attached to her (namely a Game-Breaking Bug involving her slingshot and the infamous Infinite Assist Trophy glitch), resulting in players declaring her the most OP character in the game. It heightened further when the release dates of Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing: New Horizons lined up with each other, resulting in lots of fan-art of Isabelle and Doom Slayer killing demons which spilled over to Smash communities, helped by the Doom Slayer being a somewhat popular fan pick for a DLC fighter, and eventually becoming a Mii Gunner costume.
  • Pichu, due to it being considered a Lethal Joke Character instead of being a Joke Character like it was in Melee. This went in full force when VoiD's Pichu came second in Genesis 6, the first major post-release Ultimate competitive event.
  • Vince has attained this status due to the existence of his Mii Costume and Assist Trophy, leading some to joke that he should be playable for real. Some have even given him an Evil Counterpart in the form of "Dark Vincent". This is due to Alpharad's tournament series.
  • After their announcement, Banjo & Kazooie became this for being the only fighters implicated in the Grinch leak (aside from Ken, who had already been leaked elsewhere) to survive it.
  • The DLC fighters tend to become memetic within the context of World of Light, as they just suddenly join you with no battle after getting enough fighters. This has been interpreted as them somehow surviving Galeem's attack; Min Min, Pyra and Mythra in particular already have Spirits that are fightable in the mode, meaning they somehow got their bodies back entirely on their own, even if their spirits are still on the map when you unlock them.
  • Sonic became this when during the trailer for Steve, his forward smash attack caused Mario to be flown all the way to the Minecraft world, causing fans to believe that Sonic is so powerful that he can punch people to different dimensions.
  • Sephiroth quickly became this as soon as he was revealed, due to his trailer having him do things like seemingly impale Mario and kill Galeem in one hit. Some fans also noted that he was never shown with the written invitation other added fighters got, leading many to say that he didn't care if he was "invited" or not and just decided to show up and ruin Cloud's fun by slicing Galeem in half.
  • Min Min became this during Kazuya's presentation where the CPU of her at level 7 managed to beat Sakurai during a match, causing fans to believe that she's the best character in the game for being the only character who has managed to beat Sakurai during that time.
  • Shortly after Kazuya's release, his CPU has become this due to being far stronger than other CPUs^note In reality, Kazuya's CPU doesn't differs in terms of programming to other CPUs, rather the CPU is allowed to use moves done by inputs without human limitations. While this happens with Ryu, Ken and Terry as well, Kazuya's much larger pool of input moves amplifies the difficulty since the CPU can execute those moves without any delay. To put it into perspective, top players have lost to the CPU Kazuya's devastating combos and lightning-fast input speed, to the point where some have joked that the CPU is a Kazuya main and the best Kazuya player days after his release. Only the Amiibos can best him and one can only dread that if a level 9 CPU Kazuya can give even the top Smash players trouble, imagine what a Level 50 Kazuya Amiibo can do!
  • Shortly after the reveal of Sora being the final Smash DLC, fans immediately started joking that he only joined Smash specifically to get his third fight with Sephiroth. Even a portion of his trailer was dedicated to recreating the Sephiroth boss fight from Kingdom Hearts II. Doubly so since Sephiroth himself has a reputation as being The Dreaded.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Waluigi, similar to Chrom and Ridley before their inclusions, was often the source of ridicule due to being excluded from the roster, right down to being relegated to a role as an Assist Trophy for the third time in a row. This was later exacerbated by developments such as Daisy (who was also famous for getting snubbed), Piranha Plant (one of the very few Mario mooks who had never been playable in anything before and certainly less of a character than Waluigi), Joker (who was implied to have stolen someone else's Smash invitation), and Sora (who was the final DLC character revealed) joining the roster.
  • Ashley got this reception after the August 2018 Direct revealed she was an Assist Trophy once again, despite being one of the most commonly-speculated characters beforehand. The fact this happened in the same Direct that confirmed other popular requests like Simon and King K. Rool as playable characters only added more fuel to the fire.
  • Viridi got some of this for reasons such as not becoming playable herself despite being a relatively popular Kid Icarus Uprising character, Pit's Final Smash being the Lightning Chariot contradicting Dark Pit's Palutena's Guidance, Chrom joining the roster in apparent defiance of her insulting him in Robin's Palutena's Guidance from the previous game, and her new voice actress not being as well-received as Hynden Walch.
  • Tom Nook became one after Isabelle's reveal due to him appearing immediately after her announcement, sitting in a dark room and looking at a computer (the only light source in the room); while this was a lead-in to the announcement of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the look of the scene made it seem like Nook was in a deep depression, which was only exacerbated by his perpetually gloomy-looking expression. This led to people portraying him as resenting Isabelle getting Promoted to Playable status over him, despite his seniority in the Animal Crossing franchise.
  • In the competitive community, Pikachu has fallen into this. Pre-release, it was hyped up as being the best character in the game. When the game released, however, it got overshadowed by other top-tier characters, but most notably Pichu, who was originally a weaker Moveset Clone of Pikachu. It doesn't help that its best player has lost to Pichu multiple times. Even after Pichu was nerfed in game updates, it still ended up being a big crowd pleaser, leaving Pikachu in the dust and causing it to keep being seen as a High-Tier Scrappy (since it's still considered by some to be potentially the best character in the game).
  • On the opposite side of the competitive scene, Bayonetta, whose fall from grace is on a much higher scale compared to the one suffered by Meta Knight in 3DS/Wii U; her combo starters are butchered, her side special is completely foiled by shielding, much of her KO power was reduced and she can no longer carry opponents to the top blastzone.
  • A top tier in Melee and For 3DS/Wii U, and even a mid-tier in Brawl, Sheik was nerfed to the point she has difficulty killing, even at high percentages. Game updates have saved her for some people, although it's not uncommon to still hear her on the topic of characters that have fell since 3DS/Wii U.
  • Mai Shiranui, SNK's resident Ms. Fanservice character, became this when she was directly confirmed absent as a cameo by Sakurai because "Smash is for good boys and girls" (translation: "We don't want to incur the wrath of Moral Guardians or get the game re-rated to T or M"). As a result, she became subject to jokes and fan art over her exclusion.
  • Cloud was one for only having two songs and no extra Spirits from his game at launch, though this died down with the inclusion of Sephiroth as a fighter and the addition of 9 new songs and 13 new Spirits not counting fighters - though he was still one for a different reason, as Sephiroth's inclusion shows that even in a game like Smash Bros. Cloud can never escape his Arch-Enemy.
  • Some fans treat the male Pokémon Trainer as this because his English voice makes him sound like a stereotypical nerd, especially compared to previous voiced and unvoiced depictions of Red. It's not uncommon for these fans to treat the female Trainer as the more badass one responsible for bringing her team into the top tiers, or even to go full Fanon Discontinuity and treat her as the "true" version of Pokémon Trainer, similarly to Corrin.
  • Rex was hit with this the moment it was revealed that a Mii costume of him was to be included in the game instead of the actual character, due to being deemed too late for inclusion in the base roster. His status only grew when Byleth (whose game came out after Rex's) and Min Min (whose game faced similar circumstances with Rex for being too late for inclusion in the base roster) were announced as DLC characters, but it truly went into full force in February 2021 when it was revealed that he wouldn't be Promoted to Playable, but rather Pyra and Mythra instead. On the flip side, this is mitigated by how he still appears in their taunts and Final Smash, and his spirit can now be enhanced into Master Driver Rex, making him the best-treated character out of everyone this trope applies to. Pyra and Mythra's presentation further added to this by the reveal that he was originally intended to be playable, but hardware limitations prevented it. In the same video, he was also shown to also appear in their entry animation, and four out of the six victory poses Pyra and Mythra each have, which gives him the largest presence of any character that appears in another's moveset.
  • Mythra got hit with this when Sakurai stated he prefers Pyra over her, leading to Pyra fans feeling validated and the winner of the Pyra vs. Mythra wars that have raged since their game released. This dissipated when it turned out that Mythra (as a Fragile Speedster minus the fragility) was pulling most of the duo's weight as a top-tier character.
  • Spring Man was immediately hit with this following Min Min's announcement as the ARMS fighter. Despite actually getting a hold of the Smash invitation envelope, Ribbon Girl immediately knocks him out and his Assist Trophy even gets KOed by Min Min during her trailer. In official art drawn by the creators of ARMS, Spring Man can be seen irritatedly looking on as Min Min chows down with a few members of the roster. Adding insult to injury, an oversight resulted in the 8.0.0 update releasing with Spring Man's logo in Spring Stadium instead being Springtron's, though it was later corrected.
  • Galeem became this after Sephiroth's reveal, as the latter's trailer had him killing the former by bisecting him vertically, despite Galeem being the being which killed the entire multiverse sans Kirby.
  • Geno, especially after Sephiroth's reveal. He had been among the most speculated characters to be added for both the base game and both Fighters Passes. He gained renewed hope after Min Min who—like him—was already included in the base game as a spirit, was revealed as the first Volume 2 character, only to be shot down for good after Sephiroth's presentation revealed the return of his Mii costume, right as the presentation started, no less. Geno's status as this trope hardly tempered, if at all, when Sora, who's actually owned by Disney but has games developed by Square-Enix, was announced as the final DLC fighter, especially considering the supporters of Geno and Sora had a Fandom Rivalry during DLC speculation.
  • Donkey Kong is an ever-growing example, due to continuing to have bad matchups against nearly all the DLC characters because of his large frame and unsafe attacks.
  • Even Sephiroth has gotten this in small doses over the simple fact that he's portrayed as a Knight of Cerebus compared to everyone else, to the point where he states that he "will bring Smash despair" in his trailer... Yet, just like any other fighter, he can be beaten by a baby mouse, a potted plant, a baseball bat, be burnt by curry, among all the other silly shenanigans that the Smash series offers.
  • Heihachi Mishima got this in spades after Kazuya's reveal. Firstly, his despised son got in instead of him. Secondly, because he was relegated to a stage cameo in the Mishima Dojo. Thirdly, his Mii costume had already been in the game for around a year by that point, and he was in Pac-Man's taunt roulette. Lastly, because he had appeared in the "other game", which enjoys a much less favorable legacy than Smash does. To make matters worse, Heihachi was the Tekken fighter that Sakurai had initially considered, and a screenshot Sakurai posted soon after Kazuya's reveal can be interpreted as Heihachi pouting over not being playable. And to add further insult to injury, it turns out that the main reason Kazuya was added over Heihachi was because Sakurai figured out that he can use the Devil Gene, a.k.a. the very reason Heihachi threw Kazuya off that cliff in the first place, to make a faithful Tekken moveset for Smash Bros. Couple all of this with Kazuya finally killing Heihachi in Tekken 7, and the King of Iron Fist has officially gone through the wringer in terms of this trope.
  • In the days leading up to Challenger Pack 5's reveal, Dante became quite the anticipated character due to V's voice actor talking about how Dante "will be" in Smash at some point, as well as both the Challenger Pack 5 reveal and a Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening announcement for the Switch's port both happening on January 16th. Not only did both of those instances turn out to be unrelated, but the fifth fighter ended up being Byleth of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. The memes practically wrote themselves after it turned out that many fans had jumped the gun. Through most of Fighters Pass 2 speculation, Dante would become one of the most requested characters, until Kazuya's presentation, where he'd be revealed to be in the game... As a Mii costume, that is. Cue the endless "What the hell is this" jokes.
• Memetic Psychopath:
  • Kapp'n appears as an assist trophy where he drives a bus, which catches anyone unlucky enough to come into contact with it. He then drives off the stage and into the blast zone. Naturally, this has led to people thinking that he now kidnaps fighters.
  • Due to being shown wielding the weapon in the Direct, there has been a fair amount of fanart of Ness being corrupted by Death's Scythe.
  • Similar to Villager from the last game, Isabelle has received this treatment, with many fans being fond of depicting her and her adorable Fighting Clown style as being far more brutal and terrifying than she appears.
  • Simon is commonly depicted committing or planning to commit Van Helsing Hate Crimes against fellow fighters who are or at least vaguely resemble Gothic Horror creatures, such as mistaking Inkling^note Due to their Cute Little Fangs, Corrin^note Due to their draconic wings resembling that of a bat's, and Wii Fit Trainer^note Due to their literal pale white skin, not unlike a vampire for vampires, having Bayonetta or Ashley burnt at the stake, mistaking any of the Star Fox and Animal Crossing^note Excluding Villager, of course characters, as well as some of the more "anthropomorphic" Pokémon (like Lucario and Incineroar), for werebeasts, and Kazuya for being a literal demon. A similarly common follow-up on this is Richter being the Only Sane Man to his ancestor, often portrayed as being infinitely more understanding (due to Richter's starring roles involving him teaming up with Maria Renard, his sorcery-using cousin, and Alucard, Dracula's dhampyr son).
  • Banjo surprisingly got a bit of this treatment with his reveal trailer, given that he's shown as being creepily enthusiastic about using Kazooie as a bludgeon and his actions causing King K. Rool — who was uncharacteristically happy to see him and was peacefully hanging out with the Kongs — to fall to his doom and get crushed underneath a rock. This shows how long it's been since these characters were popular; the old Rare games were chock-full of Black Comedy of this level and higher. (Take George and Mildred Ice Cube, for example, who had to be literally destroyed in order to obtain some collectibles.)
  • Byleth's stoic behavior when beating up opponents have earned them this reputation in some parts of the fanbase, but especially with their down special, in which they swing a large axe down that could break shields with ease, even more than someone like Pichu. This becomes Hilarious in Hindsight as Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes shows that's canonically how they appeared before becoming a professor. Presumably, the turned based combat just made it easy to forget that they're actually really creepy in a fight due to their condition.
  • Kazuya Mishima's trailer helped him earn this status by showing him throwing Ganondorf, Captain Falcon, Pit, Min Min, Marth, and Kirby off into a pit of lava, much like how he and Heihachi did to each other in the Tekken games.
• Memetic Troll:
  • Incineroar's status as a heel fighter, a Base-Breaking Character in its home series, and the timing of its reveal makes people depict it enjoying debunking the "Grinch Leak" while taunting everyone who wanted more characters in the base roster.
  • The Piranha Plant became this in record time due to nobody seeing it coming and the direct it appeared in obliterating the much publicized "Grinch leak" with extreme prejudice, with fanart often depicting it trolling the characters implicated in the Grinch leak, as well as Waluigi (as Sakurai got a moveset for a potted plant but not him), in numerous ways.
  • Joker became one almost immediately after his reveal due to being another Unexpected Character. Fanworks were quick to portray Joker as stealing his invitation to join Smash Bros. from the likes of Waluigi, Banjo & Kazooie^note before their announcement, and Isaac.
  • Both the Hero and Banjo & Kazooie (if the latter two aren't portrayed as Memetic Badasses) got fan-art of them either ridiculing characters who didn't get in the game (Waluigi, Steve and Sora prior to their respective reveals, etc.) or outright beating the crap out of them. They're both also associated with the "Hoes Mad" meme, which was previously only attributed to Arusu.
  • Terry has since joined their ranks with his own take on said meme, "Hoes Fatally Furious", a wordplay on his home series Fatal Fury. His troll status would later skyrocket once it was (re)discovered that a (possible) mistranslation from KOF: Maximum Impact 2 (aka The King of Fighters 2006) listed one of his hobbies as "trolling." Although some argue that this is a mistranslation of "trawling," however, there actually exists a fishing method known as "trolling."
  • Sothis has become this, thanks to being the one that handed Byleth their Smash invitation as well as her generally sassy attitude and her making fun of the "too many swordsmen" complaint some Smash fans have. Following Byleth's reveal, an edit of her wanting salt for popcorn and a fanart inspired by it were usually used along the "Hoes Mad" meme (which also heavily featured the image at the end of the trailer of Sothis overlooking both Byleths) toward those who expressed disdain to Byleth's inclusion.
  • Sephiroth has obtained this sort of reputation shortly after his debut, often being depicted killing characters like Doomguy and Jonesy, two characters fans were expecting to be revealed at the Game Awards instead, seemingly just to upset those who desired their inclusion. Or that he seemingly followed Cloud to Smash Bros. just to screw with him. There's also been rounds for his fake-out stabbing of Mario as being either a massive screw-you to the plumber, or a sort of warning about what he could do if he felt like it.
• Misattributed Song: For a short time after the reveal, this occurred on both sides of the pond in regards to the game's theme "Lifelight."
  • Rena Strober of Fire Emblem Fates fame had to go on Twitter to confirm that she wasn't the singer of "Lifelight"; Abby Trott was the actual singer.
  • Fans believed the Japanese version was sung by Shanchii, who also did the first Japanese opening and ending of Kirby: Right Back at Ya!. The actual singer was a remarkably soundalike teenager named Erina Koga.
• Misblamed:
  • When Mai Shiranui was revealed by Sakurai to not be in the game, people brought up the fact that Sakurai included Bayonetta in the game and its predecessor. The truth is, however, that by including Mai, Sakurai would've violated CERO (ESRB's Japanese equivalent) guidelines and would have to get the game re-rated to something higher. Not only that, but Bayonetta had already been toned down a lot from her own games in order to allow her to appear in an E10+ game (her presence probably would've bumped it up to M), and Mai is a Shameless Fanservice Girl, which means that toning her down would been an Out-of-Character Moment.
  • To a lesser extent, the infamous "Smash Bros. is for good boys and girls" line from the Direct presentation on Terry. What was thought to be Sakurai throwing shade at Mai fans was actually the result of a mistranslation of what he was actually saying, which was that Smash was rated as a game for kids (and was instead throwing shade at CERO for the reasons listed above). Sakurai would later express irritation with said translation, saying it was essentially having words put in his mouth. This combined with complications regarding the COVID-19 Pandemic is likely why later "Mr. Sakurai Presents" videos use subtitles instead of overdubs.
  • The online netcode of Ultimate is generally agreed upon to be very lacking for the majority of people, with many people petitioning Nintendo to create a better netcode or to at least fix the one being used. Except Nintendo didn't develop Ultimate, let alone the netcode for its online play. While it was directed by Masahiro Sakurai, he is a freelancer and not "officially" employed at Nintendo, and the rest of the development team is made up of Bandai Namco employees. Tellingly, Tekken 7 and Soul Calibur VI, which are also developed by Namco in addition to being published by them, are also agreed upon by their respective communities to have mediocre netcode.
  • Final Fantasy's and Dragon Quest's lackluster music representation is commonly blamed on its owner Square Enix being stingy. In the former's case, Sakurai revealed in "Mr. Sakurai Presents Sephiroth" that the music in Final Fantasy is owned by multiple people, and the ownership also differs from country. This meant that to get any music approved without making it region exclusive, Sakurai had to get every copyright owner's permission. Meanwhile, Square Enix does not even own the music in Dragon Quest but rather the composer the late Koichi Sugiyama retained full rights so they would have to get permission from him and he was notorious for being very difficult to work with.
  • The lack of Disney characters in Sora’s overall presentation has been almost universally blamed on Disney being stingy… when in reality, it’s because of Sakurai’s STRICT policy about having non-video game characters in Smash (for the record, Cloud and Sephiroth’s Advent Children outfits and remixes DO come from a movie, but we’re still talking about video game characters and music), so it’s logical that he wouldn’t go out of his way to put cartoon characters, especially ones as iconic as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy, in a game that’s about celebrating video games. What makes this particularly strange is that the fandom has always brought that up when talking about characters like SpongeBob, Spider-Man and, most famously, Goku.
  • It was long believed that Disney's strict protection of their properties was why it took so long to negotiate Sora’s inclusion in the first place. However, as he would reveal during an interview to promote Kingdom Hearts IV, series director Tetsuya Nomura was more reluctant to allow Sora in compared to Disney. According to Nomura, Disney was actually quite eager to let Sora join Smash, while Nomura himself had some initial hesitation about possible conflicts between Sora being in Smash and the established lore of the Kingdom Hearts series.
  • The conspicuous lack/replacing of the titles of ESRB M rated games in the North American versions of trailers is frequently blamed on Nintendo of America being overly strict, to the point some claim NoA has a specific policy regarding it. The actual party prohibiting the mentioning of ESRB M rated games alongside lower rated games is the ESRB themselves, courtesy of regulations they introduced in 2020. Further evidence is the use of the Persona logos prior to this mandate, as well as PEGI adopting the same strategy around the time Kazuya was added.
• Moe:
  • Zelda's A Link to the Past/A Link Between Worlds redesign in Ultimate makes her looks really expressive and adorable.◊
  • Isabelle, just as in her home series, is adorable and her reveal trailer exploits it for all it's worth. Sakurai himself essentially made sure her animations would be as cute as possible.
  • The female Pokémon Trainer is considered one of the cutest characters in the game. Her voice and in-battle animations make her come across as more innocent and cheery than her male counterpart, and her interactions with her Pokémon (two of which are Badass Adorable in their own right) are even cuter, especially in her victory poses. Many players find her to be lovable in her own right especially given that neither Trainer can be controlled directly except on the World of Light map.
  • For Assist Trophy characters: Nikki from Swapnote could hold a candle to Isabelle. Many fans are quite glad that they can't hurt her.
  • Pyra and Mythra also count as this. While Pyra is more confident and competitive here, she's just as lovable and endearing as ever. Meanwhile, Mythra is... well, Mythra, but her cockiness, sassiness, and cuteness all manage to shine through in Smash.
  • Consistent with their home series, all the Inklings are adorable, especially the purple-haired one in her schoolgirl outfit, which we only see in this game.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The final hit of any match will not only zoom in on the hit character, but produce an immensely satisfying sound. Don't let your guard down, though; your opponent can potentially survive this.
  • Particularly hard-hitting attacks, like the Falcon Punch and Byleth's Aymr, get a cool punctuated sound effect in addition to the camera zoom-in when they connect. Landing such Difficult, but Awesome moves is made all the sweeter thanks to the sounds.
  • The whip cracks of Simon and Richter's Vampire Killer, especially for their Up and Side Smash Attacks. Hearing it upon landing a killing blow is immensely satisfying.
  • Hearing "VICTORY!" after defeating a difficult spirit, like a Legend-class one or some Ace-class spirits, even more if done on the first try.
  • One right upon starting the game: "Colors weave into a spire of flame..."
  • The two main villains of World of Light make satisfying sounds when they are stunned: Galeem with a high-pitched ping, and Dharkon with a meaty smack. Hearing these means you get a few seconds to beat on one of the evil gods trying to control/destroy the universe, and should the other one be active in the final battle, this means that the boss that's down is about to take a hard hit from the one that isn't.
  • Just like in Persona 5 proper, the sound effects that play for Joker's All-Out Attack make landing one all the more awesome, especially the gushing noise at the end when foes start emitting High-Pressure Sparkles.
  • Hero's retro-styled Critical Hit sound effects (which are unique for each of the four incarnations), as controversial as the mechanic may be. It's definitely satisfying to hear if you manage to successfully land a hit on someone with either a critical Smash Attack or Hatchet Man, which can be very hard to do if they're not asleep or have had their shield broken.

N

• Narm:
  • Seeing the Moon slowly inch towards the world with a world-ending explosion and a look of crazed anticipation on its face? Terrifying. Seeing the same moon barrel towards a stage with a smaller but no less over-the-top explosion and the same look of crazed anticipation on its face? Hilarious.
  • You can't take Ridley's character art seriously when someone points out that he's doing a Boobs-and-Butt Pose.
  • As cool and dark as the World of Light trailer is, it sucks the viewer out of the mood once the camera cuts to the non-playable characters being vaporized as they're very obviously just various pieces of promotional/official artwork placed into the scene, causing them to look completely unfazed by the end of the world.
  • After hearing Fox, Marth, and the like speak in full sentences in the World of Light opening, it's a little bit silly when Shulk foresees the incoming doom, whirls around to everyone else, and... simply emits one of his generic grunting noises in their direction. It's not even one of his more frantic-sounding grunts, either; it's one that sounds more like someone lightly shoved him in the stomach.
  • Most art for the Spirit-possessed Fighters depict them with glowing red eyes, but on the models used the actual gameplay battles, they have pink schlera and lighter pink pupils. On many characters, this makes it look like their eyes are bloodshot from a case of pinkeye or being stoned.
  • The Exploration missions have the characters depicted as walking through caves or a jungle, however, their "walking animations" are just their pictures hopping up and down while the background is moving. That wouldn't be so bad if the characters were already silly to begin with, but just imagine a serious character (ex: any Metal Gear character), or better, an inanimate "character" (ex: any of the Star Fox vehicles) doing that animation.
  • Due to the lack of music tracks from horror games, most battles with Spirits that are associated with the horror genre will use music from the Luigi's Mansion series. The Spirit battle for Mio & Mayu Amakura uses the track "On the Hunt -Gloomy Manor Ver.- (Instrumental)", which sounds ridiculously goofy for a horror theme, especially when you consider how legitimately terrifying their game can be.
  • Due to there being a The Legend of Zelda character of the same name, the spirit of Dimitri from Fire Emblem: Three Houses specifies his series, referred as "Dimitri (Fire Emblem)" in the game. The problem is that he's an enhanceable spirit that changes to his post-timeskip appearance from his origin game, but the spirit didn't get rid of specifying his series. Thus his enhanced spirit is referred as "Dimitri - Five Years Later (Fire Emblem)" in the game.
  • As Sakurai himself points out in the Kazuya presentation, his Final Smash's declaration of "This will be your burial ground!" sounds absolutely badass... until you consider he can say it to characters like Pikachu and Isabelle.
• Narm Charm:
  • Wolf's voice. While in Star Fox and Brawl he has been a baritone, Ultimate averts said trope due to Jay Ward's (his voice actor) new delivery compared to Brawl, which sounds more guttural. That being said, Wolf's raspy and "over-the-top" voice lines, along with his pain sounds that resemble those of a real life canine, are still considered funny... although people won't deny his taunt where he snarls is actual Narm material.
  • Likewise, the male Pokémon Trainer's voice by Billy Bob Thompson has been criticized for being very nasally and not up to par to Red's other appearances across Pokémon media, but it can also come across as endearing and earnest in a dorky way to some people.
  • The reveal trailer is pretty over-dramatic, considering that the usually cute Mario and Inkling are in ominous shadow by the time the teaser is almost over. But the animation and music are so well done that those things are easy to forget.
  • Ganondorf retains the the Arabian carpet-looking cape he donned in ''Ocarina of Time', except it's much more detailed this time around. It certainly doesn't make him look any less badass.
  • The new remix of "Gangplank Galleon" features a bridge that can only be described as "The K. Rool Rap". ACE pulls it off with flair.
  • The Enderman comes off as more endearing than scary, due to having shorter limbs compared to Minecraft proper.
• Nausea Fuel: Banjo and Kazooie's home stage, Spiral Mountain, features a unique rotation gimmick which has the whole stage spin around the peak. While stages which technically move around in a circle aren't unheard of, the stage spinning coupled with the fighters not moving with the ground while it's spinning can cause very minor motion sickness.
• Newer Than They Think:
  • Ganondorf's sword in this game didn't come from Ocarina of Time. It came from a demo from Spaceworld back in 2000. It's just that in Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, his sword fights with Link had such a lasting impression that many people think of him as a sword fighter, which is why this Ganondorf uses a sword for Smash Bros.
  • Chrom's Up-Special move actually isn't based off of Ike's. It's from a move Chrom himself used when fighting "Marth" in Awakening. It's possible the move was supposed to reference Ike even then, but the fact remains that it has a canonical basis, instead of being done simply to make him more distinct from Roy. Plus, it makes sense that Chrom would have Aether as it was a move exclusive to the Great Lord class in Awakening, though the animation for the move in that game is different from Ike's (the Awakening version is instead used as Chrom's Final Smash).
• Nintendo Hard: World of Light and the Spirit Board have incredibly strong spirits which cause incredibly difficult and cheap fights, many of which have been infamous from the community. The game is also ranked inbetween "Just Right" and "Tough" difficulty on GameFAQs.

O

• Older Than They Think:
  • Ultimate isn't the first fighting game to bring back every playable character from a previous installment — Mortal Kombat: Armageddon did that 12 years ago — and the Trope Namer for Dream Match Game is The King of Fighters, whose 1998 installment was subtitled Dream Match Never Ends and brought back several characters from previous KOF games, although it didn't have everyone until the Ultimate Match version in 2008. The Tekken Tag Tournament games are also famous for bringing back nearly all previously playable characters for a single game before the canon titles returned.
  • Many people have claimed that Ultimate had an unusually short development period compared to its two predecessors. While one might assume this by looking at the gap between releases, one has to remember the development of those older games didn't start immediately after their predecessors' releases, since Sakurai took on other projects between working on Smash games, namely Kirby Air Ride and Kid Icarus: Uprising. Ultimate is the first time he's gone straight from working on one Smash game to the next since Melee, which is the real explanation for the shorter gap between releases.
  • Mario received quite the Butt-Monkey treatment in trailers, as many people noted. In reality, shades of this also took place in Melee and Brawl. Melee's Adventure Mode featured Luigi footstooling his brother on the occasions he would join the battle and Sonic both rushed past to knock Mario down and made him the target of his P-P-K combo. That being said, the former only happened under certain conditions and the latter also features Mario and Sonic making a triumphant pose together, providing balance.
  • Stage transformations were done in a more limited manner in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. In that game, it was a forced feature, all transformations were fixed, and most of them kept the same layout post-transformation. Before that, Smash itself had a similar concept with the Castle Siege stage back in Brawl, which itself returns in Ultimate, and further back still, Mortal Kombat 3 and others featured stage transitions via Ceiling Smash, though those ones physically moved the players instead of transforming the stage.
  • Not many people are aware that Assist Trophies could be attacked and even KO'd all the way back in Smash 4, because this feature was never well-documented at all. Even older than that is that Lakitu and Starfy could be KO'd all the way back in Brawl. Getting a point for doing so is new to Ultimate, but Wii U had a similar feature where KOing Ridley, a stage hazard, would award a point.
  • This isn't the first time that Nintendo has acknowledged the presence of Moveset Clone characters in Smash and labeled them as such. Melee depicted them with a recessed icon on the character select screen, next to the character they were cloned from. Sakurai also explained the rationale behind making clones vs. original characters in the run-up to that game's release as well.
  • There has been surprise about how Zero Suit Samus' physique has been changed to be more athletic and realistic. She's been portrayed as an Amazonian Beauty all way back in Super Metroid. It's also not the first time she had this build in a Zero Suit, as Metroid: Samus Returns was the basis for Ultimate's body type. In a similar situation, technically this isn't the first time Snake is presented without his "assets", as the first two Metal Gear games had Snake in a standard soldier's outfit, but those games suffer from Sequel Displacement.
  • Fans exploding at the idea that Luigi was killed off by Death, proclaiming that the Year of Luigi is over? They might be surprised to learn that Luigi has wound up dead before:
    • The Nintendo Adventure Books had only one good ending each, but several bad endings. In one, Mario smashes an egg with a giant rolling pin, intending to pre-emptively stop a monster from attacking, only to find Luigi was inside.
    • In the 3DS version of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate, there's a nameless corpse whose last message alludes to Luigi by mentioning a brother named Mario and commenting about pipes and mushrooms. This corpse is even found in Dracula's castle and the game was released in the Year of Luigi.
  • This isn't the first time that Death's Scythe from Castlevania is an item that the player can use. It is a secret weapon in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow lets you craft it as a late-game weapon, though it was a mundane Infinity +1 Sword on both cases rather than the One-Hit Kill weapon it is in Ultimate.
  • Depending on one's familiarity with Smash and Castlevania, it may be common to think that the Belmonts' ability to freely move the Vampire Killer around was influenced by Sheik's chain from Melee, with several reactors outright calling this out in their videos. However, Castlevania buffs are more likely to recognize that Simon actually originated the free control in Super Castlevania IV and Richter could do the same in Symphony of the Night, predating Sheik's variant by several years. When looking at reactions, either one of these two sources are likely to be name-dropped.
  • Some fans were surprised by the seemingly over-the-top Boxing Ring titles of Kirby ("The Pink Demon") and Ridley ("Cunning God of Death"), unaware that both of these titles originate from their respective series.
  • Joker's inclusion seems surprising given that the Persona franchise only has 2 spinoff games on Nintendo consoles at the time of his announcement, especially since every mainline title has been a PlayStation exclusive^note at least until Persona 5 Royal, Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 3 Portable were announced for launch on non-PlayStation consoles, including the Switch, in 2022, but people might forget that Persona's parent franchise, Shin Megami Tensei, has had games on Nintendo consoles since its very first game, including the upcoming Switch-exclusive Shin Megami Tensei V^note A lot of this has to do with people seeing Persona as a separate franchise from Shin Megami Tensei, as many people who play the Persona games have never touched the Shin Megami Tensei series. Atlus has also collaborated with Nintendo several times in the past, most notably with Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE. Joker's appearance here seems to be a similar situation to Cloud's, given he is simply the most popular character from a company which has had a strong connection with Nintendo.
  • This isn't the first time the Persona series was in a fighting game; they actually have their own fighting game spinoffs from 2012 and 2014. The franchise was also in BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, another Massive Multiplayer Crossover about six months before Joker's announcement.
  • Some people thought that part of the tip for Toon Link's down aerial - "If you try to dunk someone with it, you're gonna have a bad time." - was referencing Undertale. They don't realize that this exact tip, minus the mention of Young Link (who wasn't in that game), was also in For Wii U, which was released nearly a full year before Undertale. The quote is more likely referencing a meme from the South Park episode "Asspen", which Undertale also has a nod to.
  • The iconic red Piranha Plants with white dots could be captured in Super Mario Odyssey and thus controlled by the player. It should be noted, however, those were different variants that could breathe fire and poison, instead of the more common ones that appear in pipes to bite.
  • Many fans claim that Ridley's Meta Ridley costume is heavily influenced by the more recent Proteus Ridley due to having visible purple flesh on his head, limbs, and back. However, Meta Ridley's original design has always had exposed flesh in the same places as the Ultimate costume; while it was heavily desaturated (to the point of looking somewhat metallic in-game) in the original Metroid Prime, it is more clearly colored purple in Brawl and his First 4 Figures model, showing that the organic flesh was indeed always present on Meta Ridley's design.
  • With Joker's neutral special being a realistic-looking gun, Kirby can now wield a gun by copying him, which many people found to be a somewhat strange concept. However, Kirby was previously shown firing a gun in an episode of Kirby: Right Back at Ya! and even in the previous game when he copies Bayonetta. Not only that, but he actually used a gun in a minigame all the way back in Kirby's Adventure (though in that game, the gun fired an Extendo Boxing Glove).
  • The Savage Indian from Fire Attack was already Bowdlerised in Game & Watch Gallery 4.
  • Banjo & Kazooie aren't the first non-Donkey Kong Country/Star Fox Adventures Rare representation in the Smash Bros. series as the Motion-Sensor Bomb^note Only in the Japanese version, though. Western versions give it its GoldenEye 007 design and Cloaking Device items from Melee were explicitly taken from Perfect Dark. Even before that, the original Super Smash Bros. had the Motion-Sensor Bomb's design based on its appearance in GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64.
  • Banjo and Kazooie's inclusion isn't the first time Nintendo and Microsoft have worked together. Microsoft used an image of a family playing Mario Paint in their Encarta encyclopedia, and even credited it to Nintendo.
  • Ultimate wasn't the first fighting game to use the concept of characters from the franchises represented (and even beyond the playable cast) and having them be an Equippable Ally to give perks and advantages in combat, as the Heroes and Heralds mode in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 did just that (even having a similar rarity system years before SSBU was released). Heck, it's not even the first Smash Bros. game to do so either, as Super Smash Bros. Brawl had Stickers included as collectibles, which are identical in concept and executed in nearly the same way.
  • This is far from the first time Kazuya has clashed with characters from Street Fighter, Mega Man, PAC-MAN, Fatal Fury, and Final Fantasy. His father Heihachi has also faced a Metal Gear character in another platform fighter. In one instance, he even teamed up with not just Street Fighter and Mega Man, but also Fire Emblem and Xenoblade.
  • One of the reasons Kazuya caught people off-guard is Heihachi's Mii costume already being released, causing some fans to believe Tekken content was ruled out. In reality, this had previously happened when Chrom and the Black Knight received Mii costumes prior to Corrin's release back in for 3DS/Wii U.
  • While Like a Dragon fans latched on to Kazuya's white and red suit alt for resembling Kiryu's own suit, Kazuya previously donned a similarly colored suit in Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, where everyone who was already in the original Tekken 5 got their default colors changed.
  • From a competitive standpoint, most Smash players unfamiliar with fighting games may not realize that the Tekken community originated the term "wavedash", as the introduction of the technique in Tekken 3 in 1997 predates Melee by 4 years, and the term was adopted by the Melee community due to their technique being similar enough to the original seen in Tekken. Not only that, but due to Ultimate removing Melee-style wavedashing, this makes Kazuya the only character who can actually wavedash in the game.
  • Sora's inclusion in the game is not the first time Nintendo worked with Disney. Through their second-party developer at the time Rare, they did Mickey's Speedway USA, published the Capcom-developed GBA port of the first Magical Quest and Magical Mirror for GameCube, themselves created a few Mickey Mouse themed Game & Watch systems (all of which are referenced in Brawl's Chronicle^note Albeit the former three are exclusive to the Japanse version), published Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order, and they licensed Disney and Pixar characters in Disney Art Academy. There's also a Disney Tsum Tsum Festival themed Nintendo Switch. Even outside of games, the 1993 Super Mario Bros. film was distributed by Disney under their Hollywood Pictures label. Nintendo also lent Bowser for a cameo appearance in the movie Wreck-It Ralph and even namedropped Mario within the movie. Even before Nintendo entered the video game market, they produced playing cards that featured Disney characters during the 1950s and 1960s.
  • Also concerning Sora, the removal of Disney characters from the stained glass Dives to the Heart also has precedent elsewhere, such as in Kingdom Hearts-themed pop-up cafés or merchandise — basically anything that isn't the actual Square Enix-created games which would help mitigate the cost of licensing the IP.
• One-Scene Wonder: Marx has proven especially memorable despite his lack of plot relevance, thanks to Monster Clown aesthetics and Body Horror. Many encountering this boss for the first time rank him as the freakiest thing in Ultimate.

P

• Padding: Byleth's reveal trailer has a jarringly high amount of this, with most of the runtime being taken up by the Seinfeldian Conversation with Sothis and the Purple Prosing done by Solon, with the gender-swapped alts and Heroes' Relics not taking focus until a little over halfway into the trailer. Most other trailers either get to the point, or like in the cases of Joker, Terry, and Min-Min, have a substantial style difference that keeps the audience's attention, which Byleth's reveal trailer falls short in.
• Pandering to the Base:
  • Appeasing popular fan requests (both casual and competitive) and addressing complaints seems to be the most significant push in Ultimate's marketing. The game brings back features from Melee such as its directional air-dodging, adds "Battlefield form" to stages (similar to the "Omega form" stages, but with the layout of Battlefield instead), and allows the player to disable Stage Hazards, to aid the tournament community. But the game also brings back every playable character from previous entries (some of whom were highly requested to return, especially Snake and Wolf), and includes characters who many fans had long-requested to be in the games, such as Ridley, Simon Belmont, King K. Rool, Banjo & Kazooie, and Sora (the latter two fighters via Downloadable Content). In addition, it changes certain characters in other ways, such as Ganondorf, whose moveset finally implements his sword, and Pokémon Trainer, whose fatigue and type damage mechanics were removed in response to complaints about them.
  • One notable thing about the marketing is how there is a divide between stuff for casual fans and more dedicated fans. The E3 2018 Direct and the August 2018 Direct were both focused on Ultimate and included reveals for characters that are infamous in the Smash community (notably Ridley and K. Rool), while the characters that were revealed in more general Nintendo Directs were very popular with casual fans (Inkling and Isabelle).
• Periphery Demographic:
  • Joker was an inclusion from an M-rated game and mainly intended for adult Smash fans. However, he was so damn cool that he ended up popular with children as well (overlapping with the very young Persona 5 fanbase on TikTok), especially those who enjoy "edgy" things. The fact that he wields a realistic gun not subject to Family-Friendly Firearms^note it's not a real gun, but one only learns it by playing his game of origin is a particular selling point for the kid demographic, much of which enjoys M-rated games and wants to feel "grown up" in the first place, and in fact his inclusion helped bring in a cohort of younger fans to Persona 5. It also helps that Joker uses a stylish, cartoonish anime artstyle as opposed to the gritty, realistic aesthetic of similar characters like Snake, and that his game is all about youths teaming up to fight against the authority of out-of-touch and selfish adults - a concept inherently appealing to kids, particularly those who are fed up with how older adults are running the world.
  • The Pokémon Trainer was created as a homage to the Pokémon series' core mechanics of training and battling. However, they are widely-loved among Marvel vs. Capcom and Dragon Ball Fighter Z players because their switching mechanic, now free of the restrictions from Brawl, makes them play very similarly to the 3v3 fighter teams used in those games. It helps that there is already some Capcom synergy in Smash from Mega Man and the Street Fighter duo, and that the Kanto starter Pokémon trio themselves are beloved and nostalgic characters just like the cast of Marvel Comics and Dragon Ball Z. Pyra and Mythra similarly benefit from their character swap mechanic, but also have visual designs that appeal to fans of anime fighters such as Guilty Gear and BlazBlue.
  • Those unfamiliar with Custom Robo will still use the Ray Mk. III Mii costume as a stand-in for robots they are familiar with.
• Popular with Furries: Largely due to this game adding the most anthropomorphic animal/bestial characters than any game that came before it. This includes newcomers ^note Ridley, King K. Rool, Isabelle, Incineroar, and Banjo & Kazooie, as well as returning ones^note Bowser, the Star Fox fighters, the returning Pokémon, and Sonic and even some Assist Trophies^note The Sonic assists, Dillon, and especially Krystal, due to wearing her outfit from Star Fox Adventures and her... exposed private parts.
• Presumed Flop: Hero and Banjo-Kazooie were debuted on the same day. Hero initially received a fairly tepid reaction from Western fans, in part because Dragon Quest has always been much more popular in Japan than it is abroad. This lead many Western fans to assume that Japan felt the same way about Banjo that they did about Hero, and that over there, Hero was widely celebrated while Banjo was dismissed or hated. However, Banjo's announcement was warmly received by the Japanese fanbase overall.

R

• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Echo Fighters in general got a huge boost in popularity after the E3 2018 Direct made it more clear to the players that they are supposed to be bonus characters rather than "roster padding" as they've been seen as in previous games, simply by making their character number the same as their base characters' numbers, but with an epsilon symbol added (which implies that they officially aren't seen as characters made from scratch). This spawned tons of fan demand to see characters such as Ninten, Ken Masters, and Shadow the Hedgehog be playable (which turned true in Ken's case). It's been helped by the fact that Echo Fighters can be "stacked" on top of who they're a clone of, making them feel more like alternate costumes with differing properties.
  • Dark Pit was originally the most despised character in 3DS/Wii U, largely because he's a Moveset Clone of Pit with a clichéd Darker and Edgier characterization and being "proof" for Sakurai being biased towards Kid Icarus for some fans, considering how the series got three fighters while fan favorites like Donkey Kong and Metroid didn't receive any new characters. With his new distinction as an Echo Fighter, which clarified that he didn't steal a character slot as he was originally accused to do so, as well as the inclusion of Ridley, King K. Rool and Dark Samus, those complaints vanished into thin air.
  • A more subdued case here: the Mii Fighter costumes have been much better received compared to their debut in For 3DS/Wii U. Where before, many players seemed to see them as an insult, the inclusion of some rather surprising picks like Sans, Cuphead and Vault Boy have excited the fanbase almost as much as if they had been actual fighters, to the point that many fans are now hoping that certain characters, especially those who may not make good Smash fighters, can get a second chance as costumes. King K. Rool and Chrom getting promoted from Costume to Fighter in Ultimate probably helps too. That being said, they're still rather contested, if not more than ever, given that they include other fan-favorite requests like Rex (although this was alleviated somewhat with Pyra and Mythra's playability and the fact that Rex was still considered to appear as a playable fighter for the second Fighters Pass), Geno, Lloyd Irving (both returning from Smash 4),Travis Touchdown, Dante, and Shantae (all of which were heavily requested to be playable by fans).
  • Many Low Tier Letdowns from previous installments became much more warmly received after Ultimate gave them some much-needed polish and Balance Buffs:
    • Ganondorf has received a significantly warmer reception than in previous games, as he's a bit more viable than he was in Brawl and 3DS/Wii U, he has his younger-looking Ocarina Of Time design, and he uses the Spaceworld 2000 sword that went unused in Melee for his smash attacks; the latter point has particularly saved him a lot of flak, considering many fans had long been asking for him to incorporate sword attacks in his moveset. While he's still considered a low-tier character, most fans appreciate the changes and consider this one of the best-designed and most fun iterations of the King of Evil.
    • Zelda received a hefty increase in popularity in Ultimate, due to a combination of some much-needed gameplay improvements, a new vibrant personality (contrasting her previous nondescript, stoic one), and a well-received design overhaul.
    • Samus has historically been a poor character. With the exception of her Melee and 3DS/Wii U incarnations, she has been slow, weak, highly ineffective at a boxing range and sometimes even on the zoning game that is supposed to be her calling card, and frequently thwarted at every turn by mechanical issues that make her even more useless; as such, she has never risen above low-tier status competitively, save for her run in upper-mid-tier in Melee and mid-tier in 3DS/Wii U (though the latter would require a significant amount of game updates for this). This was initially how she was seen come Ultimate, but fortunately it changed as a combination of game mechanics and heavy buffs and tweaks have made her a genuinely good character who is a legitimate long-range threat and can also reliably KO up close. While few would call her one of the absolute best in the game, she is unanimously held to be a consistently viable high-tier choice.
    • Jigglypuff was seen as bottom tier in both Brawl and 4 due to its poor mobility on both the ground and the air, being the lightest character, and lack of kill options. Ultimate greatly buffed it by improving its air game and special moveset, making Pound faster, Sing having more range and being faster, and Rest being interruptible faster if it hits an opponent. And it actually got buffed even further with 2.0.0's and 6.0.0's balance patches ^note Jigglypuff was infamous for not receiving any buffs in 4's patches for the game, which further improved its aerials.
    • Pichu, of all characters, was warmly welcomed back into Ultimate by a portion of the fandom, even though the character's hated self-damage mechanic still made a return. Surprisingly, its character video has significantly less dislikes than those of Snake, Zero Suit Samus, and Bayonetta. ^note This is likely because Bayonetta is considered the most broken character in Smash 4 and is hated in competitive play, while the sizes of Snake's butt and Zero Suit Samus' chest have been reduced. Come to the actual game release, it is shown to have many improvements towards its gameplay as this video showcases, making it no longer a very Low-Tier Letdown like it was in Melee. Its self-damage, extremely light weight, and poor range on normals and Smashes are still issues, but its incredible mobility and vastly improved killing power greatly skew things in its favor, and the introduction of Rage makes its self-damage far less of an issue. Although some pro players argued on release that the buffs for Pichu probably went horribly right, game updates made sure to knock Pichu down a peg by giving it a few nerfs, so Pichu is still well-liked due to its high-risk, high-reward playstyle with heavy offensive pressure, wide variety of mixups and flashy combos, which resonate with pros and spectators alike.
    • The Pokémon Trainer returns without the Scrappy Mechanics of stamina and type effectiveness that made him a pain to play with in Brawl, now reworked into the useful and captivating character that was meant to be, and adding the much beloved and missed female FireRed/LeafGreen trainer as an extra costume option. Their three starter Pokémon also became much more vibrant, lovable and viable than their bland, half-assed Brawl incarnations, with unique animations and more well-rounded movesets that don't make them suffer from the Crippling Overspecialization that was meant to encourage the Pokémon Change mechanic. Ivysaur and Charizard in particular have been criticized for being very lackluster characters in previous games (even with Charizard as a standalone fighter early on in 3DS/Wii U), but are much more well-liked for their roles within the Trainer's team in Ultimate.
  • In Melee, some people were disgruntled about Young Link being just "Link, but younger". Now there are plenty of people who are excited to play as him again as the other two Links in the game have changed quite the amount since Brawl, and he himself is the only way to play as the Hero of Time in this game.
  • Incineroar was a major Base-Breaking Character in its home series due to its character design making it look like another Fire/Fighting starter and being an underwhelming Mighty Glacier in battle. During pre-release, there were many people who were against the idea of it joining the roster and rooted for other Gen 7 Pokémon. When it was finally revealed, however, it was shown to have a lot of personality in-game that won it a lot of fans, and its moveset is rather unique compared to the other playable Pokémon, with people enjoying its pro-wrestling based style. While it still has some detractors from people who dislike it since its debut, many more people are more accepting of it in Smash than they were before.
  • Cloud was one of the most widely hated characters in competitive play during 3DS/Wii U due to a combination of a massively overloaded kit on top of some of the fastest movement and best mobility in the game, what was perceived to be the single highest ease-of-use/effectiveness ratio in the game (unless you were an absolute beginner, you could pick him up and do well with him), his ability to force every other character in the game to approach him due to being able to charge Limit if they stayed away (while a Cloud with full Limit would have his great movement specs increased farther on top of getting access to some devastating moves and a buffed recovery), and being very common in usage, with it being a joke that everyone had a "pocket Cloud". While he had his weaknesses (a limited and exploitable recovery alongside a poor grab and underwhelming throws), they were in the unfortunate position of being just enough to keep him from being broken, but not enough to actually limit his effectiveness. In short, he was the clearest definition of a high-tier Scrappy that could be found outside of the infamous Bayonetta. Ultimate addressed this by making him much more manageable, gaining more defined weaknesses (Limit Break now has a duration of 15 seconds instead of being permanent until a Limit Break move is used, his overly large hitboxes and absurd frame data on his aerials are toned down, and some of his moves that were overly powerful like his Limit Cross Slash are more reasonable) while leaving his previous ones as is, which left Cloud's core identity as a versatile, easy-to-play Lightning Bruiser intact and allowed him to remain effective (most pros will say he is solidly high-tier) while toning down the obnoxious and abusive parts of his kit that made people hate him so much in 3DS/Wii U.
  • Upon release of the game, players believed that Ryu and Ken were mediocre compared to 3DS/Wii U's depiction of the former. In patch 3.1.0, they got many buffs that caused them (especially Ken) to skyrocket competitively.
  • Hero (or rather, Erdrick, who was more requested before Hero was announced) was seen by people who weren't hardcore Dragon Quest fans as a boring pick, being yet another swordfighter, and others were supporting different Square Enix characters such as Sora^note though he's actually owned by Disney, many video game players associate him more with the developer of the games, Lara Croft, or Geno. However, upon being shown off, Hero managed to win a large amount of detractors over for having designs taken from Dragon Quest III, IV, VIII, and XI, as well as having a moveset that utilized a traditional Role-Playing Game Mana Meter system where players could pick and choose from different spells to use. Most notably, one of those spells is Kamikazee, the first move that instantly KOs the user, rather than who it's used on.
  • Initially, Smash fans unfamiliar with SNK thought Terry would be a redundant character due to the inclusion of Ryu and Ken as 2D Fighting Game characters with mechanics from that genre. When it was revealed that he stuck out from these two by having a back special, no light/heavy tilts, a unique spotdodge attack, and Super Special Moves, fans quickly changed their mind.
  • Steve's home series had the negative reputation of being marketed to kids for several years, after Mojang was acquired by Microsoft, so the possibility of a Minecraft character coming was seen as dull to most hardcore fans that weren't already invested in that series. Once he was revealed to come with an incredibly technical moveset that streamlines the crafting mechanics from his series, fans warmed up to him.
  • Stages in general. With the inclusion of a Battlefield form and the option to negate hazards for every stage, particularly gimmicky stages like Magicant are better loved for their visuals and design, as well as adding more variety to the tournament scene, which has allowed the game to avert Abridged Arena Array (for the most part).
  • On the topic of stages, Mementos from Persona 5 is often considered to not look particularly appealing, and many fans were hoping for Mementos to not be the Persona stage. However, Sakurai changed up Mementos by basing it not on the location itself, but rather the menu for Mementos, allowing Persona 5's gorgeous UI to shine through the stage. It was also adjusted to make it more like a platform stage (though retaining some sense of uniqueness), and many fans enjoy its redesigns. It helps that the stage changes if you play music from either Persona 3 or Persona 4, allowing their UIs, primary colors and victory themes (if Joker is present) to take the stage.
  • Final Fantasy VII had been on the receiving end of jokes and mockery for its poor representation in the base game, with a single character, one stage and two music tracks to its name with no Spirits. This barebones approach was changed with Sephiroth's inclusion as a DLC fighter, bringing in a second stage and nine more songs along for the ride. With a more faithful representation of the game in hand, fans have become more appreciative of how Smash has treated one of the greatest JRPG titles of all time considering the massive quality present in its two stages, a great music selection that includes four very celebratory remixes of fan favorite songs like the Opening and Aerith's theme and characters that are fun to play in addition to presentation details that really make them stand out from the rest of the roster, like their own individual unique victory themes that override the normal post-battle results fanfare.
  • Pyra and Mythra are this to the "transforming character" dynamic that Sheik and Zelda had in Melee and Brawl. For the latter two characters, the entire gimmick was hampered by imbalance. Sheik was supposed to rack up damage but have trouble killing, while Zelda was supposed to be a Mighty Glacier, but Zelda was so incredibly ineffective that most players stuck to Sheik, who actually had little trouble finishing stocks in the right hands and there were many jokes that Zelda's best move was her down special, to the point that the two characters were made separate by the fourth game. Building on everything that the revamped Pokémon Trainer brought to the table, Pyra and Mythra were designed to have more clear strengths and weaknesses from the get-go, meaning that players are actually encouraged to swap between the two, and their Stance System is often cited as the reason why they're such competent fighters, rather than holding them back.

S

• Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic:
  • A common criticism from the competitive community was that the stage hazards illegalized most of the stages in the game. While the Omega Form and Battlefield Form toggles help, the ability to turn the hazards off has been one of the most celebrated examples of Boring, but Practical changes the game had compared to previous games, opening the gates to significantly more variety in stage selection in tournaments.
  • The way online matchmaking in Quickplay is supposed to work is that if you toggle Preferred Rules on, you're more likely to get matched up with another player or players who have similar rules toggled on. The thing is that at launch, this didn't work, as matchmaking prioritized faster matchmaking over rules, so you would often see players setting Preferred Rules to 1v1, 3 Stock, and Items Off and end up getting thrown into a Free For All with Items On. The backlash about the online being broken was staggering, to the point where within a week of launch, Version 1.2.0 was pushed out, and among other changes mostly fixed it to how it's meant to work. Also, while minor compared to the above, the patch also reduced the difficulty of the Challenger Approaching battles for those who found it too difficult or annoying to take down a CPU just to unlock a character.
  • One common complaint in past games was songs that were great, but only played on stages that didn't get a lot of airtime or vice versa (one common example being Fourside from Melee and its accompanying song). This game not only allows you to switch off hazards or turn the stage into a Battlefield or Final Destination shape, but also allows songs from a series to be played on any stage from that series, largely alleviating any problems with music selection. The 8.1.0 patch also enabled all songs from the game to be playable on the four Smash-series stages (Battlefield, Big Battlefield, Final Destination, and the then newly-added Small Battlefield), compounding the solution even further.
  • Version 3.0 corrected a minor annoyance: Chrom now shares the victory fanfare based on the Fire Emblem: Awakening track "Id (Purpose)" with Robin and Lucina. He previously used the standard Fire Emblem fanfare despite being a central character in Awakening.
  • One annoyance in previous games was that if you used a Golden Hammer on a locked Challenge, it would be permanently left with a hammer mark because of that, especially if you later manage to clear the prerequisites. Here, a hammer mark is still placed, but it'll be removed if you actually clear the challenge later.
  • The 4.0.0 update changed the Final Smash Meter to only last for a limited amount of time, prompting players to use theirs immediately instead of stalling.
  • Charizard's re-integration as part of Pokémon Trainer is an indirect case for Pokémon fans who are sick of seeing the orange dragon hogging the spotlight and being given preferential treatment all the time, particularly fans of the Squirtle and Bulbasaur lines, as its role in the game by default gives all three Kanto Starter Mon lines an equal amount of focus.
  • When Small Battlefield was released, it came with a change that allowed the four Smash-original stages to play any song in the game. While this definitely opened up some interesting combinations (Megalovania on Final Destination, anyone?), it completely overrode the player's My Music choices for those stages, all but forcing the player to go through the menus to manually pick their chosen music every time, as the Smash music was very unlikely to come up at random, given the massive soundtrack, and settling for a random song would likely end up with something unfitting chosen. The Sephiroth update now allows players to pick whether they want to use their My Music choices, pick a song from the menu, or settle for a random song with a single menu command.
  • When the base game launched, Pokémon Trainer was the only transformation-based fighter in the entire roster, which felt to some fans like a missed opportunity to regroup Sheik and Zelda (or, to a lesser extent, Samus and Zero Suit Samus) and also felt awkward given that the Trainer character slot consists of four entities while the other, removed transformations consisted of a single person swapping between two identities. The introduction of Pyra and Mythra in Fighter Pass 2 saw the return of proper "alter-ego" transforming characters and also showed that the mechanic wouldn't just be exclusive to the Pokémon Trainer from then on.
• Salvaged Story: A small minority of fans felt that Mario stole too much of the spotlight in the previous game in various ways, such as always leading the fighters in reveal trailers, his voice clips in the Sound options menu, being the default online profile icon, and the game being advertised to families as if it were a Mario game. Ultimate makes something of an effort to emphasize the ensemble-cast nature of the series and that Mario isn't the definitive main character: Mario and Link share the spotlight as co-mascots, Kirby is the closest thing to a main character in World of Light with Fox leading the fighters, the game is marketed to all demographics with an emphasis on the crossover aspect and different characters, the default online profile icon is random, and the Sound menu now uses random sound clips from the Original 12 fighters. Mario didn't feature as the "main" veteran in a trailer until Sora's, fittingly for a Grand Finale and perfect for the Money-Making Shot of Mario^note the first fighter and Sora^note the last fighter shaking hands.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Merely defeating a spirit on the Spirit Board isn't enough — you then have to play a mini-game where you attempt to shoot a spirit through a shield. If you miss, you have to wait until the spirit reappears on the board and win the battle again just for another shot at it. You can pay in-game currency to try again, but only once. This feels like arbitrary padding, especially if the spirit battle was especially difficult. This can be a bit easier if you have enough Shield Spacer and/or Sluggish Shield items, especially against a Legend spirit, but those don't come very often, be it by either getting them though random drops or buying them on the Shop. The DLC Spirit Boards are exempt from this mechanic.
  • Challenger's Approach allows you to try for a rematch against any unlockable fighters you've lost to without having to redo the actual unlocking conditions. Sounds like an Anti-Frustration Feature, right? Well, not really. It only appears randomly after fighting a few battles in other modes, and has a high chance of disappearing again after a rematch, whether you win or lose. Good luck on the later unlocks.
  • The "Preferred Rules" setting in the online quickplay mode gets flak for not allowing players to strictly enforce certain rules, so you can (for example) ask for a 1-on-1 fight with no items and get matched up rather quickly into a free-for-all battle with items that you can't leave without a penalty. This was especially common in the game's first week of release. Also, there are four options for preferred stage type, and you must pick from one of those four options, so asking for Battlefield or Omega, or having no preference for stage type while having a preference for other rules, is impossible.
  • Once again, preventing several of the most difficult Challenges from being bypassed using Golden Hammers renders them worthless.
  • The replay viewer:
    • It doesn't let you quickly seek to specific points in the replay; if you want to look at a particular part of it you have to watch the entire replay up to that point.
    • It is the only way to make gameplay videos without a capture card, since this game does not allow making 30-second clips with the Switch's capture button. Furthermore, because the completed videos are not put in the usual folder for screenshots and videos, they do not appear in the Switch's photo/video viewer. The simplest method to post them on social media is to use a USB-C to USB-A cable, and plug the Switch into a computer to obtain the video files. While this does allow for videos that are more than 30 seconds long and run at high-res 60 FPS, many would rather just use a one-touch capture button and put up with the 30-second 30 FPS limitations.
    • Have a lengthy replay you want to convert to a video, and just want to stick with the default settings? Well, tough, because you're going to have to press a button at some point, lest the system go into sleep mode, which not only renders the conversion null and void, but gives you a prompt to delete the replay (which you could very well do by accident).
    • The only way to save other players' replays online is through Shared Content. Sadly, no replay seen through Spectate or Tourney Mode gives you the option to save it, no matter how engaging it was. Unless you have a capture card, these matches are likely lost forever. If you're lucky, one of the players decided to upload those replays in Shared Content, so in some cases, it's a matter of looking through Shared Content's online archive of uploaded videos.
  • In an online arena (lobby), there is a queue you put your icon in to join upcoming matches. There are several things you can do that will take you out of the queue and make you rejoin at the back of it if you want to get back in the queue, including changing your fighter, changing your preferred stage and its music (if the lobby allows player-picked stages), viewing detailed rules, and changing the lobby music. Yeah, that's right: You can get bumped from the front of a 4-person queue to the back, and thus have to wait another one to five matches for your turn, just for simply changing the lobby music.
  • For whatever reason, in arenas where the lobby picks stages based on the players' selected Preferred Stage, the game will never pick a player whose level is set to Random unless all players in the ring also have theirs set to Random. If only one person in the arena has a specific level selected, everyone will be forced to play that level ad nauseam. Prior to version 3.1.0, this also applied to the music selection as well, with the random music setting randomly picking one song and always playing that, rather than picking songs on a match-by-match basis.
  • The buffering in the game is highly contested due to several things. To summarize, the old buffering system of Brawl and Smash 4 was retained, but a new "hold" buffering system was added on top, where a held input will be inputted on the first actionable frame regardless of how long ago the input was put in after the player's prior action. This makes certain commands easier, but also makes other commands harder to input, sometimes leading to misinputs, as well as making it more scary to attempt to do things such as tech (as you might accidentally do an airdodge) or mash out of grabs or burials (because then it will read your mashing as an input when you escape, leaving you vulnerable). This has led to complaints of people talking about how the game feels slippery as a result, which is frustrating since it makes combos more difficult than they should be. An example is the advertised short hop aerial attack (which has been nicknamed as the shortcut method), as while having an instant aerial is nice, it leads to a lot of situations where you wanted to do a full hop aerial, but the game reads a jump input and an aerial input in the same vicinity as a short hop aerial, and the shortcut method is ineffective against shorter characters, where it's better to just do a short hop than an aerial.
  • The buffer system for short hop aerials does your input based not on where your control stick was when you buffered the attack, but on where it is when the buffered input goes through. This has a distressing frequency to cause players to input one aerial, only to receive something completely different; even neutral aerials with the C-Stick/right stick can happen if a player uses one of those sticks to do an aerial while not pushing any direction on the control stick.
  • Want to level up your Spirit using Snacks? Prepare yourself to pay Spirit Points every time you use one. And don't get fooled on buying snacks in stores, you still have to pay for them just for using them. You'll get free snacks after every fight anyway, which makes some people question why they are sold in the first place.
  • When your opponent quits during the middle of a Quickplay match, they're replaced with a CPU who doesn't reward you with any GSP if you win. Even worse, this still happens even if the opponent quits after the match is over but before the victory screen, meaning players can quit after you beat them just to deny you GSP, solely out of petty spite.
  • It's possible to get temporarily locked out from online battles if the game disconnects, even when it's not the player's fault in any way.
  • An arena's host can kick people at will. It sounds very useful in the right hands, but it constantly ends up in the wrong hands, whether it be kicking players after losing a match to avoid the rematch, kicking players after winning a match to avoid the rematch, kicking other players who enter the ring to make room for themselves or get a rematch instantly, or kicking players who play characters they don't like.
  • While many fans consider this version of Stage Builder the best one in the series, it has drawn some criticisms.
    • You can't copy and paste your shapes. This makes making symmetrical stages frustrating as you have to eye the screen closely to make your stage have symmetry.
    • The eraser erases the entire shape you made instead of just parts of it, like various art programs on the computer. This makes it difficult to make a creation that doesn't have any blocks sticking out in, for example, a picture of character you want to make.
  • Spirit Collectors who don't care for World of Light have their own issue in that you can only get Boss Spirits by beating the boss in that mode. The main problem lies in the Dracula and Marx Spirits, which evolve. Since both are in the second half of the game, this means playing through a good chunk of the game twice if you want to have both forms of Marx and both Dracula and Soma Cruz in your inventory.
  • Stages introduced post-game—that is, everything from Mementos to Hollow Bastion—are excluded in Online Tourney. Unlike the other online modes, this applies even if every single participant has bought the DLC to use a particular stage.
• Self-Fanservice:
  • Ultimate's default Mii Gunner tends to get this in art, often being drawn as curvier than most Miis tend to be. The taller and more detailed build compared to Sm4sh certainly helps.
  • The female Pokémon Trainer, in keeping with how fans often treat female characters in her home series in order to make them more "waifu"-worthy. She's a child but (like her male counterpart) looks slightly older than other child characters like Ness, Lucas and the Ice Climbers due to her artstyle, and as such she's sometimes drawn in fanart to be or appear as an adult or older teenager in order to sexualize her. This applies to the Inkling girl, again a trait inherited from her home series' fanbase (though she's more clearly defined as 14 years old like many anime characters presented as Ms. Fanservice).
  • Zero Suit Samus, already an intentional Ms. Fanservice within the game, sometimes has people depict her with her larger bust and/or butt size from previous games. On the other hand, some exaggerate her musculature to make her look more like a bodybuilder and downplay her leanness.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • A common challenge that people online have taken to do is doing the entire World of Light campaign on hard with no spirits equipped. This makes certain spirit battles much harder, since you don't have any protection for spirit-only stage hazards. Using the skill trees can make things easier, although some people take it further and do spirit battles without using the skill tree.
  • There is a challenge in the game that requires you to play through the last level of WoL without losing a single stock. You could just complete the challenge on Easy difficulty which makes it rather straight forward to complete. On Hard, however...
  • One challenge that caught on among Smash YouTubers was something inspired by Pokémon's Nuzlocke runs, known as "Lightlocke." Just like their inspiration, Lightlocke runs enforce permadeath—if a fighter is KOed at any point, they cannot be used again. (The biggest complication is how to handle the DLC characters, which you receive automatically early on.)
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: The return of Stage Builder in version 3.0 is this. More background, platform and hazard options, as well as the ability to share them online, has made building your stages more fun than ever.
• Signature Scene:
  • Snake's triumphant return to the series during the fighter introduction video, coupled with the magic words "EVERYONE IS HERE!" slamming onto the screen. While there is no shortage of acclaimed moments in the Ultimate hype cycle (the intro cutscene for World of Light, the various newcomer reveals like Banjo & Kazooie and King K. Rool, Ridley impaling Mega Man, Luigi getting killed in Simon's trailer, Joker hijacking the Game Awards, the Sans Mii Costume reveal, Steve mining through the wall of blocks, and Sephiroth slicing Galeem in half), this one is easily the most iconic, parodied, and exciting of all.
  • The only moment to truly give "EVERYONE IS HERE!" a run for its money was the final shot in Sora's reveal trailer, him shaking hands with Mario while most/all of the other fighters watch and cheer in the background. It quickly became the most iconic part of Sora's entire reveal and a defining moment for the game as a whole.
• Signature Song: "Lifelight", the main theme of the game, is the first Smash theme to have lyrics in English and Japanese (Brawl's theme had lyrics in Latin), and perfectly captures the awe and pure excitement of the game.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Hero and Steve's Final Smashes are mostly prerendered FMVs, with only the characters themselves being rendered in-engine. While this isn't a bad thing in and of itself, the FMVs run at 30 FPS instead of the 60 FPS used by the rest of the game, making the other Heroes, Creepers, and other non-gameplay elements look extremely choppy and strange next to the smooth, fluid animations of the playable characters. For bonus points, characters thrown into the House of Boom don't cast shadows, and those with long, loose hair or clothes aren't programmed to have them interact with the floor, making it incredibly obvious that they're simply pasted on top of the video. Finally, when the House explodes, the heavy amount of particles and movement onscreen causes noticeable ghosting and compression artifacts.
  • At the end of Simon & Richter's reveal trailer, Carmilla is shown spying on Luigi's ghost and dead carcass. However, when Carmilla peeks in through the window, her movement animation is noticeably frame-by-frame, to the point where the viewer can see her jump from one spot to the next rather than her movement flowing naturally.
• Spoiled by the Format: Microsoft listed the E3 Nintendo Direct on their own E3 schedule for 2019, cluing people in that something related to them would be announced in the Direct. Sure enough, Banjo & Kazooie were revealed as DLC characters for Ultimate.
• Surprise Difficulty: Some players have noted the far more difficult Challenger Approaching battles to unlock new fighters, which can be attributed to them being set to 9.0 difficulty. Unlike previous games, where the AI simply cheats at 9.0 without seeing any notable increase in actual skill, the AI in this game is far more competent than before and will consistently dance around the player while comboing them to high percents and teching off walls and ledges at inhuman rates. They still appear to cheat a little, but cheating aside, they're much more difficult to take on, which can make unlocking fighters outside of Adventure Mode more of a hassle than it needs to be for less-skilled players. Even the dedicated Challenger's Approach mode doesn't help much, as losing here still leads to a cooldown period before the character can be fought again. One of the first launch week patches was forced to tone down the difficulty after the fanbase became too vocal at being unable to unlock characters due to how downright hard these battles were.
• Sweetness Aversion: Isabelle has caused this reaction among some non-Animal Crossing fans, as she's Lighter and Softer than every other newcomer, especially the previously revealed fighters from the dark and gritty Metroid and Castlevania franchises. Part of the reason why her unique character status was unexpected was because people didn't imagine her having a moveset that was much different from Villager due to being considered a "friendly" character from a non-violent series.

T

• Tainted by the Preview:
  • Initial gameplay demonstrations from both demos and the 2018 Invitational were met with mixed opinions by veteran fans due to adjustments to specific visuals and how launch physics works compared to Wii U/3DS^note In Wii U/3DS, launching an opponent would cause them to sail out across their launch trajectory at even speed, slowly coming to a stop at the end of the launch arc. In Ultimate, launched fighters now launch at an incredibly high velocity, then have their velocity rapidly drop off as they approach the end of their launch trajectory.
  • This video showing Bayonetta as overpowered as she was in Smash 4 was met with lots of boos. Even her character video got dislikes because of it. Fortunately, the actual game had her severely depowered to more reasonable levels.
  • Several Ensemble Darkhorses like Spring Man, Isaac, Shadow the Hedgehog, and the Black Knight did not appear in the first trailers, leading to speculation that they might have been Promoted to Playable. Then the November 2018 Direct revealed that they're merely Assist Trophies.
  • There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth when, shortly after the final pre-release Direct, Sakurai mentioned that this time he chose the DLC characters from a pre-approved list given to him by Nintendo. Conspiracy theories abounded, some fans flat-out accusing Nintendo of deliberately sabotaging the DLC roster with bad characters and imagining subtle clues from Sakurai that he was secretly trying to warn against buying the Fighters Pass. Thankfully, the jaw-dropping reveal of Joker the day before the game's release made most of the naysayers eat their words.
  • Some fans of the Shin Megami Tensei series weren't happy to find that with Joker's pack the series received no acknowledgement at all, with no songs or anything that originated outside of Persona. Since the series has been on Nintendo hardware for years and was even referenced by Sakurai and Nintendo at the time, this felt like a snub especially considering that Atlus' own push of Persona as their golden goose and the resulting neglect they've shown to other members of the Megami Tensei family (including the main parent series itself) remains a contentious issue in their fanbase.
  • Byleth got this the moment their trailer started, since they're the eighth Fire Emblem character and a first-party character in a pack where all of the other fighters were new and mostly-unexpected third-party characters from franchises new to the series.
  • While Sora's inclusion was widely praised, there are no Disney characters to accompany him, most likely due to legal reasons with the company. This has proven to be a sore spot for many fans, as the juxtaposition of them with a highly confusing anime plot was considered by many to be the lifeblood of the franchise.
  • There are some fans who disliked Sora's inclusion not because of the character himself but because of the involvement of the company he is owned by. As Disney has been getting a lot of scorn over the years for their growing monopoly that many fear is threatening the entertainment industry as well as their ties to the Chinese government and to authoritarian laws around the world (including its home country of the US). It also doesn't help that the creator of The Owl House gave the main reason why the series was cancelled^note  That the series didn't fit Disney's brand, with many assuming it was because of Luz and Amity's relationship which made many accuse Disney of homophobia. on the same day as Sora's reveal.
• Take That, Scrappy!:
  • Dedede being slapped off the screen after revealing he was wearing a K. Rool costume seems to be a bit of a nod to those who were displeased that K. Rool was reduced to a Mii Brawler costume in 4.
  • Similarly, Banjo & Kazooie stomping Duck Hunt in their trailer is simply cathartic. Who doesn't want to see the Duck Hunt Dog get stomped?
  • There's also the idea of beating up certain spirits that irritated you in some way. Viridi and Adam Malkovich are often-cited examples.
• That One Achievement:
  • Any Challenge that doesn't allow for bypassing using a Golden Hammer: Clearing Classic on 9.9 Intensity, several Smash challenges that require going up against one or multiple CPU opponents, and defeating the entire True Final Boss level on World of Light without a single KO.
  • Classic on 9.9 in particular is just as tricky as in For 3DS and Wii U, albeit for different reasons. Unlike the previous games, you can't simply set the Intensity to 9.9, you must earn your way to 9.9 from 5.0 through successive Nice Plays, which get progressively tougher to accomplish as the AI scales up in difficulty. The boss battles of each route are also tougher than in previous games, as they are character-dependent and are surprisingly strong and sturdy. Combine all of this with the fact that you only get one life per stage and using a Continue below 9.9 locks you out of getting 9.9 in the first place, and you're in for an incredibly daunting challenge.
  • One Smash challenge involves getting 3 meteor KOs within 3 minutes during a match against 4 CPUs. Not only is landing even one meteor KO difficult for a new player to do (since most moves that do so have to be sweetspotted), but having to land three of them in such a short timeframe against a lot of highly aggressive and competent computer players (which also like to Gang Up on the Human) can become pure agony very fast. Even if you are good at landing meteor smashes, the computers tend to congregate around the ledge, making landing most meteor smashes even more difficult. Abusing Bayonetta's down smash (which has the largest meteor hitbox in the game and also punishes this CPU behavior) is about the only way most people who aren't pro Smash players can get this one, and it cannot be bypassed with a Golden Hammer.
  • One of the Spirit Board Challenges requires you to challenge and defeat ten Legend Class Spirits. Not only are Legend Spirits quite rare, many of them are especially difficult without fight-specific cheese strategies (many of which qualify for That One Level). Thankfully, obtaining the Spirit itself is not part of the Challenge, merely defeating them is enough.
  • If you don't intend on using a Golden Hammer to clear it, playing 200 Quick Battles in the Online page is a huge grind and especially bad for people who don't have reliable internet for online play.
  • Winning against an Advanced class 3 times without using a spirit team is pure hell. Without a primary spirit, you are extremely underpowered, and spirit items will barely help you, considering a single weak attack from the enemy would be able to do over 30% while a smash attack won't even do about 10%. Another thing is that this has to be done in the Spirit Board mode, meaning you get no benefits from the Adventure Mode Skill tree and you only get one try per encounter (three as of Version 2.0.0).
  • Doing the entire final stage in World of Light without being KOed once is absolute hell. This means you have to lose no character against Galeem and Dharkon or on the Rise to the Challenge and Boss Rush immediately before. In addition, the fight itself is considered as That One Boss. This is because you have to dodge a lot of attacks coming at once, some of them being very hard to avoid especially on Hard mode. While Critical Health Healing or Great Autoheal coupled with a very powerful spirit make this easier, it can still be a frustrating nightmare trying not to lose any particular fighter, especially considering Galeem has an Off Waves-esque attack that can do a lot of knockback, that needs incredible timing to dodge, and appears in random patterns. However, it's possible to simply turn down the difficulty setting just for this one level, as this doesn't invalidate the challenge.
  • The challenge which requires you to beat Century Smash as Ken with only using special moves. Seems simple since you can KO anyone on a floating platform with a Heavy Shoryuken... except there are no exceptions. Damn You, Muscle Memory! is in full effect here; pressing the special button while fallen on the ground or hanging from a ledge will make Ken perform a get-up attack or edge attack respectively, which count as non-special attacks, rendering the run null. The challenge is also rather poorly-defined, since many players are left unsure whether jumping, shielding, triggering items with special moves (or even letting the CPUs use items), or even taunting would invalidate the run.^note Jumping and shielding are perfectly okay, but there are conflicting reports from different players about items. The jury is still out on taunting. Furthermore, while the Mii Fighters are manageable on their own, the randomized fighter that appears every 25 KOs are much more aggressive and hold nothing back against your specials-only Ken; depending on the matchup, they can easily bring your run to a screeching halt if you can't quickly KO them.
• That One Attack:
  • Master and Crazy Hand's Finger Drill. Not only does this attack come out very quickly, but it deals a decent amount of damage, eats through your shield (quite possibly breaking it outright), and is harder to dodge on higher intensities or with slower characters. Master Hand's is notorious for causing the bury status while Crazy's has a potentially high knockback. What is worse is that during the startup of their attacks, they can still damage before they drill you into the ground.
  • Crazy Hand's Roving Void is an attack where he brings out miniature black holes that can only be safely dodged. These remain onstage for about 10 or so seconds and move towards you every other second, which is plenty enough time for the Hands to do another attack and severely limit the amount of safe room you have to work with.
  • The worst attack both Hands have are their Big Swipes. Not only does this attack deal potentially high damage and knockback, but comes out with minimal windup. The best strategy to avoiding this attack is to expect them to use it at any time.
  • When either Galeem or Dharkon in their solo battles turn red, they summon puppet fighters that are not only difficult to KO, but also self destruct with a large blast radius. It becomes even more frustrating by the fact that the puppet summons are random fighters and during their rematches on hard mode, they summon a third fighter. Furthermore, they are still free to use additional attacks. Fortunately, when facing them together, the fighters will attack each other and neither boss will use additional attacks.
  • In his rematch (either solo or with Dharkon), Galeem brings one in the form of Lens Flare. In keeping in tradition of the screen nuke ring attack that began with Tabuu's Off-Waves, Galeem's Lens Flare creates a construct somewhere on-stage which fires a nearly-unavoidable ring that spans nearly the whole level. While the ring deals a ton of damage and can only be avoided with precise dodging (again, like Tabuu's Off-Waves), the real difficulty comes from the fact that Galeem fires two to four of these in rapid succession^note on Normal and below, he fires one ring (two in phase 2 if he's alone), which is doubled to 2 and 4 respectively on Hard difficulty. These rings originate from random positions and are awkwardly timed, making dodging both of them a hassle. And if one of the rings hit you, you're really likely to hit another one, which can usually lead to them juggling you for an obscene amount of damage and knockback. While it's not too big of a threat on Normal difficulty, on Hard difficulty taking one of the rings will either KO you outright or leave you near-dead for the rest of that character's life unless you bring some kind of healing. To rub salt into injury, Galeem can do this attack while his minions are already on screen harassing you. Also, playing on Hard mode and you're fighting him with Dharkon? Hope he doesn't do this attack alongside one of Dharkon's most dangerous attacks (like his Tentacle Pierce), and be prepared to push your dodging to the limit or die trying.
  • When Dharkon either turns red or is fought a second time, he brings an attack called Tangled Rush, where he creates two portals that cause his tentacles to rapidly move across them, dealing an extremely high amount of damage on contact. While this attack be blocked or countered, it is notorious for having a very large hitbox (and possibly a case of Hitbox Dissonance involved) and chances are if you avoid one, it is easy to get hit by the second. In his rematch solo on hard mode, he uses it a third time when he turns red. Without spirits, this attack has the potential to instantly KO a player if they are perfectly lined up with the attack.
  • Dharkon's Temporal Rift causes a large red rip across the stage that slows down the player's movement. When he turns red, the effect becomes even stronger where it is more difficult to escape. What is worse is during the rematch where he creates two of these at once, forming a large red cross (either cardinally or ordinally), and you have to hope that it does not touch the stage's floor because if he follows up with puppet fighter summons, his timed X bombs, his Tangled Rush or his Tentacle Pierce, then you are going to have a hard time defeating this boss. What makes this attack even worse is the fact that while dodging it is not an issue to time, there is no indication of where the rip is going to appear, which means that even if you avoid the damage, you are not guaranteed to dodge the side effect of the attack. This becomes even more difficult to safely avoid when paired up with Galeem, who is likely to use his Laser Net around the same time, which can result in a near unavoidable attack pattern.
  • In terms of Final Smashes, Zelda's Triforce of Wisdom is widely considered to be the most powerful Final Smash in the game. It has a massive vacuum range that covers the entirety of Battlefield, is a One-Hit Kill if the victim is above 100% at the end of the attack, and deals a whopping 70 percent — which means if the target is at 30 percent or higher, they're dead with no exceptions, and it can catch you even if you're hiding under a platform. And where the Final Smash Meter is allowed, despite it being much weaker, Zelda can still easily use this to pull a win away from you, such as in the Great Fairy Spirit battle mentioned under That One Level. The only saving grace is that it only takes one opponent in Free For All and is less of a hassle in larger stages such as Temple.
  • Diddy Kong's Final Smash, Hyper Rocketbarrel is very dangerous. Unlike in previous games, where it was a manually controlled move with odd controls, this game simply has him zoom all over the screen at high speeds, plowing through fighters to rack up the damage, then charging right at the fighter with the most damage to deal huge knockback.
  • Zero Suit Samus' Final Smash, the Zero Laser, is devastatingly hard to avoid if you're up against a high-level CPU. With most cases regarding reticle attacks (such as the Dragoon and Pit's Lightning Chariot), you only need to dodge at one specific moment (albeit one that's at the AI's choosing, making it somewhat of a crapshoot as to if you'll avoid it in time or not) as the hitbox is very brief. Not so with the Zero Laser, as it persists for a short period of time, making it incredibly easy to get caught in it, on top of being able to move the laser as it's firing. If you're not a master of dodging against a level 7-9 CPU, it's almost certain that you're eating the majority (if not all) of the attack. Have a high damage percentage / on low HP in a Stamina match when Samus gets her Final Smash? Sucks to be you.
  • While the Bury status existed in previous games, it's much more prevalent in this game, and while mashing fast can severely reduce their effectiveness, potentially even making several bury moves a non-factor, there are people who just physically can't mash fast enough to avoid kill followups from them at rather low percents. Plus having to mash to survive is disliked in general due to the stress it causes on hands and controllers. A few of the most infamous bury moves include:
    • Mr. Game & Watch's down smash now has a decently large sweetspot that buries opponents powerfully, which can easily be followed up by a f-smash for a KO around 80-100ish on all but the fastest mashers. The move being shockingly safe for a smash attack and often being just thrown out by Game & Watch players whenever without repercussion has also made it quite infamous.
    • Zero Suit Samus' down special Flip Jump, already an incredibly obnoxious move due to how difficult it is to punish and having a very powerful kick with very large hitboxes that activates on command, features an auto-footstooling mechanic when her feet touches anywhere near the vicinity of the opponent, while burying them in the process if they were on the ground. This bury used to additionally be one of the strongest in the game, with it before even being able to bury fast mashers long around at around 80ish to guaranteed a Boost Kick followup for a KO. A patch would fortunately nerf its burying strength significantly, with the Boost Kick followup being escapable now by fast mashers up to around 120ish%, though players still feel it to be too powerful when combined with the move's other overwhelming attributes.
    • Inkling's side special, Splat Roller, is one of the strongest burying moves in the game, with it granting enough bury time on the typical player around the 100ish% range for a forward or up smash followup that usually kills, while the move was rather easy to land, especially in tech chasing situations. It was especially dreaded near release, though players learning how punishable on shield the move is and how easy it was to beat directly would get it a lot less complaints as the meta evolved.
  • All of Ganondorf's smash attacks, especially his forward smash, which have very long range and disjointed hitboxes due to his use of a sword, which makes it difficult to punish him when they're spaced well and at the edge of stages he can kill you around 30-50%. It's even worse when playing online because of the lag and buffering making it hard to punish whiffs (or anything else).
  • Ness' up and down smash attacks make getting on stage from a ledge very painful, as his yoyo can dangle on the ledge and shut down quite a lot of characters from recovering.
  • Ness' PK Fire was bad before back at 3DS/Wii U, yet Ultimate buffed it to one of the most despised moves in the game. Not only does it deal a great amount of damage, but the hitstun it causes can let Ness easily follow it up with a grab, a smash attack, or worse, another PK Fire, which makes high percentages a game ender for players. This is especially true in Stamina Spirit battles that involve fighting a Ness puppet (of which there are a good amount), where the AI will spam PK Fire to take advantage of the hitstun the move inflicts, and the lesser knockback from Stamina Mode, in order to trap you in a Cycle of Hurting that drains your HP in a PK flash.
  • Lucas' PK Freeze has become infamous for its potency as an edgeguarding tool, as it launches fighters towards the blast zone as opposed to upwards like it did in previous games, and can KO fairly early.
  • Some of Hero's special moves are quite powerful:
    • Zap fully charged turns into Kazap, which has an incredibly large hitbox around it similar to Cloud's Finishing Touch in the previous game. It kills very early on at about 40% and has Super Armor, which means you can't actively punish it if you avoid the second hit. It can also 2 frame on the ledge thanks to its wide hitbox.
    • Magic Burst turns into this at max MP, becoming a massive hitbox that covers everything around Hero. Getting it at the edge of the stage basically makes recovery impossible, in addition, it kills very early at 20% with no rage on some characters, with max rage it kills at 5% on medium weight characters. Its argued to be potentially even more powerful than some Final Smashes. Its one weakness is that you lose all of your MP doing it, but due to how fast you can potentially get MP back, that's not as big as a problem as it could be.
    • Kamikazee is similar to Magic Burst, in that it has very wide range making recovery very difficult, kills incredibly early, but unlike Magic Burst you can't shield it. It does, however, kill the user.
  • Palutena's neutral aerial, due to it having a fairly large hitbox and launching at an angle that, at lower percents, makes it perfect for chaining into another neutral aerial, allowing for incredibly easy damage racking with just a few button presses.
  • Ike's neutral aerial hitbox is huge, which makes it very difficult to challenge it with any attack, and it can become a combo starter that can lead to Ike's powerful Up air. The fact it has a very fast autocancel, which Ike lets practically spam it as much as he wants, makes it worse.
  • Joker's Side Special, Eiha, has gotten ire similar to Ness' PK Fire. While the initial hit is weak, you'll start taking Damage Over Time for a while if it hits, as if you were inflicted with a poison effect, something that no other character can inflict on their own. The damage can add up surprisingly fast, especially if Joker traps you in a combo to complement its effect. However, what makes it so frustrating to deal with is that when Arsene is summoned, it upgrades to Eigaon, which has a wider range, is much faster (and therefor more easily spammed), and can inflict more hitstun, leaving you wide open for more combos and punishment, on top of the poison effect becoming stronger to add up damage even more.
• That One Boss:
  • Astonishingly, Master Hand and Crazy Hand on higher Intensities. In previous games, Master Hand and Crazy Hand, while formidable as a duo, were fairly predictable and lacked enough HP to make the fight drag, and in For 3DS/Wii U, you never even had to finish the fight. In Ultimate, not only are they much more difficult to kill, but both Hands have had massive moveset overhauls that make them devastating and chaotic, racking up damage at an absurdly fast pace and sporting several potential kill moves. They are the most common final bosses in Classic Mode, so the options of picking someone who does not fight them are fairly slim. The only reprieve is that they can now be stunned by dealing enough damage.
  • Rathalos is widely considered among the hardest boss battles, and in World of Light, he's even tougher than the bosses that come later in the Dark Realm, most notably Marx. The issue with Rathalos is that you might not have powerful Spirits coming up to his battle, and his attacks, compared to fellow Light Realm bosses Galleom and Giga Bowser, are faster and deal high knockback right off the bat. Unlike other bosses in the mode, he can also render himself unable to be damaged, as he either fires explosive fireballs that expand like a Smart Bomb, or swoops from the background to deal high damage and knockback. He can also feint some of his attacks and fly upwards, causing you to miss on precious damage if you were planning on punishing him with a move as he was coming at you. Speaking of his flight phase, his most reviled attacks consist of firing three consecutive fireballs that cause big damage and chain into the others as long as the first or second one hit, and a slashing swoop attack that causes Damage Over Time to your character, as if they had a flower but without the ability to get rid of its effect. Overall, do not expect Rathalos to fight fair. To rub more salt in the wound, you have to fight Rathalos before fighting the real final stages on Bowser or Hero's Classic Mode paths, meaning he can put an end to your run early.
  • Dracula's moveset can be compared to that of Master Hand and Crazy Hand in its destructiveness and kill power, but he sports otherwise predictable attacks. The true difficulty in fighting Dracula is that, true to his origin game, he can only be damaged by attacking the head, which makes use of high-power damage options difficult with only such a small aerial hurtbox to work with. He also goes One-Winged Angel and transforms into his monster form upon losing all of his HP with no recovery in between (unlike Giga Bowser), meaning you have to slog it out in effectively two consecutive fights (though the HP of each form is relatively low). His monster form, while slower and more predictable, is no slouch either, boasting an arsenal of slow but deadly kill moves. The fight is considered easier in World of Light, though, due to the Spirits you can collect before the battle, and for all your troubles in said mode, he surrenders his Spirit, which becomes one of the most powerful in the game when enhanced at Lv. 99 and leveled up again.
  • Ganon can be this, especially for slower characters. Like in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, he only takes damage through his tail (or head when he is stunned), meaning that players will have to constantly jump over him or roll when close to him, which both can easily put players in the range of one of his attacks. Not helped is that Ganon turns and jumps near constantly, making it very difficult to get more than a hit or two on his tail at a time. Fortunately, Ganon's attacks are pretty well telegraphed and consistent, but the hard part is to safely dodge some of them where they are generally fast and have large hitboxes. Characters with teleport attacks, however, will have an easier time facing him because they can go through Ganon, which ensures an easier beatdown.
  • Dharkon's second solo battle. He keeps his attacks from the previous battle, but they're more powerful, and brings a lot more to the table as well. His Electric Tentacle is longer and faster at low health, making it harder and more unpredictable to avoid. Like Galeem, he can create waves of damaging darkness with his Photonic Wave. But whereas Galeem brings Lens Flare as a reprisal of Tabuu's Off-Waves, the worst part comes with a much more dangerous Temporal Rift when he's at low health, on which he now creates two rifts in space in an X or + shape, and which slow you down even more. May God help you if he decides to use this attack and follow it up with his X Bombs, his Tangled Rush, his Tentacle Pierce (normally a well telegraphed attack to deal with on its own) or by creating puppet fighters, as all of them have an absurdly higher chance of snowballing for enormous damage and, in the worst of cases, cause a KO at a low percentage when you thought you had him cornered. His only well-telegraphed attacks are his Tentacle Pierce (again, on its own) and Shadow Eruption, which slowly creates dark pillars of energy. However, the newfound sheer power of his old attacks as well as the sheer power of his new ones will make him more formidable than the second battle against Galeem, even with the latter's Lens Flare.
  • Even for final boss standards, the final battle between Galeem and Dharkon fit the trope really well, especially on Hard mode. Predictably, the fight is very difficult, similarly to Tabuu and Master Core. Fighting Galeem and Dharkon at once means you have to dodge a lot of attacks at once, including both of their new attacks from their second fight. In addition, Galeem's Lens Flare attack in combination with one of Dharkon's harsher attacks (most infamously Tentacle Pierce) can cause you very heavy knockback and damage, making you lose quickly. As well, Dharkon's Temporal Rift will make dodging Galeem's other attacks very hard, especially if any of the two turned red before. Unlike their solo battles, you do have three characters on you, and Galeem and Dharkon attack each other (but only you can deal the final hit). Still, even with a very powerful legendary spirit that allows for easier dodging (such as Cutie J), it is a tough challenge and, on hard difficulty, the fight comes close to Bullet Hell where taking even a single hit can easily lead to a Cycle of Hurting that takes one of your stocks. It doesn't help that you have to also do a Rise to the Challenge and a Boss Rush before the fight (although you'll get your characters back beforehand). That being said, the fight is actually liked for its difficulty and how spectacular it looks, as it brings a very satisfying conclusion to World of Light.
  • Hero's Classic Mode final boss is a back to back battle against Robin and then a Giant Charizard due to not being given a Heart Container or Maxim Tomato like other consecutive boss battles. In addition, the Giant Charizard is so big, that it has some of the largest hitboxes in the game, most notably down smash. These moves will also kill at very early percents and even the most powerful moves Hero has in his arsenal won't until very high percents. This puts you at a severe disadvantage.
  • Sephiroth, in the limited-time Sephiroth Challenge mode. On Easy difficulty he's very reasonable, and on Normal difficulty he's kinda tough but manageable. On Very Hard difficulty, he's an absolute nightmare with by far the most sophisticated AI of any CPU enemy in the game, using competitive techniques such as frame-perfect inputs, Combos and edgeguarding. It can be very difficult to get a hit in against him, and any mistake you make will be punished hard. On top of that, he starts with more HP than the player (200 HP vs. 150 HP), making him even harder to take down. Good luck.
• That One Level:
  • Moray Towers is disliked for its verticality, which is the same reason why its home series counterpart also gets hate. However, while Smash Bros. fighters don't have to contend with snipers, they do have to contend with this version's awkward pattern of zig-zagging platforms that makes traversing the stage a hassle.
  • Classic Mode:
    • Jigglypuff's penultimate stage pits it against all four of the secret fighters from Smash 64 (Luigi, Ness, Captain Falcon, and Jigglypuff). And they're all on a team, so they'll freely throw out Smash attacks to cover each other without fear of damaging their teammates. Additionally, items spawn, and since there's four on their team and only one on yours, they'll have a much easier time getting to them. And since it's stage 6, the Intensity is likely at a point that the opponents start getting set to higher levels. Without a hefty dose of air camping, recovery gimping, and wearing down each fighter individually, you'll probably see your Jigglypuff runs end here.
    • Stage 4 of Pac-Man's route is a 1-versus-4 Team Battle against Young Link, Samus, Simon, and Pit. Thought you'd be fine because Pac-Man is a Multi-Ranged Master? Well, so is everyone else involved. Someone will almost always be taking potshots at you from afar while another foe is in your face, and since items are on, whoever's not fighting can go and snag them. As for the stage, it's Hyrule Castle with hazards on: a large level that allows combatants to run away as needed and can prolong their lifespans due to the distance to the blastzones, a bit of uneven terrain and walls to make things slightly more annoying, and the tornado that can chuck you upwards for a kill.
    • Byleth's path, a tour of the Fire Emblem characters in a series of Stamina matches, gets much harder as it goes. The first half is fairly easy, as the Intensity (even when started at 5.0) is lower, while the matches are against individual opponents, but the second half of the route is where the gloves come off. Round 4 pits you against Robin, Lucina, and Chrom, who are on a team against you, though you at least have the mercy of the trio starting with 50 HP and the stage being Arena Ferox, which can give you some breathing room. In Stage 5, however, the opponent is a team of two Corrins with 100 HP each, on Coliseum, a stage that's completely flat bar the occasional floor risings, leaving nowhere to hide. Byleth's poor throws and the use of Stamina mode (meaning you can't throw the enemy farther if they're damaged) keep you from just abusing the side blastzones to throw them offscreen, and no items spawn, so you're stuck fighting two characters with pretty good movement and attack speeds as a Mighty Glacier. This is immediately followed by Stage 6, where you fight a team of three Byleths, each in an outfit based on one of the House leaders; they use the weapons of their inspirations (Amyr for red, Areadbhar for blue, and Failnaught for yellow), so you have a full team of enemies throwing out attacks to cover every range. The battle is also set on Garreg Mach, leaving very few places to avoid them due to Byleth's lacking mobility.
    • Bowser Junior and the Koopaling's Classic mode pits them against a lot of team fights. Starting with round 2 you need to fight Chrom and Lucina, then you have to go up against Daisy and Luigi right afterwards. This highlights one of Junior and the Koopalings major weaknesses, they're terrible when they get flanked, and with nearly half of the classic fights being two on one handicapped bouts that weakness of crowd control becomes painfully obvious very quickly. Plus you not only face That One Boss Master Hand and Crazy Hand at the end but the majority of the opponents you face can reverse two of your specials, specifically the projectile attacks, right back at you. Then there's the little fact that items are also on, and suddenly the whole Classic mode becomes a Luck-Based Mission.
    • While Toon Link's Classic Mode has an example of a Breather Boss in Ganon due to your two CPU teammates, nearly all the fights that you take on will have you either with the same number of opponents or even being outnumbered by one on nearly every fight until you make it to the end. Your teammates AI also gets worse as your enemies AI gets better, meaning that if you don't keep an eye on what your teammates are doing you might find yourself being sabotaged by your teammates using their bombs on you when you're too close to who they're aiming at, or watching in annoyance as your teammates get ganged up on by the opposing team (there's only two rounds before the final boss where you outnumber your opponents) or sabotaging your own efforts by attacking your opponents with the wrong attack. If you're not used to fighting team battles you'll find most of the rounds difficult, if not downright impossible. Particularly the 5th round where you go up against four Inklings in Moray Towers.
• That One Sidequest: Several of the optional rescuable characters in World of Light are guarded by insanely overpowered Spirits that are difficult even with beneficial spirits equipped. Good luck unlocking your main if they happen to be in that category. Even their proper battles have their power levels on par with those spirits as well.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The removal of transformation Final Smashes has gotten this reaction from some. While Sakurai stated that this decision was to make fights faster and more streamlined, some feel that this has made the Final Smashes homogeneous and has severely cut the potential of what they could be.
  • Among Xenoblade fans, the addition of Mecha-Fiora to Shulk's Final Smash was met with much derision, since it's a major spoiler for a relatively recent game's plot - despite it being spotlighted as one of Shulk's changes during Ultimate's E3 2018 showcase. On top of that, it also makes the attack less game-accurate than it was in For 3DS/Wii U since her presence makes the attack go over the amount of active party members you can have in Xenoblade proper, making the change feel incredibly needless.
  • Mario's Wario-based and Fire Mario alts being replaced with his Builder and Wedding outfits. There are plenty of players who like these outfits, but just as many lamenting the removal of the palette swaps.
  • The Black Yoshi costume was replaced in this game by a Crafted Yoshi alternate. Few players believe this was a worthy trade, especially because of how ugly Crafted Yoshi looks with its textures.
  • Yoshi's victory theme has been abridged for the first time since his introduction into Smash. The second half of his theme no longer has the last four notes play, a change that doesn't accomplish anything, as the tune is still almost the same length as all of his prior victory themes anyway. The Ice Climbers' theme is similarly shortened, as the duo now only gets the second half of their home game's level complete theme.
  • The removal of certain gameplay modes that had been staples since Melee, most notably the Home-Run Contest. The removal of Stage Builder had also been mourned a lot, at least until it was brought back in 3.0.0. In addition, Home-Run Contest was brought back in 5.0.0, which removed this particular complaint.
  • While World of Light was praised for somewhat streamlining the Adventure Mode aspect, many were disappointed that there are very few cutscenes within the mode that feature characters interacting with each other, citing that, while many felt The Subspace Emissary was lengthy, said interactions were one of the fun things about that mode. Especially since, unlike with Subspace, the opening cutscene features actual voice-acted dialogue from the characters, which opens up all kinds of fun possibilities for character interactions. Alas, the opening is the only cutscene to include that, which many feel to be a waste of potential.
  • Even though it's understandable due to the massive and ever-increasing roster, it's hard to name even one person that's happy with All-Star Mode being just another Multi-Mook Melee option. What was once a major mode in the series since Melee is reduced to a simple minigame where all of the fighters, similarly to the 3DS version, arrive in order of debut. While that last part is interesting, especially with the increased cast and DLC additions, it's safe to say that the old All-Star modes will be sorely missed.
  • The male Pokémon Trainer, who was voiced by Michele Knotz in Brawl, has undergone The Other Darrin treatment and received new rerecorded lines by Billy Bob Thompson in Ultimate. However, many fans strongly dislike Thompson's nasally, uncharismatic performance in comparison with Knotz's original Ash Ketchum-esque performance (or Red's other well-received voice actors from Pokémon Origins or Pokémon Masters, for that matter). His female counterpart's voice acting by Kate Bristol has fortunately been better-received, and is cited as a good option for those who want to play the newly revamped Trainer but dislike Thompson's performance.
  • Due to the return of Pokémon Trainer, some fans of Mega Charizard X disliked how it was completely removed as Charizard's Final Smash to make room for Triple Finish. These fans attest that having Charizard Mega Evolve during Triple Finish would have been perfectly fine and wouldn't have come across as pandering or favoritism,^note given that Squirtle and Ivysaur have the excuse that they cannot Mega Evolve since they haven't yet reached their final stages, and that its removal makes for a much more "generic" and "cheesy" Final Smash for the Trainer. Even most fanmade fighter concepts for other Trainers that use a Triple Finish-esque Final Smash have their ace Pokémon Mega Evolve if able (such as Cynthia with Garchomp), demonstrating widespread acceptance of the idea. This slowly died out as the Pokémon franchise started moving away from Mega Evolution as a selling point and removing it from its mainline games, but many fans attest that not using it in this specific case stands out regardless, given that Mewtwo and Lucario continue to do so, Greninja uses its similar Ash-Greninja transformation, and the wider franchise still promotes Mega Evolution.
  • Being unable to taunt online outside of arenas. It's almost unanimously agreed upon that this change was completely unnecessary; not only is taunting extremely commonplace in both casual and competitive play, but characters like Luigi and Snake are essentially handicapped, due to their taunts having practical use, though Kirby is still allowed to taunt while he has an ability purely so he can discard it. While the intention was to prevent Troll matches such as taunt parties, some argue this only made the problem worse because it led to players instead using teabagging, considered one of the most disrespectful moves throughout not just Smash, but most fighting games in general.
  • Some The Legend of Zelda fans have lamented the titular princess losing her Light Arrow, something which has come to be her Iconic Item in her home series. This is compounded with the developers finally listening to the fans and giving Ganondorf regular sword moves on account of Ganondorf's then-recent swordsmanship, yet despite Zelda's magical archery skills in other then-recent games, she loses what Nintendo otherwise considers to be her preferred fighting style. While her Triforce of Wisdom Final Smash has been well-loved regardless for being one of the more powerful Final Smashes, some fans argue that her Light Arrow should instead be reworked as either a special or even a projectile normal similar to how Wario's shoulder-first tackle was reworked from a forward smash to a dash attack.
  • The removal of Trophies for the first time since their introduction in Melee. While many are perfectly understanding of the reason given for their removal (namely that fully modeling and writing entertaining descriptions for that many trophies would require a ridiculous amount of work that could be better spent on the actual game), the gallery full of detailed 3D models and funny/informative descriptions will be still be missed by trophy-collecting fans. Their replacement, Spirits, are more akin to the Stickers from Brawl: stock artwork taken directly from their sources, which doesn't exactly fill that niche. It's also a bit jarring when we still see the existence of trophies in World of Light and Sora's trailer, and the amiibo made for the series were designed to be a Defictionalization of the characters' in-game trophies.
  • Melee veterans Marth and Roy, unlike in prior Smash games, now speak English in the international version to make their portrayals more consistent with their depictions in Fire Emblem Heroes and other Fire Emblem characters added throughout the rest of the series. While their respective voice performances by Yuri Lowenthal and Ray Chase have been generally praised, some fans used to the two speaking Japanese absolutely loathe this change and don't find the new voice acting to be as good or memorable, especially since Cloud and Sephiroth (and Kazuya) still speak Japanese for various reasons. While one can change the voice settings to make them speak Japanese once more, this in turn also changes the voices for almost every other character as well as all game text into Japanese as well, making a strong case for adding voice language options for individual characters a la Street Fighter.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: World of Light opens with the entire cast standing against Galeem, but it's never explained how they ended up at that point. While it's understandable that they probably wanted to make the plot very simple due to the amount of effort that ended up going towards Subspace Emissary's cutscenes, World of Light would have benefited if they gave more build up towards the events in the mode's opening.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • While fans were excited to see that Cappy accompanies Mario this time around, many were also upset that his appearances are restricted to appearing during his up special and one of his taunts, saying that the addition of Cappy could've been used to shake up Mario's moveset and distinguish him more from Dr. Mario.
  • Although fans have always been critical about Smash dodging the use of Shiny Pokémon alternate costumes for unknown reasons, the Pokémon Trainer in Ultimate presents the most egregious case yet because of their differing male and female costumes - Leaf's default design is canon to the Pokémon series, and would have been a perfect opportunity to give her Pokémon their Shiny palettes, including the extremely popular modern Shiny Charizard, so that both she and Red use "official" colors all around. However, she instead uses a generic red palette swap for all three of them, presenting a weird case where Red's Pokémon can be colored the way they are in the official games but Leaf's cannot even though she herself can be.
  • Many felt that Young Link's Final Smash could have contained a reference to his mask transformations in Majora's Mask, switching between his forms to deliver a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, or at the very least, assuming his Fierce Deity form to perform his attack. But instead, it's a perfect replica of Toon Link's Triforce Slash Final Smash. This is in spite of Young Link never having been established to use the power of the Triforce in Ocarina of Time.
  • While fans were appreciative that Hero had alternate costumes representing several games in the Dragon Quest series, many were left questioning the use of Solo over Sofia to represent Dragon Quest IV: while both are considered to be the same character, Sofia represents the first female protagonist in the series (the female version of Erdrick being added to later versions of Dragon Quest III) and has a sizeable fanbase who prefer her to Solo. Not only that, none of the female protagonists appear in the Hero's final smash either, despite Dragon Quest IX and Dragon Quest X also featuring them as options.
• Tough Act to Follow:
  • The November 2018 Ultimate Direct, the last Smash-only presentation before the game's launch, suffered from this. The showcase of the game at E3 2018 announced the return of everyone and showed off Splatoon's Inkling in gameplay, and ended with the reveal that the long-requested Ridley was making his playable debut. The August 2018 Direct opened with another fairly popular request in Simon Belmont plus an Echo of Simon in Richter Belmont, revealed two other fan requests, Chrom and Dark Samus, as Echo Fighters, and capped off with another huge longtime request, King K. Rool. Even the September 2018 general Nintendo Direct was capped with a trailer confirming fan-favorite Isabelle (also helped by the confirmation of a new Animal Crossing game, which excited players as well). The November 2018 presentation, on the other hand, opened with its Echo Fighter, Ken Masters, followed by Incineroar, a Base-Breaking Character in its own series whose status carried over a bit to Ultimate. While this Direct also announced DLC, their opener was Piranha Plant, an Unexpected Character and Fighting Clown. This presentation also took down most of the rumored fighters from the prior week's "Grinch leak" (with only Ken, and much later, Banjo & Kazooie surviving), showcased multiple Assist Trophies and disconfirmed multiple characters in a minute, including Shadow and Isaac (who were widely speculated to be getting a promotion to playable even before the Grinch leak), and also showed off Spirits, which were assumed to be stealth disconfirmations for DLC newcomers (until Min Min proved that not to be the case). Even the dramatic reveal of the story mode didn't stop people from feeling burned by the video.
  • Sakurai has already predicted that the eventual next Smash game will suffer this. He doesn't see another "Everyone Is Here" being possible due to all the legal discussions and negoiations that would need to occur, so having just a few characters dropped from the roster will make Smash 6 automatically be seen as a lesser game in comparison to Ultimate by some, regardless of anything else.
  • Dayci Brookshire, Viridi's English voice actress replacement for Hynden Walch, hasn't fared too well with fans, since her performance is overall seen as inferior compared to the latter. The Palutena's Guidance for Piranha Plant did decrease this sentiment a bit, however.
  • This was likely a major factor in why Byleth got a mixed reception when revealed as a DLC character. They ended up as the last character of Fighters Pass Volume 1, coming after the unexpected Joker and Terry, the long-awaited Banjo & Kazooie, and a fighter of one of the most important RPG series in history with Hero, leaving many fans underwhelmed that the last character was such a "safe" option. Likewise, Min Min underwent a similar, albeit much milder, reaction as the first character of Fighters Pass Volume 2, given that the reveal of Joker as the first character of the previous Fighters Pass caused quite a splash.

U

• Unintentional Period Piece: Following the inclusion of Video Game/Minecraft content in 2020, the stage "Minecraft World" features Iron Ore as part of the setting. One year later for the "Caves and Cliffs" Minecraft update, the textures for all ores aside from Diamond were visually updated for the benefit of colourblind players, leaving the Iron Ore in Ultimate with the original texture.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
  • You wouldn't think it was possible for such cartoony characters, but some people feel this way about Banjo and Kazooie. Their in-game designs are more or less directly translated from their official artwork, but the detailed shading engine used in the game combined with the significant amount of extra detail compared to their appearances on the N64 can make them look slightly... off. Their eyes look almost glassy.
  • For some, the Sans Mii Costume can look slightly off. Translating the 2D sprite of a skeleton into a 3D model can look somewhat unnerving, especially in the costume's reveal where it just stares straight at the viewer.
  • A few returning characters feel off due certain aspects of them not changing to take into account differences from previous games: While fighters reusing their voice clips from Brawl is nothing new, Snake's case is especially egregious considering that he was one of the liveliest and most interactive characters from Brawl, but the game retained the dated codec conversations where they, at least in the case of Jigglypuff and Sonic, state that they are in Brawl. Thanks to this, Snake can potentially come across as less of an actual human and more of an Audio-Animatronic figure going through the exact same pre-programmed routines since 2008 while unaware of any changes around him, which is strange when Snake's English VA, David Hayter himself, actively helped promote Ultimate. Even in spite of Roy Campbell's retirement from the series, there's no reason why they couldn't have simply recorded new codec calls where he doesn't appear. One would think that at least the team would re-record non-Roy elements to bring them up to date, like referring to Pokémon Trainer with gender-neutral pronouns, or establishing that the Metal Gear cast knows that they're in Ultimate and that they met Sonic in Brawl once in the past.
  • Not much of the Inklings themselves, but the colors of their ink. The default orange ink color has for some reason been given a light-reddish tint, and the other colors aren't much better. The yellow and lime-green colors are a much duller and more muted shade, contrasting the vivid look they had in the Splatoon series.
  • Joker, as well as the other Persona 5 characters that appear in Mementos, look a bit off due to the lack of Cel Shading on them like they had in their home game.
  • Yoshi using his design from Yoshi's Crafted World for one of his alternate costumes. The textures in this costume look very unappealing compared to his home game, especially since it makes him much brighter looking than he originally did.
  • Pyra and Mythra themselves. They are treated as "realistic" fighters but have a very stylized anime artstyle similar to Pit, with notably larger eyes and heads than characters such as Zero Suit Samus and Lucina. This can make them look slightly out of place when in a match with similar characters, particularly Shulk himself since his game of origin had a more realistic artstyle (prior to Definitive Edition), while also looking realistic and serious enough that they don't fit in with the more cartoony humanoids like Peach and Pokémon Trainer. They end up sharing their aesthetic with the "realistic" Legend of Zelda characters, which can still be jarring when you consider that they and Shulk are from the same series.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • Ultimate switches things up in Classic Mode, with several characters now facing bosses other than the traditional Master/Crazy Hand. Unfortunately, this is not explored to its fullest potential, as evidenced by the majority of characters still fighting Master/Crazy Hand. Galleom is the only Subspace Emissary boss to make the cut, while other bosses like Porky and Rayquaza weren't ported over. Rathalos shows how an Assist Trophy could be reworked into a boss, but other potential Assist Trophies like Mother Brain and Wily Capsule did not receive this treatment. Additionally, stage bosses like Yellow Devil and Metal Face remain only glorified stage hazards and are not promoted to full-scale boss fights.
  • Despite the several unique boss encounters throughout the game, Boss Battles Mode is absent (not counting Sephiroth's Classic Mode) and the Rematch mode added in version 8.0.0 only lets you fight spirits that had possessed Puppet Fighters. Refighting the bosses of Ultimate can only be done by playing a Classic Mode route (which only lets you fight one and limits who you can use to fight them due to the non-randomized Classic routes), replaying World of Light (which is a significant time investment), playing the True Final Bosses' level (which requires at least 5 minutes just to reach the actual bosses themselves), or playing Sephiroth's aforementioned Classic Mode route (which is limited to just one playable character and has to be bought).
  • Towards the very end of World of Light, there's a unique stage where you get to play as Master Hand to fight off Galeem and Dharkon's cloned fighters. This is the only time in the entire game where you get to do so, and there's no Replay Mode for it, nor an ability to copy the Adventure's save files, so you can never play this section again without having to go back through the entire story mode to reach it.
  • The main menu has a Gift Button where you can receive gifts during special events. Since the game's launch, this feature has been used a grand total of two times to give out the bonus Partner Pikachu, Partner Eevee, and Tockles spirits, which were later added to the standard and Dragon Quest Spirit Boards anyway, and has yet to be used again. Thankfully, after not being used since the Tockles, the function would finally be used again with spirits of Sophia, Arthur, and later on, Razewing Ratha
  • Many Assist Trophies and Poké Ball summons with more unique or complex mechanics, like Devil, Marshadow, the Squid Sisters, or Lunala, are unable to appear on all but the most vanilla stages. It makes one wonder what the point of including them at all was if they're just going to be locked on half the stages anyway.^note In fact, Devil and the Squid Sisters are banned on more stages than not! Fortunately, Battlefield and Final Destination variants don't lock any summons, which takes some of the sting away.
  • Ultimate gave Kirby the ability to spit out or swallow projectiles as well as fighters. On paper, this gives Kirby an option against projectiles, something he's struggled with since Melee. In practice, it falls completely flat. Unlike Dedede's Inhale, which just spits the projectile back towards the opponent, Kirby can only actually spit out a star if the projectile was powerful enough - "powerful enough" generally means "fully-charged Charge Shots or Snake missiles." Against anything weaker, a.k.a. the attacks opponents will actually try to camp you with, Kirby is forced to swallow it, which heals 1% and leaves Kirby in a laggy animation, letting him get hit by another projectile or, worse, the opponent's combos. If anything, the newly-added ability only puts Kirby in a worse spot most of the time he uses it, meaning most players will rarely use it and leaving Kirby just as bad against projectiles.
  • Many of the Spirit effects (the Hazard Skills, Swimmer, and some of the effects strengthen or weaken elemental attacks like Water) are too specialized and don't see much use outside of the Spirit Battles. Water and Ice are some of the least common elemental effects, Poison in regular matches only comes from certain Assist Trophies and one of Hero's negative Hocus Pocus effect, and some hazards are too rare in regular stages (or outright non-existent in Stage Builder) to get the full benefits of the Immunity effects.
• Unfortunate Character Design:
  • There is a graphical issue with the Pikachu Libre costume which causes her legs to mesh into her crotch when doing a back flip, giving the appearance of a camel toe. On a similar note, the tail hole on her spandex pants is shaped like a heart, which can easily lead to much more perverted ideas for its purpose due to the area of its placement.
  • When Steve was initially released, fans immediately took notice of one of his victory screens, in which he eats a steak. Once he's done with it, the placement of the steak looks like◊ he's packing the other kind of meat. This was later removed in the 9.0.1 update.

V

• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • A minor example. Some players thought that Palutena's Conversation revealed that the Piranha Plant is female. However, the specific line of dialogue where Palutena uses a feminine pronoun is actually referring to Viridi, not the Piranha Plant. Officially, the Piranha Plant is referred to with gender-neutral pronouns (being, well, a plant and all).
  • Due to their chin-long hair, feminine voice and rather gender-ambiguous title, many fans unfamiliar with Dragon Quest mistook Hero/Luminary for a girl.
  • Smash fans unfamiliar with Banjo-Kazooie often mistake Kazooie for a boy due to her only obviously female attributes, her eyelashes, being hard to see at first glance.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • While Smash for Wii U already looked awesome while achieving stellar performance on underpowered hardware, Ultimate takes it even further with a brand new rendering engine that makes the visuals even more awesome while still achieving the same level of performance and fidelity.
  • In Sora's reveal trailer, the fighters turn back into trophies - but not just trophies, extremely detailed ones akin to high-end collector's statues that would put even the best-crafted amiibo to shame. Despite the Tear Jerker nature of the situation and the trophies being CGI like the rest of the trailer, they look just like real statues, with some fans wishing that such trophies existed in real life.
• Vocal Minority:
  • People complained throughout the second half of 2018 that Nintendo focused too much on promoting Super Smash Bros without revealing other games for the second half of the year. This most notably included a number of stock market investors who sold their Nintendo shares following the E3 2018 reveal. They were so prevalent that Nintendo eventually stated they'd have more games to be released. However, with how much attention Ultimate got and how well the pre-orders and sales of the game and the Switch ended up, Nintendo's strategy worked just fine.
  • Many people became quick to generalize Waluigi's fanbase as a bunch of loudmouthed pricks after it came out that some of Waluigi's fans were harassing Sakurai in emails to get the purple loon playable status in Ultimate. The problem is that there were a grand total of three people who were doing this (with two of them even apologizing later) but, thanks to Common Knowledge, antagonism of the whole fanbase ran rampant for a while.
  • A similar situation to Waluigi's fans occurred with Ashley's fans after the revelation that she was also confirmed to still be an Assist Trophy.
  • When Kirby was the sole survivor of Galeem's attack, a handful of people were very upset and accused Sakurai of bias. While this has tapered off since the final direct, and many have come to accept that Kirby was a good choice for a starter character (what with his impressive recovery moves, easy-to-learn moveset, and the fact that fellow Skill Gate Character Mario is the first one Kirby saves), some people act like the entire Smash fanbase was accusing Kirby of being a Creator's Pet.

W

• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?:
  • Ridley brutally impaling Mega Man and crushing Mario's neck seemingly both to death may throw off people who thought the game was completely kid-oriented.
  • Simon's reveal trailer shows Luigi getting getting his soul ripped out by Death's scythe and leaving his lifeless body with Blank White Eyes. And when Luigi is trying to go back into his body, he gets spooked by Death and Carmilla, who is crying Alien Blood.
  • The whole cast disintegrating, obviously.
  • Both bad endings. Beat Dharkon, and Galeem turns everyone back into spirits again, this time without missing Kirby. Beat Galeem, and Dharkon unleashes a powerful darkness that suffocates Mario to death onscreen.
  • The game's inclusion of multiple characters and spirits from Mature-rated game series could raise a few eyebrows from some people. It may even lead to the opposite trope if a kid is inspired to try out any of those games after seeing them in Smash. (Persona 5, for example, has a very active under-18 fanbase on TikTok.)
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • Ultimate seems to be a further attempt at an olive branch to the Tournament crowd and the not-casual playerbase in general, bringing back a number of high-level moves from Melee, and a few new tricks as well. That's on top of the Tournament mode, saveable rulesets, Final Smash Super Meter, a Stage Hazard switch, Battlefield Mode, numerous gameplay adjustments for 1-on-1 fights, etc. Even the August 2018 Smash Direct for the game was first announced at a competitive championship series, namely EVO 2018. Further, players with a Global Smash Rating above a certain threshold will be allowed to participate in "Elite Battles", and data on these battles will be what later balance patches will be based on, giving competitive players more agency in developing the metagame than ever.
  • Volume 1 of the Fighters Pass received a bit of criticism for having no solo female fighters as the default.^note Kazooie and Banjo are a team with Banjo doing more of the legwork. And while Byleth does have a female alt, the male one is the default option. Volume 2 addresses the critique and starts the pass with Min Min, which gets even more significant considering she was chosen over the de facto ARMS mascot, Spring Man. Pyra and Mythra, collectively the fourth fighter in Volume 2, helped alleviate this sentiment even more and were met with the warmest and most enthusiastic reaction out of all the first-party Fighters Pass characters, especially since they were also chosen over the male main protagonist of their game (Rex). Furthermore, the ARMS producer Kosuke Yabuki's claim about the playable cast for that game all being main characters has renewed hope for the others to be included in a future Smash installment.
  • The decision to include Corrin in the previous game was one pushed by Nintendo execs as a way to promote Fire Emblem Fates. Fans were split over this, as there were already five characters from the same series in the game, and Corrin was also another swordfighter (albeit with a more varied moveset using not just their sword), and even Sakurai thought that it was too much. When it was announced that Nintendo had given a selection of characters for Sakurai to choose from for this game's DLC, most people took that as meaning characters like Byleth or one of the three main lords from Fire Emblem: Three Houses^note Byleth, however, did get added as the fifth fighter in Fighters Pass 1, a Pokémon Sword and Shield character, or Sylux, who was heavily rumored to appear in Metroid Prime 4, would be chosen. Cue the Game Awards, where it was announced that none other than Joker from Persona 5 would be the first character from the Fighters Pass. E3 2019 followed up on this with inclusions of the Hero from the Dragon Quest series, a lengthy and heavily influential JRPG franchise^note albeit with the intent of promoting the Switch port of Dragon Quest XI in the process, though this was mitigated by other games from the franchise being represented via alternative costumes, and Banjo & Kazooie, Nintendo 64 icons who had been heavily requested for Smash for almost twenty years by that point, but that many thought would never be let in by Nintendo due to being owned by their rival platform holder Microsoft. Needless to say, fans' faith in Nintendo's decision-making abilities were restored and this has had a bonus effect on the second batch of DLC fighters. Fans are now more open to the idea of adding first party characters as DLC as the Fighters Pass delivered a wealth of popular and unexpected characters from outside of Nintendo's arsenal.
  • After Byleth's controversial reveal, expectations were severely lowered for the Second Fighters Pass. The announcement of an ARMS character got some people interested again, and the reveal that the Fighter is Min Min got people excited, in part because her inclusion definitively confirmed characters with spirits could still become fighters. Steve's unexpected reveal later in the year further renewed enthusiasm in the Fighters Pass. Then came Sephiroth, who was one of the best-received and most popular newcomers in the game and who brought a ton of hype with him and crushing any doubts that the second Fighters Pass would be just as great. The addition of Pyra/Mythra and Kazuya as well as what many fans considered to be a strong finish with Sora has caused many to say that the second Fighters Pass was worth it, with Pyra/Mythra's addition also helping to undo much of the bad blood the game had engendered between Xenoblade and Fire Emblem fans over what the former perceived to be massive double-standards favoritism towards the latter^note Initial representation for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in the franchise was markedly sparse despite the game's success and Sakurai's personal praise of it due to the game being released too late for Rex to make it into the base roster, with fans hoping for more representation in Ultimate, only to be disappointed when it received spirits but no stage and only a Rex Mii costume and three songs that aren't even remixes. The announcement of Byleth after it was revealed the DLC characters were settled on before Three Houses even released, and the continued absence of any Xenoblade 2 representation, only poured more salt in the wound. Eventually Pyra and Mythra would be unveiled in the February 17, 2021 Direct as 2-in-1 DLC fighters for Volume 2, both alleviating the game's absence and also appeasing fans of the game who weren't keen on its protagonist Rex due to his being an immense Base-Breaking Character. Sakurai's gameplay stream also then revealed that Rex would still be an Assist Character that would show up in the Final Smash and multiple animations, which some of those who are fond of him see as a good compromise, and an amusing reversal as to how Pyra and Mythra were his supporting character in the main game. .
  • In a certain way, Steve's addition is this for Western fans of the franchise, after past Smash entries and the base roster for Ultimate favored Japanese-created characters for ease of use. His addition to the game after Banjo and Kazooie allowed the prior hatedom between the characters' support bases, who believed only one of the two had a shot at getting in, to subside thanks to this.
• The Woobie: Kirby is the Sole Survivor of Galeem's attack in World of Light. It doesn't take long for him to reunite with Mario, at least, but just seeing the jovial pink hero look at the world in such a sorry state is just... harrowing. Especially in the trailer, where "Lifelight" starts playing right when he touches the ground.
• Woolseyism: In most languages, the Pokémon Trainer's crowd cheer simply consists of "Pokémon Trainer!" in the respective language. In English, this crowd cheer is changed to "I choose you!", which, aside from being a tongue-in-cheek encouragement directly towards the character, is a Mythology Gag to one of their franchise's most famous phrases, and can also avoids specifically mentioning the Trainer while leaving out the Pokémon in battle - making it more inclusive as it can be interpreted as the crowd cheering for both the Trainer and their Pokémon.

---