Smash Bros.’ fighters are toys in a child’s imagination
The strange premise behind Super Smash Bros. is that its famous fighters aren’t literally gathering to battle in their own worlds. The original game’s opening presents them as collectible figures: a hand takes them from a toy chest and sets them on a stage. Creator Masahiro Sakurai has described the characters in this toy-like way, framing the clashes as play rather than events in the characters’ official stories.
That idea gives the series room to bring wildly different characters together without requiring a shared history. Mario, Link, and Pikachu can face off because the setting works like a child’s playroom: the figures can be rearranged, matched up, and made to fight according to the player’s imagination.
The hand is part of the conceit
The hand that moves the figures in the opening belongs to Master Hand, a recurring opponent. It is more than a boss with an unusual design: it makes visible the idea that someone outside the toy world is arranging the action. The player does the same thing, choosing the fighters, stage, and rules.
There is a faintly unsettling edge to that setup. The characters appear to battle, fall off platforms, and get knocked out, but the framing treats the violence as pretend play—not as a permanent event in their home universes. The chaos is possible because the fighters are toys: they can be made to clash, then set aside, without rewriting the stories they came from.
