Isabelle Super Smash Bros Ultimate Shooting Baby Bowser

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Colors weave into a spire of flame
Distant sparks call to a past still unnamed
Bear this torch against the cold of the night
Light will guide you on your way to the ultimate fight!

— The final chorus of Lifelight, the theme of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the fifth ^note (sixth if one counts the previous game's Wii U and 3DS incarnations as separate installments, as series creator Masahiro Sakurai himself does) installment in Nintendo's Massive Multiplayer Crossover Platform Fighter series Super Smash Bros. It is developed by Bandai Namco and Sora Ltd. and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. Initially teased in March 2018 at the end of a Nintendo Direct, the game was formally revealed at that year's Electronic Entertainment Expo and was released on December 7, 2018.

The biggest Smash Bros. game to date, the title features a grand total of 89 ^note counting all 3 members of Pokémon Trainer's team fighters in the roster, including every single character from previous installments (including several not seen since Super Smash Bros. Melee in 2001), newly christened "Echo Fighters", and several brand new characters, including the Inklings from the Splatoon series and Guest Fighters like Simon Belmont from the Castlevania series.

Following the game's release, six fighters were added as Downloadable Content up until January 2020. Excluding the first one ^note which is Piranha Plant from Super Mario Bros.; they could be obtained as a bonus for players who purchased the game and redeemed its Gold Points with their My Nintendo account before the end of January 2019, which is when it was released. In February, it was made available as a standalone purchase, five of them released as Challenger Packs (available individually or as a bundle called the Fighters Pass), which contain a fighter, plus music and a stage related to them. ^note The Fighters Pass Vol. 1 consists of Joker from Persona 5 (released on April 17, 2019), The Hero from Dragon Quest (released on July 31, 2019), Banjo and Kazooie (released on September 4, 2019), Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury (released on November 6, 2019) and Byleth from Fire Emblem: Three Houses (released on January 28, 2020)

On September 4, 2019, it was announced in a Nintendo Direct that further DLC characters would be developed for the game after the completion of the first wave of content. In the January 16, 2020 "Mr. Sakurai Presents" video, the post-Pass DLC was revealed to consist of six more Challenger Packs, bundled as the Fighters Pass Vol. 2. ^note The Fighters Pass Vol. 2 includes Min Min from ARMS (released on June 29, 2020), Steve/Alex/Zombie/Enderman from Minecraft (released on October 13, 2020), Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII (released on December 22, 2020, with early access to those who beat him in the Sephiroth Challenge lasting from December 17 to December 22), Pyra and Mythra from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (released on March 4, 2021), Kazuya Mishima from Tekken (released on June 29, 2021), and—last, but certainly not least—Sora from Kingdom Hearts (released on October 18, 2021). Evenutally after three years, all content reached its end on October 2021, finally completing the game in full.

Along with the new and returning characters, the game offers over 100 new and returning stages, 1000+ music tracks, and a new Adventure mode, World of Light, which allows you to collect Spirits of non-playable characters (from all franchises with playable representation, and various additional ones) that can empower and grant extra abilities to your fighters.

Examples of Spirits can be found in their own Mythology Gag page here.

Its website can be found here.

Previews: Reveal Trailer, E3 2018 Reveal, Last Pre-Launch Direct (World of Light Trailer), Overview Trailer

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Playable Roster

Note: Bold denotes starter characters. Italics denote Echo Fighters, listed next to their derivative.

Nintendo Characters:

Animal Crossing: Villager, Isabelle
ARMS: Min Min (DLC)
Duck Hunt: Duck Hunt
EarthBound: Ness, Lucas
F-Zero: Captain Falcon
Fire Emblem: Marth, Lucina, Roy, Chrom, Ike, Robin, Corrin, Byleth (DLC)
Game & Watch: Mr. Game & Watch
Ice Climber: Ice Climbers
Kid Icarus: Pit, Dark Pit, Palutena
Kirby: Kirby, Meta Knight, King Dedede
The Legend of Zelda: Link, Sheik, Zelda, Young Link, Ganondorf, Toon Link
Metroid: Samus, Dark Samus, Zero Suit Samus, Ridley
Mii: Mii Brawler, Mii Swordfighter, Mii Gunner
Pikmin: Olimar/Alph & Pikmin
Pokémon: Pikachu, Jigglypuff, Pichu, Mewtwo, Pokémon Trainer ^note uses Squirtle, Ivysaur, and Charizard to fight, Lucario, Greninja, Incineroar
Punch-Out!!: Little Mac
Robotic Operating Buddy: R.O.B.
Splatoon: Inkling
Star Fox: Fox, Falco, Wolf
Super Mario Bros.: Mario, Luigi, Peach, Daisy, Bowser, Dr. Mario, Rosalina & Luma, Bowser Jr./The Koopalings, Piranha Plant (DLC)
- Donkey Kong: Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, King K. Rool
- Wario: Wario
- Yoshi's Island: Yoshi
Wii Fit: Wii Fit Trainer
Xenoblade Chronicles: Shulk, Pyra & Mythra (DLC)

Third-Party Characters:

Banjo-Kazooie: Banjo & Kazooie (DLC)
Bayonetta: Bayonetta
Castlevania: Simon, Richter
Dragon Quest: Hero ^note represented by the main characters from Dragon Quest XI, III, IV, and VIII (DLC)
Fatal Fury / The King of Fighters: Terry (DLC)
Final Fantasy: Cloud, Sephiroth (DLC)
Kingdom Hearts: Sora (DLC)
Mega Man: Mega Man
Metal Gear: Snake
Minecraft: Steve ^note with Alex, a Zombie, and an Enderman as alternate costumes (DLC)
Pac-Man: Pac-Man
Persona: Joker (DLC)
Sonic the Hedgehog: Sonic
Street Fighter: Ryu, Ken
Tekken: Kazuya (DLC)

Stages

Nintendo Stages:

Animal Crossing: Smashville, Tortimer Island, Town & City
ARMS: Spring Stadium (DLC)
Balloon Fight: Balloon Fight
Duck Hunt: Duck Hunt
EarthBound: Onett, Fourside, New Pork City, Magicant
Electroplankton: Hanenbow
F-Zero: Big Blue, Port Town Aero Dive, Mute City SNES
Find Mii: Find Mii
Fire Emblem: Castle Siege, Arena Ferox, Coliseum, Garreg Mach Monastery (DLC)
Game & Watch: Flat Zone X
Ice Climber: Summit
Kid Icarus: Skyworld, Reset Bomb Forest, Palutena's Temple
Kirby: Dream Land, Fountain of Dreams, Green Greens, Halberd, Dream Land GB, The Great Cave Offensive
The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Castle, Great Bay, Temple, Bridge of Eldin, Pirate Ship, Gerudo Valley, Spirit Train, Skyloft, Great Plateau Tower
Metroid: Brinstar, Brinstar Depths, Norfair, Frigate Orpheon
Nintendo DS: PictoChat 2
Nintendogs: Living Room
Pikmin: Distant Planet, Garden of Hope
Pilotwings: Pilotwings
Pokémon: Saffron City, Pokémon Stadium, Pokémon Stadium 2, Spear Pillar, Unova Pokémon League, Prism Tower, Kalos Pokémon League
Punch-Out!!: Boxing Ring
Splatoon: Moray Towers
Star Fox: Corneria, Venom, Lylat Cruise
Super Mario Bros.: Peach's Castle, Mushroom Kingdom, Princess Peach's Castle, Rainbow Cruise, Mushroom Kingdom II, Delfino Plaza, Luigi's Mansion, Mushroomy Kingdom, Figure 8-Circuit, Mario Bros., 3D Land, Golden Plains, Paper Mario, Mushroom Kingdom U, Mario Galaxy, Mario Circuit, Super Mario Maker, New Donk City Hall
- Donkey Kong: Kongo Jungle, Kongo Falls, Jungle Japes, 75m
- Wario: WarioWare Inc., Gamer
- Wrecking Crew: Wrecking Crew
- Yoshi's Island: Super Happy Tree, Yoshi's Island (Melee), Yoshi's Story, Yoshi's Island
Super Smash Bros.: Battlefield, Big Battlefield, Final Destination, Small Battlefield (free DLC)
Tomodachi Life: Tomodachi Life
Wii Fit: Wii Fit Studio
Wii Sports: Wuhu Island
Xenoblade Chronicles: Gaur Plain, Cloud Sea of Alrest (DLC)

Third-Party Stages:

Banjo-Kazooie: Spiral Mountain (DLC)
Bayonetta: Umbra Clock Tower
Castlevania: Dracula's Castle
Dragon Quest: Yggdrasil's Altar (DLC)
Fatal Fury / The King of Fighters: King of Fighters Stadium (DLC)
Final Fantasy: Midgar, Northern Cave (DLC)
Kingdom Hearts: Hollow Bastion ^note Turns into Dive to Heart when a match is anticipated to end soon. (DLC)
Mega Man: Wily Castle
Metal Gear: Shadow Moses Island
Minecraft: Minecraft World (DLC)
Pac-Man: Pac-Land
Persona: Mementos (DLC)
Sonic the Hedgehog: Green Hill Zone, Windy Hill Zone
Street Fighter: Suzaku Castle
Tekken: Mishima Dojo (DLC)

Items

Animal Crossing: Beehive, Pitfall
Castlevania: Death's Scythe
Clu Clu Land: Unira
EarthBound: Franklin Badge, Mr. Saturn, Ramblin' Evil Mushroom
Fire Emblem: Killing Edge
Galaga: Boss Galaga
Kid Icarus: Back Shield, Daybreak, Killer Eye, Ore Club, Staff, X Bomb
Kirby: Bomber, Dragoon, Maxim Tomato, Star Rod, Superspicy Curry, Warp Star
The Legend of Zelda: Beetle, Bombchu, Bunny Hood, Cucco, Deku Nut, Fairy Bottle, Gust Bellows, Heart Container
Metroid: Screw Attack
Panel de Pon: Lip's Stick
Pikmin: Hocotate Bomb, Pellet (Distant Planet only)
Pilotwings: Rocket Belt
Pokémon: Poké Ball, Master Ball
- Pokémon that can spawn include:
  - Generation I: Vulpix, Meowth, Electrode, Goldeen, Staryu, Eevee, Snorlax, Ditto, Moltres, Mew
  - Generation II: Togepi, Bellossom, Scizor, Entei, Suicune, Lugia
  - Generation III: Gardevoir, Metagross, Latias and Latios, Kyogre, Deoxys
  - Generation IV: Abomasnow, Palkia, Giratina, Darkrai, Arceus
  - Generation V: Victiny, Snivy, Oshawott, Zoroark, Kyurem, Keldeo, Meloetta, Genesect
  - Generation VI: Chespin, Fennekin, Fletchling, Spewpa, Gogoat, Swirlix, Inkay, Dedenne, Xerneas
  - Generation VII: Alolan Raichu, Alolan Vulpix, Alolan Exeggutor, Bewear, Pyukumuku, Togedemaru, Mimikyu, Tapu Koko, Solgaleo, Lunala, Marshadow
Rally-X: Special Flag
Star Fox: Smart Bomb
Steel Diver: Steel Diver
Super Mario Bros.: Banana Peel, Bob-omb, Boomerang, Bullet Bill, Fire Bar, Fire Flower, Freezie, Grass, Green Shell, Hothead, Lightning Bolt, Metal Box, Poison Mushroom, POW Block, Soccer Ball, Super Launch Star, Super Leaf, Super Mushroom, Super Star
- Donkey Kong: Hammer
- Wrecking Crew: Golden Hammer
Super Smash Bros.: Assist Trophy, Banana Gun, Barrel, Beam Sword, Beastball, Black Hole, Blast Box, Bumper, Capsule, Crate, Drill, Fake Smash Ball, Food, Gooey Bomb, Healing Field, Healing Sprout, Home-Run Bat, Motion-Sensor Bomb, Party Ball, Rage Blaster, Ray Gun, Rolling Crate, Sandbag, Smash Ball, Smoke Bomb, Super Scope, Team Healer, Timer
- Assist Trophies that can spawn include:
  - Animal Crossing: Kapp'n
  - ARMS: Spring Man
  - Art Academy: Vince
  - Bayonetta: Rodin
  - Bomberman: Bomberman
  - Brain Age: Dr. Kawashima
  - Castlevania: Alucard
  - Color TV Game: Color TV-Game 15
  - Devil World: Devil
  - Donkey Kong: Klaptrap
  - Dillon's Rolling Western: Dillon
  - EarthBound: Jeff, Starman
  - F-Zero: Samurai Goroh
  - Fatal Frame: Yuri Kozukata
  - Fire Emblem: Black Knight, Lyn, Tiki
  - The Frog For Whom the Bell Tolls: Sablé Prince
  - Golden Sun: Isaac
  - Joy Mech Fight: Sukapon
  - Kid Icarus: Phosphora
  - Kirby: Chef Kawasaki, Knuckle Joe, Nightmare
  - The Legend of Zelda: Ghirahim, Midna, Moon, Skull Kid
  - The Legendary Starfy: Starfy
  - Mega Man: Wily Capsule, Zero
  - Metal Gear: Gray Fox
  - Metroid: Metroid, Mother Brain
  - Monster Hunter: Rathalos
  - The Mysterious Murasame Castle: Takamaru
  - Nintendo Badge Arcade: Arcade Bunny
  - Nintendogs: Nintendog
  - Pac-Man: Ghosts
  - Pikmin: Burrowing Snagret
  - Sheriff: Sheriff
  - Shovel Knight: Shovel Knight
  - Sonic the Hedgehog: Knuckles the Echidna, Shadow the Hedgehog
  - Splatoon: Squid Sisters
  - SimCity: Dr. Wright
  - Star Fox: Andross, Krystal
  - Street Fighter: Guile
  - Super Mario Bros.: Chain Chomp, Flies & Hand, Hammer Bro, Waluigi, Thwomp
  - Swapnote: Nikki
  - Virtua Fighter: Akira Yuki
  - WarioWare: Ashley
  - Xenoblade Chronicles: Riki

This game provides examples of:

#-A

100% Completion: Getting 100% in Adventure Mode encompasses clearing all 615 nodes, including obtaining all 73 fighters, fighting Galeem and Dharkon for both bad endings, and defeating the True Final Boss.
2½D: As quite a few gameplay clips on Twitter will attest to, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate overhauled the hitboxes for both attacks and characters since Smash 4: the moves have been adjusted so that they need to actually make contact with the enemy to hit and not just be in the same area as them, which can lead to situations like Marth's Shield Breaker missing Piranha Plant because its "stunned" animation moved its stem out of Falchion's way for JUST long enough to avoid the strike.
Ability Required to Proceed:
- Getting around the map in World of Light requires specific spirits to bypass some roadblocks, such as rocks that need to be blown up or bridges that need repairing. This can get a bit strange when you have five different spirits clearly identifiable as magicians, but not the specific one that can enlarge some mushrooms for you. Fortunately, the game automatically informs you an obstacle can be disabled once you obtain the appropriate spirit.
- Downplayed with the challenge battles themselves. Certain stage hazards and conditions can be neutralized by the right support spirits to make the fight much easier, which the party screen draws your attention to. For example, a battle in fierce winds with water you drown in almost instantly is much easier if you first get the nearby supports that grant wind resistance and immunity to drowning, but the fight is winnable without them.
Absentee Actor: Despite Sora's reveal trailer being the Grand Finale for the game and the trailer giving the impression that all other fighters are present, a few are notably absent, including characters that already have variants and alternate forms represented ^note such as the male Pokémon Trainer (and his Squirtle and Ivysaur), the female Wii Fit Trainer, Zero Suit Samus and Mythra, although Zelda and Sheik still appear separately), Mii Fighters, and at least some third-party characters other than Cloud, Sephiroth and Sora himself.
Actor Allusion:
- In the Spirit Boards for the Persona 5 characters, Morgana is represented by Pikachu, while Yusuke is represented by Chrom in both ways.
- The fact Joker gets to face Master Hand at the end of his route is inevitable.
- During the Hero's showcase video, Sakurai mentioned that since Nobuyuki Hiyama was voicing the Dragon Quest III skin, it could be said the King of Braves is playing the Hero. In addition, this isn't the first time that Nobuyuki has voiced a franchise's most recognizable hero in Smash, voicing Link prior in both 64 and Melee.
- When Sakurai discusses calling in Ryo Horikawa to provide Captain Falcon's eating noises for Min Min's trailer, he namedrops another famous role of his: Vegeta from the Dragon Ball series.
Adaptational Attractiveness: In Persona 5, Mementos was overall a bleak and gory corruption of the Shibuya subway. Here as a stage, it's incredibly stylised, with the majority taking cues from the game's flashy UI. Especially with the Tartarus and Midnight Channel themes.
Adaptational Badass:
- Concerning World of Light, some characters' spirits are way more powerful here than in their home games. For instance, Pauline, who has been a total noncombatant since her debut and is famous for being the first Distressed Damsel Mario saved, is a Legend spirit, the highest rank available (and one of the hardest fights in the game). Another example is Hinawa, who is just Lucas's mother and isn't known for any fighting skills in her original game, and is notably killed in the game's first chapter due to that fact, yet is also ranked as a Legend and puts up a very difficult fight.
- The I-Tetromino is an Ace attack spirit that happens to sport the third highest attack stats among spirits in the game, higher than Fierce Deity Link and Fury Bowser and only beaten by Akuma and Malos in terms of raw attack power (and all of them Legend class). Impressive for cyan-colored blocks arranged in a line.
Adaptational Wimp: Conversely, there are also Novice and Advanced spirits (the two lesser ranks) of characters that are way more powerful in their home games. To put it into perspective, the very first spirit you encounter in World of Light, the Smoky Progg from the first Pikmin, is a very hard Bonus Boss that can kill Pikmin just by walking; here, it is just a measly Novice spirit. Dragonite and Tyranitar from Pokémon are only one rank above that, in spite of their immense stats back in their home series.
Adapted Out: While Kingdom Hearts is a Disney and Final Fantasy crossover with original characters, Sora and the DLC associated with him do not feature any appearances from Disney characters, the only strictly Disney-related thing that stays is the Mickey Mouse insignia serving as the keychain to the Keyblade. This is consistant with how Masahiro Sakurai keeps Super Smash Bros. strictly as a video game crossover throughout the franchise's history.
Advancing Wall of Doom: This game's Bonus Game takes the form of a linear obstacle course similar to "Race to the Finish!" from previous games. In this Bonus Game, the player is constantly being chased by a void that swallows everything it touches, and must reach the goal before the void gets them first.
After the End: The game's story takes place after all life in the Smash universe has been wiped out sans Kirby, leaving a barren world populated only by the disembodied Spirits of the slain populace and an army of lifeless Puppet duplicates of the Fighters that some of those Spirits have possessed.
all lowercase letters: Initially, the European announcement for the Sans costume was written by the skeleton himself, complete with his penchant for lowercase letters; the only capitals are the Bold Inflation for Undertale and the Megalovania song, along with the proper noun "Mii". Eventually this was changed to a more traditional writing style.
Alternate World Map: The first half of World of Light is spent in the titular world, while the second half is spent in the dark world that Dharkon creates when he takes over.
Amazing Technicolor Battlefield:
- In a new feature, some Final Smashes and Assist Trophies temporarily change the background, which can range from simple blocks of color to dark, swirling thunderstorms, or even an entire cosmos.
- The Boss Galaga item also does this, replacing the background with the star field from its game of origin.
- As usual, the new Final Destination has this going on even when the above aren't in effect.
Ambiguous Situation: In the True Ending, it is not shown what happens to the fighters after Galeem and Dharkon are killed. However, since the Spirits are seen returning to the real world, it can be assumed that the fighters did the same.
Anti-Frustration Features:
- All Final Smashes have been streamlined to keep matches fast-paced. To name a few examples: Sonic and Pac-Man have the characters attacking automatically instead of being player-controlled(though Sonic's can be made to change its height by moving up or down); some lost transformation like Fox and Falco initiating an Arwing strike similar to Captain Falcon. Some are changed to auto-combos that require the initial hit to land, like Donkey Kong doing a flurry of fists and Pikachu's Volt Tackle requiring his head bash to connect.
- To mitigate stalling and keep up the pace of combat, ground and air dodging now decay with repeated use in the same way that moves do. The more times you dodge in a row, the longer the dodge animation takes, and the less invulnerability the dodge gives you.
- If any character is offscreen, a minimap now appears at the corner of the screen that displays the current location of all fighters on the field, including how close they are to the blast zones.
- Characters with specific gauges and unique mechanics, like Cloud's Limit Break, Villager's Pocket, or Robin's weapon durability, will now always have a character-specific icon next to their damage that displays the relevant information. Banjo and Kazooie's Gold Feathers are an exception, only being shown when they spawn and when they perform the Wonderwing.
- Pokémon Trainer no longer has a stamina-reducing penalty for playing as one of their Pokémon for too long, allowing players to freely select and play as the one they prefer. Switching between the three of them is also much faster than Brawl, allowing for more combo potential, and they can switch while in the air as well. The "type damage" mechanic was also removed, something which infamously left Ivysaur at a severe disadvantage due to the abundance of fire attacks.
- Using certain moves with controllable trajectories causes a small arrow to appear around your character to show where they'll send them. Moves that use this include PK Thunder, Quick Attack, Agility, and Hydro Pump.
- There are now specific special effects to easier translate to the player what happens visually. For instance, a mini-reflector will appear when an impact caused a projectile to get reflected. If a person is being healed, a circulating light will fly up a character.
- There is an option to group Echo Fighters in the same slots as the characters on which they are based. Considering how many total fighters are in this game, this is done to make the character select screen more easily navigable to players who prefer it this way.
- Training Mode now has a special stage that's designed to make it much easier to determine how each character's attacks work. The background has a grid that can be used to measure distance, and attacks have their launch distance displayed along with their possible trajectories at 0% and 100% damage, as well as factoring in the fighter's weight. It even lists the relative sizes of Battlefield and Final Destination to help give a sense of scale, and to help with the two most "neutral" stages in the game.
- Unlocking the Mii Fighters in World of Light gives you the Mii depicted in the artwork with a default 1111 moveset, which makes them usable without having to be set up.
- Unlocking characters has been greatly simplified:
  - Rather than milestone numbers of total Smashes played (which would get incredibly grindy given the sheer number involved), a new challenger fight appears every ten minutes or so, working its way down a predetermined list. If you lose, you just have to wait until the chance comes around again — and even then, the timer can be skipped by resetting the game or changing the language.
  - The "Challenger Approaching" method is now limited entirely to completing Classic Mode with a specific character ^note Characters are divided in eight ordered pools, one for each starting character. Completing Classic Mode with a specific character will trigger the fight against the first non-unlocked character in the same pool. If you flub the fight, you don't have to re-do the required conditions to get it to trigger again. A new mode called "Challenger's Approach" appears in the Games & More menu to retry it at will.
  - Fighters recruited in World of Light are also unlocked for the rest of the game (although the reverse is not true). Due to how World of Light works, once you find a fighter, you can keep trying the fight as much as you need to beat it. Once at least 10 fighters have been unlocked in a single save file, all purchased DLC characters immediately become available for said file.
- Losing in Classic Mode in Smash 3DS/Wii U would lower the difficulty permanently if you chose to continue, frustrating players that wanted to keep the difficulty high and/or were going for a high score. This still applies in Ultimate, but you can preserve the difficulty after a defeat as long as you have a ticket to use. However, regardless of using or not a ticket, continuing before reaching 9.9 (the highest difficulty rating) will lock you out of it.
- The game makes a good faith effort to avoid giving you duplicate spirits. It's not foolproof, but copies will rarely appear as bounties unless you go out of your way to make it happen, so just plugging away at the Spirit Board for long enough will ultimately give you a shot at every spirit that doesn't have a special summoning requirement.
- If you fail to obtain a spirit during the shield phase, the damage done to the shield will still be there the next time you fight that spirit. Spending Spirit Points gives you one more shot for the time being if you choose to. If you still can't get the spirit (or don't have the SP), you can use a Rematch item to make it reappear immediately, rather than having to wait for it.
- Spirits that are related to Events typically appear at scheduled times that are listed on the event's website, and typically stick around for 15 minutes (one hour for Legend-class spirits) as opposed to the usual 5 minutes. Some Legend-class spirits are pinned, meaning they will not go away even if the player fails at them until the time limit expires.
- The game will give you a warning if you attempt to enter a battle in World of Light or the Spirit Board while using a type-disadvantaged Spirit, or no Spirit at all. If you pass up these warnings multiple times in a row, the game will conclude that you're intentionally doing this, and stop giving you the warnings.
- Prior to Version 2.0.0, if you lost a fight on the Spirit Board once, the spirit would disappear, forcing you to spend a Rematch item to get another chance. Now, the game gives you three tries to win against a spirit before having to do so.
- If you're about to fight a Spirit that sets the battlefield with a terrain hazard (i.e. lava-covered floors, strong winds, poisonous fog, etc.) and peruse your own Spirits, the ones that can weaken or outright nullify the effects of the hazard listed are conspicuously check-marked. The game also has a reliable recommended Spirit feature, which always equips a Spirit that grants immunity to a given hazard if the player has one and enough room in their Primary Spirit, avoiding having to scroll through a potentially long list of Supports. The player can further narrow searching through certain filters by effect type or even the number of slots the Support takes up.
- In Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, the power of your equipment was determined by the intensity level that you obtained it on and any support abilities were randomized, and most equipment types were limited to a handful of characters. Here, equipment is replaced by spirits, which have predetermined stats (which can be increased by levelling up), you can equip almost any support abilities you want to any primary spirit, and the entire spirit system is fighter-agnostic. ^note That said, primary spirits gain a substantial power boost if paired with a fighter from the same franchise, and some also provide benefits (such as increased sword attack power) that only certain characters can use, but these don't stop them from being equipped to any fighter and using their power boosts.
- All Online challenges require a Nintendo Switch Online account to access Online Mode to clear them, locking out those who can't or opt not to pay for the service. Fortunately, no Online challenges award Spirits, Mii costumes, or music, allowing everyone to obtain all of those regardless. The game also provides enough Golden Hammers to break most of these challenges and get their prizes.
- Excluding the Sticky Bomb, all bomb items (Smart Bomb, Bob-omb, etc.) do not harm its user anymore. You can throw a Bob-omb right in front of an enemy and not be blown off. However, if the bomb gets attacked, it will still damage indiscriminately.
- DLC spirits get their own boards, so that you don't have to keep grinding for items to reset the regular Spirit Board to obtain them. Those special Spirit Boards also allow infinite retries, as the spirits in them never go away whether you win or lose against them, and they don't need to be freed the usual way, as winning against a spirit automatically gives it to you.
- In Spirit Board, if you're struggling and take enough damage in a spirit battle, the shield guarding the spirit afterwards will be widened more, to the point of disappearing.
- Miis posted on Shared Content can be downloaded even if you don't have the costume pieces yourself, as long as the costume is in the base game and not DLC. This can save the trouble of unlocking them from the Shop or Challenge Board.
Anyone Can Die: Taken Up to Eleven in World of Light, as mentioned below. Even Kirby won't live if you end up with either of the bad endings.
Apocalypse How: Galeem, the light entity from the World of Light, is outright able to cause Universal Physical Annihilation, leaving it all as a barren wasteland/mixed dimensional soup. Only Kirby survives because he managed to warp himself out of existence temporarily. In the end, depending on how you played, the entire universe either ends up as Galeem's plaything or Dharkon just destroys it — unless you can challenge and defeat both at once.
Art Evolution:
- Ultimate goes out of its way to update the graphics of returning stages from Melee onwards, like this example ◊ comparing Kongo Jungle from Melee (now named Kongo Falls). Even Wii U stages like Gaur Plains from 3DS/Wii U get updated shaders and lighting.
- 75m now looks and sounds more loyal to the original arcade version of Donkey Kong rather than being based on the NES port like in Brawl and Wii U.
- Character design continues in the same vein of 3DS/Wii U, with the characters retaining the look and feel of their regular series counterparts while being given more realistic textures (Donkey Kong's fur and Little Mac and Ryu's muscles being huge examples).
- Deliberately averted for the 64 stages, which only received minor touch-ups and upscaling, which was what they did for their 3DS/Wii U iteration. Mushroom Kingdom is the exception, which has had its sprite art updated to be more faithful to the original 8-bit Super Mario Bros. game.
- Mii Fighters featured in Final Fantasy VII spirit battles feature customized Mii faces, while earlier ones only used the default Brawler/Gunner/Swordfighter face.
The Artifact:
- Unlike Palutena's Guidance, Snake's codecs have not been updated, presumably due to Col. Campbell's Japanese voice actor having died since Super Smash Bros. Brawl. As a result...
  - It's impossible for Snake to get codecs for characters who didn't appear in Brawl.
  - Sheik and Zero Suit Samus are still described as if they're mid-battle transformations of Zelda and Samus (e.g. Snake exclaiming, "Mei Ling, Samus took her clothes off!" and "What's going on? What happened to Zelda?!"). Both were made into their own characters in a change that was carried over from Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.
  - The Pokémon Trainer is still called a guy and referred to with male pronouns, despite the new option to use a female trainer in his place.
  - The codecs for Jigglypuff and Sonic still have Snake's contacts call this game Brawl, rather than Ultimate or just Smash.
  - Mei Ling will refer to Captain Olimar's tribulations, even if the Olimar player is actually Alph. (Curiously, the codec is disabled in a similar situation: it will not activate for Ike in his Radiant Dawn costume.)
- Even Palutena's Guidance isn't immune to this, as the one for Luigi still refers to him as "second out of all these fighters" which is at odds with the fighter numbering system introduced in Ultimate which puts Luigi at number 9.
- Mew can still be summoned from a Poké Ball, but since this game has no trophies, stickers, or CDs to collect (as music is just unlocked through the shop or through Challenges), and Bonus mode is still exclusive to Melee, Mew does absolutely nothing.
- Toon Link still has the same crowd cheer as regular Link despite Young Link getting his own.
- One of Doc Louis's quotes when Little Mac wins a match is "And the winner is... Little Mac! Hahaha!" This quote comes from 3DS/Wii U, where it was said in tandem with the announcer, but Ultimate changed the announcer's dialogue to "[character name] wins!", leaving Doc without a partner to sync up with.
- Although the character stickers on Gamer have been updated with WarioWare Gold designs, 5-Volt is still shown with her Game & Wario design when spotting players.
- The Assist Trophy remains as an item, even though the role that Trophies served in previous games is now taken by Spirits.
- Pichu has the same fall speed as in Melee despite falling speeds in general being slowed down since then.
- Within Ultimate itself, the novelty of having only the 64 starters to play with when you first play the game is diluted for those who bought the DLC characters, who are automatically unlocked.
- Since many Mii outfits were carried over from Smash 4, it's still possible to wear outfits based on Chrom, Isabelle, Daisy, King K. Rool, and the Inklings, despite all of those characters having been Promoted to Playable in this game. There's also a Zero outfit, even though Zero is an Assist Trophy this time around.
Artificial Brilliance: High-level CPUs in this game collectively Took a Level in Badass this time around, with several being able to pull off the kind of tech that players in the competitive scene are able to do.
Artificial Stupidity:
- Despite the improvement to the AI, they still have issues with stage navigation/awareness and overextension that can lead to self-destructing, which resulted in yet another video showcasing every level nine CPU being beaten by the player doing nothing.
- The AI of certain characters are particularly infamous for certain suicidal tendencies:
  - CPU Mewtwo will frequently use its Up-B seemingly randomly, and is prone to teleporting offstage to its death with it.
  - When CPU Greninja is using its side-special Shadow Sneak, it will often go farther than it needs to hit the opponent, and will not stop it short if the shadow will go into a walkoff, making it prone to teleporting into the blastzone on a walkoff and SDing.
  - CPU Ryu will not recognize if his side-special Tatsumaki will carry him into the blast zone on a walkoff, making him heavily prone to Tatsuing off to his death on a walkoff if an opponent is near the blast zone. Additionally, since Tatsu launches people vertically, Ryu will often not even take the opponent out with him during this if he hits them with Tatsu.
  - CPU Inkling is prone to using their up special when onstage for no discernible reason, and in doing so will often fly offstage helpless, leading to them self-destructing. Several players in their first encounter with Inkling in her unlock fight experienced this and had to do nothing to unlock her.
  - CPU Ridley loves to try grabbing people with his side special, and if he grabs someone with it on a walkoff, he will frequently drag the opponent into the blastzone without cancelling the move, which results in Ridley being KO'd instead of the opponent.
  - CPU Joker will often use his Arsene-powered Wings of Rebellion, onstage. Unlike Joker's regular Grappling Hook up special, which grabs the enemy and does damage while pulling them to him, Wings of Rebellion has no use aside from getting lots of airtime, as it does no damage whatsoever.
- Instead of ignoring stage hazards like they usually did in the prior games, the AI goes to the other extreme and is now ultra-cautious of them, where they will try very hard to avoid them, often using their up-specials to get away from them even if nowhere near them, and in the process leaving themselves heavily vulnerable or even outright self-destructing from their recovery moves carrying them offstage.
- In World of Light, setting the AI difficulty to Hard can result in the AI jumping around a lot and end up killing itself by falling off a ledge and being unable to recover.
- At least in Spirit Board, AIs and Super Launch Stars do not mix very well.
- That thing where you kill a wounded ally Assist Trophy for an extra point? AIs will do it in Spirit Battles where the points don't matter.
- The AI can adapt surprisingly well to certain Custom Stages, but a lot of things will trip them up. One obvious problem is them not knowing whether or not a shape of terrain is usable. For example, if there is a square of terrain and an identical square directly on top of it, the AI will plummet trying to hang on to the lower square, which is blocked by the higher one.
- When playing against a CPU opponent (or in a match with just CPU fighters) in an Omega-form stage, even if they're Level 9 CP Us, if they're trying to recover and are close to the platform, they'll almost always air dodge towards it even if they can fall safely on the stage and regardless of if an opponent is nearby, meaning they are defenseless against an attack that might KO them.
Ascended Extra:
- Inklings graduated from being a DLC trophy and Mii Fighter costume to playable between 3DS/Wii U and this game.
- Ridley appeared as a background character in the N64 original, a trophy in Melee, a recurring boss in Brawl's Subspace Emissary, and a stage hazard in Wii U's Pyrosphere before finally becoming a playable character.
- Daisy was formerly a palette swap for Peach before becoming a playable character in her own right as Peach's Echo Fighter.
- Chrom was previously just a part of Robin's Final Smash in 3DS/Wii U before becoming an Echo Fighter of Roy. He still takes part on Pair Up, oddly enough.
- Dark Samus was a regular trophy in Brawl and an Assist Trophy in 3DS/Wii U before becoming Samus's Echo Fighter.
- King K. Rool had trophies in Melee onward and a Mii Fighter costume in 3DS/Wii U before becoming a playable character.
- Isabelle goes from being an Assist Trophy in 3DS/Wii U to a playable character here.
- Ken was a trophy that accompanied Ryu's DLC pack in the previous game before getting the call-up here.
- The Piranha Plant, big time. It's one of the few iconic Mario mooks that has never had a playable role, relegated to obstacle, background element, simple enemy or as an item in both main series and spinoff games, including in this series, where it's only had a couple cameos. Ultimate is the first time a common Piranha Plant has been playable.
- Some characters who were previously Mii Fighter costumes got promoted to Assist Trophy status: Akira, Black Knight, Knuckles, and Zero (from the Mega Man series). In the opposing direction, Ray Mk III from Custom Robo and Saki Amamiya from Sin and Punishment are now Mii Gunner outfits after being Assist Trophies in previous games. And in both directions at once, Isaac of Golden Sun is both an Assist Trophy (after being one in Brawl but missing out on 3DS/Wii U) and a Mii Swordfighter outfit.
- In regards to universe representation, ARMS went from only having minor content in the base game (Spring Man as both an Assist Trophy and a spirit, Ribbon Girl as both a Mii Brawler outfit and a spirit, and spirits of Min Min, Twintelle and Ninjara) to having a playable fighter, a stage and music via a DLC pack.
- Pyra and Mythra became DLC after only appearing in the base game as Spirits.
Ascended Glitch:
- One of Simon's victory animations (the one where he grabs a Red Orb and then begins jumping up and down in place while swinging his whip) is actually a reference to a popular glitch/Player Tic from the original Castlevania where holding down both the A and B buttons after grabbing a Red Orb would result in Simon doing this as the Level Complete jingle plays.
- The Saffron City stage had a glitch in the original Smash that if you hit the Chansey that popped out hard enough, it would go flying out the back through the wall. The Ultimate version of the stage keeps the glitch.
- In Melee, there was a glitch that, when performed, allowed you to play as Master Hand, but it wasn't practical due to the game crashes it frequently caused. Several more crashes and Game Mods later, one of the final parts of World of Light has you play as Master Hand where you use nearly his entire moveset to slaughter hordes of puppet fighters so the heroes can stop Galeem and Dharkon.
- Another well-known Melee glitch concerns the Super Scope, and the ability to get infinite ammo for it. This game's iteration of the "attack the credits" game arms the player with an infinite ammo Super Scope and sets them loose.
Ascended Meme:
- For years, it was accepted as fact that Ridley would never be a playable character in Smash because he was "too big"; i.e., he is so large compared to Samus that to make him playable would require scaling him down to the point that he doesn't feel as fearsome as he rightfully should. When he was finally announced to make his Smash debut here, what was his newcomer blurb? "Ridley Hits the Big Time!" Additionally, one of his taunts is to stand to his full height, showing that even rescaled, he's still taller than all the other fighters.
- Ken takes out Little Mac with a Parry into a Shippu Jinrai Kyaku. That's right: Nintendo just referenced Evo Moment #37 in a trailer.
- It may be only a coincidence, but in the opening sequence, we can see Fox being shown in Final Destination among all possible stages.
- When playing as the Inkling on the Boxing Ring stage, the jumbotron in the background will occasionally give them the tagline of "Part-Kid, Part-Squid", a reference to the American Splatoon commercials which had the infamous lyrics of "YOU'RE A KID NOW, YOU'RE A SQUID NOW".
- When Guile is summoned as an Assist Trophy, he simply crouches down in one spot, destroys projectiles upon impact without being damaged and uses Flash Kick when a player comes too close. Anyone well-versed in the Street Fighter Meta Game will recognise this as a viable (and infamous) tactic.
- The Palutena's Guidance for Bayonetta has Viridi telling Pit to "just wiggle around or something" if caught in one of Bayonetta's combos, a nod to the notorious "Just SDI" Bayonetta meme.
- Pit yells "RIDLEY CONFIRMED!" at the start of said character's Palutena's Guidance.
- According to the Tips writer, they hear that Falco "prefers the air anyway" on the topic that his blaster fires faster while airborne.
- Fox's penultimate fight in Classic Mode pits him against Wolf (a partial Moveset Clone) on Venom (Omega form), and no items spawn. In other words — no items, Fox only, Final Destination.
- The message for the "Castlevania: Spirit Nocturne" Spirit Board event references the infamous "What is a man?" line from Dracula in Symphony of the Night:
  What is a Spirit Board? On this occasion, it's a far-from-miserable little pile of spirits hailing from the Castlevania series!
- During their reveals, when Richter Belmont saves Simon from Dracula's fireball, he greets Dracula by referencing the same infamous exchange from Symphony of the Night:
  Begone! You don't belong in this world, monster!
- Futaba Sakura's spirit battle is against an orange Inkling. From the moment of Futaba's reveal during Persona 5's prerelease period, the two characters were constantly compared due to their nearly identical hairstyles.
- A less popular in-joke in the Persona 5 fandom was depicting Yusuke and Chrom together, on account of them both being tall, blue haired swordsmen who coincidentally both happen to have the same voice actor in both English and Japanese ^note Matthew Mercer and Tomokazu Sugita, respectively. Come the 3.0 update and Yusuke's spirit fight is against Chrom.
- Joker's classic mode has one stage against Samus and Dark Samus. The battlefield is Mementos, with the music set to "Mass Destruction", a song well known (at least to Persona fans) for repeating the word "baby" a lot.
- The frequent comparisons of Duck Hunt to Banjo and Kazooie due to their similar style of a bird teaming up with a brown-furred animal were referenced in Banjo and Kazooie's reveal trailer which is a replay of King K. Rool's trailer except that he's taking a nap at the Kong's house and Duck Hunt take the place of King Dedede pretending to be Banjo and Kazooie only to get shoved away by the actual duo.
- After an insane amount of jokes about his inclusion, Sans is now in the game... as a DLC Mii costume. Additionally, this game's news bulletin announcing the costume's accompanying remix of Megalovania states that it "will fill you with determination". A promotional image for the costume is taken on the Magicant stage, which may also be a reference to the infamous "Sans is Ness" meme.
- In the introduction trailer for the Ryo Mii Fighter costume, Wario's bike rolls offscreen, with the Ryo Mii landing behind it as if it jumped off, a reference to the "I must use Haoh Sho Ko Ken" meme.
- The final Spirit Board event of 2019, centered around spirits wearing shorts, is entitled "So Comfy! So Cool!" The reference is more overt in the European version, where the event is outright named "Comfy and Easy To Wear".
- In Byleth's reveal trailer, Sothis asks him, "Too many swordsmen, are there?" This is a reference to the grievance some players have regarding the number of fighters who wield swords.
- Rhea's spirit battle is against a default Palutena. There's been numerous comparisons between the two since the moment she was revealed, and thus the Three Houses fandom even nicknamed her after the goddess.
- In the Dark World section of "World of Light", the Master Sword is guarded by Cloud, of all characters. Older gamers will recognize this as a nod to the fact that the The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy series, and by extension Link and Cloud, had a fandom rivalry going on during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Primarily because The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy VII became very iconic games during the Nintendo 64 and the PlayStation respectively, which were the main contenders of the 5th Console Generation. ^note Same reason why, when Cloud was introduced in the series in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, Cloud's promotional art work showed both characters in a Blade Lock
- One of the online tournaments Nintendo made is called "The Year is 200X", referencing the 20XX copypasta associated with Melee's competitive scene.
- After years of poorly-made rumors and jokes that Steve would be added to Smash, Steve was officially announced for Smash in October, 2020.
- Marth's line in the World of Light cutscene became a meme in the Japanese community known as the "Marth Theory". Sakurai referenced this meme in his showcase of Sephiroth vs. Master Hand and Crazy Hand.
- Two of Mythra's English lines reference the infamous Ardainian Soldier, "You're done" and "Think you can take me".
- For the Dragonborn Mii Costume:
  - Its trailer begins with them riding the Kapp'n bus before jumping off, referencing the "Ah, you finally are awake." opening that has been used in plenty of meme templates.
  - One of the daily Sakurai screenshots is a Dragonborn Mii having an arrow stuck to his knee.
- During the final Sakurai Presents video featuring Sora, when he starts the gameplay demo with Mario as Sora's first target, Sakurai expresses disbelief that "he" is in the game, but then reaffirms that he's not referring to Mario, a reference to the "Mario Is Finally In Smash" meme.
Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: The primary way to dispose of spirits is to send them back into the real world. Gesture of goodwill aside as they couldn't do this themselves, they'll leave behind a core which is generally used for summoning new spirits. Clouds of spirits do this en masse in the true ending of World of Light.
Assist Character: Assist Trophies return, summoned from their item of the same name. In Time Battles, you can now earn points by knocking out Assist Trophy characters (you could do so before, but there was no reward other than stopping them earlier than usual), a rather unorthodox way of "assisting" you.
Athletic Arena Level: King of Fighters Stadium is a downplayed example; while it does take place in a football stadium, the battle occurs on an elevated arena sitting in the middle of the field.
Attack Its Weak Point:
- Dracula in his humanoid form can only be attacked at his head. Upon transforming, he loses this trait and is able to be attacked anywhere.
- Ganon can only be harmed if his glowing tail is attacked. However, upon being stunned, he hunches over, which allows his unarmored head to be attacked as well.
Audience Surrogate:
- When Joker was revealed to be coming to Smash, what immediately followed was Ann's Big "WHAT?!" and Ryuji exclaiming "Smash Bros.? Is this for real?". It's probably what people watching the reveal trailer thought at that moment as well.
- In Banjo & Kazooie's trailer, upon noticing a Jiggy go by, Donkey Kong quickly tries to get Diddy Kong and King K. Rool to wake up, and when seeing Banjo and Kazooie for themselves, they uproariously applaud. This reaction is likely ones that fans who had waited a long time to see the characters in Smash would have.
Awesome, but Impractical:
- Many of the most powerful spirits have no slots, meaning that they cannot be combined with useful abilities, some of which are actually required (some spirit battles such as Pyra and Great Zapfish are simply impossible without two-slot Immunity abilities).
- Galeem is capable of one-shotting the entire universe in one attack...but that attack requires consuming his entire present army and 20 seconds of uninterrupted charge time to actually pull off, and he's no less vulnerable to attack than anyone else. As such, he only gets a chance to actually use it in the opening and never gets a chance to use it again between the fighters managing to fight him up close and having to use that army to fight Dharkon's unless the Fighters take care of the latter for him. Dharkon's ending implies he has a comparable attack with the same issues.
Awesomeness by Analysis: Galeem was able to create Kirby puppet fighters despite Kirby escaping by analyzing him.

B-C

Back from the Brink: World of Light starts with only Kirby playable, as everyone else has been wiped out completely. It's then up to him to rescue them and take back their world.
Badass in Distress: The entire cast except Kirby is this in World of Light after Galeem atomized everyone, with everyone turned back into trophies, cloned and kept guarded by said clones, and due to their power, both Bayonetta and Palutena are kept guarded as far away as possible by Galeem and Dharkon's forces.
The Bad Guy Wins: Both bad endings to the World of Light mode; you defeat Galeem or Dharkon, but that simply allows their rival to claim victory and conquer the world, killing everyone all over.
Bait-and-Switch:
- Isabelle's trailer starts off like an Animal Crossing game until she mentions the mayor being busy in Smash. Then she expresses shock when she finds her own invite mailed to her.
  Isabelle: (!) They want me in Smash?!
- Terry's trailer shows various other SNK characters trying and failing to catch a Smash invite before he does. And his showcase has Sakurai show off what appears to be a vintage Neo Geo console, only for him to open it up and reveal that it's a carrying case for the portable Neo Geo X.
- Min Min's trailer has the ARMS cast fighting for the Smash invite. Spring Man pick up the invite and triumphantly holds it up in the air, until he gets decked in the face by Ribbon Girl, who ends up not getting to the invite before it gets stolen by Ninjara, getting chased by some of the other ARMS fighters. Min Min eventually gets out of her ramen shop employee disguise to leap into the fray and take the invite for herself.
- Sephiroth's trailer features a scene that's framed to look like Mario is impaled by Sephiroth's Masamune...only to reveal it's only going through one of the straps on his overalls.
- The final reveal trailer shows the flaming Smash logo fading to embers, leaving Mario surrounded by darkness. Mario approaches a flaming sword embedded in the ground and reaches out to it, making it seem like a Dark Souls rep would be announced... only to reveal that the sword is a a Keyblade, with the final fighter being Sora.
Bait-and-Switch Silhouette:
- King K. Rool's trailer. It shows various heroes fighting their most personal opponents, and then cuts to Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong's cabin, where they hear loud footsteps and look outside to see a silhouette of King K. Rool, their most persistent foe... only for it to be King Dedede pulling a prank. King K. Rool himself then pops up for real while Dedede is laughing, knocking Dedede out of the way and setting the stage for the remainder of the trailer.
- Banjo & Kazooie's trailer (at least, the CGI portion of it) is almost exactly the same as King K. Rool's. The differences are an added vignette of Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong vs. K. Rool; K. Rool is napping in their house as well; a bouncing Jiggy is what alerts them; Duck Hunt are the trolls in the costume pulling the prank; and Banjo and Kazooie are the ones who drop in and knock the pranksters out of the way.
Balance Buff:
- Several moves that left the user helpless despite being purely offensive and/or not offering recovery distance (Giant Punch, PK Flash, Din's Fire, etc.) no longer do so, giving them much more versatility offstage.
- Every character has seen a variety of buffs, including a faster jump squat animation for all but Pichu (because its jump squat was already the same speed as everyone else's is now, 3 frames), in order to work better in the game's engine, although some of the top-tier characters in the previous game received fewer buffs and more nerfs for the sake of balance.
Beef Gate: Given the sporadic distribution of Spirits in World of Light, it is entirely possible to have your path blocked by a Spirit that is over five or ten times stronger than everything around it. However, there is almost always a longer and more time-consuming path that a player can take to circumvent it instead.
Beneath Notice: Min Min herself, in her reveal trailer. She was dressed in her civilian guise, so when she left to square off with the other ARMS fighters, Captain Falcon and Kirby didn't catch on to her being one at all before she returned to the noodle shop.
Big Bad: Galeem in the "World of Light" Adventure mode. It shares the spot with its rival and counterpart, Dharkon.
Big Damn Heroes:
- In the "Vampire Killer" trailer, Simon pops in to save Luigi after the latter's soul had been reaped by Death. Later in the same trailer, Richter pops in to keep several of Dracula's fireballs from killing an incapacitated Simon.
- In the "Heroic Encounter" trailer, the Hero of Dragon Quest XI makes a giant leap from his steed to intercept puppets of Marth and Meta Knight, saving Link in the process. Later in the same trailer, when a horde of puppet fighters overcome him, the other Heroes of Dragon Quest III, IV, and VIII come to his aid and stand beside him as well.
Big Damn Reunion: The E3 2018 announcement trailer reveals the return of every single playable character in the Super Smash Bros. franchise returning, making this entry the biggest roster to date, if not ever. EVERYONE IS HERE, indeed.
Big "NO!": Played for Laughs during Sakurai's demonstration of 2-player Home-Run Contest, where he uses two controllers at the same time and was able to rack up a good amount of damage on Sandbag using Corrin and King K. Rool. Then it cuts to Sakurai, who exclaims this and states that this is not how you're supposed to play.
Black Comedy: A surprising amount of it, both in the trailers and the game itself.
- Ridley's reveal trailer has him impale Mega Man with his tail and crush Mario's head, then gleefully twirl Mario's cap on his finger.
- Simon Belmont's reveal trailer has Luigi getting violently killed by Death and turning into a ghost. At the end of the trailer, he's about to get back into his body before getting interrupted by Carmilla.
- Some of the deaths in the World of Light opening cutscene are played for laughs: Snake tries hiding in a cardboard box, Villager runs around in a panic, and the Wii Fit Trainer just does exercises until the beams hit her.
- The Spirit for Paz Ortega Andrade gives the special ability to start with a Bob-omb equipped. This is likely a reference to Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, where she dies by having a bomb implanted in her body detonate.
- The Spirit for Ness's Dad is represented by a telephone, and requires fighting an invisible Snake. In addition, the ability for it is "Running Start".
- One unlock picture references ◊ Aerith's infamous death pose.
- The Palutena's Guidance conversation for the Pokémon Trainer has Viridi wonder about all the weak Pokémon that get left in their balls and forgotten. Pit then suddenly worries about "PikaPit" before Palutena assures him that "I'm sure all those abandoned Pokémon are all playing in a farm upstate."
- The Spirit for Nash gives the special ability to start with a Death's Scythe equipped, a likely reference to the fact he's Killed Off for Real in several games (two of those deaths being canon).
- During Terry's reveal trailer, Geese is seen jumping towards the invitation letter, only to fall to his death.
- Steve's reveal trailer has him run away at the sight of a Creeper, sealing the tunnel behind him and leaving Mario to his fate.
Bookends:
- The first teaser trailer of the game has a zoom-in shot of a fiery Smash logo in the Inkling Girl's eye as she spots the other fighters. One of the commercials within the final full month before the game's release in December 7th, 2018 ends with a shot of the Inkling Girl battling the fighters before zooming in on her eye again and fading back into the same fiery Smash logo.
- The first CGI Smash Bros. trailer made by Digital Media Lab Inc revealed Villager, the first newcomer announced for For 3DS/Wii U. The last CGI Smash Bros. trailer made by them revealed Incineroar, the last newcomer announced for Ultimate before DLC fighters, and at the end of the trailer, we see Villager trying to challenge Incineroar to a fight.
- The reveal trailer for the final fighter of Fighter Pass 2 and the last newcomer for Ultimate calls back to the game's first teaser, though instead of the newcomer (Inkling) witnessing a burning effigy hailing the returning cast, it's the entire cast of Ultimate up to that point witnessing the effigy burning out and the remains of it hailing the final newcomer: Sora from the Kingdom Hearts series. Fittingly, the trailer ends with Mario and Sora shaking hands: the first and final character revealed for Ultimate.
- Two of the final Mii Costumes is for the Octoling and Judd, both characters from Splatoon, where the Inkling was the first revealed newcomer for Ultimate.
Bonus Boss: Spirits that have special requirements to find aren't fought normally, but after you acquire them, they can appear on the Spirit Board. The "Boss" factor comes from all of these being Ace- or Legend-class Spirits.
Boring, but Practical:
- Certain Spirit Battles being troublesome? Equipping an Ore Club or Beam Sword greatly helps out. The former clears out groups of enemies and deal damage at range, the latter has long reach while doing respectable damage and only eating up one slot. Doubly so if you have a Primary Spirit that boosts battering items.
- Some special moves of certain characters (PSI Magnet or Reflector) can change the tides of a battle, making especially hard fights easier to manage due to negating major problems.
- Strong Wind Resist (unlike Lava Floor Resist and Zap Floor Resist) reduces the corresponding hazard to a manageable irritant 'and' only takes up one slot.
Boss Fight:
- In addition to series mainstays Master Hand and Crazy Hand, there are now six giant monster bosses with HP bars that serve both as final bosses for several characters' Classic Mode runs and as major obstacles in World of Light. The list includes two Smash Bros. originals (Giga Bowser and Galleom), two classic Nintendo villains (Ganon and Marx), and two Guest Fighters from third-party franchises (Dracula and Rathalos).
- Three of the four stage bosses from the previous game — Yellow Devil, Dark Emperor, and Metal Face — return along with their stages, Wily Castle, Find Mii, and Gaur Plain.
Boss Rush:
- During The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, there is a segment where each of the six main bosses must be defeated to progress to the True Final Boss, each represented by Spirits clashing with each other above Final Destination. Attacking a Spirit will take you to fight its respective boss. However, the Final Destination area between boss fights is not a safe zone; in fact, if you defeat a boss belonging to one side, the now-unopposed Spirit will begin shooting orbs at you in the break area.
- Sephiroth's Classic Mode route has him take on all of the boss battles (sans Galeem and Dharkon) featured in the game.
Both Order and Chaos Are Dangerous: Galeem and Dharkon cannot stand one another, and are in the middle of an Evil vs. Evil rivalry even as they are opposed by the heroes. Just taking one out results in a Downer Ending where the other triumphs.
Bottle Episode:
- Isabelle's trailer is set in the mayor's office, with no one besides her and (eventually) Pete in it, and the entire scene is filmed with a single camera angle before The Reveal. Other fighters are only seen in her gameplay montage.
- Joker's reveal trailer is done in an anime style (much like in his source game) and doesn't have any gameplay footage.
- The CGI in Banjo & Kazooie's reveal trailer reuses a considerable amount of animation and assets from King K. Rool's trailer, in order to both save money and highlight how both characters were made by Rare.
- "The Masked Rebel", Joker's gameplay reveal, was a very flashy video with smooth editing and narration from several of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. After that, the budget for the DLC characters' presentations ended up pretty slim, which Sakurai himself acknowledged during the Hero presentation. The end result of this was the "Mr. Sakurai Presents" series of videos. Like some of the prior presentations and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Directs, this series features Sakurai being recorded as he talks to the viewers, but unlike those presentations, "Mr. Sakurai Presents" is a very informal series. Sakurai is much more willing to say casual and off-the-cuff remarks or tell stories, and the rest of the crew can regularly be heard laughing or reacting to what he does in the background. There's much less editing, with most of it being reserved for camera zoom-ins, pop-up summaries of Sakurai's statements, and title screens for new sections of the presentation. The video shifts to a livestream-style format during gameplay demonstrations, where Sakurai can be seen playing the game in a facecam, often having to control multiple characters at once to show off certain aspects of them. Sakurai also handles all the narration of the videos himself, compared to "The Masked Rebel", which had the Phantom Thieves of Hearts for Joker's portion and a different narrator for the rest of it. "Mr. Sakurai Presents" videos were made for every DLC fighter released after Joker.
- Terry's announcement trailer from the September 2019 Nintendo Direct mainly involves Limited Animation with various sprites from SNK games rather than CG or more elaborate 2D animation. The later version of this trailer, shown at the end of Mr. Sakurai Presents "Terry Bogard", downplays this by adding in a new section showing gameplay of Terry, while still retaining the sprite animation opening.
- Subverted with the addition of Steve, despite appearances. While his design and animations were easy to pull off programming-wise, as well as requiring no voice actor, his moveset was particularly difficult to implement, especially with every stage being modified to accomodate his blocks.
Bowdlerise:
- Pyra and Mythra from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and the spirit of Camilla from Fire Emblem Fates had to be visually modified in order for the game to retain an appropriate rating, CERO A in particular. In Camilla's case, her Cleavage Window was removed and her hair was moved to cover her chest; for Mythra, her Cleavage Window was also removed, and she now wears black a black bodysuit under her dress; and though Pyra's spirit wasn't changed, her fighter model covers up her thighs and the lower half of her "hip windows" with a semi-transparent stocking-like material. The modified design for Mythra was even made available as an outfit in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and its Torna - The Golden Country expansion as a bit of cross-promotion. Tharja's Spirit uses a character portrait of her in Fire Emblem Awakening holding a book to her chest, rather than her official artwork like most other Fire Emblem Spirits.
- EVA from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater normally wears a jumpsuit zipped all the way down, showing off her midriff and a black bikini top. Her Spirit in this game, however, is posed in a way that her gun blocks the view of her chest, and her midriff has been blacked out, presumably covered in a latex bodysuit.
- In a nod to his original games, Mr. Game & Watch now changes his appearance during certain attacks to resemble characters from those games; unfortunately, one of those characters was The Savage Indian from Fire Attack, which some players didn't take kindly to. Nintendo apologized and altered the animation in the day one patch.
- Dracula's Spirit artwork is taken straight from his Castlevania: Symphony of the Night artwork, except that it lacks the puddle of blood pooled around the edge of his cape. Furthermore, the blood-filled wine glass that he famously throws aside in several Castlevania games is empty in his boss intro for Ultimate.
- Palutena's design in all versions of the game is taken from the slightly toned-down CERO version of 3DS/Wii U, rather than her design in other regions.
- Joker's Final Smash, the All-Out Attack, ends with the affected opponent(s) having magic sparkles explode out of them instead of the High-Pressure Blood seen in Persona 5. In one variation of it, Morgana says "Time for some brutality", instead of "Time for some bloodshed", the line in the original game. Panther also got changed as well, as her measurements for her model on Mementos are toned down in comparison to how she usually looks.
- The music track "Mass Destruction" from Persona 3 has been slightly edited to remove the line "Damn right".
- The start of Byleth's trailer plays out almost identically to the original scene in Chapter 10 of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but (presumably for both trailer length and the sake of Smash's lower age ratings) leaves out Kronya from the scene, and thus the part where Solon tears out Kronya's heart in order to activate the Zahras spell.
- On the Cloud Sea of Alrest stage, Brighid's dress has been modified to cover up her Absolute Cleavage by having a light-purple bodysuit under her main dress.
- The Assassin's Creed, Fallout, No More Heroes, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Devil May Cry, and Doom franchises aren't explicitly named in the North American trailers showing off the Altaïr, Vault Boy, Travis Touchdown, Dragonborn, Dante, and Doomslayer Mii costumes. ^note In Doom's case, this also extends to the European trailer. The game logos on the list of Fighters Pass characters were also removed in every trailer since Terry's and Sakurai's Min Min presentation was also edited to remove him namedropping Fallout. This is due to ESRB regulations introduced in 2020 that prohibited ESRB M-rated games from being promoted alongside lower rated games. This explains why Metal Gear, Bayonetta, and Persona 5 didn't get the same treatment, as their videos were released prior to the change in regulations.
Brainwashed and Crazy:
- The Spirits in World of Light are under the control of Galeem and eventually taken over by Dharkon.
- Same for the captured fighters. The game states the player is awaking them when they join the party.
- Similarly, Master Hand and Crazy Hand. Until you find the real ones at the tail-end of "World of Light", the hands you fight before that are puppet fighters.
Breaking Old Trends:
- Up until Pyra and Mythra were released, the DLC Characters' special Spirit Boards only contained one Legend-class Spirit and it was always a Support Spirit. Pyra and Mythra's board not only contains two Legend-classes (Malos and Pneuma), but the former is also a Primary as well.
- The inclusion of Kazuya followed onto the above, with two Legend-classes (Jin Kazama when enhanced into Devil Jin and Heihachi Mishima), along with not including a support spirit with a unique trait, which is instead held by Heihachi's spirit as Fist and Foot Attack+.
Breather Episode:
- Ridley's trailer features him violently killing Mario and Mega Man, and Simon's trailer features Luigi getting his soul torn out by Death (even if still with a comical slant to it). King K. Rool's trailer is, by contrast, much more comedic and lighthearted, with a lot of the humor coming from K. Rool's return and DK and Diddy's reaction to it.
- Similarly, Isabelle's trailer deals with her secretary duties and has a comedic interlude where she considers taking over as mayor from Villager. In fact, her trailer doesn't feature any violence outside of the in-game clips from Ultimate.
- Hero's trailer features Link struggling against an army of puppet fighters, until he gets help from Eleven, with Three, Solo, and Eight assisting him in turn, and it's played dead serious. Banjo & Kazooie's trailer is considerably lighter, like K. Rool's trailer mentioned above, with most of the humor coming from the pair's return and DK, Diddy, and K. Rool's reaction to it.
- The first Fighters Pass ends with a trailer for Byleth caught in a spell by Solon, with a Smash invite from Sothis to help them, and she provides some mild humor. The Second Fighters Pass starts with a trailer that features Min Min triumphantly grabbing her invite after the other ARMS fighters figuratively tripped over each other to try and snatch it, and there is lots of humor throughout (much of it from Captain Falcon and Kirby's activities in the noodle shop).
- Sephiroth's trailer involves Galeem cornering the heroes, only for him to be cleaved by the one-winged angel, who proceeds to torment the heroes in turn as the mood darkens to the point that it's reflected in the wastelands' sky. Pyra & Mythra's trailer is much breezier, dealing with a simple case of Rex looking for Pyra, who mysteriously vanished from Alrest, but only because she joined Smash, and the two blades have a happy reunion with the fellow Xenoblade-verse hero Shulk.
Broken Bridge: There are many instances in Adventure Mode where you will be unable to proceed down a particular path unless you have the proper Spirit in your collection that can deal with the obstacle. One in particular is a literal broken bridge that Master Hand destroys. In a subversion, if you already happen to obtain certain spirits before playing World of Light, you can immediately fix the obstacles without needing to tread most of the mode's map.
The Bus Came Back:
- The game's tagline is "EVERYONE IS HERE!" All fighters who have previously appeared in the series are playable. In particular, this applies to the Ice Climbers, Wolf, Young Link, Squirtle, Ivysaur, Pichu, and Snake, who all missed out on a game or two since their debuts. Note that Charizard returns as part of Pokémon Trainer's set, not as an individual fighter. This is alluded to in Wolf's Classic Mode route, titled Reunited Roster, where he is pitted against the returning characters who were missing from 3DS/Wii U.
- After vanishing from For Wii U and 3DS, Galleom returns as a boss in the game's Adventure Mode. Fittingly for Wolf's Classic Mode route, it is the final boss there.
- King K. Rool is a different sort, as this is the character's first major appearance in any game for over ten years, with his last role being as a Secret Character in Mario Super Sluggers.
- Leaf is in almost the same boat as King K. Rool, as she hadn't been seen since 2004's Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen for over a decade's worth. A version of her named Green did manage to sneak in a fresh appearance in Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! a few weeks before Ultimate's release, though.
- Spiky-Eared Pichu returns after a 9-year absence as one of Pichu's costumes.
- Although Krystal only shows up an Assist Trophy, it still marks her first physical appearance in over twelve years. She was last seen in Star Fox Command before the series went on hiatus and then came back, but with a semi-reboot game that dropped Krystal in favor of restoring Peppy's place on the team. ^note She is mentioned in the ending for Star Fox Zero, but isn't actually seen at any point.
- After being the only primary universes ^note (series with character and/or stage representation) entirely cut during the transition from Brawl to 3DS/Wii U, the Metal Gear and Electroplankton franchises make their grand return as well.
- Many (but not all) old stages that debuted once and never returned for a long time (Saffron City, Brinstar Depths, Fountain of Dreams, etc.) returned.
- Several original tracks from Smash 64 return for the first time: Bonus Game, Meta Crystal, Duel Zone, and Training Mode.
- In terms of gameplay modes, the Tourney mode is available offline for the first time since Brawl, as it was exclusive to the online mode in Wii U, while it was missing altogether in 3DS.
- As for the Assist Trophies, Gray Fox and Isaac returns after their absence in 3DS/Wii U (it's very obvious for the former).
- Spirits replace trophies and are directly represented by art assets from their source games; as a result, you can expect to see spirits who haven't made appearances in any video game in over 30 years.
- The Banjo-Kazooie DLC marks the duo's first appearance on a Nintendo console since Banjo-Pilot on the Game Boy Advance in 2005, and their first appearance in any game since Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing With Banjo-Kazooie in 2010.
- For game modes, Home Run Contest was added back in September 2019, after being left out of the initial release.
Call-Back:
- The Inkling's reveal trailer (which doubled as the game's teaser trailer) begins in the same manner as the original Splatoon's, with the female Inkling laying down ink and swimming through it as a squid before revealing her humanoid form.
- In K. Rool's trailer:
  - Donkey Kong's and Diddy Kong's eyes burst out of their heads when K. Rool appears. This was a facial expression seen regularly in the Rareware-era of the series; the opening of Donkey Kong Country had DK do it when Cranky threw a TNT Barrel at him, while Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest has it be Diddy and Dixie's reaction to every boss.
  - The end of the trailer has K. Rool lying on the ground while the Kongs celebrate. K. Rool turns out to be Playing Possum, like he did in the Victory Fakeout segment of Donkey Kong Country.
- When Isabelle receives an invitation in her reveal trailer, the envelope is identical to the one Villager got in the 3DS/Wii U reveal trailer, complete with a Smash-logo-shaped wax seal. It's also sent through the post, except Isabelle receives her invitation personally from Pete, while Villager picked up theirs in a mailbox.
- "World of Light" is a homage to the Kirby series, due to a villain that is just as devastating as a main villain from that series, how, in Japanese, the title is the Kirby title in reverse, and how you start the mode as Kirby. The cliff and the overview shot in the opening also take homage to Subspace Emissary from Brawl.
- In this trailer, the Inkling Girl's eye has the Smash logo reflected in the pupil, just like the very first teaser.
- Joker's reveal trailer at The Game Awards 2018 starts with the screen turning to static as the Phantom Thieves "steal" the show. This is how the Phantom Thieves sent Shido's calling card, and how Persona 5 was first revealed.
- Jigglypuff's Classic Mode route, "All Original, All 64", is a Call-Back to the "1P Mode" of the original Super Smash Bros. 64. You fight each of the other 11 playable characters from the first game, and the final boss is Giant Donkey Kong, one of the 1P Mode boss fights.
- Banjo & Kazooie's reveal trailer starts almost the same way as King K. Rool's, showing a series of pictures of playable heroes fighting their playable enemies, but then throws in a new image based on King K. Rool's reveal trailer. It even follows a similar format: DK and Diddy in their treehouse relaxing (with the addition of K. Rool this time), a character's silhouette being shown, it turns out to be another character impersonating them, that character laughs... and then the actual character drops in, knocking the other away. In the former, the impersonator was King Dedede; in the latter, it was Duck Hunt. It ends with K. Rool falling off a cliff leaving an Impact Silhouette before a bolder crushes him, just like Grunty's fate at the end of Banjo-Kazooie.
Came Back Wrong: How Spirits operate in World of Light — they were put under the direct control of a higher power and possess a puppet fighter. Some downplayed exceptions include those that reincarnated as a Mii Fighter that more closely resembles them, such as Lip, who is now a Mii Swordfighter in her image.
The Cameo: Following the pattern of Slippy appearing in one of Snake's codecs in Brawl and Chrom in one of Palutena's Guidances in WiiU, Alucard appears and joins the conversation when Pit asks Palutena about Richter. He also Lampshades him being available as an Assist Trophy.
Capture and Replicate: What happened to the fighters in "World of Light". They get captured and then Galeem creates a puppet out of them, which then a controlled Spirit possesses. You have to free them in order to make them playable in "World of Light".
Casting Gag: In the 3DS port of Dragon Quest VIII, one can have Eight marry Jessica, who is voiced by Ayana Taketatsu in Japanese. In what is most likely an intentional casting, Yūki Kaji, who is married to Ayana, voices Eight in Ultimate.
Cerebus Call-Back:
- The setting that Kirby transports to at the end of the Downer Beginning looks exactly like the background used in several 3DS/Wii U character reveals.
- When Kirby crash lands his Warp Star in Rosalina and Luma's reveal trailer, he comically tumbles to a stop. Compared to in the "World of Light" opening, where him crash landing and sliding to a stop is definitely not Played for Laughs.
Character Customization:
- Spirits can be equipped to fighters to power them up or grant special skills, similar to Gear in 3DS/Wii U. They are also similar to Stickers in Brawl in that they are represented by various art assets from various games and are used in their games' respective Adventure Modes.
- Mii Fighters return from 3DS/Wii U, and retain their changeable names, headwear, outfits, and special moves. New to this game, you can also change their colors without having to change the color of the Mii in Mii Maker, and select one of several voices and change its pitch.
- Figure Player customization for amiibo has been greatly expanded. Instead of feeding equipment to Figure Players, you can now feed them Spirits. Feeding them Spirits gives a small amount of EXP and boosts their stats. In addition, feeding them Primary Spirits can alter a Figure Player's "personality", which alters their approach to combat, and feeding them Support Spirits can bestow them with Support Skills.
Character Roster Global Warming: Downplayed. While the majority of the cast is still lightweight-midweight, a few heavyweight fighters have been brought in, those being Ridley, King K. Rool, and Incineroar, with Simon also being on the slower end of things.
Character Select Forcing: Certain challenges in Spirit mode are set up so that you basically have to equip certain Spirits to overcome the stage hazards. For example, the Kapp'n battle is virtually unbeatable without using a Spirit that gives resilience or immunity to winds. Coincidentally, you find one, a Snorlax, very close to Kapp'n's location.
Cheaters Never Prosper: Apparently happened In-Universe according to Pit on the Palutena's Guidance entry of the Ice Climbers. Aside from the real-life hardware limitations of the 3DS (which was why they were cut in the first place), the duo were actually temporarily suspended from participating when their dual-fighter playstyle was deemed against the rules. They were patched since then to make it much harder to perform the "unfair" combos (keeping them separated and juggling opponents with no means of escape).
Chest Monster:
- There is a particular Chest in the Temple of Light dungeon that transforms into a Mimicutie Spirit upon being opened.
- Mimics can show up on Yggdrasil's Altar, giving up items like the real chests if you manage to KO them.
Clock Tower: The iconic one from Castlevania appears in the background of Dracula's Castle. There's even a section in "World of Light" as part of a Nostalgia Level based on the original NES game. You end up destroying the inside with a cannon.
Clone Army: The puppet fighters in "World of Light" are replicas of the original fighters possessed by brainwashed Spirits.
Closest Thing We Got: Galeem's method of creating puppet fighters works like this: Due to his initial onslaught resulting in several characters losing their bodies, he creates a vessel for them which physically matches what their previous identity was using a fighter as a base, with some additional aspects sprinkled in to complete the replication.
Colony Drop: The Moon assist trophy, from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, drops onto the battlefield, blasting everyone excluding the player who called it in. The trick to avoiding it is to run away from its rather small impact point.
Combat Commentator: When fighting at Cloud Sea of Alrest, Azurda (who forms the stage itself) will make remarks as the fight progresses, such as complimenting KOs.
Commercial Switcheroo:
- The game's reveal trailer starts out with what at first seems to be a repeat of the original Splatoon trailer, giving strong implications that they're porting the original game to the Nintendo Switch.
- Isabelle's reveal trailer is made to look like a new Animal Crossing game. Played with, as a new Animal Crossing game really was revealed immediately afterward.
- Joker's reveal trailer looks like it could be a reveal for a Switch port of Persona 5.
- A series of commercials for the game start out looking like gameplay from Splatoon, Street Fighter, and Animal Crossing until Mario shows up.
- Pyra/Mythra's trailer begins with Rex searching for the former in Alrest and talking to the other party members, leading some people to believe it was an expansion for his game before he finds Pyra.... on Final Destination.
Companion Cube: Some of the Spirits are of inanimate objects, such as the Star Fox ships or Samus' individual power suits.
Completion Meter: This is shown on your Adventure Mode save files after clearing it for the first time. It is not revealed until after clearing Adventure Mode to prevent an Interface Spoiler regarding the Dark Realm and The Final Battle.
Composite Character:
- Piranha Plant's moveset takes inspiration from the various Piranha Plant subspecies, like Putrid Piranha, Ptooie, and the Spiked Piranha Plant from Super Mario Galaxy. It briefly dons the color scheme of two subspecies for its side-special and side-smash as well.
- Spirit battles consist of fighting against playable fighters taking on the traits of characters that didn't make the cut.
- The Ganon boss utilizes attacks from some of its various incarnations, like Demise's Skyward Strike and Calamity Ganon's laser beam and homing fireballs.
The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
- In stages that can be partially hidden (such as Luigi's Mansion), the CPU fighters will know exactly in which section any given item spawned and take it. The best the player gets is the sound that an item spawned, but no way to know where.
- In the highest CPU levels, the CPU fighters react to the button press instead of the player character's movement, so the player character and the AI character move simultaneously and according to the command the player sent. Of course, an actual player wouldn't be able to know this, as players would react to the opponent's movement. This can be justified under Purposely Overpowered.
Console Cameo:
- One Mii fighter costume for the Mii Brawler is a jumpsuit with the Robot Toy-Con set, complete with the Joy-Cons being used and placed as part of the cardboard mechanisms.
- One location in World of Light has an abundance of Nintendo consoles in the form of a city with the buildings in the shape of them, including a monument of the Nintendo 64 logo.
Continuing is Painful: Just like in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, continuing after a loss in Classic Mode lowers the intensity and requires payment. This can be mitigated with the use of a Classic Ticket, but Tickets are hard to come by (they do appear in the Shop from time to time, but are a pretty expensive item at a price of 5000 G), and if you continue at all, you are locked out of Intensity 9.9 unless you use a Ticket while already at 9.9, complicating matters in clearing a certain Challenge.
Convection Schmonvection: In spite of it being made of bridges that traverse over a floor of lava, none of the fighters have any trouble navigating the Molten Fortress in World of Light.
Convenient Weakness Placement: In World of Light, some Spirits are located close to others their abilities have an advantage over. For example, there's a fight against a Spirit of Kaepora Gaebora whose gimmick involves flipping the camera upside down, and nearby his location is a chest containing a Nihilego Spirit, which negates screen flipping.
Cosmetic Award: Fighter spirits earned by completing a fighter's Classic Mode (or buying them in the shop) simply appear on the Spirit List and are not used in battle.
Crack in the Sky: In World of Light, the sky cracks open when Dharkon enters from the Dark World.
Creative Sterility: Galeem just creates copies and rearranges what's already there; unlike Tabuu, it never creates anything new. This is true for Dharkon as well.
Creator Provincialism: Several of the Spirits available in the game are from Japan-only properties, which may or may not have properly translated titles in their description. In contrast, absolutely no Nintendo-owned games which didn't receive a Japanese release of some sort ^note such as Elite Beat Agents being considered a spin-off of sorts of Ouendan are represented, notably StarTropics, Geist and the Cruis'n series.
Crippling Overspecialization:
- The new "Smashdown" mode can Invoke this if you're skilled with a very small number of characters or just one, since after a fighter has been chosen for a match, they will be locked for the remainder of the playthrough. This can work in the other player's advantage if they pick a fighter they know their opponent is exceptionally good at.
- The Absolutely Safe Capsule from Mother 3 is a Legend Primary Spirit that can only be summoned with a Mr. Saturn Spirit and six Shield Cores. It is a Shield-type Spirit that has enormous Defense but gives a whopping zero Attack.
- A minor example comes with other slotless spirits. They are exceedingly powerful, but they are helpless against the many Geo Effects in the game.
- The I-Tetromino spirit is a big one, it has similar attacking stats to Akuma, Hades and Fierce Deity Link but has much worse defence (Only around 2000) than either of them, as such, there's no reason to use it after you get those spirits.
Critical Hit:
- The Killing Edge will intermittently glow with a purple aura, during which it has vastly increased power.
- Some Spirits grant the Critical Hit skill, which randomly increases your damage and knockback.
- The Hero from Dragon Quest is able to do this as an innate ability.
Critical Status Buff: The Rage Blaster is very weak if you're at a low damage percentage, but it becomes more powerful as you reach higher percentages. Think Lucario's Aura mechanic, weaponised and usable by all fighters.
Cross-Referenced Titles: The two character reveal trailers set in Donkey Kong's house and the surrounding jungle: King K. Rool's is "The Rivals", while Banjo & Kazooie's is "Best Friends".
Cruel and Unusual Death: Two of them, in fact! Bad Ending #1: Dharkon is straight-up vaporized. Bad Ending #2: Galeem is impaled by a dozen needle tentacle spike things.

D-G

Damage-Sponge Boss: The Snorlax-possessed K. Rool in World of Light is a literal DPS check, sporting hundreds of HP and a time limit of only one minute, but zero inclination to do anything more than sit there and eat randomly-spawning food.
Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
- The game looks very similar to its predecessor, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, but many mechanics have been changed, such as how rolling and spot dodging will leave you more vulnerable the more times you use them in a short timespan. Players more used to Melee will also find it difficult to adapt to not only how hard it is to wavedash, but also how nerfed it is in this game, and all Smash players will take time to adjust to how collision in the game works. Furthermore, players who are used to shielding with the R button on the 3DS version may get thrown off by the fact that it is now the grab button.
- Getting too used to some of the abilities available in World of Light, like super armor when charging smashes or extra midair jumps, can cause problems when playing the modes without those upgrades.
- Many a player has fallen victim to Ike's buffed Eruption, which now shoots out additional flame pillars when used based on its charge level. Players too used to the mediocre range of the attack in previous games may end up on the receiving end of a shield break after standing outside what they think Ike's attack range is.
- Perfect shielding, otherwise known as Parrying, has changed from what it was in every Smash game before, going from "Press the block button right as the attack hits you" to "Release the block button right as the attack hits you", meaning you have to preemptively put up your shield in order to properly punish your opponent for throwing out an attack. You can no longer react to attacks with a perfect shield, which throws many players off. There are jokes among the community how most parries are accidental.
- No more can you pass through other players and even assist trophies. Some players take a while getting that.
Darker and Edgier:
- Inkling, Ridley, Simon, and Sephiroth's respective trailer reveals, in comparison to reveal trailers of the previous games. Inkling's ends with them staring at the Smash logo on fire, surrounded by darkness and Ominous Chanting. Ridley's has Mega Man brutally stabbed by Ridley himself before he grabs Mario by the head. Simon's has Black Comedy with Luigi getting his soul ripped out of his body by Castlevania's Death. Sephiroth's trailer has him introduced by first worfing World of Light's Big Bad Galeem with one swing of his Masamune, and then brutally plundering the fighters who were confronting Galeem, including a moment where Mario appears to be impaled by Sephiroth. Overall, Ultimate continues a trend from Smash 4 with rather violent trailers in dark, realistic locations.
- The game's story mode likewise has higher and much darker stakes than even The Subspace Emissary did. While the destruction of the entire universe was prevented in Subspace, this story opens with the Big Bad Galeem successfully doing so, obliterating not only all the main playable characters (sans Kirby, who was barely able to escape), but every other video game character in the entire universe as well. Put simply, the Darkest Hour is already here, everybody's almost dead (the playable characters are now trapped in limbo, their bodies used to create red-eyed Empty Shells; the non-playable characters only living on as ghost-like wisps called Spirits bearing their images on them), and Kirby is the only one who can get up and stop it. Even past the beginning, the mode's story is overall more dramatic and serious than usual for Nintendo, especially when Dharkon (who makes Tabuu and even Galeem look like normal Nintendo characters) appears... and then you discover that it's possible for the heroes to lose once and for all.
Dark Is Evil: Dharkon is the lord of darkness to Galeem's light, seeking to both eliminate Galeem and to envelop all of existence in shadow.
A Day in the Limelight:
- In World of Light, by virtue of being the Sole Survivor, Kirby gets a lot of focus as he has to start saving the fighters that were captured by Galeem.
- At some point during World of Light, you take control of and play as Master Hand himself to fend off an army of shadow clones.
- Aside from some hints in later World of Light cutscenes, Sora's reveal trailer is the first one to put an overt focus on Mario more than other veterans, like in the 3DS/Wii U days.
Deadly Dodging: In the True Final Boss fight with Galeem and Dharkon, the game design heavily encourages this. Friendly Fireproof is not on and their attacks do more damage to one another than they do to the player (due to the two despising one another), making luring the two into harming each other a major aspect of the fight. It is almost possible to defeat the two using nothing but this tactic; the only thing stopping you is that the game requires you to personally deal the final blow.
Deconstructive Parody: The Belmonts' trailer has Luigi trying to use his Luigi's Mansion 3 toolset to defeat the monsters in Dracula's Castle of all places. His usual tools like the flashlight don't work on them since they're corporeal, resulting in him "dying" at the hands of Death. Even as Luigi's soul is about to return to his body at the end, Carmilla pops over to scare the crap out of him one last time.
Defeat Equals Explosion: It's a Smash game, so enemies getting thrown off the stage results in them exploding in a huge pillar of energy upon defeat. When both are killed in the True Final Boss fight, Galeem and Dharkon both crash into the ocean and explode in huge blasts of light and darkness, respectively.
Defeat Means Playable:
- Aside from the usual Challenger Approaching unlocks, spirits are Deprogrammed when defeated, allowing you to add them to your Spirit Teams.
- Once the real Master Hand and Crazy Hand are freed through their defeat, Master Hand becomes playable in one special battle where he fights 50 puppet fighters by himself to clear the way for the actual fighters.
- The limited Sephiroth Challenge mode was available to people who purchased Sephiroth (individually or as part of Challenger Pack 2) for five days prior to his release. Beating Sephiroth in this mode unlocked him as well as the Northern Cave and the new Final Fantasy music, in advance of the wider release.
Demoted to Extra: As part of the "Phantom Thieves of Hearts" Spirit Battle included with the Joker DLC, all of the Phantom Thieves except Noir, Oracle and Crow are represented by their Spirit counterparts. While Noir herself watches from the background, and Oracle commentates during Joker's Final Smash, Crow himself doesn't appear at all, owing to him not having a cameo on Mementos and his absence from the "Phantom Thieves of Hearts" Spirit artwork. ^Note This is very likely due the Spirit in question's artwork being comprised of the official art of the thieves, and Crow's official artwork being witheld by Atlus for a future reveal. Said artwork was accidently leaked via an official wallpaper before being pulled and replaced with a cropped version of his All-Out Attack finisher screen.
Developers' Foresight:
- At the end of a match, the announcer says "[character/team] wins!" In the specific instances where the winners are the Ice Climbers, Rosalina & Luma, or Banjo & Kazooie, the announcement is changed to "[characters] win!" to be grammatically correct.
- If you manage to find your way to one of the other paths at the beginning of World of Light after Master Hand blocks your way but before defeating your first boss, the shield guarding the character from the front automatically breaks.
- You can unlock each type of Mii Fighter the old-fashioned way instead of creating one by fighting their Spirits in World of Light. This gives you the Mii shown in the artwork with a default 1111 moveset.
- Some of World of Light's Broken Bridges can be fixed by more than one character's Spirit. Chances are you'll run across the Shadow Dragon axe users first, but you can also use Reese and Cyrus or Guts Man to do the job of fixing the bridges. Similarly, you'll most likely open the Base via the Hal Emmerich spirit, but Susie or Mega Man.EXE works just as well.
- In the pre-rendered cutscene depicting the conflict between Galeem and Dharkon leading up to the final battle, the only characters depicted as witnesses are Kirby, Mario, Bowser, Fox, Simon, Pit, Samus, Zelda, Sonic, and Greninja. By the time you get to this point in World of Light, you are guaranteed to have all of the mentioned fighters on your team, even if you avoided freeing characters whenever possible. ^note The player begins with Kirby being the only fighter available. Mario is always the first fighter you battle. Bowser is achieved after beating Giga Bowser. Fox guards one of the switches to the Temple of Light, in which you save Simon and Pit to unlock the eastern part of the map, where Samus is the first obstacle to reach Rathalos. Zelda and Sonic are required to fight Ganon, and Greninja is on the path to Marx. The only other "mandatory" fighters (excluding the variable pairs of Marth and Pac-Man, Sheik and Yoshi, and Villager and Lucario ^note which pair is mandatory depends on the route you take after freeing Mario) who are absent are Young Link, Cloud, Ganondorf, Ike, and Meta Knight. ^note The former three whom are required to fight Ganon and the latter two whom are required to fight Marx.
- In the Palutena's Guidance conversation about Cloud, Viridi mentions the strong knockback of his Finishing Touch. However, the fact that there is less knockback to attacks in stamina mode is acknowledged if the Guidance is played there.
- If a Poké Ball Pokémon or Assist Trophy already makes an appearance somewhere on a stage, it cannot be summoned from its respective item when playing on that stage. ^note For example, Electrode will not appear on the N64 Saffron City stage because it sometimes pops out of the door.
- Because Kirby needs to taunt to get rid of copy abilities manually, taunts are not disabled in Quickplay for him when he has one.
- The game prevents you from manipulating the camera during a Stage Morph. This keeps the player from potentially breaking the immersion if they are transitioning from a 2D stage to a 3D stage or vice versa.
- On stages with water, fire Pokémon and Inklings will take damage while they swim. Conversely, water Pokémon can still drown, but need much longer to do so before their drowning timer starts. Also, Sonic similarly takes damage while he's in the water, a reference to his notorious Super Drowning Skills.
- Stamina matches will prevent Pichu from killing itself with its Final Smash by never letting its HP go below 0.1 while the move is active.
- Alucard, a half-vampire, does not appear as an Assist Trophy in stages with reflections.
- Defeating the Rathalos while it is trapped in a pitfall trap has it fall unconscious while still buried in the trap a la capturing a Rathalos with a pitfall in Monster Hunter.
- Joker's victory animations have him continuously running, while the other characters stay in place at the end of theirs; however, he has a unique victory animation where he stays idle if he's not the leading player on the winning team of a Team Battle ^note though it's recycled from his up-taunt and idle stance.
- Every single character has a unique animation when K.O.'d without taking knockback, something that can only happen in Stamina mode, and there's only a select few attacks that can do the job (such as Fox's Blaster).
- Depending on if you purchased their Mii costume or not, the stand-in for their Spirit battle will be changed to feature their costume/music (e.g. If the Cuphead Mii Costume has been purchased, his series' spirit battles will be changed to feature said costume and/or "Floral Fury". Otherwise, they will use music already in the base game and the stand-ins for Cuphead and his pal Mugman will be Mega Man's red and blue/white palette swaps respectively.).
- As in previous games in the series, certain characters, namely the casts from Star Fox, Fire Emblem Awakening and Kid Icarus, will say a unique victory quote if they win against an opponent they're closely associated with. For example, if Falco defeats Fox in a fight, he'll quip, "You're off your game, Fox!", or if Palutena defeats Dark Pit, she'll taunt by saying, "Poor little Pittoo". Simon is the only character who has a unique victory quote against a character that isn't from his home series, in his case, if he beats an opponent associated with darkness (Dark Samus, Bayonetta, Ridley, Dark Pit, Ganondorf), he will proclaim, "To darkness!".
- Both Fox and Wolf will say a special line if they use their Final Smashes against each other.
  Fox: This is the end for you, Wolf!
  
  Wolf: I've got you now, Star Fox!
- Ryu's Final Smash actually has three variations. The third one is never mentioned by the game, but it happens if Ryu is close enough to use Shin Shoryuken on an opponent yet misses the first hit. This causes Ryu to use the very weak Forbidden Shoryuken move that Ryu uses in other Street Fighter games if the same thing happens.
- On the off chance that Incineroar grabs someone with Alolan Whip, but fails to hit them with the followup attack, he'll have a unique animation where he shrugs at the screen.
- Incineroar's Final Smash is also a grab, and it's affected by the timed grab immunity all characters get after being grabbed once. There's also a unique animation if Incineroar uses it on such an opponent, where he tries to grab them, but he passes right through them. This is specific to this sort of immunity, as the Final Smash won't trigger an animation at all against normally-invincible targets.
- After you defeat a Spirit on the Spirit Board, you're taken to an empty area with you carrying a special Spirit Gun, tasked to shoot the Spirit through a rotating barrier. Just like the results screen area, this area is actually a stage and not just a background, and hacking to play on the stage in a normal match will reveal the Spirit Gun is not just a prop, but its own fully-functional item. Its beam deals 36% and heavy knockback to other players.
Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: All three endings involve the fighters defeating a Physical God (or gods). However, in all but the True Ending, the other entity simply capitalizes on the situation to claim victory.
Diminishing Returns for Balance: Dodging now decays. If a fighter keeps dodging too many times in a row, their duration of intangibility keeps getting shorter, and their recovery time keeps getting longer. In addition, trying to repeatedly grab the side of a stage as a defensive tactic can result in your character losing their grip.

Disc-One Final Boss: Galeem serves this role, but in a subversion, returns later on and can serve as the Final Boss proper.
Disc-One Nuke:
- If you start with Marth's route at the beginning of Adventure Mode, you will eventually come across the Polar Bear Spirit around an hour or two into the game. The Polar Bear is a Support Spirit that bestows the Slow Super Armor ability for two Support Slots, which turns any character into a Mighty Glacier that is Immune to Flinching at low percentages. This can easily trivialize spades of Spirit battles, as the ability to push damage without being interrupted by the opponent and sheer resilience to launching is invaluable for all but a few Spirits.
- On the Villager route, if you're lucky, it's possible to purchase a spirit at Anna's Emporium which grants you a battering item... such as Death's Scythe. From that point onward, it's possible to cheese the ensuing fights by racking up a high percentage, then going in for a One-Hit KO. This doesn't work in a stamina battle, though.
Do Not Adjust Your Set: Meta: The Game Awards 2018 ceremony was briefly hijacked by The Phantom Thieves of Hearts to reveal that Joker had just stolen an invitation to Ultimate, securing his spot as the first DLC character of the Fighters Pass.
Do Well, But Not Perfect: The Gourmet Race subarea of the overworld in World of Light challenges the player to collect food as they navigate down a series of paths, with them receiving first, second or third place rewards depending on how much food they snag. However, getting higher prizes doesn't unlock the lower prizes, forcing the player to intentionally do worse in terms of food count if they want all the prizes.
Downer Beginning: The World of Light intro cutscene has various heroes against Galeem, when Shulk has a vision about everyone vanishing before it becomes reality, with everyone losing their bodies, leaving Kirby as the Sole Survivor in the process, meaning that it's up to him to undo the damage.
Downer Ending: The two endings besides the True Ending in World of Light. Should you allow either of the forces of light and darkness to gain too strong of a foothold on The Final Battle map, you'll only face one of the two Big Bads, and the surviving one will obliterate what's left of the world (and all of the characters) with either light (Galeem) or darkness (Dharkon) once and for all.
Downloadable Content: Like the previous title, several new fighters and Mii Fighter costumes are being added post-launch:
- The first DLC fighter is Piranha Plant, which was free for those that registered the game with their My Nintendo account before the end of January 2019, and became available for purchase for non-early adopters starting February 1, 2019.
- Five other completely new fighters with their own stage and music are purchasable separately or in a bundle called the Fighters Pass. The bundle also comes with a Mii Fighter costume of Rex from Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
  - The first of the bundle is Joker from Persona 5, who made his playable debut on April 17, 2019.
  - The second Fighters Pass character is the Hero from Dragon Quest, who comes in multiple skins representing the main characters from Dragon Quest III, IV, VIII, and XI, with the latter being the default as a tie-in to his game's recent release. The fighter was released on July 30, 2019.
  - Third in the pack are the team of Banjo and Kazooie from Banjo-Kazooie, who were made available on September 4, 2019.
  - The fourth member of the squad is Terry Bogard, known for appearing in SNK's fighting games such as Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters. He was released on November 6, 2019.
  - The fifth and final character is Byleth from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, who came out on January 28, 2020.
- Additional fighters beyond the Fighters Pass were also confirmed in September 2019 due to strong sales, followed by the January 2020 Mr. Sakurai Presents video confirming the count of six new characters. Like before, each fighter will come with their own stage and music are purchasable separately or in a bundle, Fighters Pass Vol. 2. This bundle will include a bonus Mii Fighter costume based on the Ancient Armor from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
  - The first character is Min Min from ARMS, released on June 29, 2020.
  - The second character is Steve from Minecraft, along with Alex, a Zombie, and an Enderman as alternate skins, released on October 13, 2020.
  - The third character is Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII, released December 2020. Notably he could be acquired before his official release date of December 22nd by completing the limited-time "Sephiroth Challenge" mode that began 5 days earlier.
  - The fourth is the transforming duo Pyra and Mythra from Xenoblade Chronicles 2, released March 4, 2021.
  - The fifth character was Kazuya Mishima from Tekken, released on June 29, 2021.
  - The sixth and final character was Sora from Kingdom Hearts, released on October 18, 2021.
- Additional Mii Fighter costumes are released at the same time as the new fighters, but are separate from the Fighters Pass and are bought individually.
  - Joker's release brought six new costumes, with all of them also being tied to Sega: wigs of the Persona 3 and Persona 4 protagonists and matching Swordfighter-exclusive outfits, a hat based on Teddie from Persona 4, a hat based on Morgana from Persona 5, a hat based on Tails' head and a matching Gunner-exclusive outfit, and a hat based on Knuckles' hair and a matching Brawler-exclusive outfit.
  - Alongside the Hero's release came three new costumes and one hat, all also from the Dragon Quest series: Veronica from XI and (the descendant of) Erdrick from I as Swordfighter outfits, the generic Martial Artist first seen in III as a Brawler outfit, and a Slime hat based on the series' Mascot Mook.
  - Banjo & Kazooie's release broke the trend with an assortment of costumes unrelated to them: Goemon from the Mystical Ninja series and Zero from the Mega Man X series as Swordfighter outfits, Team Rocket (Grunt) from the Pokémon series as a Brawler outfit, and Protoman from the Mega Man series and Sans from Undertale as Gunner outfits. The Sans costume also comes with a new remix of "Megalovania" for play in stages in the "Other" category.
  - Terry Bogard's associated costumes are, like him, all from fighting games. Nakoruru appears as a Swordfighter costume, and the rest are Brawlers: Ryo Sakazaki and Iori Yagami are new outfits, and the Akira Yuki and Jacky Bryant costumes are returners from 3DS/Wii U.
  - Byleth brought in a slew of unrelated costumes, similarly to Banjo & Kazooie. Altair from Assassin's Creed (as a Swordfighter), a hat based on the Raving Rabbids, X from Mega Man X (as a Gunner, returning from 3DS/Wii U), MegaMan.EXE from Mega Man Battle Network (ditto), and Cuphead from his self-titled game (as a Gunner) were all added alongside Byleth and the 7.0.0 update.
  - Min Min's accompanying Mii costumes are a motley collection: fellow ARMS character Ninjara, Tekken's Heihachi (returning from 3DS/Wii U), the Squid Sisters Callie and Marie from Splatoon, and Fallout mascot Vault Boy.
  - Steve's costumes are half and half; Creeper, Pig and Diamond Armor all come from Minecraft, and there's also Gil from The Tower of Druaga (returning from 3DS/Wii U), Bomberman, and No More Heroes' own Travis Touchdown.
  - Alongside Sephiroth, there is an assortment of Square Enix costumes. Three of them are from Final Fantasy VII: Barret Wallace (as a Gunner), Tifa Lockhart (as a Brawler), and Aerith Gainsborough (as a Swordfighter). The remaining costumes consists of a Chocobo hat (returning from 3DS/Wii U) and Geno from Super Mario RPG (as a Gunner, returning from 3DS/Wii U).
  - Alongside Pyra and Mythra, there was a selection of Capcom costumes. Three of them were from Monster Hunter: the Hunter and Rathalos armor outfits (as a Swordfighter, both returning from 3DS/Wii U), and a Felyne Hat. The last costume was Arthur from Ghosts 'n Goblins (as a Swordfighter). These costumes were tie-ins to recent Nintendo Switch releases, namely Monster Hunter: Rise and Ghost 'n Goblins Resurrection.
  - Alongside Kazuya, only one costume was tied to the same company, Lloyd Irving from Tales of Symphonia (Swordfighter, returning from 3DS/Wii U). The other costumes are unrelated: the Dragonborn from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (as a Swordfighter), Dante from Devil May Cry (as a Swordfighter), and Shantae from her self-titled series (as a Brawler). The Shantae costume comes with a song from Half-Genie Hero.
  - Only three items were revealed alongside Sora: an Octoling wig and Judd hat from Splatoon, and the Doomslayer (aka Doomguy) from Doom (Gunner).
The Dragon:
- Master Hand and Crazy Hand unwillingly serve this purpose for Galeem and Dharkon, respectively. Throughout the story both entities send puppets of the hands to try and stop the fighters, and their last-ditch effort involves sending the original Master Hand and Crazy Hand after them.
- As far as the puppet fighters go, Galeem's final imprisoned fighter is Palutena, a Goddess of Light and canonically one of the strongest fighters in the game. Similarly, Dharkon's final imprisoned fighter is Bayonetta, an Umbra Witch with a similar level of power. In fact, Masahiro Sakurai admits that besides Kirby taking advantage of the properties of his Warp Star to escape Galeem's first attack, Palutena and Bayonetta were the only other two fighters with enough power to escape. Since neither is very beginner-friendly, he decided to explain their imprisonment by having their homeworlds being destroyed by Galeem as well, giving them no where to run.
- On the final map, the last branch of the pathways leading to Galeem and Dharkon, respectively, are guarded by one final spirit each. Galeem is guarded by Arceus, the creator of the Pokémon world and canonically one of (if not the) most powerful Pokémon. Dharkon is guarded by Madama Butterfly, an extremely powerful demon that is the source of most of Bayonetta's power. Each is "assisted" by Solgaleo and Lunala being nearby - Pokémon with the power of sunlight and moonlight, respectively.
Dramatic Red Samurai Background:
- Ridley's reveal trailer has him grab Mega Man and Mario and stab them with his tail; the acts are done in front of a bright red background, with their bodies and his tail in complete black.
- Like in his game of origin, Joker's Final Smash, "All-Out Attack", has him call on his teammates to barrage his opponent(s), with the deed framed in black against a red background —as this is an E10+ Nintendo game, the spray of blood coming out of the victims is instead a stream of stars.
Dream Match Game: Although Super Smash Bros. as a series is already based upon this concept, this game takes it further by bringing back every fighter up to the point of this game's release, including the third-party characters, which allows for matchups that wouldn't have been possible at the time of their releases (such as Snake being able to fight Mega Man), and adding more third-party characters for good measure.
Dual Boss: Along with the Master and Crazy Hand battles, getting the true ending for the Adventure Mode involves facing both Galeem and Dharkon at the same time. Notably, they attack each other as well as you during this battle.
Dualvertisement: The addition of the Trials of Mana protagonists as spirits on April 24, 2020 is a tie-in with the release of that game's remake on the Switch releasing on the same day.
Dub-Induced Plot Hole:
- Yama's origin game is said to be SimTower SP in localized versions of Ultimate. This game was actually released as The Tower SP without being a part of the Sim Series.
- Sephiroth's challenger pack adds two songs named "Those Who Fight (AC Version)" and "Those Who Fight Further (AC Version)". The non-Advent Children versions of these songs have the tiles "Let the Battles Begin!" and "Fight On!" ^Note Both being the Final Fantasy VII songs originally in the game, leaving those unfamiliar with the franchise confused as to why these songs would be placed where they are.
Dub Name Change:
- The original Japanese version of "World of Light" has an alternate name for the main villain: "Kiira" (based on the Japanese onomatopoeia for glittering, "kirakira").
- In the Italian translation, the "World of Light" story mode is instead titled "The Star of Hope." The main villain was renamed Kiaran (a corruption of "chiara," meaning clear).
Dynamic Difficulty: The intensity meter in Classic Mode increases depending on your performance each round, or even decreases if you lose and use a continue.
Dynamic Entry:
- In the "Vampire Killer" trailer, Simon makes his entrance by smacking Death in the jaw with the Vampire Killer.
- Sephiroth one-ups him in the "One-Winged Angel" trailer by slicing Galeem in half before descending on the rest of the cast.
Early-Bird Cameo: The Castlevania reveal trailer featured Luigi's new Poltergust before Luigi's Mansion 3 was formally announced. In Ultimate itself, Luigi uses it as his grab, and even incorporated that game's Slam move as his back throw.
Early Game Hell: Early on, you'll be able to take on a couple of Spirits, especially if they're around the 2000-power range, but you'll eventually run into Ace- or Legend-class Spirits that suddenly have power levels in excess of 9000+, which will easily pound you and the spirits you're likely to have at that point into the dirt. You're meant to find other ways around and, through leveling up Primary Spirits and acquiring a wider range of Support Spirits, eventually come back to those powerful Spirits later to fight them on more equal terms.
Early Installment Weirdness:
- Mr. Sakurai Presents, a presentation for the DLC character in the character passes before they are released, is rife with this. To wit:
  - The update video for the first DLC character, Joker, is not actually a Mr. Sakurai Presents presentation, but a standard overview trailer like most other Nintendo videos in that format.
  - The first proper Mr. Sakurai Presents entitled Mr. Sakurai Presents Hero mostly used Japanese footage and didn't even mention the songs being played in the background. Starting with Mr. Sakurai Presents Banjo-Kazooie, the video uses English footage and the songs being played throughout the video are labeled in the upper-left corner. Additionally, the first video wasn't streamed live, simply being posted online, while all the following videos starting with the second were aired live before posting the recorded footage.
- The base game Spirit Battles are all dead-set on never using the default costumes for any Puppet Fighters, even when it would make the most sense to do so. Spirits added later on in the game's life, both from free updates and DLC Spirit Boards, stopped caring about this restriction and freely use default costumes if they fit.
Easier Than Easy: Very Easy difficulty mode in World of Light, added in the Version 4.0 update, in which most enemies are set to level 1 and walk around like idiots. Useful for very young or inexperienced players and those who just want to cruise through World of Light without a hitch.
Easter Egg: Many of them are retained from previous games, but there's plenty of new ones too.
- If you tilt the camera on the left side of Great Bay, you'll find a Heart Container hidden off-screen, where it was in Majora's Mask.
- If you zoom inside one of the buildings in Fourside, you'll see a completely modeled version of Monotoli's office.
- If you zoom inside Dungeon Man in Magicant, you'll see Brick Road's face.
- Multiple clocks in the game properly display the system time; Umbra Clock Tower displays the system time on its face, the Persona 3 version of Mementos displays the time on its clocks, and Town and City displays the time on the clock in the City phase.
- This game's Final Destination track is the melody of "Lifelight" played backwards. This despite already already being a variation of the song when played normally.
- If Joker ends a match with his Final Smash, it goes straight to the results screen instead of playing a victory animation, similar to how All-Out Attacks work in Persona 5.
- On the Mementos stage, if the song playing during a match is one from Persona 3 or Persona 4, the stage will change its appearance to match the respective game. If Joker wins a match under these conditions, the respective game's victory theme will play instead of his own.
Easy Level Trick:
- For most of the Challenges and Spirit battles, anything is fair game as long as you stick to the rules. Because most of these involve AI opponents, you can get away with particularly cheesy methods to clear them with far less difficulty than you were expected to have, most notably sacrificial KOs like Kirbycide.
- As pointed out in "Mr. Sakurai Presents Min Min", Pauline, considered one of the most Nintendo Hard Spirit Battles in the game, can be easily defeated with just two shots of a Staff, since the vast starting distance between the player and the target Peach puppet lets the Staff (which fires fast sniper shots that increase in power the further away the target is from the shooter) reach its full potential. Fortunately, Cupid (which gives you a free Staff at the start of a fight) can be found fairly early in World of Light.
- The Odyssey's battle involves a Giant Jigglypuff that is hard to launch and frequently shields itself, which would make it difficult to defeat under a time limit. Equip a Spirit that starts you off with a Mr. Saturn, and you can end the battle in just one hit.
Eldritch Location: The Dark Realm, a mashed-up mess of multiple dimensions filled with chaotic architecture hung over a purplish grey void. The strangest part is the northern end, which starts with a maze-like landscape before turning into a digital-looking mashup with various floating shapes. It says something that Dracula's Castle is the most stable part of the place.
Enemy Mine:
- Bowser and King K. Rool stand alongside the heroes in the World of Light cutscene, and together they oppose the new enemy Galeem, in spite of them sharing bad chemistry with each other in Mario Super Sluggers previously. It's nothing new for Bowser, but this is also notably the first time K. Rool has ever aligned himself with Donkey Kong (baseball aside). Also counts for the other villainous characters once they join the party, as well as spirits that are enemies to any of the heroes.
- Galeem and Dharkon can be driven to do this at the very end of World of Light if the fighters manage to confront them both simultaneously. However, having a common enemy doesn't stop Galeem and Dharkon from taking potshots at each other.
Enemy Rising Behind: King K. Rool does this to King Dedede in his reveal trailer before slapping him aside and snarling at the Kongs.
Escort Mission: Some Spirit fights involve you protecting another character while also dealing with the Spirit. For example, Calamity Ganon requires to you win before your NPC-controlled Zelda teammate dies.
Establishing Character Moment:
- Ridley's infamous reveal is shot like a horror movie, with only brief flashes of him being visible as he ambushes and apparently violently murders Mario and Mega Man. When Samus realizes that her compatriots are gone, and who's responsible, she closes her eyes in resignation, and turns around to find Ridley standing behind her, spinning Mario's hat around on his finger with a ginormous smile on his face.
- King K. Rool's starts with the Kongs' cabin being shaken by massive footsteps, and as they look out the window to see who it is, a massive crowned silhouette rises up to blot out the sun... only to unmask himself as King Dedede. While Dedede is laughing at the Kongs, the real K. Rool rises up behind him and casually knocks Dedede aside with one slap before baring his teeth and roaring at the Kongs.
- Simon Belmont reveals himself by hitting the Grim Reaper in the face with the Vampire Killer.
- The boxing ring features Ken and Little Mac fighting. After Ken defeats the boxer, he is challenged by Incineroar, who uses flames to show off its prowess. After defeating Ken, we see him all boisterously happy, before shrugging his head upon seeing a line of challengers behind him.
- In one of the most shocking moments in Smash Bros. history, we see various Yoshis and Luigi dazed out of their mind. Mario steps toward the character responsible for this and attempts to attack him... only for the Piranha Plant to dodge him, bite him back, and knock Mario off of the screen.
- Joker's reveal trailer, first shown during the 2018 Game Awards, has him pulling a Do Not Adjust Your Set, running around Phantom Thief style, and then revealing a stolen Smash invitation.
- Banjo and Kazooie's trailer mimics K. Rool's, with the Duck Hunt dog and duck trolling the Kongs and K. Rool by pretending to be the famous bear and bird duo (complete with the dog's infamous laugh) before Banjo bashes the dog aside with his banjo and makes his appearance with Kazooie, to the Kong's (and even K. Rool's) delight.
Establishing Series Moment: invoked The first "Mr. Sakurai Presents" video, done for Hero, manages to explain itself neatly early on. Sakurai offhandedly states that the budget for the presentation was a lot lower than what they usually work with, which causes someone to laugh in the background. This neatly summarizes the highly informal style of presentation that this series would continue with, as well as why they picked the style.
Everybody Calls Him "Barkeep": The main female deuteragonist from the obscure 1999 Japan-only SNES game Famicom Bunko: Hajimari no Mori appears as a Spirit, simply titled "Girl from Hajimari no Mori". This is quite strange considering that not only is every other Spirit with a given name referred to as such, but she does have an actual name, Komurasaki.
Everybody's Dead, Dave: World of Light's opening scene starts with almost every single character in the roster completely atomized by Galeem, leading the Master Hand army. The only one to survive the onslaught is Kirby... who may have the courage to save everyone else.
Eviler Than Thou: Not even previous Big Bad Tabuu was safe from being turned into a spirit by Galeem.
Evil Knockoff: Much like the Shadow Bugs creating false copies in Subspace Emissary, the captured fighters in World of Light are covered in a golden liquid which creates a vessel for the spirits to possess. Both Galeem and Dharkon also have a personal army of clones of the fighters made of Hard Light and Hard Darkness, respectively, which they deploy during their boss battles and detonate like bombs.
Evil Versus Evil: Galeem and Dharkon are at odds with one another. Both are also Omnicidal Maniacs looking to end the world in their own ways.
Evil Versus Oblivion: If Bowser's and King K. Rool's presence at the (doomed) fight against Galeem at the beginning of World of Light is of any indication. Every villain can be rescued to assist against Galeem and spirits of villainous characters can also be equipped to fight his puppet fighters.
Evolving Title Screen: The Adventure Mode title screen is mostly empty, with Galeem on its right. After the conclusion of the Light Realm arc and the surprise reveal of Dharkon, Dharkon himself is added to the left side of the title screen, opposing Galeem like in the story.
Excuse Plot: Unlike Brawl's elaborate plot and the rest of the games' lack of plot, Ultimate gives a pretty simple reason for fighting a vast collection of characters and bosses.
Failure Montage:
- The majority of Terry's trailer has a variety of the SNK cast trying and failing to catch the flying invitation to Smash, which involves Geese Howard falling to his death trying to get it. It's eventually claimed by Terry, who simply waited for it to land on the floor.
- In Min Min's trailer, Spring Man is the first one to see the flying Smash invitation and reaches out to grab it... only to get knocked out of the way by Ribbon Girl... who is knocked out of the way by Ninjara... and so it goes with almost every member of the ARMS cast until Min Min finally ditches her job at the ramen shop to leap in and take it for herself.
Fake Balance: On paper, Final Smashes activated through the Final Smash Meter are supposed to be weaker than their normal Smash Ball counterparts. In practice, the actual meaning of "weaker" tends to vary wildly by Final Smash, ranging from "doesn't kill except at high percents" to "barely changed". For example, most conventional Final Smashes that simply deal damage and knockback have their output scaled down as expected. However, unconventional Final Smashes tend to not be balanced this way, such as Critical Hit (which can still score kills at 0%), Peach Blossom/Daisy Blossom (which puts opponents to sleep, opening them up to smash attacks), and anything that simply destroys the opponent at 100% or higher (Triforce of Wisdom, Plasma Scream, and Infernal Climax).
Family-Friendly Firearms: While Snake (who only uses explosive weapons) and, to a lesser extent, Bayonetta (who uses pistols, but they're magic) play this straight, Joker outright averts it, by bringing his real pistol that shoots real bullets. Somewhat justified in that this is only due to the nature of the Metaverse making the gun real; in the "real" world of Persona 5, it's just a model.
Family-Unfriendly Death: The character trailers have uncharacteristically violent deaths.
- In Ridley's trailer, he impales Mega Man with his tail and crushes Mario's head.
- In the Belmonts' trailer, with a literal Family-Unfriendly Death who slashes Luigi's soul out of his body. This one shocked enough people that the Nintendo UK Twitter account had to reassure people that he would be fine; indeed, one can see Luigi's soul was just about to return to his body at the end of the trailer.
- The whole cast sans Kirby gets one in the intro to World of Light. Disintegration could not have been a pleasant way to go...
- Physical God be damned, Galeem suffers a brutal death at the hands of Dharkon in the second bad ending, upon which his wings are stabbed, bound, and pulled apart by chains, then Galeem himself is impaled by multiple chains simultaneously before emitting a bright stream of light from his entire body, likely Galeem's version of bleeding.
- In the first bad ending, Galeem just straight-up vaporizes Dharkon, and we get to see him slowly crumble into dust.
Fanservice Pack:
- Played Straight for Daisy, as her design is slightly bustier than in the Mario sports and party games.
- Double Subverted for Zero Suit Samus; her bustline was toned down to more realistic proportions in comparison to her 3DS/ Wii U incarnation. However, she is noticeably more muscular than her previous appearances, which is also more realistic, considering her profession.
- Also inverted for Snake, as his bodysuit isn't as skintight as it appeared in Brawl. Among other less defined areas, his butt was toned down.
- Less notable but also inverted for Palutena, as her dress cut has been slightly stitched, exposing less of her thigh. This change was originally made in the Japanese version of the previous game. ^* Her dress does get briefly lifted up if she's hit by King Dedede's Dede-Rush Final Smash, however.
- Unlike the poses she had in her previous artworks, Sheik's arms are no longer obscuring her chest, making it even more obvious that Sheik is a woman.
- Unlike the examples above, somehow Wolf managed to have tight, formfitting pants that shows his shapely buttocks. His leather undersuit also manages to be tight enough to show off his biceps.
- Krystal, who was already Ms. Fanservice in her original appearance ◊, is now slimmer and more muscular. ◊ Also, manipulating the camera to... very specific angles ◊ reveals that she isn't wearing any underwear.
- Done quite literally and inverted with Pyra and Mythra in the fourth Challenger Pack of Fighters Pass 2, being the most suggestive fighters to be added up to that point. Their outfits have vastly differing modifications for their appearance and subsequent promotion here (Pyra's are negligible while Mythra's hides a lot of skin), yet they are the first female fighters whose chests make use of actual Jiggle Physics.
Filler: Any themed spirit events that don't introduce any new spirits can be seen as this, although there is the occasional subversion (like the black color-themed spirit event that Lotus arrives in).
Final Boss:
- Unlike previous installments, the final opponent in Classic Mode depends on who the player picked to play, instead of all characters facing Master Hand at the end. Besides Master Hand and Crazy Hand, characters can face also off against the likes of Giga Bowser, Galleom, Ganon, Dracula, Marx, and Rathalos.
- Certain Classic Mode routes will have a fight against a more powerful version of a regular foe as the Final Boss. Bowser fights Mario, who comes back as Metal Mario; Bayonetta fights Giant Palutena; Jigglypuff fights Giant Donkey Kong; and Hero fights Robin, followed by Giant Charizard. Mega Man's final challenger is an exception in that they're not "more powerful," but he does fight Dr. Mario and Mewtwo in succession. This is zigzagged with Mario, who first fights Bowser in a regular 1-on-1, then he comes back and turns into Giga Bowser.
Five-Second Foreshadowing:
- King K. Rool's trailer starts with various Nintendo heroes fighting their respective villain or rival before cutting to Donkey Kong yawning, presumably watching this series of images on his television.
- In the intro of World of Light, Shulk sees a vision of everybody being vaporized by Galeem's beams. He only gets about a split second to try to warn them before the events he foresaw play out.
- The E10+ logo in front of the Persona 5 trailer is rather conspicuous given that the franchise is normally T to M-rated, hinting that Joker was going to appear in the family-friendly Smash series.
- Banjo & Kazooie's reveal trailer has a Jiggy bounce through Donkey Kong's house, less than a minute before the duo themselves appear to take out Duck Hunt and secure their spot on the roster.
Foil: Palutena and Bayonetta's role in the World of Light mode plays up the contrast between them. It was noted in developer interviews that they are the only ones other than Kirby who could have survived Galeem's attack were it not for extenuating circumstances, and their juxtaposition as immensely powerful — and opposing — forces of light and darkness, respectively, is highlighted by their locations in World of Light: in The Final Battle map, they're each summoned alongside Master and Crazy Hand as agents of Galeem and Dharkon and personally stand guard before each hand, Palutena before Master Hand and Bayonetta before Crazy Hand. Notably, this makes them the last characters you can unlock in the campaign.
Foreshadowing:
- The majority of the game's main theme: Lifelight references several points in World of Light: Connotations to darkness, Galeem and Dharkon's struggles, and what all the spirits do in the Golden Ending: Weave into a spire of flame to head back to the real world.
- During the Banjo & Kazooie/Version 5.0 video, Sakurai noticeably refers to most of the cameos on the Spiral Mountain stage as "poor souls". Later, Sans from Undertale, a game with a large emphasis on souls, was revealed as a Mii Gunner costume.
- Take a look at Galeem's entire army in the "World of Light" intro. He has absolutely no Crazy Hands present. Turns out Dharkon has an army purely consisting of Crazy Hands.
- During the reveal of the ARMS character, it starts with Captain Falcon and Kirby enjoying ramen in a shop. Anyone who knows the lore of the games should have been able to guess that the fighter was Min Min.
- When Heihachi's Mii Costume is revealed to be returning, the trailer recreates his Tekken 2 ending by showing him throwing Wolf into the Wuhu Island volcano, a reference to how he threw his son Kazuya into a volcano in said ending. Guess who ends up joining the roster nearly a year later?
Full Health Bonus: The Annie Spirit grants increased attack power while at 0% damage.
Funny Background Event: Haru/Noir isn't represented in the Phantom Thieves Spirit battle, so instead, she appears as a permanent background element for the fight (as opposed to normal fights on Mementos, where she only appears periodically).
Fun with Palindromes: A unique case as it's a song. Normally, the new Final Destination theme plays the title melody and is followed by an apparently-new composition. Play the song backwards, however, and aside from the obvious audio errors from reversing songs in general, the result has an identical melody with the title theme first and then the "new" section.
Game-Breaking Bug:
- In early versions of the game, if you were to have one player-controlled Villager and one player-controlled Isabelle play catch with the shot from Isabelle's side-aerial slingshot with their respective Pocket moves, the game would freeze and crash to the main Switch menu after a few throws. Presumably, it results from the game getting the two's respective slingshot projectiles confused and borking itself as a result, as it doesn't seem to affect any other projectile, nor does the glitch occur with two Villagers or Isabelles doing the same thing.
- The game will also crash if you have Yoshi land the final blow of a two-player Stamina battle with his grab. Presumably, this is due to the game not knowing what to do with the KO'd player who is still stuck in Yoshi's mouth. Version 2.0.0 fixed this bug.
- Another game-crashing bug can only be performed through ridiculously specific circumstances: If a Mii Swordfighter with Gale Stab as their Side Special uses said side special directly towards Duck Hunt during a specific frame of time while the latter has a Gunman out on the field, the game will freeze. The catch is that the glitch doesn't seem to occur unless the Mii Swordfighter's other special moves are set to only specific combinations while still containing Gale Slash as the side-special. The reason for why this glitch occurs is unknown.
- Finishing a match in Classic Mode with Joker's Final Smash will cause the game to softlock, as the developers seemingly didn't account for transitioning to the Classic Mode results screen from Joker's unique way of ending a match. This one got fixed in 3.0.1.
- Steve/Alex debuted with enough odd bugs to fill a minecart (to the point that Patch 9.0.0., the patch that added them in, received two additional patches just to get rid of the majority of them), among them being a game-crashing bug involving mining on rotating pieces on custom stages. Another highly-specific glitch involves Steve attacking another Steve/Alex with a Hammer while they are being attacked by Zoroark, causing the other player to get permanently stuck in mid-air. If the player manages to summon Zoroark again while player 2 is stuck, the game will crash the moment Zoroark tries to attack the frozen player.
Gameplay and Story Integration:
- The Wii Fit trainer's up smash, Tree Pose, gives her brief invincibility frames; when she uses it right before getting hit by Galeem's beam, she lasts a little longer than Villager and Duck Hunt.
- Being in the water in this installment causes damage to characters who can't swim (Sonic), or are harmed by water (Charizard, the Inklings, Incineroar) in their home series.
- Fighters possessed by Spirits both look like and act like the characters they're being possessed by; see Mythology Gag for an extensive list of them.
Gameplay and Story Segregation:
- Despite the fact that Kirby was never caught by Galeem and subsequently used as a base for Puppet Fighters like everyone else, there are still Spirit Battles with Kirby Puppet Fighters in World of Light. When asked about this, Sakurai gave a Hand Wave that Galeem is actually creating Kirby puppet fighters based off his analysis of him.
- World of Light makes no concessions for Min Min, Pyra, or Mythra (previously only in the game as Spirits) becoming playable in the mode, so it's possible for them to end up fighting themselves during their NPC Spirit Battles. They can even equip their own spirits.
- Dismissing Spirits In-Universe is supposed to be sending them back to their own game-worlds. But you can also dismiss characters like Primid and Sandbag, who are from Smash itself and thus already "home".
Gate Guardian: In the adventure mode's Final World, the paths leading directly to Galeem and Dharkon are blocked off by what are effectively the final spirit battles in the game. Fittingly, the spirits are of characters with enormous power. Galeem is protected by the spirit of Arceus - a Pokémon that created the entire universe, and that is powerful enough to both create or completely overwhelm multiple Legendary Pokémon at the same time, as well as render all attacks against it completely worthless by changing to any type it wants. Unsurprisingly, its signature attack lets it scattershot beams of light like meteors. Meanwhile, Dharkon is guarded by Madama Butterfly, a massive demon dwelling in Purgatorio who is the source of all of Bayonetta's power. Just summoning part of her limbs gives Bayonetta the largest Smash Attacks in the game, and Madama Butterfly's power is so great that Masahiro Sakurai himself speculated it could let Bayonetta evade Galeem's initial attack, if not for it striking Purgatorio as well.
Gender-Neutral Writing: The new Palutena's Guidances for Corrin and Pokémon Trainer are written this way, and are the same whether you play as the male or female versions of the character.
"Get Back Here!" Boss: Any Spirit who "prefers to avoid conflict" will run away from you and let their allies do the fighting for them.

Gigantic Moon: Simon and Richter's reveal trailer ends on a shot of Dracula's Castle silhouetted against a full moon that, in typical Castlevania fashion, is so big that it looks like it could be on an imminent collision course for the earth. The in-game Dracula's Castle stage has a crescent moon that isn't quite as big, but it's still much bigger than would be realistic.
Glass Cannon:
- One ability you can train in the Dojo is Demon Style, which massively increases offense but heavily lowers defense on a certain type of spirit. It's also generally considered the best fighting style out of the bunch. Fittingly, it works best on Akuma's Spirit due to him already being a Glass Cannon (he has the highest attack out of every spirit, while having below average defense for a Legendary spirit).
- There's also Hades, who has Trade-Off Attack (which makes you start with 30% or makes you lose 30HP in Stamina Battles, but increases attack power to obscene levels), an absurdly high attack stat (third-highest in the game) and very low defense for a Legendary Spirit. With Hades, you can do a lot of damage very quickly, even against other legendary spirits, but you die especially quickly.
- The I-Tetromino has attack stat on par with Hades and Akuma, but the defence stat is only in the 2000s being incredibly low for an Ace spirit. It's best to use Akuma over it as the I-Tetromino falls too much into Crippling Overspecialization.
Glowing Eyes of Doom:
- Every single match starts off with silhouettes of the characters with a glint in their eyes before switching over to their character portraits.
- In the Fighting Fire with Fire trailer, we see Incineroar's eyes appear from the backstage while Ken is busy fighting Little Mac.
- Galeem's Puppet fighters in World of Light have ominous red glowing eyes, while Dharkon's Puppet fighters have purple eyes.
Godzilla Threshold: In World of Light, heroes and villains, no matter how hated, perform an Enemy Mine against the common foe, Galeem. On top of that, achieving the True Ending has the villains doing so; the fighters have become so powerful that Galeem and Dharkon, begrudgingly, team up to take them down, while still trying to kill each other. Even just before the final battle, Galeem and Dharkon are exhausting so many resources to fight each other that they barely have any left to deal with the fighters. After defeating a single puppet fighter of Master Hand and Crazy Hand in the final world, Galeem and Dharkon are forced to send the ORIGINALS after them. This gives the fighters the chance to release them from the control of Galeem and Dharkon, allowing Master Hand and Crazy Hand to destroy the barrier separating the two entities, and allowing Master Hand to utterly decimate the bulk of the remaining puppet fighters.
Going Commando: Thanks to some...intrusive digging, Krystal ◊'s model has been found to not wear underwear under her clothes.
Gotta Catch 'Em All: Spirits, taking over the role of trophies in the previous games. There's several ways to find them; most spirits have to be battled in either World of Light or the lucky-dip Spirit Board, several can only be purchased in the World of Light shops, a few can only be gotten be releasing spirits and using the cores they leave to summon different ones (which then means you have to get the spirits you released again), some are earned by leveling specific spirits to 99 so they can be enhanced into a new form, and a select few are locked behind Challenges that need to be completed before you earn them and have them start appearing normally. Spirits can also be snagged from the Vault shop, and received as rewards in modes like Classic Mode, Home-Run Contest, and Online Tourney. A special category of Spirits, Fighter Spirits, can only be gotten via Classic Mode or the shop in the Vault; these can't be equipped, and instead represent the fighters themselves. Ultimate also has regularly-occurring events that introduce more spirits to the game, which last for a few days at a time; while the events are limited-time, the spirits eventually get added to the base game a few months later. Additionally, there's the Partner Pikachu and Partner Eevee spirits and Tockles spirit, which were exclusive to Old Save Bonuses of their respective games, but they were made obtainable through normal means in updates (2.0.0 for the former, and 6.0.0, only fightable on Hero's Spirit Board, for the latter). As of the Cuphead event in 7.0.0, there are 1,401 unique Spirits.
Gradual Regeneration:
- The Healing Sprout item constantly heals off your damage as long as you are holding it. However, it can be thrown, and it can be transferred to other fighters on contact or knocked off if you take enough damage or are thrown.
- Some Support Spirits give the "Autoheal" Skill, which heals you for a small amount of damage every 5 seconds. The "Great Autoheal" Ability exclusive to Celebi does the same, but heals in much greater amounts.
- Madama Butterfly from Bayonetta gives the unique Ability "Poison Heals", which inverts the effects of the Poison status effect, Poison Floors, and poison clouds, causing them to rapidly heal off damage. While it costs three slots, this Ability can make you effectively invincible in certain fights.
Grandfather Clause: Nothing new for the series, but Ultimate adds some new ones where tradition is carried out despite being out-of-place.
- Luigi, Dr. Mario, Falco, Wolf, Pichu, Young Link, Ganondorf, Toon Link, and Roy are still distinct enough characters separate from the ones that they were initially based off of in their Smash Bros. debut ^note Mario, Fox, Pikachu, Link, Captain Falcon, and Marth, respectively, even though Echo Fighters have been introduced in this game. Due to Divergent Character Evolution, they're all considered too distinct to be considered Echoes.
- Pokémon Trainer was the only character in the roster to maintain the Stance System of transformations, after For 3DS/Wii U got rid of them by making Zelda/Sheik and Samus/Zero Suit Samus separate characters while taking out the Trainer in that game and making Charizard his own fully developed fighter. Because everyone is back, including the Trainer alongside Squirtle and Ivysaur, they get to retain the Stance System after it had been discarded, while kicking Charizard back into being part of the Trainer's set rather than his own character (throwing out Rock Smash in the process). But unlike the two examples given above, Pokémon Trainer conceptually is about using each monster to cover each other's weaknesses rather than being separate characters in a single slot (you can still stick to one Pokémon if you want to, though). As Pyra & Mythra are a transforming fighter, however, they prove that this kind of fighter is not gone for good.
- Chrom is now a playable fighter as an echo of Roy instead of just being relegated to Robin's Final Smash. Emphasis on "just," because for some reason he's still part of Robin's Final Smash.
- Lyn still has her somewhat deep voice from Brawl, provided by Lani Minella, even though Fire Emblem Heroes introduces a new, much younger sounding voice for her, provided by Wendee Lee, and other classic Fire Emblem characters such as Marth, Roy, and Ike were updated to use their Heroes voices in Smash.
- The music track "Athletic Theme - Super Mario World" is a Yoshi series song despite all other Super Mario World tracks being Mario series songs because the stage it debuted on, Yoshi's Island (Melee), is a Yoshi series level that traditionally uses this track.
- Melee's All-Star Rest Area song is still classified as a Smash series track due to only being used in the original-to-Smash Rest Area, despite being a remix of the Kirby's Dream Land song "Float Islands".
- For an advertising example, the image that serves as a main advertisement features every base game third party franchise... except for Castlevania, due to being announced after the original trailer. Even more strange with the substantial amount of content the series has compared to others, including a boss.
Grand Finale: Fighter #82, Sora, was the last character revealed for the game, with his trailer even calling back to the game's first teaser.
Gratuitous English: F-Zero Medley , a new remix done by Takenobu Mitsuyoshi, is filled to the brim with lyrics like that. And yes, it sounds amazing.
Guest Fighter:
- Not only do all 7 previous third-party characters (Snake, Sonic, Mega Man, Pac-Man, Ryu, Cloud, Bayonetta) return, they are joined by Simon and Richter Belmont from Castlevania, and Ryu's echo Ken Masters.
- Several other non-playable guests appear: new Assist Trophies include Alucard from Castlevania, Bomberman, the Rathalos from Monster Hunter, Akira from Virtua Fighter, Knuckles from Sonic the Hedgehog, Zero and Dr. Wily (in his Wily Capsule) from Mega Man, Rodin from Bayonetta, Guile from Street Fighter, and Shovel Knight, and even Shantae, Risky Boots, and Rayman get to make appearances as Spirits.
- Two third-party characters also serve as bosses: Dracula from Castlevania and the aforementioned Rathalos.
- The first Fighters Pass DLC character announced was Joker, the main protagonist of Persona 5.
- The second Fighters Pass DLC character is the Hero from Dragon Quest XI (canonically named as the Luminary), joined by Erdrick from Dragon Quest III, Solo from Dragon Quest IV and Eight from Dragon Quest VIII as alternate costumes.
- The third Fighters Pass DLC character is the duo of Banjo and Kazooie from Banjo-Kazooie.
- The fourth Fighters Pass DLC character is Terry Bogard, who hails from the Fatal Fury series.
- The second DLC character from Fighters Pass 2 is Steve/Alex/Zombie/Enderman from Minecraft.
- The third DLC character from Fighters Pass 2 is Sephiroth, the Big Bad of Final Fantasy VII.
- The fifth DLC character from Fighters Pass 2 is Kazuya Mishima, the Villain Protagonist of Tekken.
- The sixth DLC character from Fighters Pass 2, and the last overall, is Sora, the protagonist of the Kingdom Hearts series.
Guide Dang It!:
- How to unlock Richter in World of Light. You need to clear all the purple monsters from the Dracula's Castle sublevel, with very little indication beyond the star next to the dungeon icon on the Dark World map that the purple monsters are anything but a puzzle roadblock.
- To unlock Chrom in World of Light, you have to check an inconspicuous chest after you've already opened it. One owl statue does hint at this, but this is the only time you're ever able to interact with something after its initial purpose.
- The path to Mewtwo is a little less obtuse but still so. In the Mysterious Dimension, one of the quiz questions is "Who among the spirits can Kirby not inhale?" This is the only question with two right answers; Scarfy and Whispy Woods. However, the former takes you another segment of the map (ultimately leading to King K. Rool), while the latter takes you to Mewtwo.
- Several Spirits can only be obtained by purchasing them at shops, however, other Spirits are only found by completing certain challenges. Which challenge contains said Spirit isn't disclosed or hinted during the game.
- The existence of Elite-only Battle Arenas. It's not told to the player anywhere in the game or any of the trailers, and is only quietly unlocked as the very last Arena type once at least one of your characters is in Elite. Most players are completely unaware of them.

H-M

Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: World of Light can have some very frustrating spirit battles (an infamous one being Pauline); however, for the most part the bosses are a lot easier, except for Ganon, Dracula, and the True Final Boss.
Haunted Castle: Dracula's Castle from the Castlevania series is a new stage. Various Gothic Horror monsters such as The Creature, a Werewolf, and Death will pop into the darkly lit level, with Dracula himself occasionally appearing. In World of Light, it also appears as one of the sub-areas, with the layout and placement of Spirits directly mirroring the levels and enemy placements of the very first Castlevania.
Heel–Face Turn: Defeating the true Master Hand and Crazy Hand during The Final Battle restores them to normal, where they unite to assist the heroes break the barrier between Galeem and Dharkon. Master Hand even helps out by plowing his way through an army of puppet fighters.
Hope Spot: Galeem gets utterly annihilated by Sephiroth during his reveal trailer...only for the ex-SOLDIER to immediately gun after the rest of the roster afterwards.
Hope Springs Eternal: Essentially the theme to the lyrics of Lifelight, which shows in World of Light; the Smashers may have been wiped out by Galeem, but there's still hope of them being saved and getting back up for round two.
Hyperspeed Escape: Kirby manages to survive the attack at the start of the World of Light by virtue of pushing his Warp Star to the absolute limits of its speed, eventually causing himself to temporarily blink out of existence and send Kirby to the new world.
Iconic Item: An envelope with a red wax seal of the Smash logo on it, originally created for the Smash 4 reveal to tease the Villager's inclusion, got a huge following in the Smash fanbase after that trailer. As such, it appears in a lot of marketing for the game as new fighters get introduced— Isabelle got an identical envelope in her reveal trailer, it was used for the Wham Shot to show that Joker was in Smash, all the SNK characters in Terry Bogard's trailer try and fail to grab it before Terry himself picks it up, Sothis tosses one at Byleth as she tells them to join Smash, it's used to "hide" fighters that haven't yet been revealed as part of the Fighters Pass, and it was used as the background for the announcement that there will be more fighters after the Fighters Pass concludes.
Idiosyncratic Wipes: A staple of World of Light.
- Normal Spirit battles have darkness converge in the middle of the screen before bursting out to cover it. Bosses have darkness creep in from four directions on the screen, meeting in the middle. Fighters have darkness in a diagonal Smash logo, before it spreads to cover the screen.
- Galeem's Spirit battles have a shining light appear from the top left corner of the screen. Dharkon's Spirit battles have darkness dispersing from the screen.
I Know Madden Kombat: One of the new items is called the Beastball, a seemingly innocuous baseball that, when thrown, goes into flames the farther it travels and teleports mid-flight to align with a target. The player can find creative ways into throwing the item to unsuspecting foes.
Immune to Flinching: The Slow Super Armor ability on a handful of Ace Support Spirits gives its user flinch immunity and resilience to knockback up to a limit in exchange for making you move as slow as molasses and virtually incapable of jumping. Its upgraded counterpart, found exclusively on the Legend Support Spirit Gold Mario, is simply known as Super Armor, which gives all of the benefits of Slow Super Armor without the "slow" part.
Interesting Situation Duel: Players can use Spirits for special conditions that aren't normally possible within the regular customization options. One such example is a Loftwing giving whoever equips it a constant gust of wind.
Interface Screw:
- A new item is the Ramblin' Evil Mushroom, an enemy from EarthBound. Players who get hit by this will have their left/right controls reversed.
- Some Spirit battles involve flipping your horizontal controls or turning the screen upside down. Both of these can be countered by certain Support Spirits.
Interface Spoiler:
- Averted with the character select screen, which begins with only the original eight Veteran characters from the original game. Since the selection screen grows in size as you unlock characters, in addition to allowing the player to "merge" echoes and their originals into the same slot, it is hard to see how many are actually remaining.
- In "World of Light", players who diligently full clear every area may notice that by the time they reach Galeem, they've still only found a bit more than half of the playable cast. Turns out, Galeem's just a Disc-One Final Boss. Likewise, cleaning up both the Light and Dark Realms will still leave you missing Dark Samus, Roy, Palutena, and Bayonetta when you reach Dharkon in the latter area, because those four are in The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
Joke Character:
- Among spirits, the weakest one is, fittingly-enough, Dan, whose power level is only around 400 at level 1 and has a trait that starts the player with 30% damage with no benefit to make up for it (unlike Trade-Off Abilities). He's actually one in a collection of Primary Spirits who have that trait, which forces you to start every fight at a disadvantage if you use them, unless you are Lucario or are equipped with a Rage Blaster.
- The Buzz Buzz Spirit fight pits you against an ultra-tiny Mr. Game & Watch who starts at 300% damage. It dies in one hit.
"Just Frame" Bonus: Activate the shield just as you're about to be hit and it'll block the damage without reducing any shield strength.
Kaizo Trap: The zoom in that flashes red is said in-game to either be a signal on when the battle is over or when someone almost ends the battle. Whenever it's the latter, the receiving end still has a chance to turn the tides in their favor while their opponent might be caught off guard, especially if they don't know if the last hit would have KO'd.
Kick Them While They Are Down: Dharkon's entrance into the story is opened with him attempting to capitalize on Galeem's defeat at the hands of the fighters, initially trouncing Galeem's Master Hand army before Galeem is forced to pull a hasty retreat to recover. In both bad endings, the surviving entity takes the opportunity to finish off their opponent after they are defeated. In the True Final Boss fight, even though they're supposed to be on a truce, neither entity can resist taking a free shot at the other when they get stunned.
Kill 'Em All: The introduction cutscene for World of Light. As the characters are preparing to face a new opponent, Galeem, it absorbs a massive amount of energy to unleash a devastating wave of destruction that obliterates anything in its path, eventually reaching out to the entire universe. Kirby only survives thanks to his Warpstar going at warp speed. The bad endings have Galeem or Dharkon do this.
Last Lousy Point:
- Trying to register every single Spirit can turn into a game of luck towards the end, due to the randomized nature of Spirit appearances outside of Adventure Mode meaning you will have to constantly cycle the Spirit Board and Shops just to acquire/summon the last few that you need. And there are spirits locked away as an Old Save Bonus from other games played on the Switch.
- There is an entire page in Challenges dedicated to Online. Nevermind the fact that you need to pay for Nintendo Switch Online to actually go online in the first place, many of the Challenges there are ridiculously grindy and/or luck-based, especially the ones that involve playing 200 Quickplay matches and defeating 10 players with a higher GSP than you. Fortunately, none of them have exclusive spirits, costumes, or music locked behind them, and none of them are no-hammer challenges.
- World of Light has a few of its own:
  - To find Chrom, you must open a treasure chest in the Lost Woods portion of the Sacred Land and then use it again to jump inside and warp to his location. No other chest in the game has this special property.
  - To get Richter, you have to utilize all the available cannonballs in order to defeat all of the ghosts on the Dracula's Castle map before he will appear.
  - While not as apparent at first, both of the two bad endings count towards 100% Completion, which means fighting both Galeem and Dharkon individually on the Final Battle map.
Last Stand: The "World of Light" Adventure Mode starts with all of our heroes (and villains) doing this against Galeem and his army of Master Hands. It failed utterly, though not for lack of bravery.
Late-Arrival Spoiler:
- Many of the spirits reference certain plot points from their games of origin, but the most blatant examples are the ones that can be enhanced. A lot of these spirits can be enhanced into a form that spoils a major plot twist in their original game.
- The reveal trailer for The Hero briefly shows Dharkon, the other antagonist of World of Light, at the beginning.
- Northern Cave, based on The Very Definitely Final Dungeon of Final Fantasy VII, plays through an abridged version of the events that happen at the end of the game. Sakurai's presentation of Sephiroth has him explaining what exactly happened in the end of the game, with him giving a spoiler warning before pointing out that he is talking about a 20-year old game and that he isn't sure that the events will play out the same in the remake.
Later Installment Weirdness:
- The stage selection screen appears before the character selection screen. This would make players strategically choose a character who would be more suited to the selected stage.
- The stock icons are not crops from the characters' renders and are instead minimalist vector graphics usually depicting the front of their head.
- Unlike previous clone characters, Divergent Character Evolution is not applied to Echo Fighters who originated as clones in 3DS/Wii U. The game also gives the player the option to "stack" the clones in the same character slot as their basis rather than give them fully separate slots.
- There isn't a new English-language announcer, with Xander Mobus reprising the role. ^note Note that the Brawl announcers for other European languages returned in 3DS/Wii U.
- All stages are now unlocked from the beginning, as opposed to most of them being unlocked and then unlocking a few more.
- All characters in the game were revealed before release, meaning no more hidden characters. You still need to unlock characters, but there won't be any surprises for those who kept up with the game's promotional material.
- Marth and Roy now have English voice clips, after three games being voiced in Japanese. This is due to their characters being now dubbed in English in games like Code Name: S.T.E.A.M., Fire Emblem Fates, Fire Emblem Warriors, and Fire Emblem Heroes, which were all released after Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.
- The Triforce Trio's designs are not all based on the same game, instead being based on four different games (Breath of the Wild for Link, A Link to the Past and A Link Between Worlds for Zelda, and Ocarina of Time for Ganondorf).
- For the first time since the first game, Ultimate does not feature collectible trophies of various characters, items and locations, with Spirits serving as a sort of replacement instead.
- The Poké Ball Pokémon that fills the role of "small, cute Water-type that runs across the stage pushing opponents away" is Oshawott once again rather than a newer one.
- Because of the game's online modes being linked to the subscription-based Nintendo Switch Online, this is the first Smash Bros. game where you need to pay to access and use the online modes.
- Many in terms of the fighting mechanics.
  - Grabs can now be parried by inputting your own grab at the same time, as opposed to previous games, where grabs were absolute, bringing the game closer to more traditional fighting games. This also makes the distinction between normal and command grabs like Bowser's Side B matter, since command grabs cannot be parried.
  - Perfect Shields used to be done by shielding just as an attack hits; now it's done by releasing your shield as an attack lands, and adds hitstop to the situation, allowing for much easier punishes when successful.
  - The game treats Free For Alls and 1v1s separately — making attacks stronger in 1v1 matches ^note Only if the match is started as 1v1 and no items, adding hitstop and freeze frames to many situations, adding a full-screen overlay for stock counts on each KO, and even having 4 characters (Ryu, Ken, Terry, and Kazuya) work differently depending on whether they're in a free-for-all or 1v1 situation. The game even transitions to 1v1 mode when there's only 2 people left in a match that started as a free-for-all. Previous games made no distinction between the two besides number of players.
  - Damage percentages now show decimal points. While decimal percentages are not new, they've always been a hidden mechanic, which is no longer be the case.
  - Any attack can be performed out of a dash, as opposed to previous Smash games where you were only allowed to do a dash attack, specials, and special cases allowing other attacks.
  - The game now considers when two objects and/or characters are colliding, so one character can't run past another character if the two meet. This also affects moves like Bayonetta's Heel Slide and Fox's Fox Illusion.
- Unlike Wario in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Little Mac in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, there are no characters that have double the standard amount of alternate palettes — every character is limited to 8.
- Each character now has a set lineup of fighters that they face for their Classic mode runs, ranging from Wolf going against other returning characters to Isabelle fighting all the other female characters in the roster. Furthermore, the Final Boss of Classic mode isn't necessarily Master Hand, with examples such as Wolf facing Galleom in his run and Duck Hunt going against Rathalos in theirs.
- Master Hand and Crazy Hand can now be temporarily stunned during their boss fights for the first time in the series, allowing for free hits.
- Characters now have different reactions to being in water instead of just standard swimming. While most swim normally, Charizard, Sonic, Inkling, and Incineroar will flail once in the water and will take damage (Charizard and Incineroar are Fire-types and Charizard's line infamously claim it'll die once its tail is extinguished, Sonic is infamous for his inability to swim, and water is an Inkling's Kryptonite Factor).
- In the previous game, Xerneas boosted all fighters' launch power (with a bigger boost for the user), while Victini gave its user a 50% damage bonus and immunity to launching. In this game, Xerneas gives its user the Gold status (the same status as collecting 100 Coins on the Golden Plains stage), while Victini simply gives its user a Final Smash.
- A-OTF Folk Pro and DF Gothic Japanese, the main fonts from previous Smash games, are nowhere to be seen.
- The only difference between custom stage themes is the background and lighting scheme, which are all taken from other stages.
- Stamina is a standard ruleset along with Timed and Stock matches, rather than being considered part of Special Smash.
- The Spirits from Pokémon Sword and Shield use Ken Sugimori's artwork, as opposed to the Dream World artwork used for base game Pokémon Spirits.
- Unlike Cloud, Sephiroth's Fighter Spirit uses Tetsuya Nomura's official artwork from Final Fantasy VII with the option to display his Smash render instead (like most other fighters), instead of only using the latter. This prefigured the eventual inclusion of Cloud's official art in the 10.1.0 update (Advent Children Cloud, however, still only has his Smash render).
Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
- Palutena's Guidance returns and is updated for Ultimate's base roster, with her and Viridi informing Pit about the characters. Unfortunately, with the exception of Piranha Plant, Palutena is Locked Out of the Loop for any DLC character, like she is in 4.
- Snake's Codec sequence returns from Brawl. Unfortunately, it's not updated for Ultimate, and is only focused on characters featured in Brawl as if they are still in that entry.
Let's You and Him Fight: One attack Galeem and Dharkon can use is to temporarily leave the battlefield and sic two puppet fighters on you which eventually explode. Funnily enough, you can Invoke this yourself if you fight both bosses at the same time. They'll perform this attack at the same time, but both Light and Dark puppet fighters often prioritize each other rather than you, meaning all you have to do is just wait until all of them explode after beating each other up.
Level Editor: While the game didn't initially launch with a custom stage editor, it was introduced in the Version 3.0 update. The major addition to the creator compared to previous installments is the ability to design the background and the foreground.
Level 1 Music Represents:
Life Drain: A very rare Support Spirit Ability is "Lifesteal", which gives you the ability to restore damage when striking an enemy. An Adventure Skill also gives you a chance to heal when connecting with Smash Attacks. Some enemy Spirits also have this ability.
Lighter and Softer:
- Isabelle's trailer was this compared to previous newcomer reveals. As opposed to Ominous Latin Chanting and characters dying, Isabelle's involves a typical day at work before getting her letter.
- The Fighters Pass 2 trailers as a whole have been lighter than the originals, making little to no connection to World of Light. Up until Sephiroth was revealed, that is.
Light Is Not Good: In addition to the Adventure Mode being entitled "World of Light", the villain, Galeem, takes the form of a ball of light surrounded by wings, uses giant beams of light to disintegrate the fighters, and has a name that itself is a corruption of the word "gleam".
Limit Break: Instead of breaking a randomly-spawning Smash Ball, players have the option to build up their own Final Smash Meter to activate a weaker version of their Final Smash, akin to how supers in traditional fighting games are performed. No two Final Smashes can be activated at the same time, however.
Loads and Loads of Characters: Considering the game has every playable character in series history and still adds more on top of that, definitely. Including DLC, there are 82 numbered fighters, not even including other characters playable as Echo Fighters and alternate costumes. There's also the Assist Trophies, Mii Costumes, Final Smash helpers, and bosses, adding dozens more. And if you include Spirits into the mix, of which there are over 1000 , the number of characters becomes truly nuts. There's even several background characters without Spirits to make things even more insane.
Loads and Loads of Roles: Spirit battles simulate fights against non-playable characters using the playable cast as your opponents. As a result, you have battles such as Shantae being represented as Zero Suit Samus, Otacon being represented as Dr. Mario, a Lakitu being represented as Iggy Koopa (with tiny red Bowsers standing in as his Spinies), and The Imprisoned represented as a gigantic, black palette King K. Rool standing still with Ghirahim protecting him.
Lonely Piano Piece: One of the songs in the game is a piano solo of Lifelight.
Long Bus Trip: The 5 cut Brawl veterans (Ice Climbers, Snake, Squirtle, Ivysaur, and Wolf) had to wait 10 whole years to return to the cast. And the two cut Melee veterans (Pichu and Young Link), who some had believed would be gone for good, had to wait 17 years in total.
Long List: Viridi rattles off the names of nearly every type of Piranha Plant in its entry for Palutena's Guidance. It takes a while.
Long Song, Short Scene: There are several songs which can't be played in stages and are only able to be played in the Sound Test or Arena lobbies, such as the original opening to Melee with the ingame sound effects removed for the first time, Melee, Brawl, and For 3DS/Wii U's All-Star Rest Area songs, Brawl's Trophy Gallery, and Street Fighter's Player Select B (although Player Select A is used in World of Light's World Tour).
Loophole Abuse:
- Ultimate normally inflicts a damage penalty on short hop aerial attacks, but Peach and Daisy can bypass it by floating, allowing them to use aerial attacks at full power while staying close to the ground. This is intentional, as one of their tips mentions this trait.
- Usually, in order for a character to reach Elite Smash and fight other Elite Smashers, they need to have a high enough GSP to break out of Quickplay. Nothing is stopping you from unlocking Elite Smash with one character, joining/creating an Elite-only Battle Arena, and then choosing one of your non-Elite characters, since Arenas don't actually check your characters' GSP levels.
Lost in Translation: Players familiar with the English versions of the game might be confused as to why Banjo and Kazooie's home stage, Spiral Mountain, rotates the way it does. As it turns out, this is because the area's Japanese name is クルクル山 (Kurukuru Yama), which can translate as either "Coiling Mountain" or "Spinning Mountain" depending on the context.
Ludicrous Precision: This game measures damage percentages to an extra decimal point. Previous games (i.e. every game except for the original) did this as part of background damage calculation, but this is the first time it's been shown to the player.
Macrogame: While some elements of the Adventure Mode such as fighters and skill points only transfer through New Game+, all playthroughs have persistent access to acquired spirits and spirit points, as they are part of the game's main save file. This also means that spirits earned in the Spirit Board and Classic Mode are always available as well, even on a brand new World of Light file. This includes Master Spirits that run facilities, as well as spirits used for Broken Bridge paths.
Made of Indestructium: Despite the fact that Galeem's beams of light easily penetrate practically every other means of conventional defense, both mundane and magical, Link's Hylian Shield is able to deflect some of the beams. Link himself is only consumed when the beams push him back too much for him to maintain his balance.
Magikarp Power:
- Some Spirits, such as Boo and Groudon, need to level up to level 99 to be enhanced. Their enhanced forms are stronger versions with a special effect, but they are reset to level one again.
- The most extreme example is Alm and Celica. When you first get the Spirit (which is them as small children), its power level is only around 700, which is among the weakest spirits you can get. Once leveled, they can be enhanced and become adults. Their power level can be around 8000 once leveled up to level 99 again. Best of all, they're a neutral spirit with three slots and provide a back shield when equipped, making them one of the most versatile spirits in the game that can be used as the player's primary spirit in almost any situation.
- Zygarde is notable for being the only Novice spirit that becomes a Legend when it is enhanced (from its 50% Form into its Complete Form).
Marathon Level: The True Final Boss fight takes the form of a three-stage gauntlet, starting with a long autoscrolling platforming section with mook fights in between, followed by a Boss Rush against all six bosses, and then the actual Dual Boss fight itself against Galeem and Dharkon. While Checkpoint Starvation is averted due to the game letting you continue from the current phase if you lose all three of your characters, in order to get the Challenge for clearing the final battle without being KO'd, you have to do the entire thing in one sitting without getting KO'd at any point or else the run will be invalidated. That also means continues are useless.
Meaningful Background Event: The cutscene which shows Galeem and Dharkon defeated at the same time takes place at sunset, essentially the midpoint between light and dark.
Meaningful Echo: The main theme, Lifelight, at various points repeats "Colors weave into a spire of flame" throughout it. And it's what happens after Galeem and Dharkon are defeated, all the spirits form a spire that traverses through the cosmos as their worlds get restored.
Meet Your Early Installment Weirdness: Pikachu and Link are part of the Original 12 and have gone through both Art Evolution and moveset changes in all of the games. In comparison, Pichu and Young Link have had little changes since they last appeared in Melee, making them the closest things you have to Melee versions of the characters they were based on in this game. Young Link is notable in that he's the same Link that appeared in 64 and Melee except shorter, whereas this Link is based on his Breath of the Wild incarnation. To drive this further, his intro is Link's intro from 64.
Megamix Game: Although the sheer volume of fighters already qualifies Ultimate as a Dream Match Game, it has plenty of returning content besides fighters, such as stages and game modes.
Mêlée à Trois: While on paper, the final boss is the heroes vs Galeem and Dharkon with the two in an Enemy Mine, the two are undoubtedly trying as hard to kill one another as they are to kill the heroes, to the point of actively attacking the other, so it's closer to the heroes vs Galeem vs Dharkon.
Merged Reality:
- The overworld of World of Light takes place in a land where several locations from existing franchises and original areas have been mushed together. For example, you can leave Lumiose City from the south and end up in a neighbouring city made out of Nintendo video game consoles.
- Dharkon's realm consists of a mixture of various locations and terrains, albeit with nearly every inch of the region ravaged and scarred.
Mighty Glacier:
- Certain Ace Support Spirits bestow the ability Slow Super Armor, which slows mobility to a crawl and burdens your jumping capacity, but gives you permanent resilience to flinching and launching to a limit. This allows you to turn any character into an effective tank who can pump out their strongest attacks with sheer impunity without fear of interruption.
- Zelgius evolves into the Legend Primary Spirit "Black Knight" upon reaching Lv. 99. Upon doing so, he gains a unique ability called Armor Knight that slightly reduces movement speed in exchange for slightly boosting Attack and providing a huge bonus to Defense. Incidentally, the Black Knight has two Support Slots, which allows you to stack it with Supports such as Slow Super Armor.
- Kraid's Dojo teaches the appropriately-named "Tank Style", which enhances a Primary Spirit's Attack and Defense at the expense of practically all of its other mobility-related attributes.
Mons: Basically what Spirits are. They can be levelled up and have their stats increased, do various jobs like being sent on missions to retrieve items, trained in certain styles, and some can even evolve, or rather enhanced, to become even more powerful.
Mood Whiplash: The World of Light opening cinematic depicts the Smash characters' struggle against a new and unknown overwhelming force, with some valiantly fighting against the beams or desperately fleeing for their lives. This is interwoven with various other shots such as Captain Falcon trying to jump into the Blue Falcon, Wii Fit Trainer doing yoga poses while Duck Hunt and Villager panic aimlessly, and Snake trying to hide in his cardboard box before being disintegrated.
Morphic Resonance: Of a sort. In Spirit Battles, the Spirits appear to take over puppet fighters that greatly resemble their former shape. They also chose alts, sizes, and other factors to accommodate this.
Motif Merger: The floor in King of Fighters Stadium has the "KOF" logo in the center, but replaces the O with the Smash logo. The field in the background is emblazoned with Smash's logo, while the letters "KOF" are written down the vertical line inside it.
Motifs: There appears to be some sort of connection to the concept of "reversal", given that there is a version of one of its trailers that plays backwards, the World of Light's Japanese title has significance if the words are reversed, and the latter half of Final Destination's theme is the game's theme song played backwards.
Moveset Clone: Now clones are formally called "Echo Fighters". They refer to characters who, like Dark Pit, Lucina, and Dr. Mario in the previous title, are only balanced against the fighter they are based from instead of the whole roster, and are mostly the same, with animations being altered first, then some moves and attributes. However, clones that are fundamentally different from their base, including Dr. Mario himself in this version don't qualify. Echo Fighters can also be stacked into the same slot on the character select screen as the character they're based on if the player so chooses. Lucina and Dark Pit were retroactively given the Echo designation, while later adding in Dark Samus, Daisy, Chrom, Richter and Ken. That said, how much they actually differ can vary:
- Dark Samus, Daisy and Richter (Echoes to Samus, Peach and Simon respectively) are nearly the same save for cosmetic changes and very, very minor tweaks to a few attributes. Dark Samus has slightly faster rolls and bigger shields due to floating instead of staying on the ground, and Richter's Holy Water deals Aura damage to contrast Simon's fire to differ how it reacts to explosives, but are identical otherwise.
- Dark Pit still retains the differences with regards to his bow and Electroshock specials in addition to his original Final Smash.
- Lucina and Chrom have balanced swords which lack the sweet/sourspot mechanic of Marth and Roy. Chrom has a few more distinctions, such as his Soaring Slash recovery being more akin to Ike's Aether than Roy's Blazer or even Marth and Lucina's Dolphin Slash, and his Final Smash being unique as well.
- Ken boasts the most number of changes for an Echo to differentiate himself from Ryu, very fitting given his role as the Trope Codifier. To put it short, his entire fighting style trades Ryu's powerful single-strike and heavy knockback KO options for multi-hitting attacks that specialize more in racking up damage than going for early kills, and two of his signature Super Combos - the Shinryuken and Shippu Jinraikyaku - replace Ryu's Shinkuu Hadouken and Shin Shoryuken for his Final Smash.
Multiple Endings:
- Ending 1: Achieved if Galeem's forces take over completely during The Final Battle (by defeating too many of Dharkon's forces) or the heroes challenge and defeat Dharkon. Dharkon collapses, completely overwhelmed, and he is finished off by Galeem. As Dharkon dies, Galeem enacts his final plan, engulfing the remainder of the universe in light.
- Ending 2: Achieved if Dharkon's forces take over completely during The Final Battle (by defeating too many of Galeem's forces) or the heroes challenge and defeat Galeem. Galeem is overwhelmed and left in a weakened state, allowing Dharkon to consume and destroy him. Mario collapses as Dharkon devours the universe in eternal darkness.
- True Ending: Achieved if none of the above conditions are met and Galeem and Dharkon are challenged and defeated together. With both entities dead, they collapse into the ocean, whereupon they release a wave of energy that frees the remaining Spirits. The freed Spirits make their way home to the real world, coming together in a spire of light as they return.
Musical Nod: The main theme of the game, though it doesn't have any direct melody lifted from any game before, has similarities to Melee's opening theme and menu theme, and 3DS/Wii U's main theme, with how the score progresses through the notes and how the A section transitions to the B section, as shown here. Notably, the transition between the two sections in the "Challenger Approaching" trailer occurs when Zelda appears with Sheik being there later, as a call back to Melee's opening, where Sheik appears when the transition happens with Zelda being in the background afterwards.
Mutually Exclusive Party Members: Downplayed in World of Light. At the start of the game, you will be forced to choose between recruiting Marth, Sheik, or Villager. Picking one of them causes a Master Hand to block the paths to the other two, forcing you to take the open path and clear the way before you can recruit the others. You can do this by going the long way to the other side of the barrier, or defeat a boss and break all the barriers at the same time.
Mythology Gag: Has its own page.

N-S

Nerf: In previous games, only a couple Assist Trophies could be KO'd. The majority of them are now susceptible to being damaged and defeated (including some you wouldn't expect to be vulnerable).
Never Say "Die": The characters atomized by Galeem at the beginning of World of Light were just "turned back into trophies", not killed, according to official descriptions.
Never Trust a Trailer: The E3 2019 trailer revealing Hero used the orchestral versions of the Dragon Quest Overture and the overworld theme from Dragon Quest III, implying that they'd be used in Ultimate itself. In-game, however, only the MIDI versions of those themes are heard, and only a brief snippet of the Overture is heard in Hero's victory fanfare.
New Game+: A Clear Save in Adventure Mode can be used to start a New Game+, which carries over all previously-unlocked Fighters, and all Skill Tree progress and Skill Spheres. All Spirits and bosses also reappear in a New Game+, allowing you to get duplicates of them.
New Work, Recycled Graphics: Ultimate, according to Sakurai, was built using many assets from the previous game in order to save on development time and resources, which allowed them to bring back every character from the series' history. He states that if they had started from scratch, only a third of the fighters would be available.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The last act of World of Light has both villains at high strength, but too distracted fighting each other to consume the world. Both bad endings involve the fighters tilting the balance away from one of the villains and then defeating them, leaving the other free to complete their plan.
Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In contrast to the bad endings (caused by Nice Job Breaking It, Hero), the good ending is the result of this. The True Final Boss fight is against both villains at once. The two can't stand one another at all and are so busy fighting one another it gives the heroes a chance to stop them. Furthermore, in the True Final Boss, the two might be in an Enemy Mine, but aren't Friendly Fireproof and will actively attack one another if the other is stunned. Galeem and Dharkon's hatred of one another makes things way easier for the heroes.
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.
Non-Action Guy: The Master Spirits are special spirits that communicate with you and fight for your cause their own way via selling you things, taking your spirits on expeditions and teaching them battle styles rather than directly helping you in a fight.
Non-Damaging Status Infliction Attack: The Gust Bellows, a pickup item that blasts gale-force winds at your opponents. It doesn't do any damage but can blow them right off the platform.
Non-Elemental: The Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors triangle has Attack, Shield, and Grab spirits... and Neutral Spirits off to the side. Thus, they aren't super-effective against any of the other types, nor are they resisted by them.
Nostalgia Level:
- A lot more than in previous games — in fact, most of the stages are returning older ones. Unlike 3DS/Wii U, Ultimate features Melee stages not featured in Brawl. For the first time in the series, the majority of older stages feature updated graphics and textures to bring them up to modern standards, in the vein of Mario Kart 8; the exceptions are the stages from Super Smash Bros. 64, which retain their original looks, except for Mushroom Kingdom, which was given a makeover to make it look even more retro, as its textures and background are now taken directly from the original Super Mario Bros..
- Jigglypuff's Classic Mode route "All Original, All 64" is themed to the original Super Smash Bros. You fight the Original Eight on their 64-era home stages ^note except for Samus and Fox, who get paired with Yoshi and Kirby respectively due to Planet Zebes and Sector Z being absent, and Round Six is against the four unlockable characters with 64's Final Destination theme playing. The final boss is Giant Donkey Kong on Kongo Jungle, a staple fight in the original game's 1P mode.
Nothing Is Scarier:
- We only see brief flashes of Ridley's tail, claws, and wings in his reveal trailer as he violently murders Mario and Mega Man, before finally revealing himself to Samus.
- In Adventure Mode, when you're about to face the boss of a sub-level (represented on the map as a vortex with glowing eyes), any music stops and you're just left looking at a vague silhouette of the boss that awaits. No power-level... just question marks and that unsettling silence. Even if you know who you're going to be fighting, the effect still can give you chills. The exceptions are the Hands, Galeem, Dharkon, and Rathalos, the latter of which appears in-person in his sub-level unlike any other sub-level boss.
Notice This: World of Light is very unsubtle about showing when something on the adventure map changes, and obstacles that can be conquered with a Spirit that you own are highlighted by a ring of light.
Not Too Dead to Save the Day: While Spirits are essentially the formless remains of characters who didn't survive Galeem's initial onslaught, they can still help via powering up the surviving fighters while some retain their characteristics enough to interact with the environment such as driving trains, blowing up boulders, fixing bridges and many more.
Obvious Rule Patch:
- Not long after the launch of the game, players discovered that attaching a level 99 Akuma spirit to Captain Olimar resulted in the single-most broken character combination in the entire game. Any smash attack from his red, blue, or purple Pikmin would result in a One-Hit Kill on all enemies that weren't part of a stamina battle (and if they survived the first hit, they wouldn't survive the 2nd.) The 2.0.0 patch nerfed the bug with Olimar so this was no longer possible on anything but weaker enemies or anyone too close to the edge of the map.
- A few Spirit Battles against opponents who didn't like moving, when on a stage with walkoff blast zones, could easily be won in earlier versions by just running into them to push them off the screen. Eventually, these particular foes were changed so that they actually make an effort to recover.
- Non-gameplay example: Chrom originally had the generic Fire Emblem victory theme shared with Marth, Roy, and Ike, even though the other Awakening characters (Lucina and Robin) has "Id (Purpose)" as theirs. Version 3.0.0 changed it so that Chrom had the same theme as them.
Oh, Crap!:
- In King K. Rool's reveal trailer, upon seeing that King K. Rool's finally returned, Donkey Kong and Diddy's eyes pop through the window.
- In the opening "World of Light" cutscene, Shulk gets a vision of everyone getting struck down and he knows there's nothing he can do.
- When a Final Smash is activated, any nearby fighters can be seen with such an expression before the attack is unleashed.
- Most characters will give off panicked or frightened expressions upon whiffing a grab, with the implication being that they've realized that they're wide open for an attack. Even the normally straight-faced Ridley will sport a comical, surprised grimace upon missing his side-special.
Old Save Bonus:
- Figure Player data stored on amiibo can be transferred from 3DS/Wii U to Ultimate. While Figure Players can only carry over a portion of their levels and memories and lose all of their stats, you will also receive either a random Spirit, currency, or snack in conjunction with the revised Figure Player data. A quirk of this system is that Young Link figures are read as Link in 3DS/Wii U. Therefore, Link FPs from the older games that happen to be saved to Young Link figures are converted into Young Link FPs, that get the bonus even though Young Link was not in the previous games. (Similarly, but more logically, Charizard FPs are converted into full Pokémon Trainer FPs.)
- If your Switch has save data for Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, you will automatically receive a Partner Pikachu or Partner Eevee Spirit.
- Data from Dragon Quest XI or its demo granted a Tockles spirit.
- Having data for the Nintendo Switch version of Persona 5 Strikers will earn you a Sophia spirit,
- Ghost N' Goblins: Ressurection would gift an Arthur spirit.
- A Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin save file grants a spirit from that game.
- With the release of Kingdom Hearts's Sora, having a Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory save grants the use of an additional song on the Hollow Bastion stage.
One-Hit Kill: While attacks and items that have high enough knockback that a Ring Out is almost certain have been around since the original game, Ultimate expands on the ability previously seen in For 3DS / WiiU to straight-up obliterate your enemies in certain conditions (usually a high damage percentage), such as the Death's Scythe item, various new Final Smashes, and Mimikyu's grab.
One Steve Limit:
- Several past stages have been renamed to avoid confusion with similarly-named stages. Some examples are "Yoshi's Island" renamed to "Super Happy Tree", "Kongo Jungle" renamed to "Kongo Falls," and "Mario Circuit" renamed to "Figure-8 Circuit". Averted with Melee and Brawl's versions of Yoshi's Island, which are both named that, but the former additionally has "(Melee)" in its name. There's also an interesting aversion in the form of "Mute City (SNES)", though the Melee version of the stage is not part of the initial roster.
- For the Loads and Loads of Characters, there's only one case of this on the roster itself. Two Roys are playable in the game — the swordsman and the Koopa.
- Aversions occur in the form of spirits: A single character can have multiple spirits, so long they represent an alter-ego or different version. For example, you can have the spirit of Kaptain K. Rool empowering... King K. Rool. Even more egregious is Min Min, Pyra, and Mythra as fighters, being empowered by Min Min, Pyra, and Mythra as Spirits.
One-Winged Angel:
- Just like in Melee, defeating Bowser at the end of Mario's and Captain Falcon's Classic Mode causes him to transform into Giga Bowser and challenge you to a second fight.
- Upon reducing his health to zero, Dracula will transform into his monster form from Rondo of Blood, starting the next phase of the fight.
- Like Bowser, Ganondorf appears onscreen briefly before transforming into Ganon, though the only scenario in which defeating Ganondorf directly leads to the Ganon fight is Zelda's Classic Mode.
- The Trope Namer himself, Sephiroth, transforms into Safer Sephiroth for his Final Smash.
Opportunistic Bastard: Galeem and Dharkon completely loathe one another and will take any opportunity presented to try to kill the other. Dharkon's entrance to the story is attempting to capitalize on the fighters defeating and wounding Galeem to try and kill his nemesis, and Galeem comes back into it trying to return the favor when Dharkon is beaten. Both bad endings are one of them taking advantage of the other losing first to kill them and take over themselves. This works against them in the boss fight with both of them at once, as despite technically being in an Enemy Mine, the moment one of them is stunned, the other will promptly deal a massive blow to them, inadvertently helping the fighters.
Orchestral Bombing: Final Destination, natch. The endboss music from World of Light also qualifies: Galeem's theme is fast-paced with high-pitched choir vocals, while Dharkon's theme is slower, foreboding, and has a more bass choir (in addition to some electric guitars). Their shared theme for the True Final Boss fight strikes a balance between the two with a medium-paced tempo and both male and female choirs.
Order vs. Chaos: Ultimately, this is what the two main villains of World of Light represent. Galeem is a being of light who wants to bring his own form of order to the world, while Dharkon is a being of darkness who simply wants to Kill 'Em All and plunge the world into shadow.
Out of the Frying Pan: In one character trailer, the cast of Smash Bros. is badly hurt and defenseless against Galeem. Just before he finishes them off for good, Galeem is sliced clean in half, ending the tyranny of the Lord of Light. Unfortunately, the one who killed him was Sephiroth, who descends to the battlefield to fight the heroes himself.
Palette Swap: Every character is given 8 slots for alternative appearances. Most of them are simple recolors, while others are more elaborate alternate costumes ^note Most of which have their own distinct Fighter Spirit from the default appearance, including different genders for characters that have them (like the Inklings, the Pokémon Trainer, and the Fire Emblem Avatars), and even entirely separate characters like Alph and the Koopalings.
Patchwork Map:
- The World of Light map can only be described as a mishmash of random Nintendo elements and Video Game Settings woven together. You have your jungle right next to a military base and a foggy forest that happens to have a power plant in it, just as an example. The most baffling thing, however, is the retro Cyberspace maze found to the east of the map, in-between a beach town and a mountain settlement.
- Making things worse are the sub-maps that are just randomly there with little context, like DK Island's Kongo Jungle from the first Donkey Kong Country game being right next to the aforementioned Cyberspace. Hilariously, the player also gets to travel around the literal world after getting to the airport island, meaning that the World of Light features a whole Hollywood Atlas as one of its "sub-maps".
Permanently Missable Content: A late-game region of Adventure Mode, the Mysterious Dimension, blocks the player with quiz questions that describe a particular Spirit. If you choose and defeat the right Spirit on the first try, a treasure chest will appear on the route forward. Answer a question wrong and its treasure will never appear... at least not within the same Adventure file. They only contain caches of Spirit Points, though, and are not required for 100% completion.
Personal Hate Before Common Goals: Galeem and Dharkon, the two Eldritch Abominations that have taken over the world and threaten to destroy it, are ultimately possible to defeat only because they hate each other's guts. The last segment of World of Light requires the player to systematically take down their last remaining puppets, making sure never to tip the balance far enough that one of them can overwhelm the other and move on to the rest of the world. Only after all that will the two team up to fight the player together, and even then, they're not Friendly Fireproof, and in fact, if one gets stunned, the other will actively attack them.
Pirates vs. Ninjas: Ridley and King K. Rool (the former a Space Pirate, the latter having appeared as "Kaptain K. Rool" in Diddy's Kong Quest), who can fight against Greninja and the ninja-esque Sheik.
Play as a Boss: Near the end of the "World of Light" mode, the player gets to control Master Hand while fighting off waves of Puppet Fighters.
Poison Mushroom: In addition to the returning Trope Namer, Ultimate introduces the Fake Smash Ball, which releases a devastating explosion when it's broken. Compared to a real Smash Ball, the Fake Smash Ball has a thicker horizontal line and a thinner vertical line.
Pop Quiz: The primary gimmick of the Mysterious Dimension in the Dark Realm is asking the player questions like "Which spirit is the King of Twilight?" or "Which of these is Chrom's little sister?" Fighting the right spirit will allow you to proceed through the map. There are additional questions that don't lead to the boss but to other fighters.
Post-Final Boss: A few characters' Classic Mode routes have them facing the big boss monster with an HP bar as the penultimate fight, before the Final Round with a normal Smash character. In particular, Bowser fights Rathalos in Round 6 and Mario, later Metal Mario in the Final Round, and Mega Man fights Galleom in Round 6 and Dr. Mario, then Mewtwo (representing the final battle of Mega Man 2) in the Final Round.
Power at a Price: A certain type of Spirit Ability forces you to start at 30% damage, but gives you permanent stat bonuses. However, if you play as Lucario, you can utilize that 30% as extra starting power as well.
Power Levels:
- Global Smash Power returns from the previous game. As before, GSP is the measure of how many players you have outscored: a GSP rating of 5000, for example, means that you have a higher score than 4999 other players. GSP is used to determine matchmaking with other players in Quickplay.
- "Team Power" is the level of strength a Spirit grants your character when equipped, and can be increased as they level up.
Power Up Letdown: Some particularly weak Spirits such as Buzz Buzz have the innate ability of starting you off at 30% damage with no benefits.
Pragmatic Adaptation: The Northern Cave stage adapts the elements of the ending of Final Fantasy VII, including the clash between the decending Meteor and Holy. However in the original game Meteor was on a collision course with Midgar, while Ultimate changes it to being outside of the Northern Cave.
Pretender Diss:
- King K. Rool's reveal trailer opens with King Dedede pranking Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong into thinking the big croc is outside their house. Cue the actual King K. Rool smacking Dedede offscreen.
- The November 2018 Smash Direct has Kirby use Stone to turn into a Thwomp and fall on Snake, only to then be on the receiving end of an actual Thwomp.
- Banjo & Kazooie's entire opening in their reveal trailer throws back to the aforementioned trailer for King K. Rool; this time, the latter's relaxing with the Kongs, and the prankster is Duck Hunt, pretending to be the iconic bear and bird duo. Cue the actual Banjo & Kazooie falling out of the sky and landing on the dog and duck.
Production Foreshadowing:
- The Vampire Killer trailer featured Luigi using a new version of the Poltergust which could also fire plungers. Later, the 9/13/18 Nintendo Direct revealed Luigi's Mansion 3, which also features the same Poltergust model and the plunger ability.
- The grappling hook that Joker uses in his up-special was later revealed to be a new game mechanic in Persona 5 Royal less than a week after his DLC launched.
Promoted to Playable:
- This is the first time Ridley and Dark Samus have been playable under any circumstances.
- Both Chrom and Isabelle used to be NPCs, the former as part of Robin's Final Smash and the latter as an Assist Trophy. Both are now playable fighters.
- Ultimate is also the first time a Piranha Plant is playable in any game.
- If you are on the path to the True Ending in Adventure Mode, you get to take control of Master Hand for one fight.
- ARMS, which only had Spirits, Mii Fighter costumes, and an Assist Trophy in the base game, is receiving a fully-playable character as Downloadable Content in the Fighters Pass Vol. 2. This culminated in Min-Min, who was a spirit in the base game, becoming a playable character.
Race Lift:
- Villager's seventh and eighth costumes are now dark-skinned, based on the tanning mechanism from New Leaf. This was a late-development change, as they still had their pale skin from Smash 4 in the E3 demo and promotional videos.
- Pokémon Trainer's fourth male and fourth female costumes both have light brown skin, reflecting one of the skin color options in the sixth and seventh generation games which their respective costumes are based on.
Ramen Slurp: In Min Min's reveal trailer, Captain Falcon slurps his bowl of ramen to the point where it reaches an over-the-top level. Min Min herself also indulges in a bowl at the end of the trailer.
Random Power Ranking: The star ranking Spirits have can seem rather arbitrary. Popular characters or ones who are known to be very powerful in their home canon can be classified as Aces or Legends as expected, but so can otherwise unknowns or muggles, and other popular figures (like Jill Valentine or the Fire Flower) are only Novice spirits. Which spirits are Primaries and which are Supports also seems to have no real pattern, as a number of generic mooks like Goombas and Slimes are Primary spirits whereas actual main characters and extremely powerful supporting cast members are relegated to Support status.
Redemption Demotion: Some spirits grant different abilities when equipped than they employ during their spirit battles. For instance, equipping Mermaid increases the power of Water and Ice attacks, which can be disappointing to anyone expecting her to gradually heal damage like during her battle.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: Incineroar and Greninja team up during some of Incineroar's Classic Mode stages, and they're as spot-on an example for this trope as you can get. The former's a red-furred pro wrestling tiger who loves to showboat with strong, hard-hitting moves and the latter's a blue-skinned ninja frog with a cool head who favors quick and sneaky attacks.
Reflective Eyes: Used in the reveal trailer for the game, where a flaming Smash logo is reflecting in the Inkling girl's eyes.
Replay Mode: One of the new things added in Version 8.0.0 is an option in Collection to replay the Spirit Battle for any spirits you've collected, with a new system for Scoring Points in place that scores you based on how much easier you made the battle for yourself, reducing it in various ways based on whether you used Spirits, Styles, Spirit Board Items, and such (every fight has a maximum possible score which is equal to the Spirit's power times 100, which is earned for winning with no spirits or Board items). This additionally allows you to replay battles that are exclusive to World of Light, such as Geno, Yuga, Landia, and M. Bison, without needing to play through a file to reach them again.
Resting Recovery: The Healing Field item creates a small area that heals anyone standing inside of it.
Retraux
- Stages originating from the first game are designed to look like they were ripped straight from a Nintendo 64 with some minor touch-ups. This includes using sprites for some map features and retaining the somewhat blocky stage geometry.
- Terry's reveal trailer sources animation from several Neo Geo games, depicting spritework of various SNK characters trying and failing to grab the Smash invitation until Terry finally picks it up. It only switches to something modern for the ending when the camera zooms in on Terry striking a pose, with him switching from his sprite form to his Smash model.
- The new remix of "Tiger! Tiger!" sounds like something straight out of a retro arcade game like Gradius or TwinBee
Rise to the Challenge: The first leg of the True Final Boss battle is a vertical autoscrolling platformer that constantly scrolls upward. A certain Challenge requires you to clear this segment as Ganondorf without being KO'd.
Role-Reversal Boss: World of Light contains a segment where you play as Master Hand, the most prominent recurring boss in the series.
RPG Elements:
- You can equip Spirits that level up as you fight and can even evolve into stronger spirits. You can also equip support Spirits to give you support abilities similar to equipping a customizable weapon or armor.
- There's a skill tree in Adventure Mode that lets you boost the power of your attacks and provide other benefits.
Running Gag:
- During online announcements, Sakurai frequently states that he's about to talk about a new fighter... except it's one you've recently learned about, like the Inkling or Richter.
- Most trailers for new characters being added to Ultimate, as well as all appearances of DLC Mii Fighter costumes, have a shot of the logo of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, followed by "x <their series' logo>". For characters, this has included Castlevania, Persona 5, Dragon Quest, Banjo-Kazooie, Fatal Fury, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, ARMS, Minecraft, and Kingdom Hearts. Mii Fighter outfits have gotten a lot more of these, including Persona 5, Persona 4, Persona 3, Sonic the Hedgehog, Dragon Quest XI, Dragon Quest I, Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, Mega Man, Mega Man X, Pokémon, Undertale, Samurai Shodown, Art of Fighting, The King of Fighters, Virtua Fighter, "Altaïr" (Assassin's Creed), Rabbids, Mega Man X, Mega Man Battle Network, Cuphead, Tekken, Splatoon, "Vault Boy" (Fallout), and "Doom Slayer" (Doom).
- Nearly every character reveal trailer has someone getting killed, or at the very least injured:
  - In Ridley's reveal trailer, Ridley impales Mega Man on his tail and crushes Mario's head in his hands.
  - Simon and Richter's trailer has Luigi getting sliced by Death's scythe.
  - In King K. Rool's trailer, he swipes King Dedede away.
  - In Ken and Incineroar's trailer, the former combos Little Mac and sends him crashing into the Boxing Ring's monitor. Later, Incineroar does the same thing to Ken.
  - Hero's reveal trailer has Link getting beaten up by Dharkon possessed clones of Meta Knight and Marth, only for the Luminary to launch the two away. Likewise, the Luminary is launched away in turn by Snake, Robin and Ganondorf.
  - Banjo & Kazooie's trailer has them drop-kicking Duck Hunt, while at the end of the trailer, King K. Rool gets sent flying by their Final Smash, falls to the ground with an Impact Silhouette, and gets trapped under a rock.
  - In Terry's trailer, Geese Howard jumps off his tower in an attempt to grab the invitation, only for him to miss and plummet to his death.
  - Byleth's trailer has him getting consumed by Solon's forbidden spell of Zahras, nearly identical to how the scene plays out in Three Houses, being imprisoned in an endless dark void, never to return... at least until Sothis intervenes.
  - In Steve's trailer, he traps Mario inside of a Minecraft cave with a Creeper, which then explodes right next to him.
  - In Sephiroth's trailer, GALEEM gets hit with this when he gets bisected vertically... and then "One Winged Angel" starts playing as the culprit makes himself known...
  - Kazuya's is probably the most gruesome, tossing Ganondorf, Captain Falcon, Pit, Min-Min, and Marth's lifeless corpses off a cliff. He also tries to dump Kirby off, but thankfully, he flies away safely.
Sadistic Choice: You're presented with one near the end of World of Light: Stop Dharkon, and Galeem makes everything his plaything for eternity. Stop Galeem, and Dharkon destroys everything. Or you could take them both on at the exact same time...
The Savage Indian: Mr. Game and Watch's forward smash attack has him attacking with a torch. Like all of Mr. G&W's other attacks, Ultimate redesigned its appearance to more closely resemble the game it's referencing, in this case Fire Attack. As a result it originally had a Native American feather, but this was later removed due to stereotyping.
Scenery Porn: Many of the classic Smash stages have been given a fresh HD makeover, so expect a lot of gorgeous backgrounds to accompany your brawls. Some notable standouts include the sprawling cityscape of Fourside, the naturally beautiful mountains of Corneria, and the sunny beach and hills of the Great Bay.
Schizophrenic Difficulty: Challenges in World of Light aren't laid out with any particular eye for consistency. At any point, you could find a 9000-point Ace or five-digit Legend surrounded by 2000-point chaff. Fortunately, there's nothing stopping you from coming back later with a better spirit of your own to even the odds, and unless that fight was there specifically to blockade something, there's always a way around.
Self-Deprecation:
- In King K. Rool and Banjo's trailers, Donkey Kong watches a montage of various Nintendo protagonists facing off against their rivals before switching off his TV and yawning.
- In the Nov. 1, 2018 Smash Direct, after discussing plans to develop DLC fighters through to early 2020, Sakurai is shown sitting silently for a couple seconds before wondering aloud if he'll ever get to take a break.
Sequence Breaking: This is essentially encouraged due to the existence of the Spirit Board. There is more than one way to bypass an obstacle in a given area in Adventure Mode; for example, going through Adventure Mode normally will typically result in you hunting and acquiring Hal Emmerich to open the door to the underground laboratory, but other Spirits that are good with computers, like Megaman.EXE or Susie, can do it as well. Rocks may block your path, but any Spirit that is associated with using bomb-based weaponry can destroy it, which encompasses Spirits such as Bomb Man and Bomberman. Lip, Kammy Koopa, and Viridi can all force mushrooms to grow large enough to be walked on, granting access to Olimar. Due to the multifaceted approach to getting rid of obstacles and the fact that the Spirit Board allows you to acquire Spirits early and/or unrelated to Adventure Mode, Spirits you obtain from the Spirit Board can potentially be used to get rid of obstacles earlier than the game expects.
Sequential Boss: The Final Rounds of several Classic Mode routes actually pit you against multiple opponents in a row. Mario and Captain Falcon must defeat Bowser, who then comes back as Giga Bowser; similarly, when Zelda defeats Ganondorf, he then transforms into Ganon. Bowser himself has the tables turned on him when Mario comes back from defeat as Metal Mario, without even a loading screen like the previous examples; likewise, Mega Man faces Dr. Mario and then Mewtwo one right after the other. Pikachu and the Pokémon Trainer battle Mewtwo as well, but it is followed by Master Hand. Finally, everyone who battles Dracula must defeat his first vampire form and his second monstrous One-Winged Angel form in succession, with no chance for recovery in between.
Serial Escalation:
- Ultimate brings out every fighter from past installments, introduces a few new fighters on top of that, contains over 100 stages, and has 800 tracks (900 if you include things like fanfare and menu music) from each series.
- "World of Light" also does this compared to "Subspace Emissary". Tabuu had Master Hand under his control, and was able to destroy the world single-handedly. Galeem has a whole army of Master Hands, and manages to destroy the entire galaxy.
Shaped Like Itself: Battlefield has a Battlefield Form. Unsurprisingly, it's exactly the same as its normal form.
Shout-Out:
- Fans noted that Xander Mobus's narration for the overview was reminiscent of All Might in My Hero Academia. He didn't exactly deny that it was intentional.
- Among Pac-Man's many references he can pull up with one of his taunts are 8-bit versions of Prince of All Cosmos and Heihachi.
- During Ryu's entry on Palutena's Guidance, Viridi references his adventures in Marvel vs. Capcom without mentioning the game's title by simply stating "super heroes".
- Luigi's Classic Mode involves fights against scary characters or characters with scary or creepy alternate costumes. One fight is against a bunch of Miis with costumes, the first three of which consist of one with devil horns, one with a mask, and a witch.
- A Tip about Toon Link's Down Aerial mentions that if you try to dunk someone with it, you're gonna have a bad time.
- During Joker's presentation after the speaker details Joker's special moves, he then notes that they aren't even their final forms.
- During the presentation detailing the Dragon Quest Hero, Sakurai outright mentioned the King of Braves due to Arusu's voice actor.
- One of Banjo & Kazooie's color palettes involves a purple winged creature alongside a mammal with blue pants. This is more than likely a nod to Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon, which are often considered sibling series from different developers, and even cross promote.
- In Sakurai's presentation on Min Min, he says that if you look up Spring Man online (at least in Japan), you're more likely to find images of a character from "a certain manga", referencing the character of the same name from Kinnikuman.
- The end of the full trailer for Sora involves both him and Mario shaking hands with the Smash logo in the background, a reference to the iconic title screen of X-Men vs. Street Fighter with Ryu and Cyclops. It makes a lot of sense considering both Marvel and Kingdom Hearts are Disney properties, both Disney and Capcom have a long history of working together (including both companies' works now being featured in this very game), and the framing of the handshake is meant to mark a historic crossover.
Show, Don't Tell: Beyond the first cutscene, most of "World of Light"'s plot is told in the way the map is changed and revealed.
Sinister Scythe: Death's Scythe is a new striking item that instantly KOs high-damaged opponents without sending them to the blast line.
Sinister Subway: Mementos is a stage here. It's a corrupted version of the Shibuya subway formed as a single Palace for the general public, where walls periodically change the layout and trains speed by, potentially serving as a hazard.
Situational Damage Attack:
- One of the new items is a gun called the Rage Blaster, where its attacks are stronger when the user is more damaged.
- The Staff from Kid Icarus: Uprising fires a beam that does more damage the further it travels before hitting a target.
- From the Fire Emblem series is a sword called the Killing Edge. Based on its increased Critical Hit probability in its home games, here it can deal twice the damage only when the sword is glowing.
- Death's Scythe from Castlevania can One-Hit KO opponents without them even being knocked past the stage boundaries, but only if their damage is high enough.
- Hero's Metal Slash can One-Hit KO metallic foes.
Skill Tree: "World of Light" has a grid for learning new Skills that looks a little similar to the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X. Skill Spheres earned from clearing Adventure Mode battles can be spent on the Skill Tree to unlock a variety of upgrades and powers that apply regardless of the equipped Spirits. Such abilities include boosting the power of your Tilts or Neutrals to giving you a second mid-air jump, giving you a second Final Smash right after using one, or giving you Immune to Flinching while charging Smash Attacks.
Slasher Smile: Due to the more wider variety of expressions a character can have in battle, the villainous characters like Ganondorf, Ridley, and Wolf may sport one in any of their animations. King K. Rool is a special case, as he has one constantly, but it's not apparent immediately.
So Last Season: In Simon's trailer, Corrin tries to hit him from across the stage with his forward smash (the longest-ranged non-projectile attack in Smash 4) and comes up short. Simon retaliates with his whip and connects. Then, in the November 1, 2018 Direct, Spring Man does the same thing to Simon to demonstrate the strength Assist Trophies can bring to the battle. Again, during Byleth's reveal trailer, the female version does the same thing to showcase the Areadbhar's range.
Sole Survivor: The only character to survive Galeem's onslaught in "World of Light"'s intro cutscene is Kirby.
Soundtrack Dissonance:
- Because music tracks from miscellaneous series only play on stages without playable characters ^note In addition to the Summit and Duck Hunt stages, it is possible to have humorous stage-and-music combinations such as an epic RPG battle theme playing in a living room with cute puppies or a peppy J-Pop song playing in the lair of an evil demon dragon.
- Some spirit battles have characters where the music playing in the background isn't the character's actual theme. That said, the dissonance is downplayed, as these battles tend to have themes that evoke the feeling of those characters, if not their literal themes. For instance, Dimentio's battle doesn't have his theme, "The Ultimate Show", but does use a battle theme from later in the series, Paper Mario: Color Splash; along the same lines, the Shovel Knight spirits tend to use songs from Mega Man, as Shovel Knight's soundtrack was composed as an homage to that series.
- Averted in regards to the music from Minecraft series. It was stated in the demonstration video the original game's relaxing BGMs wouldn't really fit in a fast-paced brawler ^note Although this tweet implies there are other circumstances regarding why the original Minecraft music couldn't be used beyond "too relaxing", the franchise's music selections instead come from the spin-off games Minecraft Earth and Minecraft Dungeons.
Spell My Name with an "S": The Stage 2 theme from Castlevania, usually spelt "Stalker," is spelled "Starker" in this game.
Standard Female Grab Area: Zig-Zagged. Female characters (as well as male characters that share animations with them, such as male Miis, Male Villagers, Inkling boys, and even Marth) are much more likely to be grabbed by the arm, while other characters are more likely to be grabbed by the neck or the chest. In some cases (such as Lucina), this is highly downplayed, with a defensive posture implying that they reached out an arm to try and block when they got grabbed (which is also the case for a few male characters, such as Ryu), but for some characters (such as Peach, Isabelle, and, interestingly, Bayonetta), it's played much straighter, with them being simply held by the wrist with the rest of their body being at arm's length. However, there are a few exceptions such as Samus, who actually gets grabbed by the chest, and female Robin, who simply gets grabbed by the neck. Also all examples could be seen as Downplayed since grabs can be escaped by button-mashing. However, having "thrash to escape" as the only option (and putting its level of incapacitation on the exact same level as grabs that take the form of a Neck Lift) means that it's still an example.
Stealth Pun:
- There are many characters in the game that aren't in the game physically, but rather take the bodies of the fighters. Basically, they aren't present in the game, but they are there in "spirit", which is what they're called in-game.
- The new remix of "Crocodile Cacophony" contains a few bars from the game's opening theme, which is titled "K. Rool Returns"; an apt descriptor of his appearance in Ultimate after a decade of absence.
- Not so much in the Japanese version, but for English speakers, it could take a bit for the GaoGaiGar reference in Hero's showcase video to sink in, as the Japanese words for "brave" and "hero" are said the same (yuusha).
- The reveal trailer for Banjo & Kazooie starts off almost exactly the same as the King K. Rool trailer, which shows off images of various heroic characters with their rivals, with the second including DK and K. Rool. While at first it just seems like a fun Call-Back, Banjo's trailer still fits the theme, as the duo are currently owned by Microsoft, a "rival" to Nintendo.
Stone Wall:
- Fully leveled up, the Absolutely Safe Capsule provides 10,000 additional defense power and no additional offensive power.
- Any primary spirit can be nudged towards by going to the dojo with the "Brick Wall" style, which greatly increases defense and decreases offense. Combine with a fully leveled Absolutely Safe Capsule, and many attacks on you will do less than 1% damage, though your own attacks won't be too powerful either.
Strong and Skilled: Legend spirits are incredibly powerful, and there a couple that have 3 slots such as Soma Cruz, Isaac, and Rodin the Infinite One.
Stylistic Suck: The Minecraft characters all have the stiff, jerky Limited Animation from the original game, which contrasts with the smooth and detailed animations of everyone else (aside from Mr. Game & Watch).
Suddenly Voiced: Princess Zelda mostly. Along with Fox, Marth, and Pit, she is given a voiced line in the opening cutscene for the "World of Light" Adventure mode, as opposed to being a Silent Protagonist like in Brawl's Subspace Emissary mode. While all four were voiced in their own games, this marks the first time that Zelda has spoken in Smash at all, and serves as the first time that an incarnation of Zelda other than that from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has had spoken dialogue.
Sudden Name Change: Some tracks from Melee, which were named after the stage they played on, have had their names changed to match the songs they're based upon due to the new allowment of all songs to be played on a corresponding series stage. For example, the Fountain of Dreams track is now named "Gourmet Race (Melee)", while the Corneria track is renamed "Star Fox Medley".
Super Move Portrait Attack:
- When a character initiates a Final Smash, it is accompanied by their portrait appearing on the side of the screen.
- When Joker summons Arsene while standing still and it's a one-on-one battle or everyone else is a CPU, one appears on the screen.
Supernatural Gold Eyes: When a fighter successfully pulls off a perfect shield (releasing the shield as soon as an attack connects), their eyes flash yellow for a second.
Suspender Snag: Mario gets his overalls strap hooked on Sephiroth's Masamune in his reveal trailer as part of a Bait-and-Switch gag.

T-Z

Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Primary Spirits are divided into four types: Attack, Grab, Shield, and Neutral. Attack beats Grab, Grab beats Shield, and Shield beats Attack, while Neutral has no advantages or disadvantages. Fans of Pokémon will note that the colors each type is associated with match the Fire-Grass-Water triangle in that series; the colors also follow the same order as in Fire Emblem Heroes and Eternal Darkness.
Take a Third Option: If you beat Galeem in the final battle, Dharkon instantly capitalizes to take down his nemesis and consume the universe in darkness. If Dharkon is defeated, Galeem finishes him off and engulfs everything in light. So how can the heroes win? Take on both at once and kill them both at the same time.
Take That, Audience!: Not necessarily an active insult, but Sakurai's remarks in Terry's video presentation about preferring fun characters over relevancy and younger generation players not necessarily understanding his use of fighting game lingo did feel like he was definitely aware of the less than enthusiastic reaction the character received in the West.
Teleport Spam:
- One of the many Pokémon one can summon from the Poké Ball is Abra, which will float over to opponents and spam Teleport, taking nearby fighters with it and potentially offstage.
- Master Hand, Crazy Hand, Marx, Galeem, and Dharkon all have moves where they rapidly teleport themselves several times.
Temporary Online Content: To celebrate Sephiroth's inclusion, players were able to play a limited-time event called the Sephiroth Challenge, pitting them against a unique boss version of Sephiroth on the Northern Cave stage. It was available December 17-22nd, 2020 and players who completed the challenge were able to unlock Sephiroth and his stage before his official release on December 22nd. It is still possible to play if the player did not update to version 10.1.0 (the update that unlocks Sephiroth for everyone else).
This Banana is Armed: This game introduces a new item called the banana gun. It looks like an ordinary banana, but it fires a single, powerful bullet before turning into a banana peel.
This Is Unforgivable!: Viridi's never been a fan of humans, but she gets especially outraged when she learns that Mewtwo was created through genetic experimentation and swears to never forgive them.
Token Good Teammate: In Spirit Battle where you're given a CPU ally, (usually as a We Cannot Go On Without You! scenario as you have to act as their bodyguard) they're actually puppet fighters on your side as shown by their eyes in Story Mode.
Took a Level in Badass:
- Peach (and Daisy)'s Toads function the exact same in Ultimate as in previous installments, but now appear more confident. Whereas they looked like they were being used as human shields in prior games, they jump out to protect their Princess instead. They're also now a part of their Princess's throw animation.
- In previous games, Master Hand and Crazy Hand were relatively predictable opponents that didn't do much more than flick, slap, and punch you around. They also only had three moves that they joined forces to pull off which are laughably easy to avoid. In Ultimate, both hands gain a wide array of powers both individually and together, thus making their Classic Mode fights go from a moderately difficult battle to an absolute nightmare to complete without dying even once.
Trailers Always Spoil: This line was zigzagged several times in the pre-release promotional cycle.
- It was averted entirely with the massive "Everyone is Here" mural, which was constantly updated with each new character announcement, shuffling around the positions of previous characters in the meantime. As a result, it was a lost cause trying to use it to predict newcomers.
- It was also averted with certain character reveal trailers; some of them, including Isabelle's and Joker's, did not open with the Smash logo when they were first broadcast, hiding their nature as character announcements for this game until The Reveal was dropped at the trailer's climax.
- It was played straight when the August 8, 2018 Direct revealed Monster Hunter's Rathalos and Castlevania's Dracula, showing them being fought in arenas that had no place on the website's Stages section and were not referenced anywhere else, implying that the game would have proper boss fights akin to Brawl's Subspace Emissary mode.
- On a related note, the developers technically averted this some more in the same Direct by showing the main menu but blurring out the big green option. However, eagle-eyed fans were able to figure out its name (if not its details) "Spirits" long before it was officially revealed in the last Direct.
- Certain stage names in pre-release demos hinted at possible future inclusions. For instance, Kongo Jungle from Melee was renamed to Kongo Falls, making many fans realize that the 64 Kongo Jungle was returning.
True Final Boss: Unless you make a concerted effort to avoid that fate, your final defeat of Galeem or Dharkon on The Final Battle map will simply lead to the other one wiping out all of existence instead. To reach the true ending, you need to prevent either Galeem or Dharkon's forces from completely overwhelming the other side on The Final Battle map. If you pull things off right, you'll free Master Hand and Crazy Hand from Galeem and Dharkon's control and play as Master Hand in a Mob Smash to clear the way to the true final gauntlet, which consists of a Rise to the Challenge platforming segment, a Boss Rush, and the true final battle with both Galeem and Dharkon at once.
Understatement: One of the loading screen tips states that Star Fox 2, Wolf's debut game, got delayed "a bit". "A bit" in this case being 20 years.
Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay:
- Some characters whose actual in-universe abilities are unsuitable for real combat (or who can't go toe-to-toe with cosmic beings) end up not doing much of anything against Galeem's onslaught, such as the Inklings (who try to hide in ink and fail miserably), Snake (who tries to hide in a box, to no avail), Wii Fit Trainer (who ineffectively does yoga poses), and the Villager (who simply panics). The Duck Hunt Dog, being just a normal dog, also panics and freezes while the duck tries fruitlessly to carry him to safety.
- During the final battle in World of Light, Dharkon and Galeem are going all-out against each other with their remaining forces; if you focus on one of them too much, the other will use the opportunity to catch everyone off-guard and kill them.
- Galeem one-shots all life in the universe...but the attack used to do so requires both the sacrifice of his entire present army for power and 20 seconds of uninterrupted charge time. As such, he only ever gets the chance to use it once between the fighters not giving him the prep time for it and having to use his army to fight Dharkon's. Unlike Tabuu, he can't even use a watered down version in his boss fights. Dharkon's ending implies he has a similar attack with the same drawback.
Unexpected Shmup Level: The Minigame Credits in Classic Mode has you riding a Respawn Platform while armed with a Super Scope, shooting at the names in the credits for the chance to earn bonus items.
Unexplained Recovery: World of Light offers no in-universe explanation for the presence of the DLC characters and why they aren't ever shown being under or being released from Galeem's or Dharkon's control. It's up to the player over whether they somehow managed to weather out Galeem's initial onslaught like Kirby, were indeed vaporized and captured and were simply rescued off-screen, just showed up out of complete nowhere, or whatever other explanation one might come up with. It's especially notable in the cases of Min Min, Pyra, and Mythra as all three were previously shown to be Spirits, only to show back up alive and well to help everybody else. Hero and Sephiroth's reveal trailers don't help the case, as they showcase DLC characters as part of the events of World of Light.
Unrealistic Black Hole: The appropriately-named Black Hole item sucks everything — items, enemies, projectiles, etc. — into its center. Only the player who activated the item is immune from this. Trying to knock away a person being sucked into the black hole will only have them be pulled back.
Unskilled, but Strong:
- Akuma has bar-none the best Attack stat of any Spirit in the game, with respectable Defense. However, he lacks both a Primary Ability and Support Slots to compensate for his high raw power.
- Galeem and Dharkon's Spirits have zero Support Slots and Abilities that are only effective in Adventure Mode. However, what they lack in flexibility and utility, they make up for in sheer power, sporting a whopping 13,000+ Power rating, higher than any other Spirit.
Variable Mix: When playing on the New Donk City Hall stage, the various members of the New Donk City Players, as well as Mayor Pauline, float in on platforms. Touching them will activate that member's instrument, including Pauline's singing voice, in "Jump Up, Super Star!" or the band's cover of the famous Super Mario Bros. Ground Theme, if either of those songs are playing.
Versus Character Splash: Before each battle, a dramatic display of each fighter in the bout is thrown up as the loading screen, complete with glinting eyes and smoldering embers.
Video Game Cruelty Potential: Certain spirit battles can be a fountain of this. For example, you can fight Sigurd with a character that has a fire attack (such as Roy, Zelda, or especially Robin) and potentially reenact his Plotline Death at the hands of Arvis. Or if you want to feel like a real dastard, you can fight Sigurd and Seliph together and KO them both the same way.
Video Game Perversity Potential: The 3.0 update added a Level Editor. Without hesitation, the internet being what it is, immediately started creating the most audacious levels imaginable.
Vile Villain, Saccharine Show:
- The Smash Bros games are known for their lightheartedness and chaotic fun that even the bad guys get to join. Then there's Galeem, an Eldritch Abomination that manages to destroy all but one character in its vicinity, making it more threatening than Tabuu (who was already very powerful, considering what they did), and Dharkon, who looks even more terrifying than Galeem.
- Ridley and Sephiroth are portrayed within the game and without as much more dire and serious threats than the other playable villains. This is made clearest in their Establishing Character Moments in their reveal trailers. Ridley's trailer is staged like a science ficture horror movie; he "kills" Mario offscreen and Mega Man onscreen, then taunts Samus with Mario's hat after revealing himself. His attacks have far more savage and brutal-looking animations than almost any other fighter in the game, featuring a reference to his Cutscene Power to the Max attack from Brawl where he grinds Samus along a wall and a potential impalement in his down special, and his damage output is among the highest of any character, giving the overall impression that you're fighting for your life. Sephiroth, meanwhile, is introduced by cleaving Galeem in half and proceeding to wipe the floor with the rest of the cast, including a scene where he appears to impale Mario through the chest with the Masamune. If he wins a match, his results screen is set against a flaming backdrop reminiscent of the Nibelheim Incident—and adding to the solemn atmosphere, nothing more than the sounds of fire is heard after his victory fanfare.
Villain Team-Up: Found in the true final battle in World of Light, as both Galeem and Dharkon will team up to defeat the fighters, but also subverted as their attacks hurt each other and, if one gets stunned, the other will gladly hit it while it's down for massive damage.
Weapon of X-Slaying:
- The Assist Killer ability is given by a handful of Legend Supports, which specifically boosts damage dealt to Assist Trophies.
- The Metal Killer Ability, given from both Support Spirits and the Skill Tree, boosts damage inflicted to Metal characters.
- Giant Killer from Support Spirits boosts damage against Giant characters.
- Galeem's unique Ability, Bane of Darkness, boosts damage against any Dharkon-aligned Spirits and Fighters in Adventure Mode. Likewise, Dharkon's Ability, Bane of Light, boosts damage against any Spirit or Fighter possessed by Galeem.
Wham Line:
- The E3 2018 trailer, which immediately follows Snake's return:
- And for long-time fans, an even bigger one comes after Ridley ferociously tears through the bridge that Samus was on:
  RIDLEY HITS THE BIG TIME!
- One last surprise from a somewhat unexpected source:
  Morgana: We've been invited... invited to steal the greatest treasure of all! (*Joker brandishes an envelope with Smash's signature logo stamped on the wax seal*)
- During the E3 2019 presentation, some old friends finally return to Nintendo consoles:
  BANJO-KAZOOIE ARE RARING TO GO!
- The Mii costumes seen in Banjo & Kazooie's presentation don't seem like anything too special, until the last one...
- For the final character presentation, a dream came true for a lot of fans:
  SORA IS FINALLY HERE!
Wham Shot:
- The teaser trailer at the end of the Nintendo Direct on March 2018 is a big one for fans of the Smash Bros series. It starts out like the first Splatoon trailer with Inkling Boy and Inkling Girl playing Turf Wars in an all-white environment before it goes dark. Inkling Girl turns around and sees in Stunned Silence what appears to be fire, but the reflection in her eye becomes a clear view of the iconic Super Smash Bros. logo, revealing that Smash is coming to Nintendo Switch, and that Inkling is first new character to join the roster.
- Like the announcement trailer for 4 featuring Animal Crossing's Villager, most of the character reveal trailers either start off with the series logo opening or, whether that's present, have the newcomer holding an invitation to be added to Super Smash Bros. Among the ones who obtain invitations are Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury/King of Fighters, Pyra (and Mythra) from Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and Isabelle from Animal Crossing.
- The first Fighters Pass DLC character is revealed in the style of its game, which leads to fans being caught completely off guard when Joker shows off his Smash invitation.
- The character count trailer mostly showed the expected returning characters from 4, the possibly-in-jeopardy-due-to-being-third-party characters Ryu, Cloud, and Sonic, previously-confirmed newcomer Inkling, the expected return of the Ice Climbers, the surprise return of the Pokémon Trainer (and by extent, Squirtle and Ivysaur)... and then the music cuts out, and Snake, a character nobody thought was coming back after his absence from 4, disengages his camouflage. Then further returning characters were revealed, such as Pichu, Young Link, and Wolf, to truly show that "Everyone is here".
- The entire roster on a cliff, overlooking a new enemy called Galeem flanked by an army of Master Hands. Then, Galeem unleashes beams of light that disintegrate most of the roster, except Kirby.
- After Galeem's defeat, the sky cracks open to reveal Dharkon with an army of Crazy Hands in tow.
- After freeing the true Master Hand and Crazy Hand, the next match starts to reveal that, for the first time in the franchise (barring unofficial methods), you're playing as the big white glove himself.
- The end of the E3 2019 presentation provides a one-two punch; the first few shots of the trailer are a repeat of the Heroes vs. Villains pictures from the King K. Rool reveal trailer. The second punch? A Jiggy being thrown into Donkey Kong's house while he's chilling out with Diddy and King K. Rool. Anyone who recognized that iconic puzzle piece knew what was coming next: Banjo & Kazooie are coming to Smash, and are finally making their grand return to a Nintendo home console after almost 20 years.
- When presenting the DLC Mii costumes during Banjo & Kazooie's demonstration, everything looked like standard fare, then "MEGALOVANIA" starts to play, and we get to see a Mii costume of Sans.
- In the 77th Fighter Reveal Trailer, Mario has been flung into a dark, enclosed space, surrounded by glowing red eyes. All of a sudden, part of the wall is broken down, and in the light that shines through the hole we can make out a familiar blocky form.
- In the trailer revealing the third DLC fighter in Fighters Pass Vol. 2, the heroes are beaten down by Galeem, but before he can unleash his light, he's suddenly bisected down the middle...and then One-Winged Angel starts to play, heralding the arrival of Sephiroth.
- The penultimate fighter's trailer shows Ganondorf's dead body being carried by someone who is obscured, only for an overhead shot to show that person approaching a pit of lava, mirroring the ending of Tekken 7's story mode and clueing everyone in that the fighter is Kazuya Mishima.
- The very last fighter is revealed after Mario throws a fireball towards something, only for it to turn into a large key with a VERY familiar logo attached to it...
What Happened to the Mouse?:
- Zig-zagged with the fate of Luigi in the Simon/Richter reveal trailer. After being reaped by Death, his ghost is never shown re-entering his body (Carmilla scares him just as he's trying to do so, and the last we see or hear of him is his scream from the exterior of Dracula's castle). Nintendo UK's twitter tried to assure fans that Luigi was okay, but some remain skeptical.
- A number of stage cameos (most notably on KoF Stadium) and Mii Costumes lack corresponding Spirits, leaving the question of the fates of those characters.
Whole Plot Reference: The reveal trailers for King K. Rool and Banjo-Kazooie play the exact same way. Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong wake up and see someone familiar out the window. The character outside turns out to be impersonated by another character who laughs about it, only for the character they impersonated to attack them in retribution. K. Rool does this to King Dedede and Banjo & Kazooie does this to Duck Hunt.

A Wild Rapper Appears!: This game's remix of Gangplank Galleon unexpectedly has a rap verse snuck into it, turning the theme into something of a Villain Song for King K. Rool. Also doubles as Indecipherable Lyrics.
The Worf Barrage:
- In Sephiroth's reveal trailer, Cloud caps off his duel with him by using his Omnislash Ver. 5 limit break, which has killed Sephiroth before...but it prompts the latter to transform into his Safer form.
- Sakurai used Captain Falcon's Falcon Punch of memetic legend in Byleth and Kazuya's gameplay trailers to demonstrate that their respective super-armored attacks can plow right through it.
The Worf Effect: Several character reveal trailers have newcomers show up to beat an established fighter.
- Ridley impales Mega Man with his tail and punctures Mario's neck.
- Simon Belmont banishes Death after the reaper kills Luigi with a single swing of his scythe.
- Soon after, Richter saves his wounded ancestor from one of Dracula's fireballs.
- K. Rool wallops Dedede for impersonating him and gets a flabbergasted Eye Pop from his old nemeses.
- Happens twice in the last base reveal: Ken beats up Little Mac... and then faces the same fate from Incineroar.
- In "World of Light", everyone but Kirby gets Worfed, Kirby only escaping thanks to the Warp Star's warping abilities.
- Piranha Plant leaves Luigi and multiple Yoshis rendered dizzy. When Mario attempts to confront it, Piranha Plant swiftly dodges the attack and slams Mario off-screen.
- The fact that even Tabuu is found as a Spirit in "World of Light" seems to indicate that not even he and his minions were any match for Galeem. Master Core's various phases can also be found as Spirits, implying Galeem can overpower him too.
- Link gets tired up trying to fend off Dharkon's copies of Marth and Meta Knight, but Eleven rides in on horseback to save him from the sticky situation.
- Later, when Eleven himself gets knocked out by three other copied fighters, the other Heroes of Dragon Quest (Eight, Solo, and Arusu) step in to back him up.
- Banjo and Kazooie literally stomp the Duck Hunt duo and bury K. Rool under a big rock in a king-shaped hole in the ground.
- Kid Cobra and Twintelle are easily defeated when Min Min decides to show up to grab the Smash invitation.
- Happens to Galeem in Sephiroth's reveal trailer, wherein Sephiroth cleanly cleaves Galeem in half like it was nothing before fighting the Smash roster.
- Kazuya in his trailer beats Ganondorf, Captain Falcon, Pit, Min Min and Marth badly off-screen before throwing them to a volcano.
World-Healing Wave: Killing Galeem and Dharkon at the same time unleashes one. After that, every single spirit goes up in a spire of flame to return to the real world as they wanted.
World of Chaos: The world Galeem creates after atomizing the universe is a utopian, organized world filled with normal-looking things you'd expect to see such as forests, cities, oceans, glaciers, and jungles amongst other things. The world that Dharkon creates on the other hand? Not so much. The Dark Realm is a messed up, chaotic dimension where the landscape is completely mangled and littered with giant gears, ruined buildings, and other nonsensical architecture with bright unnatural colors illuminating the place. The Mysterious Dimension takes this Up to Eleven, as the subworld is nothing more than a random mishmash of destroyed objects from other games. This includes cherry blossom trees, airplanes, warp pipes, a pirate ship, bubbles, and train tracks, all of which circle around a gigantic black hole.
World-Wrecking Wave: Killing either Galeem or Dharkon in the final map allows the other one to unleash one of these to obliterate the fighters (and their rival) and conquer everything.
Writing Around Trademarks
- When discussing Ryu, Viridi mentions that he's fought "superheroes" before. This is referencing his appearances in the Marvel vs. Capcom series without actually mentioning Marvel.
- In an example that doesn't have to do with copyright or trademarks, new ESRB rules went into effect in 2020 that banned M-rated games from being promoted alongside non-M rated games. This prevented promotional material for Ultimate from naming M-rated games, which Nintendo got around by replacing the "Super Smash Bros. × <game title>" template that marks the introduction of a new franchise to Smash with "Super Smash Bros. × <character name>". Some notable affectees of this rule include Mii Costumes for Altair and Doom Slayer.
- One of Sora's battles in his Classic Mode route has him fighting Cloud inside the Coliseum, which is a Mythology Gag to a boss fight in Kingdom Hearts. The stage is standing in for the Olympus Coliseum without directly referencing Hercules.
Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: It seems like you've defeated Galeem, and you are right. However, the sky cracks open to reveal Galeem's counterpart Dharkon and his army of Crazy Hands, meaning that your adventure is far from over.
Your Size May Vary: Bowser noticeably shrinks between normal gameplay and the No Contest screen, being nearly as tall as Peach, rather than a foot-plus higher than her. Likewise, Bayonetta noticeably grows during the same transition, going from shorter than Ganondorf to outgrow him.
Your Soul is Mine!: Death rends poor Luigi's soul from his body in Simon's trailer. Luckily for Luigi, Simon wasn't having any of it.

"Everyone is here. And everything...IS...ULTIMATE!"

Luigi trips over while running

While he was shown to be typically clumsy in previous games, in the Simon Belmont Reveal Trailer however, he was still the lovable coward we all know who was never given a break, this moment in particular showcases his true clumsiness more than before.

Example of:
The Klutz

Alternative Title(s): Super Smash Brothers Ultimate

Isabelle Super Smash Bros Ultimate Shooting Baby Bowser

Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosUltimate

Isabelle Super Smash Bros Ultimate Shooting Baby Bowser

Video Game / Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

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Luigi trips over while running

Alternative Title(s): Super Smash Brothers Ultimate

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Isabelle Super Smash Bros Ultimate Shooting Baby Bowser

Video Game / Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Nintendo Characters:

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Nintendo Stages:

Third-Party Stages:

This game provides examples of:

Luigi trips over while running

Alternative Title(s): Super Smash Brothers Ultimate

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