A character falls in "helpless" mode after an air dodge or finishing the animation of an Up B (with the exception of Jigglypuff's Sing and Yoshi's Egg Throw). While helpless, characters cannot perform any action except fast-falling, and characters are vulnerable to attack. Helpless mode is canceled by hitting the ground, grabbing a ledge, or being hit with an attack other than Fox's Blaster.
Additionally, several other special attacks enter characters into helpless mode after finishing the animations of the attacks while aerial.
These moves include:
- Raptor Boost
- Gerudo Dragon
- PK Flash
- PK Thunder
- Din's Fire
- Giant Punch
- Egg Roll
- Fox Illusion
- Squall Hammer
- Rollout
- Falco Phantasm
Landfallspecial and superdashtechnique
In debug mode, the state of the character when landing from this state is referred to as landfallspecial. Because airdodging enters this state, and wavedashing involves airdodging into the ground, when wavedashing was tried in debug mode, "landfallspecial" appeared for the character state. This led some players to believe that the "landfallspecial" designation was specifically designed for wavedashing, and that developers put wavedashing in the game intentionally, further fueling the various debates over wavedashing's legitimacy. At one point, the myth morphed to where, instead of just landfallspecial, there was purportedly another debug mode designation, cited as "superdashtechnique", "superdashattack" or other variants, created solely for the wavedashing animation. All incarnations of this story are false, and should not be taken as evidence that wavedashing was intentionally put or left in SSBM.
In Brawl
Certain third jumps no longer leave characters in a helpless state, and airdodges only have temporary Helpless status. This completely changes the strategy of many characters.