7 Video Game Fan Theories Confirmed By The Creators

6. The Characters Are Just Toys - Smash Bros.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate
Nintendo

The Smash games were clearly never meant to be taken seriously from a story and lore perspective. The whole point is for players to enjoy their favourite gaming characters being (s)mashed together, without thinking too hard about the rules and plots of the fighters' separate universes.

But where there's a large fanbase, there's rigorous dissection, thorough discussion, and, of course, lots and lots of fan theories - and Smash is no different.

One of the most popular theories is that within each of the Smash games, the characters you play as are just children's toys controlled by an imaginative kid (like The LEGO Movie). It sounds odd, but there's actually evidence to support this, such as boss battles against the giant white Master Hand. A human hand, perhaps?

Eventually, Nintendo legend Satoru Iwata confirmed that the characters are toys in an interview with Time, stating that the games "do not represent the Nintendo characters fighting against one another", and mentioning that the team hotly debated this topic during development:

"They actually represent toys of Nintendo characters getting into an imaginary battle amongst themselves... And frankly that has to do with a very serious debate that we had within the company back then, which was, ‘Is it really okay for Nintendo characters to be hitting other Nintendo characters? Is it okay for Mario to be hitting Pikachu?'”

And no, it's not okay for Mario to be hitting Pikachu. But hitting Kirby? That's okay.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!