This announcement only strengthens my personal theorized timeline of events, which I’m now calling the ChocoMallow Theory:
Mid 2018: The base and FP1 rosters are finalized. With no further DLC planned at the time, Geno is planned to be the first in a set of “Premium Costumes” that include songs. This could be why BTFM wasn’t in the base game’s tracklist, as it could have been saved for the costume. (Please note, because I had a few people misread last time I brought this up, I am talking about the situation nearly two years ago. I 100% think that we’re about to be getting a fully playable Geno as #77, this is just how I think events played out.)
Late 2018: The game releases, and the Fighter’s Pass makes a ****load of money.
Early 2019: Geno’s Mii costume is being prepped for release with #2, along with Mallow and Smithy hats. The costumes are fully done and ready to go for Hero’s reveal, alongside the Chocobo hat. Yes, it would mean that Wave 2 would have had a whopping eight costumes, but as seen from Smash 4’s special treatment, Geno’s worth it.
May 2019: A second pass is greenlit... and at pretty much the last second, Geno gets an upgrade to the seventh Challenger Pack to be released in over a year from then, and the costumes are shelved. The team realizes that just having the Chocobo hat without Geno would be particularly suspicious-looking, so that’s also cut.
With these six projected to be the final additions to the game, they start contacting friendly companies that didn’t quite make the cut about potential Mii Costumes: One(songless) full-body costume and one hat each. Ubisoft and Bethesda sign on, the former with Altair and a Rabbids hat, and the latter with Vault Boy and a Cacodemon hat.
June 2019: A legitimate leak gets out! With the DQ costumes packed away and ready for the presentation, a list of all the other non-premium costumes that were finished at the time manages to make its way onto Discord. Said leak includes every single costume coming in Wave 3, but also includes the hats cut from #2. Completed premium costumes are importantly not on this list, explaining the lack of both Geno and Sans.
July 2019: Hero’s presentation, and Geno is nowhere to be seen.
Mid-2019: The team works on #5’s Ubisoft costumes.
September 2019: Banjo’s presentation, and the leak is confirmed! Sans is a surprise to all, yet every single other non-Square costume was gotten exactly correct, leaving those three a mystery.
October 2019: The team works on #6’s Bethesda costumes. But... suddenly, another leak gets out! Someone took the Cacodemon hat, threw it together with the dormant Mallow hat that won’t be needed for a few months, and leaked them both! ****! Taking the leak down would spoil content that wouldn’t be out for like nine months at the earliest, and Square content at that! It would be possibly the earliest definitive leak that Smash has ever had! Legitimately, the best option is to do absolutely nothing in this case, particularly when the inclusion of Cacodemon would give the wrong impression of the characters to come, especially since...
January 2020: A bit before #5’s reveal, one of the top people at Id is interviewed about Doomguy’s Smash chances. He is quite open and blatant about how it’s not happening, but does mention that they have talked with Nintendo, making his statements a strong blow against Doomguy as a character yet a good indicator regarding the idea of a Mii Costume like Cacodemon existing.
Later, #5’s reveal happens, and with it, the Ubisoft costumes. Inexplicably, the Altair costume is literally just called “Altair” in America yet nowhere else, with the other broadcasts using the full series logo. FP2 is announced as well, with six characters.
March 2020: #6’s series is revealed as being from Arms. Behind the scenes, Nintendo is realizing they now have a similar quandary to the Chocobo hat: If they include it in the presentation, then that would confirm the leak and the existence of the Mallow hat. They decide to shelve it and give a bit of extra fanfare to Vault Boy.
May 2020: Both Cloud Amiibos are leaked for a reprint in September, along with some Mario characters.
June 2020: #6 is properly revealed, finally deconfirming “Spirits deconfirm” to the point where the Spirit Board discrepancies are officially addressed. The stream also confirms Joker and Hero Amiibos slated for Fall, and the Vault Boy costume. Vault Boy notably shares the same odd naming convention that Altair did, being “x Vault Boy” in America and “x Fallout” everywhere else.
Basically, in other words, I think Cacodemon was originally planned for this wave, but revealing it here would confirm the leak, so it was shelved. The Ubisoft and Bethesda “packs” would line up incredibly well in multiple ways otherwise.
In other words, I’m excited for Geno getting revealed as Challenger Pack #7 and fighter #77 at 7:07 on 7/7.