Trivia / Street Fighter IV

• Ascended Fanon:
  • Gouken exists entirely because of fans clamoring for years for Capcom to make a real "Sheng Long" with him even having a tongue-in-cheek title of "a.k.a Sheng Long". Sheng Long became a Decomposite Character, appearing as an NPC in Street Fighter 6's Word Tour mode.
  • Guile's dead combat buddy from the Street Fighter Alpha games, known as Charlie internationally and Nash in Japan, has been addressed by fans under the combination full name "Charlie Nash". Thanks to his dogtags seen in Guile's intro video in IV, that full name is now confirmed as canon. It was probably done out of convenience, to avoid having to draw two different versions of the same scene with a different name on the dog tag, and UDON's comics used the "Nash" surname prior to Capcom making it official (as did The Legend of Chun-Li film around the same time), but still. Bottom line: Street Fighter fandom, you're welcome.
• Author Appeal: Yoshinori Ono, the game's producer and the architect behind getting Capcom to revitalize the series, pushed heavily for the new series to bank hard on nostalgia for Street Fighter II. Due to Street Fighter III and Street Fighter EX flopping, Ono urged that the best chance at success would be to try and replicate the appeal of the more iconic II, from its gameplay right down to its roster. This is why, despite being the 4th official entry, it served as a direct sequel to II.
• Content Leak: Despite Capcom's best efforts to keep Juri and Hakan under wraps before their planned debut, both was mentioned as far back as September '09 when details of the Super version of the game first emerged.
• Killer App: 3D Edition was a minor one for the Nintendo 3DS early in its lifespan, being a launch title for the system, and being the first game on it to pass a million units sold.
• Meme Acknowledgment: At Comic-Con 2011, a panel featuring the voice directors for Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 had Taliesin Jaffe (the English VA for Blanka and Adon in Street Fighter IV) belting out "Would anybody like...SOME POUND CAKE?!" and "JAGUAR SLEEPOVER!" The former is a meme originating from one of Egoraptor's sketches from the Street Fighter Collab on Newgrounds and the latter is an oft-quoted mondegreen of Adon's Jaguar Revolver Ultra in IV.
• Newbie Boom: In way, IV was this both for the franchise itself and the Fighting Games genre as a whole. Prior to it's release, fighting games at Capcom were largely at a standstill, with Street Fighter III having flopped and Capcom Fighting Evolution outright bombing. IV's release was a massive success, revitalizing the franchise and bringing fresh blood into the fandom. Concurrently, IV's success also saw a new boom happen in the Competitive Fighting Game scene.
• The Other Darrin: The Japanese version of IV has all characters recast for some reason, except Bison, Blanka, Ken, Makoto, Yun, and Yang.
• Shrug of God: The Arcade Edition and the game's staff are insisting in every way possible the ambiguity of Oni's identity, he who basically all fandom has accepted as a new Super Mode for Akuma, but the in game material still says otherwise: the character is just named Oni, all of his available quotes so far bears almost no connection to Akuma aside from their power-hungry nature, his fighting stance resembles Gouken's more than anyone else, his face has minor differences compared to Akuma's (notably the nose), and the already leaked ending is even more dull than Akuma's as one cannot tell anything about the character by just watching it (well, except the fact he can destroy volcanos with a single punch and possess flight abilities); still it is safe to say that the logical conclusion is that Oni indeed is Akuma. Word of God finally confirmed Oni as Akuma via Seth Killian.
• Trolling Creator: Yoshinori Ono openly admits to being this. For example, Decapre's Introduction video quickly gets the fandom's hopes up and swiftly dashes them, with R. Mika standing up to Bison and vowing to defeat him, only for her to be easily blasted away.
• Vaporware: For many years after Street Fighter III, the idea of another Street Fighter game was seen as a joke. But when it was announced...
• What Could Have Been:
  • Abel was originally conceived as a skinny, Bishōnen Judo-ka, that was intended as "a character who could be mistaken for a girl."
  • Originally, Rufus was named "King Cobra," and was a lean muscular black man wearing a stylish karate gi◊. An infamous example in the series, as his design was changed radically at the very last stages of the game's development, even after all King Cobra’s dialogue had been recorded. Series producer Yoshinori Ono decided that IV needed a more "shocking" and "memorable" character at launch, and thus Rufus in his current portly, white, chatty form was born, despite marketing research on the preferences of American gamers having a big hand in Cobra King's design. According to SF4's producer, they used Rufus' current look because it would "freak people out," and because "over-the-top" characters sets Street Fighter apart from the other fighting game franchises. The gi would later be used as an alternate outfit for Ken.
  • T. Hawk and Dee Jay were originally going to be in vanilla IV. Both of them joined the roster with the release of Super.
  • R. Mika, Karin, and Elena were considered for Super. Series Producer Yoshinori Ono said that if DLC characters are released, R. Mika will be among the first. In fact, Elena barely missed the final roster for Super Street Fighter IV.
  • Ono also mentioned that he wanted Final Fight's Rolento in the mix as well.
    • And now with Ultra Street Fighter IV coming along, Elena and Rolento are finally playable characters.
  • Concept art shows that Guy's alternate outfit in IV was planned to be Strider Hiryu.
  • As detailed under Never Trust a Trailer on the main page, more characters would have received a second Rival as opposed to just six (Ryu, Chun-Li, Guile, Cammy, C. Viper, Seth):
    • Ken: Sakura
    • E. Honda: Adon
    • Blanka: Dan
    • Balrog (Boxer): Cody
    • Vega (Claw): Cammy
    • M. Bison (Dictator): Cammy
    • Rufus: Ryu
    • El Fuerte: Guy
    • Abel: Juri
    • Akuma: Gen
    • Gouken: Ken
    • Fei Long: Gen
    • Sakura: Cammy
    • Rose: M. Bison
    • Gen: Guy
    • Dan: Sagat
    • Guy: M. Bison
  • Additionally, Cody's Rival was originally slated to be Chun-Li, as seen in the SSFIV trailer. Considering that Cody's an escaped convict/vigilante and Chun-Li is an Interpol agent, as well as factoring in their respective win quotes for each other, it makes sense; later in development, Cody's Rival was changed to Guy, his old Final Fight brother-in-arms and SFA3 sub-boss (which also makes sense, albeit for more personal reasons as opposed to merely being on opposite sides of the law). The trailer also featured locales different than the final build for all of the new characters' Rival Battles.