Trivia / Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U

• Colbert Bump:
  • Bayonetta's inclusion as the final DLC character led to back copies of Bayonetta 2 flying off the shelves and selling out online. This later led to both later print runs of the Wii U version during the remainder of the console's lifespan, and Nintendo porting the game (and the first Bayonetta) to the Switch, where it continued to sell well.
  • Shulk's inclusion sparked new interest in Xenoblade Chronicles 1.
• Content Leak:
  • In August 2014, just a few weeks before the 3DS version released in Japan, some screenshots and videos of the game surfaced online that revealed the rest of the roster. It was believed that this leak was somehow connected to the ESRB, but it was discovered almost a decade later that a child of a Nintendo of America employee managed to get into Nintendo's intranet by using their parent’s log-in information. From there, they got a hold of screenshots and videos that were meant to be reviewed by the ESRB and then shared them among their friends. One person eventually shared these leaked screenshots online, and the rest is history.
  • The update containing Lucas, Roy, and Ryu was accidentally made available earlier than planned. While Lucas had been teased earlier in 2015, this leak revealed Roy and Ryu before they were officially unveiled.
• Dummied Out: Kirby has unused voice clips for using Power Copying on Palutena's Heavenly Light and Explosive Flame attacks; as it stands, he can only copy Autoreticle.
• Exiled from Continuity: In the transition from Brawl to 3DS/Wii U, Snake and his series were removed as a result of Nintendo not having the rights from Konami to use Metal Gear content. He was mentioned in the "50-Fact Extravaganza", but only to draw comparison between the Codec calls in Brawl and Palutena's Guidances in Wii U.
• Fandom Nod:
  • Super Smash Bros. for 3DS/Wii U's random online multiplayer has a "For Fun" mode that explicitly removes Final Destination, a stage notorious for being played frequently by both competitive players and stereotypical wannabes. For Glory (aka the competitive mode) turns off items and does have Final Destination... in fact it only has Final Destination. Almost every stage in the game has an optional Omega version that keeps the backgrounds and textures but reduces the playing field to a flat platform, and For Glory exclusively uses these versions.
  • Sakurai is well aware that Ganondorf has a huge advantage in the Home Run Contest thanks to his Reverse Warlock Punch doing more knockback than the Home Run Bat. After acknowledging it in a Miiverse pic-of-the-day, he made it a Challenge to hit the Sandbag a huge 3,280 ft or further with him.
  • For Guest Fighter Bayonetta's crowd cheering, the audience chants "Bayo! Bayo! Bayo!" "Bayo" is often used as a Fan Nickname for Bayonetta, and has never been used in her games proper.
• Flip-Flop of God: Masahiro Sakurai stated in interviews about Downloadable Content that, since the dev team was trying to make new game modes, "there probably won't be many DLC characters or stages" — the key word being "probably"^note There were seven characters, six of them not chosen through the Fighter Ballot and not even influenced by it, and there was a whole second page devoted to stages that may or may not be packaged with characters like Ryu's was, fans wondered if Nintendo was milking the potential of DLC for all it's worth or if Sakurai simply had a broad definition of "not many". It didn't help that Sakurai is known for flip-flopping on his statements at the drop of a hat, especially with this interview where he said "there will only be several more characters", which stirred up intrigue even more as people wondered how "only" and "several" work in the same context.
• God Never Said That:
  • Some people insisted that Super Smash Bros. for 3DS/Wii U would have fewer characters than Brawl because Sakurai said so. What he actually said was that if adding characters was the only thing he did, the game wouldn't be any better. Even when the pre-launch revealed roster for 3DS/Wii U exceeded 30, with many veterans still unannounced, and months to go before the 3DS version's release, such people still insisted the cast was going to be smaller than Brawl's 39.
  • When Sakurai lamented about the Subspace Emissary cutscenes being uploaded onto the internet and said he wasn't going to have cutscenes like that in 3DS/Wii U because of it, many people took it to mean that Sakurai abhorred spoilers and would thus not try to keep any content secret in 3DS/Wii U. What Sakurai actually lamented, though, was since the cutscenes were something that could only really be enjoyed on a first viewing, that a player would not need to actually buy and play the game to enjoy them if they could just watch them on YouTube, i.e. the massive amount of development and space that was put into the cutscenes went to waste as people who didn't own and play the game could just watch them on YouTube. Thus it was simply more feasible for Sakurai to put the development space into cinematic trailers for social media, meant to be watched on YouTube.
  • Many are insisting that Mii Fighters were not worth the development effort because they're not allowed online. They're actually not allowed online on "With Anyone" mode; they're still fair game in "With Friends". They are also the new Multi-Man mooks.
  • Before Mewtwo as announced as the first DLC character, many were insisting that 3DS/U would not have any DLC because Sakurai said that he didn't want any DLC. What he really said was that he wants to make the game as complete as possible, and that he wasn't opposed to the idea and would consider it once he felt satisfied with the released product.
  • When the Smash Ballot was announced, Sakurai stated that the dev team would use the results to consider a potential DLC character. At no point was it stated that the character with the most votes was guaranteed a spot nor that every future DLC character from that point would be based on ballot results.^note Although, Sakurai did say the actual Smash Ballot winner, Bayonetta, did get the most votes out of all "realizable" characters. In Ultimate, the Smash Ballot was brought up again during King K Rool's and Sora's confirmation, with Sakurai mentioning the former's popularity in the ballot and stating that the latter was the true winner of the ballot, only being possible because Sakurai happened to meet with a Disney employee at a game show and worked up negotiations with Disney and Square Enix.
  • When Bayonetta was added as the final DLC character, many fans of the franchise were shocked since they had heard that Bayonetta designer, Hideki Kamiya, had apparently stated he hated Smash Bros. on Twitter and refused to even consider one of his characters added to the roster. What he actually said was that he was sick of Smash Bros. fans continuously asking him the same questions about his characters' potential over and over again, when he had explained that he was not at liberty to discuss such things (finally coming to the head in the infamous "Fuck off Smash idiots!" post).
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": The Trope Namer:
  • 3DS/Wii U has Assist Trophies that fall under this, namely Prince of Sablé from For the Frog the Bell Tolls. Narrowly averted for Takamaru, though, as The Mysterious Murasame Castle finally got an international release between his reveal and the Smash release.
  • Corrin's game, Fire Emblem Fates, had not been released internationally when they were added as a DLC fighter.
  • The 3DS version was the first appearance of the Inklings in South Korea, because the Wii U was never released there and thus neither did the original Splatoon. For the same reason, and also because the 3DS version of Super Mario Maker wasn't released in the country until 2017, the game's first portrayal in any capacity for South Korean players was via the eponymous Super Mario Maker DLC stage.
• Meme Acknowledgment: Note the placement of the Villager in Bayonetta's promotional artwork◊.
• No Export for You: Marth's original NES game, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light, is part of the Masterpieces collection only in the Japanese version of For Wii U, and was removed from the US version.
• New Work, Recycled Graphics: Most of the models used for the trophies are just their in-game models ripped from their respective games. Very noticeable with the for Wii U-exclusive trophies of the party members from Xenoblade Chronicles 1 who do not appear anywhere else in the game, whose faces are not as refined as Shulk or Dunban's in their trophies.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Rosalina is an odd case, as her voice frequently shifts back and forth. In 3DS/Wii U, she's voiced by Kerri Kane, who held the role in Mario Kart 7 and Mario Golf: World Tour, whereas in both her previous and following game appearances, she was voiced by Laura Faye Smith.
  • Pit is played by Antony Del Rio, his voice actor from Kid Icarus: Uprising, succeeding Brawl's Lani Minella.
  • Sonic's voice has switched from Jason Griffith in Brawl to Roger Craig Smith, who has held the role in all media from Sonic Colors and Sonic Free Riders onward.
  • Lauren Landa voices female Robin, in place of Michelle Ruff and Wendee Lee from Fire Emblem: Awakening.
  • Ali Hillis, who voiced Palutena in Kid Icarus: Uprising, has confirmed that she was not available to voice Palutena in 3DS/Wii U. Instead, her friend, Brandy Kopp, took over the role. As well, Patrick Seitz voice-matches Fred Tatasciore as Magnus, and Stephanie Komure takes over for Kari Wahlgren as Phosphora.
  • Kosuke Toriumi replaces Matt Harty as Little Mac's voice actor. Since Riley Inge returned to voice Doc Louis, many had thought Harty would have reprised his role as Mac who uses Non-Dubbed Grunts.
  • Keiji Fujiwara replaces Masachika Ichimura as Mewtwo; unlike the last time Mewtwo was re-cast, this is truly an example of this trope in that this is the same Mewtwo that appeared in Melee.
  • Fox and Falco, who were voiced by Jim Walker and Dex Manley, respectively, in Brawl, are now voiced by Mike West and Mark Lund, respectively, who voiced the characters in Star Fox 64 3D. Also a case of The Original Darrin for West, as he had originally voiced Fox in Star Fox 64. Similarly, Peppy and Slippy, who were voiced by Dex Manley and Mike McAuliffe respectively in the secret taunts in Brawl, are also voiced by their Star Fox 64 3D actors, Jaz Adams and Lyssa Browne, the latter having voiced Slippy in Star Fox 64 as well.
  • Sean Schemmel replaces Bill Rogers as Lucario in another case of The Original Darrin, having previously voiced him in the anime movie Pokémon: Lucario and the Mystery of Mew.
  • Tom Wayland replaces Vic Mignogna as Keldeo in the English version and Yuka Terasaki replaces Shoko Nakawaga in the Japanese version.
• Production Lead Time: During development of both versions of the game, Sakurai decided against making Takamaru playable due to Western unfamiliarity. The game was being developed when Nintendo was making this less of an issue, as The Mysterious Murasame Castle was the subject of a Nintendo Land minigame and got an international release on the 3DS Virtual Console.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Shortly after Brawl was released, Matthew Mercer created and acted in the webseries There Will Be Brawl. Five years later, Mercer actually got to be in the Smash series, reprising his role as Chrom from Fire Emblem: Awakening.
  • Xander Mobus, the announcer, is a big fan of the series himself.
• Role Reprise:
  • The Wii Fit Trainers are all reprised by their respective voice actors in their own regions: October Moore and Steve Heinke for the NTSC (American) trainers, Tania Emery and Luke Smith for the PAL (British) trainers, and Hitomi Hirose and Tomoyuki Higuchi for the Japanese trainers.
  • Greninja is voiced by Billy Bob Thompson and Yuji Ueda in English and Japanese, reprising their roles as Ash's Greninja from Pokémon the Series: XY.
  • Barring Female Robin as noted above, the rest of the Awakening representatives are reprised by their respective voice actors from the original game:
    • We have David Vincent as Male Robin in English, and Yoshimasa Hosoya and Miyuki Sawashiro for both versions in Japanese. Matthew Mercer and Tomokazu Sugita reprise their roles as Chrom for Robin's Final Smash and Palutena's Guidance.
    • Lucina is once again voiced by Laura Bailey in English, and by Yuu Kobayashi in Japanese.
  • Adam Howden and Shintarō Asanuma return from Xenoblade Chronicles to voice Shulk once again. The same applies to his two colleagues that appear in his Final Smash: Rufus Jones and Ryō Horikawa for Dunban, and Wayne Forester and Yuki Kaida for Riki.
  • The Koopalings are all voiced by their recurring voice actors as of New Super Mario Bros., those being Caety Sagoian (Bowser Jr.), Lani Minella (Larry, Morton, Wendy and Lemmy), Mike Vaughn (Iggy and Ludwig) and Dan Falcone (Roy).
  • Kyle Hebert and Hiroki Takahashi return to voice Ryu, having voiced him officially in English and Japanese respectively since the release of Street Fighter IV.
  • Due to legal reasons about Smash being a non-union dub that would've prevented the return of Steve Burton or his character getting a temporary English recast just for the game, Cloud is solely voiced in Japanese for all regions by his recurring Japanese voice actor Takahiro Sakurai, who has voiced him since the first Kingdom Hearts game back in 2001.
  • Hellena Taylor and Atsuko Tanaka reprise their roles as Bayonetta's English and Japanese voice actresses. As a nod to the first Bayonetta not having a Japanese language track, Taylor's voice acting is used in the Japanese voice track for any of Bayonetta's original costume palette swaps.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot:
  • Sheik and Zero Suit Samus were made separate characters from Zelda and Samus due to hardware limitations on the 3DS preventing their transformations from working right.
  • Hardware limitations on the 3DS led cutting the Ice Climbers from the roster. While they reportedly functioned fine on the Wii U, Sakurai wanted both versions to play the same and didn't like the idea of version-exclusive characters, so he cut the Ice Climbers to focus development resources on characters who could be included in both versions without issue.
  • After the fact, Sakurai admitted when they decided on Bayonetta as the final DLC Guest Fighter, he wasn't sure what he was going to do with her moveset, and chose to borrow heavily from her home series games. This led to the natural progression of her becoming a Combo-heavy fighter, more extreme than any previous fighter before her (even Ryu).
• Short Run in Peru: The 3DS version was released in Germany one day earlier (October 2nd, 2014) than in the US and Europe (October 3rd, 2014) because the latter is a public holiday in Germany (German Unity Day).
• Star-Making Role: Xander Mobus' stint as the announcer was very well-received, launching his career as a prolific voice actor. In a first for the English-language announcer, he was brought back for the next game and voicing a fighter as DLC.
• Teasing Creator:
  • Pac-Man's reveal trailer, where Mr. Game & Watch shows up at the end to show that the two are the oldest characters in 3DS/Wii U, predating even Mario and DK by a year. This was Mr. G&W's only pre-release appearance. In addition, his intro splash was his classic sprite, before revealing Pac-Man's model, acting as a tease for those worried that his latest (and divisive) redesign from Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures would be used. Sakurai himself was worried that Namco would force the new design onto the game and thought about scrapping Pac-Man altogether before getting his older look approved.
  • One pic of the day showed a couple of Miis wearing masks and cosplaying, one as Samus and one as Meta Knight; when the latter hadn't been confirmed yet and the caption joked that this was Meta Knight returning in the new game. Two days later the real Meta Knight shows up, with another caption joke claiming that he may have attacked the "imposter" from the first pic.
• Trolling Creator: As of 3DS/U, Sakurai has taken a new level in messing with the fans.
  • The trailer for Rosalina & Luma starts off in a way to trick viewers into thinking that a sequel to Kirby Air Ride was being made. It then shows Kirby appearing in a Mario Kart setting, making everyone believe that he might be DLC for Mario Kart 8. Of course, both turned out to be false.
  • The Waluigi Assist Trophy reveal stands out, as he really seems to be rubbing in the fact that Waluigi isn't playable:
    Once again, Waluigi's Assist Trophy joins the collection!! ...Which also means he’s not a playable character. Just because you try hard doesn't mean you'll make it into the battle.
  • The Takamaru reveal did the same thing, with Takamaru boasting about his abilities and throwing in an "(FYI, I'm an Assist Trophy)" at the end.
  • The Ridley teases were just as bad. Occam's Razor dictated he was just a stage hazard (his shadow was revealed in a video article all about stage hazards). But Sakurai refused to confirm what his role was nor even directly acknowledge him, instead of outright disconfirming and openly acknowledging him like other popularly-requested non-playable characters, which made it highly unclear if Ridley is actually a stage boss or if Sakurai is trolling people into thinking he isn't playable. It turns out he's a boss character in the Wii U version, but he can fight alongside the player who touched him first.
  • The 3DS/Wii U Nintendo Direct on April 8, 2014 included a lot of trolling. Introducing the Assist Trophy segment with a Waluigi plush in the scene, dropping yet another Ridley hint, showing off a Palutena trophy before revealing it's actually Pseudo-Palutena, briefly joking that Zero Suit Samus wasn't returning, framing Greninja's silhouette to look like Mewtwo...
  • The trailer for Lucina and Robin ends with Chrom sprawled out on the floor, lamenting that maybe he'll have his chance another day. The trailer then cuts to Chrom in-game... as part of Robin's Final Smash, while the subtitles below say "No, you'll get it today", officially debunking him as a playable character.
  • Other examples coming from the 14th of July, 2014 update include the first Pic of the Day, depicting a Rayman trophy hours before the character reveal video of Robin and Lucina (tricking people into thinking he was leaking the character reveal early), as well as a caption under Captain Falcon's Miiverse post questioning whether Captain Falcon will get a new game of his own anytime soon (made trollier as Sakurai headed Kid Icarus: Uprising which had jokes about the same problem that in series). Not to mention that this update significantly threw a wrench in the up-until-then accurate Gematsu leak, which correctly predicted most of the newcomers but incorrectly predicted that Chrom would be playable. Sakurai has had a lot of fun.
  • There's also the fact that the director of Xenoblade Chronicles 1 retweeted the Twitter announcement of the character reveal, which led many people to belief that Shulk would be announced weeks before he actually was—this may have been a deliberate bit of misdirection, possibly inspired by the Gematsu leak (which included Shulk in the roster).
  • The pic of the day on the day right before the 50 Facts Extravaganza was a screencap of Duck Hunt's trailer — with the image edited so the dog is blurred out. Come the Direct, many people were expecting Duck Hunt's and Bowser Jr.'s trailers to show at the end, but only Bowser Jr.'s showed along with Mewtwo's announcement as DLC. Many people were misled to believe Duck Hunt would receive a trailer that day. However, they did receive a trailer in the November 5, 2014 Direct.
  • When Cloud's reveal trailer was first shown, the burning Smash logo intro was not included, jumping straight to the part that mimicked the opening scene from Final Fantasy VII. This lead to many believing that Square would be porting either FFVII or its PlayStation 4 re-release to the Wii U or NX. Said logo re-appeared when the trailer was made standalone. Though Final Fantasy VII really did get ported to the Nintendo Switch in 2019.
  • When Bayonetta's trailer was shown as "the final DLC character", the main two characters of the trailer were Pit and Palutena... temporarily misleading fans into thinking that the Smash Ballot winner was a Kid Icarus character (a franchise that's been under a lot of fire due to perceived favoritism from Sakurai). However, that quickly changed to reveal Bayonetta and shift the focus to her while Palutena's describing her character.
• Urban Legend of Zelda:
  • Quite a few supposed "leaks" of the game's roster have surfaced. Rather tellingly, many of these are contradictory or include fan-favorite (though not entirely outside the realm of possibility) characters like Ridley, K. Rool, and Takamaru. Ridley and King K. Rool would eventually appear in Ultimate, however.
  • There's a fast-spreading rumor that the Duck Hunt dog's canon name is "Mr. Peepers". As noted on the Duck Hunt trivia page, this is actually an old Fan Nickname.
  • The painstakingly faked Rayman leak convinced many until the leak's creator stepped forward and detailed the process.
  • A supposed screencap of Palutena saying that Pit's original design looked like the result of "a one night stand between Missingno and a garden gnome" spread like wildfire on Tumblr shortly after the release of Super Smash Bros For Wii U. It was photoshopped.
• What Could Have Been: A pic of the day mentioned that the tail granted by the Super Leaf could be used as an attack, but ultimately wasn't implemented.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: Because of people uploading The Subspace Emissary cutscenes from Brawl onto the internet, there are no cutscenes in 3DS/Wii U (there are still Classic Mode/All-Star Mode clear movies for each of the characters, as well as an opening cutscene on the Wii U version). This is because Nintendo, Sakurai in particular, were uncomfortable with a scene where people don't need to actually play the game to enjoy the development- and space-intensive cutscenes.
• Word of God: Sakurai in an interview referred to 3DS as "version four" and "version five" for Wii U. While some fans have interpreted this to mean that Wii U is not "part of the fourth entry" but is "the fifth entry" instead, the truth remains unclear.

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