As of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in 2018, only three characters that started out as Assist Trophies became playable in future installments:

•Little Mac, an Assist Trophy in Brawl, then became playable in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS/Wii U
•Dark Samus, an Assist Trophy in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS/Wii U, then became playable in Ultimate
•Isabelle, an Assist Trophy in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS/Wii U, then became playable in Ultimate.

The match end tune from Street Fighter II can be found in the game's files. However, a remix of this tune was used instead for Ryu's win theme. The unused tune was most likely a placeholder during development.

An alternate version of Kirby saying "Hi!" for his down taunt can be found in the game's files. This version sounds closer to the ones heard in previous games than the one used in the final game.

According to Masahiro Sakurai in an interview, Pac-Man would have been removed from the roster if Bandai Namco had rejected his redesign of the character with a more classic Pac-Man appearance, as he considered it superior to the designs used in Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures.

It was considered to make Alph a clone of Olimar with the ability to use Rock Pikmin. However, this idea was scrapped and Alph became a costume swap instead.

Tekken's Heihachi Mishima was briefly considered for the roster of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, but was ultimately replaced with Ryu from Street Fighter. The team thought that implementing Heihachi's movement into the game would have been difficult due to fundamental design differences between the Tekken and Super Smash Bros. series, and instead released a Mii Fighter costume of him. He was once again considered for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but his son Kazuya was chosen instead due to him possessing the Devil Gene from his mother Kazumi. This choice was made to implement Kazuya's Devil Powers into midair jumps, smash attacks and special moves, while making the rest of Kazuya's moveset as similar as possible to his normal moveset in the Tekken series.

Tingle's trophy chronology only mentions his appearance in Majora's Mask. Which is odd considering Tingle's Wind Waker design is used for the trophy, and his role in Wind Waker is mentioned in the trophy's description.

In Melee, Nintendo 3DS & Wii U, and Ultimate, if the game language is switched to Japanese, Mewtwo will speak in full sentences for some of its victory poses. In English, Mewtwo only laughs during its victory poses and taunt.

Super Smash Bros. 4 is the first game in the Super Smash Bros. series where Falco is not unlocked by completing 100-Man mode. This condition was instead given to Wario.

According to Masahiro Sakurai, in an interview with Famitsu, the reason for the addition of the fighter Duck Hunt was for two reasons. The first reason was that he had an interest on adding them for a long time, but was also because of the uniqueness of the character. The second reason was because of the high sales of the game, and he deemed that the game was the high-selling shooting game in the USA.

Corrin from Fire Emblem Fates nearly didn't make it into the game because Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai thought that they had already included too many Fire Emblem characters.
However, Sakurai's team thought that Corrin would be a unique fighter and convinced him to include the character in the game.

The Epona trophy is taken from the 3DS release of Ocarina of Time, rather than the original Nintendo 64 release.

If Little Mac accrues 100% of damage during a match, bruises and tape will appear on his face.

The image of Mario and Luigi carrying gifts for Bayonetta is a possible reference to Bayonetta 2, in which Enzo carries Bayonetta's gift boxes in the game's opening cutscene.

The reveal trailer for Roy shows him taunting in front of the Spicy Curry item. This is actually a reference to a Japan-only Super Smash Bros. Melee photo contest. The winner was a photo called "The Ultimate Curry", which depicted Roy taunting in front of the Curry food item.

In the June 14th, 2015 Direct, Sakurai stated that the Suzaku Castle stage was the first in the series to have music that changes as the timer gets close to zero. This is false, as the Mushroom Kingdom stage of Super Smash Bros., and the Mushroom Kingdom and Mushroom Kingdom II stages of Super Smash Bros. Melee all have music that changes as the timer gets close to zero. It is however the first stage in the series that changes the music during stock battles when the last opponent standing or the player is down to their final life.

On page 292 of the Prima Guide for Super Smash Bros. 3DS / Wii U, it shows a beta image of the roster containing the Mii Brawler icon. Although the individual Mii fighters do not have their own icons in the final game, the unused icons for the Brawler as well as the Mii Swordfighter and Mii Gunner can still be found in the game's data.

Smash Run mode was originally going to have cooperative gameplay, but the idea was dropped due to the 3DS's limitations.

According to Masahiro Sakurai, in the November 2014 issue of GameInformer, the reason why Super Smash Bros. was released on two different consoles was because he was a “freelance game designer,” and that having a unique version of the game makes it fun.

"The first reason is that I think both portables and home consoles have their own traits that make them fun. I've gone into that in previous interviews, so I'll omit the details here.

One big reason for this approach is because I'm a freelance game designer ... I'm always going to be the center of any Smash Bros. project, but since I don't have my own personal studio, the staff changes in and out with each project. Changing development studios like this also means that you can't build out from the know-how and in-house assets you've accumulated over time.

As a development environment, it's different from a publisher that can work on fighting games, shooters, and open-world titles all at once. For us, even if things look the same, it's all completely different, completely built from scratch. If we started with a console project then moved on to the portable platform, once one team finished up their work, we'd have to wait and hand everything over to another team."

According to Masahiro Sakurai, in the November 2014 issue of GameInformer, the reason why both versions were released at different times was done to "keep the debugging schedules separate from each other:"

"The biggest reason was so we could keep the debug schedule separate from each other. Debugging a game this size is a major project involving hundreds of people, and since the two platforms offer pretty different content, we wanted to avoid conflicts during the debug stages. If we were hell-bent on a simultaneous day-and-date release, we would have wrapped up one title, put it on the back burner, and launched both games in 2015. But I doubt most people prefer that."