User:BubzieBobkat/List of misconceptions

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This is a list of misconceptions related to the Super Smash Bros. series. A misconception in this context refers to a mostly untrue statement about the series, its development, or its creators that manages to gain traction among general discourse as if it is fact. While many of these claims have some kind of truthful element to them, they are mostly based on faulty logic and tend to be easily disproven. Some intellectually dishonest individuals have attempted to push many of these misconceptions for the sake of building a narrative towards or against certain people or groups for malicious purposes (for example, rumors about Waluigi fans harassing Masahiro Sakurai being used to stigmatise fans of, and silence discussion of, said character). It should be specified that this list excludes rumors and speculation of potential content. For a list of claims that cannot be proven true or false, see List of rumors.

Piranha Plant's gender

Upon Piranha Plant's release, a line from its Palutena's Guidance conversation was noticed, where Palutena responds to Pit's first line with "Not so loud! She'll hear you!" Though fans misinterpreted the line to be in reference to the Piranha Plant, it is actually in reference to Viridi, who shows her extensive knowledge of the Piranha Plant family in the following lines.

"Never ask me for anything ever again"

An image of Sakurai during the Super Smash Bros. Direct with an edited caption "Never ask me for anything ever again." has circled around the internet, being used to create a sarcastic representation of himself who achieves the impossible and wishes to be left alone afterwards due to incessant fan demands. This, however, is not an actual representation of Sakurai's personality, as proven by multiple pieces of commentary provided by himself in his various appearances for Smash promotional purposes.

This image was brought up during an interview with former Tekken series director Katsuhiro Harada, where Harada compared it to an image of himself famously wearing a shirt saying "Don't ask me for shit"; Sakurai commented that he wished people would stop using his face to say what they want to say.

Sora was a difficult character to acquire rights for

Sora was, for many years, believed to be impossible to put in the game due to his parent company, Disney, supposedly being difficult to work with and requiring a high asking fee for licensing purposes. Following the announcement of his inclusion, Kingdom Hearts series director Tetsuya Nomura revealed that Disney was actually on board with Sora's inclusion from the start, and that he was the one who was skeptical towards his inclusion.

Sora's inclusion being canon to Kingdom Hearts

The above additionally added the misconception that Nomura wanted Sora's inclusion to be canon to the Kingdom Hearts series, itself an extension of the fact that the non-numbered Kingdom Hearts series' games are integral to the overall storyline despite any common belief that those same games are "unimportant". In truth, Nomura's concern was instead over the Smash series clashing with any pre-established lore.

Smash not being intended for children

Due to the inclusion of characters from mature games such as Metal Gear and Bayonetta, as well as some international age ratings reaching into the teens and "darker" situations featured in promotional materials, some fans have a tendency to present Smash games as "for teenagers" or even adults, often in the context of complaints about censorship - however, Smash has been marketed on Nintendo's Play Nintendo hub for children, live-action commercials for both Smash 4 and Ultimate featuring child actors, and in an interview about Smash 64, Masahiro Sakurai has refered to it as having all age appeal with its "core players" being a middle school and elementary school demographic:

“	—Do you think Smash Bros. appeals to a younger age group? Sakurai: No, I wouldn’t say that—at least judging from what I saw at the most recent tournament. The “height gap” between players was funny: you had adults playing matches with kids half their size. Of course the core players are middle school and elementary age, but I’ve seen kids as young as 3 and adults over 30. I would say Smash’s uniqueness lies not so much in appealing to a wide age range, as it does a wide variety of skill levels. I’ve had people tell me it’s a huge hit at their preschool, and other people tell me how great the combo system is for a versus fighting game.	”

Nintendo also has a history of making commercials for video games that lean more mature than the actual game content, such as the infamous "Still the Big One" commercial for Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island and early adverts for the Game Boy targeting working adults, making darker imagery in Smash trailers not a remarkable outlier.

"Japanese game for Japanese people"

A criticism of Fighter Pass content was a rather fallacious statement of it being "too Japanese". While this notion can be disproven in many ways, one popular counterargument was variations of the phrase "of course the Japanese video game developers would add characters from Japanese games"—this, in reality, does not reflect the process of choosing Smash characters. Sakurai has claimed at least two times that characters only known in Japan are not priotised for inclusion, also adding that Lucas only appeared in Brawl due to him not knowing Mother 3 would be a Japan-only release. On the other side of the coin, many characters who did get in lack Japanese appeal but are perceived as iconic elsewhere, such as Little Mac, Samus, Duck Hunt, and by far the most infamous example, Sonic. Given attempts to include characters such as Vault Boy and Doom Slayer in minor roles, the small amount of non-Japanese content in Smash could likely be better attributed to language and travel barriers.

Sakurai working for Nintendo

Though Sakurai works closely with Nintendo and many of the titles he has worked on have been published by Nintendo, he himself is not, and has not been, an employee of Nintendo. Having worked for HAL Laboratory—itself being unaffiliated with Nintendo, outside of the joint venture Warpstar, Inc. made for handling the Kirby series license—until 2003, he founded his own company, Sora Ltd., in 2005, of which he and his wife are the sole two employees.

Sakurai himself has somewhat commented on the matter in his YouTube video on Super Smash Bros. Brawl, stating that, though the game was the first to feature characters from "outside companies", he considers Nintendo to be an "outside company" as well, and approached Konami and Sega the same way he would have approached Nintendo to include both Snake and Sonic in the roster.

Smash characters must have been on Nintendo hardware

Although the majority of the characters within the Super Smash Bros. series have been on Nintendo hardware outside of their appearances in Smash itself at one point or another, and Super Smash Bros. itself is a Nintendo-published series that started out including strictly Nintendo characters, there has never been a rule stating that characters who appear in the series have to have appeared on a Nintendo console prior to their appearance in a Smash game. It all comes down to negotiations between Sakurai and the company that owns the character. If there is a certain character that the community wants to see in Smash, but has never been on Nintendo hardware, the character is still a potential candidate for inclusion in Smash, as long as the copyright holder for the character and their franchise is on board with their possible inclusion.

Smash saves franchises

A common sentiment around Smash is that it has the ability to revive dormant gaming franchises or introduce them to a new audience. There is most certainly a truth to this, whether it be Fire Emblem coming to the West, Sakurai reviving Kid Icarus using elements from Brawl, or even just individual characters like King K. Rool reappearing in their home series - however, this is not an effect Smash actively attempts to do. Most dormant characters and series featured in Smash have generally been added due to fan campaigns or lingering iconic factor, and in fact, the series goes out of its way to avoid "series without a future".