Franchise: Super Smash Bros.

The trophy representing Meowth in Super Smash Bros. Melee is a reference to his appearance in a tech demo shown off at Spaceworld 2000 called "Meowth's Party", which itself was based on a recurring ending musical number from the Pokémon anime. In his trophy he is holding the same red guitar that he performs with in the tech demo. The flavor text for his trophy even directly mentions this tech demo:


A version of Meowth's Party eventually made its way into the GameCube release of Pokémon Channel.

When asked if they would approve of Cooking Companions content appearing in the Super Smash Bros. series, Deer Dream Studio said no, claiming "I've seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by Smash."

Though Donkey Kong's neutral special Giant Punch has no specific origin, Donkey Kong performs a similar wind-up punch in "Bad Hair Day", the first episode of the 1997 animated series "Donkey Kong Country", which first aired 17 months prior to the Japanese release of Super Smash Bros.

There are 17 stages in the Super Smash Bros. series that (intentionally) contain the full title of a video game in their English name: Balloon Fight, Duck Hunt, Find Mii, Luigi's Mansion, Mario Bros., Minecraft World, Pac-Land, Paper Mario, Pokémon Stadium, Pokémon Stadium 2, Super Mario Maker, Tomodachi Life, Wii Fit Studio, Wrecking Crew, both stages titled Yoshi's Island, and Yoshi's Story.

Additionally there are Miiverse and the Pictochat stages but their source material’s status as "video games" are debatable.

Although he appears to be a flat sprite, Mr. Game & Watch is actually a 3D model designed to look 2D from the perspective of the camera.

The platform fighter genre has typically been thought of as having originated with the Super Smash Bros. franchise, to the point where it is common for the genre to be called "Smash Clones". However, while Smash did introduce almost all of the defining mechanics to the subgenre, such as ring-out based KOs, wavedashing, and the 3/4-way-input special move system, there are at least two titles that predate Nintendo's crossover and attempted to merge platforming with fighting gameplay - the multiplayer mode within 1991's Captain America and the Avengers for NES, and 1995's arcade title The Outfoxies. Both titles had characters with limited movepools compared to the style Smash would popularise and were lifebar-based. The Outfoxies also included damaging stage hazards and items, two mechanics popular within Smash but scantly used in other platform fighters.

Also of mention is Savage Reign, a traditional fighting game from 1995 featuring a platform gimmick, though this game has far less in common with platform fighters than The Outfoxies or Captain America, simply serving as a traditional fighting game with two planes to stand on as opposed to mobility-based platforming.

It is not known if anyone who worked on Super Smash Bros. was aware of or conciously took inspiration from these 3 games.

On October 24, 2023, Nintendo released a list of "Community Guidelines" for eSports events surrounding their games in Europe and Japan - these rules received major backlash from competitive Smash and Splatoon players and were theorized as being intended to directly stifle Nintendo's competitive communities. With particular criticism going towards:

• Enforcing a maximum player count of 200 per day for in-person tournaments
• Enforcing a cash prize maximum at £9,000 / €10,000 and prohibiting sponsors from funding events
• pre-Switch games (particularly Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Smash Bros.) not being available for licensing
• Not allowing titles from Nintendo's games to be used in branding, even including shortened variants such as "Splat" or "Smash".
• Banning modified, emulated, or fan-made games - the prior two being essential parts of modern day competitive Melee.
• Food, drink, and merchandise sale being banned from venues
• Arguably most damningly, requiring official licensing for smaller-scale high school charity events.

When Tsuyoshi Tozak, director of Bubble Bobble 4 Friends, was asked about if Bub and Bob would appear in the Super Smash Bros. franchise, they simply responded "let's skip that question". The interviewer theorized that they may have been under a non-disclosure agreement, citing a similar response when asking the developers of Cuphead about if they wanted to make a TV cartoon, which would eventually happen, but come the end of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's DLC cycle, Bubble Bobble content did not appear in any form, meaning that Tozak was likely indifferent on Smash rather than under NDA.

When asked about what cameos he'd like to see Amigo from Samba de Amigo make in the future, series director Shun Nakamura joked that he wouldn't mind Amigo becoming a playable character in the Super Smash Bros. series, noting how none of the characters in the series have a music-based moveset.

Pac-Man's blue palette swap in the games that he appears in is based on his in-game sprite from Pac-Land when he wears the Wing Shoes power-up.

Although naturally each and every Special Move in the series mirrors itself and its hitboxes, an odd exception is made for Cloud's Cross Slash. When Cloud does the move, he draws the Kanji "凶" ("Kyo"), which means misfortune, bad luck, evil, and other negative things, and because this is a kanji it must be written a certain way regardless of orientation. It cannot simply be flipped like other moves, meaning that the move's hitboxes change depending on where Cloud is facing. From the right side and facing left, Cross Slash will actually hit lower, making it better at hitting smaller characters. However, from the left side facing right, Cross Slash will hit higher up, making it a better anti-air attack. This also occurs with the Limit Break version of the move. These differences makes Cloud mirror matches uniquely imbalanced and not as 50/50 as they would be for other fighters.

Pikachu and Pichu's Neutral Special, Thunder Jolt, is actually a move taken from and exclusive to the Pokémon Trading Card Game, specifically the Pikachu Card from the very first Base Set. This is true for both the English and Japanese versions of the move, as the same exact name in both languages is used from the card (Thunder Jolt and "Electricity Attack" respectively). This makes Thunder Jolt the only adapted Pokémon Special Move to be directly taken from the TCG, instead of the games or anime.

In a 1999 interview with game's director and designer Masahiro Sakurai published in Nice Games magazine vol.3, he was asked if Super Smash Bros. appealed to a younger age group? He responded:

Snake's match victory theme ironically is based off of the Game Over jingle from Metal Gear Solid.

In an interview with Xander Mobus, who voices the Announcer in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, he revealed that Nintendo, in an effort to stop character leaks, would often throw him off about which characters would be in the game or DLC by giving him "red herrings", otherwise they would give him some ridiculous names to say that would be far-fetched. He even claimed that because of the intensity of this, he didn't believe that the Duck Hunt dog and duck were in the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U versions of the game as playable characters, and assumed Nintendo was referring to the Duck Hunt cartridge being in the game instead, and thus believed it to be a fake.

This also caused a rather humorous incident following a hoax created by YouTuber Artsy Omni to promote his "Smashified" series, where after it had spread, Mobus actually did a line read for Rayman, the subject of the hoax.

While he is normally an avid gamer, Masahiro Sakurai revealed in a Famitsu interview that he strictly refrains from sharing what he is currently playing on social media sites because of fears it would be misinterpreted by the Smash Bros. fandom (especially outside of Japan) as a confirmation of a new fighter for the series. He also states that the issue has gotten so bad that he frequently declines appearances on TV shows that deal with a specific game for the same reason.

Giga Bowser's design was inspired by Sakurai's vision of how Bowser looked before Super Mario 64.

"The old Bowser was scary. In the NES era, characters were more symbolic, so you had room to use your imagination. When I looked at the original Bowser, I saw a frenzied, terrifying monster.

But, advancements in technology have allowed designers to convey characters in greater detail, and in recent games his image has steadily become cuter.

Naturally, this is a current game, so it needs to use his current design. And from there, Giga Bowser (unexpectedly?) happened to come into existence."

The Poison Mushroom in the Super Smash Bros. games is the only item borrowed from another series whose appearance does not stay true to its original franchise. In the Mario series, poison mushrooms have distinct colouring from other mushrooms, but in the Super Smash Bros. series, they look similar to Super Mushrooms in order to purposefully confuse players. The differences between the two items are nearly unnoticeable - the Poison Mushrooms are only slightly less red and have a meaner look.

In each game the texture for Ness's yoyo includes the year of the game's release:
• "2001" for Super Smash Bros. Melee
• "2008" for Super Smash Bros. Brawl
• "2014" for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U
• "2018" for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Pit's hammer swinging animation is meant to resemble how he moves around and attacks with a hammer in Kid Icarus and Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters.