Western Animation / Street Fighter

"Colonel William Guile, one of the greatest martial artists in the world, travels the global tournament circuit, using it to conceal his top secret mission as leader of an elite group of international crime fighters, known only by their code name: Street Fighter! The heroic man-beast, Blanka! Hard-kicking fighting machine, Chun-Li! And the team of the most amazing warriors ever seen have joined forces with Guile to combat the criminal empire of Shadaloo and its superhuman leader, Bison. They have their own code of honor: discipline, justice, commitment. And together, they will triumph against the forces of evil. Street Fighter!"

Street Fighter is an animated series produced by Graz Entertainment for the first season and InVision Entertainment for the second, based on the Street Fighter series by Capcom. It aired for two seasons on the USA Network from 1995 to 1997.

As the Opening Narration above explains, Guile leads a group of Street Fighters against terrorism, mainly related to Shadaloo. Besides Street Fighter II, the series also contains elements and characters from the live action movie and the first two games in the Street Fighter Alpha series, as well as original characters and situations.

The entire series is available on DVD, and is also available for free on both Amazon Prime and, strangely enough, Crunchyroll.

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This series provides examples of:

• A-Team Firing: Lots of it.
• Actor Allusion: Akuma, voiced by David Kaye in "The World's Greatest Warrior", drops a dramatic "Yeeesss..."
• Adaptation Name Change: Cammy's former teammates from MI5 (Burke, Rory and Celia) are technically from the games, but the original game versions had different names and character designs.^note Keith Wolfman, Matthew McCoy, Lita Luwanda and a fourth member named George Ginzu.
• Adaptation Personality Change:
  • Even more than the live action movie, Ken is generally greedy, sarcastic, and self-centered. Special mention goes to the first episode, "The Adventure Begins", where he wants to swipe a bunch of ancient treasure from Blanka's friends.
  • In the movie, Captain Sawada has few lines, as his actor couldn't really speak English, and is mostly stoic. In this series, Sawada is hot-blooded and repeatedly acts as an Inspector Javert to Guile.
  • Double subverted with Balrog and Dee Jay. In the games, Balrog is one of Bison's flunkies, while Dee Jay is a kickboxing musician. In the movie, Balrog is part of Chun-Li's news team, while Dee Jay is one of Bison's flunkies. In this series, Balrog and Dee Jay return to more or less their game personalities with the former making a single appearance as one of Bison's employees, while the latter goes back to being an ally of Guile's.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: In the games, Blanka is rather happy-go-lucky and there is no clear explanation for why he looks the way he does. Since his characterization in this series is based on the movie, where he is Guile's friend Charlie mutated into a beast, Blanka is considerably more unhappy about his condition. This isn't helped when other humans hate and fear him, and when he further mutates in Season 2.
• Adaptational Nationality: The Japanese Sakura is made into a member of Shadaloo's native Resistance. May also count as a Race Lift.
• Adaptational Protagonist: All of the Street Fighter video games and most of their related media have Ryu as the lead character, whose Walking the Earth lifestyle allows him to compete in tournaments with the rest of the fighters. One of them is Guile, from Street Fighter II, whom this 1995 animated series puts as protagonist much like the film.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Zangief, who is among M. Bison's lackeys.
  • Sagat is an outright bad guy who wants to usurp the leadership of Shadaloo from Bison, instead of the morally conflicted fighter from the games.
  • Akuma lacks the positive traits of his video game counterpart and is far more of a monster than he was in the games.
• Adapted Out: Neither Guile's family nor Ken's girlfriend/wife Eliza are anywhere to be seen. Instead, Guile is given an on/off love interest in the form of Lucinda and there's also some Ship Tease between him and Cammy in Season 2, while Ken becomes a womanizer who hits on every female character he encounters.
• Aesop Amnesia:
  • Even though Blanka learns how to deal with his mutation several times, he's still shown to be angry and/or angsting about it later on.
  • Even after being called out for being an irresponsible Jerkass, Ken still acts like one. An especially notable example is "The World's Greatest Warrior". Ken receives the most character development in the series when he successfully defeats Akuma and saves the lives of both Ryu and Gouken. However, the following episode is "So, You Want to be in Pictures", in which Ken's jerkiness shines through.
• Alternate Continuity: The series is in a different continuity than the game series that it is based on, with some Broad Strokes elements from the movie adaptation.
• Animated Adaptation: The American series serves as this for the franchise. Specifically, it contains elements from the live action movie and the first two Alpha games.
• Animation Bump:
  • Bison's very detailed in "The Strongest Woman in the World".
  • "Strange Bedfellows" has the best animation of all of Season 1.
  • Every now and again, the animators will occasionally overdo the shadows of a character in certain scenes.^note Usually Sunrise, though Madhouse wasn't immune to this either. However, this normally results in animation that's somehow better than the rest of the show.
• Animesque: Obvious at times due to the fact that the series was animated in Japan. This is especially noticeable whenever Sunrise animated an episode. It's jarring when compared to the more American looking, error-prone style episodes Madhouse did during Season 1.
• Arc Words: "Discipline, justice, commitment" is used on a fairly regular basis, not just in the intro either.
• Art Shift: Satin Hammer's armor became much more realistic and detailed in Season 2 compared to Season 1.
• Artifact of Doom: The Kali statue, which Bison uses to heal himself in Season 2. It eventually brainwashes him into wanting to destroy the world instead of take it over.
• Artistic License – Physics: The series has far too many examples of this to list here, so let's just have a quote from Dhalsim sum it up:
  Dhalsim: "Not if I were bound by your immutable laws of physics. Fortunately, I have advanced beyond such simple-minded perceptions and embraced the limitless enlightenment of metaphysics."
• Bad Boss: Bison will occasionally show signs of this. Zangief is usually his favorite target.
• Badbutt: Due to broadcast standards, Vega is almost never shown actually using his claw on anyone; he merely threatens to harm or kill people with it only to be distracted or interrupted before he gets the chance. When he finally does get to use his claw against Blanka in "Face of Fury", it ends up getting broken thanks to the latter's further mutation.
• Beam Spam: Guile. When all else fails, he'll just constantly throw Sonic Booms and Flash Kicks. Case in point: His and Sagat's method of ambushing Bison in "Cammy Tell Me True".
• Becoming the Mask: T. Hawk temporary becomes this in "Desert Thunder". He got too deep while working undercover.
• Big Bad: Bison is the main villain of the series and is responsible for most characters' tragic backstories.
• Big Good: Escher for the Street Fighters.
• Big "NO!": All over the place. One of the more notable examples is when Guile screams this and shakes his fists like an angry child when a brainwashed Cammy retreats with Bison and kisses him.
• Big "YES!": Uttered twice in a single scene by a certain character. "YES! YES!"
• Bittersweet Ending: Season 2 ends with Bison finally being defeated and the world saved. However, Cammy has no idea what to do anymore.
• Black Eyes of Evil: Both Bison and Akuma have black sclera with white pupils.^note Except for the episode "The Strongest Woman in the World", in which the former has game accurate Monochromatic Eyes.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Bison does this in "Dark Heart" when he leaves Ryu and Ken in a death trap so he can redirect the Millennium Comet towards the U.S.
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • Bison is able to brainwash both Guile and Cammy on separate occasions.
  • Bison himself becomes brainwashed by the Kali statue after using it on himself one too many times.
• Break the Cutie: Cammy isn't the same once she breaks out of her brainwashing and finds out what happened to her parents.
• Break Them by Talking: Bison nearly does this to Chun-Li in "The Strongest Woman in the World" when he calls her weak for not having her revenge against him when she had the chance. Guile reassures Chun-Li that she made the right decision, her father would be proud of her, and she truly is the strongest woman in the world.
• Broad Strokes: The series implies that the events of the movie occurred, but not exactly as depicted there. For example, "Keeping the Peace" shows a flashback of Guile being court-martialed for invading Shadaloo City against his superior's orders, which happens in the movie. However, there are a number of changes that make it impossible for the movie to fit in this series' continuity:
  • Dee Jay and Balrog are now working on opposite sides. Even Zangief, who pulled a Heel–Face Turn at the end of the movie, ends up working for M. Bison again in the series.
  • Captain Sawada supported Guile's judgment, while in the movie, he supported the raid on Shadaloo.
  • Guile hates guns in this series, while in the film he frequently used firearms when he wasn't showing off his martial arts skills.
  • The country of Shadaloo is now located in South America instead of Southeast Asia like in the movie.
• Broken Pedestal: Sagat for Kip in "No Way Out".
• Bullying a Dragon: Yes, Middle Easterners, go ahead and throw rocks at the big green monster with electrical powers.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday:
  Bison: (to Chun-Li) "Yes, yes, I killed your father. What is it with you women anyway? I killed my father too and you don't hear me whining about it!"
• Call-Back:
  • The plot of "Chunnel Vision" receives one in "Cammy and the Bachelor".
  • "The World's Greatest Warrior" has one for "Strange Bedfellows" when Akuma mentions that he fought Guile and Bison.
  • Fei Long's rivalry against Wo Fat and the Triad in "The Hand That Feeds You" is referenced in "So, You Want to be in Pictures" via a flashback.
  • The events of "Eye of the Beholder" and "New Kind of Evil" is referenced in "Face of Fury".
• Calling Your Attacks: Several characters do whenever they unleash their special moves. Guile is the most noticeable example.
• The Cameo: Some Alpha characters make cameo appearances in "The Medium is the Message". Doubles as an Early-Bird Cameo for Rose. Several Final Fight characters also appear in the episode.
• Canon Foreigner: Escher, Lucinda, Mei Lei, Satin Hammer, Sachi (Ryu's cousin), and Midori.
• Character Catchphrase:
  Guile: "Sonic BOOOOOOOOOM!"
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
  • Dee Jay in Season 2. In fact, he only receives a passing mention in "Second to None".
  • Balrog, one of the Four Devas in the game, only makes a single appearance in the entire series.
• Composite Character: Blanka and Charlie were made into one character, just like in the movie. A flashback in "The Medium is the Message" shows a pre-mutation Blanka looking just like Charlie did in Street Fighter Alpha, but with a color scheme closer to Blanka (black hair with a green vest and brown pants). He reverts back to his human form for a while in "Eye of the Beholder."
• Continuity Cameo:
  • "The Medium is the Message" features almost all the new characters from the first Street Fighter Alpha, which was being released for home consoles at the time, as competitors in an underground tournament. Birdie, Adon, Rose and Guy are all featured in this episode, along with weird renditions of Sodom, who is not wearing his mask, and Dan (in a green gi instead of his usual pink and with a different hair style). Most of the cast from the original Final Fight (along with Carlos and Maki from Final Fight 2) appear in crowd shots as well.
  • Guile's opponent in "Keeping the Peace" is Bred from Final Fight.
  • In "New Kind of Evil", Blanka's opponent is Mike Haggar in his Saturday Night Slam Masters incarnation.
• Continuity Nod: Despite a few inconsistencies with the source material, there are points in the series that follows the continuity of the games:
  • Chun-Li's father was killed by Bison.
  • Sagat getting his scar from Ryu's Shoryuken.
  • Dhalsim abandoning science for Yoga.
  • Ryu and Ken's techniques are based on an assassination martial art.
  • Vega is vain and freaks out whenever his face is touched.
  • Rose's rivalry with Bison. During their confrontation, Bison mentions that he senses a "bond" between them.
  • Ken is rich.^note Up until "So, You Want to be in Pictures", Ken had been acting more like his portrayal from live action movie.
  • Sakura being a huge fan of Ryu.
  • Cammy being brainwashed by Bison. This is especially notable because the overseas versions of Super Street Fighter II rewrote Cammy's ending to imply that she was Bison's lover and not necessarily an agent. However, the writers did throw in plenty of subtext between them. Though by the final season of the series, X-Men vs. Street Fighter had already established that fact in the West.
  • In the arcade version of Street Fighter: The Movie, Akuma is the brother of Sheng Long, the character created as a hoax by Electronic Gaming Monthly. In this series, he's the brother of Gouken.
• Convection, Schmonvection: In "Strange Bedfellows," Bison and Guile get awful close to the lava pits without getting burned.
• Crazy-Prepared: Sagat built an escape mechanism into his firing squad wall in case he himself ever got to be on its receiving end. Seems he was rather savvy about being Hoist by His Own Petard.
• Crossover:
  • Meta example with the Warrior King. He would go on to appear in three other shows in USA Network's Action Extreme Team block. The shows are Savage Dragon, Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, and Wing Commander Academy. He was voiced by Michael Dorn in almost all of his appearances.^note Dorn didn't voice him in Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm. In fact, the character appeared only as a silhouette towards the end of the episode he was in.
  • "Final Fight" revolves around Ryu and Ken helping Cody and Guy rescue Jessica.
• Cultural Translation:
  • Like in Street Fighter II and the movie, Guile is the main character. He's only absent in "The World's Greatest Warrior", "So, You Want to Be in Pictures", "The Flame and the Rose", and "Final Fight."
  • Ken receives more focus compared to Ryu. Most notably, he defeats Akuma in single combat, becoming "The World's Greatest Warrior" for his success, though Ryu was injured during an earlier sparring session.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Guile tends to knock down most opponents with one Sonic Boom.
• Cutting the Knot: Guile disarms a bomb with a Sonic Boom.
• Dating Catwoman: T. Hawk and Satin Hammer.
• Deadpan Snarker: Guile loves his sarcasm.
• Demoted to Extra: Escher in Season 2.
• Deranged Animation: Bison's facial expressions in "The Warrior King" are some of the most over-the-top in the series.
• Does Not Like Men: With the exception of T. Hawk, this is implied to the case for Satin Hammer.
• Doesn't Like Guns: Guile, who explicitly states that "guns are for wimps!". Not only that but he manages to rip apart the license for getting the weapons by just crumpling it in his hand.
• Doomsday Device: In "Cammy Tell Me True," Bison, under the influence of a priceless statue Cammy stole for him in a previous episode, decides not to Take Over the World, but instead destroy it by activating all the nuclear missiles on Earth. The statue had planted this in his mind since "The Flame and the Rose".
• Dream Within a Dream: Seen in "Getting to Guile". Guile first dreams that a bunch of hostages are vaporized and wakes up. He then goes to work and meets with Escher, who suddenly turns into a werewolf:
  Escher: [The] Street Fighters have no more use for you, Colonel Guile!
• Easter Egg: An unintentional one is contained in the episode "Face of Fury", with a frame of Blanka heads◊ hidden during the climax of the battle between Guile and Chun-Li vs. Blanka.
• Enemy Mine:
  • In the appropriately titled episode "Strange Bedfellows," Guile and Bison are left with no choice but to form a temporary alliance to counter Akuma.
  • In "Cammy Tell Me True," the heroes and Sagat team up to stop Bison. Cammy also joins the fray after her brainwashing wears off.
• Evil Tastes Good:
  • Satin Hammer is prone to stating her view on the tastiness of whatever is currently happening.
  • For Bison, watching Guile get his ass kicked by one of his mutant soldiers in "The Medium is the Message":
  This is DELICIOUS!
• Executive Meddling: invoked Ken does this in "So, You Want to be in Pictures" when he becomes the producer of Fei Long's movie after he secured funding for it.
• False Flag Operation: The plot of "Keeping the Peace". General Mendoza plants a bomb in his own mine so that when it explodes, people will become sympathetic to his plight, causing the AN to join his side. It's up to Guile and Sawada to stop him.
• Family-Friendly Firearms: Specifically Bison and his followers all have lasers instead of real guns.
• Firearms Are Cowardly: Guile firmly believes this and the sentiment that guns are for wimps, preferring to settle things with his fists, boots, and Ki Manipulation.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • In "The Hand That Feeds You", Guile's tattoos can be seen for a few seconds in one scene. This is the only time his tattoos are shown in the series.
  • In the beginning of "Chunnel Vision," a man is reading a newspaper. When paused, the following headlines can be read: "Street Fighter III Released!", "Final Fight 3 Released!", "Darkstalkers 3 Released for Home Systems", and "Android Brought to Life".^note Dr. Light's name is even mentioned in the subtitle. A similar newspaper can be seen in "Keeping the Peace".
  • In "Cammy and the Bachelor", Cammy's MI5 file is briefly shown.
  • "So, You Want to be in Pictures":
    • One of the clapboards for Fei Long's movie has "McNeil" listed as the second unit director. This is a reference of Scott McNeil, Ken's voice actor.
    • A newspaper can briefly be seen. When paused, it has several headlines, one of which talks about Ken saving Fei Long, while another states that "InVISION OPENS STUDIO". The latter headline is a reference of InVision Entertainment, the production company of this series.
    • When Ken and his father reconcile, the words "Street Fighter" are briefly shown when the scene cuts to the airport.
  • In "Second to None", when Sakura's sensei gets hit by Sagat's Tiger Shot, he's briefly seen getting split in half.
• Gang Initiation Fight: In "Final Fight", Ryu and Ken go undercover to infiltrate the Mad Gear gang, and are told that the only way to join is to beat Sodom, one of the bosses from the original Final Fight game. They're up to the task.
• Goofy Print Underwear: In "Eye of the Beholder", it's revealed that Blanka wears lightning-print boxers.
• Gratuitous Japanese: Despite the games' language being deliberately Japanese, Chun-Li being Chinese, and this series' language being English, they had decided to keep her winquote untranslated. It gets inconsistent when her Kikouken is initially referred to as "Fireball":
  Chun-Li: "Yatta! I am the strongest woman in the world!"
• Heel–Face Turn: Sagat in "Cammy Tell Me True", as he does not want the planet to be destroyed.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In "Cammy Tell Me True", Bison's Psycho Power rages out of control, and he can't stop discharging an ever-strengthening magnetic field. This causes the metal computer console he landed on top of to rip him apart and explode.
• I Owe You My Life: At the end of "Strange Bedfellows," in an rather awkward Out-of-Character Moment, Bison spares Guile's life by stopping Zangief from shooting Guile as payback for saving him earlier.
• Idiot Ball: Bison grabs it at the end of "Chunnel Vision" when he throws his ransom money at E. Honda just before he escapes.
• Immortality Seeker: Vega is a former henchman of Bison's who works for him because he's promised eternal youth and beauty.
• The Immune: It's revealed in "The Adventure Begins" that Blanka's blood contains antibodies that are being used to fight off a deadly virus. It is then used to create a vaccine to cure Ryu.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: When it's not A-Team Firing, nobody can hit anyone with bullets or lasers. Ever.
• Insane Troll Logic: Bison drops this one on Chun-Li when she mentions, once again, that he killed her father:
  Bison: (to Chun-Li) "Yes, yes, I killed your father. What is it with you women anyway? I killed my father too and you don't hear me whining about it!"
• In-Series Nickname: "Cindy" for Lucinda.
• Instrumental Theme Tune: Based on the theme of Street Fighter II, naturally.
• Ironic Echo: Cammy does this when she declines Guile's offer to rejoin the Street Fighters following Bison's defeat. She echoes the same words she told Guile when he got back together with Lucinda:
  "A person can't live in the past, Colonel. The past is filled with pain."
• Irony: Despite boasting about discipline, justice, and commitment, Guile very often attacks his opponents from behind.
• It's Quiet… Too Quiet: In the episode "New Kind of Evil," Guile, Blanka and Chun-Li are searching for mutant creatures in the sewer. They say that it is "Quiet," "Too quiet," then say they would prefer to battle their opponents face-to-face instead of being ambushed.
• Just a Kid: In "Second to None", when Sakura says that she wants to go with Guile to rescue her sensei, who is not Dan, he calls her a kid and tells that it is too dangerous. She throws him on the ground and tells him that she knows her way around the area where her sensei is located.
• Large Ham:
  • Bison. Richard Newman was obviously having way too much fun with this role. Coincidentally, this ends up making him the most well-acted character in the show.
  • Akuma, especially when he drops a dramatic "Yes" in "The World's Greatest Warrior".
• Lethal Lava Land: The island that Akuma leads Guile and Bison to in "Strange Bedfellows" is full of active volcanoes that are getting ready to erupt.
• Limited Wardrobe:
  • Many of the Street Fighters wear the same thing all the time, even in places where it would be seen as unprofessional or impractical. Averted by Chun-Li, however, who wears a pink robe in her hotel room in "Getting to Guile", and a business casual lavender skirt when she works as a reporter. This is also averted in "The Warrior King", when she wears a formal dress to a ball. She wants to get out of it and into her Street Fighter uniform as quickly as possible, though, because she has a hard time fighting in the dress.
  • This is most pronounced with Fei Long, who goes shirtless everywhere.
• Look Behind You: In the beginning of "Chunnel Vision," Bison is busy fighting MI5 when one of them shouts to look behind him. Bison scoffs, thinking it's a lame attempt at a distraction. He almost gets hit by a train.
• Made of Iron:
  • Literally in the case of an iron gate in "No Way Out", which takes a lot of punishment from Sagat's platoon before they finally get it out of the way with tanks.
  • If "Desert Thunder" is to be believed, Escher. He takes a shot from a misfired laser superweapon in the head and arm, and suffers no ill effects despite said laser's island destroying power.
• Magic Countdown:
  • In "Keeping the Peace", Guile and Sawada gets into a fight when the latter tries to disarm a bomb. During the fight, the countdown suddenly slows down.
  • In "Cammy Tell Me True", as the countdown to apocalypse happens, it's incredibly slow, even when it speeds up.
• Manipulative Editing: Bison and Balrog do this in "The Medium is the Message" by making it look like that the Street Fighters desecrated a holy temple.
• Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All: Bison gets captured by MI5 in "Chunnel Vision," but it turns out to be a ruse that allowed his agents to hold all of England hostage unless he is freed. Bison then forces the British government to hand over a ransom of one billion pounds sterling, all while chillaxing in his cell and sipping tea.
• Mind Screw: In "Getting to Guile", Guile keeps having nightmares about people turning into monsters, and his friends turning on him. This is justified since Bison was actually screwing around with his mind.
• A Minor Kidroduction: In "Getting to Guile," the Torture Technician sets the memory-scanning/brainwashing device too far back, resulting in a scene of a young Guile defending a kid from bullies only to be chased himself and forced to hide.
• The Mole: Cammy is secretly Bison's sleeper agent, who goes back to working for him after he sends her a certain telepathic message.
• Motor Mouth: In "The Hammer Strikes", everyone sounds like this at times, especially Sawada.
• Mundane Utility: Bison uses his Psycho Power to do everything from go down a subway tunnel on a handcart to dialing an old rotary telephone.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In "Desert Thunder", some of the controls for the superweapon Satin Hammer commandeers are a joystick and six buttons.
  • In "The Medium is the Message", the crate that contains Bison's mutants has the Capcom logo on it.
  • While Blanka has his movie backstory (where he's Charlie mutated), his human form clothes in "Eye of the Beholder" are a paletteswapped dead ringer for the video game Charlie Nash's outfit in Street Fighter Alpha.
  • Gouken's design in "World's Greatest Warrior" is based off of his design from Masaomi Kanzaki's Street Fighter II manga.
• Never Say "Die": Characters sometimes substitute it with "destroy", but there are quite a few exceptions - most notably, Bison proudly proclaiming he killed his own father too after Chun-Li says Bison killed her father.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Invoked by Cammy at the end of "Cammy Tell Me True". After learning the truth about her brainwashing, she decides not to rejoin the Street Fighters, and put everything behind her somehow.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Chun-Li pretends that she doesn't know how to play pool in "Keeping the Peace".
• Oblivious to Love: Subverted. Guile is well aware that Cammy has a crush on him due to the not so subtle hints that she has given him. He does not share these same feelings, however, due to the fact that he is still carrying a torch for his ex-girlfriend Lucinda.^note Whom he would eventually get back together with at the end of "Strange Bedfellows". Despite this, Cammy still hits on Guile until she is brainwashed by Bison in "Cammy and the Bachelor".
• Oh, Crap!: The epic look on Bison's face when he realizes Chun-Li is about to Lightning Kick him in "The Warrior King".
• Opening Narration: As noted in the page quote.
• Out-of-Character Moment:
  • Subverted the first time Bison saves Guile's life in "Strange Bedfellows." He quickly provides a rather in-character explanation:
  Bison: Self-preservation narrowly won out over the pleasure of watching you burn.
  • Ken, while he's fighting Akuma. While it's out of character in comparison to his normal douchiness in this series, it's ironically closer to his actual in-game persona.
• Out of Focus: In a large amount of the Street Fighter media, Ryu is considered to be the series' main protagonist. While he's still a main character in this series, he has a much less prominent role.
• Percussive Maintenance:
  • At one point, Guile throws a Sonic Boom at a bomb to defuse it.
  • In "Cammy Tell Me True," both Guile and Sagat try wrecking Bison's computer terminal after trying to stop the missile launch the normal way just speeds up the countdown.
• Plot Hole: T. Hawk and his power of flight in "Desert Thunder".^note Which was probably just an exaggerated rendition of his Tomahawk Buster attack. In his next appearance, he has no such ability.
• Poirot Speak: Zangief dips into this.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Though mainly presented as a follow-up to the film, the series drew more heavily from the games (restoring everyone's Ki Attacks, for example), and moved even more in that direction as the Alpha games provided new material to work with.
• Psycho Electro: In addition to his usual Psycho Power,^note Er, pun not intended. Bison can also manipulate magnetic fields and, consequently, metal objects.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Bison's eyes tend to glow red when he's angry or about to unleash his Psycho Power.
• The Rest Shall Pass: "Bison is mine!" (or some variant) is said by numerous characters throughout the series, but usually by Guile.
• Running Gag:
  • The various unorthodox methods in which Guile is called in to see Escher.
  • Guile, Ryu, and Ken mentioning the latter two should have stayed in Bangkok in "Dark Heart".
• Sadistic Choice: In "Eye of the Beholder", Vega makes Blanka choose between the formula that will make him human again or Mei Lei, his love interest. Blanka chooses the latter.
• Satellite Love Interest: Mei Lei, the girl Blanka falls in love with in "Eye of the Beholder", doesn't really have much going for her in terms of personality.
• Say My Name:
  BIIIIISONNNNNN!!!!^note Flames appear behind Guile.
  DHALSIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIM!!!!
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: This is Ryu's reaction after he gets slimed by a pig while he and Ken are looking for a temple in "The Adventure Begins".
• Self-Made Orphan: invoked Bison, as he reveals to Chun-Li in battle after she angrily reminds him that he killed her father:
  "I killed my father too, and you don't hear me whining about it!"
• Shirtless Scene: Due to getting injured in "Cammy and the Bachelor," Bison spends the next couple of episodes with no shirt on.
• Sigil Spam: The "SF" emblem that Escher uses to summon Guile to missions can pretty much be anywhere or anything. Among the creative ways it's used, the letters can even be spelled with sandwiches on a dish as seen in "The Strongest Woman in the World".
• Soft Water: In "Desert Thunder", Guile, Blanka, and one of Satin Hammer's guards land safely in a fountain, despite jumping off the roof a Las Vegas casino.
• Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • A brassy, upbeat, heroic fanfare, actually "Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor", can be heard during several inappropriate moments throughout the series. It can be heard during the following scenes:
    • Most notably, it is heard during Bison's famous "YES! YES!" scene, even though he's the Big Bad and might've finally triumphed over the heroes.
    • In "Getting to Guile" when the house Guile and Bison goes into turns into a monster during Guile's nightmare.
    • In "So, You Want to be in Pictures" when Ken nearly falls to his death.
    • In "The Warrior King" when the jet Guile, Ryu, and Ken is in flies into a windstorm that Bison created with the Orb of Power. It causes them to eject out of the jet.
    • In "Final Fight", a much shorter build up of the fanfare can be heard when Belger fires a laser gun at Cody, Guy, and Jessica while they are hiding behind a table:
  "It's only a matter of time until you're all FRIED!"
  • Guile's Big "NO!" features a brassy stinger that wouldn't sound out of place on The A-Team.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Belger in "Final Fight". In the game, he is knocked out of the skyscraper to his death. Here, he catches a railing on his way down.
• Squee: Sachi and Midori do this in "The Hand That Feeds You" when they realize that they had indeed met Fei Long in person.
• Stock Footage: In "Dark Heart", whenever Dhalsim uses his Yoga Fire, the same footage is shown.
• Story Arc: Season 2 got a couple of them: Cammy's Face–Heel Turn due to Bison's mind control, and Blanka's struggle to contain his strength and anger after getting sprayed with mutagen ooze.
• Tarot Troubles: In "The Flame and the Rose", Rose has nightmares of a fiery Armagaeddon and uses tarot cards to determine the cause. She draws The Fool, The Devil,^note Which she calls "a beast". and The Tower.^note Which she says "is [the one] doomed by fire". She assumes the first two to be Ken and Blanka and kidnaps them, forcing them to fight each other to the death in order to keep the world safe. Naturally, the last of three is Bison, the source of the fire in her nightmares. After realizing that she was wrong about Ken and Blanka, she recruits them to go after Bison. In the end, she determines either Bison or herself is all three for varying reasons related to their foolishness.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In the movie, Guile disobeying his superiors would get him court-martialed in real life. This series has this happen as part of his backstory, resulting in him forming his own team of heroes.
• Terrifying Rescuer: In "Eye of the Beholder", Blanka rescues the Japanese Prime Minister. Upon seeing his savior, the Prime Minister yells "Kaibutsu! Kaibutsu!" ("Monster! Monster!") and flees. This becomes part of Blanka's ongoing identity struggle caused by his forced mutation.
• Thick-Line Animation: "Eye of the Beholder" goes for more of a comic book look for the characters; as a result, the outlines are thicker than normal.
• Third-Person Person: Zangief often talks like this. Blanka starts speaking like this in "The Flame and the Rose" while fighting Zangief, probably to make fun of him.
• Troll: In "Final Fight", after Ken teases Cody about Jessica falling for himself:
  Ryu: Why do you do that sort of thing?
  Ken: 'Cause it's fun! (laughs)
• Truer to the Text: The series is related to the movie, taking many of its plot points, but adds more of the games' lore into it, especially in Season 2.
• Unexplained Recovery: Despite the fact that Sodom apparently perished when Bison's hovercraft crashed into a building in "Cammy and the Bachelor", he's alive and well in "Final Fight".
• Unreliable Illustrator: Everybody gets affected by this at least once. Neither Madhouse or Sunrise, the show's animators, were consistent with each other much less among themselves:
  • Guile has eyebrows. This makes his expressions easier to read. Additionally, his eyebrows goes back and forth between being blond and black.
  • Ken's hair flips back and forth between being blond and strawberry blond throughout the series.
  • One particular moment in "Eye of the Beholder" is when Dee Jay appears to shrink. He got out of an elevator by running out of it, and then he turned to his left while still running. Some guy was shooting at him. But by running towards the left, he was supposed to become "closer" to the camera. Instead, it's as if the distance wasn't even changed; if anything, he was actually getting smaller. And that's how he avoided being shot. Plus they spelled "MAXIMUM" wrong on his trousers.
  • In "Keeping the Peace", a sniper takes aim at Sawada and Guile pushes him out of the way. The sniper misses, but the shot appears to hit Guile's shoulder anyway, with no lasting effects.
  • "Desert Thunder": At one point, a superweapon that Satin Hammer commandeers misfires thanks to T. Hawk and one of her shots goes wide and heads in Escher's direction. It looks as if it was supposed to miss Escher according to script, but seems to hit him in the head and arm. It doesn't affect him in any way despite having the power to obliterate islands.
  • Guile, Bison, and Akuma in have different facial designs in "Strange Bedfellows". Bison's cape also can't decide if it's flapping in the breeze or not, and often alternates between shots.
  • In "Strange Bedfellows," Sagat puts his feet up on Bison's desk to reveal he has two right ones. In "Cammy Tell Me True," his iconic chest scar disappears.
  • Sometimes characters are drawn with the wrong emotions, or look like they were. For example, in "Second to None", Ken is in the hospital, injured, and Escher is supposed to be comforting him. But the way he was drawn makes him look menacing as hell.
  • Bison has eight different facial designs in "The Warrior King".
  • The aforementioned moment in "Second to None" where Sakura's sensei is briefly seen getting split in half by Sagat's Tiger Shot.
  • When Chun-Li sees Bison in "Cammy Tell Me True", she does a flying kick. However, when she gets close to him, she suddenly throws a punch and then a kick. Furthermore, when he gets ready to do a Psycho Crusher, he stands several feet from her.
• Villain Has a Point: In "The Strongest Woman in the Woman", Bison, while holding the detonator for the explosives inside a nuclear power plant, tells Chun-Li that getting her revenge against him will lead to the death of many people. This convinces her to let him go in exchange for the detonator.
• Villain Teleportation:
  • Akuma is very found of Teleport Spam in "Strange Bedfellows".
  • Bison teleports behind Guile several times in "Cammy Tell Me True".
• Villainous BSoD: Cammy, after learning she was brainwashed by Bison:
  Cammy: Everything is lies! EVERYTHING IS LIES!!!
• Vocal Dissonance: The feral boy in the episode "The Beast Within", who has the voice of a ten-year-old despite having the body of a teenager.
• Wag the Director: invoked In addition to his meddling as a producer, Ken does this to Fei Long as well in "So, You Want to be in Pictures", since he's one of the latter's co-stars.
• Wall Run: Guile does this to evade a thug in "The Hand That Feeds You".
• We Need a Distraction: In "The Flame and the Rose," Rose offers to distract Bison on the astral plane while Ken and Blanka break into his hideout and get rid of his Kali statue.
• Wham Episode: "Cammy and the Bachelor" has Cammy awakening as Bison's sleeper agent and helping him escape, shaking up the status quo and leading to a season-long quest to help her.
• Wham Line: In "The Hand That Feeds You", Fei Long and his movie director, Raymond Wang, have this exchange when the former finds out that the latter is involved in a drug ring:
  Fei Long: Ray! So it is true. You're involved in all this evil!
  Raymond Wang: Correction—we're involved. Without this money, none of your films would ever have been made.
  Fei Long: You financed my career with blood money?
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • In "Getting to Guile," Chun-Li wins a private fighting tournament in exchange for information from its organizer, El Fideo. Before she can meet with him, she's summoned for Street Fighter duty. At the same time, Ryu and Ken are hired by El Fideo to search for a treasure map and they're attacked by his thugs in a dark alleyway. They're rescued by Chun-Li and Dee Jay, and the map is never turned in. A short moment later, Blanka joins them after getting a message from Chun-Li. Dee Jay asks how Blanka managed to find them, but no explanation for how all of them met up is given by the end of the episode, nor anything about the information Chun-Li won the rights to and never claimed.
  • Balrog never appears after his first appearance. Where did he go? Never explained. To quote the annotation near the end of this video:
  "What will Cammy do next? Can Ryu and Ken stop Akuma from murdering fighters and stealing their chi? Can T. Hawk set aside his feelings to stop Satin Hammer's terrorist vendetta against those who wronged her? Will Warrior's World ever be saved and with Chun-Li ever reunite with her lover?^note The first part of one is answered in Wing Commander Academy: no. Can Fei Long end the Triad's grip on Hong Kong and rebuild his tarnished career? Will Guile ever regain his old life and will Blanka regain his humanity? And what happened to Vega and Balrog?"
• What the Hell, Hero?: Fei Long chews out Ken in "So, You Want to be in Pictures" for allowing his fame to get in the way of his training, making him a sloppy and unreliable mess during filming. To elaborate, he and Ken were filming a scene where Ken's character was meant to die. However, thanks to getting more funds for the film from his dad, and being handed creative control of the film, Ken rewrote the scene to have him get up triumphantly, amongst other things:
  "And you... you're a LOSER!"
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Bison attempts to do this to Zangief in "Demon Island" after his plan is thwarted by the Street Fighters.
• You Killed My Father: The focus of the plot in "The Strongest Woman in the World" (Bison killed Chun-Li's father). This receives a callback in "Cammy Tell Me True" during a exchange between Bison and Chun-Li. It goes double for Cammy here, as she found out in the same episode that Bison had both her parents executed. Hence Bison's "What is it with you women anyway?" line when Chun-Li confronts him: Cammy had thrown her you killed my parents in his face earlier.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me: In "The Hammer Strikes", when T. Hawk refuses to use a nuclear warhead on the Livermore Laboratory, Satin Hammer pulls out a laser rifle. When he calls her bluff, she shoots him in the arm.

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