Hidden Details: Painchu (Patreon)

Hey everyone, welcome back! I've made yet another comic filled to the brim with hidden details. And a Pichu that likes to whip himself. Drawing that felt weird.

Luckily, as usual, the hidden details and jokes seemed to hide the terrible joke and people seemed to like the comic.

The following are the hidden references and things you may have missed!

The pattern on Sakurai's shirt changes in every frame. A trained eye will notice they are logo's from different Nintendo franchises, but what nobody seemed to notice I only included franchises that were represented in the original Smash Bros for Nintendo 64 (Mario, Donkey Kong, Link, Metroid, F-Zero, Earthbound, Yoshi, Kirby, Star Fox and Pokémon). That just a little nod to the "original twelve".

Waluigi is standing outside in the rain, not being allowed into the exclusive club of Sakurai's Smash fighters.

Bayonetta and Zero Suit Samus are admiring Simon Belmont's body. I don't know, I just wanted to fill up the space in that panel and I drew this. It's a bit of an easy joke and I'm not very proud of it, but some people seemed to like it.

If you look closely to the bottom right corner in the first panel, you'll see that Mario is still wearing his neck brace from last week's comic! Consistency is my middle name!

But my personal favorite of this comic is Sakurai's freakishly long left arm in the first panel. Fun fact: I drew this comic in a hurry. I was working so stressfully that I actually completely forgot Sakurai's mutant arm. I only saw it again when someone on Reddit pointed it out and it actually made me laugh out loud. My own joke. I might have some narcissistic tendencies.

I might be wrong, but while I was researching stuff for this comic, I think I saw some small mentions of a meme/piece of headcanon that Richter Belmont and Kirby are best friends. I think people think a friendship like that would be pretty adorable and I have to agree with them. Which is why I made Kirby angry in the second panel. He sides with his best friend and doesn't like Simon making accusations like that.

Pichu has chosen he likes to be known as "Blackrose", as you can see on his door. Nobody knows, though, that Blackrose isn't just a name I made up. It used to be the old MSN name of Felicia Kiessling, one of our interns a year ago. We all thought edgy teenage online names were hilarious and hers took the cake, so from time to time we joke about Blackrose.

The Stussy S once again appears in this comic. If you've been following us for a while, you'll know that this S has popped up in a LOT of previous comics. I think it's more fun if you go searching for them so I won't reveal all the Stussy S locations here.

And lastly, I once again went all out with fake band posters in the last panel. I did this once before with the Game of Thrones comic about the Night King and Viserion, but the theme was Pokémon/Nintendo now so I'm not EXACTLY copying myself. Link-182 is, of course, based on Blink-182. Yellowzard is Yellowcard, Joltic at the Disco is Panic at the Disco, Paramorelull is Paramore.

In hindsight, I confused a few subcultures in this comic. I thought the emo scene was most often connected to self-harm, but I later realized that's another form of self-harm than the one Pichu is inducing in in this comic. Pichu is clearly into bondage/bdsm, which is inflicting pain on yourself for sexual arousal. But bondage/bdsm isn't exactly a subculture so I'd have trouble decorating his room without the emo theme.

Ugh, I can't believe I'm writing about an emo Pichu that's into bondage. Oh how far I've fallen.

See you next week.

- Abel