Super Smash Bros./Nightmare Fuel



There are eight other TV Tropes pages detailing the Nightmare Fuel in different Nintendo games. There are also entries in the main Video Game section detailing the frights in other Nintendo games. So when you combine characters from all the recognizable Nintendo franchises in one fighting game series, it might be handy to take a few deep breaths before playing.

== In order for Nightmare Fuel tabs to survive, a new writing style is going to be used, nicknamed Example Lobotomy. Basic rules: just list facts as they are, don't just say "character X" or "the X scene" (such zero context examples will be Zapped), spoiler policy to be determined on a case-by-case basis, italics to be applied to works' names only and not to give emphasis on what tropers say. "X scared me" is already implied by the mere addition of that example by the troper. ==

"Zelda: Wait... what about the audience?
 * In the first Super Smash Bros, players fight constantly against their fellow creations, killing them all, ultimately annihilating the creator, who had been sadistically forcing you to fight for his own dark amusement. All this knowing that he was the only thing giving you life, turning the whole thing into an extended quest to die, and essentially lecturing the players about how awesome the "Cool vs. Awesome Mascot Fighting" really is. That, or the game's plot is about a kid playing with his toys, and the last boss is the kid using his hand to represent a "big villain".
 * Metal Mario never says a word, he doesn't even flinch when hit, and worst of all, he never runs: he does Unflinching Walk towards the player, not seen as a menace.
 * In the Kirby games, the eponymous protagonist inhales the opponent and swallows it. In the Smash Bros games, he doesn't. The fact he restricts himself in order to "play by the rules", in turn, makes his abilities in his native series worse in comparison.
 * Brawl's Link has an alternate costume that turns him into Dark Link, with black clothes, gray skin, and red eyes: pretty standard fare. Doing the same with Toon Link's big, cat-like eyes results in the freaky page image seen above.
 * Similarly, Pit has a "fallen angel" costume, who ultimately resulted in an actual Dark Pit in Kid Icarus Uprising.
 * In the Subspace Emissary game, Brawl's "Adventure" mode, there is a room in the Halberd Interior level in which the player character passes through a room with nothing in it bar unreachable glass cages that appear above and below him. Within these cages are various enemies that you encounter throughout the game, except for Mizzo. On the bottom row of cages, second to the right, there is this enemy that appears nowhere else in the game. It's just stuck in there.
 * The Armights fly out of the background with a creepy Evil Laugh when they appear. An Armight appears to be some sort of mutated, blue-skinned, dismembered head with two pointy tentacles and a Roman helmet. Funny mustaches aside.
 * Floows: floating, shadowy, wraith-like creatures with beady, red eyes that follows the player everywhere and regenerates as fast as they can be damaged; their main attack is to stand in place and let out a ghastly, tortured shriek as hundreds of smaller ghosts fly out of its body. The bio on its Trophy say it harbours "pent-up resentment" and "one part sadness, one part madness".
 * Puppits: corpse-like things with really long claws that just hang lifelessly from a string until they come across the poor unsuspecting character in their way, then they start attacking like crazy. Their trophy description points out that "nobody knows what's on the other end of the string".
 * Shaydas are giant black entities with big swords for arms.
 * Captain Falcon's Final Smash knocks a couple of characters near him onto an F-Zero track, where they look up to see Captain Falcon racing towards them in his Blue Falcon, which crashes into them and sends them flying. Anyone sensitive to real-life car accidents are better off not thinking about that one too much.
 * Mr. Game & Watch's Final Smash involves him turning into a giant octopus that hovers around with its undulating tentacles, with a constant ominous and unnatural humming sound throughout the whole thing.
 * When Pit summons Palutena's Army, the Centurions actually die after striking the enemy, as pointed out by the trophy: "their deaths are not in vain".
 * Even without prior knowledge of the Mother/EarthBound series, the boss battle against Porky is scary, either for the spider robot or for the boy in question - Porky - trapped inside it, apparently screaming; in fact, the entire Ruined Zoo level seemed to be slight-to-extreme Nightmare Fuel, because of how it contrasts with the brightness of the SSB world, and starts with Lucas from MOTHER 3 chased by unstoppable Pig King statue. Prior knowledge of both Porky from Earthbound and the actual Ruined Zoo from the first MOTHER, if added to the picture, makes it worse.
 * Wario's part in that level is what makes him, for the first time, a believably frightening villain.
 * The fight between  in the Subspace Emissary has
 * Playing in stamina mode: instead of knocking fighters off the stage, you just beat them down until their HP drops to 0. The final hit is rendered in slow motion with the loser letting out a Death Cry Echo, and then their lifeless bodies just lie there on the field.
 * Fighting Master Hand is not entirely unlike one's action figures trying to kill one's hand; Crazy Hand, on the other hand, is creepier, since it idles spastically, has a few oddly creepy attacks, and is a tough boss, since it almost always brings Master Hand along.
 * Speaking of which, probably one of the worst original BGMs to ever come from the franchise is the Lonely Piano Piece playing right after defeating the Hand in the original N64 title. The so-called "Game Clear" music is indeed a lonely piano piece, but a horribly demented and off-key one, at that. Essentially, Pyrrhic Victory in musical form.
 * Tabuu: floating digital ghost, borderline SNK Boss with highly damaging attacks, including his signature, which can kill you in one hit on standard difficulty. This guy controlled  though chains of light planted beneath his skin, hence the "bleeding to death" bit mentioned above.
 * The scene near the end where the heroes have finally fought their way to the heart of Subspace, with Mario leading them, ready for the final battle: . Their Mass Oh Crap is rendered in slow motion for added drama.
 * Giga Bowser's introduction in Melee. Just after getting to the end of Adventure Mode and beating Bowser, Bowser's trophy suddenly lurches back on stage with a loud thud, and then mutates into a colossal, far more vicious-looking, SNK Boss version of Bowser. And his transformation ends with a silent roar, complete with Glowing Eyes of Doom that freezes in frame while the actual fight starts loading.
 * Said "more unsettling version of the Final Destination theme" also makes an appearance for Bowser and King Dedede's battle in the Subspace Emissary. Which really makes sense, considering the main theme of Melee is remixed from the Bowser stage music in Super Mario 64.
 * In the Smash Bros. Brawl world, apparently, all the main characters are trophies that exist to fight and nothing else. Thus implying parallels between Super Smash Bros and the Norse legend of Valhalla, an afterlife where heroes get to beat each other up for fun for all eternity, without having to worry about things like death and grevious injury.
 * At the beginning, the arena gets nuked with a Subspace Bomb, which basically pulls that part of the world into another dimension for Tabuu to do whatever he wants with. The characters flee before it is bombed, and the arena reappears later in the Subspace Maze for a boss fight, but nobody seems to care about rescuing the audience: nevermind the Inferred Holocaust to the R.O.B.s who got sucked into Subspace.
 * This was lampshaded by Mikey Wolf in her SSE Parody, and in The DubSpace Emissary:

Kirby Notorious K.R.B.: Who gives a shit?"


 * Giant, purple, yellow-eyed Diddy Kong, another borderline SNK Boss not unlike Tabuu himself on the higher levels.
 * Shaydas has two heads, each with glowing red eyes, a glowing pink thing in its chest, blades for hands, and it's made of Shadow Bugs, which make up Mr. Game and Watch.
 * The scene titled "Ganondorf Takes Command".  Of course, the ensuing awesomeness as the Ancient Minister   sort of mitigates this.
 * Donkey Kong smashes a Koopa to the ground at one point, and then you see pieces of the shell flying all over. While shells are worn in the Marioverse, here it seems more like Donkey Kong crushed his spine.
 * Pikachu stuffed into a jar and electrocuted, used as a source of electricity.
 * Bombeds decapitate themselves to attack, and then run around like a beheaded chicken until they grow a new head and repeat everything all over again. Their heads are bombs.
 * Some theories as to just how
 * Luigi's Final Smash: the "You cannot grasp the true form of Luigi" attack.
 * Samus getting worfed by Ridley: grabbed and scraped against the wall. It is fairly striking in its sheer brutality.
 * Apparently, according to the SSBB Website, R.O.B's homeland was unable to be restored like the rest of the world, and R.O.B. is now the Last of His Kind.
 * Bytan looks like a mutant Poké Ball with a sharp-toothed grin, and reproduces by popping another Bytan out of its eyeball. They form huge, terrible swarms.
 * Bucculus hides in the ground so you can't get at it until it attacks and often won't notice it until it ambushes you, and drains the life out of you with giant spiky lips.
 * Hacks and moveset swapping.
 * The save points in the Great Maze. The background is desolate, and the sky is ripping apart to reveal the eerie darkness that is Subspace. The music sounds like you're in a Super Smash Bros. version of Hell, with a slow, unsettling rearrangement of the opening theme on top of it. The Great Maze and Subspace in general are pretty much Nightmare Fuel.
 * Game Modding for Brawl has lead us to lotsa skins for every character. However, the Mickey Mouse costume for Lucario stands out.
 * The Electroplankton stage, especially when it's paused, what with 2D characters, Super Drowning Skills-ish water, lack of music aside from that made by Hanenbows.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome is a staple of the series, but the Game Over succeds way too well at creating atmosphere with its Scare Chord: yet another reason for players to not screw up.
 * The Brinstar Depths stage is a giant piece of space debris that could be altered by a giant Lizard alien in lava.
 * Norfair in SSBB has lava plumes and occasional lava run-off appearing on left or right taking that portion of the screen.
 * The conversation with the Colonel if Snake uses the radio successfully while facing Luigi. They begin with discussing Luigi's second banana status but eventually move on to Luigi's magic powers. Suddenly the Colonel trails off and starts chanting "Lalulelilo... lalulelilo...": so either the Colonel is actually, or Luigi just took over his mind. Creepy either way.
 * The Ice Climber's freeze glitch in SSBM tend to leave the frozen character in very awkward positions.
 * Lip's Stick: it causes a plant to grow out of someone's skull as it causes them agony. Look up Cordyceps and their effect on insects - the concept is the same.
 * Zooming in on Daisy's trophy from the back in Melee reveals a glitchy, deformed eye on the back of her head.
 * For added Fridge Horror about the already scary Subspace levels, saving all characters isn't mandatory. It's up to the player to decide if one character deserves to be left lifeless forever or not.
 * When Link and Zelda revive Ganondorf in SSE, he seems to be recovering from the beatdown Bowser laid on him (he's groaning and holding his head like it got hurt really badly). This implies that the trophy characters feel any pain they receive in trophy form.
 * Mr. Game and Watch has no concept of right or wrong and is able to be controlled by just about anyone, and is totally willing to go along with it no matter how mistreated his kind is, similarly to Wreck-Gar's Transformers Animated incarnation.
 * Aside from the Dedede Brooches, trophies cannot self-revive. And I Must Scream ensues if somebody ever falls in battle to someone who won't revive them, or worse, decides to either hide their trophy or keep it as an actual trophy because they hate them that much (or are that much of a Jerkass). And some of the earlier villains are implied to be in the second category, such as Wario.
 * It's not technically And I Must Scream because they're not conscious, but they could be sealed in a trophy-can for a very long time...