Buried

Buried is a status condition which debuted in Super Smash Bros. Melee that can be inflicted by attacks with a bury or plunge effect. A buried fighter cannot be grabbed and is unable to take any actions until the status wears off. Examples of attacks with the bury effect are Donkey Kong's Headbutt, Villager's down smash, and the Poké Ball Pokémon Togepi's Magnitude; the Pitfall item is the only source of the plunge effect.

Only fighters on the ground can be buried; if a fighter in the air is hit by an attack with the bury effect, they will simply take knockback as usual.

The amount of time a character remains buried is dependent on that character's damage percentage; the higher the number, the longer they will be stuck to the ground. This duration can be decreased by button mashing. If the ground below the character disappears, they are automatically unburied. When the buried condition fades, the released fighter gets some invincibility frames.

In Melee, buried characters remain stuck in the ground until the effect wears off or the ground disappears. From Brawl onward, a character hit by a move that deals more than 100 units of knockback will freed from being buried and launched as usual. In Brawl and Ultimate, the amount of knockback taken does not get reduced, allowing for reliable, early KO setups on buried characters; however, in Smash 4, it is equal to 0.7x of the knockback that would have been inflicted otherwise, drastically weakening the effectiveness of such setups. In Ultimate, attacks performed without unburying the opponent retain their properties when the effect wears off, including neutral attacks and meteor smashes.