Super Smash Bros. Invitation Letter

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Published September 29, 2026

Super Smash Bros. Invitation Letter is a Nintendo advertising trope where fighters learn they've made the roster via a handwritten envelope, first shown when Villager got the call in a June 2013 Wii U trailer. Fans turned the framing into a running gag with photoshops and comics that put wishlist characters, and eventually characters from anime and other franchises, on the receiving end of the letter.

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Overview

The Super Smash Bros. Invitation Letter template plays off a bit Nintendo used in its own trailers, where a new fighter is shown discovering a fancy sealed envelope with the Smash logo, opens it, and reacts to being drafted into the roster3. Fans took that beat and ran with it, drawing their preferred picks opening the letter, or drawing rejected picks staring sadly at an empty mailbox1.

Most entries stick with the same visual grammar: the character, the envelope with wax seal, and a punchline about who did or didn't make the cut. The gag hit its stride during the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate reveal cycle, when every new fighter announcement gave artists a fresh excuse to redraw the moment5. The joke also stretched well past Nintendo, with anime and manga characters shown getting invited in wishful photoshops6.

Origin & Background

Platform
YouTube (Nintendo trailer) / Reddit and Twitter (fan spread)
Date
2013

The invitation letter first showed up in Nintendo's June 11th, 2013 reveal for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, where Villager from Animal Crossing is seen opening the envelope and reading his invitation before joining the fight3. Nintendo produced the trailer, so the trope itself is a marketing bit, not a fan creation, which is why the meme's creator is best listed as Unknown5.

The day after the trailer aired, DeviantArt user eltoNNNNNN uploaded a clean painting of the envelope with its wax seal, an asset that later got reused as a base layer for fan edits4. That standalone envelope image gave the community an easy template to drop other characters into once the parody wave started.

How It Spread

The parodies really picked up in 2018, when the drip-feed of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate reveals had fans redrawing the invitation scene for each new fighter5. On June 18th, 2018, Redditor Zsar_Salad posted a comic to r/smashbros imagining Daisy opening her letter, which cleared 5,200 points on the subreddit1.

After the pre-DLC roster was locked in, Twitter user @KrazyBonesTV posted a comic on November 6th, 2018 showing Mario consoling Banjo-Kazooie that there was still a chance at getting in, picking up more than 480 retweets and 3,100 likes2. Banjo was later added as DLC in 2019, which gave the comic a second life as a callback.

The template spilled outside Nintendo fandom too. In late 2018, Redditor banana_in_your_donut posted to r/Animemes about wanting Goblin Slayer added to Smash using the letter format6, and Redditor 1st_General_Waffles photoshopped Jotaro from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure receiving his invitation in a post that pulled more than 3,200 points on the same subreddit7.

Frequently Asked Questions