Sora was the Kingdom Hearts character identified as the top request in the 2015 Smash fighter ballot.
The ballot was conducted for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, allowing players to suggest characters they wanted to see in the series. Nintendo did not initially publish a complete ranking, and the result remained a source of speculation for years. In 2021, director Masahiro Sakurai explained that Sora had been the leading request.
Sora eventually became the final fighter added to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. His Challenger Pack launched on October 18, 2021, completing Fighters Pass Volume 2 and the game’s planned fighter additions. The negotiations were unusually complicated because Kingdom Hearts is jointly associated with Square Enix and Disney.
The ballot’s wording can cause confusion: it was not a vote limited to characters already connected to Ultimate, and it did not mean every top request could be added. Roxas, Kairi, and Riku are important Kingdom Hearts characters, but Sora is the series’ central protagonist and the name associated with the ballot’s top result.