Hidden Details: Wahssist Trophy (Patreon)

Phew. While I was drawing this week's comic, I kinda lost myself. I'm such a huge Smash fan, and I'm so familiar with all the jokes and memes of the Smash community I kept noticing new places to hide all sorts of references. That's a good thing, of course, but that also means this blog is going to be pretty lengthy. I hope I can hold your attention all the way trough. Here goes!

First things first. Some of you might have noticed Sakurai looks a bit... off in this comic. He didn't look like that, originally. But when this comic was about halfway done, I realized I really loved "super stereotype anime Sakurai" from our Sakurai/Hype Train short. So I made an important decision: from that moment on, every time I'd draw Sakurai, I'd make him look like an anime character. Because let's be honest, Sakurai IS an anime character. And that's why he looks so weird in this comic.

Next up, we have the billboard behind Sakurai's desk, which is pinned absolutely full with memes and references. Let's break the board up an upper part and a lower part. I'll go through them from left to right.

First up, there's a bunch of "possible newcomers" Sakurai is apparently considering for Smash Ultimate. Tony (cereal) and Boss Baby are based on a hilarious video by videogamedunkey. So that's just a reference to one of the funniest YouTubers (in my opinion). To honor Dunkey even more, I even included him as a possible newcomer.

Next up, there's Home Depot. Yes, the American home improvement retailing company Home Depot. I guess this one requires some explanation. The meme of Home Depot being a playable character in Smash originated in this Reddit thread from 4 years ago. Reddit user /u/SexyOmlet told the sub "I once had a dream I was playing and there were two newcomers. Dry Bones and I shit you not, Home Depot was playable. I don't even know why". Hence, the meme was born.

Next up, I put myself in there! I figured the time was right for some greasy, slick, shameless self promotion, so there. I'm in Smash Ultimate, bitches.

Next, Kojima. As in: Hideo Kojima. I have no idea why I put him up on that board, honestly. Probably because he'd make a great Smash character. If you don't know who Hideo Kojima is: he's a legendary game designer who created the Metal Gear Solid series and is now working on Death Stranding.

And that leaves us with Omar (the Wire). Omar is a pretty badass character from HBO series The Wire and he appeared in one of my dreams as a Smash character a while ago. So there's literally nobody who could have gotten this reference, since I never told anybody about that dream. But now, you are one of the lucky enlightened ones ;)

Next to the possible newcomers, there's a little sheet of paper showing how many new amiibo's every region is getting. amiibo are notoriously rare, especially some of them. So, as an amiibo collector, I decided to express my frustration with this piece of paper. Looks like the situation won't exactly improve, with Europe only getting 2 new amiibo in total.

To the right of that piece of paper, there's a picture of Solid Snake's butt. Solid Snake was a playable character in Super Smash Bros Brawl for the Wii, and after almost 10 years, he's finally back. But his butt is a lot less… round. Here's a tweet about the notorious nerf of Snake's butt:

Ha, look at this wall of text. And we've barely scratched the surface. Let's move on to the lower part of the billboard.

The leftmost piece of paper shows a made up date of the next Nintendo Direct (Nintendo's online press conference shows): August 9th. I don't have any inside information, I just picked a random date that might be kinda logical for Nintendo to use as a Nintendo Direct date. I do hope I guessed right though, that would be hilarious!

Right behind Sakurai is a poster that has been adorned with pictures of a woman and a kid, as well as Kirby. This is a direct copy of the famous "do it for her" poster from the Simpsons:

The original text read "Don't forget, you're here forever", but Homer has stuck pictures of him and Maggie over some of the letters, forming the sentence "Do it for her", to give him strength to keep doing his horrible job. I thought Sakurai might be a bit similar to Homer Simpson in this scenario: the man is known to be a huge workaholic. I don't know if he has any kids, but I know he has a wife. So in my/Sakurai's version of the "Don't forget, you're here forever" poster, he has put on pictures of his wife, his son and his personal creation, Kirby. With a little help of a sharpie, he has converted the threatening text to "Do it for them". Sakurai's wife and son are taken directly from the short I mentioned before! Yay, cross-Wooden Plank-appearances!

To the right of that, there's a little post it with "Reminder: nerf Greninja" written on it, along with a doodle of the frog Pokémon. This is another Smash Bros meme. After Smash for Wii U/3DS came out, Greninja, which happens to be my main, received a number of seemingly random nerfs, since the character wasn't overpowered to begin with.

With that, we're finally done with the billboard! Let's move on quickly, shall we?

If you look closely, you'll notice Sakurai is wearing a weird nametag, with a weird picture of a big black dude. His name also changes between panels, to "Samurai" and "Sack 'o Rye". More memes. The first one, the black dude, is a meme that exists because this guy appears when you Google "Masahiro Sakurai". I hereby invite you to try! He's often called "Blackurai" or "Big Ni🅱🅱a Sakurai". Absurd, but quite hilarious.

The other meme I'm referencing here is the tradition of completely Butchering Sakurai's name, which is very popular in the Smash community. A few examples are Massive Hero Soccer Guy, Mashed Potato Sack of Rye, et cetera.

On Sakurai's desk, there's a picture of Pit, the main character from Kid Icarus and Kid Icarus Uprising (which was directed by Sakurai), with a little heart. Awww. Sakurai loves his creations.

In the second panel, if you look closely, you can already spoil the joke of te comic by barely making out "Newcomer: Inkling" by guessing the letters you only see the top part of.

Wonder what Sakurai says here? I literally went to Google Translate, entered the word "disgusting" and copy pasted the result. Funny side note, Google Translate has changed the translation since then. The translation I get now, while checking for this blog, seems to be "that which you dislike". Hahaha.

In the second panel, Pit has disappeared from the frame on Sakurai's desk, and he's been replaced by the words "LITERALLY EVERY FIRE EMBLEM CHARACTER EVER". This is a reference to the fact that Sakurai seems to love Fire Emblem characters, since he puts a lot of them in Smash. Smash Bros for Wii U/3DS and Smash Ultimate already have six: Marth, Roy, Lucina, Robin, Ike, and Corrin.

We've finally arrived at the last panel! Behind Janitor Waluigi, F.L.U.D.D. (Flash Liquidizer Ultra Dousing Device) is lying on the ground. F.L.U.D.D. is Mario's sidekick in Super Mario Sunshine. In that game, he can use it to clean paint and goo by spraying it with water. My original idea for the comic was to have Waluigi use F.L.U.D.D. to clean up the mess the Inklings made, but later on, I had two objections to my own idea. One: F.L.U.D.D. is Mario's thing, not Waluigi's. Two: F.L.U.D.D. would make Waluigi's humiliating work a lot easier and even fun. So, I gave Waluigi a sidekick of his own: M.O.P.P. M.O.P.P. stands for "Mildly Operative Purification Piece".

Also, Waluigi's trademark upside-down L on his hat has been replaced with a J. As a matter of fact, his whole outfit has been replaced by a professional janitor outfit. A Redditor asked me why the J isn't upside-down. I don't know the answer to that. Shame on me.

And lastly, the hidden detail I'm most proud of! There are shapes of Pokémon hidden in the sky in the last panel. And not any Pokémon! No sir, these are all the Pokémon that appear as hovering battlegrounds in the Poké Floats stage which appeared in Super Smash Bros Melee. I should hate that stage because of all the appearing/disappearing stuff, but for some reason I've always thought it had this unique charm.

Phew.

I'm not sure if this is the longest Hidden Details blog yet, but it does feel like that, haha. Nevertheless: this was SO much fun to make. I love Smash, I love making Smash comics, I love you for supporting us. See you next week!!

- Abel