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.

According to series creator Masahiro Sakurai in a 2024 video, ideas for the series' name were first brainstormed by team members at HAL Laboratory, while the "Bros." part of the name was picked out by its president Satoru Iwata during a meeting with him, Sakurai, and Ape Inc. founder Shigesato Itoi. Iwata's reasoning for adding Bros. to the title was that despite the game's roster not all being "brothers", he believed the word added the nuance that they were "friends who were settling a little disagreement" instead of just simply fighting.

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."

In an interview with Miketendo64, Nihon Falcom president Toshihiro Kondo stated that if Nintendo ever decided to ask the company to use one of its characters in Super Smash Bros., he would most like to see Adol Christin from the Ys series. His reasoning was that unlike many other characters created by the company, Adol has been the main character of several games and has been around for a long time. He also noted how unlike The Legend of Heroes: Trails series where the protagonist changes every arc (i.e. Van Arkride being the main character of the Calvard arc started in The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak), Adol has had a consistent presence in his series, thus making him more recognizable as a character.

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.

Ganondorf's design in Super Smash Bros. Melee is based on his appearance in the Spaceworld 2000 tech demo which showcased a fight with Link and himself where he wields a large sword. This large sword only ever appeared in that tech demo and in one of his win animations in Melee. This specific sword would not be used in Ganondorf's moveset until the release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in 2018, where his design is based on that same Spaceworld 2000 tech demo as well as elements from his appearance in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

In all games in the series since Super Smash Bros. Melee, you can choose which victory animation the winning character can do, though the button combinations differ by the game:

• In Melee, you can change the victory animation by pressing X, Y, or B before the result screen appears.
• In Brawl, holding either X, Y, or B, or Up, Left, or Right on the D-Pad of the GameCube controller will determine the victory animation.
• In the 3DS and Wii U games and Ultimate, holding Up, Left, or Right on the D-Pad will determine the victory animation.

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.

As of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in 2018, Shadow the Hedgehog is the only third-party Assist Trophy to appear in every Super Smash Bros. game since the introduction of Assist Trophies in Super Smash Bros. Brawl in 2008.

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 Studio MDHR, the developers of Cuphead, about if they wanted to make an animated series based on their game, which did eventually happen. However, come the end of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's DLC cycle, a Bubble Bobble multimedia adaptation did not happen in any form, suggesting that Tozak was likely indifferent on the possibility 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.