What if Ditto joined Super Smash Bros?

Pokopia did not suddenly make Ditto famous. It made Ditto playable.

Ditto might be one of the most recognisable Pokémon ever created, yet for most of its existence it would also have been one of the strangest serious suggestions for Super Smash Bros.

Pokémon #132 has been around since Pokémon Red and Green in 1996, armed with a face that requires roughly three pen strokes and one of the purest gimmicks in the entire franchise. Ditto rearranges its cellular structure, copies another creature and becomes whatever happens to be standing in front of it. Its traditional mainline learnset has reflected that simplicity with almost comic commitment.

Transform.

That is essentially the whole pitch.

As Pokémon character design, it is wonderful. As material for a fighting game character, it is considerably less cooperative. Pikachu arrives with electricity. Charizard has fire, claws and flight. Greninja brings an entire vocabulary of acrobatic Water attacks, while Lucario has Aura binding its identity together.

Ditto’s traditional combat identity begins with “stop being Ditto” and does not really progress from there.

You could certainly build a Smash gimmick around that, but the obvious interpretation immediately bumps into Kirby while creating a far nastier technical question underneath. Does Ditto need to inherit the abilities of every fighter in the game simply to justify having a roster slot of its own?

For decades, the answer barely needed serious consideration. Ditto had recognition, charm and enough meme status to survive virtually unchanged through generation after generation, but it rarely felt like a genuine roster candidate.

Then Pokémon Pokopia arrived on Nintendo Switch 2 in March 2026 and quietly solved a problem that had followed Ditto since the Game Boy.

It did not reinvent the Pokémon by throwing Transform away.

It gave Transform somewhere new to go.

The Pokémon That Was Always Somebody Else

Ditto’s unusual popularity has always been tied to the fact that it barely possesses a fixed identity at all.

The main series built its entire battle role around Transform, while the later Imposter Ability streamlined the process by letting Ditto copy an opponent as soon as it entered battle. Pokémon GO turned the same trick into an encounter gimmick, hiding Ditto inside seemingly ordinary catches until the capture was complete. The Trading Card Game has repeatedly played with copying and substitution, while Pokémon merchandise discovered years ago that almost any creature becomes funnier when you replace its expression with Ditto’s vacant eyes and tiny straight mouth.

There are few characters whose branding is quite so effectively built around impersonating everybody else.

That consistency is part of the appeal. Ditto has never needed an elaborate personality or a mountain of lore to stick in people’s heads; the joke works because the design is simple enough to survive being applied to virtually anything.

Yet the same idea which made Ditto culturally durable also kept it awkward whenever the conversation turned towards Smash.

Recognition was never the hurdle. Ask a casual Pokémon player to identify Ditto and there is a decent chance they will manage it before half the actual Smash roster.

The difficulty came afterwards.

Once Ditto had bounced onto Battlefield and looked cheerfully towards Mario, what exactly was it supposed to do?

Generation II accidentally made the situation even funnier. Breeding arrived with Pokémon Gold and Silver, where Ditto became the great exception to the usual compatibility rules, capable of breeding with almost every Pokémon that can produce an Egg regardless of gender.

Over subsequent generations, that practical usefulness only grew. Players chased strong-IV Ditto for competitive breeding, used Everstones and Destiny Knots to pass desirable traits, and sought foreign-language Ditto for Masuda Method shiny hunting.

For a substantial portion of Pokémon’s history, one of the original 151 became enormously useful to serious players without becoming any more interesting in an actual fight.

Ditto was effectively the Day Care employee of the month for several generations running.

The result was a peculiar reputation. Ditto was famous, useful and deeply embedded in Pokémon culture, but almost everything people associated with it involved becoming somebody else or helping somebody else exist.

Even its most enduring practical role happened outside battle.

It was difficult to imagine a better mascot for the phrase “supporting character”.

Which perhaps explains why Smash itself reached exactly the same conclusion.

Smash Already Tried Ditto

Ditto was originally planned as a Poké Ball Pokémon in Super Smash Bros. Melee. The idea was wonderfully straightforward: throw the Poké Ball, Ditto appears, transforms into the fighter who summoned it and joins the battle as an AI-controlled copy.

The feature was cut before release, although unused remnants remained in the finished game and its strategy guide still described what Ditto was supposed to do.

Nearly two decades later, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate finally completed the concept. Ditto can emerge from a Poké Ball, copy the summoning fighter and spend a short period helping them as a slightly purple duplicate.

It is a perfect cameo and, unintentionally, a perfect demonstration of why playable Ditto never seemed especially necessary.

Smash’s developers looked at the Pokémon twice and arrived at the same natural interpretation everybody else would.

Ditto becomes another fighter.

That is enough material for an item because the gag only needs to last for a short burst before the match moves on. Stretch the same concept across an entire character slot and the novelty begins turning into admin. Every new fighter potentially becomes additional Ditto work, the character’s usefulness changes depending on its opponent, and Kirby is sitting nearby wondering when copying people became such prestigious specialist employment.

There is some pleasing symmetry in the fact that Pokopia now offers a way around the problem.

Smash would no longer need to promote Ditto by simply turning its old Poké Ball behaviour into a playable character.

It could promote the Pokémon itself.

The classic Transform gimmick remains part of its history, and there is no reason to pretend Ultimate’s cameo never happened, but Ditto no longer needs another member of the roster to provide all the interesting bits.

Then Pokémon Pokopia Happened

Released exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2 on 5 March 2026, Pokémon Pokopia takes one of Pokémon’s oldest supporting creatures and puts it at the centre of an entire game.

Ditto transforms into a human-like form and settles into a life simulation built around restoring environments, meeting Pokémon, gathering resources, crafting objects and gradually turning a desolate landscape into somewhere worth living.

It is a gentle premise, particularly by Smash standards, but the important change is easy to miss if you only look at the gardening.

Ditto is the protagonist.

And protagonists require verbs.

Pokopia gives it plenty.

Ditto walks, jumps, explores and physically interacts with its surroundings, while Pokémon it befriends teach abilities that expand what it can do. Bulbasaur provides Leafage. Squirtle offers Water Gun. Other techniques and transformations unlock actions including Rock Smash, Surf, Rollout and Glide, with Dragonite letting Ditto cross wide aerial gaps. A free August 2026 update later added Dive, taking the same idea underwater.

These are still transformations, so the game has not suddenly forgotten what Pokémon Ditto is supposed to be.

The difference is that they are selective, learned and purposeful rather than opponent-dependent.

Sometimes Ditto changes completely into a learned Pokémon form. Sometimes an ability simply expands what it can do. Either way, Ditto is drawing from an established toolkit rather than requiring whatever happens to be standing opposite it to supply an identity.

That distinction seems small until you put it beside Smash.

Traditional Ditto copies an opponent and inherits their identity wholesale. Pokopia Ditto accumulates a toolkit. One approach practically demands a copy mechanic; the other offers a collection of fixed abilities that can be animated through transformations without changing how the fighter fundamentally works.

Suddenly, Ditto does not require the rest of the roster to make it interesting.

It can stretch, squash and reshape its own body for ordinary attacks, call upon a carefully chosen selection of learned Pokémon abilities when it needs something more specialised, and keep classic full-body Transform in reserve for a moment extravagant enough to deserve it.

That is arguably the first point in Ditto’s history where a complete Smash fighter begins to appear without somebody having to invent half of it.

Five Million Reasons Nintendo Might Care

A clever mechanical solution would only take Ditto so far if Pokopia had come and gone as an experimental spin-off.

Instead, the game quickly became one of the most striking early success stories of the Switch 2 era. Nintendo and The Pokémon Company announced that Pokopia had surpassed 2.2 million sales worldwide within its first four days. In August, the companies announced that worldwide sales had passed five million within the game’s first four months.

That is serious momentum for a life simulation starring a Pokémon whose previous career highlights largely involved breeding logistics and pretending to be other Pokémon.

The critical response has been similarly strong. At the time of writing, Pokopia holds an 89 Metascore, placing it among the highest-scoring Pokémon games on the site.

There is something inherently amusing about the idea that, after decades of Gym Leaders, Legendary Pokémon, apocalyptic villains and regional championships, one of Pokémon’s greatest critical successes would involve Ditto becoming vaguely person-shaped and doing some landscaping.

Apparently the secret ingredient was municipal improvement.

More importantly, that success changes the context around a hypothetical Smash appearance.

This would not be a case of excavating a thirty-year-old Pokédex entry because somebody had run out of newcomer ideas. Pokémon is currently fronting a major Switch 2 exclusive with Ditto as its protagonist, while Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have continued supporting the game through free updates and a three-part Expansion Pass.

The free Version 2.0.0 update added Dive in August, while Part 1 of the paid Expansion Pass, Bubbly Basin, opened an entirely new underwater town on 5 August. Part 2 is scheduled for late 2026, with Part 3 following in 2027.

That creates a very different roster argument from Crash Bandicoot’s long-running case for Smash. Crash carries enormous historical weight, but part of his difficulty is proving that a defining mascot from an earlier console era still demands a slot today. Ditto has the opposite luxury. The history was already there; Pokopia suddenly supplied the present tense.

Smash selections have never been governed by a clean sales spreadsheet, nor should they be, but timing has always shaped the roster. Greninja was selected while Pokémon X and Y represented the current generation. Incineroar followed Sun and Moon. Corrin famously arrived while Fire Emblem Fates was contemporary enough to ignite arguments on sight.

Ditto offers something Smash rarely gets from a Pokémon newcomer: the familiarity of a Generation I character attached to the commercial relevance of a current Nintendo platform release.

Nostalgia and recency are normally competing arguments.

Here, oddly enough, they are the same Pokémon.

Pokémon Does Not Exactly Need Another Fighter

There is, admittedly, one enormous obstacle which no amount of pink elasticity can squeeze around.

Pokémon already has a lot of fighters.

Pikachu, Pichu, Jigglypuff, Mewtwo, Pokémon Trainer, Lucario, Greninja and Incineroar collectively give the series one of the largest playable presences in Smash, before even considering Poké Balls, Spirits, stages, music and everything else surrounding them.

Any future game will also have newer generations demanding attention, including whichever species Nintendo considers best suited to represent Pokémon’s next major era.

Ditto would be competing with all of them.

Unlike several other characters in this Smash Speculation series, it does not arrive with years of organised roster campaigning behind it either. Waluigi’s endless Smash campaign has become part of the character’s wider identity at this point. Every new roster announcement seems to produce another round of purple-clad forensic analysis before the trailer has finished buffering.

Bandana Waddle Dee’s case is quieter but similarly established. Kirby fans have spent years arguing that the modern quartet has an obvious empty chair, and one small orange spear-bearer keeps hovering beside it.

Ditto has never inspired that kind of organised impatience.

Before Pokopia, even many committed Pokémon fans would probably have placed dozens of species ahead of it if asked to build a newcomer shortlist.

There is also the awkward business of its existing Poké Ball role. Smash has promoted supporting characters before, so that is hardly a prohibition, but Ditto’s old implementation immediately creates expectations about Transform.

Build the entire fighter around copying opponents and all the original problems return. Ignore Transform completely and the character risks feeling strangely disconnected from the gimmick that made it famous in the first place.

The convincing answer sits somewhere between those extremes.

Do not design classic Ditto and desperately squeeze Pokopia references around it.

Start with the protagonist of Pokopia, then let classic Ditto sit underneath.

Ordinary attacks can belong to the creature itself, taking advantage of a body that has never shown much respect for anatomy. More specialised tools can come from the learned abilities and transformations that structure exploration in Pokopia.

Full Transform then becomes special again rather than an obligation hanging over every second of the match.

Pokopia Solved the Moveset Problem

That approach produces a fighter with a surprisingly clear identity.

Ditto’s normal attacks can lean into elasticity: flattening limbs, enlarging hands, springing upwards, melting towards the floor and snapping back into shape. None of that requires another Pokémon to appear, which is important. Even with no transformation on screen, the player should still feel as though they are controlling Ditto rather than an anonymous vehicle for franchise references.

Pokopia can then supply the broader utility.

Water Gun provides straightforward ranged pressure. Surf creates momentum. Graveler’s Rollout gives Ditto a heavier transformation attack. Dragonite naturally handles horizontal recovery through Glide, while Leafage translates environmental manipulation into limited stage control. Dive offers an aggressive downward aerial.

The temptation would be to cram fifty Pokémon into the animations simply because Ditto technically allows it.

Resisting that temptation is exactly what gives the fighter an identity.

There is a useful parallel with Shadow the Hedgehog’s Smash problem. Shadow only becomes interesting once the design stops asking how closely he can imitate Sonic and starts asking what makes Shadow himself worth controlling. Ditto needs the same discipline in reverse. The character famous for becoming everybody else has to prove that a playable version would still be recognisable when it is not copying Mario’s Neutral Special or borrowing Ganondorf’s boots.

There is no need for another meter, inventory system or transformation wheel either.

Ditto would have one fixed moveset. The chosen Pokémon forms are the visual language attached to predetermined actions rather than an entire secondary character system.

Steve has done admirable work ensuring Smash players already spend enough time thinking about materials. Ditto does not also need to check whether it has gathered three pieces of timber before using an Up Smash.

Most importantly, this creates a clean separation from Kirby.

Kirby takes something from the fighter standing opposite him and adds that ability to his existing kit. Ditto would enter the match with its Pokopia techniques already established. The two still share the broad concept of imitation, just as plenty of swordfighters share swords without becoming interchangeable, but they use that idea in completely different ways.

Kirby copies an opponent.

Ditto has finally learned how to be itself.

The moveset therefore has one job: make Ditto feel like Ditto first and a collection of other Pokémon second.

Its elastic body carries the ordinary attacks. Pokopia provides a small, deliberate selection of transformations with clear purposes. Full Transform remains the spectacular payoff rather than the mechanic responsible for holding the entire fighter together.

Put those ideas together, and Ditto could look something like this.

Why This Ditto Works

The strength of the concept is not how many Pokémon Ditto can become.

It is how few it actually needs.

Pokémon Pokopia has given Ditto far more potential material than any Smash fighter could reasonably use, and attempting to acknowledge every transformation would simply replace one identity problem with another. Instead of a Pokémon that exists only by copying its opponent, we would end up with a Pokémon buried beneath endless cameos from more recognisable species.

Keeping the ordinary attacks rooted in Ditto’s own physiology prevents that.

Stretching limbs, oversized hands, flattened attacks and elastic throws establish the fighter before Squirtle, Graveler, Dragonite or Bulbasaur contribute anything. Ditto has a readable physical language of its own first.

The transformations then have jobs instead of merely functioning as references.

Surf creates forward movement. Water Gun handles straightforward ranged pressure. Graveler brings speed and committed momentum. Dragonite supplies aerial mobility. Bulbasaur changes a small patch of ground. Dive converts Pokopia’s Bubbly Basin underwater exploration into a risky descending attack.

Each one tells the player something useful.

That allows the moveset to represent three different things simultaneously.

It represents Ditto as a creature, through its elastic body and almost complete disregard for fixed anatomy.

It represents Pokémon as a wider series, through familiar species and techniques.

And it represents Pokémon Pokopia specifically, because those abilities behave as a consistent toolkit rather than a random parade of references.

That last point is crucial.

A Smash newcomer should ideally tell you something about the game it represents. Steve mines, crafts and builds because that is the language of Minecraft. Inkling covers the stage in ink because Splatoon would lose half its identity without it. Olimar manages Pikmin because simply giving him a sequence of tiny punches would miss the entire point.

Ditto’s Pokopia identity is about adaptation.

It learns something useful, changes just enough to perform the task, then moves on to the next problem.

That is much more interesting than a fighter whose defining strategy is waiting for somebody more exciting to stand opposite it.

Saving full Transform for the Final Smash completes the idea neatly. Ditto’s defining gimmick does not disappear; it receives the one part of a Smash moveset where excess is actively encouraged.

After spending the entire match proving that it no longer needs to become somebody else to function, Ditto finally gets permission to become absolutely ridiculous.