What's The Deal With The Master Hand From 'Smash Bros.'?
Every good story needs a good baddie. This week at Cracked, we're examining supervillains of all sorts and kinds and finding out what makes them tick.
Video game heroes usually are just as good as the villains they're up against. Link has Ganondorf, Solid Snake has all sorts of Snakes to deal with, and Bowser is up against serial wife kidnapper Mario. Those are some of the best, and even they need to combine their forces if they're to stand a chance against the most powerful villain in all of gaming: some placeholder-looking hand that serves as the final boss in the original Super Smash Bros.
Maybe due to the small roster of characters you get to play as in the original Super Smash Bros, players started going crazy looking for ways to unlock the Master Hand. I get it. The game was all about forgetting IP barriers to allow for the wackiest battles possible, so can you really blame them for trying to get the wackiest character of all to join the fight?
But the Master Hand wasn't meant to be playable. Its move set was too overpowered, and Nintendo probably wasn't even trying to create a new character, just a new enemy. Too bad, because players broke the game and found a way to play as the hand anyway.
Fans have also come up with many theories trying to explain the hand, with a popular one saying it's actually a reference to Masahiro Sakurai, the game's creator who heartlessly abducted the various characters from their worlds. Upon seeing such interest in the Hand, Nintendo started indulging fans and expanded on the "character" 's mythos. It reached levels of insanity even fan theories could only dream of reaching.
Out of nowhere, we weren't dealing just with the Master Hand, but with the "Crazy Hand" as well. The Crazy Hand stays faithful to Nintendo's level of laziness when they created the original hand. It looks just like the original hand but has its fingers positioned in a much crazier manner.
Then we found out what the hand inside the master glove looks like:
Then, as definite proof that fans probably shouldn't ever try to look too deep into stuff, we found out that the Master Hand, the Crazy Hand, as well as many other hands, all obey Galeem, an even more powerful cosmical entity hellbent on obliterating the Smash Bros. multiverse.
Couldn't we have just allowed it to stay as an obvious metaphor for a kid playing with their toys?
Top Image: Nintendo
