What is Smash Players Saying "Kazuya Mishima"?

A running gag in the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate competitive scene where players say "Kazuya Mishima" out loud after taking a stock, mimicking the deep-voiced Tekken-style win-screen call that only Kazuya uses in the game.

Where did Smash Players Saying "Kazuya Mishima" come from?

It appears to have started among Japanese competitive players and went public at the Summit IV invitational in March 2022, after @AaronFGC tweeted that Tea said the line each time he took a stock.

What does Smash Players Saying "Kazuya Mishima" mean?

There is no literal meaning; it is a deadpan brag that reuses Kazuya's win-screen voice line as a stock-take callout even when the speaker is piloting a different fighter, as Protobanham did while playing Min Min.

How do you use Smash Players Saying "Kazuya Mishima"?

Say "Kazuya Mishima" in a deep voice after taking a stock, ideally while playing someone other than Kazuya, or edit the phrase into Kazuya's voice clips the way @Dimichi1 did in a widely shared mod.

Is Smash Players Saying "Kazuya Mishima" still popular?

The bit peaked during Summit IV in March 2022 and lives on in Smash community edits and copypastas, including @NUTradewar's Flying Lotus riff from that same month.

Smash Players Saying "Kazuya Mishima"

2022catchphrasesemi-active

Published October 28, 2026

Smash Players Saying "Kazuya Mishima" is a bit in the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate competitive scene where players recite the fighter Kazuya's Tekken-style win-screen line after taking a stock, no matter which character they are using. Japanese pros Tea and Protobanham turned it into a running gag at the March 2022 Summit IV invitational, and within days Twitter modders had edited every one of Kazuya's voice clips to speak the phrase.

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Overview

Kazuya's win-screen line is the one spot in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate where the regular announcer steps aside for a deep-voiced delivery lifted straight from the Tekken series4. Players seized on the oddity by saying the full name out loud each time they knocked an opponent off stage, regardless of which fighter they were piloting. Clips of Japanese competitors deadpan muttering "Kazuya Mishima" between neutral exchanges carried the appeal, with the line reading as a quiet brag5.

The bit works best when the speaker is not playing Kazuya, because the words then have no in-game justification. Twitter edits soon stretched it into character mods and copypastas that let the voice line stand in for every Kazuya audio cue6.

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Origin & Background

Platform

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate competitive scene / Twitter (viral spread)

Date

2022

The practice traces back to the Japanese competitive scene and surfaced in the West during Summit IV, an invitational that put Japanese standouts Tea and Protobanham in the same player house as English-speaking pros. On March 2, 2022, player @AaronFGC tweeted that Tea said "Kazuya Mishima" every time he took one of AaronFGC's stocks in friendlies1. Four days later, caster @TKBreezy posted that the Japanese players were doing it with no provocation at all and called it "the funniest shit"2.

How It Spread

Co-caster Coney backed up the account on the same day, noting that Protobanham said "Kazuya Mishima" after taking a stock from Light while playing Min Min, not Kazuya3. The gag stuck through Summit IV; after Protobanham upset MKLeo with Min Min and Lucina, the commentary desk fed him the line and he fired it right back4. Tea later posted friendlies footage of himself and MKLeo in which he slipped the words into neutral between exchanges7.

Outside the venue, the joke moved to Twitter mods and copypastas. On March 10, 2022, @willy_crescent showed off a mod by @Dimichi1 that replaces every one of Kazuya's in-game voice clips with the win-screen phrase, drawing more than 770 retweets and 4,200 likes4. @NUTradewar had already remixed the Flying Lotus Copypasta around Tea on March 6, 2022, writing the names Tea and "Kazuya Mishima" into the template6.

Timeline

2022-03-02

Player @AaronFGC tweets that Japanese competitor Tea says "Kazuya Mishima" every time he takes one of his stocks in friendlies at Summit IV.

2022-03-06

Caster @TKBreezy posts that the Japanese players are reciting the line unprompted, and Coney confirms Protobanham did it while playing Min Min against Light.

2022-03-06

@NUTradewar posts a Flying Lotus Copypasta riff built around Tea and the "Kazuya Mishima" bit.

2022-03-10

@willy_crescent showcases a Kazuya voice mod by @Dimichi1 that replaces every clip with the win-screen phrase, drawing over 4,200 likes.

How to Use This Meme

Players typically recite "Kazuya Mishima" out loud right after knocking an opponent off stage, in the deep delivery of the Tekken win-screen voice. The common convention is to do it while piloting a character other than Kazuya, since the mismatch is what sells the joke. Online, people often edit the phrase into Kazuya's voice files or splice it into copypastas about specific pros.