Web Video / What If They Were In Smash?

aka: What If X Was In Smash

There are going to be a good amount of characters who unfortunately will not become playable characters in Smash. But it's still interesting to think about what kind of move sets these characters can have if they were playable, so that's why I'm here today.

— BrawlFan1, Description in every episode

What If Troper Was In Smash?

What If They Were In Smash? is a series of videos by BrawlFan1 (also known as BJ) that discusses what if certain characters were introduced into Super Smash Bros., in the form of a full move-set for the character of the day, going over their normal attacks, Special moves, Final Smash, and other features such as alternate colors / costumes, taunts and animations for the win screen. Most ^note Certain episodes such as the first, the Slime from Dragon Quest, and the "BJ's Picks" are general exceptions. of the characters are given a move-set video via requests from comments on YouTube and Twitter for a specific character. The first episode was uploaded on October 3, 2018 with the first video covering Jibanyan.

You can find BJ's YouTube channel here and his Twitter here.

You can find the full series here.

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What If They Were In Smash? contains examples of:

• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The host is usually BJ, but certain episodes feature a different host in his place.
  • RealmWars hosts the episodes for Klonoa, Spyro, Rayman and Amateratsu.
  • Roushutsu Rises (AKA Dani) hosts the episode for NiGHTS.
  • supersonic407 (AKA Ryan) hosts the episode for Master Chief.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Some key elements BJ wanted to emphasize in Freddy Fazbear's move-set was the fact that Freddy is an animatronic in poor condition, a horror monster out for other players' stocks, a pizzeria mascot, and a bear.
• Assist Character: While these characters in canon are common recipients of the move-sets (ex: Waluigi, Knuckles, Shadow, Alucard, Bomberman...), as of November 10, 2020, a side series that describe what potential Assist Trophies could be added has started. These are for characters that BJ doesn't see enough potential in for a full on moveset (without compromising what makes the character/game special), but is still worth adding as an Assist Trophy.^note Just because he relegated them to the Assist Trophy video doesn't mean they are completely barred from having a move-set, as the Impostor video demonstrates. These include...
  • The Medic from Team Fortress 2, due to his focus on healing and supporting his teammates not really fitting in with a game like Smash.
  • The Creeper from Minecraft, due to doing nothing other than exploding.
  • The Crewmates & Impostor from Among Us, because of the game being about social deduction, but lacking a clear way to represent that within a move-set. Though, the theme of the Impostor in particular, that being deception and manipulation, is later captured in another move-set.
• Audience Participation:
  • BJ encourages his viewers to suggest characters to make a move-set for future videos, oftentimes those with the most requests getting a video.
  • I Am Bread was a once in a blue moon community effort. Many who requested this "character" contributed to making the move-set as a whole.
  • BJ sometimes sets up streams titled "What If We Make The Extra Smash Aesthetics!" where BJ goes over the Aesthetics not covered in the main moveset videos. (Stock Icons, Series Icons, Stages, Classic Mode Routes, and Boxing Ring Titles). BJ frequently goes to the chat for suggestions for these aesthetics.
• Bait-and-Switch: invokedProvided you watched the videos during the Premiere rather than afterwards. Some episodes start off with one character on screen, only to show the actual character shortly afterward.
  • Double Subverted with the Sans & Papyrus episode. Sans briefly considers complying with the large list of supporters he has, only for Papyrus to show up and, after the latter complains about his brother's overwhelming support, gets gifted Sans's list of supporters in his name and runs off to become a "Super Smash Brother", only to come back and convince Sans to tag along to "Witness his rise to stardom".
  • Twice with Mettaton. The episode starts with game-play footage of Pikmin, only for BJ to pause the game in response to metallic thumping in the background, with Mettaton making himself known shortly after-ward. After being told off, Mettaton offers to help select the next character via "spinning the wheel", seemingly content to sit this one out ...except when the wheel lands in between two characters, with a close-up showing a barely visible Mettaton. Thus, he becomes the character of the day anyway.
  • The same gimmick is reused for another video that implies Petey Piranha will be given a move-set, being known as a "Monster" in the preview image, and it starts in Super Mario Sunshine... only for the same metallic thumping Mettaton made to play again... revealing it to be AMY ROSE, of all characters.
  • Conker's moveset video starts off as seemingly a third attempt at a Jibanyan moveset before the titular rodent saws the fake title card in half.
• Bookends: The series started with Jibanyan in episode one, with the one hundredth episode closing off the milestone being a much older Jibanyan with a more powerful Shadowside form.
• Bowdlerise: Discussed at length in the Scorpion episode. BJ notes that Scorpion can still be true to who he is so long as the violence of the character is toned down to not include the skin breaking and Body Horror, noting that most of the attacks in Smash Bros. don't normally result in either flinching or getting launched in normal circumstances, name dropping Willing Suspension of Disbelief in the process.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: During the Papyrus and Sans episode and since then, the characters from the same game have met up and interacted with the host BJ to varying degrees.
• Everyone Has Standards: While BrawlFan1 is open to giving a move-set to a vast variety of characters that get requested — including Freddy Fazbear, the goose, and non-video game characters ^note So long as they have enough of their own games to use as a reference. such as Goku and SpongeBob SquarePants — BJ outright refuses to cover characters whose series have content considered highly offensive, such as Pico, ^Explanation Due to Pico's School featuring an event based-off the Columbine incident (not necessarily caused by Pico himselfinvoked, but the point still stands), and with school shootings becoming more well-known with time, this only got more tasteless with time. The excessive crudeness present not helping matters, either. characters from Family Guy and South Park, or requests considered plain ridiculous like Lightning McQueen and (initially) Bread.
• Exact Words: When BrawlFan1 offered a subtle hint back during one of his streams as to who the character for episode 89 (Dante) was going to be, he's referred to himself as a fan after "playing all four of his good games". In the following move-set, he only acknowledges one, three, four and five, while the existence of Devil May Cry 2 leaves BJ puzzled as to what that isinvoked.
• Foreshadowing: While BJ keeps the various characters he covers a secret until the premier - at most only giving channel members the option of knowing the character beforehand, trusting they don't potentially spoil the surprise - he did share at the end of his hundred-thousand subscriber live-stream several keywords that hint towards fighters 96 to 99. Those being Fury (Fawful), Soulless (The Masked Man), Desperation (Monika) and Power (Spider-Man).
• Guest Fighter: By the nature of this series, a lot of the video game characters that BJ covers range from IPs associated with Nintendo to third-parties that never before had their games on the same system. BJ also covers non-video-game characters for this series (examples include Goku and SpongeBob), but with a strict rule of these characters needing to have enough video-game appearances to build their move-set.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: As with the official characters, certain fighters have unique traits exclusive to them, oftentimes borrowing mechanics from pre-existing Mechanically Unusual Fighters as a reference to build their gimmicks. Specific gimmicks tied to the character in question are covered on the character page.
• Moveset Clone: Even some of these characters have echo fighters (or semi-clones).
  • Crash Bandicoot: Coco Bandicoot ^note Hindsight on BJ's part would re-dub them as a semi-clone.
  • Shovel Knight: Black Knight
  • Hat Kid: Bow Kid
  • Rayman: Globox ^note They were initially called an Echo Fighter, but due to clarification from a Sakurai interview about what defines them, they were re-dubbed as a semi-clone in the same video via post-editing message.
  • Phoenix Wright: Apollo Justice
  • Sora: Roxas (and, via alternate costumes, Xion)
  • NiGHTS: Reala
  • Amaterasu: Chibiterasu
  • Isaac (Golden Sun): Felix
  • Quote: Curly Brace
  • Koopa Troopa: Dry Bones
  • Spider-Man: Miles Morales
  • Ninten: Ana
  • Ratchet and Clank: Rivet and Kit
• One-Steve Limit: Averted with Isaac and Isaac, whose videos both came one after the other. Lampshaded in both of their videos, with the latter Isaac appearing as a cameo in the end card of the former, and the former's introduction script accidentally being read in the latter video.
• Overly Long Gag: BrawlFan1 spends a good 15 seconds recovering from Apollo Justice's "Chords of Steel".
• Promoted to Playable: The whole point of this series. Being a series of theoretical move-sets of Smash for various characters of various series, including characters who have never had been playable in their game of origin.
• Running Gag:
  • Plenty specific to certain episodes(s), such as:
    • Presenting the Steve video as if he's teaching a class. Gets a Call-Back at the start of the Terrarian video.
    • Using different family-friendly alternate acronyms when addressing the BFG-9000 for the Doom Slayer's Final Smash.
    • Throughout Impmon's video, BJ speaks in a Brooklyn accent to imitate his Tamers voice (though he sounds more like Joey Wheeler than Impmon).^note As BJ himself states, he actually has a Brooklyn accent, though it's largely phased out over his life, only coming back on occasions such as with Impmon.
    • BJ cracking up or losing his tone whenever he names Eevee's specials, as he can't really take them seriously. Though, with names such as Sizzly Slide, Buzzy Buzz, Sparkly Swirl, and Baddy Bad, can you blame him?invoked
      BrawlFan1: Okay... I feel like whoever came up with these names had to have been, like... really proud of them or something cause... jeez.
    • Playing the infamous clipinvoked of Zero shouting "What am I fighting for?!" in his move-set video each time the subject comes up. Particularly when mentioning two characters that contributed to the events of said infamous scene and when comparing Zero to Dante.
    • Deliberately pronouncing Cthulhu different each time he says it in the Terrarian video.
    • "You'll be hearing from my lawyers" from several characters popping up in the Fawful video, due to the titular character having similar moves from them.
  • Anytime BrawlFan1 mocks the argument of the character being "another sword-fighter", no matter how minimal a sword is used in their move-set. Promptly Running Gagged as of Scorpion.
  • Whenever the fighter of the day in question uses an attack… that puts them on fire!
  • Referring to each of the Mook turned fighters as the Super-Skrull of their species, due to the Composite Character type of move-set being given.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In the Zero episode, after the revelation of Zero and Dante being Surprisingly Similar Characters, right down to the hero Angsting into a Skyward Scream after the death of a loved one, BJ outright stopped the episode in its place to go outside and think to himself. BJ then shortly received a phone call, reminding him that he still has an episode to do.
• Spin-Off: What If They Were In Pokémon Unite?, another speculative moveset video series specifically dedicated to Pokémon Unite and the various Pokémon not yet featured.
• Take That!:
  • While discussing Violet's down aerial and its ability to spike, an image of Suguru Kamoshida appears before getting spiked down by a glass slipper.
  • For the Maxwell video, when discussing the effect of the "Nasty", a status effect caused by the down special Adjective, he briefly calls the hypothetical afflicted opponent "Melee players"^note The competitive smash bros community, particularly Melee, had garnered infamy for the lack of hygiene among its group in tightly packed conventions; BJ himself experiencing this first-hand in person. before backspacing and continuing on with the video.
  • BJ's comment on the Zombie's back air in the Zomboss and the Horde video has him express his less than stellar opinion of Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time, which gave him enough trouble to delay the episode another week.
• Take That, Audience!:
  • The start of the Monokuma episode has BrawlFan1 call out those who requested the character as "sadistic jerk-faces", because he had to play the various games from the series and experience the many Player Punchesinvoked that drove him to tears and despair.
  • A pretty savage one in the Henry Stickmin episode, due to the burst in popularity Henry had in terms of requests.
    BrawlFan1: Henry does seem like the kinda guy to jump on bandwagons, much like a lot of the people who requested for him.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: The intro to the Flowey episode features the titular Foul Flower introducing himself by stealing a minimum of six souls from the viewers. He later attempts to steal BrawlFan1's soul, only to be utterly baffled at BJ's lack of soul.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: In response to a Shiny Trapinch encounter happening in his stock footage while discussing the Unova region in the Unovan Trainer video. BJ later admits to having a history with Shiny Trapinch, due to having encountered eight to nine of them throughout his life, including the first.

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