If I may offer a corollary to this discussion:
There's a certain feeling that if you have to google or wikipedia a character, that means they're not in the common knowledge. Nobody needs to google something like Pac Man or Donkey Kong to know the basics of it. Ask anyone - go to your parents or grandparents and see if they know about those. Heck, I'm sure that there are loads of casual gamers who don't recognize up to half of the Smash roster outside of Smash.
There's also the fact that many people are exclusive to one set of consoles or don't really follow video game news. We like to say that all of the DLC characters so far were perfect wonderful additions that are incredibly well-known to everyone and their grandma, but remember:
- Persona 5 (and most of the series) was exclusive to PlayStation, which not everyone has. It may have won 'Best RPG' at a game awards (that people uninterested in game news won't watch), but it's not Final Fantasy, so it's understandable that people who only know one JRPG know it.
- Dragon Quest has struggled to get a foothold in the Americas when it's a cultural phenomenon in Japan. To anyone who isn't aware of regional popularity, it makes sense it could seem to come out of nowhere.
- Banjo-Kazooie hasn't really had a game in the past 12 years, and that was exclusive to XBox. Besides, the character was designed mostly off of their original 20-year old games. New gamers who aren't into the 'retro' stuff or people who didn't grow up with N64 may not be as familiar with them.
- SNK may have influenced Smash, but that's more for the people who follow Smash's history. There are people who don't even know about Smash 64. And SNK is not the most well known fighting game in certain parts of the world.
I don't think that people are 'comically ignorant' for not knowing these. I think 'comically ignorant' is more "Who is Mario?" Maybe 'normal ignorant' would be something like "Who is Final Fantasy?" But once we get into "You need to do research to know the characters," that's not ignorance, that's just not knowing a lot about games. Does that mean that these people do not have valid wants since they don't know about characters on a console they don't have in a genre they don't play that came out during a timeframe they didn't know about...? Sometimes it feels like you need a PhD in Video Game history to have an opinion on these boards...
I don't think it's a bad thing if people don't know a character. It seems that the problem is a lot of people here are taking it as a personal attack: "They don't know who this character is, so they're telling me that my character is worthless!" It's not, it's an admission that they don't know who the character is, so the character isn't as pervasive as you think. That's all.
Heck, look at my favorite. I'm not gonna get mad if there are people who don't know Skyrim. Yeah it won every award and was
the big name in open-world, but it's also over 8 years old by now. I'm sure there are people who haven't heard of it. And I'm sure there are a decent number of people who don't recognize that it's The Elder Scrolls V, which means there were four others before it: go ahead, see how many people know about those four. Bonus points: what's the title of the playable character in those? (Now I do think that TES:III really deserves a RE-style remake and that'd be great on Switch, but that's a different story)
The problem is really that, when people say "I don't know them," there's an implied "I would rather they had picked someone else." And who can blame them for thinking that? People know there are only a few slots left. Every one character that gets in means there's fewer spots for someone who anyone would want in, so it's completely understandable that people would rather they get a character they know. It's not like Smash is going to keep adding characters until every single character ever is added. So yeah, everyone would prefer to get at least one character they like in the DLC. I'm not going to fault anyone for that. And yeah, it can get frustrating enough when a character is announced that you've never naturally come across without having the internet police coming down with a pretentious "LOL ur such a looooser just google them and you'll know they're totes better than ur lame most wanted!!!11!" But on the other hand, if you don't know someone, you can't also go around screaming about it being a worthless addition - it may be one
to you, but there are reasons they got picked and there are people happy to see them.
Finally, there's a lot more to the character packs than just the character - there's also the stage and music. If I need to research a character to decide if I want to buy them, obviously that's gonna put a check in the 'con' column. But some of the characters may have great stages or music that puts them in the 'pro' column.
Out of the current DLC, I know I'm getting one character I knew from the beginning even though I've never played them, but they fit really well and I've always been able to recognize them. There's another one I know about but don't like their genre, but their music and stage is phenomenal so I'll get that one as well. There's a third who I don't know except for the fact that the series exists; I don't like the genre, I don't like the character kit, I'm not impressed by the music, but I love how the stage looks and I recognize the series importance so I'm on the fence about getting them eventually. Then there's the two characters I really don't know anything about besides what I've read here; one has a stage which I find unimpressive, the other I actually think looks really ugly. That one is also from a genre I don't like, from a game I can't play even if I wanted to, I listened to all their tracks on Youtube and didn't like a single one, and the character is complex to boot. Yes, these are all opinions - I know there are people on this site who think that that's the best addition possible. But I'm not a fan. And I'm not attacking the character, I'm just saying that I'm not getting them and I hope that one of the 5 upcoming is someone I'd like.