So the leaks Smash 4 has had
- Pre reveal E3 2013, 4 characters are leaked, Mega Man, Wii Fit Trainer, Villager and Little Mac. The first three are revealed the next day.
- Skip ahead to December 2013. Nintendo of Brazil accidentally uploads the Direct early, leading to Rosalina and Luma being leaked about an hour early.
- Little Mac is revealed, who had been leaked the previous year.
- "Pokemon from X/Y", Shulk, Mii, Chrom, Pac Man, Chorus Men and Palutena are leaked. All but two are revealed, with evidence Chrom and CM were planned at some point.
- A few weeks later, Greninja is revealed, confirming the previous leak.
- A text leak comes out stating Duck Hunt, Dark Pit and Bowser Jr are in, Alph is a costume, Doc is returning and Ice Climbers are cut. He backs this up describing costumes for Bowser.
- E3 2014, Mii, Palutena and Pac Man are revealed. One of the alts leaked for Bowser is confirmed. Mr Game and Watch is also soft confirmed and Dark Pit is teased.
- E3 2014 3DS Tournament: JC from Treehouse stops himself mid sentence from talking about Falco
- August 2014: Robin and Lucina are revealed, shattering the previous leaks' credibility (until later when we found out the two wrong characters he mentioned were cut at some point)
- Sakurai later mentions in Famitsu that Chrom was considered but was too similar to Marth and Ike.
- August: Metaknight is revealed as the last pre-release vet.
- August 19, 2014: The entire roster and stage list from the 3DS version is leaked with video and plenty of images from a worker at ESRB. The Smash speculation world is driven mad with this information overload.
- Late August: Shulk is officially revealed, with his art matching the ESRB leak. It's 100% confirmed.
- September: Nintendo accidentally puts Ganondorf in an advertisement before he was officially revealed and quickly pull the ad. Sakurai had joked about Ganondorf being in before, so it's not like they even needed to...
- At a demo in Japan, Alph is confirmed as an alt of Olimar.
- The next day Sakurai remembers he forgot to show Alph and puts him out there. "Here's Alph, he exists, totally forgot to show him before"
- September: The game is released in Japan. A Twitch user gets a copy 2 days early and leaks everything. He is terrible at the game. He takes 4 tries to unlock Doctor Mario.
- The 3DS is datamined, finding a Wrecking Crew stage, a Miiverse stage, Master/Crazy orders, Smash Tour and 8 Player Smash. The 3DS having sloppy data cleanup will be a re-occurring problem. Also Ice Climbers and Rhythm Heaven icons under the character list.
- "Tower of Smash" gets a couple of stage choices right and sounds somewhat believable.
- October: Nintendo of Europe thinks Great Cave Offensive was revealed, shows an image of it with no explanation. This destroys the Tower of Smash "leak" which had previously gotten information right.
- Amazon accidentally lists the Stage Builder and Master/Crazy Orders as features.
- October: 50 facts revealed, Ridley officially deconfirmed once and for all, Mewtwo confirmed as first DLC character. Etika is now a meme.
- Some Pokemon guy on Youtube gets a review copy of Smash 4 and accidentally shows Flat Zone X, which he quickly pulls.
- Some other guy just doesn't care about NDAs and reveals the entire stage list and tons of other black listed content.
- Smash for Wii U is released and the leaks stop. Miiverse' music and Tournament Mode's music are left on the disc.
- Lucas is revealed and it's legitimately a surprise.
- The leaks don't stop for long. When Mewtwo is released Nintendo messes up completely and leaves Ryu, Roy and Dreamland on the 3DS' files. Dreamland was so bad, it actually broke classic mode for Kirby characters. Jesus.
- Nintendo again fails horribly with patch data and puts the Wii U data up a day early. The entire of the next day's content is 100% revealed and E3 hype is deflated.
- The latest DLC releases at the end of July with no hitches or leaks. Although it was revealed on Twitter which was kind of stupid.
What a wild ride.