
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is a platform and mascot fighting game series developed by indie studio Ludosity (the studio that previously developed their own Platform Fighter, Slap City) and Fair Play Labs, and published by GameMill Entertainment (the studio that previously published the Nickelodeon Kart Racers games).
The games pit various characters from various eras of the Nicktoons franchise against each other in a brawl, from classic fare like Rugrats and The Ren & Stimpy Show to more modern shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Loud House. The first game launched with 20 characters and stages, along with an arcade mode and a multiplayer mode supporting up to four players, with more characters and stages being added through free updates and as paid DLC. It was released on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (via Steam) on October 5th, 2021.
The first game's soundtrack is available to listen and download for free via Steam.
A sequel, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2, was announced in July 2023, set to feature new characters, stages, updated graphics, and a campaign mode. It was released on November 7th, 2023note for the same platforms as the original game.
Compare with Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion, Cartoon Network's take on the mascot fighter genre, and MultiVersus, CN's parent company Warner Bros.' take on the genre. See also Nickelodeon Super Brawl, a series of web-based 2D fighters whose name may have inspired this game's title.
NASB
- Announcement trailer
- Character reveal teaser
- Gameplay showcase (How to Play)
- CatDog reveal
- April reveal
- Ren & Stimpy reveal
- Aang reveal
- Toph reveal
- Korra reveal
note
- Launch trailer
- Costume trailer
- Garfield reveal
- Shredder reveal
- Season pass reveal
NASB2
NASB
Fighters (and their home stages)note
Italics + Asterisks (*) indicate DLC characters.
- Aaahh!!! Real Monsters:
- Oblina
(The Dump)
- Oblina
- Avatar: The Last Airbender:
- Aang
(Western Air Temple)
- Toph Beifong
(Omashu)
- Aang
- CatDog:
- CatDog
(CatDog's House)
- CatDog
- Danny Phantom:
- Danny Phantom
(Ghost Zone)
- Danny Phantom
- Garfield:
- Garfield
(Sweet Dreams)*
- Garfield
- Hey Arnold!:
- Helga Pataki
(Traffic Jam)
- Helga Pataki
- Invader Zim:
- Zim (with GIR)
(Irken Armada Invasion)
- Zim (with GIR)
- Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius:
- Hugh Neutron
(Duck, Duck, Pie!)*
- Hugh Neutron
- The Legend of Korra:
- Korra
(Harmonic Convergence)
- Korra
- The Loud House:
- Lincoln Loud
(The Loud House)
- Lucy Loud
(Royal Woods Cemetery)
- Lincoln Loud
- My Life as a Teenage Robot:
- Jenny Wakeman
(Tremorton Joyride)*
- Jenny Wakeman
- The Ren & Stimpy Show:
- Ren & Stimpy
(Space Madness)
- Powdered Toast Man
(Powdered Toast Trouble)
- Ren & Stimpy
- Rocko's Modern Life:
- Rocko Rama
(Hardcore Chores)*
- Rocko Rama
- Rugrats:
- Reptar
(Showdown at Teeter Totter Gulch)
- Reptar
- Sponge Bob Square Pants:
- SpongeBob SquarePants
(Jellyfish Fields)
- Patrick Star
(The Flying Dutchman's Ship)
- Sandy Cheeks
(Glove World)
- SpongeBob SquarePants
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
- Leonardo
(Sewers Slam)
- Michelangelo
(Technodrome Takedown)
- April O'Neil
(Rooftop Rumble)
- Shredder
(Slime Time)*
- Leonardo
- The Wild Thornberrys:
- Nigel Thornberry
(Wild Waterfall)
- Nigel Thornberry
Items
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: Sokka's Boomerang
- CatDog: Trash Can
- Danny Phantom: Fenton Thermos
- Hey Arnold!: Arnold's Boombox
- Invader Zim: Guidance Chip, Lawn Gnome
- The Ren & Stimpy Show: Log from Blammo!
- Rocko's Modern Life: The Suck-o-matic
- Rugrats: Reptar Wagon, Tommy's Ball
- Sponge Bob Square Pants: Anchor, Explosive Pie, Jellyfish Jelly, Krabby Patty, Sandy's Rocket, Squidward's Clarinet
NASB2
Fightersnote
Fighters in bold are newcomers.
Itlaics + Asterisks (*) indicate DLC characters.
- The Angry Beavers:
- Avatar: The Last Airbender:
- Danny Phantom:
- El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera:
- Garfield:
- Hey Arnold!:
- Invader Zim:
- Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius:
- The Legend of Korra:
- The Loud House:
- My Life as a Teenage Robot:
- The Ren & Stimpy Show:
- Rocko's Modern Life:
- Rugrats:
- Sponge Bob Square Pants:
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
- Donatello
- Raphael
- April O'Neil
- Rocksteady*
- Donatello
- The Wild Thornberrys:
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl provides examples of:
- 2.5D: The visual design presents the 3D CG characters and stages in a 2D perspective, similar to the Super Smash Bros. series.
- Actually a Doombot: After his first defeat, Vlad Plasmius reveals that you only fought a ghost clone. Clockwork admits afterwards that he led you to the clone on purpose so you'd at least have some experience before trying to fight the stronger real one.
- Adaptational Badass: Characters with no fighting experience in their home series, such as Nigel Thornberry, Hugh Neutron, and Lucy Loud, can duke it out with experienced fighters like Leonardo, Jenny Wakeman, and Korra.
- Advanced Movement Technique: Wavedashing, a physics exploit stemming from Super Smash Bros. Melee, is an intentional mechanic in this series, instead of the accidental gimmick it started off as. It can be performed by either airdashing into the ground or simply pressing the jump and shield buttons simultaneously.
- Advertised Extra: GIR is featured in the first game's key artwork with every playable character, despite solely being Zim's Assist Character.
- A.I. Breaker: In the first game, CPU opponents are completely unable to comprehend Aang's Spinning Staff should the player position Aang at the edge of a stage and start spinning it non-stop. The CPU player will try fruitlessly to get back on stage over and over again for as long as the player feels like keeping the staff going or until the CPU fudges an attempted recovery, like this
.
- Air-Dashing: In 1, every character can dash in the air, a more offense-oriented substitute for Smash's air dodging. As mentioned above, airdashing into the ground lets you wavedash, just as air dodging into the ground would in Melee. 2 changes it so it's an air dodge normally, but spending Slime makes it an airdash.
- Ambidextrous Sprite: The series uses the 3D invoked version of ambidextrous sprites, having the character models laterally flip when turning around so that the animations are the same in both directions. That said, certain characters with asymetrical design aspects always have them in the proper orientation, such as Sandy's flower, Hugh's hair (though despite this, the text on his pie boxes will still flip when facing left), and Leonardo's "L" belt button. Prior to a patch, Danny's "D" logo would flip when facing left, but this has been corrected.
- Amusement Park: Glove World features a glove-themed Ferris wheel, a roller coaster called the Fiery Fist O' Pain, a swinging pirate ship, and other carnival rides.
- Animation Evolution: While the first game had fairly stiff, robotic animations that quickly snapped between frames, the sequel has much more fluid animation across the board, with little details thrown in to make each animation feel more responsive and expressive.
- Apocalypse How/Class X-5: Vlad's plan in 2's Campaign is to control all minds in all universes. Unfortunately, his machine is destined to backfire and destroy all universes instead. You see reality beginning to come apart at the seams before Clockwork brings you back to the Hub Level. Vlad was aware of the problem and was in the process of trying to repair the machine, but the Brainwashed and Crazy Clockwork kept getting in his way because he enjoyed watching the universes' demise repeatedly.
- Art Evolution:
- The renders for the first game's DLC characters, as well as the base game characters' alt costumes, are noticeably higher-quality and feature more intricate lighting compared to character renders from the base game. Rocko's render is particularly notable for having reflective eyes, detailed shading, fabric on his shirt and no visible polygons on his model.
- The sequel features an extensively overhauled art style with more advanced models and lighting. The base game characters have also had their models touched up, or in some cases, completely overhauled — April O'Neil is highlighted in the trailer, now having a more detailed model and a more active idle animation.
- Art-Style Clash: This is present in not just the expected differences between characters, but the stages too: The Loud House and Tremorton Joyride are entirely done in cartoony, flat-shaded styles in reference to their home series, while all the other stages have more standard 3D rendering.
- Ascended Meme:
- In both games, SpongeBob has a taunt where he performs the "Mocking SpongeBob" pose from Little Yellow Book. His Down Strong also has him make a rainbow with his hands, and is called "Imaginaaation Clap".
- Patrick's Neutral Strong has him slam a telephone down, and is called "No it's Patrick", a reference to the "No! This is Patrick!" meme.
- Nigel says "Smashing!" when performing his Down Special, referencing his Catchphrase.
- Ren & Stimpy's victory animation has them do the "Happy Happy Joy Joy" dance. The song itself is also referenced a number of times throughout the game.
- Michelangelo saying "Dude, I could be gaming" in Injustice 2 was extremely popular among users of the Michelangelo channel on the official NASB Discord, to the point where after the character channels were retired, Mikey's was kept up so people could still spam the GIF. When voice acting was added, it became one of Mikey's entrance lines.
- Back before Hugh got into the game, his fans collectively referred to themselves as "Hugh Nation". In the Rocko update, Hugh's strafing taunt has him say "Hugh Nation" verbatim. Another possible line has Hugh thanking the internet for getting him in.
- The reveal trailer for the sequel references the "Squidward Looking Out the Window"
meme, showing him in the same pose, disappointed that he didn't get to join the original game.
- One of Squidward's normals is the double kick that was used in the "ah hell nah Skodwerd got the janky ass hitbox" meme.
- Attack Reflector: All Strong Attacks can reflect projectiles, meaning the ability to reflect projectiles is a universal mechanic. Similarly, projectiles can also be grabbed, held, and returned to their owners.
- Badass Adorable: There are serval cute characters who can fight their opponents, such as SpongeBob, Patrick, Sandy, Lincoln, Lucy, Aang, Toph, Ren & Stimpy, CatDog, Danny Phantom, April O'Neil, Garfield, Korra, Rocko and Jenny.
- Badass Normal: Alongside characters with supernatural strength and extraordinary powers are ones who don't have any special abilities other than being creative with the tools they have, such as Helga and April O'Neil.
- Battle in the Rain: Royal Woods Cemetery takes place on a dark and stormy night, fitting the gloomy setting.
- Big Bad: Vlad Plasmius serves as the primary villain of All-Star Brawl 2's single player mode; the goal is to stop him from taking over the entire Nickelodeon universe.
- Big Boo's Haunt:
- Lucy Loud's stage is the Royal Woods Cemetery, a spooky graveyard befitting her Gothic personality.
- Patrick's stage is The Flying Dutchman's Ship. It takes place on a ghostly floating ship with the Flying Dutchman making a cameo appearance haunting the stage.
- Bowdlerize: On Traffic Jam, the Doomguy Expy on the Hillwood Arcade's storefront is holding up his fists rather than aiming a gun.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Thanks to Vlad, this is the fate of all fighters in the second game except for Spongebob until he can beat some sense back into them. Vlad wants to bring the entire universe under this spell. It's revealed in the final act that the brainwashing didn't actually give Vlad any control — it just injected an evil personality that ran rampant, as he found out the hard way when he tried to control Clockwork.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Hugh's secret taunt has him thanking the internet for getting him into the game.
- Calling Your Attacks: After voice acting was added into the first game, there were naturally many instances of it. SpongeBob says "Imaginaaation!" when performing his Imaginaaation Clap, Patrick goes "No, this is Patrick!" and "I'm a Superstar!" when performing those respective moves, etc.
- The Cameo: Most of the stages have background cameos from other characters, including Gary on Jellyfish Fields, Lynn, Lola, and Lily on The Loud House, Winslow on CatDog's House, Mr. Horse on Space Madness, and Grandpa Lou on Teeter-Totter Gulch.
- Catch and Return: All fighters have the ability to use their grab to catch projectiles, hold them while walking and jumping around, and throw them back at opponents.
- Cosmetic Award: In the first game, completing arcade mode gives you an emblem depending on what difficulty it was completed on, starting at bronze and going up to silver, gold, platinum and finally, on Very Hard, purplish gold. Completing Very Hard without using a continue upgrades the emblem into a more intricate design with "wings".
- Dash Attack: Every character has two attacks they can use while running. If they connect with an opponent, they can be cancelled into any other attack.
- Demoted to Extra: After appearing as playable characters in the first game, Helga, Lincoln, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Hugh, Powdered Toast Man, and Sandy all appear as NPC's in the second game, while Shredder appears as a boss.
- Developer's Foresight:
- As of the June 2022 update of the first game, certain characters have unique voice lines when picking up/throwing certain items. One example is Spongebob with a Krabby Patty, and another is how Danny Phantom will say "What are you doing here?" when throwing a Fenton Thermos item, which is already in his moveset.
- In the first game, most fighters react in disgust to throwing a trash can. Exceptions include Oblina and the Ninja Turtles, whose usual dwellings are rather nasty.
- In the first game, Spunky only appears as part of Rocko's light down if he hasn't been sent out by "Go Spunky!", and only appears in the background of Hardcore Chores if Rocko isn't being played as.
- In 2, all of the playable characters have different interactions with the NPC's and bosses such as Garfield being confused when Gary meows at him.
- Some mind-controlled brawlers have special lines when you have certain bonuses equipped. For example, normally Rocko makes an empowered speech... unless you have the "Stinky Fantasy" power-upnote , in which case he asks you when the last time you took a bath was.
- Directionally Solid Platforms: Floating Platforms can be phased through from below.
- Dream Land: Garfield's stage is "Sweet Dreams", which takes place in his own dreams. It includes oversized food, a statue of himself as king, Pooky sleeping on the moon, and Counting Sheep.
- Easy-Mode Mockery: Subverted with 2's easy difficulty: It's represented by Tommy Pickles, AKA a baby, but the difficulty's name is "Tiny but Mighty".
- Enemy Mine: In the campaign mode for 2, all the playable fighters have to team up to stop Vlad Plasmius from taking over/destroying the universe. This includes established villains Plankton, Ember, and Azula, who are so angry about being controlled by Vlad that they're willing to work with their respective heroes to take him down.
- Evil Knockoff: In Campaign Mode, one-on-one battles against characters that have already been unlocked will replace them with a shadowy ghost clone, which can itself be unlocked as a costume after defeating a given fighter three times (the first time unlocking the fighter itself, the second unlocking the Mind-Controlled Brawler costume).
- Fighting Clown: Practically almost every fighter, as it's a fighting game based on zany Nickelodeon properties and they range from SpongeBob blowing bubbles, Patrick using a trophy, Dog getting ridiculously muscular, Ren using Stimpy as a bludgeon, to Nigel's entire moveset being based on wildlife.
- Funny Background Event:
- Mr. Horse can be seen running in zero-gravity outside of the Space Madness stage.
- In the first game's version of Technodrome Takedown, Krang is flying around. He is taken out of his robot body so he can take a closer look at the action, until he slips off of its hands and plummets down, causing the robot body to fly after him.
- In Tremorton Joyride, Tuck can be seen desperately clinging on to a jetpack and flying through the background.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation:
- Since Jenny can fight on Royal Woods Cemetery with no issue, she can finally "go for a walk without rusting in the rain".
- Oblina still gets healed from Krabby Patties, even though monsters in the Aaahh!!! Real Monsters universe prefer to eat garbage and dislike eating "real" food. Jenny also eats them, despite being physically unable to eat. Two other examples are actually subversions: Aang can eat Krabby Patties despite being a vegetarian in his series, and Zim can eat Krabby Patties even though he's severely allergic to meat. Krabby Patties are actually vegetarian burgers, meaning they don't have actual meat in them.
- Genre Throwback: The TMNT stages feature heavily saturated coloring and synthesized music, evoking the '80s throwback feel of the characters, as they are from the 1987 series.
- Green Hill Zone: SpongeBob's stage, Jellyfish Fields, is an idyllic grassland with rolling hills and serves as an introductory level to the game while being home to its gateway starter character. The stage is also very simple, with a single moving platform featuring no gimmicks or stage hazards.
- Guest Fighter:
- The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters are an interesting case, as they are not Nickelodeon original characters and the franchise was bought by Paramount in 2009, which led to the Nickelodeon-made Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) and Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. However, the character incarnations used here are from the 1987 series, which had never aired on Nick (though it has crossed over with the 2012 series a few times) and were specifically chosen because the developers loved and grew up with that series.
- Garfield is also not an original Nickelodeon character, but his franchise was bought by Paramount in 2019; although he has never had a Nickelodeon-made series, his appearance makes nods to the syndicated animated series, Garfield and Friends, which did air on Nick and other networks.
- Happy Circus Music: Glove World's background music is a bouncy, quirky organ theme. It even incorporates the Mocking Sing-Song tune for extra comedy.
- Hit Stop: Time briefly stops when hit connects. The stronger the hit, the longer the Hit Stop is.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: 2 has the following difficulty levels for its single player modes:
- Tiny but Mighty: Easy, represented with an icon of Tommy Pickles.
- Texas Tough: Medium, represented with an icon of Sandy Cheeks.
- Master Class: Hard, represented with an icon of Master Splinter.
- Unstoppable Force: Hard with a one-stock-only handicap, represented with an icon on Korra. Not available in Campaign.
- How Tough Are Ya?: Campaign only. Harder Than Hard, represented with an icon of the Salty Spitoon bouncer.
- Madness Reigns: Campaign only. Harder Than Harder Than Hard, represented with an icon of Ren giving a Slasher Smile.
- Prepare For Doom: Campaign only. Hardest, represented with an icon of Zim.
- Ignored Enemy: Garfield really doesn't care what the bosses have to say and is just pretending to listen, which he tells the player at one point.Vlad Plasmius: How can even a cat be bored at a time like this?!
- Intelligible Unintelligible: Downplayed with Reptar. He only "speaks" in growls and roars, and that's all other characters hear, but they can get the gist of whatever feeling he's trying to convey (e.g. offended at Clockwork leading him to the ghost clone Vlad instead of the real one, or terrified at the impending Apocalypse How).
- Large-Ham Announcer: The announcer provides some color commentary during battles and throws in one liners like "Critical hit!" and "Major damage!".
- Level Ate:
- Powdered Toast Man's stage, "Powdered Toast Trouble" ("Messy Kitchen" in the second game), shrinks down the brawlers so they can fight on top of various food items on a kitchen counter, including a bowl of cereal (that they can drown in), a piece of cheese, and toast in a toaster.
- Garfield's stage, "Sweet Dreams", consists of a huge pan of lasagna and two pizza pies as platforms, and the background is filled with other kinds of junk food.
- Hugh Neutron's stage, "Duck, Duck, Pie!", is set on a giant piece of pie floating in the sky, with ducks and boxes of pie floating in the background.
- Limit Break: 2 features super moves in the same vein as Final Smashes, powerful single-use attacks that can be unleashed after building up your Slime meter.
- Macro Zone:
- The "Powdered Toast Trouble"/"Messy Kitchen" stage is a giant kitchen where the fighters brawl on the countertop. Obstacles include toast popping out of a toaster, a bowl of cereal with milk, and a hot frying pan with bacon and eggs.
- "Showdown at Teeter Totter Gulch" takes place in a sandbox which, due to the babies' hyperactive imagination, has transformed into a giant sandpit from a Wild West town. And the fighters are shrunk down to the size of toys so that they can actually fight on top of the playground equipment and seesaw.
- Mascot Fighter: The game involves several characters from Nickelodeon shows fighting each other a la Super Smash Bros.
- Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Multiple Nickelodeon characters from different animated shows are featured as playable characters.
- Meteor Move: Most everyone's strong down air can spike opponents straight down.
- Mirrored Confrontation Shot: The first game's announcement trailer concludes with a brief sequence where ten characters (five on each side) rush towards each other and begin to trade blows.
- Mirror Match: At launch, the first game lacked alternate costumes, taking mirror matches to their logical extreme; all characters playing as the same fighter look identical. A future patch added alternate costumes, but only one per character, which means fighters can still look identical if two or more of the same are present. The second game remedies this by having multiple alternate costumes per character.
- Mooks: The campaign mode in the sequel has stages where the main goal is to fight off enemies such as Jellyfish or Foot Ninjas.
- Musical Pastiche: The stage themes are made to be representative of the shows they're based on while not using music directly from them.
- The theme for "Jellyfish Fields" uses the same woodblock beat and sea life samples as "Jellyfish Jam"
, while incorporating the slide guitar and ukulele typical of SpongeBob music.
- "The Loud House"'s theme uses the same rock instrumentation and "In the Loud House, in the Loud House" chorus as the show's theme.
- The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles stages all use synth samples from the '80s, in the style of the background music from the 1987 show. It's also reminiscent of the Sega Genesis soundchip.
- The theme for "CatDog's House" uses the same bluegrass style as the show's theme, featuring the same mouth harp and slide guitar.
- "Traffic Jam"'s theme is a laidback jazz tune, very close to the style of background music in Hey Arnold!.
- "The Dump"'s theme samples the Howie Long Scream, which was also used in the theme song for Aaahh!!! Real Monsters.
- "Irken Armada Invasion"'s theme combines orchestral samples similar to Invader Zim's soundtrack with a Heavy Metal theme.
- "The Ghost Zone"'s theme features the use of Danny Phantom's signature heavy techno beats.
- "Sweet Dreams"' theme starts out with a gentle piano intro before breaking out into a full big band arrangement, similar to "Friends Are There" (the original theme for Garfield and Friends). It's also reminiscent of The Garfield Show's theme song with its use of jazz samples, making it sort of a middle ground between the two.
- "Tremorton Joyride" is a pop-punk anthem with synthesized sound effects, similar to the theme song for My Life as a Teenage Robot.
- The theme for "Jellyfish Fields" uses the same woodblock beat and sea life samples as "Jellyfish Jam"
- Mythology Gag: The game has enough references to the original Nicktoons for its own page.
- No Plot? No Problem!: In the first game, there is no setup or Excuse Plot for multiple Nickelodeon characters to fight each other, even in the arcade mode. The second game, however, averts this with a full campaign mode.
- Nostalgia Level: While the second game gives a number of returning stages new or overhauled layouts, some of them also have their old designs from the first game thanks to the alternate version tabs.
- “Irken Armada Invasion”, via the three platform layout.
- “Jellyfish Fields”, via the single moving platform layout.
- “Harmonic Convergence”, via the flat stage layout.
- “Rooftop Rumble”, via the flat stage layout. For this one, the extra wooden platform is added.
- One-Hit Kill: In the first game, if Critical KOs are enabled and a character gets hit by a strong attack after already taking a lot of damage, they'll get KOed on the spot instead of being launched away.
- Power at a Price: An entire category of power-ups in 2 are classified as "Pros & Cons", and power your character up while hampering them in some way such as damage or a debuff.
- Power Creep, Power Seep: For just two examples, Danny Phantom (a superhero) and Lincoln Loud (a normal grade-school kid) are both playable characters. As expected from their source material, Danny is seen using his ghost powers like an ectoplasmic blast, while Lincoln carries around an ordinary yo-yo among his toolset. They can duke it out with each other nonetheless.
- Put on a Bus: While most of the cut veterans from the first game do appear as NPC's in the second game, Toph, CatDog, and Oblina are completely absent without explanation.
- Quicksand Sucks:
- The sand in the "Showdown at Teeter Totter Gulch" stage, despite literally being a children's sandbox, acts as a deathtrap that will pull in any fighters who fall off the playground equipment. Bottles, bouncing balls, and Cynthia even swirl around in sand cyclones!
- The cereal bowl in the "Powdered Toast Trouble" stage has milk that acts like quicksand, so naturally it can pull in anyone that falls into it.
- The slime in "Double Dare" also plays a very similar role.
- Retraux: The TMNT stages feature synthesized electronic music that sounds straight out of the original show, or even the Sega Genesis, on which the series had its own fighting game.
- Shifting Sand Land: "Showdown at Teeter-Totter Gulch" is a children's sandbox and playground area that has been transformed into a Wild Western desert town by the babies' imaginations and even features a sinking quicksand hazard that can KO players.
- Shown Their Work: The devs did a lot of research for each of the movesets, rivaling the Smash devs in that front, adding tons of accurate references to each of the characters' movesets and animations, as well as references to each of their own series in general.
- Shout-Out:
- Shredder's dash attack is M. Bison's Psycho Crusher in all but name. One of Hugh Neutron's attacks is a reference to Chun-Li's Houyokusen.
- April's moveset breakdown for 2 shows off her Super Move, which essentially has her throw a Spirit Bomb at her foes, down to the animation.
- Being Assist Characters to one another, the Angry Beavers naturally reference two of the most infamous assists in fighting game history; Daggett can perform Doctor Doom's Hidden Missiles with logs, while Norbert recreates Vegeta's Consecutive Energy Blast with mashed potatoes.
- Sidelined Protagonist Crossover: Some of the shows represented in the series have secondary characters as the playable reps while the main protagonists are completely absent:
- Rugrats: Reptar, the star of the series' Show Within a Show, is playable while none of the titular babies are. Tommy, however, does appear to cheer him on in his entrance and victory animations.
- Aaahh!!! Real Monsters: Oblina is a playable character, but Ickis is completely absent.
- The Wild Thornberrys: Nigel Thornberry is playable, but his daughter Eliza is nowhere to be found.
- Hey Arnold!: Helga is playable in the first game, but not the titular Arnold. Likewise, Grandma Gertie and Gerald appear in the second game with Arnold nowhere to be seen.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): Zig-Zagged: Leonardo and Michelangelo are playable, but Raphael and Donatello are absent in favor of secondary protagonist April O'Neil, which was later followed-up on by primary antagonist Shredder as post-launch DLC. The second game keeps April and adds Raphael and Donatello, but cuts Leonardo and Michelangelo (Shredder was also removed, and Rocksteady is planned to be added as DLC). This is unusual, as all other TMNT material features all four turtles equally.
- The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: Hugh appeared in the series ahead of Jimmy himself. Averted in the second game which only has Jimmy playable.
- The Loud House: Averted in the first game with Lincoln and Lucy being playable, but played straighter in the second with Lucy returning but Lincoln being reduced to a cameo.
- Subverted with the following:
- The Ren & Stimpy Show: Powdered Toast Man was revealed in the initial game announcement without Ren and Stimpy in sight, but Ren and Stimpy were revealed at a later date regardless.
- Sponge Bob Square Pants: Sandy and Patrick were revealed before SpongeBob himself as well, but SpongeBob was revealed a bit later in the same trailer as them anyway.
- Spotlight-Stealing Crossover: The game has a noticeable emphasis on Sponge Bob Square Pants and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) content, with both series having three characters in the first game at launch (with the latter getting a fourth character in Shredder later on) with all the associated content each one gets (particularly Home Stages, extras and profile pictures) compared to every other series having only one or two characters instead. The Avatar universe also toes the line, as it has two characters from The Last Airbender and one character from its sequel series, meaning the franchise as a whole gets a lot of representation as well. Not helping this perception is that all three of these series have DLC characters announced for the second game.
- Stock Scream: "The Dump" stage's music track samples the Howie Long Scream in some spots, referencing the theme song for Aaahh!!! Real Monsters using the same sample.
- Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Strong Attacks have this in the first game, where the directions of the attacks colliding cause one of three effects: down beats mid and briefly stuns the latter fighter, mid beats up and causes the latter fighter to involuntarily turn around, and up beats down and causes the latter player to spin out. The sequel abandons this.
- Taunt Button: In the first game, every character has their own unique taunt. In addition, by pressing the taunt button in the air, your character will be sent into a tumbling state with a squeaky sound effect. The Rocko update added additional taunts that can be performed by taunting while holding the strafe button, though not every character has an alternate tauntnote In the second game, every character has multiple taunts.
- Tennis Boss: Projectiles can be reflected by every Strong Attack, becoming stronger every time they're redirected. Naturally, this leads to a sequence where the two players in the demonstration volley one of SpongeBob's bubbles back and forth until it finally hits one of them.
- Truer to the Text: In an interesting decision, the Turtles featured as playable characters are designed closer to their 1987 counterparts. This contrasts with previous Nicktoons crossover games primarily using the 2012 series, or Rise on the rare occasion, as they're more directly Nick-produced adaptations. According to Ludosity, this decision was made at their request, as Nick originally proposed the use of the 2012 designs.
- Variable Mix: The music for Tremorton Joyride varies depending on which phase the stage is in, with each of the five phases having its own unique variant of the same song.