Smash Ultimate fighter “leak” reveals Kingdom Hearts Sora – is it real?

With Super Smash Bros Ultimate fans anticipating a new DLC reveal at The Game Awards, a possible leak has surfaced showing off Kingdom Hearts’ Sora as a playable fighter.

Sora has been a popular candidate for Smash Ultimate for a long while with many fans putting him on the very top of their wish lists.

While there has been some doubt about the Kingdom Hearts protagonist coming to Smash after former Game Informer editor Imran Khan claimed Disney Japan prevented it from happening, fans have remained hopeful.

Now, a series of images have appeared online suggesting that Sora could be much closer to appearing in Smash than originally thought.

In a post on a popular message board, an anonymous user uploaded several photos from Smash Ultimate featuring Sora doing battle with Incineroar.

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“They [were] sent to me from my source from internal play testing,” the user claimed. “He claims that final playtests of the next DLC fighter are running right now and Sora will be announced [at] The Game Awards.”

In the first picture, it shows Sora as a selectable fighter in the character select screen right next to Steve from Minecraft and the Mii fighters. The Kingdom Hearts logo appears in the background and an assortment of costumes are available too.

The other images show Sora doing battle against the Pokemon fighter with each photo being of the TV screen.

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While the leak may seem promising, there are some major red flags. For one, as plenty of users suggested, it’s very likely that this was made using a mod of another fighter, such as Shulk, and photoshop.

Additionally, the leak does match some of the stereotypical fake leak criteria with the photos being taken of a TV screen from off angles, no video, no Final Smash – nothing that would suggest the leak is legitimate.

Another thing to keep in mind is that it is unlikely that Square Enix gets two fighters in the same pass, so if Sora does get in, it may severely hurt the chances for other fan-favorites such as Geno from Super Mario RPG.

In any case, we won’t have much longer to wait to find out if the leak is real or not with The Game Awards happening on December 10. While nothing is set in stone, it’s possible that we see some sort of announcement. Back in 2018, the first Smash Ultimate DLC was revealed at TGA as Persona’s Joker.

There are still four more DLC slots remaining in Fighters Pass Volume 2 with the final character set to release by December, 2021.