Trust me this has been going on for years; here is one example.
“After Sakurai wrote about his arm injury in Famitsu, many can’t afford to add more reason for him to delay the game even further. Geno appeared solely in Square’s Super Mario RPG for the Super Nintendo and has had a cult following since. Many have been requesting his inclusion in Smash Bros. for years.”
Source Link
I don’t know how reliable the source is but if you Google Smash Bros + Geno you will find a bunch of things like that. Try images too; you will see some really funny things like this for example: