While SF6 is an overall lighthearted and fun-personified game with plenty of things to do, it's also got its share of rather depressing subject matter. A lot of which can hit home pretty hard.
- Street Fighter 6 displays a more tragic and vulnerable side to the sadistic spider known as Juri. Despite Bison's final defeat and death in V, she finds herself unable to move on from her past and find peace. Having been consumed by anger and grief since she lost her parents and losing her eye to Shadaloo, she now finds herself with nothing to live for as she's a shell of her former self. The only thing she has left is fighting as she picks fights with whoever she sees which many have noted is unhealthy.Juri: There's this chump I'd always wanted to kill. And wouldn't you know it, the guy apparently went and kicked the bucket. But lemme tell ya... I don't feel even the slightest bit happy about it. For the longest time, it was all I could think about. To make that a reality, I used every dirty trick in the book and then some. And yet... why am I so freaking pissed off?! I mean, for real! God DAMMIT!
- More details of her past are shown and we get to see Juri as she was a child with her parents
, looking nothing like the bloodthirsty, sadistic maniac she is now, but as a genuinely endearing child and loving daughter. - Juri's fight with Chun-Li really demonstrates the juxtaposition between the two in the wake of Bison's demise. While Chun-Li was able to find solace after Bison's death and opened a school of martial arts thanks in part to a healthy support system of friends, Juri has no friends or family to turn to and so she throws herself into the only thing she knows how to do: Fighting anyone she sees and hiring herself out as an assassin. And it's made painfully clear that her hedonistic, thrill-seeking lifestyle is more a coping mechanism to distract herself from her deep emotional scars. Their fight is mainly Juri lashing out at Chun-Li, clearly resentful that Chun-Li was able to find the peace she so desperately craves.
- The final screenshot shows Juri in the sunset sitting on a wall watching a cat beside her with a morose expression. It soon scurries away, leaving her alone with her thoughts. With Juri remembering Chun-Li's words acknowledging her as another of Bison's victims, it's implied that Juri actually agrees with her (if reluctantly) but is too consumed by her experiences to move past it.
- The thing is, it's not like characters like Chun-Li and Cammy aren't willing to help her out, but as the old saying goes, they can't help her if she's unwilling to help herself.
- More details of her past are shown and we get to see Juri as she was a child with her parents
- Ken's entire storyline. In the prequel comic Days of the Eclipse, he's shown to be on rocky terms with his son Mel, who he's been trying to stay in touch with while still being the acting chairman of the Masters Foundation. He ends up getting suckered into one big con by JP, funding a huge fighting arena in Nayshall and investing in cryptocurrency. JP proceeds to frame him for terrorism and kidnaps Mel in order to force him into compliance. JP gets away scot-free, while Ken takes the fall. Even after he's eventually cleared and Mel is rescued safely, his reputation is ruined beyond repair and his past glory as the American martial arts champion has been forgotten. Throughout World Tour the various people the player character talks to say he's washed up and are still under the impression he's a traitor to his country despite his name being cleared, proving JP's point that the average person doesn't give a damn about the truth, only a story that's good enough for them to self-aggrandize themselves. By the time of 6, Ken has outright resigned from his position as chairman and left his family to keep them safe, but now he's completely lost as to what to do next, to the point where he's actually tempted towards murdering JP in revenge. Even Guile, his own brother-in-law, is rather shocked upon seeing him like that, and decides to take matters into his own hands.
- Taking the above into account, it's also a rather tragic Hourglass Plot between him and Ryu. Whereas Ryu finally overcame his inner demons and mastered the Power of Nothingness in the previous game and is at his apex here, Ken has really fallen on hard times to the point of almost being unrecognizable. Also keep in mind that the Satsui no Hado is a thing across all Ansatsuken practitioners if Akuma and (the non-canon) Dark Sakura are anything to to go by and Ken does contemplate murdering JP after beating him in his story mode. If Ryu has come close to giving in countless times to the Satsui no Hadou, what's to stop Ken from going down that path and turning into Violent Ken... or worse, go beyond that and become something like Kage or Oni?
- If that wasn't enough, Ken's Continue animation shows just how broken a man he is in this game; what with him stumbling about and struggling to keep his balance, as if all the hard times he's been into have finally taken a serious toll on him. Then, should the counter hit "0" and the player refuse to continue, Ken will collapse to the floor on all fours, weakly uttering "Damn... Get up..." before going unconscious, as if he died. That's right, Ken's troubles are so severe that he's not just pained or miserable. He's visibly lost all hope. Dang...
- Manon has a major Trauma Button where she hates being called "strong". Since her childhood, she's been alienated from her peers due to her prowess at Judo, and her mother ended up abandoning her. From that point, she's been trying to constantly reassure herself that she's been doing fine, hiding her pain and loneliness. It isn't until she meets Marisa, who sincerely compliments and praises her strength, that she finally starts to open up.
- Cammy's final bond interaction during her substory in World Tour Mode confirms the worst possible outcome of a plot thread that was left somewhat ambiguous during the Cinematic Story of V. Marz, the shy Shadaloo Doll who sacrificed herself to save Rashid after he freed her from F.A.N.G's brainwashing, really is dead, having perished from her fall off of the rafters trying to drag F.A.N.G down with her. All traces of her remains were obliterated in the Shadaloo base's explosion thereafter.
- Even darker than that, F.A.N.G. shows up in World Tour as an NPC, meaning it was all in vain.
- Rashid's final bond interaction, surprisingly. It details his family's history and reveals that while they were once royalty and had a prosperous kingdom ages ago, they fell in a single night due to an ambush from a rivaling nation who conquered and seized their land. He describes the invaders as having "fair skin and blonde hair, waving banners of red and blue", meaning Rashid's ancestors were ousted by Gill's ancestors, who would go on to found the Secret Society and further spread their reach of power and influence across the globe.
- In a weird way, A.K.I and F.A.N.G's relationship. A.K.I truly does love her master for giving her existence meaning, but F.A.N.G was raised in an environment where forming emotional attachments is a liability. He not only saw his "siblings" die before his eyes as they all underwent the hellish Poison Hand training, but also had to kill some of them himself in order to survive. As an assassin, he prioritizes a strictly professional relationship between the two of them, and stresses the point that there may come a day when the two end up being pitted against each other, making A.K.I's love tragically one-sided.
- The ending of World Tour's main storyline is perhaps one of the bleakest moments in the entirety of the franchise's storyline. You as the player may have the satisfaction of beating JP, but as he points out in the cutscene immediately afterwards, your perceived efforts and whatever motivations you may feel for doing so are All for Nothing. None of this stops JP's plans. At best, you've only delayed him for an ultimately insignificant amount of time before he comes back. The only thing you get for your troubles are the knowledge that JP will continue to rule Nayshall from the shadows for his own purposes, the Resistance has failed utterly in stopping him, and one of their key members, who was your rival, is dead, having been forced to sacrifice himself when JP saw right through said Resistance's attempt on his life. You and Luke are left to mourn Bosch's death during The Stinger, but only for a moment before life moves onward.
- Ed reminiscing about Balrog is tragic as it shows that Balrog does care for someone other than himself. Ed even notes that without Balrog, he could've become a lot worse.
