No items, Fox only, Final Destination
"No items, Fox only, Final Destination" is an internet meme that mocks competitive play in the Super Smash Bros. series, particularly Super Smash Bros. Melee. The origin of the meme is not clear, but it was built on three assumptions: that tournaments have all items turned off, that Fox is the most frequently used character in top-level Melee tournaments and has been the highest-ranked character on Melee's tier list for several iterations, and that Final Destination is the most frequently played stage in tournaments due to its complete lack of platforms or hazards. Combined into a phrase, it is quoted by Internet users as a generalization for competitive play in general, under the implication that competitive play is "less fun" than "regular" or "casual" play.
Another possible origin is from a former Smashboards member named Dylan Tnga, who only ever played Melee on Final Destination with no items, though his preferred character was Captain Falcon. Dylan frequently picked fights with both casual and competitive players, tried to force his playstyle on others, and would complain obsessively about changes made from Melee to Brawl, even making death threats towards casuals and Masahiro Sakurai on occasion. Though even the competitive community considered him extreme, his behavior led many a casual player to assume that all competitive players were just as obsessive and elitist as he was.
The phrase is ubiquitous to the point of not being exclusive to the Super Smash Bros. series. Players of other games may use a variation of "no X, Y only, Final Destination" to refer to competitive play of their game, with X often being a feature disabled in tournaments while Y is a character that high-level players tend to succeed with the most (or alternatively, a character that has the physical features of a fox). "Final Destination" is sometimes replaced with a native stage of competitive fairness, but is more often left as-is as the "anchor" of the phrase. Oddly enough, despite the original phrase being Melee-specific, corresponding phrases for other games in the series are effectively unheard of.
The pervasiveness of this supposed competitive ruleset appears to have been noticed by the developers of the Super Smash Bros. series. In both versions of Super Smash Bros. 4, the two online modes playable against non-friends are For Fun and For Glory. For Fun allows any stage except Final Destination and has all items on, while For Glory turns off all items, allows 1v1 fights instead of just free-for-alls and only allows Final Destination and the Ω form of stages (i.e. existing stages restructured to have Final Destination's stage design). However, any character can be used instead of just Fox.
This meme has been embraced in a joking and ironic manner by the competitive community; it is often branded on T-shirts from sponsors and on parodies of the Melee box art. On the occasion that a Fox mirror match occurs on Final Destination, commentators may reference the meme. However, professionals maintain that while their ruleset is more restrictive than "regular" play, it still allows far greater degrees of freedom than what this meme suggests competitive play to be. They further discredit the original argument the meme was based on, stating that Final Destination is not more frequently played than any of the other legal stages in the Melee ruleset (the most played stage being Battlefield) and is in fact one of Fox's worst stages in certain matchups.
Trivia[edit]
- A shot in the opening movie of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate depicts Fox standing alone on Final Destination with no items in sight. This could possibly be a homage to the meme.
- Another possible reference can be seen in Fox's Classic Mode route in Ultimate: a battle against his pseudo-clone Wolf on the Ω form of Venom with no items.
