Sora In 'Super Smash Brothers'

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What Disney shows/movies do you remember watching between Oct. 5, 2021 - Oct. 18, 2021 (Oct. 6, 2021 - Oct. 19, 2021 on eastern time zones) on either TV or the internet, whether original or acquired by Disney?

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About

Sora In Super Smash Brothers refers to persistent speculation that Sora, the protagonist of the Kingdom Hearts series of video games, will be added as a fighter into a Super Smash Brothers video game. While there was never evidence to support the speculation, those who believed Sora would be included have argued that his fighting moves demonstrated in the Kingdom Hearts series and the Kingdom Hearts series' high popularity made Sora a strong contender to be included as a fighter. Speculation ramped up with the release of DLC (downloadable content) characters for Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, particularly in advance of the October 5th, 2021 announcement of the final Smash fighter, where it was confirmed that Sora would be added as the final fighter in Ultimate.

Origin

Speculation that Sora could join the Smash roster began after the announcement of Smash Wii U and Smash 3DS (commonly referred to as Super Smash Brothers 4) at the 2011 E3. On June 10th, 2011, forum poster Monkey posted a thread on khinsider^[1] for people to voice their opinions about why Sora should or shouldn't be added to the roster.

Spread

Similar threads appeared on forums over the following several years. On August 5th, 2012, Smashboards^[2] user Altais posted a thread arguing why Sora should be included in Smash. On June 3rd, 2014, Gamekoop^[3] published an article arguing why Sora would be a good fit for Smash, arguing his moveset in Kingdom Hearts would translate well in Super Smash Brothers. Sora was included in the fan game Super Smash Flash 2 (shown below).

Sora was a common subject of Smash 4 Character Announcement Parodies (examples shown below).

Super Smash Brothers Ultimate

After Super Smash Brothers 4 did not include Sora in the roster, the announcement of Super Smash Brothers Ultimate reignited speculation that Sora would soon join the cast, particularly with some surprising character announcements such as Daisy, Ridley and later often-requested DLC picks like Banjo and Kazooie, Steve from Minecraft and Sans (as a Mii skin).

Speculation that Sora could be included in Smash Ultimate ramped up ahead of the October 5th, 2021 announcement of the final DLC character to be added to the game.^[3] On October 4th, Inverse^[4] published an article reviewing the logistical evidence for and against Sora's inclusion. In the pro-column, they discussed an internet rumor that started on 4chan from an anon who stated he worked at Disney Music and that Nintendo had asked Disney for several tracks for a 'digital event' on October 5th.^[5]

Debate

The inclusion of Sora has been a topic of intense debate among Smash fans. Pro-Sora fans believe his move-set translates well to Smash, making him a perfect fit for the roster, while anti-Sora fans believe his connection to Disney IPs could eliminate him from contention, plus the roster already has many sword-based fighters.^[3]

Update

The Reveal

On October 5th, 2021, Sora was announced to be the final fighter in Super Smash Brothers Ultimate. The event livestream kicked off with the video reveal, which was also posted to the official GameStop^[6] YouTube channel, earning over 500,000 views in 5 hours (shown below).

After the reveal trailer, Masahiro Sakurai showed Sora's alternate costumes, which are the default outfit from Kingdom hearts 1, 2, 3D: Dream Drop Distance, and 3, as well as the Valor, Wisdom, Master, and Timeless River outfits from Kingdom hearts 2. Each alternate costume features a different pose that is from the game it came from (shown below).