1.
Yeah, by far. While I always figured third party echoes could happen, I sure as hell didn't predict one for a third party newcomer, let alone Simon. I remember just being all "WHAT!" at his splash title. Crazy times. Requests for him were basically nonexistent when the Castlevania fans were focused purely on Simon, which is sorta funny considering that Richter is the most popular of the Belmonts, despite Simon being the logical choice.
2.
The idea of clone characters as fan favorites had never really been done before, so Daisy took me by complete surprise. I agree that if, say, the first echo they introduced was Chrom, then I'd definitely be expecting Daisy. But man, that threw me for a loop.
god damn memoryman
3.
I mean, yeah, the leak, I basically wasn't expecting Ridley until the leak. After the Smash 4 interview, I more or less threw the towel in on Ridley and moved on. But I did consider the possibility that Sakurai would have to revisit Ridley again simply because Ridley was one of the few candidates left for a character that would cause the Smash fanbase to
erupt with hype, especially at E3. I definitely had my reservations but Verge was getting all sorts of things correct at E3... and once I saw the space station, I knew what was about to happen, even if I didn't want to fully believe until the splash screen. What a ride.
4/5.
The biggest surprise Dark Samus and Chrom brought is I thought there would be less echoes than we seem to be getting. I considered both of them basically equal, but initially didn't have them on my echo prediction list since I was thinking Shadow and Octoling at the time. Both had things in their favor, with their non-playable roles unaccounted for and Samus/Ike missing the corresponding alts, so neither inclusion was surprising, exactly... but not really expected either.
6. Isabelle: I wasn't sure if Isabelle might return as an AT or not, but after the 8.8 Direct with the Kapp'n appearance, I basically assumed she was in the game as a fighter, the question was echo or unique. I leaned towards echo myself... the answer turned out to be neither, really. Pretty interesting how things turned out there.
7.
I was hopeful but unsure how K. Rool stood when the game was announced. We had no real guarantee at the time the ballot was going to be used, even though it seemed too logical it would be. With Ridley's confirmation I immediately grew more optimistic, and following that up with the confirmation that the design document was dated December 2015, and the datamine revealing the true nature of Bayonetta's inclusion... I just couldn't see him missing out. Verge's "no new DK reps" BS was the first time I genuinely had doubt, but I hoped for the best. Genuinely, absolutely did not expect him to be revealed alongside Simon, right after E3, however. That is by far the biggest shock of it all. And I couldn't be happier.
8.
Simon not only got leaked by Verge, but by
Nintendo themselves. Oi. But even if Simon wasn't leaked by Verge, the presence of Konami in the game, with a Bomberman Assist Trophy, would definitely raise my eyebrow, since he was really the only other Konami character in the running. Reading the interview where Sakurai said he considered Castlevania influential on him as a game designer, I pretty much assumed he'd show up. Beforehand I had some doubts as I wondered if Simon was really an iconic character in his own right (despite Castlevania being an iconic series), but it seems like Sakurai answered that question for me, in the best way possible. (In a leakless reality, I guess he would be more expected than Ridley but not as much as Isabelle.)
9.
If they weren't in this game, Sakurai would have failed his most basic mission. Inkling, K. Rool, and Ridley were the big 3 fish to fry for Smash 5.
Why don't we have the Isabelle stock icon yet...?
- (Isabelle) Kinda expected, but as an echo, not as a semiclone.
