There are certain actions that will cause a character to become helpless. In Melee, air dodging caused a character to become helpless. In addition, most characters become helpless after using an up-special attack. 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, Mario's Cape, Mario's F.L.U.D.D, or Squirtle's Water Gun.
Additionally, several other special attacks enter characters into helpless mode after finishing the animations of the attacks while aerial.
These moves include:
- Din's Fire
- Dimensional Cape
- Drill Rush
- Egg Roll
- Falco Phantasm
- Farore's Wind
- Fire Wolf
- Fox Illusion
- Giant Punch (only at full power)
- Gerudo Dragon/Flame Choke
- Mach Tornado
- PK Flash
- PK Freeze
- Quick Draw
- Raptor Boost
- Squall Hammer
- Wolf Flash
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 do not leave characters in a Helpless state, and air dodges only cause temporary Helpless status. This completely changes the strategy of many characters.
Characters not put into a fully Helpless state after using their third jumps:
- Mr. Game and Watch
- Pit (If his third jump is attacked out of)
- R.O.B.
- Snake
- Sonic
- Peach
- Yoshi
- Zero Suit Samus
- Diddy Kong's Monkey Flip does not give full Helpless, instead it disables all Special moves until landing. He can also use any remaining jumps.