Hidden Details: Royal Belly (Patreon)

I don't wanna toot my own horn or anything, but I think I'm killing it with these titles. Royal Belly is a play on Royal Jelly, a special type of liquid bees produce to feed the larvae. And since King K. Rool is royalty with a huge belly that floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee, I thought it was pretty fitting.

Also: little disclaimer: I don't know if King K. Rool's belly is actually armor or his real belly. I don't really care, I just thought joking about it was funny. I also know Mega Man is a robot and he most probably doesn't look like that underneath his blue armor.

Let's get into the hidden details!

In the first panel, Ganondorf is shaving in the background. This is a reference to his new design. He lost his beard along the way from Smash for Wii U/3DS to Ultimate:

He also has the glowing scar from Twilight Princess on his chest! He has that scar in Brawl and Smash for Wii U/3DS but it's absent in Ultimate. I think it's still there, but underneath his new armor. Would be pretty stupid to tear a hole in a new piece of armor to show of a glowing scar/weak point, right?

King K. Rool's towel just so happens to be the exact same color as his cape, which he isn't wearing in this comic. I did this to give him just a dash of recognizability to prevent viewers from thinking he's a random Kremling, without his crown and everything.

Sheik is among the characters taking a shower in the first panel! I posted this panel to Instagram on Monday and you won't believe how many messages I got telling me that Sheik is actually a woman. Her being there is, of course, a reference to the confusion about Sheik's gender way back in the day when Ocarina of Time was just released. Nintendo even calls Sheik a "he" in Ultimate a few times, so I just wanted to make fun about the ongoing discussion we just can't seem to escape.

Next to Sheik is the Inkling Boy, using his new umbrella to keep from getting wet. Inklings die when they touch water, so it's probably a good idea for him to protect himself. An even better idea would be not even entering the showers, but ok. The umbrella he is holding is the present he got during Everyone is Celebrating:

I almost deleted the Inkling Boy from this panel, because it felt a bit weird to have a kid among grown men in the shower. But in the end, I realized it's a fictional half-squid character and the other characters are imaginary as well and I decided not to be too prudish.

Captain Falcon is washing his hair, but since we've never seen Captain Falcon without his helmet, I can't just suddenly decide how his face looks, that's up to Nintendo. So I let him keep his helmet on in the shower. He's now washing his helmet instead of his hair, but I thought that only made it better.

Another character that dies in water: Sonic! I gave him a cute little yellow raincoat that makes him look pretty adorable, in my opinion. I also could have included Charizard and/or Incineroar but they wouldn't look as cute in a raincoat, so I went with Sonic.

And that's it for this week's hidden details! To be honest, I expected more, probably because this comic took quite a while to finish. Maybe I'm missing stuff I forgot I included along the way. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the few that I did remember to reveal!

Have a great weekend, see you next week!

Cheers,

- Abel