Helpless

Mario's helpless animation in Super Smash Bros.

There are certain actions that will cause a character to become helpless (sometimes called "fallspecial"). In Super Smash Bros. Melee, air dodging caused a character to become helpless. Most characters also become helpless after using an up-special attack. While helpless, characters cannot perform any action except fast-falling, and characters are vulnerable to attack. Helpless mode is canceled by hitting the ground, grabbing a ledge, or being hit with an attack that causes the character to flinch.

Additionally, several other special attacks enter characters into helpless mode after finishing the animations of the attacks while aerial.

These moves include:

• Din's Fire
• Dimensional Cape
• Drill Rush
• Egg Roll
• Falco Phantasm
• Fox Illusion
• Gerudo Dragon/Flame Choke
• Mach Tornado
• PK Flash
• PK Freeze
• Quick Draw
• Raptor Boost
• Squall Hammer
• Wolf Flash
• Rollout*
• Giant Punch**

*Only in Melee

**Only in Melee and Brawl

Landfallspecial and superdashtechnique

In debug mode, the state of the character when landing from this state is referred to as landfallspecial. Because airdodging enters this state, and wavedashing involves airdodging into the ground, when wavedashing was tried in debug mode, "landfallspecial" appeared for the character state. This led some players to believe that the "landfallspecial" designation was specifically designed for wavedashing, and that developers put wavedashing in the game intentionally, further fueling the various debates over wavedashing's legitimacy. At one point, the myth morphed to where, instead of just landfallspecial, there was purportedly another debug mode designation, cited as "superdashtechnique", "superdashattack" or other variants, created solely for the wavedashing animation. All incarnations of this story have been proven false, and should not be taken as evidence that wavedashing was intentionally put or left in SSBM.

In Brawl

Certain third jumps do not leave characters in a helpless state, and air dodges no longer cause helpless status. This completely changes the strategy of many characters.

Characters not put into a fully helpless state after using their Up Special:

• Jigglypuff
• Mr. Game and Watch
• Peach*
• Pit (If his third jump is attacked out of)
• R.O.B.
• Snake
• Sonic**
• Yoshi
• Zero Suit Samus

*Peach's Up-B causes her to pull out her Parasol, which greatly reduces her falling speed. If the control stick is pushed down, Peach will lower the Parasol and fall helplessly. Tapping up on the control stick makes her bring her parasol back out.

**Using Sonic's up-B prevents him from using B moves until he lands.

All of the characters on this list except R.O.B. and Peach have no true helpless state.

Trivia

• When Kirby has the ability of any Standard Special Move that makes the player helpless in midair, the same effect will happen to him.
• Any character - even those who cannot get their helpless state originally - can get their secret helpless state revealed by hacking. Apparently, R.O.B has no designed helpless state, and the game will crash if he starts to fall helpless.
• Hitting a character with a thrown screw attack in Melee will cause that character to fall helplessly. This is useful if you can hit with the screw attack while an opponent is away from the edge, since it denies them all their remaining jumps and recovery moves.